A clear and present danger After the obligatory niceties and review of his accomplishments in office, President Joe Biden’s farewell address from the Oval Office got to the nub of it: America is at risk. That is, from “the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people.” Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America. And we’ve seen it before. More than a century ago, the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts. They didn’t punish the wealthy. They just made the wealthy play by the rules everybody else had. Workers want rights to earn their fair share. You know, they were dealt into the deal, and it helped put us on the path to building the largest middle class, the most prosperous century any nation the world has ever seen. We’ve got to do that again. The ultrawealthy and their enablers among the Republican Party have made no secret for decades that their goal is eradicating post-New Deal America and returning to the McKinley era of robber barons. William Greider warned two decades ago: The movement’s grand ambition—one can no longer say grandiose—is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to…