• Forbes magazine gives love to North Kansas City’s Cerner and boss Patterson 

[Cerner Corp. founder and chief executive Neal Patterson] comes off as the sort of CEO hero (Forbes describes him as “a registered Republican and Ayn Rand devotee”) that Forbes tends to champion.  

• Let’s reach out for common ground 
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It’s true that President Barack Obama wants the wealthiest Americans to be taxed more and to mandate health insurance. That, however, doesn’t make him a communist or even socialist. It makes him a Democrat. But you wouldn’t know that from the Ayn Rand-wannabe bombast blaring from the right.  

• Chuck Michael of KC gives Hollywood’s latest apes their voice 
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Sixty-six years ago, Missouri-born President Harry Truman ordered the atomic bombing on Hiroshima, Japan. He has also had an enormous influence on how the incident was perceived. With “The Beginning or the End,” the 1947 MGM movie about the creation and use of the bomb, Truman ordered script changes and even, according to producer Sam Marx, coined the title. [....] Considering the fact that Ayn Rand wrote a draft of the script, and scientist Leo Szilard dubbed it his punishment for having worked on the bomb, the movie still holds interest.  

• Good budget talks 
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Alan Greenspan  |Capitalism  | One can only imagine how hard it must be for congressmen to change, to give up previously held economic theories, and not follow the herding instincts of colleagues. Even Alan Greenspan admitted he mistakenly advocated Ayn Rand, free market ideology, and the dire effect on corporate policy regulation while at the Fed. Now Congress must reassess itself, emerge anew as flexible economic and political pragmatists, not theorists. Budget talks require nothing less. All are watching.  

• • ‘Atlas Shrugged’ not adolescent 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | “Atlas Shrugged” demonstrates that most of those who preach self-sacrifice intend to collect the sacrifices, not make them. Voluntary giving is not sacrificial if the giver derives more personal pleasure from giving than not giving. It is very natural for most people to want to give if they can afford it. On the other hand, if you are coerced to give by a moral code that condemns you if you don’t, or by tax laws enforcing that moral code ultimately at the barrel of a gun, you are not giving — you are being robbed. The novel explains the long range consequences of that moral code.  

• • Limit Sinquefield’s reach with reason, not finance limits 
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Ayn Rand Center  |Don Watkins  | Should there be a limit on how much wealthy individuals can contribute to issue campaigns in Missouri? That’s the focus of this story in today’s Kansas City Star, prompted by the megabucks that St. Louis multimillionaire Rex Sinquefield has sunk into his statewide campaign the ultimately repeal the earnings tax in Kansas City and St. Louis. [....] The Star’s story quotes Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, a libertarian think tank (as the name would imply): “The basic idea behind these complaints is, instead of speech being free, it should be equal,” Watkins said. “But leveling the playing field means shutting some people up. … The government’s going to take away his audience and give me an audience I didn’t earn. That is outrageous.” Watkins’ statement that “the government’s going to take away (Sinquefield’s) audience and give me (meaning less wealthy people) an audience I didn’t earn” strikes me as pretty elitist.  

• • Big money commands attention and protest in Missouri 
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Ayn Rand Center  |Don Watkins  | (Article widely syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.)
Any legislative attempt to rein in issue campaign contributions will meet fierce resistance, said Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, a libertarian think tank. “The basic idea behind these complaints is, instead of speech being free, it should be equal,” Watkins said. “But leveling the playing field means shutting some people up. … The government’s going to take away his audience and give me an audience I didn’t earn. That is outrageous.”  

• • Latest culture war in America is nationalism in ... 
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Capitalism  | Certainly, there are coldly dispassionate ideologues in [the Tea Party] mix: [....] The Ayn Rand libertarians who conflate Keynes with Marx, and a capitalist welfare state with socialism.  

• Ignore socialist label 
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Capitalism  | On banks and the financial markets, Obama’s economic advisers and Treasury Secretary are staunch free-market advocates. Unless you’re comparing them to Ayn Rand, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner cannot be accused of being market obstructionists. Regulating Wall Street’s ruinous greed is balancing "too big to fail" and "too small to care about." It is not socialism. For the sake of our country, tune out the fear mongers and turn on the brain.  

