The New Catch-Phrase is 'The New Gilded Age'

The Supreme Court just made another decision in favor of employers, rolling back worker protections that were borne of blood. As old as they are, the justices seem to have forgotten the coal mine wars. Oh, you never heard of the coal mine wars? This is where the term 'Redneck' originated.

• Supreme Court backs employers over workers in first of two major labor cases 
• We are proud to be 'rednecks'. It's time to reclaim that term 
• The Mine Wars (PBS: American Experience video)
• Trump’s National Labor Relations Board will be anti-labor 

Rent's going up, and so are evictions:

• Decatur evictions are double the statewide rate. Here's a map that shows where they happened. 
• Reframing Evictions as a National Crisis 

Now everyone is starting to talk about "The New Gilded Age."

• Lessons From the Gilded Age 
• A comparison of income inequality and working conditions of present day to the late nineteenth century. Support for the working class peaked and began declining with the Reagan administration, and deregulation is accelerating.
• 'The Alienist' Stars on How TNT's Drama Shines a Light on New York's ... 
• The cast of 'The Alienist' reflects on their roles in the setting of New York in the 1890's, and mention the "timeliness" of the story.
• Montana's Primary Tonight Could Be a Testament to the New Gilded ... 
• Esquire report on a carpetbagging east coast real estate developer who was able to run in the state because an old law protecting fair politics in the state was erased by the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision.
• In the second Gilded Age, the mansions get bigger, and the homeless ... 
• Karma reaches a five hundred million dollar home in the hills of Bel Air in the form of a wildfire started from a portable stove at a homeless encampment.
• America's Second Gilded Age: More class envy than class conflict 
• Nine specific events from present day and the past are presented as indicators of our current economic and social status. A surprise about a new project by the creator of Downton Abbey. 
• Wall Street Needs a New Tom Wolfe: John Micklethwait 
• A profile of Tom Wolfe who wrote about Wall Street, among other authors who wrote about our Gilded Ages.
• It's Billionaires at the Gate as Ultra-Rich Muscle In on Private Equity 
• Avarice is leaving millionaires in the dust of bankers drooling for the absurdly wealthy.
• Opinion: Blame tax breaks for loss of historic neighborhoods 
• 15 year tax abatements are giving developers enough time to raze historic homes, build new ones at an extreme tax discount, then flip the properties at the last minute before the tax abatement expires, leaving the new owners hold the bag.
• PACIFIC • These five companies own the future 
• The future of monopolies and price gouging.
• America's new aristocracy: the 9.9% and their delusion of hereditary ... 
• And introduction and summary of a much longer article in the Atlantic about The New Aristocracy.

The pressure is on. What and where the breaking point will be is anyone's guess.

Goodbye Justice Scalia: Is This The End of an Era?

We have come to a turning point in our history when the U.S. Constitution can finally be released from the shackles of "Originalist" Interpretation. Originalism is exactly the same as religious fundamentalism, clinging to some ancient zeitgeist, stone age mentality, or the mind-set of an era where medical treatment was primarily blood-letting.

Then there's "Textualism". I don't need to go on about this anymore except to say PLEASE pay attention to politics. We don't need another 30 years of this.

A Brazen New World Order

The game is up for the "Fourth Estate." The Internet continuously calls out the news media of television, radio and newspapers, discrediting the old media on near hourly basis. The cable news audience is slipping away nearly ten times faster than the newspaper audience is going extinct.

Unfortunately, most people can't seem to let go of their televisions and still fall under the influence of fear-driven propaganda that fomented the election of unscrupulous, sociopathic politicians beholden to their own interests and indentured to billionaire patrons.

Most billionaires of today are not the founders that created the brilliant financial engines of their wealth, but the flaccid offspring raised by nannies with a sense of entitlement unthinkable to the nobility of the middle ages that rose to their ivory towers through the brutality of hand-to-hand combat with swords and shields.

Skip forward to present day, the media, including the Internet that engages in criticism of the billionaires has become background noise. Public shaming of corruption has crept into normality of the masses. Everyone is sick and tired of hearing about it. Everyone is avoiding the noise like a terminal pain spot on a map to avoid. There is nothing to be dome about it. Everything attempted so far has ended with dispersing crowds, wandering off to their jobs or the nearest McDonald's.

The futility of Justice Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States best expressed the future of the United States:  http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/02/a-blistering-dissent-in-mccutcheon-conservatives-substituted-opinion-for-fact/

Nobody cares. They only want to live comfortably and fulfill their biological need for food, shelter, sex, children and distraction. Rarely do a few emerge that wish to compete for the top of the mountain, but they will attempt to gather to themselves as many minions as possible under the guise of serving them all with the spoils of their accomplishments. In the end these politicians and media pundits are exposed for wanting of their own self-interests, such as a throne for themselves in an independent state, or status above their own class, ultimately to the exclusion of their followers.

The Billionaires will drain and hoard the money and resources, but will find when they open their front doors to go grocery shopping that there is nothing for them outside but a vast wasteland of starvation. They will be trapped in their castles among their piles of money and gold, having no way to rid themselves of what has become the new chaff.