The Ticker Quick Views on Politics, Economics and Finance
What Ayn Rand Can Teach John Boehner
All this talk about Plan B got me thinking about Project X.
What's Project X, you ask? Randians (that's Ayn Rand to the uninitiated) will recall it from "Atlas Shrugged" as a sonic weapon of mass destruction being developed by the State Science Institute. With the nation's producers on strike, Project X is the government's last gasp to exert control over a collapsing economy.
Without getting into the twists and turns of Rand's magnum opus, suffice it to say the government bureaucrats, struggling for control of Project X, trigger it accidentally, destroying the weapon and everything in sight.
The goal of Plan B -- House Speaker John Boehner's WMD -- which would have raised taxes on real millionaires, was to shift the blame to President Barack Obama, who threatened to veto the measure. That way, Obama would be responsible for allowing taxes to increase on all Americans on Jan. 1.
Boehner had to pull the bill last night because he didn't have the votes. He sent his members home until after Christmas.
The moral of the story? Know your WMD and make sure it can't implode on itself.
(Caroline Baum is a Bloomberg View columnist. Follow her on Twitter.)
Read more breaking commentary from Bloomberg View at the Ticker.
About Caroline Baum»
Caroline Baum, a columnist for Bloomberg News since 1998, is the author of "Just What I Said: Bloomberg Economics ... MORE
FOLLOW ON TWITTER
Rate this Page
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions.