Trump's Brand is Ayn Rand

Is the Koch Brothers' Curriculum Coming to Your Kids School?

The Ayn Rand Self-Obsessed Cult Has Run Amok!

The Great Libertarian Paradise Experiment Has Failed

Hey, Paul Ryan -- We All Depend on Government - Even You (and Your Mom)! | Common Dreams

Hey, Paul Ryan -- We All Depend on Government - Even You (and Your Mom)! | Common Dreams
"This is the Paul Ryan whose budget plan would have slashed funding for public education, roads, and public services that are the investments we need to lift people out of poverty and strengthen our economy. Now he's taking aim at the most vulnerable people in society -- food stamp recipients.

Ryan worships at the altar of novelist Ayn Rand, the philosopher of you're-on-your-own selfishness, whose books were required reading for his Congressional staffers."

Ayn Rand USA: In 20 Years Corporate Profits Are Up 4X and Their Taxes Have Fallen by 50% -- Meanwhile the Workers' Payroll Tax Has Doubled | Alternet

Ayn Rand USA: In 20 Years Corporate Profits Are Up 4X and Their Taxes Have Fallen by 50% -- Meanwhile the Workers' Payroll Tax Has Doubled | Alternet
"Ayn Rand's philosophy suggests that average working people are 'takers.' In reality, those in the best position to make money take all they can get, with no scruples about their working class victims, because  taking, in the minds of the rich, serves as a model for success. The strategy involves tax avoidance, in numerous forms."

Ayn Rand and the Horror at a Texas Fertilizer Facility | Alternet

Ayn Rand and the Horror at a Texas Fertilizer Facility | Alternet
"the central role that absolute free market libertarianism, as personified by the fictional John Galt, played in the horrific explosion in West, Texas that took the lives of fourteen people, most of whom were volunteer firefighters fighting a fire at an unregulated fertilizer facility. We have now learned that the facility had a checkered history of ignoring regulations and had 1350 times more ammonium nitrate on hand than the amount that triggers a legal requirement to report the facility to Department of Homeland Security. Of course, the facility’s owner chose to ignore that regulation along with the many other regulations he chose to ignore."

The Southern State Fast Becoming Ayn Rand's Vision of Paradise | Alternet

The Southern State Fast Becoming Ayn Rand's Vision of Paradise | Alternet
"As you would expect, this translates into hard times for its public school systems, which rank 48th in school revenues per student and 45th in teacher salaries. The failure to invest in education also corresponds with poverty: the state has the 40th worst poverty rate (15%) and the 13th highest state percentage of poor children (26%). 

Employment opportunities also are extremely poor for the poor. Only 25% have full-time jobs, 45% are employed part-time, and a whopping 30% have no jobs at all. So what do you do with all those low-income folks who don't have decent jobs? You put a good number of them in jail. In fact, only Louisiana, Georgia and New Mexico have  higher jail incarceration rates."

A Cinderella Story? How The Koch Brothers Use Florida Gulf Coast University To Promote Their Agenda

A Cinderella Story? How The Koch Brothers Use Florida Gulf Coast University To Promote Their Agenda: It’s a great story: the virtually unknown, 15th seeded Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU), has made it to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. But there’s something you might not know about FGCU: its economics department is, as a consequence of grants from Randian businessman John Allison and the Charles G. Koch Foundation, a haven [...]/p

Welcome to Ayn Rand Planet: Why the Rich Prosper from the Stock Market While We Get Screwed | Alternet

Welcome to Ayn Rand Planet: Why the Rich Prosper from the Stock Market While We Get Screwed | Alternet
"The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, the old and new testament of the Ayn Rand nation, which includes much of the Tea Party and its Republican allies."

Republicans Fulfill Their Cruel Ayn Rand Obsession With the Sequester | Alternet

Republicans Fulfill Their Cruel Ayn Rand Obsession With the Sequester | Alternet
"America has the lowest tax rates of any developed country on the planet and the rich have a greater share of national wealth than at any point in our history. But poverty is stuck at a decades-high level, black and Latino wealth is the lowest ever recorded, and America remains flat on its back after the worst economic downturn in almost a hundred years.

Contrary to the “starve the beast” philosophy, holding up the 1 percent andweakening economic opportunity for the 99 percent has enfeebled America, not strengthened it."

Ayn Rand Classes Forced on Children

Let's Face It, Ayn Rand's Gospel of Selfishness and Billionaire Empowerment Is the Dominant Ideology | Alternet

Let's Face It, Ayn Rand's Gospel of Selfishness and Billionaire Empowerment Is the Dominant Ideology | Alternet
"Between stupidity like this, and the re-birth of Ayn Rand through corporate-funded think tanks and Hollywood movies, the Billionaire Class wants to make sure the next generation buys into a toxic ideology that’s quite literally destroying the world as we know it."

Noam Chomsky Slams America's Selfish Ayn Randian Elites | Alternet

Noam Chomsky Slams America's Selfish Ayn Randian Elites | Alternet
"Noam Chomsky argues that people who have the most privilege owe the most to society. "The more privilege you have the more responsibility you have," says Chomsky, "It's elementary." 

Asked why the opposite seems to be true in America, where many wealthy people refuse to give up their time or money to help those in need, Chomsky replies that the lack of public responsibility among many elites makes sense; after all, if you've devoted your life to enriching yourself and wealth is what you value the most, you don't care as much about other people. But it goes beyond that, argues Chomsky. "It's also institutional. In its more pathological form, it's Ayn Rand ideology: 'I just don't care about anyone else. I'm only interested in benefiting myself. That's good and noble"."

How Romney And Ryan Would Severely Impair Disaster Relief Efforts

How Romney And Ryan Would Severely Impair Disaster Relief Efforts: The federal government’s ability to respond to natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy currently bearing down on the East Coast, would be significantly hindered under a Romney-Ryan administration. At least three times, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have publicly demanded that the federal government only disburse disaster relief funding if Congress agreed to offsetting budget cuts [...]/p

Ryan Shrugged - In These Times

Ryan Shrugged - In These Times
"You’d expect a Rand devotee mired in the bureaucratic maw of the federal Leviathan to emulate her heroes by cultivating their sneeringly autocratic flare for rebellion. But Ryan has been an arch GOP loyalist, backing George W. Bush’s massive expansion of Medicare drug coverage and the costly invasion of Iraq, in spite of his carefully curated image as a crusading budget slasher. 

 

On closer look, though, Ryan’s Randianism seems like a pose adopted as a deeper psychic compensation to make up for a chronic need to please in every conventional manner. He shows a craving for approval going back to his senior year in Janesville, Wis., when the yearbook named him the school’s “biggest brownnoser.” And that penchant for not merely pursuing, but luxuriating in, the ripest opportunity has stayed with Ryan ever since."

Paul Ryan Is the Newest New Nixon, a Moocher Belied | Common Dreams

Paul Ryan Is the Newest New Nixon, a Moocher Belied | Common Dreams
"More to the point, during the whole time Paul Ryan was on his own path, his own journey, the American journey where he could think for himself, decide for himself, and define happiness for himself, every rough road was made smooth by his reliance on Social Security survivor's benefits that came to his family upon the death of his father. At least Chris Christie had the self-awareness to mention the G.I. Bill on Tuesday night, when he was talking about his father. The assistance that young Paul Ryan got from "the central planners" as he rose from Janesville, through Miami of Ohio, and to a career in which he never has had a job that wasn't inside, or very close to, the national government was not even acknowledged. He knows, in his Randian soul, that he once was a moocher, that in many ways he remains a moocher, and perhaps it galls him just a bit. It eats at him, the way Richard Nixon's childhood poverty was wormwood in his soul. That's where the connection lies. Paul Ryan is the newest new Nixon and, don't kid yourselves: He's a lot better at it than the old one was."

Paul Ryan And The Fountainhead : Information Clearing House: ICH

Uri Avnery:    Paul Ryan And The Fountainhead    :    Information Clearing House: ICH
"Ayn Rand, it was said, was one of the main inspirations for his particular philosophy. Since Ryan is being represented not as an ordinary, run-of-the-mill politician, like Mitt Romney, but as a profound political and economic thinker, the inspiration deserves some scrutiny."

Paul Ryan Lies About His Devotion To Ayn Rand

Paul Ryan faces the reality of being a Vice Presidential candidate, and divorces Ayn Rand the Russian atheist. After 25 years of adoration and worship at her alter, he realizes he can't get the new job with her . He has claimed she was the reason he started in politics, he wrote and gave a speech to a meeting of her followers, he said as recently as 2009 that her writings are "sorely needed right now". Don't be fooled, Paul Ryan understands Rand's objectivist philosophy, his polices reflex it. He is lying to avoid the political ramifications of having a Russian atheist as his philosophical teacher.

Paul Ryan, Catholics and Ayn Rand

Sister Simone Campbell, discuss how Paul Ryan will mesh his faith with his admiration of atheist Ayn Rand's economic philosophy.