POLITICAL COMMENTARY
Obsequies for Ted Kennedy
Analysis of a Failed Presidency
The Van Jones Resignation
Taboos in the Health Care Debate
Barack Obama, Master of Illusion
Three Big Bugaboos: Waste, Fraud and Abuse
Ayn Rand and Other Malcontents
Obsequies for Ted Kennedy
Forgive me if I sound a tad irreverent, but I'm growing weary of the news cycle of the
last 72 hours being monopolized by obsequies to the death of Ted Kennedy. Speak no ill of
the dead, but if this is the best we have to offer by way of a national hero and a world
statesman, then the Republic is on a short tether.
Remember? This was the knee-jerk liberal who voted against the First Gulf War, who turned
down Richard Nixon's offer of employer-mandated health care in 1971, who maliciously
wrecked the career of Judge Robert Bork (and removed civility and bipartisanship forever
from the judicial selection process), and who voted against Bill Clinton's sweeping
welfare reform bill in 1996, etc.
This was the pampered scion of a New England rumrunner and Nazi sympathizer, Joe
Kennedy, who authored a bill granting unconditional amnesty to twenty million unskilled
illegal aliens, who would certainly have become loyal Democratic voters in future
elections. (Though a bit on the dim side, no one ever said Ted Kennedy lacked cunning.)
Speak no ill of the dead, but I kind of miss the days when the news cycle was dominated by
Michael Jackson.
Wm. B. Fankboner
August 30, 2009
Analysis of a Failed Presidency
"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become
sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal."—Corinthians 13:1
It may seem premature to write off the Obama Presidency as a failed experiment in
messianic politics, i.e. the politics of deliverance and hope, but I do not think so. The
flaws of Mr. Obama , and of his administration, are too deep and structural to be salvaged
by any desperate last minute remedies, i.e. the fissures in the woodwork are too deep to
be glossed over with varnish and furniture polish. And if things look bad now, they can
only get worse in the months to come.
President Obama is glib, even eloquent, to a fault—that is his saving grace and his
special curse. Americans felt so embittered and let down with inarticulate Republican
dolts and mediocrities like John McCain and the Bushes, that his soaring rhetoric seemed
to promise a new day in Presidential politics. Indeed, who was not moved by the
announcement in his inaugural address of the death of Washington’s favorite pastime,
petty political bickering and partisanship? It was one of those singular moments in
history when the will to do good was high. Never has the mood for meaningful change been
so puissant. Even the eyes of stalwart unbelievers on the right misted over with the
afflatus and the exaltation of noble aspirations.
And yet, what was Mr. Obama’s first piece of legislation but the now infamous
stimulus bill.
The stimulus package was by any measure a steaming pile of Liberal special interest
philanthropy, a spoils system largess that would have made Andrew Jackson blush, doubly
irresponsible in this hour of economic crisis. This was a reversal so cool, casual, and
blasé, so destructive and so encompassing, it raised political cynicism to a new level.
What a blatant, bald-faced deception! What an unimaginative, slimy-green, mildewed
piece of liberal policy-making! Call it the audacity of manipulation.
Psychologists doing research on the subject of leadership have found that people who
aspire to positions of power the most aggressively are frequently those least qualified
temperamentally and intellectually to wield it. (No surprise—history has been telling
us this for centuries.) And so it is with Mr. Obama. Those around him, and even his
bitterest adversaries, tell us that he is a very intelligent man. But the facts would seem
to indicate that he is rather stupid, at least with regard to his duties as the leader of
the world’s most successful democracy and superpower. His early opponents had
complained correctly that he lacked seasoning and policy experience, that his intellectual
accomplishments were essentially academic, and that his personality tended to be
narcissistic. And now the crows have come home to roost.
For calling President Obama a 'racist' with a deep-seated hatred of the white people in
his July 28 broadcast, Geico pulled its sponsorship of Fox News commentator Glenn Beck,
prompting the defection of several other major advertisers as well. For what it's worth,
President Obama is not a racist. Racism implies some firmly-held beliefs, however
noxious and misguided. Obama has no convictions at all. He believes in nothing but
himself. In brief, he is a narcissist and an opportunist who dreamed of being President.
To achieve this he campaigned as a centrist and after he was elected emerged, willy-nilly,
a leftist. He is neither a good man nor a bad man. He is simply a cipher, a man devoid of
principle. There is something wanting in Mr. Obama, that essential, indispensable
component of humanity that separates men of honor from ordinary mortals. Who would have
guessed that beneath all his magnificent rhetoric and electrifying eloquence he was hollow
to the core?
