Audio from Clerk of Courts outsourcing meeting and the way employees treated “just plain evil”

Former Brevard Clerk of Courts Scott Ellis has obtained an audio recording of an employee meeting from earlier this year where employees were told their jobs would be outsourced. Attendees are given tickets, and on the audio you can hear one person telling the audience “four minutes until showtime”.

“When you listen to it with the knowledge of what is going to happen to these people and the way they are being treated… well, it’s just plain evil,” said Ellis.

Click to listen for yourself:

Part One (31 mins):

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Part Two (31 mins):

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Part Three (17 mins):

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Ohio Teen Wins $2,000!

Ohio Teen Wins $2,000!

IRVINE, Calif, August 11, 2009–High school sophomore Hillary Purcell, from Terrace Park, Ohio, is the winner of the Ayn Rand Institute’s annual Anthem essay contest, for which she received a prize of $2,000. Ms. Purcell is a student at Mariemont High School in Cincinnati.

First published in 1938, Anthem depicts a collectivist dictatorship in a future in which the word “I” has vanished, and how a lone dissident discovers the lost word’s true meaning.

ARI also awarded 5 second prizes ($500), 10 third prizes ($200), 45 finalist ($50) and 175 semifinalist ($30) prizes. A complete list of winners and information about next year’s competition can be found here.

Open to 8th, 9th and 10th graders, the Anthem essay contest requires contestants to write on one of several topics dealing with the characters and themes in the novel. The contest is designed to promote critical thinking and writing skills. Essays are judged on both style and content.

Since 1985 more than 226,000 students from around the world have entered ARI’s essay contests. This year, more than 16,000 students submitted their essays to the Anthem contest, an all-time record.

Each year ARI offers three separate contests (Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) and awards more than $81,250 in prizes. ARI has given away more than $838,000 to contest winners during the past 20 years.

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Atlas Shrugged Selling in Record Numbers

Atlas Shrugged Selling in Record Numbers

Irvine, CA, July 13, 2009–Penguin USA, publisher of the four American editions of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, has reported that in the first half of 2009 it shipped well over 300,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged to distributors, bookstores, bookstore chains, online resellers, libraries, businesses and other institutions.

As Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, noted, “Considering that in the first half of 2008 Penguin shipped about 85,000 copies, the spectacular jump to 300,000 copies in the first half of 2009 represents an increase of almost 250 percent in gross sales of Atlas Shrugged!

Reports from industry sources indicate that more copies of Atlas Shrugged were sold in book stores and by online resellers in the first half of 2009 than in all of 2008, when a new all-time annual record was established with more than 200,000 copies of the novel sold in the United States.

“The spike in sales of Atlas Shrugged more than a half century after its initial publication is truly remarkable,” Dr. Brook pointed out. “Annual sales of Atlas Shrugged have been increasing for decades to a level not seen even in Ayn Rand’s lifetime. Sales of the U.S. paperback editions averaged around 70,000 copies a year in the 1980s, and doubled to about 140,000 copies a year in the current decade. And the pace of sales has been accelerating recently, reaching an all-time high during the novel’s 50th anniversary in 2007, surpassing this mark in 2008, and on course to set another record in 2009.”

Almost 7,000,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged have been sold since it was first published in 1957.

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Four House Republicans ask for investigation into Sink’s use of state planes

A group of four House Republicans Chris Dorworth of Lake Mary, Steve Crisafulli of Merritt Island, Mike Horner of Kissimmee and Matt Hudson of Naples is asking state CFO Alex Sink to call an independent investigation of her use of the state plane.

Sink has ordered her office to conduct a thorough and immediate review into whether she misused the state plane to pick up and drop off family members. Sink reimbursed the state for the cost of those flights before questions were raised. But the lawmakers say the review might not be good enough. In this letter, they cite a story in which Sink reacts to a Miami Herald investigation of financier Allen Stanford, who struck a deal with state regulators to sell investments and move vast amounts of money offshore without government oversight.

