Getting Close to "Atlas Shrugged"

I didn't comment on Michael Hiltzik's piece earlier this week at the Los Angeles Times, "Obama Skews Battle Lines in "Class War." The article combined all the usual leftists characteristics - collectivism, dishonesty, and mendacity - and I was busy with teaching and other things at the time.

Yet amid all the debate about "Going Galt," I got a kick out of this letter to the editor this morning:

Hiltzik's column made me cringe. Why are we lumping someone making $250,000 in with people making $10 million?

I run a small business that employs 10 people who receive health insurance and paid vacation. I am already paying an inordinate amount of taxes between federal, state, property and city business taxes. Now the feds and the state are going to ask for more? With the current economic situation, that might mean having to let someone go. This whole thing was started by people making bad financial decisions, and now those same people are asking for a bailout.

This may be closer to "Atlas Shrugged" than Hiltzik thinks.

Bill Toth

Studio City

Leftists think this is all too funny, but I'm reading everyday about more and more regular folks - small business owners and working professionals - who really are "going Galt" in the sense of cutting back on productive output, freezing hiring, and letting workers go - that is, people are bascially contracting the type of personal activities that when multiplied exponentially constitute the dynamism of the American economy.

And the top staffers in the White House Office are pleading that they're just "pragmatists."

Right.