The next time a Republican even looks at you cross-eyed

...tell him this:

If the income gain of most people since 1966 is one inch, the gain of the top .001% is five miles.

The corporate takeover: Chris Hedges says "Rise Up or Die"

I can't believe I missed this sobering piece back in May:

Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless against corporate power. [. . .] 

There is nothing in 5,000 years of economic history to justify the belief that human societies should structure their behavior around the demands of the marketplace.

[Emphasis mine.] He notes that we can't vote our way out of this situation nor rely on the courts. The only way out? Radical mass movements. And if, like the Pequod's crew in Moby Dick, we fail to rise up through "habit, cowardice, and hubris," we will slide into serfdom.

And I'm pretty sure that rising up is not in the cards.