Resurrecting Ayn Rand: Hedge Fund Money Teams Up With Koch & BB&T

A Corporate Coup D’Etat on Campus

Ayn Rand: Knowing her propaganda value, the capitalists
are trying to revive this ghoul.

by PAM MARTENS and RUSS MARTENS

Gary Weiss, the Wall Street writer who was ahead of his time with his comprehensive chronicle of Wall Street corruption in 2006 (Wall Street Versus America) charts a bold new course this week with the release of Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul.

Thanks to Weiss, the nation might just escape the next wave of Ayn Rand’s radical capitalism and student brainwashing by corporate money vultures fanning out across U.S. campuses.

Thanks to the trail paved in Weiss’ book, we did some further digging into the money cartel financing this “spontaneous” outpouring of campus and Tea Party interest in Rand, whose work is regularly considered by top academics to be mediocre and simpleminded.

This cartel has a striking similarity to the network of university economists set up by Big Tobacco in a money for hire scheme from 1983 to the mid 90s to blanket Congress and the media with bogus OpEds and research papers.

Atlas Shrugged is taught and distributed to students.

Raising more eyebrows is the discovery that the so-called populous craze for Ayn Rand’s seminal work, Atlas Shrugged, is also being financed by a decidedly non-populist pact of deep-pocketed hedge fund operators.

As we reported yesterday in this space, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) has already conceded the following on its web site:

“ARI seeks to spearhead a cultural renaissance that will reverse the anti-reason, anti-individualism, anti-freedom, anti-capitalist trends in today’s culture. The major battleground in this fight for reason and capitalism is the educational institutions—high schools and, above all, the universities, where students learn the ideas that shape their lives…To date, more than 1.4 million copies of these Ayn Rand novels have been donated to 30,000 teachers in 40,000 classrooms across the United States and Canada.

“Based on a projected shelf life of five years per book, we estimate that more than 3 million young people have been introduced to Ayn Rand’s books and ideas as a result of our programs to date…partnerships have been established between ARI and the corporate community to advance Ayn Rand’s ideas in the universities. (Italics added.)

“Through ARI’s assistance, Ayn Rand’s ideas are taught and studied at more than 50 of America’s most influential institutions of higher education, including: Clemson University, Duke University, University of Virginia, University of Texas at Austin, University of Pittsburgh, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Brown University, University of Kentucky, University of South Carolina, University of Florida, University of West Virginia and Wake Forest University.”

Weiss attends the 2010 St. Regis event and was stuck at an ultraconservative press table, getting a sugar high on moelleux aux chocolat, coconut sorbet and berry chutney, as the mindless clap-trap of Objectivist theory drones into the microphone.

What happened at the September 15, 2011 redux of this fundraiser, “The Atlas Shrugged Revolution,” when Weiss’ book is no doubt already in galleys, might surprise even Weiss. The hedgies are fully in control of the event, dominating the podium and raising a little more than a cool $1 million, besting the prior year’s take by $600,000.

The key speakers included Dmitry Balyasny of the hedge fund, Balyasny Asset Management, as well as Colvin, also from this hedge fund and creator of the New York chapter of the Ayn Rand Institute. Another key speaker was Scott Schweighauser, partner and chief investment officer of Aurora Investment Management, L.L.C., a fund of hedge funds managing approximately $10 billion.

The biggest donors at the event who would allow their names to be published, included the following:

$50,000: Balyasny Asset Management

$25,000: Eric Brooks and Jeff Yass of hedge fund and private equity firm Susquehanna International Group.

$25,000: Jim Brown of hedge fund, Brandes Investment Partners.

$25,000: Scott Schweighauser of fund of hedge funds, Aurora Investment Management, L.L.C.

There are two simple words that sum up why hedge funds would be bankrolling the resurrection of a woman who’s been dead for thirty years: Dodd-Frank, the financial reform legislation that Wall Street is desperately trying to kill.

Among the multitude of co-opted campuses – three stand out as taking on the aura of right-wing flacks gone bonkers rather than a serious economic course.

Florida Gulf Coast University’s Distinguished Professorship of Free Enterprise:

That every exit door from this program leads to a Koch funded group or an Ayn Rand text is spine chilling. Where are the advocates for these impressionable young minds at this institution of higher learning? Forget about the nonsensical “Moral Foundations of Capitalism,” this whole program is a moral outrage.

the internships are either directly run by Koch, nonprofits created by Koch or funded by Koch.

