Wesley Mouch Lives

“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.”
—Ayn Rand, 1975

"Freedom has been given a chance and has failed. Therefore, more stringent controls are necessary. Since men are unable and unwilling to solve their problems voluntarily, they must be forced to do it."
—Wesley Mouch, Economic Bureaucrat, "Atlas Shrugged"

The Securities and Exchange Commission, for those of you not up to speed on this sort of thing, requires publicly-held (stock-issuing) companies to adhere to certain standards of accounting. First among these is the so-called GAAP accounting principles.

Yeah, I know. Stick with me here - I'll make it short, and I guarantee at least TWO redheads, OK?

Part of the GAAP accounting method is to analyze expected costs, write-downs, etc., said analysis to be projected for a considerable time into the future.  This is required for the purposes of estimating earnings, and generally projecting the health of the company.

AT&T, John Deere, Caterpillar, and a variety of others have followed these Federally-mandated steps, and have put up the numbers.  And it turns out they're going to have to write down over a BILLION dollars VERY soon, money that's going to be recouped by increasing health-care COSTS (not savings) to employees by about 3%, that's going to directly affect (by REDUCING and COSTING MORE) coverage of retirees - in short, ObamaCare (surprise!) is one expensive motherfucker, even over the short term, and paying for it is coming off the bottom lines of the companies, the employees, the retirees, and the customers.

It is a huge tax increase, in short, moving your money into a bloated, poorly-conceived, bureaucratic black hole without the maggots having to add even a single extra line to your 1040.

Now, the Obamanation and his happy little crew were hoping that this would not become apparent until after the November elections, and even then figured they could get by with pointing at the "no new lines on the 1040" to claim they haven't increased taxes, or at least not much.

So, when these huge corporations, following SEC regulation and accepted accounting principles put these numbers up well BEFORE November, was the response to reconsider what a economy-siphoning load of horseshit their program really is?

It was not. In the best 1984/Randian tradition, their response is to have hearings to find out why these evil corporations' projections are not the roses and sunshine they promised to the public. Or, as that evil little prick Henry Waxman would have it:

"“The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern,” Waxman and Stupak, both Democrats, wrote in the letters yesterday. “They also appear to conflict with independent analyses.”

 Or, rephrasing into non-NewSpeak: "We are reaching into your pockets and stealing billions of dollars. And now we are going to have hearings to determine how it is that you dare to not ignore this and join us with blowing rainbow smoke up everyone's ass when telling your stockholders, insurance holders, employees, and customers why your company is going to tank and cost them a big ol' wad of their money."

Henry Waxman, Evil Little Prick

For an excellent analysis of the problem, see Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Progressives can't get past the Knowledge Problem.

At the "street" level, the left's sole input into this process is to continue to denigrate the center, the right, and the extreme right (e.g., those who believe freedom is kind of the point) with clever little cocktail-party bumper-sticker slams.

As an example, they consider Ayn Rand a complete whack-job, when in fact her novels are, in the most literal sense, coming to life in front of their eyes in Washington.

They dismiss the core-deep anger of their actually-producing fellow citizens who are being forced to shoulder this burden as right-wing wingnuttery and "teabagism."

They stand with open-mouthed wonder listening as the evil scumbags they have put in charge blather their "black is white" sloganeering and crowd-control propagandizing so blatantly it would even embarrass the North Koreans.

They are, in short, the victims of their own delusional thinking, and I, for one, am rapidly approaching the conclusion that they are no longer capable of rational thought, only glassy-eyed, mantra-chanting regurgitation of the party pablum which is the hallmark of the true slave of the State.

This is going to be a problem, because if the American public continues to allow these venal scumbags to run their lives, they deserve NOTHING but the totalitarian third-world shithole that they are creating.

In Our Next Episode: Revolution Chic - What's Hot In Camouflage Couture