Oh, happy day! Thanksgiving — our annual pause for family gatherings to celebrate the rich and tasty diversity of America's harvests.

There is, however, something decidedly distasteful that has steadily been forcing its way onto our dinner tables: raw monopoly power. This concentration of market control in the hands of a few domineering conglomerates is decimating farm families, swindling food industry workers and gouging consumers. Economists have a technical term for what food industry profiteers are doing to us: stealing.

Farmers know the evil of unrestrained monopolists all too well, for they are relentlessly squeezed by two sets of them. First, everything they must buy to produce food — from seed to tractors — is controlled by non-competitive giants that charge rip-off prices. Second, when selling their products, farmers and ranchers are boxed in by corporate cartels that only offer take-it-or-leave-it, go-broke prices.

Then, this same anti-competitive system turns on us consumers, charging grossly inflated grocery prices that give them monopoly profits and even more market power.

This Thanksgiving dinner is a good time to tally up the ever-widening monopoly spread separating you from farmers:

— A Butterball turkey costing you $2.42 a pound pays the farmer 6 cents per pound.

— Potatoes costing $4 a bag return only 55 cents to farmers.

— Wheat farmers only get 13 cents from a $4.50 loaf of whole wheat bread.

— Top sirloin steak cost $16.50 per pound, but ranchers get under $4.

— Even simple lettuce is $2 to you, but pays only 29 cents to farmers.

The very idea of Thanksgiving is that we're all in this together. So let's get together and bust these greed-headed monopolies. For connections, go to Family Farm Action: farmaction.us

HOW TO RUN A PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN AND WIN

An 1887 critic of Britain's government rightly proclaimed that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." For today's American government, though, that adage needs a small but significant amendment: "Money corrupts, and absolute money corrupts absolutely."

Washington's pay-to-play game has long been used by corporate powers to buy particular government favors, but now the money corruption "game" is so routine, so massive, and so flagrant that it has become the government. The likes of Big Oil, Elon Musk, Wall Street lords and high-tech hucksters buy politicians in bulk, literally usurping the people's authority to over public policy.

But what can we do about it, especially since Democratic Party officials also play this plutocratic game? Well, Zohran Mamdani showed us one solution last week with his grassroots populist victory over New York's Big Money establishment to become the city's mayor.

He ran a true people's campaign on progressive issues and values — which he was able to do because of a populist campaign funding option that the city initiated years ago called small donor public financing. This alternative provides matching dollars from a public fund for candidates who rely on small donations from regular citizens, rather than begging for big bucks from billionaires.

In Mamdani's case, his unabashed progressivism excited long-ignored working-class voters, who contributed a few dollars each. Then, the public match added up to $13 million — enough to get his message out and organize turnout. Though he was still outspent four to one, the small donor fund provided the margin he needed to be competitive in a big race.

So far, public financing options have been adopted in 17 jurisdictions, from Arizona to Maine, Seattle to Baltimore. Why not where you live? For guidance, go to CommonCause.org.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Jed Owen at Unsplash