Something is terribly wrong. The Dow has dropped below 4,000, gasoline (when available) costs $37.50 a gallon, the nation's infrastructure is deteriorating, businessmen are wearing sandwich boards asking for work. Government's response to the enervated economy is to impose even more regulations and forced wealth-redistribution on already-highly regulated business and industry. A gray palpable pall hangs over the land. Meanwhile, the nation's most productive citizens begin to disappear voluntarily, one by one. But why? The question is answered by another question as mysterious as the disappearances themselves: "Who is John Galt?"

The McClatchy-Marist Poll, which was released last Monday, revealed that those calling themselves Tea Partiers have little interest in doing anything substantial about slashing government spending. This cuts the legs out from under any attempt by conservatives in Washington to rein in that spending and it also gives President Obama a huge edge going into the 2012 elections.  

Real estate magnate Donald Trump’s likely candidacy for President in 2012 surfaced last September with an anonymous telephone poll of voters in New Hampshire. Denying any involvement in the poll, Trump claimed, “I never heard of this poll but I’m anxious to find out what it says.” He obviously found out what it said about his chances, and, in October, began tip-toeing into the presidential race. On CNN’s American Morning, he commented that running for President is “not something I talked about or considered, but somebody has to do something or this country is not going to be a great country for long.”

Now that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has unveiled his “Path to Prosperity” budget, nearly all discussion is focusing on the details and not on the proper role of government. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Ryan said that "our budget ... cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt." He also said that it "brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product, consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion."

The Cato Institute’s just-announced ad campaign in major newspapers around the country asks rhetorically, “This is leadership?” and then neatly summarizes numerous areas where major budget cuts could be made. The ad questions the debate currently taking place over almost invisible cuts to the federal budget: “The House Republican leadership has proposed $61 billion in spending cuts — but that’s less than 4% of this year’s massive $1.65 trillion federal deficit.” And the Democrats have managed to squeeze out an even more modest proposal of a mere $10 billion.

Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, is the organizer behind Thursday’s “Continuing Revolution” rally at the Capitol, and said that:

When the internationalist-minded Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) decided it was time to take a hard look at the growing influence of the Tea Party movement in America, it selected “one of the country’s leading students of American foreign policy,” Walter Russell Mead, to do the study. Appearing as the headline article in Foreign Affairs for March/April 2011, his article is entitled “The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy.”

Junius Morgan was, at best, a third-tier English banker in the 1850s, who was fortunate to have had a hand in a number of lucrative financings, mostly for industries seeking seasonal financing. His conservative nature was partly a cause of his lack of distinction. He’d inherited a substantial sum when his father died and was exceedingly careful when risking any part of it. One of the maxims Junius instilled into his son, John Pierpont Morgan (shown at left), was, “Never under any circumstances do an action which could be called into question if known to the world.”

As political commentator for the Concerned Women for American's Legislative Action Committee and former speechwriter for former President George H. W. Bush, Janice Shaw Crouse celebrated Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday with a paean of praise for the former President's skills as "The Great Communicator" which perfectly illustrates the perception of Reagan as a good conservative, at least when he spoke.

When Matthew Josephson wrote The Robber Barons in 1934, he tipped his hand as to his personal prejudice against the capitalists of the late 19th century: