Ayn Rand (and Ron Paul) Madde This Nation More Selfish

At least Paul's appointees would protect civil liberties. I'm doubtful that anybody Obama appoints would do the same, based on his record on civil liberties thus far as President.

 

What I fundamentally don't understand is the segment of the population that would identify as both Christian and somewhat Rand-ian. It seems to me, if you take ANY of Christ's teachings to heart, that even one sentence of Ayn Rand would be more than you could stomach.

She is, semantically, bullet point by bullet point, an anti-Christ figure. I don't mean Biblically, but just that each of her points runs counter to Christ's teachings.

Be selfish
Accumulate wealth
Spurn charitable activity

May I say: blech.

 

I think many of us liken our government to the dam protecting a village (that would be our country in this example). It has leaks in it. So many leaks that it will take everyone in the village to play a part in fixing those leaks. It's highly unlikely but it's possible and it's the only choice we have.

I think Paulites (is that a word now?) think the solution is to blow the damn up with dynamite and rebuild it. The problem is that they forget (actually I think many don't care or are too ignorant to understand) that a leaky damn might not do the best job but if you blow it up everyone drowns.

 

i can, you know, read too samuel! paul indeed proposed greater transparency of the SEC (the kind that your president obama promised).

and thanks for posting that link samuel! good stuff and i totally agree w/ everything paul is saying! if you dont mind, id like to share this w/ everyone!

http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-01-06/its-time-to-abolish-the-fed-and-the-sec/

 

He proposes legislation because he sees it as a vehicle to his ultimate goal of abolishing it... There's an arguable point in there in that allowing for confidential submission of materials enhances disclosure and thus enforcements. - but I don't think L. Ron has much comprehension or appreciation for it in the context of his plutocracy now! campaign. It's more like

1.demonize the SEC as colluding with big business etc...
2. hurt/hinder it as much as possible and do the bidding of monied interest so that eventually we will:
3. get rid of it, so that magic invisible hands can punch us in the nuts repeatedly on our way to greater prosperity because Atlas shrugged says so.

The problem is that I don't really care what L. Ron thinks of it, both in the grand scheme of things, because he is a silly crackpot, and one of hte most unwitting dupes in the history of the universe, and because it's kind of irrelevant to the one part of the Paulista phenomenon I find interesting, the willngess of the free drugs & populism part of his brigade to ignore his fealty to his rich overlords - he's the greatest shill they ever had; they don't even have to pay him as much as the rest because of the divine testaments he hath received.

So in that context, I'm asking for your answer, not you reading the Tea Party Leaves of what the great L. Ron foreswore into his 8-track recorder before departing this mortal realm and dwell amongst the ether along with Ayn the rest of the demi-gods, what is your basis for thinking that abolishing the SEC and repealing the Securities Act, the Exchange Act, rule 10b-5 and every other federal securities regulation is a good idea?

Simply repeating "Madoff" btw, is not a valid answer. It's like saying "well, murders happened, so we need to just repeal all federal murder laws and disband the FBI." I don't need to elaborate on this because you're smart enough to comprehend the issue here.

Have you studied this issue at all, do you honsetly thnk that a completely unregulated market for securities with state common law fraud statutes as the only barrier to misdeeds is a fantastic idea on the basis of efficacy/cost basis/etc? Have any evidence whatsover?

 

Worth repeating. This is the facepalm moment for me whenever I listen to Paul supporters railing against the status quo-corporate-owned-political parties crap.

Ron's policies removes any restraints whatsoever from total corporate takeover. ****, all Ron's philosophy does is remove the middle man.

 

This is also where Paul supporters typically dodge to less ugly talking points, regurgitate tired examples of current problems, and just generically dodge defending the man they otherwise idolize.

 

in principle i dont have a problem w/ regulations, but corrupt regulatory agencies that routinely fail to do their job and routinely fail to punish criminal behavior are not worth having.

insofar as "madoff" is a prime example of the failures/corruption of the SEC it is.

if the fbi knew about a mass murderer for 10 years and did nothing i would think we would see some firings in that agency and calls for more oversight/accountability - how many people in the SEC lost their jobs over the "madoff" fall-out?

did anyone go to jail over the subprime mortage scandal which helped crash our entire economy in 2008 and forced the taxpayers into giving bailouts to the very entities which f***ed everything up? bankers screwed over their investors for billions and billions and nobody gets in trouble (unless you think dudes who raked in millions paying a few thousand in fines=getting in trouble). do you think the SEC did their job in enforcing and regulating banks?

did anyone go to jail over wachovia laundering $400 billion in drug money? is the fine of a few million they paid appropriate for what they did?

this is a microcosm of the larger issue that our government is fundamentally broken, corrupt and exists for the benefit of the elites and 1% - our government has decided that certain classes of people are above being held accountable for their crimes. as i said earlier, people are sick of the corruption, corporate influence, hypocrisy and lies. the rise of paul is a direct reflection of that sentiment. many, like myself, believe that the system is broken beyond repair and paul represents a 'reset' button, if you will, on the game of 'the united states of america'.

just so you know samuel, even if paul does not get the republican nomination or run as an independent i shall be voting republican for the sole purpose of cancelling out your vote!

 

You're aware that the Commissioners serve terms that expire, right? Most of the Commission and the division heads from the 90's when he started were long, long gone by the time he was finally caught.

