"Grover Norquist once said, “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub . . . " “I don't know if I'd go that far, but I can tell you one thing: I'm sick of the damned thing taking out (questionable) mortgages in my name.” http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live it for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live his for mine." -- John Galt from Atlas Shrugged the novel by Ayn Rand
"Who is Midas Mulligan?" Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
Missed the Boat, but Only Barely
Prophecy has never been humanity’s strong suit . . . not talking about “educated guesses” and “fact-based hunches here” . . . but serious prophecies, predictions and prognostications. Perhaps one in twenty thousand really off-the-wall predictions for the future ever comes true. Novelist Ayn (rhymes with “mine” though most people rhyme it with “main”**) Rand in her novels and non-fiction philosophy books incidentally made thousands of predictions and most of her most fundamental ones are coming true, sort of . . . Let’s take our present financial meltdown and ongoing economic malaise, for example . . . it’s too bad Rand never went acorn-hunting as a child, or should we say “ACORN-hunting?” If she had, the intriguing question running throughout her monumental masterpiece might not have been “Who is John Galt?” but rather, “Who is Midas Mulligan?”
In the novel (now made into a sensational low-budget independent film Atlas Shrugged Part I) the unseen Galt permeates our awareness as a potentially-sinister, confusing and mysterious presence. In real life, however, it is definitely the Midas Mulligans who are more likely to run the world. By the way, the movie Atlas Shrugged Part I is proving a huge consternation for all the (mostly left-wing) critics out there, roughly 85% of the pundits panned it with only 2% proving highly enthusiastic about its prospects. Virtually everyone who actually sees the movie (94%) rates the flick quite highly and, depending which article you read, numbers like 85%, 86% and 88% of them are “widely enthusiastic” about the search to discover “Who is John Galt?” The limited release to 299 theaters has proved very successful and now a 499 theater expanded-release is going on, with a wider 1,000 theater-release planned for May 1st. Let's get back to Midas . . . .
Rand’s creation “Midas” Mulligan was born Michael Mulligan and fought his way from nothing to become a highly successful, wealthy banker. After a lamestream-mainstream media hack called Mulligan, “Midas,” in a highly derogatory “slam” which Mulligan took as a huge compliment . . . the banker Mulligan thereafter insisted upon being called Midas after first having his name legally-changed.
In a shocking case of reality imitating fiction, Ms. Rand’s Mulligan finds himself being forced by the government via court order to lend money to an utterly incompetent and unworthy loan applicant. Of course, the reality being “predicted” a full twenty years before it happened was progressive president Jimmy Carter’s first congress (with loads of progressive Democrats and about fifteen progressive Republicans) passing the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA ’77) thus forcing banks and other mortgage lenders to knowingly make highly ill-advised loans to pathetically unqualified home-loan applicants. In the novel, Midas of course, refuses to make the loan, totally ignores the court order, liquidates his entire financial empire, pays off his depositors and joins Galt’s underground movement.
In real life, alas, there were no Midas Mulligans. ACORN when originally created in 1977 (to exploit CRA ’77) by a George Wiley, Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven NWRO (National Welfare “RIGHTS” Organization) confederate named Wade Rathke stood for ARKANSAS Community Organizations for Reform Now) ACORN was a test-creation for Piven, Cloward and Wiley who by that time were already bragging publically and in print about their success in bankrupting New York City (it was given a federal bailout in 1975), almost bankrupting New York State, and putting the entire nation into a huge tailspin by having Wiley create an army of welfare recipients (they doubled the rolls across the nation in three years between NWRO’s creation in 1967 and 1970) using Saul Alinsky “street tactics” to implement the Cloward-Piven Strategy of “managed chaos” first published in The Nation in 1966.
