Walking around on Resurrection ground
July 22, 2015 1 Comment
A Cost to Benefit Analysis of scientism’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory (AGW) or “Stop being afraid and start thinking”:
See also my recent post “Climate Scientism is Made of Green Cheese”.
July 21, 2015 Leave a comment
July 16, 2015 Leave a comment
UPDATE: It has come to my attention that some persons believe I ridiculed Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. in this post. That was not my intent and, on rereading this post, is far from the truth. I have the utmost respect for both climate scientists. I simply used Dr. van Oldenborgh’s blog post as a springboard for this one. Geert Jan has since written a follow-up post about lower troposphere temperature data. See Is there a pause in the temperature of the lower troposphere? And I referred to Dr. Pielke in this post for two reasons. First, he is known to skeptics, and, second, he agrees with Dr. van Oldenborgh about the importance of ocean warming. I simply put ocean warming into terms that are more familiar with most readers…deg C, instead of 10^22 Joules.
My apologies to Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Roger Pielke Sr…
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July 11, 2015 Leave a comment
It’s a mystery to me
We have a greed with which we have agreed
You think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all you won’t be free
Society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without
Though the message of the above song resonates within me throughout and though I have seen others on the same road as Alexander Supertramp I do not recommend walking away…
~~~
Two recent events reveal the impoverished thinking of populist economics and “society’s crazy breed”: A mandated minimum wage increase in Chicago (Chicago-Minimum-Wage-Notice) and Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman’s macro-hypocrisy increase.
Let’s start with the subliminal wage increase.
It feels so “Oprah-kind” to know that the minimum pay for your effort will be set at a fixed rate by Big Brother. Big Brother, of course, is not paying for the increase but he is certainly gaining political capital and tax revenue from your increased paycheck.
The media abets the ravenous pols by constantly bombarding us with income deltas as if materialism is the bread of life. Karl Marx did care about how much someone else made, he dined out on it.
On a daily basis I find some financial webpages and articles written about comparative CEO salaries. OMG! Reporter, get the socialist’s dirty needle out of your arm! Are you reporting these numbers so as to invoke class-ic envy?
“There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, For I did dream of money-bags to-night.” William Shakespeare
~~~
Thomas Sowell, economist
“Minimum wage laws make it illegal to pay less than the government specified price for labor. By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market. The result is a surplus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of farm produce and labor.
Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount….” Quote from Thomas Sowell, economist, “The Thomas Sowell Reader”.
~~~
Nothing happens in isolation. Consider also that the Obamacare/health “coverage” is also mandated. So, a worker’s hours are restricted to ensure that a business remains profitable to ensure employee jobs. And, a worker who doesn’t fulfill the Obamacare mandated-Justice Ruth Ginsburg-and-Justice John Roberts-mandated requirements is fined or taxed-actually, both. Big Brother has the gun law of coercion to your back.
~~~
Under the “People should and do trust me” department…
Hillary Clinton and Income Reality Inequality! Hillary Clinton Broke?
Why “income inequality”? Because good money is thrown after bad.
Paul Krugman, pop economist
Paul Krugman Sticks It To Poor People With $225,000 Salary To Study Income Inequality
By Eric Owens, Education Editor:
“This week, trustees of the cash-strapped, taxpayer-funded City University of New York (CUNY) system approved a hefty annual salary as well as the fancypants title of “distinguished professor” for Paul Krugman.
New York City’s public college system pays Krugman $225,000 each year to analyze the vexing problem of income inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Luxembourg Income Study Center, Gawker notes.
Krugman’s $225,000 salary — which is $18,750 per month — does not include his undisclosed earnings from other ventures, the sum of which could be substantial.”
Why “income inequality”? (You don’t have to pay me!)
A Fool and his money are soon parted. Duh!
-Folly: A fool and his money are soon parted.” That’s what state lotteries and casinos count on.
