Heartland

John Robbins has argued that "Greenspan may be more responsible than any other single human being for the disastrous developments in our nation's economy," and that "when it comes to wreaking financial havoc, Madoff was a piker compared to the man who was dubbed history's greatest Federal Reserve chairman upon his retirement in 2006."

A friend to this blog sent a link to yet another story featuring the Heartland Institute in action. As the friend notes, Heartland is "like the Halliburton of Academia. Everywhere at once."Apparently, in its efforts to disprove man-made global warming, Heartland cites published studies whose authors came to conclusions at a 180-degree remove from those reported by Heartland. When those authors complained, Heartland pretended not to hear a word.Why don't these deceptive tactics receive greater publicity? Why hasn'treceived greater publicity? Part one of the above-linked story shows that nine out of ten scientists who have voiced doubts about man-made climate change possess financial ties to big oil.)Heartland -- a propaganda outfit masquerading as a "think tank" -- has led the charge to change perception on global warming. The campaign has been spectacularly successful. Republican politicians who once admitted the reality of man-made climate change have now all reversed their position -- at least in public.The Heartlanders are Ayn Randroids. At one time, the Ayn cultists were a risible fringe group. Now they are getting their big chance to destroy...everything.I'm convinced that, for some libertarians, the motive isn't money. Neither is it ideological zeal. On an unconscious level, they seek -- how to put it? -- the void itself, preceded by cataclysm. They are half in love with uneaseful death. Apocalypse is their smack. Objectivism is a sick ideology concocted by an emotionally unstable woman -- a masculine-looking, chain-smoking hag who longed to be ravished by Conan the Barbarian but remained perpetually unsatisfied because she never found a man she couldn't emasculate. The fact that she always blathered on about her supreme "rationality" provides damning evidence of her mental illness.Among her emasculated devotees was one Alan Greenspan , who somehow became the chairman of the Fed despite a history of being wrong about pretty much everything.Ayn's idiotic legacy has ruined this country economically. Now it endangers human life.