The concentration of Koch money and influence at Troy is a disgrace at a publicly funded institute of higher education. That it is occurring under the nose of an institution with an FBI partnership tells one a great deal about corporate money and Washington today.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She maintains, along with Russ Martens, an ongoing archive dedicated to this financial era at www.WallStreetOnParade.com. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

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Taibbi sheds no tears for Andrew Breitbart

OpEds
Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche

Taibblog

by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Andrew Breitbart speaks at a ‘Cut Spending Now’ rally at the conservative Americans for Prosperity ‘Defending the American Dream Summit.’

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

So Andrew Breitbart is dead. Here’s what I have to say to that, and I’m sure Breitbart himself would have respected this reaction: Good! Fuck him. I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.

I say this in the nicest possible way. I actually kind of liked Andrew Breitbart. Not in the sense that I would ever have wanted to hang out with him, or even be caught within a hundred yards of him without a Haz-Mat suit on, but I respected the shamelessness. Breitbart didn’t do anything by halves, and even his most ardent detractors had to admit that he had a highly developed, if not always funny, sense of humor.

For instance, it would be dishonest not to tip a hat to him for that famous scene when he hijacked Anthony Weiner’s own self-immolating “apology” press conference, and held up the entire event by standing at the lectern and congratulating himself at length, before Weiner could let the humiliating healing begin.

For that one, brief, shining moment– still one of the most painful-to-watch YouTube spectacles of all time, right there with Mitt Romney’s priceless attempt at singing “Who Let the Dogs Out?” with a group of black voters in Florida in 2008 – Breitbart could legitimately claim to have the biggest, hairiest balls on earth.

Watching Weiner apologize to Breitbart later in that same event was certainly chilling for a number of reasons (if I were Weiner, I wouldn’t have apologized to that fucker even under torture) but it was hard not to appreciate the deliciousness of the scene from Breitbart’s point of view. Watching Weiner pause, swallow hard, and make the extraordinary decision to plant his lips squarely on the loathsome Breitbart’s ass on national television, that was like the ultimate Mona Lisa masterpiece of right-wing media provocations. That the outrageous Breitbart was standing right there, looking gorgeously gassy in his unbuttoned shirt, bloated Joey Buttafuoco cheeks and splendiforous silver half-mullet, made the humiliation of the trim and neatly-groomed Weiner even more abject.

Furthermore, the ACORN videos made by Breitbart and his two young acolytes, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe – it’s hard not to see the inspired humor behind their elaborate stunt. And anyone who’s heard their proposals before ACORN staffers to bring underage girls over the border as part of a white-(or nonwhite-) slaving startup firm, and doesn’t think the ACORN responses (or non-responses, as it were) were shocking, they’re deluding themselves. In the Baltimore office, they ran the whole underage hooker-den spiel past an ACORN staffer, and got the following response: “You are gonna use three of them – they are gonna be under 16, so you is eligible to get child tax credit and additional child tax credit.”

That is seriously messed up material. Did they edit the videos heavily? Hell yes. Did they make ACORN’s behavior out to be a lot worse than it was? Absolutely. But there’s no way to watch the raw footage and not grasp how totally nuts some of this ACORN “counseling” was. We have to give Breitbart that.

Breitbart has written some nasty things about me personally, once contrived to publish my private emails online, and even teamed up with Rush Limbaugh to humorously mis-identify me as a behind-the-scenes marionettist of the “media-Democrat industrial complex” (Breitbart thought I was improperly advising Occupy leaders), but all that’s okay. I think today, it’s safe to stand back and simply recognize that while many people go through their lives without leaving distinguishing marks, Andrew Breitbart definitely had his moments.

But he also had enough of a sense of humor to appreciate why someone like me shouldn’t bother to pretend I’m sad he’s dead. He wouldn’t, in my place. So to use one of his favorite words: Good riddance, cocksucker.* Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

* See the following Breitbart quote: “I like to call someone a raving cunt every now and then, when it’s appropriate, for effect… ‘You cocksucker.’ I love that kind of language.”

