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How the Oligarchs took over America:

""""Not surprisingly, political power has a way of following wealth. What that means is: you can't understand how the rich seized control of American politics, and arguably American society, without understanding how a small group of Americans got so much money in the first place.

That story begins in the late 1970s and continues through the Obama years, a period in which American policy has been so skewed toward the rich that we're now living through the worst period of income inequality in modern history. Consider the statistics: 50 years ago, the wealthiest 1% of Americans accounted for one of every 10 dollars of the nation's income; today, it's nearly one in every four. Between 1979 and 2006, the average post-tax household income (including benefits) of the wealthiest 1% increased by 256%; the poorest households saw an increase of 11%; middle class homes, 21%, much of which was due to the arrival of two-job families."""""

Speculation du jour: part of the blame for the rise of the American oligarchs rests with do-gooder progressives (rhymes with Hooey, Muxley, Dillson, etc) who insisted on removing the study of the Latin language from the schools of Yankeedom. That process has nearly been completed. With the exception of español (detested by the usual Yokeli Americanus) latinate tongues--french, italian-- have been purged, as has german (greek offed sometime in the 19th century). Ulysses S Grant studied latin as had RE Lee--probably fairly common among both Federals and confederate officers (one JW Booth was a latinist--shouting SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS immediately following his dread dead).  On the other hand, many southern hicks, even politicians, could barely write Anglo: el pedazo de mierda Andrew Jackson, for one.   Note to communistas escondidas: DeLeon for one  supported retaining education in the latin tongue.  

Freed from the difficulty of authentic scholarship (apart from acquiring the bare-minimum of Techie-tools, aka Theology of the Periodic Table) the would-be Bloomyburg or Larry Ellistone may sail through a pseudo-curriculum of Adam Smith studies, Tory-common law-lite, applied Larry Summers, so forth and continue on the family tradition of Shekelsmeister in the most efficient manner possible. (POUND, Ezra occasionally thought and wrote along those lines, rather more eloquent lines than ours)