the gilded age

Wealth inequality in the US is at its highest level since the tail end of the Gilded Age, which unsurprisingly was characterized by the most outrageous spectacle of political corruption ever seen until the present day.

Now that the owner of enormous hotel-casinos the world over, Sheldon Adelson, has purchased the campaign of Newt Gingrich for $10 million, we can draw exact paralells with the sort of payoffs that greased the rails of the Crédit-Mobilier scandal, and the drilling contracts sold for the oil of the Teapot Dome by the Secretary of the Interior.

And in the earlier case, we at least got a railroad and some oil out of the deals. All we could hope for from a presidency owned by Mr. Adelson would be a war with Iran, since the multi-billionaire is an extreme Zionist and one of the US's most enthusiastic cheerleaders for attacking Iran.