Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown: Recent Episodes
Jim Hightower
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, co-editor of the monthly "Hightower Lowdown" and author of "Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time to Take It Back," Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be -- consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Until recently, corporate executives were eager to demonstrate how “green” they were. But then came Trump, trashing the very idea of a green economy.
So, to appease the vengeful Republican, obsequious CEOs rushed to dump their green principles. Except for one especially verdant area of the corporate culture: CEO compensation. As widely reported, top executive pay has surged during the Trump regime.
But wait, they want more, so other tendrils of executive pay have sprouted and grown like Jack’s beanstalk, further separating those at the top from the rest of us. Wall Street Journal reporters have uncovered some $600 million in executive perks that big corporations shelled out to their honchos last year.
For example, investors in Apollo, the avaricious Wall Street huckster, laid out nearly a million for luxury limo and chauffeur services so their billionaire CEO wouldn’t have to open the car door by himself. For tax purposes, Apollo called this a “security measure,” rather than the pompous plutocratic perk it is.
Already overpaid, these royals have come to expect all of life’s needs and whims to be covered, including:
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$121,000 in free tickets to ballgames to please the multimillionaire chief of Roto-Rooter, who is said to be “a huge sports fan.”
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$20,000 in booze for the head of a liquor conglomerate, which insists the freebie is awarded to enhance the boss’ “knowledge of the product.”
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And a $492 payout to cover the maintenance cost on a home generator for the chief of Hewlett Packard – who is paid $23 million a year.
An old adage claims that it’s the little things that matter… and these CEO entitlements show just how little corporate “leaders” have become.
Do something!
To stay on top of all-things-CEO-pay, check out Inequality.org’s work on the topic and take action with the organizations they recommend here.
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Not that it matters, but sometimes I wonder if the billionaire potentates of artificial intelligence ever wonder why they’ve become so despised.
I doubt it, since introspection doesn’t seem to be in the DNA of hubristic AI demigods like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg. Nor are they programming such qualities into their “superintelligent bots.”
So, let me help them see themselves. First, today’s eruptions of public hatred toward them are not, as they want us to believe, just petty jealousy by people who want to be like them. Really… be like Musk? His ugliness is not just skin-deep – it emanates from his inner core.
Such aloof AI profiteers have sparked a nationwide prairie fire of anger by plundering local water supplies, farmland, electric power, and tax subsidies. They’re callously treating our communities as nothing more than a series of financial transactions for them to be consummate. But people’s rebellion is not merely about monetary prices and property. Fundamentally, it’s fueled by corporate elites’ total disregard for the basic human value of Fairness.
Even pre-school children comprehend the moral implication of “That’s not fair!” The corporate gold rush to an AI future is not about the mystical possibilities of technology, but old-fashioned greed – moneyed elites grabbing more profits and control. And there’s nothing fair about either.
The spreading rebellion against AI arrogance is raising a politically explosive moral question: “Who the Hell elected you selfish screw-ups to dictate our future?” Musk & Co. say they don’t even believe in democracy, so why would We the People let them remake society in their totalitarian image? To join your local rebellion, go to jimhightower.com/datacenters.
Do something!
There are more and more groups forming around the country to fight this exploitation— so many that we’re having a hard time keeping track of them all! Here are a few hubs that will help you find your way to join the rebellion:
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Data Center Opposition Report: A regularly-published comprehensive report on the numbers of fights out there, with case studies for inspiration
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The Stop Data Centers Coalition has a list of member organizations who are calling for a national data center moratorium
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The Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development, a Minnesota based organization, has published a map of Facebook groups all over the country fighting data centers
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One of our top go-to resources are the toolkits that MediaJustice has created
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Kairos Fellowship also has a slew of guides and is developing a hotline that local groups can call for advice.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
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In 1982, the Dallas Morning News editorial page had a name for a guy who wanted to bring back farmers markets in Texas: socialist.
Not Medicare for All. Not a wealth tax. Farmers markets. The kind with watermelons and a guy selling tomatoes off a folding table.