From my contacts, the people in the NERO of the enforcement division have pretty high turnover - but honestly if you think firing a staff attorney who's probably not there anymore is the linchpin of your argument in favor of abolition of the entire system of securities law and regulation - your argument speaks for itself.

My god, herp a ****ing derp. THe SEC doesn't put people in jail, that's the US Attorney. But to answer your question, yes around the country therea re hundreds of people in jail arouund the country for subprime mortgage fraud - mostly small fries as they are the easiest to catch and prosecute. And I think the total amount recovered by the SEC in civil enforcement actions is in the billions now since 2008. But don't let facts like that screw a good Paulista rant.

No...because commercial bankingthat isn't regulated by the SEC - it was the former OTS and the FDIC and federal reserve. The SEC's regulation touches on investment banks when they act like broker dealers but that's differrent.

Look , the root of the problem here is that you don't know what federal securities laws actually say and what they actually do.

Enforcement is only a fraction of what the commission does and what the federal securities laws do. It basically sets up the entire framework for capital markets in this country, the vast majority of participants in which, shockingly are not felons. There are millions and millions of documents filed on EDGAR every day - the vast majority of which are not fraudulent. They handle exchange regulation, broker dealer compliance, and other things that you don't understand and don't know exist.

But just because you don't understand them, doesn't mean it has no value, or that it should be abolished and devovled onto the states.


Again, the position that L. Ron is advocating here is not "let's have the SEC enforce better" (the best way to do that, btw is to give them more resources and make federal securities laws more broad...The SEC enforcement division is woefully underfunded compared to the people it's tasked with going after, adn the statutes are pretty constrained. Does this mesh with the Paulista mssion? Increase government funding and a broad new range of criminally punishable conduct? Yeah...didn't think so).

It's "Let's abolish the SEC and federal securities laws" Come again? And replace them with nothing.

What the ****? Why are we abolishing rule 10b-5 which outlaws securities fraud? Because people have been charged with violating it? Or becuase certain other people haven't been? That's just the epitome of batsh-t ****ing stupid, and it's what L. Ron argues we should do.

I'm asking you again, why do you think we shoudl do it? Let's ignore the enforcement aspect,

why do YOU JOSEPH MAMA think that the State of Texas and 49 other states will do a better job, with fewer resources, of drafing broker-dealer clearign rules?

why do YOU JOSEPH MAMA think that the MSRB needs to have 50 different sets of rules?

why do YOU JOSEPH MAMA think that having 50 different systems of ssecurities filings is more useful than EDGAR (probably one of the greatest regulatory innovations of all time...)?

Etc ad nauseum...I'll pause to give you a while to figure out what these things actuallly are, and then try to figure out why you support eliminating them.

 

Did you give up on trying to troll me Sam?

 

I'm feeling a bit cast aside here...

 

Do you think the SEC and the federal securities laws should be abolished and repealed and devolved to the states?

If so you are an idiot - see above. Enjoy.

 

The federal government does have the authority to policy interstate trade, and there should be an agency that polices fraud, embezzlement, etc. in securities markets, so I'd say no. I do think policy should be changed a bit and their role should be more clearly defined and limited.

 

that's probably because a vast majority of so-called christians are christian in name only. they don't actually study the teachings of jesus christ.

 

I think you're making some assumptions here. I don't think anybody wants corporations or big business to be able to skirt the rule of law in a way that harms the people.

 

You must not know much about Alan Greenspan or Paul Ryan...

 

Being influenced by Ayn Rand does not a libertarian make.

And if you did a simple search on Alan Greenspan, you'd see that his opinions have changed quite dramatically since he mingled with Ayn Rand in his younger days. Of course, I don't expect you to know that, and I don't expect that information to stick, since it would hinder your ability to catagorize everybody you disagree with as a libertarian, a Randian, or a Republican.

 

as ive said many times, i dont agree w/ paul on everything, but on my key issues i believe he is spot-on. civil liberties, non-interventionist foreign policy, ending military/foreign aid to other counties, anti-war, military spending, unequivocal rejection of the bush doctrine, anti-corporate welfare and pro-government transparency.

and just like i dont agree w/ paul on everything, i dont disagree w/ obama on everything, but on my most important issues he has been a major disappointment. infact, even if i agreed w/ obama on everything else, his civil liberties record would prevent me from supporting him.

as for samuels so-called 'regulatory' agencies, they seem to be totally corrupt and in the pocket of wall st./bankers/corporations. everything from "madoff" to oil regulators doing blow and having sex w/ the people they were supposed to be regulating to wachovia laundering 400 billion in drug money and getting a slap on the wrist to the subprime mortgage scandal. many of these agencies are hopelessly corrupt and at the least need the kind of oversight and transparency that paul is calling for. or maybe we need to do what the city of veracruz did yesterday when they fired their entire police force due to corruption...totally clean house.

and why is it that "paulistas" are expected to support, defend and explain all of pauls policy positions while "obamabots" are allowed to ignore/dismiss some of obamas more egregious actions? many of the people who demand that i endorse and explain all of pauls policy positions are the first ones to attack people who dare criticize obama. im constantly accused of not wanting to discuss pauls policies while samuel and others straight-up declare that they will not discuss unsavory elements obamas policies and thats ok. just look at this thread - i get chastised for refusing to address part of samuels post (which i did b/c samuel was just trollin') while samuel does the exact same thing to me and he gets a pass...hmm.