Wade Rathke, who had been sent to Arkansas in1970 to teach the Alinsky tactics and implement C-P Strategy there for the NWRO, was chosen because of the presence of a charismatic young lieutenant governor in that state who was very simpatico with C-P Strategy and Alinsky tactics: Bill Clinton. It’s notable that in the C-P article in The Nation, Cloward, Piven had set out to create an NGI (national guaranteed income) thus SNAP! they said, wiping out poverty in one-fell-swoop while taking advantage of the progressive Democratic sweep in 1964 and the ensuing “War on Poverty” and creation of Medicare and the federal side of Medicaid by the ultra-progressive Lyndon Baines Johnson’s administration. While bragging about their great deeds (they didn’t get any serious interest for GNI but did almost destroy the economy – the two year-long 1973-74 recession was the second worst financial disaster in history after the Great Depression) Cloward and Piven advised their followers that the next areas of emphasis were to be: voter registration and the system of public housing. Rathke came up with a slightly altered emphasis, based upon CRA ’77: Arkansas ACORN would create its chaos in voter registration and mortgage-lending. With no Midas Mulligan’s out there to protect us, here’s a synopsis of the ACORN “success” story:
I. ACORN Voter Registration efforts
A. Ran the biggest voter registration drive in Arkansas history in 1977-78. Threw away all would-be Republican registrants and easily made Bill Clinton Arkansas governor in 1978.
B. (Except for the first Reagan sweep in 1980) kept Clinton in office for twelve of the next fourteen years.
C. Clinton returned the favor in his first months in the Oval Office in 1993 by passing the Motor Voter Act (a.k.a. “A License for voter fraud”) with Cloward and Piven standing behind the President during the signing ceremony in a picture found all over the internet. See it here:
D. ACORN continued its fraudulent voter registration practices and even received federal money to do so and for census work up to 2010
II. ACORN Abuses CRA ’77 Mortgage-Guarantees
A. Operating only in Arkansas took 1975’s nationwide “suspect” home loan percentage from 0.24% to 0.51% (loans granted with 3% down or less) by 1985
B. Based upon success with voter registration and the home-loan program ACORN is expanded to all fifty states and renamed “Associations of Community Organizations for Reform Now” by 1995, one in seven home loans is suspect; by 2005 34% of them.
C. Bill Clinton sets about REALLY repaying ACORN for its support.
Even while getting Motor Voter passed, President Clinton began incredibly debilitating actions affecting the home-loan industry he’d not been able to impact while in Arkansas. Democrats regard Clinton as the first and greatest ACORN president.
1. In 1993 he drew up a huge regulatory expansion of CRA ‘77
2. Twice in 1995 Clinton and the congress passed CRA ’77 legislative expansions with incompetent Speaker Newt Gingrich as his unwitting foil.
3. Barack Obama serves as ACORN lawyer between 1994 and 1996, brow-beating and shaking-down home-lenders with Saul Alinsky tactics. Obama is teaching “Constitutional Law” and “Rules for Radicals” (Alinsky’s second book) in evening classes and proves successful in getting large future quotas placed upon banks for ‘sub-prime’ loans and often even gets ACORN donations from them in the Chicago area.
4. In 1998, Clinton passed a “steroid-version” CRA ’77 expansion. Between 1998 and 2007, where before it had been difficult to get unqualified borrowers into $100-$120,000 homes . . . all over the country people without jobs, without a decent credit rating, without even rental histories, whose only “income” is food stamps or other welfare, and, yes, even illegal aliens are now more easily put into $350 - $450,000 homes. 34% of all home loans are sub-prime highly suspect loans -- many of them with 0% down payment.
5. George W. Bush addresses the nation or congress nineteen times to try to get CRA ’77 repealed starting in January, 2005. Thirty months later a belated and very weak version of his bill is passed in July, 2007, it helps some. Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will say in August, 2010, that Bush’s actions saved the nation from a much deeper recession and kept us from a staggering collapse in housing prices. Nevertheless, it’s all too little, too late and in October, 2007, the sub-prime lending crisis is clearly upon us and the meltdown begins.
The phenomenal website http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/ published an April 19th blog comparing the actions of the government to identity thieves; the great author of How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, Harry Brown who once ran for president under the Libertarian banner, said there was little moral difference between government and the Mafia or other organized crime syndicates. Well as for me, everything I needed to know about government’s evils came from Ayn Rand’s remarkable hero: John Galt.
And let us leave you with one last Atlas Shrugged quote:
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked ‘what is the root of money?’ Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods (and services) produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?..."
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** ‘Tis very fitting today to think of Ayn Rand as a gold “mine” akin to the Founding Fathers and to relate to her strong support for unfettered individualism, lower taxes, and property rights which we associate with the word “MINE.”
"Grover Norquist once said, “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub . . . " “I don't know if I'd go that far, but I can tell you one thing: I'm sick of the damned thing taking out (questionable) mortgages in my name.” http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live it for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live his for mine." -- John Galt from Atlas Shrugged the novel by Ayn Rand
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