UPDATE: Well done, Breitbart fans, well done! In less than 24 hours you’ve hacked into my Wiki page, published my telephone number on Twitter, called the Rolling Stone offices pretending to be outraged “advertisers” (anonymous ones, who hung up before we could figure out which “ads” to pull), and then spent all night calling and texting my phone with various threats and insults, many of them directed at my family. “Better grow eyes in the back of your head,” was one; “I’m going to take a shit on your mother’s grave,” was another; a third called my wife a “piece of shit like you,” and many others called me a “pile of human excrement.”

Those last ones to me were the most interesting because that quote is lifted directly from Breitbart’s own obit of Ted Kennedy, which like me Breitbart ran just hours after his subject died. So that means the writers of these letters knew that what I did was exactly the same as what Breitbart had done, and yet they still found a way to be unironically outraged on Breitbart’s behalf. I thought: “These people don’t even get their own jokes.”

The really crazy thing is that I was sort of trying to be nice to Breitbart – the obit was at least half an homage. Not that I liked the guy, but he did have a few attractive qualities, one of which being the fact that he got a kick out of the nasty things people said about him. He even once had a plan to set up a website encouraging anti-Breitbart abuse, and was going to let it ride for a while, even spending six figures to hire an Obama p.r. flack to make anti-Breitbart posters, until finally revealing that he’d sponsored the whole thing. Would a person like that really expect someone like me to send flowers when he croaked? No way: he’d be insulted if I didn’t give him one last kick in the balls on the way out the door.

But I guess no homage is complete without a celebration of the whole man, and the whole man in this case was not just a guy who once said, “It’s all about a good laugh,” but also someone who liked to publish peoples’ personal information on the internet, hack into private web sites, tell lies in an attempt to get his enemies fired, and incite readers to threats against his targets and their families, including death threats. I left all of that stuff out of my obit, but now, thanks to you readers, that’s all in there as well, leaving, for posterity, a much more complete picture of the man.

Matt Taibbi is one of the few justifications for the existence of Rolling Stone in our time.

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One Less Scumbag!!!

by Diane Gee, The Wild Wild Left

The departed

_____________________________

The liberals are busy already cleaning their golden pipes to sing the praises of this notorious operative of the right, but Diane has no trouble dismissing the invitation to join the De mortuis nihil nisi bonum chorus for what it is: a futile and hypocritical exercise that falsifies history.

Have we forgotten what the Right really stands for in this world?—Eds

Load up your bladders baby, we have grave pissing to do. Yeah, you read that right. I’m not one of those hand-wringers that believe that we can “speak no ill of the dead.” I mean, skull fuck his cold corpse and feed him to the maggots.

I mean, seriously, dying does NOTHING to change history no matter how we wish it to be so. As someone who has recently endured a loss of a lifetime mate and beloved – I’m sorry, I know all you leave is your acts. I’m glad Breitbart’s chance to “act” upon this world and promote further warfare and the murder of ACTUAL innocents has been cut short.

I’m neither religious, nor fond of canonizing the dead. Dead makes you no less worthy or unworthy than you were in life. Breitbart promoted EVIL every minute of his life on the platform he had.

Good riddance to a plague upon humanity. Too bad Cheney’s dead heart still beats albeit mechanically. I for one hope that instead of his life passing before his eyes, the lives of all the people killed or abused from his influence pass before his eyes.

Hearing the Queen Whore Arianna gush over him makes me want to switch her douche water to alum… like that’s not what she prefers anyway.

Seriously, what insanity it is to believe death is so unnatural so heinous as to give a pass for people’s soulless acts of destruction? No one gets out of here alive, and the world will be a better place without him. Is that TRUTH so hard to admit?

I am equally sure there will be celebrations equal to the mourning when I pass. I will not be offended, and will instruct my son not to be either. I am living a life the way I want, they way I believe will improve others, and with ethical actions.

If there is a God, Breitbart is already toasting. If there isn’t? Then all this false-chest thumping is bullshit.

You wanna chest-thump? Chest thump for the victims of our dronings in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Africa. You want to bemoan lives cut short? Look no further than the people of color we STILL make endure cultural and economic slavery within our own borders.

If your only reason is his age…. get a grip on the eventuality of your OWN mortality and quit projecting.

Me? I’m going to celebrate one less piece of fucking trash on my planet wasting my oxygen and befouling minds with his poison.

