Many of us who know Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957….

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism….

David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand’s ideas, explains that “the older the book gets, the more timely its message.” He tells me that there are plans to make “Atlas Shrugged” into a major motion picture — it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. “We don’t need to make a movie out of the book,” Mr. Kelley jokes. “We are living it right now.”

via What Caused Atlas Shrugged Sales to Soar? | Cato @ Liberty.

Why ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Matters

by Mike Baron

When I mentioned to friends I was reading Atlas Shrugged their response was uniform: “Oh that. I read it in college but now I have moved on to adult subjects.” These were liberal friends, you understand, and I couldn’t help but wonder why they would want to discourage me from reading a literary classic that is selling better now than at any time in its history. In fact, it has recently moved up to become Amazon’s 37th best-selling novel. Last week it was 44. By the time you read this it will have moved higher.

The reason becomes immediately apparent upon reading. It might have been written yesterday. Rand’s description of a socialist state taken over by “looters,” people who cannot create or produce but who seize power under the rubric of “fairness” is so spot-on accurate of today’s administration it’s scary. At over one thousand pages long, Atlas Shrugged is not a weekend read and made me question whether my fun-loving liberal friends actually read it, or read the Cliff’s Notes version which is also selling at unprecedented levels.

In a fictional United States, three giants of industry struggle with a government of venal bureaucrats, “looters,” Rand calls them, that closely resemble our present administration. The three industrialists are Dagny Taggart, Vice President in Charge of Operations for mighty Taggart Transcontinental, steelmaker Henry Rearden whose Rearden Miracle Metal puts steel to shame, and the Chilean play boy Francisco D’Anconia who inherited the world’s richest copper mines and proceeds to turn them into dust, shocking all who know him and invested in his supposedly rock-solid enterprise.

The reasons D’Anconia liquidates his empire in secret become increasing clear as the new administration strips away individual rights.

These are larger-than-life characters acting out their passion on an international stage. Has there ever been a more dynamic woman literary character than Dagny? There’s a reason Angelina Jolie is eager to play her in the upcoming film. This will only intensify rumblings that our Most Holy of Hollywood Couples are secret libertarians.

via Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Why ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Matters.

I can’t help to think that perhaps all of the great minds in our era have gone on strike. Financial idiots seem to be driving the economy. They believe that they are smarter than the market, yet the market continues to punish their folly by its relentless descent into depths unseen in a decade and a half. Gone – vanished – disappeared. All the hard work and energy that productive members of society have built up and saved has been destroyed.

Our President since the day of his election has in my opinion personally destroyed the wealth of millions all over the world. November 4, 2008 the DJI Stood at 9625. As I write this the market is at 6652 a 31% drop and a 53% drop from its record high 0f 14093 in October 2007. Just a little over 1 year and utter devastation has occurred with a majority of it happening since November.

Why is this the case? Obama seems hell bent not only on transfering wealth from rich to poor but in destroying it in the process as well as removing incentives to create wealth by excessive taxation

It was the first failure in the history of Rearden Steel. For the first time, an order was not delivered as promised. But by February 15, when the Taggart rail was due, it made no difference to anyone any longer.
Winter had come early, in the last days of November. People said that it was the hardest winter on record and that no one could be blamed for the unusual severity of the snowstorms. They did not care to remember that there had been a time when snowstorms did not sweep, unresisted, down unlighted roads and upon the roofs of unheated houses, did not stop the movement of trains, did not leave a wake of corpses counted by the hundreds.
The first time that Danagger Coal was late in delivering fuel to Taggart Transcontinental, in the last week of December, Danagger’s cousin explained that he could not help it; he had had to cut the workday down to six hours, he said, in order to raise the morale of the men who did not seem to function as they had in the days of his cousin Kenneth; the men had become listless and sloppy, he said, because they were exhausted by the harsh discipline of the former management; he could not help it if some of the superintendents and foremen had quit him without reason, men who had been with the company for ten to twenty years; he could not help it if there seemed to be some friction between his workers and his new supervisory staff, even though the new men were much more liberal than the old slave drivers; it was only a matter of readjustment, he said. He could not help it, he said, if the tonnage intended for Taggart Transcontinental had been turned over, on the eve of its scheduled delivery, to the Bureau of Global Relief for shipment to the People’s State of England; it was an emergency, the people of England were starving, with all of their State factories closing down—and Miss Taggart was being unreasonable, since it was only a matter of one day’s delay.
It was only one day’s delay. It caused a three days’ delay in the run of Freight Train Number 386, bound from California to New York with fifty-nine carloads of lettuce and oranges. Freight Train Number 386 waited on sidings, at coaling stations, for the fuel that had not arrived. When the train reached New York, the lettuce and oranges had to be dumped into the East River: they had waited their turn too long in the freight houses of California, with the train schedules cut and the engines forbidden, by directive, to pull a train of more than sixty cars.
Nobody but their friends and trade associates noticed that three orange growers in California went out of business, as well as two lettuce farmers in Imperial Valley; nobody noticed the closing of a commission house in New York, of a plumbing company to which the commission house owed money, of a lead-pipe wholesaler who had supplied the plumbing company. When people were starving, said the newspapers, one did not have to feel concern over the failures of business enterprises which were only private ventures for private profit.
The coal shipped across the Atlantic by the Bureau of Global Relief did not reach the People’s State of England: it was seized by Ragnar Danneskjold.
The second time that Danagger Coal was late in delivering fuel to Taggart Transcontinental, in mid-January, Danagger’s cousin snarled over the telephone that he could not help it: his mines had been shut down for three days, due to a shortage of lubricating oil for the machinery. The supply of coal to Taggart Transcontinental was four days late.
Mr. Quinn, of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company which had once moved from Connecticut to Colorado, waited a week for the freight train that carried his
order of Rearden steel. When the train arrived, the doors of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company’s plant were closed.
Nobody traced the closing of a motor company in Michigan, that had waited for a shipment of ball bearings, its machinery idle, its workers on full pay; or the closing of a sawmill in Oregon, that had waited for a new motor; or the closing of a lumber yard in Iowa, left without supply; or the bankruptcy of a building contractor in Illinois who, failing to get his lumber on time, found his contracts cancelled and the purchasers of his homes sent wandering off down snowswept roads in search of that which did not exist anywhere any longer.
The snowstorm that came at the end of January blocked the passes through the Rocky Mountains, raising white walls thirty feet high across the main-line track of Taggart Transcontinental. The men who attempted to clear the track, gave up within the first few hours: the rotary plows broke down, one after another. The plows had been kept in precarious repair for two years past the span of their usefulness. The new plows had not been delivered; the manufacturer had quit, unable to obtain the steel he needed from Orren Boyle.
Three westbound trains were trapped on the sidings of Winston Station, high in the Rockies, where the main line of Taggart Transcontinental cut across the northwest corner of Colorado. For five days, they remained beyond the reach of help. Trains could not approach them through the storm. The last of the trucks made by Lawrence Hammond broke down on the frozen grades of the mountain highways.
The best of the airplanes once made by Dwight Sanders were sent out, but never reached Winston Station; they were worn past the stage of fighting a storm.

Atlas Shrugged

This exemplifies what seems to be occurring today.

A topic of note is that California is working on legislation to limit automobile emissions. How are they going to do this? Buy limiting the amount of vehicles in a class that can be sold within the state based opon  fuel efficiency.

For those who want trucks watch prices skyrocket!