Plutocracy:  government by the wealthy Oligarchy:  government in which a small group exercises control for corrupt and selfish purposes Divide and Conquer:  The act of turning the citizens of a nation against one another to distract them from observing how plutocrats and oligarchs are using the government of that nation for corrupt and selfish purposes.   As the November election draws near, we Americans seem intent on tearing one another to political and social shreds. Neighbor turns on neighbor, friend on friend, family member on family member. Fear and hate override rational thought, and no matter our political ...

Humans, us, we, are at a crossroads, a critical juncture in our evolution on a lonely planet, voyaging through the Universe. A mindless, moral-less, belief-less, dangerous, microscopic virus is bringing us great clarity if we allow ourselves to see. It cares not what we “believe,” cares not our “economic” ideology, cares not our ethnicity or location on the globe, cares not who thinks themselves a “chosen,” a “special” people. A mindless virus is telling us - - - we, the people of Planet Earth, travel together. We succeed together – we fail together. No one is coming to save us. It matters not what we think we “know.” It may ...

  Imagine for a moment that in 2016, shortly after Donald Trump had bested Hillary Clinton in the race for the presidency, the Russian magazine, Russia Times, had run a major cover page article picturing Trump and bragging about how Russia had rigged the US presidential election in his favor. The outrage of Americans would have been immediate and vociferous. Calls for outright war against Russia could easily have been imagined. See the July 15, 1996 cover of the US magazine Time:   A major US publication, Time Magazine, was openly broadcasting to the entire world how American election experts had, with the full knowledge and ...

  Conservative   con·ser·va·tive   (kən-sûr′və-tĭv)  believing in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society;  disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change. It is indicative of the extremism sweeping America when, after spending all of my life thinking of myself as a “liberal” or “progressive,” now in my 70’s, I find I must join with other conservatives to fight the radical changes destroying my nation. I must declare I have become an unapologetic conservative. As an unapologetic conservative, I wish to preserve the ...

(reprinted from January 27, 2015 MW issue) Born in the late 40’s, I grew up in a family of hunters. Fair shots most of them, I remember standing next to my father when a spooked buck crossed our path at a dead run. Dad shot twice, hit twice, and the buck went down. It was near Hatfield, in central Wisconsin. Dad’s rifle was an old, iron sight, pump action, 30 Remington. It has killed (we kill deer – corn and oats are harvested) a few deer since my father died in ‘94. My sons have used the rifle. It was never a popular caliber and bullets are no longer manufactured for it. I have about 35 left – should last me until I no longer hunt. ...

“Following the lead of pharma-friendly Rep. Richard Neal, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee this week crushed several progressive amendments to a House drug pricing bill that would have expanded the number of medicines covered by the legislation and extended lower costs to the nation's tens of millions of uninsured. The Intercept reported Wednesday that Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, warned his Democratic colleagues against offering any amendments to the Lower Drug Costs Now Act of 2019 (H.R. 3) during the committee's markup of the legislation on Tuesday. "We intend to stick with the ...

  North Dakota State University Archives By 1915 the farmers and workers of North Dakota had had enough. As the cover of the November, 1916 Nonpartisan Leader above indicates, they were done being run over by corrupt politicians, predatory bankers, the railroad cartel, grain speculators and privately held grain elevators. They were done losing their farms, their homes, and their hope. Led by a charismatic flax farmer, Arthur C. Townley, who himself was facing foreclosure to the Minneapolis branches of the Wall Street banks, they took matters into their own hands. The Nonpartisan League (NPL) was born. Winning state elections in 1916 and ...

“Eleanor wore a pearl necklace and diamonds in her hair, gifts from Franklin’s rich Delano relatives. Even though Franklin had never made much money himself, Teddy knew that he would be able to care for his new wife: FDR was heir to the huge Delano opium fortune. Franklin’s grandfather Warren Delano had for years skulked around the [China’s] Pearl River Delta dealing drugs.” “The Delanos were not alone. Many of New England’s great families made their fortunes dealing drugs in China. The Cabot family of Boston endowed Harvard with opium money, while Yale’s famous Skull and Bones society was funded by the biggest American opium ...