Hypocrites of the Day - Kock Brothers - Ayn Rand (The Stalwart of Libertarianism).

It has been a while since I wrote a post of the hypocrite of the day, but an article today In Naked Capitalism Naked Capitalism  convinced me more than ever that we live in a society today where people will say whatever they want and then do just the opposite. Do as I say not as I do.

 I find hypocrisy one of the truly great faults of our American political system. Politicians will say anything to get elected and then do the polar opposite. Is it any wonder that Congress has one of the lowest rating in history? How can we all not be disillusioned?

 The latest comes from the Kock brothers. If you don't know who they are you should!! I have written about them and their near control of the tea-party, a movement which benefits their financial interests most. See HERE and HERE.

Now just read what http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ reports and you will see just how clearly we are all being duped by the controlling elite. Hypocrisy at its worst! From Naked Capitalism:

 Friedrich Hayek Joins Ayn Rand as a Hypocritical User of Medicare

We’ve been a bit hard on the left of late, so we figured we’d take some steps to balance our programming. Mark Ames, who has been doggedly on the trail of the Koch brothers, found a delicious failure to live up to his oft-repeated standard of conduct by a god in the libertarian pantheon, Friedrich Hayek. And this fall from grace was encouraged one of the chief promoters of extreme right wing ideas in the US, Charles Koch.

Bear in mind that Charles Koch has not merely promoted libertarian ideas generally but in particular founded the Cato Institute, which has done more than any other single organization to wage war on Social Security. Koch wanted Hayek to come to the US in 1973 to become a “distinguished senior scholar” at the Institute for Human Studies, which Koch quickly made into a libertarian citadel. Hayek initially turned the opportunity down, saying he had just had an operation, which made him particularly aware of the dangers of falling ill abroad. Austria had close to universal health care; Hayek’s comment strongly suggests he took advantage of it.
Per Yasha Levine and Ames in the Nation:

IHS vice president George Pearson (who later became a top Koch Industries executive) responded three weeks later, conceding that it was all but impossible to arrange affordable private medical insurance for Hayek in the United States. However, thanks to research by Yale Brozen, a libertarian economist at the University of Chicago, Pearson happily reported that “social security was passed at the University of Chicago while you [Hayek] were there in 1951. You had an option of being in the program. If you so elected at that time, you may be entitled to coverage now.”

A few weeks later, the institute reported the good news: Professor Hayek had indeed opted into Social Security while he was teaching at Chicago and had paid into the program for ten years. He was eligible for benefits. On August 10, 1973, Koch wrote a letter appealing to Hayek to accept a shorter stay at the IHS, hard-selling Hayek on Social Security’s retirement benefits, which Koch encouraged Hayek to draw on even outside America.

This should put Hayek in some sort of libertarian circle of hell, along with Ayn Rand, who took Medicare and Social Security payments when she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

To quote Blue Texan at FireDogLake:

And before any glibertarians come back with “but…but…she paid into it so there’s no hypocrisy” in comments, Rand herself wrote,

There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

Adding an extra layer of crow to the deliciousness, the Ayn Rand Center for the Center for F*ck You I Got Mine Individual Rights has an article on its website right now titled, “Social Security is Immoral“.

SO NEXT TIME YOU HEAR A TEA-PARTIER OR REPUBLICAN ATTACK SOCIAL SECURITY OR MEDICARE, ASK THEM HOW IT IS OKAY FOR THEM BUT NOW FOR THE REST OF ALL HARD WORKING AMERICANS?

This is more than an outrage it is a crime.  We are now being run by the financial elite who have no concerns for average Americans at all.

I have always believed in free enterprise - BUT - is this truly free enterprise or crony capitalism?  What is worse is that it makes me question whether the "American Dream" is dead.

Jamie Diamond the head of Chase is reported to have received more than $20,000,000.00 last year in compensation.  How much did they allow you to make?

And do you believe people should be allowed to die on the streets?

I revert to one last post I made.  It is about the Statue of Liberty - a symbol of the American Dream; the inscription of the Statue by Emma Lazarus. She is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1912. The sonnet was solicited by William Maxwell Evarts as a donation to an auction, conducted by the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" to raise funds to build the pedestal.

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Has that dream died?