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Showing posts with the label Ayn Rand

This is what excessive wealth buys

Sheldon Adelson is working on a deal to develop a Las Vegas style gambling center in Spain (called Euro Vegas) where gambling has been banned for moral reasons.  He has already built an similar gambling center in Macau (People's Republic of China),  which helped Adelson build his wealth of approximately $25 billion dollars.  In Macau, his attempts to manipulate the government have drawn scrutiny from federal and Nevada investigators, but this has not deterred him from moving on with his plans for Spain.  Besides being an apparent manipulation of desperate people and countries, doesn't this all seem apocalyptic?  A man with more money than he, his family or generations of his family could ever spend seeks to accumulate even more wealth.  What is the point of his greed?  If Adelson showed an inordinate amount of philanthropy like Charles F. Feeney or even a more modest amount of philanthropy like Bill and Melinda Gates (which is still extraordinary), it would make sense, but t

No matter what they say

It seems to me that far too many people can't think for themselves or discern when a leader is saying something that would prove detrimental to them.  Whether financially, as in giving tax breaks to the rich and raising the tax burden of everyone else or physical, when saying we need to go to war with more countries, it is quite difficult to understand what it will take for certain voters to understand that the GOP is not their friend, let alone a good source for leaders.  Just look who they have put up as the the leader of the party.  Mitt Romney is running on his management skills, but he can't seem to manage his own campaign.  He can't even seem to "Do no harm.", which is all he should have to do given the state of our economy.  As for his supposed management skills, what has he actually managed?  At Bain, he basically bought companies that other people managed and ran up the debt of those companies that were not managed properly and provided support to those t