Taibbi feels the Bern: "An elected government should occasionally step in and offer an objection or two toward our progress to undisguised oligarchy."

This one from Matt Taibbi was posted on April 29, 2015, and I've underlined a passage which echoes something we've been saying locally:

Why do we accept the entire governmental structure becoming oriented toward monetizing and dispensing financial favors to the business and construction elites, at the expense of a level playing field for ordinary people?

This is why I'll trudge down to Tuesday's BZA meeting and denounce cynical trickle-down corporate welfare yet again, even as the Dugginses and Gibsons of the ruling elite chortle from the back row at the temerity of anyone daring to question their wheel-greasing boilerplate.

Flaherty Collins rubber stamp for the Coyle site to be hastened by the Board of Zoning Appeals this Tuesday night.

I'd never even consider placing myself in the same league with Bernie Sanders, but this much we have in common: There'll be no oligarchy appeasement here.

Give 'Em Hell, Bernie: Bernie Sanders is more serious than you think, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

 ... That saltiness, I'm almost sure of it, is what drove him into this race. He just can't sit by and watch the things that go on, go on. That's not who he is.

When I first met Bernie Sanders, I'd just spent over a decade living in formerly communist Russia. The word "socialist" therefore had highly negative connotations for me, to the point where I didn't even like to say it out loud.

But Bernie Sanders is not Bukharin or Trotsky. His concept of "Democratic Socialism" as I've come to understand it over the years is that an elected government should occasionally step in and offer an objection or two toward our progress to undisguised oligarchy. Or, as in the case of not giving tax breaks to companies who move factories overseas, our government should at least not finance the disappearance of the middle class.

Maybe that does qualify as radical and unserious politics in our day and age. If that's the case, we should at least admit how much trouble we're in.