One less scumbag, indeed.

Editor DIANE GEE founded and remains senior editor of The Wild Wild Left. She also helms the Facebook’s group Links for the Wildly Left.

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Adam Carolla Rails Against Occupy ‘Ass Douches’ In Rant: ‘F**king Self-Entitled Monsters’

by Jon Bershad | Mediaite, December 1st, 2011

His current celebrity could be seen as an advance from his ridiculously unfunny previous venue, The Man Show.

So, what was it that inspired the Occupy movement? Was it a growing realization that the privileged had been gaming the system, making transition between social classes nearly impossible? Was it annoyance at a corrupt collusion between politicians and banks, one that kept those responsible for ruining our economy for future generations out of prison? Or was it simply a feeling that, were no one to speak up, things would continue to get worse? Well, according to Adam Carolla, the blame lies squarely on one sinister culprit; participation medals. In a lengthy rant on his hugely popular podcast, Carolla explained just how growing up in a culture of entitlement had created a generation of, as he sees it, “ass douches.”

According to Carolla, the Occupiers weren’t born out of a hatred for corruption, greed, or white collar crime, but, rather, years of being told that they deserve a medal no matter what. He explained his Incredibles-esque view thusly:

“We’ve created a bunch of fucking self-entitled monsters. And this has become the pursuit of my life where people are so far out of it in what they expect and what they think realistic is and what the set of rules that pertains to them versus the other guys- Because that’s what the bottom line is. ‘I want my Most Valuable Player trophy.’ ‘Well, you’re the slowest, fattest guy on the team.’ Why should he get one and I don’t?’ ‘Because he busts his ass and he runs a 4.4 40. That’s why he gets one.’ ‘Well, this is bullshit.’ And then everyone gets involved and everyone gives everyone a participation trophy and then everyone feels good about themselves but it’s not based on anything. You should feel good about yourself because of your accomplishments. Not because someone yelled at you to feel good about yourself and you got a fake fucking piece of plastic that was sprayed gold and had your name on a plaque at the bottom. And, when these people become adults and enter the work place”

Carolla argued that we’ve been raising our children this way for 25 years and now “we’re getting the first wave of these douche bags.” It’s an interesting theory although it doesn’t entirely explain the Occupiers that weren’t born in the 80s but are instead in their 80s.

Over at Breitbart.tv, they characterized this rant as being the only one to truly “capture” how their readers feel about the protest movements and I think they’re probably right. There’s a reason Carolla’s show does so well and I think this is probably exactly how many folks view the movement; as a bunch of douche bags.

Still, the Occupiers shouldn’t feel too bad. He called them “ass douches” and, after all, isn’t their whole goal to flush out some bad crap that’s clogging a system. Listen to the rant that follows. Click on the player button. Remember, douche bags are hygienic products.

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Ask Senator Santorum

By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is steadily climbing the GOP polls (even though his standing versus President Obama is dismal). He may even win in Michigan, one of the several home states of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. (Whatever happened to “Willard?” But that’s another story). At any rate, having done “Ask” columns on Newt and the other Rick (Perry, remember him?) I believe that the Senator has risen far enough in the polls that he deserves one for himself. So here goes.

1. You frequently talk about your grandfather, a coal miner. I’m wondering why you never talk about the union he most likely belonged to, the United Mine Workers. Its President when it was at the height of its powers in the 1930s and 40s, when your grandfather was presumably working, was John L. Lewis, one of the most militant non-Communist labor leaders in US history. Or is the possible reason that you don’t talk about your grandfather’s union is that he belonged to the Communist-led Progressive Mine Workers?

2. Speaking of Communists, are you aware that members of your family still living in the north of Italy are ardent members the Communist Refoundation Party (Rifondazione), the successor to the former Communist Party of Italy?

3. Speaking of ancestors, while you talk frequently about your grandfather, you never seem to mention your parents. Could that be because both your father, a clinical psychologist, and your mother, a nurse, worked for the largest socialized medicine service in the U.S., otherwise known as the Veterans Administration Hospital system? Could that be because you have vowed to repeal even the modest changes to the world’s most expensive health care system contained in the Affordable Care Act? You have gone so far as to call the latter “socialized medicine,” or worse, when all it does is make some relatively modest changes to the health insurance system. It would bring another 30 or so million people under its umbrella eventually, a far cry from the coverage and services provided by the government-owned and operated system both your parents worked for. But you don’t talk about them.

4. You have referred to the science behind our understanding of global warming and the threats to humanity and indeed many of the Earth’s species that it presents as “punk science.” You feel that we should continue to rely on fossil fuels and indeed would vastly expand the extraction of same regardless of the pollution of the air, water and ground that such extraction causes. You are also against any government-supported development of alternative fuels and energy sources. But suppose you are wrong, and global warming is real (as virtually all scientists who have worked on the problem agree that it is). What then? But even if the science is wrong, we are going to run out of fossil fuels eventually. Why not work on the development of alternative energy, just as every other major power in the world, including China which has literally tons of coal, is, anyway? If you’re right, we would still derive the benefits of cheaper energy in the long run. So why not go for it?

5. You seem to be bothered by homosexuals and homosexuality to a rather extraordinary degree. You have compared homosexual intercourse to “bestiality,” for example, and would outlaw it. (One wonders how such a law would be enforced, but that is another matter.) You have a lot of sweater vests in your closet. Whole bunches of right-wing Republicans come out or are exposed as gay on a regular basis, the latest being Sheriff Paul Babeau of Pinal County, AZ. Is there anything else your closet we should know about?

6. Speaking of sex, you have said that the only reason for humans to have it is to engage in procreation. Your youngest child is four and you are 53. Does that mean that you and your wife have not had sex in over four years?

7. On the abortion thing, based on your religious belief about when life begins you are against it and want it to be criminalized, in the process criminalizing the religious/secular belief of those of us who hold that life begins at the time of viability (which criminalization would violate the First Amendment, but that is another matter). Would you be for sending just the abortion providers to prison, or would you include those women who have them too? And if the latter were sent to prison for violating the law, who would care for their children? Of course, since you think that abortion is murder, would you be going for the death sentence, for the providers, for the recipients? How would you go about paying for the massive increase in the size and scope of the criminal justice system that the criminalization of abortion in the way you contemplate it would entail?

8. Further on abortion, you are against it in all cases, including those resulting from rape and incest. In such cases, would the father be responsible for child support?

9. You want to keep US troops in Afghanistan until “victory” is achieved. How do you define “victory,” and how do you propose to keep paying for that war?

10. You have said that you would be in favor of bombing Iran over their supposed nuclear weapons program. Several questions. A) Do you remember the “WMD threat” from Iraq that turned out to be bogus? B) Have you given any thought to the massive loss of civilian life that would be incurred in any US/Israeli bombing raid massive enough to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program, whatever its true objectives? C) How would you explain to our nation the incredible rise in the cost of gasoline that would result from the closing of the Strait of Hormuz which would certainly occur should such raid take place and the resulting anti-American acts of violence that would invariably take place around the world? D) how would you pay from the vast expansion of war at home and abroad that would follow upon such raids?

11. Finally, you have been bombarded with the “contraceptive question,” so I won’t raise it here. Except to note that if you and your wife do still engage in sexual intercourse and she has not been pregnant for a while, either she is past menopause or you two are incredibly lucky at Vatican Roulette, and taking the literal meaning of the term, isn’t that a form of contraception?

———————————————————————————————————

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor of over 30 books. In addition to being a Contributing Editor for The Greanville Post (https://www.greanvillepost.com/; he is Managing Editor and a Contributing Author for TPJmagazine; a Contributor to The Planetary Movement, a Columnist for Truthout/BuzzFlash (http://www.truth-out.org/, http://www.buzzflash.com), a Featured Writer for Dandelion Salad, a Contributor to Op-Ed News.com (http://www.opednews.com/), and a Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter.

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Resurrecting Ayn Rand: Hedge Fund Money Teams Up With Koch & BB&T

A Corporate Coup D’Etat on Campus

Taibbi sheds no tears for Andrew Breitbart

OpEdsAndrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche

One Less Scumbag!!!

Adam Carolla Rails Against Occupy ‘Ass Douches’ In Rant: ‘F**king Self-Entitled Monsters’

by Jon Bershad | Mediaite, December 1st, 2011

Ask Senator Santorum

OpEds
Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche