I’m not going to defend Trump. Nobody needs to. Yet by the end of the Mueller probe we’ll know how preposterous each side of this political battle has been. I’m reminded of the New York Times’ pedigree in misplaced humor when on February 25, 1885, an article appeared denigrating Henry George’s thesis in his recently released book, Progress and Poverty, a book that sparked a progressive era that lasted up to WWII, influencing policies of his contemporary T. Roosevelt. The Times used the word “trousers” as a substitute for “ground rent” in a comical rant about the economy. George’s thesis was about how socially generated wealth in progressive cities (i.e., land values) should go to fund that which creates those values in the first place (services, what we call today infrastructure). Things haven’t changed much; Times is still a mouthpiece for land monopolists. Today our institutions struggle to find ways to provide critical services, although long ago a concept now validated was ridiculed. George was prescient; the Times wasn’t and isn’t.