Sorry I haven't blogged in a while...

but I've been super busy. (oh, no! I'm turning into one of those people).

I did want to take a couple minutes and give an update on a post I made back in February, you can read it here, containing a prediction based on my rudimentary understanding of Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged, (based entirely on what Wikipedia says about the book), that the "men of the mind", o sea, the entrepreneurs would go on strike and refuse to use their talents for the benefit of those that are just looking for handouts.

It appears that this prediction is coming to fruition, as can be read in this article found on American Thinker. But it goes beyond the porculus bill. The article explains that the government running major industries in the economy is creating a hostile environment for business start-ups, which is causing entrepreneurs to take a
wait-and-see" approach, further delaying the recovery from the recession:

...there are few opportunities worth the risk anymore, thanks to Washington. Whether the Congress or the administration will infuse themselves directly into a given industry is not the only point. When government arrogantly claims it can perform impossible slam dunks in the banking industry, the auto industry, the insurance industry, and the medical industry, all the while imposing confiscatory taxes, there is almost nowhere to escape them in any legitimate business.
Businesses need professionals in banking, lending, insurance, and accounting to depend on, and we know now that whomever we hire in these areas will be under the government's thumb. Of course, paying customers are needed as well, and with government causing huge cracks in foundational sectors like housing, lending, and manufacturing, a reliable employed customer base is becoming harder and harder to maintain, much less find.
For many decades, the American dream has been undergirded by the faith that regardless of its current state, the economy would come back around thanks to the greatness of ordinary people being free to do extraordinary things. Thus the bold gunslinger mentality many business owners have had in previous recessions, refusing to participate, and even expanding cheaply to grab market share in the next recovery.
But it's different now, and there is no denying it. The dream itself is being killed by legal and regulatory micromanagement. Washington is determined to employ policies to cure something that can be cured only by government getting the hell out of the way.
A small business summit in the White House will accomplish nothing unless the invitees include unions and lawyers and bureaucrats, in which case it will be devastating. When did a union or a lawyer or a bureaucrat ever start a business? How many times a day do they kill one?
And that's the climate entrepreneurs see. Unions, lawyers, and bureaucrats gain more power and leverage every day. The big opportunity now is to spend government money: an eighteen-million-dollar government contract to create an awful Recovery.org website, SEIU union jobs in ObamaCare, bankruptcy lawyers, and perhaps carbon credit trades coming. There are ACORN-style crony contracts to be had, not to mention all the jobs created by the David Axelrod astroturfing media escapades. If you are connected or if your dream is to enrich yourself by killing the dreams of others, then the field is ripe for you.

Atlas is beginning to shrug.

On a side note, when I recently heard about the student protests @ UCLA and UC Berkeley, it caused some strange feelings I couldn't quite process. The college-student part of me sympathized, being concerned about my own rising tuition costs, but a larger part felt odd about it. I couldn't quite process it until I saw this article. It then made perfect sense. That was exactly how I felt about it.

Let your voice be heard and tell me what you think.