For those mystified by how Mr. Obama could sit in the congregation of Reverend Jeremiah
Wright and listen to his lunatic race-baiting and other filthy claptrap for twenty years,
the answer is now at hand. They need wonder no longer.
Wm. B. Fankboner
December 3, 2009
The Van Jones Resignation
Black Author, Green Message
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the
time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. —Abe Lincoln
I confess that I cannot find words to
express my amazement at the Van Jones affair. It is yet a great mystery to me. Not how
Obama's vetting process failed—I've always regarded his administration a collection
of rank amateurs—but how Van Jones managed to get himself into such a self-inflicted
pickle. Let me repeat the astonishing litany of self-incrimination: he
1. signed on to the "911
Truthers" manifesto,
2. declared himself an ardent communist,
3. accused whites of environmental
vandalism of black communities,
4. called Republicans assholes,
5. denied it all and accused Fox News of
a smear campaign.
Now, I can understand how Charlie Sheen could partner with the "Truthers";
Charlie Sheen is a manifest nutcase. But Van Jones is not a product of Hollywood
narcissism and showbiz megalomania. He comes from a solid middle class background. His
father and mother were hard-working educators and community leaders. So, what in the world
predisposed him to such reckless behavior? Consider this: Van Jones earned a law degree
from Yale and wrote a bestseller on the subject of the green job revolution. These
accomplishments are simply incompatible with such shocking acts of self-immolation.
Imagine, if you will, a man pouring gasoline on himself and striking a match like a
Buddhist monk. It is difficult to reconcile such self-destructive behavior with such
achievement, or even explain how these two things could co-exist in the same person. I
wondered if we were getting the full story. Was his law degree a gift from the affirmative
action mafia at Yale? Was the success of his book a timely PR coup by Macmillan? (Black
author, green message?)
I've since had the opportunity to do some research on Van Jones and
learned that he's an accomplished public speaker, and has an imposing resume as an adroit
and creative community worker, with impressive administrative skills. He is without
question an intelligent and gifted young man, quite capable of writing a decent book on
green jobs and passing his law exams at Yale.
I think what we have here is a case of radical chic, a political phenomenon documented by
Tom Wolfe in the 60s. If you hanker after instant recognition, especially in the community
of a penalized minority, all you have to do is say something outrageous, especially if
it's anti-American in tone, and you will attract an immediate following: legions of
ne'er-do-wells and self-loathing liberals will rally around you as if you are the Second
Coming. That great forgotten man, Jimmy Carter, parlayed a second career from the left
wing rag heap of inflammatory invective (Israeli apartheid, Neoconservative war-mongering,
Republican racism, etc.), and that insatiable attention-addict, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright,
refined anti-Americanism to an art form.
The fast-track to political prominence is to become 'controversial.' The problem is that
controversy will eventually catch up with you and you'll pay the price. So Van Jones isn't
a certifiable nut job like Charlie Sheen, Rosie O'Donnell, and the other Truthers, but a
cunning player who outsmarted himself in a dangerous game. To attain high visibility he
gambled with some disreputable associations that did irretrievable damage to his career.
He struck the match and was enveloped in the roiling spires of a partisan conflagration.
In this regard, he is not unlike his recent employer. Obama climbed to prominence on the
backs of some dubious characters on the far left, which he convincingly disavowed. Indeed,
he ran for President as a centrist. But after his election he took counsel with the
radical left wing of his party, a dangerous association in a country that is historically
right of center. And now he too is paying dearly, for once you have betrayed the trust of
the American people it is very hard to get it back, and barring a miracle, he will be a
one-term President.
Radical chic just doesn't work any more, if it ever did.
Wm. B. Fankboner
September 18, 2009
Taboos in the Health Care Debate
Is the U.S. Congress a ‘Death Panel’?
Perhaps to burnish his street cred for
evenhandedness, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” has been making
disapproving noises about Sarah Palin’s use of the expression 'death panels' to
characterize President Obama's health care plan, declaring that such demagogic hyperbola
only inflames passion, and identifies the GOP and the conservative cause with the most
extreme elements of the party.
Hmm...
'Death panels' applies literally to a stipulation in the plan, since removed, for
panels of medical experts to provide end of life counseling for the terminally ill.
Presumably we spend a disproportionate amount of money keeping people alive in the final
year of life. Somehow it got about that the real purpose of these panels to discuss end of
life issues was to euthanize, i.e. pull the plug, on the old folks.
Most seniors have more sense than to credit such an outlandish rumor. Moreover, I think
most people who have less than a year to live would decline to have a $50,000 hip
replacement procedure simply because it violated their sense of economy, not to mention a
painful period of recovery and side effects. So, the literal interpretation of the phrase
'death panels' appears to be a red herring, and is probably moot as far as dear old
granddad and grandma are concerned.
However, the expression does resonate on a metaphorical level. It stands for the unease we
all feel about the arbitrary rationing of medical care. For example, to insure his health
plan is revenue-neutral, President Obama plans to defund Medicare Advantage private
insurance plans to the tune of $177 billion over the next 10 years. But will siphoning off
these funds be patient-neutral? Democrats have been voicing strong opposition to private
plans within Medicare for some time because capitated payments to the insurers have been
on average 14% higher than Medicare’s fee-for-service payouts, amounting, they
maintain, to a taxpayer-subsidized windfall for the insurance companies.
The administration proposes cutting federal payments to insurers that run the plans by
requiring them to submit competitive bids. The government would then pay them based on the
average bid. Sounds like a plan, but according to Karl Rove Medicare Advantage already has
built-in incentives to encourage insurers to offer lower costs and better benefits. Says
Rove, “It's a program that puts patients in charge, not the government, which is why
seniors like it and probably why the administration hates it,” and he goes on to
argue that Obama’s cuts will probably “force most [seniors] to lose the
insurance they have now."
So, even if the expression 'death panel' isn't strictly
factual, it has the ring of poetic truth: it is a metaphor, not only for Obama’s
half-baked medical reforms, but for the corrupt practices and disastrous direction of
government itself. Indeed, what an apt name for the houses of that august body, the U.S.
Congress, which if past performance is any indication, could very well be negotiating the
euthanasia of the Republic as we speak (e.g. ruinous legislation like cap and trade, and
the stimulus package). Congress was at the helm when the ship of state foundered in the
financial storm. And, it was Congress that, bought off by campaign contributions from Wall
Street lobbyists, looked the other way as deregulated financial markets spun out of
control and plunged the nation into near economic collapse and terminal debt. Is it any
wonder alarmed citizens are raising holy hell at town hall meetings?
The leftist furor over ‘death panels,’ arose because the liberal press
insisted on a literal interpretation of the expression. I move that we reinstate the
phrase 'death panels' to the health care debate as an acceptable and legitimate
characterization of President Obama’s incoherent and ill-conceived health care plan,
and as a metaphor for the Senate and the House of Representatives
—at least until they produce a medical reform bill that doesn't kill
Americans and bankrupt the country, and until they restore to the nation the financial
health it once enjoyed before it was so casually destroyed by lazy, incompetent and venal
legislators.
Wm. B. Fankboner
September 22, 2009
Barack Obama, Master of
Illusion
It was with unabated relief that I learned that Congress would
not pass the public option of the health care bill. Not that I’m averse to the idea,
or have anything against a single-payer system. After all, I am the beneficiary of a
single-payer system called Medicare. It’s simply that the economy is in such fragile
condition right now it might buckle under stress of a major outlay for an expensive
entitlement. In a word, we cannot afford it.
Of course Mr. Obama would have us believe that built-in savings from
his health care reforms are the royal road to financial well-being and bringing the rising
costs of health care into line. But the devil’s in the details and Mr. Obama has yet
to reveal those details, or provide any information at all explaining how he would effect
these savings. Indeed, there is not a single provision in the Democratic bill for
eliminating billions in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. And until there is, consideration of
a public option will have to wait until the economy is in better shape.
Nevertheless, President Obama’s claim regarding health care
savings is interesting. It floodlights a murky area of his personality: an unfortunate
tendency to play hard and fast with the truth. I will not call him a liar—you can get
in trouble for that—let’s just say he hasn’t held himself or his
administration to the highest standards of truth-telling. In fact he has broken more
promises and pledges than any politician since Huey Long, the most conspicuous being his
vow to end political bickering and partisanship. It’s not easy to do that when you
delegate a lion’s share of policy to three of the most partisan politicians in Washington—Rahm
Emmanuel, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Of course, all politicians shade the truth; but the best of them shed
this ugly relic of precinct politics as they mature and grow into the job. Take one of Mr.
Obama’s own heroes, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s early career in the Illinois
State Legislature was a long and depressing litany of expediency, opportunism and excess;
he was notorious for rascally behavior, and once seen diving out a window of the assembly
house to defeat a quorum. But Abe took stock of himself and his later years were so
distinguished for uncompromising veracity he earned the sobriquet, ‘Honest Abe.’
Indeed, you would be hard put to find a hint of prevarication in his later years of high
office. Honesty and forthrightness were his stock and trade, job one, his most valued
currency. I haven’t heard anyone say that about Barack Obama.
It is not my purpose to provide an exhaustive list of Obama’s
broken promises; I will confine myself to two or three salient examples that reveal the
blighted landscape of his strange twilight world of casuistry and illusion. The first sign
that things might not be so pure and lily-white in Obamaland was his failure to live up to
his pledge to use federal campaign funds. Okay, every pol is allowed a few missteps:
politicians are only human. But the significance of this broken promise was that it was a
betrayal not only of his adoring constituency but his stated campaign principles. It is
conceivable, though highly unlikely, Obama occupied a pew in the congregation of Reverend
Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and never heard him utter an anti-American calumny; but
this reversal was an unmistakable abandonment of core philosophy. The most revealing thing
about it was that Obama didn’t bat an eye: he didn’t think it mattered. It was
all part of the rough and tumble of Chicago politics.
His promise to close down Gitmo was also revelatory of another
unappealing trait of Obama’s, his breathtaking contempt for detail and facts. He
simply did not think through the implications of his campaign rhetoric. If he had, he
would have understood what a brier patch he was walking into. Sometimes it isn’t
clear whether he is obfuscating, or simply ignorant of the facts. You can almost hear a
little voice inside him saying: ‘If it’s approximately true, go with it.’
For example, his claim, challenged by Joe Wilson in an impolitic moment of lèse majesté, that his bill would not extend
health care benefits to illegal aliens. Obama is a past master of lying by omission, in
this case it was his failure to mention that there was no enforcement language in the bill
to guarantee compliance.
More recently there was his interview with George Stephanopoulos
where he quibbled like a schoolboy over the meaning of ‘tax,’ preferring words
like ‘fine’ and ‘penalty.’ (It was reminiscent of his ungracious
refusal to acknowledge the success of the surge in Iraq.) When Stephanopoulos quoted the
definition of ‘tax’ from the dictionary, Obama turned on his inimitable charm;
chuckling tolerantly, he chided George for ‘stretching’ to make his point.
This is a typical diversion of Obama’s. He has the extraordinary
notion that a thing becomes true the moment he gives utterance to it, or what is the same
thing, that he will make it so in the minds of his ardent devotees by the sheer force of
his personality. The origin of this godlike confidence is not far to seek: he and his
political cronies convinced themselves that his election was an affirmation of his
messianic vision, elder statesman gravitas and stature, irresistable charisma, and
historic destiny; that his Presidency would be a transformational event. More importantly,
they believed it was a mandate for a far left agenda. This, of course, is fantasy. Obama
won the election by default. If his victory affirmed anything, it was the
electorate’s impatience with mediocrities like George Bush and John McCain, and the
failures of two Republican administrations.
There is a thread running through all of Obama’s equivocations,
sophistries, untruths and half-truths, and it is an air of unreality; there is an
out-of-touchness with the harsh glare of the real world that smacks of narcissism. (Anyone
who writes three autobiographical books by the age of fifty is by definition a
narcissist). Obama’s narcissism subsists in a bubble of invincible self-regard that
is impervious to the sway of empirical fact; for Mr. Obama has a very simple test for
truth: it is whatever advances his agenda, i.e. whatever sustains ‘the dream.’
He is like a child who will look you straight in the eye and tell you a whopper because it
is the easiest way out.
Wm. B. Fankboner
September 28, 2009
Three
Big Bugaboos: Waste, Fraud and Abuse
The other day I heard a prominent political commentator who had spent a couple of terms
in the U.S. Congress respond to President Obama’s promise to make his health care
plan revenue-neutral by eliminating ‘waste, fraud and abuse,’ with uncontrolled
geysers of laughter. An eruption of levity so explosive he nearly fell out of his chair.
He recovered his equilibrium just long enough, before bursting into another fit of
laughter, to explain that the elimination of ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ was a
meaningless mantra invoked by legislators as a kind of inside joke to break the tension
during hard-nosed negotiations in committee, there being a wide consensus that it was
impossible to eliminate any one of these, let along all three.
