In a column about the revolving door between big government and the lobbying world, here’s what the irreplaceable Tim Carney wrote about the waiver process for folks trying to escape the burden of government-run healthcare.
Congress imposes mandates on other entities, but gives bureaucrats the power to waive those mandates. To get such a waiver, you hire the people who used to administer or who helped craft the policies. So who’s the net winner? The politicians and bureaucrats who craft policies and wield power, because this combination of massive government power and wide bureaucratic discretion creates huge demand for revolving-door lobbyists. It’s another reason Obama’s legislative agenda, including bailouts, stimulus, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, tobacco regulation, and more, necessarily fosters more corruption and cronyism.
This seemed so familiar that I wondered whether Tim was guilty of plagiarism. But he’s one of the best journalists in DC, so I knew that couldn’t be the case.
Then I realized that there was plagiarism, but the politicians in Washington were the guilty parties. As can be seen in this passage from Atlas Shrugged, the Obama Administration is copying from what Ayn Rand wrote – as dystopian parody – in the 1950s.
Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen railroad bonds, perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At first, there had been signs of a panic among the bondholders and of a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch had issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds “defrozen” upon a plea of “essential need”: the government would purchase the bonds, if it found proof of the need satisfactory. there were three questions that no one answered or asked: “What constituted proof?” “What constituted need?” “Essential-to whom?” …One was not supposed to speak about the men who, having been refused, sold their bonds for one-third of the value to other men who possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen cents melt into a whole dollar, or about a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves “defreezers” and offered their services “to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms.” The boys had friends in Washington.
This isn’t the first time the Obama Administration has inadvertently brought Atlas Shrugged to life. The Administration’s top lawyer already semi-endorsed “going Galt” when he said people could choose to earn less money to avoid certain Obamacare impositions.
So if you want a glimpse at America’s future, I encourage you to read (or re-read) the book. Or at least watch the movie.
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[…] waiver process, Tim Carney revealed the special deals for politically connected companies, and I suggested the process was eerily similar to a passage from Atlas […]
[…] waiver process, Tim Carney revealed the special deals for politically connected companies, and I suggested the process was eerily similar to a passage from Atlas […]
A speedy red fox jumped over the lazy pet
my brother wanted to know something about this, ill point them to your blog, thanks
I dont disagree with this blog post!!
[…] the Occupy Wall Street folks actually understood the difference between capitalism and cronyism, there’s a chance they might join the right side. LD_AddCustomAttr("AdOpt", "1"); […]
[…] the first time real-world events seem to have come straight from the pages of Rand’s book. I wrote last month about the creepy similarity of the waiver process for Obamacare and the bond de-freezers in Atlas […]
[…] Corrupt Obamacare Waiver Process Is Like a Scene from Atlas Shrugged Then I realized that there was plagiarism, but the politicians in Washington were the guilty parties. As can be seen in this passage from Atlas Shrugged, the Obama Administration is copying from what Ayn Rand wrote – as dystopian parody – in the 1950s. Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen railroad bonds, perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At first, there had been signs of a panic among the bondholders and of a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch had issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds “defrozen” upon a plea of “essential need”: the government would purchase the bonds, if it found proof of the need satisfactory. there were three questions that no one answered or asked: “What constituted proof?” “What constituted need?” “Essential-to whom?” …One was not supposed to speak about the men who, having been refused, sold their bonds for one-third of the value to other men who possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen cents melt into a whole dollar, or about a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves “defreezers” and offered their services “to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms.” The boys had friends in Washington. […]
@Dan,
I suggest you reread the Carney piece again. You are misinterpreting what he wrote:
“Now, this is about a Medicaid waiver, not an ObamaCare waiver, but the same dynamic is at play: Congress imposes mandates on other entities, but gives bureaucrats the power to waive those mandates. To get such a waiver, you hire the people who used to administer or who helped craft the policies.”
The part about the “same dynamic is at play” gives away the game. This is all about power. Everything Obama does is about power.
That’s the exact passage from AS that came to mind when I first heard about the Obamacare waivers.
Followed by this one:
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against–then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted–and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.”
