Snidely Whiplash

oh forgive me . . .  I was thinking about Mittens.

This is an incomplete post, but I am tired of thinking about it.


Minor Ayn Rand-ness

I drove my son to school at GW on Friday.  On the way we discussed how the villians of the Atlas Shrugged rig the rules to take intellectual property and bounty of others work to profit themselves.  The heroes are not interested in great wealth, but they are interest in reward equal to their efforts.  All of them are innovators (Galt) or have vision that lead them outside the norm.  Most of them start at the bottom and work.  If firms like Bain and individuals like Romney profit by hollowing out failing companies rather than innovating on their own, protect themselves by special tax loop holes, and otherwise utilize rules specifically designed to profit them, they are not Rand's heros, they are exactly her villians. 

Anyway, Atlas Shrugged is a great read.  It is an interesting personal response to communism. 


I am an entrepeneur and a tax cut on my upper rate won't help my business or you

At least, I sometimes count myself as one, though obviously not the best one.  I started a company that has survived for more than 15 years.  Started with zero employees and bootstrapped to over 20 employees, I have paid millions of dollars in salaries over the years, provided excellent health insurance, and matched my employee retirement contributions.  My company survived the recession, but we're finding it very hard to get back to our peak.  It is very slow and remains very scary at times.

Along the way I've provided some innovative programming code and ideas that we implemented in our company.  This code has turned up used verbatim in India (with copyright info removed) and carried away by ex-employees to my competitors.   If I was big enough I might be able to sue some people, but that is a lot easier said than done.   As a small business, I have pretty little leverage to go after companies abroad and it would be laughable for me to go after some of the big names in my business, they are nearly billion dollar companies.

It has been a lot of hard work for a long time.  In that time I've helped numerous companies with products that have become market leaders in their area.  Sometimes the companies have sold for 100s of millions of dollars.  Not that I gave them their inventions, but I provided them expertise in my area, sometimes rescuing them from their own mistakes, all at a reasonable price.

Anyway, in this particular area, I have walked the walk. 

So, I can confirm for you that if my upper tax rate goes from 35% to 29%, it won't make an iota of difference to me and I won't employ a single extra employee as a result.  I will simply keep the difference.  So, Republicans, do it if you want, but realize that the Romney tax plan will do nothing for the middle class.  Even worse, even David Stockman called it, the Romney plan will only make the deficit worse. 


Faith-based Objectivism is an Oxymoron

There was a reason Ayn Rand was an athiest, for this she was not a hypocrit.