Is economic, civil rights history repeating itself?

Published 11:02 am Monday, July 29, 2013

Do you know that after the Civil War the government was unduly influenced by the great industrial and banking magnates (J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller) who “owned” the government and turned it to their personal enrichment?

How many American voters know that in the 1890s the Supreme Court protected corporations as “persons” under the 14th Amendment, and Plessy v Ferguson gave the court’s institutional stamp of approval to segregation? Sixty years and many Jim Crow laws later, another Supreme Court decision overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine, returning voting power to blacks in the South, as poll taxes, literacy requirements and other technical tricks were no longer allowed.

What about today? Are recent Supreme Court decisions signs that tainted history is repeating itself?

Tom Driscoll
Poulsbo