-Government and Progressive Income tax: I made a few dollars as a store clerk at age thirteen. Now I make a whole lot more money closer to retirement. And this is because I have worked a lifetime to obtain skills that have been of value to my employers. Should I be taxed more because I make more money due to the manifest effort on my part to take care of my family and to pay my bills, just to satisfy the ‘social justice” gnosis?
–Time and experience: Over the course of decades I have had “income inequality” every year of my life. Should I demand equal pay because someone is making more at some point in time? No way! I need to make myself of more value to my employer and then ask for an increase in pay or find a better paying job. This brings me to my next point…
-Denial: Degreed Millennials, as an observation, think that their academic credentials buy them a ticket to ride without much effort on their part. Some even think that blue-collar labor is beneath them. This denial of reality of their situation and a lack of healthy self-awareness is the result, in part I believe, of the effects of psychotherapy’s delusional self-awareness pharmacopeia on our culture. Psychotherapy provides the illusion that you can live an existence free of any tension over time, through endless sessions of… therapy. An analysand’s every thought must be reviewed, be given equal doses of “hmmm” and then before the open-ended session’s time is done, be given equal value. “You are not to blame yourself. XYZ is responsible. Look, our time is up. See you next week. Pay up front.” And, psychotherapy’s moral deficit is not a cure for a person’s lack of awareness of the obvious-many a Millennial thinks he is entitled. And, of no value is the politician’s “Hope and Change” pharmacopeia. A Minimum wage is not a cure at all. It is a placebo that generates no economic health whatsoever. In fact it denies the existence of bad economic choices an individual has made. Yet, perverse politicians say “it’s not you. You didn’t build that problem. The institution of big business is the problem. It must take our ‘medicine’ for your cure.
-Misdirected Self-awareness: Millennials tend to think of only what they need and not what an employer needs. Naiveté.
Money Well Spent?!?
sodahead.com
-Some people have a spending problem: Some people reinvest their money and create jobs. Others will spend their money and ask “Why am I ‘poor’ when others are rich?” The makeshift poor will demand the doctors of politics to up their dosage of cornucopian wealth.
-Lack of wisdom: “He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.” William Shakespeare
-Lack of wisdom: “It is senseless to pay tuition to educate a fool, since he has no heart for learning.” Proverbs 17:16
-Lack of wisdom: “Lazy people want much but get little, but those who work hard will prosper.” Proverbs 13:4
-Lack of wisdom: “Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!” Proverbs 14:23
~~~
In a twist of a Thomas Sowell quote, ”It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.” I say, ”It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to insure them against their bad decisions.”
~~~
Added 7-15-2015:
Thomas Sowell – Minimum Wage Exploitation (Economics 101)
July 5, 2015 2 Comments
Instead of the man-handled “AGW” data, the populist’s scientism data which has fueled a lot of politicized hot air about a coming apocalypse the world would be better served by science and a global credulity index…
Remember the Greek philosopher Plato’s symbolic illustration of a cave and the people chained inside? The cave captives were scared of their own fuel burning fire-generated shadows. Cave tour guide here.
Today we have the Climate Change doomsday cult who has chained themselves inside a dark and unventilated CO2 filled cave. This cult eats green cheese and they are very scared of their flickering carbon footprint on the wall. “Those bad humans! Bad!” they tell themselves.
Wafer thin Green Cheese for dessert?
The cave dwellers, using bits of charcoal, etched on the walls of their cave the words, “We are settled science, No Deniers Welcome!”
But wait! What is that light outside yonder cave? It is the east and hydrogen is the sun! In that light we see other light: there’s a living oxygen breathing CO2 expelling naturally occurring human who is standing outside the unventilated CO2 cave. He is calling to the cave people to come outside, out into the street light, to feel “summer’s ripening breath” on their necks.
If the cave people would just rub their smog filled eyes and stopped eating their green cheese, if they just came outside then they would see that flora is green because of CO2 and…that fossil fuels have helped mankind move around in the dark when the sun hides its helium/neon glare.
Solar nexus
Apparently, this outdoorsman humanist doesn’t eat the Climate Scientism green cheese even if it is labeled “Aged 2 days in science labs”! He is humanist philosopher Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress.
Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel
The greatest threat to mankind is NOT AGW! The greatest threat to mankind is mankind no longer caring for its neighbor. Remember! Climate cultists believe that humans are bad and Mother Earth is good.
The greatest threat to mankind is man seeking material gain, security and power at another’s cost.
Lest anyone think that I hate earth because I do not join the cult of climate change believers then think again. As a Follower of the Way I know that as part of the Kingdom of God I must care for the planet.
I care for the planet. I don’t care for the politicized religion of scientism. >>What is Scientism?<<
And you should know that God has enriched the planet with various sources of all-natural fuel sources including fossil, nuclear, wind, solar and gravity (dams).
Every living thing someday decomposes into fossil fuel. Why? So the cycle of life continues.
Fossil fuel is created from the decomposition of every living thing including you. You are renewable…in more ways than you think.
The body. It’s elementary Watson!
***
Calif. Philosopher Making the ‘Moral Case for Fossil Fuels’ Says “This Is How Global Warming Should Be Discussed”:
“If you look at the assumptions behind all the arguments against fossil fuels, they turn out to just be incredibly irrational,”…
Epstein said you are “taught this narrative” that “fossil fuels are an addiction” and, while they are convenient in the short-term, in the long-term they are “destroying us.”
“You’re given three basic reasons: One, they’re causing depletion. Two, they’re causing pollution. And, three, they’re causing global warming or climate change,” Epstein explained. “This is used to say, ‘They’re an addiction. We need to get off them. We need to use renewable, moral, green energy instead.’”
But Epstein said every other positive technological development that has side effects is not considered a short-term, destructive fix, and it is certainly not considered “immoral.” (emphasis added)
Read the whole article (link above) to find out the benefits of fossil fuel before the lights go out.
And come to the Heartland.
July 3, 2015 Leave a comment
!!Trigger warning – Snark attack!! Proceed with clarity of mind…
Who needs ISIS when Greece, Spain, Portugal, France-the totality of the West-can self-destruct from within just by voting for idiots and appointing people into positions of power who have no business (or moral rectitude or moral courage) for holding the position they are in?
I don’t need to name names but these Prime Suspects are currently seeking to placate a deaf, obstinate and Israel-hating-West-hating Iran; these suspects have dealt a fatal blow to the sacred institution of marriage by ascribing “dignity” to godless and blatant lasciviousness; these suspects have mandated Obamacarelessness! Wow! The U.S. can now be like Europe-morally and financially bankrupt with plenty of time off work! Happy Fourth of July Dependence Day!
Not the House of the Rising Sun but similar in Epicurean proportion!
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859)
We were warned …
Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1805 – 1859) prescient warning about soft despotism accurately depicts the political will of our three branches of government including the infamous 2015 SCOTUS. And, it certainly applies to all the over-reaching regulatory agencies armed with the tentacles of the politically motivated unelected. Here is de Tocqueville’s warning (emphasis added-across the post):
“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Four, Chapter VI.
“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack; it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?”
“Democracy in America”, “Accidental or Providential Causes Which Contribute to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States.”
And this…
“I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”
Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843, Tocqueville Reader, p. 229
And this…
“Socialism is a new form of slavery.”
“As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can’t have it both ways.”
Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848).
And this…
“Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.”
Ancien Regime and the Revolution (fourth edition, 1858), de Tocqueville, tr. Gerald Bevan
“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.”
Democracy in America, Chapter XVII.
And this, the piece de resistance…
“The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.”
Old Regime (1856), p. 204
**
We were warned …
From my post “The West: Moral Courage or Moral Chaos?”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
(1918 – 2008)
Excerpts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s speech at Harvard, June of 1978, “A World Split Apart”
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life….”
“Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”
“Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.”
“And what shall we say criminality as such? Legal frames, especially in the United States, are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist’s civil rights. There are many such cases.
Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually, but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature. The world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems, which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.
The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media.) But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?”
“How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.”
~~~
LGBT Motto
“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.” The Apostle Paul’s second letter to his son in the faith, II Timothy 3: 1-3
A License to…Look Out For Number One
July 18, 2015 Leave a comment
Living in a Material World, Part Two
Atlas Shrugged and Went About his Own Business
Not long ago, while riding the commuter train home, I sat down on an upper row seat not far from a young Indian woman. Her head was covered so I believed her to be a devoutly religious person. On her lap was Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. I wondered what interested her in Rand’s lengthy novel.
***
As you know there has been much in the media-the politically biased-media-about corporate greed, fairness and income inequality. The “social justice “rhetoric is ubiquitous, whether here in the U.S. or in re-salvaged unrepentant Greece.
In op-eds and news commentaries we are lectured to with the by-products of the liberal elites (e.g., Paul Krugman (see my previous post about economist Krugman’s $225K payday in return for his thoughts on Income Inequality!), by Progressive politicians (e.g., Hillary Clinton and Liz Warren) and by their media puppets (e.g., MSNBC), all of whom feign a disdain for money, that “filthy lucre”, while quietly reaping enormous capital gains of their own (See also Vanity Fair’s glossy wealth-guilt sympathy card dated August 2015, the article “The Charlie War”, regarding the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo coming into mega-Euros.) Looking out for number one has never been so savoir faire.
Then not long ago we were accosted by the “commoners” – the OWS protesters. Though largely unfocused and self-trivializing we were told by our ‘betters’ that these poor folk just wanted to generate a discussion about what is ethically the “right thing to do” in the world of money and specifically money as a power or a force to use for “good” and not for selfish materialistic pleasure (ahem, Vanity Fair). The Wall Street bulls and bears became the effigies they wanted to burn or, rather, smoke to get their solvency high.
The OWS’ trashy 60’s bohemian style protest became a mixed message diatribe against a ‘rigged” system, a system that didn’t appear (in their cloud computing at least) to offer them a break into the big leagues of the adult material world. Apparently, the OWS protestors ‘just’ wanted to “survive” materially, debt-free, well-off and on their own terms-no pain, all gain, Greek style.
OWS! May Day!
It was noted though by those standing head and shoulders (a stock chart term) above the “Leaning Forward” genuflectors that the protestors was certainly compromised in their messaging. Their signage/texting revealed the protesters demands.
Their demands included gaining “justly” (a word replacement for “freely”) the same materialistic “well-being” that someone else had achieved under the rubrics “income equality” and “free tuition” and “social justice”. Their socialist mantras were remarkably self-centered, covetous and Marxist.
Is the OWS’ ‘just’ quest for materialism-looking out for number one-any different from the Wall Street gang “running with the bulls” down Wall Street in hopes of not being gored by unleashed regulators? And, rigged or not rigged, Materialism, in the light of day, wears the same “envy green” scrubs.
***
Unions are all about looking out for Number One.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) a federal union, is fighting against reforms of the badly run VA administration. You won’t see AFGE publicly decrying a measure that would mean that their union members may be held responsible and they may be fired or their bonus withheld. AFGE is currently working in Congress to stop VA reform. From a Daily Caller Article:
“It’s time to turn the page on morale-busting measures like Rep. Miller’s proposal and focus on the mission of delivering top-quality care to America’s veterans,” AFGE President J. David Cox Sr. declared in a statement.
Yeah, it’s about time to focus on others…
Here is why AFGE’s is against VA reform:
Yeah, those evil Koch Brothers trying to help veterans by removing bad employees-not Number One on AFGE’s list.
Why make the VA better for our wounded veterans when union members are more G_d-Damn important?
Looking out for Number One leaves the robbed and wounded man left for dead alongside the road…until the Good Samaritan comes along to care for him.
***
Going Number One Onto Others:
The recent abominable SCOTUS decision made it possible for homosexual couples to look out for their Number One mission-use their new-found legal licentiousness to bash Christians and to seek material gain via law suits against Christian wedding cake bakers who refuse their demands. All done under the guise of ‘true love’ and “equality” (actually, unabated unnatural desires).
