We all know Punxsutawney Phil, the weather-predicting groundhog. Lesser known, there are many sage woodchucks all over the region, spanning all areas of expertise. Henrietta Woodchuck lives in the vacant lot behind the house here in Perry Hilltop. Her specialty is world politics and macroeconomics. It’s a popular double major back there.
Henrietta has been concerned for some time about what may be called a “corporate oligarchy.”
“At the local level,” she was telling me last May, “this can be seen in the form of the city/corporate/nonprofit partnership, which concentrates and singularizes economic and social initiatives, good or bad. It protects the wealth and power of the few.”
It’s bad for the poor folk. At the grassroots level, people have no bargaining position against that of the oligarchy. Henrietta says we need to force the Fed to rewrite the antitrust laws that were put to sleep when the Bush family was in the director’s chair.
I agree with Henrietta. The United States is in the grips of a corporate oligarchy, and it may be resisted by the use of antitrust laws.
Bruce Reisner
Perry South