Sink said the Office of Regulation should not investigate itself and the lawmakers are asking Sink to apply the same criteria to her office. If its good for the goose, it should be good for the gander, Dorworth said in an interview.
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Four House Republicans ask for investigation into Sink’s use of state planes

Statement on Governor Sarah Palin

Tallahassee - Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer released the following statement today regarding Alaska Governor Sarah Palins decision to not to seek re-election and to resign her position as Governor. On behalf of the Republican Party of Florida and Republicans across the state, I would like to thank Governor Palin for her service to our Party. She worked tirelessly to defend Republican principles throughout her service in state and local government and demonstrated tremendous courage as a historic candidate on the Republican presidential ticket in 2008. We respect her decision and wish Governor Palin and her family the very best as she moves forward.

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Statement on Governor Sarah Palin

Roubini: US Banks Already Toast

By Dan Weil
Moneynews.com

NYU economist Nouriel Roubini, widely credited for predicting the current crisis, says government aid to banks isn’t enough to hide the fact that they’ve failed.

“Even with the $2 trillion of government support, most of these financial institutions are insolvent,” he writes on Forbes.com.

“Delinquency and charge-off rates are now rising at a rate – given the macro outlook – that means expected losses for U.S. financial firms will peak at $3.6 trillion.”
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Let Airlines Decide Who Boards Their Planes

Washington, D.C.–A 29-year-old Middle Eastern man who insisted on occupying the window seat closest to the cockpit while wearing a T-shirt saying, in Arabic and English, “WE WILL NOT BE SILENT,” has been paid $240,000 to drop his discrimination lawsuit. Raed Jarrar had sued JetBlue and two federal security officers for having made him cover the T-shirt and sit in the rear of the plane, to mollify passengers who felt threatened.

“It’s an injustice when a private airline is penalized for exercising its rights as an owner,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Property owners are entitled to set standards for conduct, including dress codes, that their customers must observe when using company property. If a potential customer finds those standards unreasonable, he is free to take his business elsewhere.

“Here, JetBlue should have been legally entitled to forbid Mr. Jarrar from frightening other passengers aboard its privately owned jetliner. In deciding the matter, JetBlue had a right to consider that Mr. Jarrar’s behavioral and physical profile resembled that of terrorists who have left a trail of blood and bone across the globe, both before and after destroying the World Trade Center with hijacked airliners in 2001.

“Now, however, Mr. Jarrar is a quarter-million dollars richer because our anti-discrimination laws forbid businesses to use their own judgment in these matters.”

Obama’s Backward Economics

Washington, D.C.–“Barack Obama claims that Americans can only stave off economic disaster by trillions in government spending–which means trillions of dollars taxed or borrowed to finance government make-work programs,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
 
“Obama-nomics couldn’t be more wrong.
 
“Prosperity requires that the government drastically cut government spending. That way, as much real capital as possible will remain in private hands, and be put to productive use by entrepreneurs to create valuable goods and services to sell at home and abroad. By taxing and inflating our wealth away, Obama will simply be creating more of the crushing debt that brought about the current crisis.”
 
“You don’t put out a fire with more gasoline. And you don’t end a recession by destroying capital.”

No "Footprint," No Life

By Keith Lockitch (Washington Times, January 9, 2008)

As environmentalism continues to grow in prominence, more and more of us are trying to live a “greener” lifestyle. But the more “eco-friendly” you try to become, likely the more you find yourself confused and frustrated by the green message.

Have you tried giving up your bright and cheery incandescent light bulbs to save energy–only to learn that their gloomy-but-efficient compact fluorescent replacements contain mercury? Perhaps you’ve tried to free up space in landfills by foregoing the ease and convenience of disposable diapers–only to be criticized for the huge quantities of energy and water consumed in laundering those nasty cloth diapers. Even voicing support for renewable energy no longer seems to be green enough, as angry environmentalists protest the development of “pristine lands” for wind farms and solar power plants.
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Long-shot candidates pose a threat

When Democrats took control of the House in 2006, Michael Montagano was a fresh-faced Indiana University Law School graduate without any serious political ambitions.

Two years later, in the midst of a long-shot bid against Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) in a deeply conservative northeast Indiana district, the 27-year-old attorney could find himself swept into Congress if a sizable Democratic wave hits on Tuesday.
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