This is the Tom Hartman program.

So my op-ed today over at HartmanReport.com is titled Oligarchy when brutal capitalism

becomes more important than democracy.

And there's a point to that.

It goes back to an interview that I had on this program with Stephen Moore.

And this was years ago.

This was back like 2008, 2010, something like that.

It was long before he was working for Donald Trump.

And I asked him, just straight up, in fact, there's a link to the actual interview it's

on YouTube in the article at HartmanReport.com.

I asked Stephen Moore, I said, which is more important, capitalism or democracy.

And without a missing of beat, he said capitalism.

Because rationale was that without capitalism, you can't have democracy, which is kind

of sketchy.

But without debating that, the point that I'm making in this op-ed, that I want to make

right now, is that we are now in a full-blown Oligarchy in the United States.

And that's a dangerous thing, because Oligarchy's almost never last more than a single generation.

Oligarchy is rule of by and for the rich.

For example, yesterday the New York Times was reporting, or actually the Washington Post

was the one that I read, that the Sackler family, this multi-billion dollar multi-billionaire

family, are reaching a settlement with the individual states that are suing them for killing

a half million Americans with their marketing practices around OxyContin.

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