CARLTON FLETCHER: America is increasingly the land of the rich

You can rely on the old man’s money, you’re a rich girl …

— Hall and Oates

I’ll start this with an admission: I have a bias that I can’t shake. As one who was born to a hardscrabble family that eked out its daily existence, I have over the years developed a strong disdain for the very wealthy.

And, yes, a bias is a bias, and to condemn a whole group because of the actions of some in that group is the very definition of prejudice. But I can’t help it. So many times I’ve seen acts of cruelty carried out by the wealthy who’ve been taught that they can do pretty much what they want because they have money.

I find that sickening, particularly in 2026 America, where the wealthy are living it up at the expense of middle- and lower-class people who are scrambling from paycheck to paycheck.

Yes, America is now led by a person who inherited a lot of money, has bankrupted his way – multiple times – out of debts he owed, and he’s pushing legislation that adds to the wealth of millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the people who have to work for a living.

Many of these millionaires and billionaires, we’re finding out, got caught up in the madness of that monster Jeffrey Epstein and decided that, hey, we can do what we want, we’re rich. When “what we want” includes murder, cannibalism, vampirism and a litany of grotesqueries too horrible to mention, though, a whole lot of people are starting to rethink that “rich people can do anything they want” ethos.

Americans have been granted only the tip of the iceberg as it relates to these horrors, as the wealthy – including many of those high-ranking politicians who are using any trick in their bag to try and keep their names out of this sickening mess – are fighting like crazy to keep the public from finding out the things they did.

Here in Albany, the politicians are not so wealthy, but some of them seem to want to do the bidding of people with wealth – or at least with the trappings of such – to, apparently, keep things in some kind of “proper” order.

Take the case of the former downtown Pretoria Fields Brewery. When Dr. Tripp Morgan defaulted on his loans and the once-popular business shut down, Morgan, according to bank and city of Albany officials, owed more than $2 million on the property. More than a million of that was owed the city.

When city officials bought out the bank that had granted Morgan loans on the Pine Avenue property, the city gained control of the property, but the money Morgan owed city taxpayers was now in excess of $2 million, according to city officials.

Here’s the kicker, though: Even indebted to city taxpayers by more than $2 million, Morgan has made an offer to take back over the brewery at a cost of only $1,000 a month. But to do so, he wants the city to pay for equipment that may have been damaged by the several months of inactivity.

And some of our local politicians are OK with that? They think Morgan deserves “another shot.” They’ve even parrotted his excuse that “COVID led to our downfall.”

I’m amazed every time I read of someone repeating that cliched excuse, when I know for a fact that Pretoria employees were working virtually around the clock during the early stages of COVID to create enough hand sanitizer to fulfill multimillion-dollar contracts that the brewery had once it was granted emergency permission by the state to convert its brewing equipment to make hand sanitizer.

Plus, I know for a fact the brewery received fat PPP money in addition to the hand sanitizer deals that turned into a fiasco because of mismanagement.

It’s like: Everyone says COVID was horrible and killed their business, so that must be the case here. 

Again, even at this level, the wealthy – or even semi-wealthy, or people who’ve had family money – are taking care of their own, even if it comes at taxpayers’ expense.

With more and more sickening information leaking out about the Epstein plague – despite efforts to control this narrative at the very top levels of government – it looks like the latest golden era of the rich may be headed for a tumble. Sadly, efforts are being delayed by people who are so enthralled by rich people lying to save themselves, that they would rather protect the wealthy than hold them to the same standards everyone else faces.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected].