Posts

C Street Takes Care of The Family’s Sex Problems, Again

/6 Comments/in , /by

Roll Call reports that former Representative [redacted] son, [redacted], got hired as Tom Coburn’s District Staff Assistant. That, in spite of the younger [redacted] conviction on misdemeanor charges of criminal solicitation and sexual harassment.

Sen. Tom Coburn’s decision to hire a former Member’s son who has a criminal record illustrates the latitude lawmakers have to hire as they see fit — and the value of personal connections in a world where information about wrongdoing can be found at a moment’s notice.

[redacted]

Credit where it’s due, the Hill actually makes the connection between Coburn, the [redacted], the Christian cabal “The Family’s” brownstone known as C Street where they shacked up together, and the involvement of both in covering up John Ensign’s extramarital affair [redacted].

While it doesn’t come out and say it directly, it comes as close as possible in a Hill rag to stating the obvious: [redacted] only got this job because his daddy belongs to the same cabal as Coburn (and because he’s white and connected, because if he weren’t, even The Family might not have been able to help him).

Of course, Coburn is also the guy who once sterilized at least one woman without her consent because he thought she had had too many babies already. Vagina monsters, you see, aren’t entitled to the same kind of second chances as male members of The Family.

Update: Fixed mis-identification of original report to Roll Call thanks to Peterr.

Update, 12/3/20: Names that have legally been expunged have been redacted.

Mark Sanford Goes Galt

/93 Comments/in , , /by

Clearly Jon Meacham and his deputy editors at Newsweek could use a refresher course in compelling journalism from their sister ship test proctors at the Stanley Kaplan Corporation. Newsweek, you see, has just seen fit to publish a lengthy interpretation of Ayn Rand by none other that Appalachian Trail aficionado Mark Sanford.

The Fountainhead is a stunning evocation of the individual and what he can achieve when unhindered by government or society. Howard Roark is an architect who cares nothing about the world’s approval; his only concerns are his integrity and the perfection of his designs. What strikes me as still relevant is its central insight—that it isn’t “collective action” that makes this nation prosperous and secure; it’s the initiative and creativity of the individual. The novel’s “second-handers,” as Rand called them—the opportunistic Peter Keating, who appropriates Roark’s architectural talent for his own purposes, and Ellsworth Toohey, the journalist who doesn’t know what to write until he knows what people want to hear—symbolize a mindset that’s sadly familiar today.

Yeah, because the guy using state money to fly himself around the globe to meet his Latin lover, while his wife and children are back in the government paid for Governor’s mansion, ought to be talking about second hand leeches.

When the economy took a nosedive a year ago—a series of events that arguably began when the government-sponsored corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went broke—many Americans, myself included, watched in disbelief as members of Congress placed blame on everyone and everything but government. This wasn’t new in 2008. It’s an act we’ve seen over and over since the beginning of the New Deal in 1933. For that reason, I think, those passages in Atlas Shrugged foreshadow what might happen to our country if there is no change in direction. As Rand shows in her book, when the government is deprived of the free market’s best minds, it staggers toward collapse.

Uh huh, how convenient. Sanford pegs Fannie and Freddie as the ultimate culprits without noting that, while government sponsored, they are privately run enterprises. Nor noting that the reason the GSEs failed is from the complete hash of the financial markets made by the anti-regulatory, free wheeling, Randian geniuses populating Wall Street and the “financial products” markets that Sanford so adores.

Then there is this: Read more →