Looking out for number one has never been so “User friendly” for lawyers and bullies.
***
A well-known looking out for Number One persona:
Objectivism is my Game.
Ayn Rand’s (1905-1982) novels portray the philosophy of Objectivism. The (paper) weighty “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” clearly identify the key tenets of Objectivism: objective reality, reason, individualism over group-think, self-interest and ego-ism.
Ayn Rand’s Objectivism:
There are four pillars to Rand’s objectivism: objective reality, reason, self-interest and capitalism.
Reason: direct stimuli from nature; there is no God, no soul, no intuition, nothing beyond what we determine though reason.
For Rand Man is all there is. There is no spiritual reality of angels, demons and God. The heroism of man was to be worshipped, as did the Greek stoic philosophers and the food-and-wine-friendly Epicureans who avoided God and enjoyed the ‘heroics’ of pleasure.
Early Greek philosophers taught that man was mortal, corporal, and that sensory inputs were the only reality available to mankind. God was described as elsewhere and angry so therefore the true God was not of any material benefit to mankind. Avoid pain, seek pleasure. Be your own hero. Be Number One.
Rand’s Self-interest: your own self-interest and happiness is what life is all about. You take care of Number One.
Capitalism for the Objectivist is all about individual rights and private property; self-reliance, free trade, entrepreneurship and initiative all operate freely and without coercion within capitalism and the free market system. I have no issues with Rand’s objective definition of capitalism. As a Christian in the Kingdom of God I do have a problem with Rand’s use of capitalism as a means to flee from God and from responsibility towards others and to use it as self-promotion, as a prosperity gospel.
Ayn Rand’s described herself as a romantic-realist. Her Objectivism is atheistic, rejecting faith and religion. It believes only in reason and what the self can determine. For her it was every man for himself, the survival of the fittest. This viewpoint is born out of a godless Darwinian materialist view of life, the Enlightenment era and philosophical naturalism. Objectivism is blind faith in Number One-Yourself.
Rugged individualism, for Rand, was a force like other forces of nature and something to be reckoned with. As you might imagine this type of thinking would certainly feed the ego and especially if the person who embraces Objectivism is successful in life. For these people pride of place means you’ve made it to the top of the heap. Your self-esteem is rewarded. You are recognized by your peers as having objectively “made it.”
Ayn Rand’s extreme philosophy is most likely a reaction to her early life in Russia during the Communist Revolution. As a child she learned to despise coercion, government intrusion and totalitarianism. She came to oppose statism and collectivism while she promoted social systems which protected individual rights and personal initiatives. As a romantic realist she hated the dystopian effects created by those seeking to create a man-made utopia. Though a polemic, Rand never insisted that others be made to accept her philosophy. She was “laissez faire” with respect to others.
A Christian Perspective:
The Kingdom of God’s answer to Looking Out for Number One: kenosis- a ‘self-emptying’ of one’s own will and becoming entirely receptive to God’s divine will.
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” The Apostle Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, II Corinthians 8:9
A Christian’s response to Ayn Rand
***
The call of “Number One”
Before Ayn Rand another voice of philosophical naturalism had chosen the similar atheistic force with which to respond to “the law of life”: Jack London (1876 – 1916).
Remember Buck and the rugged ‘individual’s’ response to “The Call of the Wild”? It’s a tale of primitive and bestial survival, of self-interest, of the strong seeking to overcome nature. It’s a tale of reversion to innate instincts and characteristics of our evolutionary heritage-a looking out for Number One and a dog eat dog meal ticket.
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Filed under Economics, Political Commentary, Progressivism Tagged with AFGE, American Federation of Government Employees, Ayn Rand, capitalism, Economics, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, Income Inequality, Koch Brothers, LGBT, materialism, Objectivism, OWS, Paul Krugman, progressivism, social commentary, Vanity Fair, Wall Street, wealth redistribution