• ‘What’s the Matter With Kansas’ liberal filmmakers get a dose of Wichita 
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Capitalism  | “I’m a natural-born pessimist,” [documentary author Thomas Frank] said. “People shouldn’t be waving pictures of Ayn Rand and cursing liberals when we’re sinking into a worldwide recession. But the Democrats can’t seem to get a handle on it.  

• Vonnegut story prescient 
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Atlas Shrugged  | This summer I noticed a renewed interest in Ayn Rand’s classic “Atlas Shrugged.” Then a letter by Amy Brown (11/15) called our attention to George Orwell’s “1984.” I would like to add to the list of classics worth revisiting.  

• Midwest roots and branches 
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Back East and in Hollywood, they call this “populist” country. It’s an irrelevant label here. The eastern Hamiltonians, Jeffersonians, followers of Ayn Rand, modern New England liberals, and all of those cookie cutters just do not bake well here. Just like music from Nashville and the EastCoast/WestCoast factories, imported political behaviors and rhetoric, partisan fence posts while attractive, just don’t hold up on our prairie. What holds up, what takes root here are communities composed of great families, friends, schools, businesses, and a variety of worship choices.  

• Debating our health 
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I went to Senator McCaskill's health care town hall at the University Missouri Kansas City this past Monday [....]. There was the usual question from the senator about, “How many are on Medicare?” Hands shot up. “How many want to get rid of Medicare?” Only a few hands were held up, one of them being a college student a couple of seats down from me. I thought of asking him if he'd heard of Ayn Rand. Should I hope that he had?  

• • Free films, special screenings 

The Fountainhead  | “THE FOUNTAINHEAD” An avant-garde architect (Gary Cooper) defies convention; Ayn Rand’s script celebrates the rugged individualist. 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Film Vault, KC Central Library.  

• • Library film series gets down to business 
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The Fountainhead  | Cinematic portrayals of corporate giants and individual entrepreneurs will be featured in the next free film series at the Kansas City Central Library [....] “The Fountainhead” (1:30 p.m. June 13): An avant-garde architect (Gary Cooper) defies convention and destroys his own buildings when they fail to meet his idealized conceptions. Based on Ayn Rand’s novel.  

• •Selfishness is foolishness 
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Capitalism  |Egoism  | I thought Ayn Rand’s writings, popular 40 or 50 years ago, had been pretty well debunked as the philosophy of selfishness. “Doing what’s best for me is what’s best for all of us.” “Self-interest works for the common good.” “Say what?” is most people’s response. Even former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, an early disciple, admitted he was wrong in thinking the banks, acting in their own self-interest, would do what was best for the nation. That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in now. It seems pretty foolish to me. Those curious about Rand should rent the excellent movie, “The Passion of Ayn Rand.”  

• • Morality of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Letter to the editor.
Until not only the political, but more important, the moral significance of Rand’s novel is understood and accepted, America will continue down the road to total government control and destruction.  

• Sit back and let KC celebs read to you 
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Old School is the story of an ambitious, insecure prep-school teenager, circa 1960, who makes a serious mistake and eventually suffers the consequences. Its literary content extends to the students’ interest in writers of the day, including Ayn Rand, Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway.  

• It’s time to restrain the demons 
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Capitalism  | Letter to the editor.
By now as we go deep into recession we should understand that democracy and economic stability are incompatible with a wholly unregulated market system. Yet the Ayn Rand folks are still in denial.  

• • • Alan, like Atlas, shrugged 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | Oh, Alan. What would Ayn say? Alan Greenspan’s reluctant recent acknowledgment of his crucial role in the ongoing global credit crisis missed one crucial element — his devotion to objectivist philosopher and author Ayn Rand. Most notably in the fictional tome Atlas Shrugged but throughout her life, Rand pushed Adam Smith’s relatively brief discussion of self-interest in Wealth of Nations to the intellectual limit.