Thursday

I tried Mike Duncan's new podcast, "Revolutions," but I had a hard time "getting into" them. I think he was simply jamming too many facts and names into them, but he's doing a great job with the current topic: The French Revolution. I highly recommend it. * * * * * * * The podcast prompted me to do some web surfing about the Revolution, and I came across the following picture at Wikipedia:

It shows the Third Estate (basically, all of France, except nobles and clerics) carrying the Nobility and Clergy on its back. If you put "Government" and "Wall Street Interests" in the place of Nobility and Clergy, you'd have a good picture of what's been occurring in America over the past 150 years. Under "Government," would sit all state and federal employees, their contractors, and all public educational institutions that are supported with state or federal tax dollars. Under "Wall Street Interests" would sit the primary lenders, too-big-to-fail financial institutions, health insurance companies (heck, the meedical establishment in general), big ag, and any other large business that uses its money to obtain favors from state and federal government. Such favors always, always, come on the backs of the Third Estate, either in the form of direct taxes (income taxes) or in the form of burden shifting (money printing Obamacare), since government earns no money of its own.