Yesterday, when I wrote about a White House gathering of young billionaire philanthropists, I did so with a healthy dose of snark. However, I didn’t make an argument about the many things that are terribly wrong with government-by-billionaire. But if you’re interested in reading such an argument, you’re in luck. Tom Frank has written one that was posted at Salon.com today, and it’s excellent.

In his piece, Frank makes a smart historical analogy between today’s reformist billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, and the sanctimonious “Mugwumps” the nineteenth century:

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