Far be it from me to question received wisdom, expertise and experience of an erstwhile
congressman and distinguished representative for fourth estate, but this struck me as
unduly cynical and defeatest, and so I decided to look into the matter. This involved
getting down into the weeds, so bear with me.
One of the most common forms of Medicare fraud is the submission fraudulent claims for
reimbursement of medical equipment such as oxygen tanks and wheelchairs. Here’s a
typical scam, reported on March 1, 2004 in Home Care Magazine:
Texas Deja Vu: Another Big Power Wheelchair Scam
News of power wheelchair fraud returned to the Lone Star State in February when 11
Dallas-area residents, including DME dealers and a physician, were arrested in a
multi-million-dollar Medicare billing scheme.
Unsealed Feb. 5 by the U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Texas, indictments
allege that the defendants submitted fraudulent claims for reimbursement of power
wheelchairs and diverted the funds they received from Medicare for personal use. The U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services said billings in the schemes were in excess of $36
million, with more than $15 million paid out by Medicare to the defendants.
According to the indictments, older individuals were often approached by recruiters who
offered them free scooters in exchange for their Medicare information, which was then used
to file the fraudulent claims. Some beneficiaries actually received scooters, but the
suppliers billed Medicare for more expensive power wheelchairs, the indictment said. Other
beneficiaries received written notification from Medicare that they had received a power
wheelchair when, in fact, they had never asked for or received one.
Typically, Medicare was billed from $8,000 to $10,000 for the motorized wheelchairs.
For each claim they submitted, the wheelchair suppliers would receive approximately $5,000
from Medicare, the indictment said.
Now I am just your average kitbitzer on the sidelines, innocent the intricacies of the
legislative process; nor am I particularly expert in the subject of Medicare or Medicare
fraud; but it seems to me that theft this brazen and on this scale should be discouraged
and that it should be possible to introduce appropriate legislation to control this
rampant fraud with oversight and supervision. Well, in fact, there was such legislation
introduced in 2006 by Judy Biggert (R-IL-13). It never got out of committee. Here is a
news release outlining the particulars of the bill from Representative Biggert’s
website:
Washington, DC – Today U.S. Representative Judy Biggert (R-IL-13) introduced
legislation to crack down on the waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicare system that is
costing taxpayers as much as $54.5 million a day.
Biggert’s bill, H.R. 5962 or the Medicare Fraud, Prevention and Enforcement Act, is
designed to prevent waste, fraud and abuse by strengthening the Medicare enrollment
process, expanding certain standards of participation, and reducing erroneous payments.
The bill also gives law enforcement agencies additional tools to pursue health care
swindlers.
The legislation includes the following provisions:
• Amends title 18 of the Social Security Act to reduce Medicare’s susceptibility
to fraudulent billing and to provide the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of
Health and Human Services with additional tools to fight waste, fraud and abuse.
• Authorizes the Office of the Secretary of Human and Health Services (HHS) to
conduct site inspections and background checks of suppliers, health centers and other
provider groups that apply for provider numbers to provide services for Medicare
recipients.
• Allows HHS to refuse to issue a provider number to individuals or organizations
that have a history of bankruptcy, civil judgments and felony convictions. The HHS would,
in turn, report the information about the applicable provider – and HHS’ refusal
to issue a provider number – as a red flag to the health integrity protection
database (HIPDB). The HIPDB is a database that identifies and flags healthcare
practitioners, providers and suppliers involved in fraud and abuse.
“Over the past few years, Medicare fraud has skyrocketed, depriving millions of
seniors the quality care they deserve and bilking taxpayers out of billions of
dollars,” said Biggert. “Medicare is already facing the pressure of baby boomer
retirements, and we must do everything we can to target the waste, fraud and abuse in the
system.”
According to the HHS’ Inspector General, waste, fraud, abuse and other improper
payments drained as much as $19.9 billion from the Medicare Trust Fund in 2004 alone.
Among the fraudulent claims identified in the past are:
• Two doctors who submitted in excess of $690,000 in fraudulent Medicare claims
listed nothing more than a Brooklyn, New York, laundromat as their office location.
• In Florida, over $6 million in Medicare funds were sent to medical equipment
companies that provided no services whatsoever.
• One of the Florida companies listed a fictitious address that would have placed the
business in the middle of a runway at the Miami International Airport.
“Phony addresses and bogus providers add up to Medicare fraud and taxpayers being
swindled out of billions of dollars,” said Biggert. “There is no easy solution
to ending Medicare fraud. But the Medicare Fraud, Prevention and Enforcement Act will make
it more difficult for unscrupulous individuals to enter and take advantage of the Medicare
system.”
It is appalling to think of the billions in health care dollars that have gone into the
pockets of criminals since Medicare was enacted in 1965. More appalling still is the
inaction of Congress: are not the real criminals the lazy, inept and venal Congressmen who
have been bought off by health care providers and the medical equipment industry to defeat
this legislation?
There must be something beyond my comprehension. Perhaps someone can explain to me and
the American taxpayer why this bill was never acted on. Or is it, to quote K’s
lawyers in The Trial, something I won’t understand and have no need to
understand?
I guess eliminating ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ in the Medicare system is a just
joke after all. LOL.
Wm. B. Fankboner
October 7, 2009
Ayn Rand and other Malcontents
Class warfare has broken out again. Bitter acrimony and
vituperation between the conservative and liberal voices of Congress, besides which the
wrath of Zeus and the Titans is a modest dustup, crackles over the air waves and cable
networks with the deadly menace and fierce rancor of an old time range war between noble
sheep herders and evil cattle barons.
For the sake of argument
let’s agree that the noble sheep herders are the liberals and the evil cattle barons
are the conservatives. I realize this is a stereotype, but it’s really academic; the
members of both parties enjoy a curious parity: judging by past performance, Democratic
and Republican Congressmen are uniformly lazy, inept, and morally challenged.
But I digress. Against the
well-documented liberal belief in the redistribution of wealth, you might sum up the
conservative or libertarian position with a line from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:
‘How well you do your work … [is] the only measure of human value.’
Now that is a pretty stark
definition of our collective humanity.
Rand was probably thinking of the traditional categories of work,
such as lumberjack, mason, banker, tinker, tailor, soldier. It probably would not have
occurred to her that there could be such a thing a pole-dancer or hedge-fund manager. So,
whether you believe in the Calvinistic doctrine that man can achieve moral salvation
through hard work or not, I think you would agree that Rand’s statement
represents an over-simplified model of the capitalistic universe as we know it.
For example, I used to work
for a company that developed telemarketing software and equipment. Yes, gentle reader, the
predictive dialer that summons you to the phone at dinnertime, is driven by a computer
program. This presented me with a moral dilemma: if the lowest life-form is a
telemarketer, what do you call a person who empowers him with software? The better I did
my job the more I contributed to a pestilential nuisance of Biblical proportions: the
daily intrusion in the domestic privacy of anyone who owned a telephone.
If Ayn Rand had been around,
I could have sent her an email asking her what to do. As it happened, the moral
ambiguities of my position, accepting the Devil’s coin to pay the rent and put food
on the table, were resolved by my employer: I was fired.
My employer had made a
fortune selling his telemarketing equipment and software to the telephone sales industry
and had decorated the walls of his company offices with a fabulous art collection that
included works by such painters as Salvador Dolly, so you would have thought that he could
afford to be generous about things like severance pay. Not a bit of it. In fact he
challenged my claim for unemployment insurance based on a ginned up story of misconduct.
But apparently he had second thoughts, for he sent no one to present his case at a
scheduled hearing of the California State Appeals Board and I was awarded six months of
unemployment benefits.
What Ayn Rand would call a
confiscatory ‘redistribution of wealth’ by the welfare state tided me over until
I found other work. Moreover, I was to have my revenge in spades: In 2004 the national 'Do
Not Call List' became law, limiting cold call lists to charities, and effectively putting
my employer out of business, though I suppose he could live handsomely off the proceeds of
his art collection.
While my employer is not to
be compared with an international arms dealer, the idea is the same, i.e. capitalism is
not to be trusted as a self-correcting system. Left to its own devices (and vices) it will
periodically spin out of control and self-destruct. Wall Street needs policing as much as
any other street. My employer was, by Ayn Rand’s standard, a hero of the capitalist
system, a fiercely individualistic entrepreneur and a self-made man who had built a
prosperous business around an innovative product. But by any standard of human decency he
was a conniving opportunist who had made a fortune by exploiting imperfections in the free
market system. It was only by the intervention of the state that cold call telemarketing
was delegitimized as an industry.
As I grow older and wiser I
become more conservative in outlook, the less governmental interference into our lives the
better I say; but I am not an anarchist, and I’d like to think I have enough
intellectual honesty and common sense to acknowledge there are times when government acts
as a positive force for good
Wm. B.
Fankboner
October 31, 2009
wfankboner@dc.rr.com
williefank@aol.com