The Albuquerque Journal wants to know who will rein in the tech barons monopolizing AI and space. Meanwhile, the Springfield News-Leader reports that male farmers are killing themselves at one and a half times the rate of other working-age men — and almost nobody is counting the women. One story demands more government power. The other documents what happens when government already fails the people who feed the country.
The Journal's column, written by someone nostalgic for Teddy Roosevelt's trust-busting, frames today's tech titans as modern robber barons who are "monopolizing AI and space" and "buying elections and stratifying wealth at the expense of the everyday man." The cure, we are told, is antitrust law — more Washington power, more regulation, more agencies deciding who gets to build and who gets shut down.
What the Journal buries: the real threat isn't that tech barons have too little oversight. It's that they've moved through the revolving door and partnered with the state itself. The column even notes, almost in passing, that Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced the U.S. has deployed space weapons to "control and contest" the space domain, employing "kinetic and nonkinetic means" to disrupt, degrade, or destroy adversary capabilities. The Space Force spokesperson confirmed it. That is not a market problem. That is a government-corporate merger — and more regulation won't fix it. It will deepen it.
The same establishment press that demands regulators crack down on tech can't be bothered to track the crisis on Main Street. The Springfield News-Leader, to its credit, pulled the CDC data: for working-age men overall, the suicide rate is 32 per 100,000. For men who farm and ranch, it's 52.1. Women? The CDC couldn't produce a rate because too few deaths were recorded to calculate one — though more than a third of America's farmers are women, according to the USDA. As the News-Leader put it: "That doesn't mean the women are fine. It means nobody is counting them very well."
The piece tells the story of Toby Gottman, who grew up on a Marion County, Missouri farm where five generations had worked the land. A new combine costs more than a house. Farmers carry mortgages on family land just to keep operating. They race the weather and pray the equipment holds together one more week.
"If bankers or accountants or the people who send me those credit card offers every week were dying at one and a half times the national rate, would we notice?" the News-Leader asked. Answer: there would be task forces, ribbons, and a hashtag by lunch.
Two stories, two Americas. One column says Washington needs more power over billionaires who already sit at Washington's table. The other documents working people dying in obscurity while the institutions that should count them can't be bothered.
The question isn't who will rein in the barons. It's who will stop the barons and the bureaucrats from reinventing the same machine together — and who will look twice at the farmer behind the pumpkin on the porch.
