Who are you going to believe–me or my budget?

 In Obama’s budget things are looking up! The recession’s end is right around the corner. [T]he administration’s budget depends on optimistic projections that the economy, currently in the longest recession in a quarter-century, will come roaring back with economic growth of 3.2 percent next year and 4 percent-plus rates in the following three years, significantly higher than private economists are forecasting. Slate

Charitable contributions of NY Governor Paterson

 In his first remarks after reports surfaced that he and his wife had given just $150 to charity last year, Gov. David A. Paterson described himself on Monday as a generous person, but said he did not want to reveal more about his charitable giving because he was worried that it would bring intrusive news media attention to those he helps.

“I felt to go further into an explanation opened the door to a feeding frenzy that I thought I was the victim of in the last month,” he said during an interview on the AM radio station Talk 1300 in Albany.

Last week, the governor made public his 2007 tax returns, which showed that, among statewide elected officials, he had given the smallest percentage of his income to charity. He and his wife earned $269,815 but claimed a charitable deduction of only $150 worth of old clothes, which they donated to the Salvation Army.

More here.

Ayn Rand displays at bookstores

I rarely go into a bookstore these days. All of my book browsing and buying is done on line. But I did stop by Borders the other night and bumped right into a display of Ayn Rand books at the front door. Unusual. But she wrote for such times as these, the times when statism rises up as a substitute for individualism. Of course, she wrote during the time of the elite’s flirtation with communism, the utopian vision of a society perfected through the community of the proletariat. Her lonely heroes challenged group-think, cowardice and fear. Her heroes could fail or succeed. It didn’t matter which. What made them heroes was that they refused to hand over the responsibility for their lives to another. She taught an enlightened self-interest.

Hillary Clinton might trumpet that it takes a village, but we have found that it was the village that pillaged our 401Ks, transformed our urban school into asphalt jungles, raised our taxes, and turned the work-a-day working man into a chump for doing so. He has found that he would have been better off depending on the government, reducing his productivity and finding someone else to shift the tax burdens to.

Thus, a new fascination with Ayn Rand. It will be interesting to see how the church handles community during these times. I wonder if we will find some need to resurrect the lonely hero, the one who goes against the crowd, who is not so interested in the niceness of it all that he sells his dignity and personal sense of mission. Any Rand at the front of the bookstores signals, perhaps, a new phase of American culture – beware the group.

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