Anti-Government Ideologue Megan McArdle's Amnesia About Her Privileged, Govt.-Funded Upbringing

Just when you think you've seen so much hypocrisy that nothing can shock you, along comes Megan McArdle. McArdle, who blogs for the Atlantic Monthly, presents herself as a principled libertarian, fiercely denouncing any attempt to provide any sort of government-funded health care, because as she argues, big government is bad, bad, bad. She's written some truly appalling things over the years as a shill for big corporate interests, recently defending Goldman Sachs because, as she wrote, "financial meltdowns offer no villains."

Last week, McArdle posted an encyclopedia-length article on the Atlantic Monthly's site, denouncing Obama's health care plan in a rambling piece that essentially boiled down to this: big government is a bad thing, and free markets are the medicine you need, even if you don't like it, and even though you can't afford it. McArdle's post sparked a series of smackdowns, including Ezra Klein in the Washington Post, and Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake.

What Megan McArdle doesn't mention is that her own privileged upbringing was funded by public money. That's right, Megan McArdle is just a second-generation product of the sleazy NYC construction business, which has been using public money for private gain since the Tammany Hall era. Even more galling is that Megan's father got his start in the public sector working in taxpayer-funded health care programs. If it weren't for her father's employment as a public health care official in the 1970s, Megan McArdle's life might have turned out completely different from the privileged one she enjoyed.

Megan McArdle is the daughter of one Francis X. McArdle, who built his career as a public servant in the New York City administration, then moved over to the private side, where he could leverage his contacts with the government -- and finally moved back onto the public payroll in 2006, when Mr. McArdle was appointed by then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to advise the federal government how public funds should be spent, and on whom. Earlier this year, Mr. McArdle was reportedly in Albany lobbying the New York state government for a job as the "stimulus czar," appropriating President Obama's federal spending money.

Megan was born in 1973, a few years after Francis got his big fat job on the public payroll in the New York City administration, where he stayed for 11 years. Among the first big jobs Megan's daddy took while climbing up the public payroll career ladder were jobs as Inspector General for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and Director of Program Budget for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.

So Megan McArdle's entry into this world was literally greased by taxpayer funds. But of course, it wouldn't stop there.

Francis McArdle, rose up the Big Government ranks in the New York city. His public-funded career reached its peak in 1978 when then-Mayor Ed Koch named him as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, where he served until 1981. That job put McArdle in control of all sorts of public works: water supply, waste water, sewage infrastructure. It's kind of fitting that McArdle's privileged childhood was funded by taxpayer's shit and urine -- a Freudian might say that this is the source of her inexplicable hatred of the same Big Government that pissed dollars and shat gold on the McArdle household.

Megan's dad moved from the public sector overseeing public works to a job with real estate developer Olympia & York -- just in time to take advantage of the huge Battery Park City project that Olympia & York was developing under contract. The success of the project relied on huge taxpayer subsidies -- at least $65 million in 1981 dollars -- as well as major public works projects to make the development attractive, including the disastrous Westway road project, which drained at least $85 million of federal subsidies until it was finally mothballed in the mid-80s, due to environmental concerns and public protests -- the kinds of protesters whom grown-up Megan McArdle would later attack. No matter, though, because by the time the Westway was canceled and all that public money was wasted, Olympia & York, Megan's daddy's company, had catapulted into one of the top real estate moguls in the world, and Megan's daddy was ready to move on to even bigger things.