In 2012, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback promised his state a “shot of adrenaline.” Cut taxes deeply on businesses and wealthy households, he said, and the economy would surge: new businesses, more jobs, rising prosperity.
Politics and Systems
In-depth analysis and multi-part series on political, social, and cultural dynamics. Strategic thinking and big-picture perspectives on systemic patterns and civic challenges.
They’ve Been Picking My Pocket for Six Years
I live in Arizona, and for six years we have been targeted by a coordinated national campaign to scare voters with propaganda about election fraud. It has never produced a shred of evidence, because there was never any evidence to find. The Department of Justice is now demanding the voter files of five million Arizonans. … Read more
Cashing In on Our Veterans
In March 2026, the VA and the Department of Justice signed an agreement to put homeless veterans under permanent legal guardianship. They called it protection.
It isn’t.
Disabling America
America’s post-9/11 wars produced more than 1.8 million disabled veterans. The economic cost will last generations.
Labeled and Blamed
White nationalist anxiety about demographics and feminism is misdirected rage. Something is actually collapsing — the economic foundation that made the American family possible. Wealth extraction did that. Not women’s choices.
The Veto Number Is Real. The Context Is Missing.
Attack ads will say Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed 401 bills. The public record shows what those bills were, what the veto blocked, and it has cost Arizona taxpayers. Seventy of those vetoes were ordinary legislative friction, the kind that happens between any governor and any legislature regardless of party. The remaining 331 followed a pattern that is documented in the public record and consistent across three legislative sessions.
It is All One Pot of Money
Americans tend to think about the economy in sectors. The defense industry. The oil industry. The banking sector. The tech giants. This is a useful shorthand for what these industries produce — weapons systems, energy, credit, software — but it describes function, not ownership. The question this piece examines is a different one: at the level where the money actually accumulates, do these sectors exist as separate things at all?
The answer the ownership record suggests is largely no. The same concentrated pools of capital sit at the top of the shareholder lists across industries that are supposed to be distinct, supposed to compete, supposed to be governed by separate regulatory frameworks built around their differences. This piece assembles that picture — not sector by sector, but all at once — and asks whether economic activity at that scale is better described as productive or extractive.
The Veto Queen Story Is Missing Its First Three Chapters
Arizona voters will hear that Katie Hobbs vetoed 401 bills. That number is real. The context behind it — the audit that cost taxpayers at least $8.6 million, the structural reasons Arizona was targeted, and the wealth extraction agenda those vetoes blocked — is the part the attack ads leave out.
Maybe the Two-Party System Is a Root of Wealth Extraction
The U.S. two-party system may do more than organize elections. Its donor structure, electoral rules, and polarization dynamics may also help sustain policies that concentrate wealth.
HCR 2056: A Vote About Your Family’s Safety
Arizona voters will decide this November whether to permanently lock public health policy into the state constitution. HCR 2056, titled ‘Medical Mandates; Right to Refuse,’ sounds like a personal freedom measure. Before you vote, here is what the proposal actually does — and what it prevents.