The oligarchs are coming! The oligarchs are coming!
For real, not joking, listen up: Joe Biden thinks that big money might be in charge.
“I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And this is a dangerous concern. And that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people,” Biden said last Wednesday in one of a series of swan songs. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
That sort of sums up why Biden’s presidency was a disappointment. They never quite got it.
Has he not heard of the grain traders, the meatpackers and the chemical companies?
The malefactors of great wealth described by Teddy Roosevelt never let go. Biden thinks he is on to something.
Who broke up the conglomerates that fix wages and prices?
Not the USDA. Not the FTC. Not the Justice Department. The public wants to drain the swamp but the Biden administration just swatted mosquitoes.
Sure, they meant to get around to it, but didn’t. Tom Vilsack must have thought Merrick Garland was already on the case. They said they would. You want to believe them because they are decent, restrained people.
When Biden warns that a power structure is “taking shape” you know he is out to lunch or not being square with you. Has he not heard of Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling 15 years ago that allowed unlimited dark money to pour into politics? Did he do a damn thing about it?
Things were supposed to be different. Biden had the opportunity to take on the power structure. He should have known how, as an old bull of the Senate. He couldn’t control his own caucus, namely Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Biden could not recast the safety net that Ronald Reagan ripped up. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama never really tried.
They let rural America drift away. Nothing happened west of Interstate 35 in Iowa as the result of Joe Biden being president. The main business is Dollar General or Casey’s, where the tin cup is out for the breast cancer patient who can’t afford the drugs. But they capped insulin costs!
The Democrats told Iowa essentially that they are not interested. The Iowa Caucuses, where Joe Biden was an also-ran for his brand of corporate servitude, were dumped. The senator from Wall Street, Chuck Schumer, was the messenger and certainly not Bernie Sanders, who twice placed atop the Iowa Caucuses but was run off by the corporate wing. Schumer is now the minority leader.
In Iowa, the minority party fell farther behind in the House and the Senate.
Biden’s hand-picked successor Kamala Harris, who fared even worse than Biden in the caucuses, could not beat an opponent with 34 felony convictions.
That’s how it looks from Iowa.
Who runs this state? First, it was the railroads. Nowadays, it’s the consolidated chemical and food companies. They’re working the legislature right now for protections against cancer litigation in our state courts. They will get it, and the Supreme Court in Des Moines is stacked to ratify those protections.
Oligarchs? What oligarchs?
Biden may have been blinded by the fact that he was a senator from Delaware, where all reputable corporate oligarchies are domiciled.
Elon Musk is so obvious that the departing trust-buster wannabe couldn’t ignore him. Biden and Schumer have been running with the money crowd, too.
Biden can claim credit for leading the USA out of the pandemic. It actually was Nancy Pelosi who came up with the Payroll Protection Program that saved the economy during the worst of times. Trump went along. After that, Biden had his great opportunity to take on the monied few, and he blew it.
Biden is left to issue stern cautions in his coda. We are left with Trump, and a state that has been completely captured by the oligarchs, from the court system to the state universities. That happened a long time ago, while the senator from Delaware voted aye.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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As Bill the Cat was known to exclaim: "pFBBBTT" as Opus would look on and Milo walked to the next frame. I haven't the foggiest idea how to restore something of a moral fiber to politics. The GOP stole it from under our noses with the "Moral Majority", religious liberty, patriotism and a dozen other buzzwords that grabbed more attention than Trumps right hand, (apologies for the image). In July of last year, Julie Gammack asked who is the next Harold Hughes?
My Dad followed Hughes as the State Chairman of AA after his departure, in 1962 maybe? I was 4, memory is a little tough. Dad opined at the time that he might just follow Hughes into the Statehouse, but alcohol won that next round and Dad was gone by '76.
Marjorie Fuller; former Director of The Center for Black Culture and Research at the University of West Virginia wrote about Newton's cradle, or the pendulum effect. How every action has an equal and separate reaction as it pertained to race relations after the 2016 election. Prior to the election, and rightfully so, she was fearful that Obama's term would be over corrected by the Right. Only someone with a 9-year-olds ethos has taken the ball of the right side of the cradle and slammed it back into the balls. Biden was effective early but ran out of gas after the mid-terms in 2022, he was on fumes by then and should have taken the initiative at that time to work with the Party to find a leader and a path forward.
But here between the Missouri and Mississippi we haven't seen such swings; its as though there is a block on the left side of the cradle. Can you imagine if Jim Leach were up against the likes of Miller-Meeks today? "Liberal", "RINO" or worse would be tossed at him in expletive form. The Governor is so emboldened in her stance that she doubles down on her bent to kill education and the environment in Iowa.
Were someone to come to the front of the room and be heard, would they be a Jim Leach, or would Hunter S. Thompson be the better way to go? Both long gone, I just hope that pendulum can swing free again. If not, Newton's other law may come into play and gravity will set in.
Thank you so much!
https://www.100daysinappalachia.com/2017/02/pendulum-effect-science-took-us-obama-trump/
As I was being moved from Iowa in the mid sixties, I was going to farm sales. Items cost pennies on the Dollar. These were 160 to 240 acre farms like I grew up on. When Petroleum Producers like Atlantic Richfield stated to control the fertilizer and later the seed corn producers, they could determine the fate of the farmer through pricing of vital components of farming. Consolidation spread this to machinery producers it became impossible to farm as my Grandfather farmed.
He held on until his mid eighties farming the old ways, but the continuation was not attractive to younger farmers. Had I been allowed to remain and take over the farm, I probably would have been bankrupt. I have just inherited this farm and am tasked with making sense of a situation that would not have been to Granpa’s liking. It got my attention when the first thing the attorney said was” Under Iowa Law, tenants can only be changed in September