• Elizabeth Renant
• New Mexico

It is far too late, Prof. Stiglitz. That 30 year shift you reference is indeed not a coincidence, but a stealthy, carefully considered, one-step-at-a-time campaign to erect the post-modern, post-industrial version of feudal serfdom in the United States. The planks in the campaign have included back-room tax deals, keeping polarizing political wedge issues like abortion and gun control to the fore to keep the middle-class in Texas and the middle-class in Brooklyn hating each other instead of focusing their collective gaze on who is bringing about their economic downfall, and, of course, money in politics.

The more visible issues – tax loopholes, cust to Social Security instead of raising the income cap on contributions that would render the program completely solvent, the repeal of Glass-Steagall , the shameful bailout of the criminals on Wall Street . . . these were all tactical rather than strategic.

The real strategy, along with deliberately fueled ideological polarization, has been the massive failure to bring about truly effective campaign finance reform that would get the money out of politics – this would have placed limits on the access and effectiveness of the efforts of the 1%, particularly the corporate 1%.

Congress was too weak and too indebted to the moneychangers, and Americans failed to see from which direction the tree was really going to fall on their houses. Meek, frightened, and passive, we failed to fight back.

And now the battle is lost.”

The article is by a famous economist,  Joseph E. Stiglitz, who must be about a hundred years old by now, because he was famous when I was in college.  The article can be found at: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/inequality-is-a-choice/?ref=global-home

Your daily pictures will follow shortly.  First I need to update my survival plan, in view of that comment.