– President Grover Cleveland
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt
America has experienced this crisis before. Every few generations, a class of greedy oligarchs rise to power who are so intoxicated by wealth, so determined to hoard more, more, more, that they become a threat not just to our economy but to our democracy itself.
— It happened in the 1850s when the plantation aristocracy rose up, destroyed democracy in the South, and then tried to conquer the entire nation.
— It happened again when the Robber Barons of the Roaring 20s crushed unions and helped trigger the Republican Great Depression.
— And it’s happening today in the aftermath of the Reagan/Bush/Trump Revolution, as billionaire fortunes have exploded over the past 44 years and the American middle class has collapsed.
-Thom Hartmann
Chris Berrie
Rockaway Beach