April 2019

Our Great Recession continues

While the plutocrats get richer and the president proclaims the greatest economy in the history of the nation, the three counties which led the race to the top of the most inflated real estate prices in the nation and the race to the bottom of highest foreclosure rates in the nation are creating institutions to cope with permanent recessio

Gee whillickers, Ma, I got the anxieties tonight

Badlands Journal editorial board finds the Atwater City government’s attempts to stop delivery of marijuana to its residents. Atwater needs marijuana like few other municipalities in the state. It reminds one member of the editorial board of an Indian reservation he once lived near that occasionally went around the bend when there was nothing but booze and speed available.

A fool and his money are soon elected -- Will Rogers

America’s  better angels, present and absent, are haunting us demanding that, just to start with, we remember, recall, bring important things to mind. Thorsten Veblen flies among our best angels, and Ann Jones, of Norwegian-American background like Veblen and like Veblen from the Upper Midwest, tells his story and shows his importance in the fewest and clearest words we’ve ever read. Nobody described American plutocracy – its origins and tendencies -- better and more fully than Veblen did in 1899, in his Theory of the Leisure Class.