I’m about halfway through it, and I swear it feels as if DC is using it as a manual to systematically destroy our economic infrastructure and enslave us, and using the same boneheaded “logic” and “reasoning”. Frightening, too, perhaps because of its prescience, is the complicity of the press in refusing to accurately report events, or refusing to report certain things at all. It’s all I can do to refrain from beating my head against a wall when I read some of what passes for scholarship in her “leaders”. I still haven’t decided yet if John Galt is a hero or someone to be despised.
Commenter “hitnrun” is exactly right: as a statement of Objectivist principles, Atlas Shrugged is cumbersome. As a description of how a country slowly destroys itself with one small bad decision after another, it’s quite a prophecy.
It must be a mistake, as the Obama administration would never break the law and give assets to Unions that by law should go first to bond holders. They would never give waivers on Obamacare to McDonalds’.
Oops! Nevermind.
Are you intentionally lying? Or just lazy? Even Tim’s post acknowledges that the lobbying notice that is the subject of his post is NOT RELATED TO OBAMACARE. And as is pointed out in the comments to his post, the waiver at issue is a VERY COMMON Medicaid waiver. It is NOT something “imposed on other entities” but waived for only a few.
So yes, TIM is quoting Atlas Shrugged. But he is not writing anything even vaguely accurate about the current administration. So you and Tim can join an echo chamber convincing yourself that we live in a novel, while anybody who cares about the truth and looks into the facts will realize that it is pure fantasy. Otherwise known as a lie.
Even the corporate spokespeople for affected companies speak like Ayn Rand characters. Who can forget the Wet Nurse and “Iron smelting, I believe, seems to require a high temperature”. Like him, LED lighting company executive Greg Merritt, a clear beneficiary of the incandescent light ban, cannot make a single definitive statement:
Company Vice President Greg Merritt spoke about the LED boom in April 2009 at a green-tech conference. “We are in a perfect storm in some respects,” he said. After talking about new manufacturing efficiencies, Merritt added, “The political environment for sustainable technologies and energy efficiency is perhaps more favorable today than it’s been for quite a while.”
From the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/06/obama-rubs-elbows-regulatory-robber-barons#ixzz1PGjdKviv
I read Altas last year. It seemed to parallel the modern political landscape of the nation and my state (CA) so closely that I felt like Rand was writing about current affairs.
The oft-summarized “point” of Atlas Shrugged – Atlantis, the heroic rich – is errant nonsense, but the page-by-page economic slow motion highway wreck is what made the book for me.
1/20/13
Ayn Rand… the new Nostradamus, except you don’t have to “decode” her writings.
“The Catholics used to call these “Indulgences.””
Now it is called economic and social justice!
@CaseyM
No they didn’t. Nice try though.
John
[…] Corrupt Obamacare Waiver Process Is Like a Scene from Atlas Shrugged « International Liberty. […]
The Catholics used to call these “Indulgences.”
[…] Here is a great example of crony capitalism in action. […]
[…] Corrupt Obamacare Waiver Process Is Like a Scene from Atlas Shrugged […]
I admit that politicians have perverse incentives, and do create economic inefficiency. However politicians do, in the end, take the money of more productive people and give some to me, enabling me to live a slightly better life than I would otherwise deserve. So I can turn a blind eye to their succumbing to inherently perverse incentives. They may take $4 from producers, waste $2 and give $1 to bureaucrats, but so long as they give me the remaining $1 in one form or another, I can turn a blind eye and forgive politicians. They pay me, I vote for them. No need to philosophize too much.
Country on its way to decline because of the inefficiency and loss of incentives? Well, that seems too far out in the future, not my problem and the temporal even if limited benefits of redistribution are just too seductive to pass up. Besides people in the know assure me that there are many tools to macroeconomic manipulation and thus some solution will be found. I do not understand much what they’re talking about but I trust them, they are government officials. So in the end, come election time, I vote for people who redistribute and give me hope that there are solutions that involve more prosperity without having to bother to produce more value. If it doesn’t work out, we can always turn back. Can’t we?
Saw my niece this weekend at a family wedding. She’s just become a nurse back in December. She told us how she carefully watches how much overtime she works because if she does too mitch in any given 2-week pay period, they take a higher percentage out for taxes and she loses money.