“I think,” said Rearden slowly, “that the country needs me much more than it needs Orren Boyle.” …

“It’s not Boyle alone who is involved,” said Holloway pleadingly.  “The country’s economy would not be able to stand a major dislocation at the present moment.  There are thousands of Boyle’s workers, suppliers, and customers.  What would happen to them if Associated Steel went bankrupt?”

“What will happen to the thousands of my workers, suppliers, and customers when I go bankrupt?” …

“We can’t theorize about the future,” cried Wesley Mouch, “when there’s an immediate national collapse to avoid!  We’ve got to save the country’s economy!  We’ve got to do something!”  Rearden’s imperturbable glance drove him to heedlessness.  “If you don’t like it, do you have a better solution to offer?”

“Sure,” Rearden said easily.  “If it’s production that you want, then get out of the way, junk all your damn regulations, let Orren Boyle go broke, let me buy the plant of Associated Steel -and it will be pouring a thousand tons a day from every one of its sixty furnaces.”

Atlas Shrugged, pg. 888 -89.  For those who have felt as if the past few months have been a bit surreal - not quite something out of the America you know, but vaguely familiar - try picking up a copy of Atlas Shrugged.

Patterico describes the UAW’s job banks and its effects upon the market and viability of Detroit.   Essentially, automakers are required to set up “job banks” for union employees  who have no work to do.  The employees (it is not quite accurate to describe them as “workers”) show up each morning, are told - surprise of all surprises - that there isn’t anything for them to do.  They are then paid over $30/hour, plus benefits, to sit around and do nothing.

These union sissies don’t seem to understand that there are thousands, if not millions, of antisocial, video-game addicted, pot-smoking 20-somethings who would be more than happy to have a gig like that.  In fact, they will not work for $15/hour, or even $10/hour, so long as they get their Guitar Hero and their mums get them out of the cellar.  Is it any surprise that a business which runs itself like a genie’s lamp - granting every wish, or at least, three at a time - is going out of business?  When we talk about retrieving excess compensation from CEO, why don’t we talk about the people who get paid $62,000/year (more than the average American household) to do crossword puzzles?

Speaking of market distortion, Obama has proposed an “Old Deal” that would create 2.5 million jobs, presumably to improve America’s infrastructure.  Left unexplained is why construction workers are worthy of employment but other professionals are not.  As Peggy Noonan pointed out in the WSJ, the government - bureaucracy, regulations, and employees - keeps expanding, to the benefit of those in it and the detriment of those too foolish to not have jumped on the gravy train.

Finally, Michelle Malkin on Mexico’s reinstation of the death penalty and its own, newfangled thoughts on illegal immigration.  Turns out, once drug cartels started trashing the southern border of Mexico, and Cubans (heading to America via Mexico) also started making pests of themselves, this whole “live and let live” mentality began to get old.

People, conservatives don’t do things like push for the death penalty, tough sentences for drug dealers, deportation of illegal immigrants, and other law-and-order type things because we are huge meanies or total racists.  It is simply because, while one system may be flawed, everything else proposed is a whole hell of a lot worse.  If you want people to live in a free, safe society - if you want children to grow up in good homes, without drugs, without teenage pregnancy, and without violence - conservative values are the way to go.