A version of this article appeared in the 6-20-2016 edition of Middle Wisconsin. Given the growing level of inequality in America and how it is destroying our democracy and our nation, the message still seems relevant. The investment - - and the enablement - - began 3.6 million years ago in Tanzania when two early humans stood upright and left the “Laetoli Footprints” in the wet volcanic ash. We do not know what these humans knew, but they had mastered enough of their environment to survive, because we are here today. We owe them a great debt. A million years passed. Hammerstones and sharp stone cutting flakes were in use. Another million ...

   “I am opposed to the United States Government, which possesses the sovereign and exclusive privilege of creating money, paying private bankers for the use of its own money. These private bankers do not hire [lend] their own money to the Government; the hire [lend] only the Government’s money to the government, and collect an interest charge annually. I insist it is absolutely wrong for this committee to permit this condition to continue and saddle the taxpayers of this Nation with a burden of debt that they will not be able to liquidate in a hundred years or two hundred years.”      - - US Congressman Wright Patman speaking to then ...