House Oversight — Estate records
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From: Sent: 7/16/2011 6:42:55 PM To: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Fwd: 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years . Attachments: image007.jpg Importance: High From Stevie. -----Original Message----- From: Steven Sinofsky To: 'Melanie Walker' < Sent: Sat, Jul 16, 2011 11:05 am Subject: 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years . 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years By STEPHEN MOORE Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster. The art for a 1999 postage stamp. Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit. HOUSE OVERSIGHT 030235 Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible. For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the pol […]