Dylan Ratigan Profile…

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter profiles Dylan Ratigan…

At MSNBC, Mr. Ratigan was initially given a midmorning time slot, but he made no dent in the ratings. Mr. Griffin concluded that “he plays better in the afternoon,” closer to the channel’s evening lineup of point-of-view hosts like Chris Matthews and Ed Schultz.

Mr. Ratigan does not just have a point of view, he has a point — one that he repeats relentlessly and feverishly, sometimes with props like buckets and Monopoly money. To hear Mr. Ratigan tell it, the American people are being held hostage by a banking system that acts like a government subsidized casino. His analogy: “My mother is paying taxes to the government. The government is giving her money to the banks. The banks are gambling like they’re watching ‘Fast Money.’ But my mother didn’t sign up for that.”

Mr. Ratigan said flatly, “As long as there’s been banks and governments, banks and governments have been conspiring to take money from the people.” What has changed now, he said, is that “we have the ability to engage it directly,” through fair elections and a free press. The first step in his playbook, then, is to end the denial about it through his show.