Hightower ran for Texas Agriculture Commissioner with the idea as a key part of his platform anyway. He won. And in his first year in office, he and a staff of six built a hundred of them across the state.
Forty-some years later, Democratic strategists are still having the same panic attack about socialism. Turns out the “radical” thing was never the label itself; it was whether the guy delivered on campaign promises.
Here, Hightower tells the story himself: the watermelon stand outside Weatherford that started it all, how Hightower’s staff created the market access for the farmers, and the line he used to shut the haters up for good — “the word ‘free’ in ‘free enterprise’ is not an adjective. It is a verb.”
Here’s an interesting fact: Dinosaurs dominated Earth for 165 million years – and they assumed they always would.
Which brings us to… well, us. We bipedal, far-ranging, Homo sapien primates have certainly established our dominance over modern-day Mother Earth. And even though our reign has only lasted about 200,000 years, we 21st Century humans grandly assume that we’re ordained by the gods to rule ad infinitum over our planet (and beyond).
But – oops! – unfortunately we’ve based our preeminence on the unsustainable consumption of our domain, rather than on stewardship for the ages. Under the global misguidance of corporate, political, religious, academic, and other Powers That Be, our large-brained species has ended up making an awful mess of the nest we inherited. Elite plunderers and profiteers have imposed an ethic of greed, inequality, and even inhumanity that is devouring everything from Earth’s climate to our basic human values of fairness and justice.
Leading this careless assault is a clique of arrogant and abusive high-tech gabillionaires who consider themselves geniuses because, well… they’re rich! Consider Elon Musk, presently the richest of the world’s richest, who postures as an uber-brained deep thinker, social engineer, and whirling corporate dervish. He presently runs not one, but three mega-corps (Tesla, X, and SpaceX) while also rewriting the rules of free speech, telling American’s how to vote, and claiming he’ll save humanity by colonizing Mars.
But wait – strip away the hype, and Musk is just another self-serving plutocratic ravager, a cartoonish robber baron whose “genius” lies in (1) taking credit (and profit) from other people, (2) demanding subsidies and special breaks from government, (3) cheating workers and customers, and (4) suing everyone for his failures.
If billionaire humanoids like Elon really wanted to save us from extinction, they should do the honorable thing… by going first.
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Does becoming a billionaire turn one into an insufferable jerk, or is that an innate quality they bring to the position?
Big-name billionaires – like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg – literally flaunt their irrepressible jerkism, but the disease seems to inflict their entire class of über-rich corporate royals. Its telltale symptoms are not their grandiose mansions and yachts, but their sudden impulse to instruct us regular people on how to think. In particular, they’re now demanding that we get out of their way so they can remake society in their image.
Jensen Huang, for example, a Silicon Valley techno-whiz who heads Nvidia, now the world’s richest corporation. He’s demanding that we transform our economy and social structure into a new order of AI dominance, piously chiding those of us who’re angry about AI’s destruction of our jobs, communities, water, farmland, and democracy itself. Tut-tut, the gabillionaire scolds, you petty people must “create new social norms” to advance AI.
Then there’s the little-known honcho of SoftBank, a multi-trillion-dollar Japanese tech powerhouse trying to impose AI supremacy worldwide. He’s now asserting a corporate “morality” of wealth, calling people who question AI “foolish.” He philosophizes that TechWorld “will transform our lives completely and do so in a way that generates profits.”
For whom? For billionaires, of course. So there you have a clear statement of the values and goals of AI profiteers: More for them, no matter the cost to everyone else. SoftBank’s imperious boss laughs at those of us who dare question his vision of an AI plutocracy, calling us fools who are “spitting upward.”
No sir, look again. We are spitting straight at you.
Do something!
Want to join the rebellion against AI billionaires? Check out Public Citizen’s work on Big Tech and other corporate monsters: https://www.citizen.org/topic/consumer-worker-safeguards/big-tech/
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Some presidents are known as uplifting orators; our present president is known for petulant putdowns.
Periodically, Trump discovers a new pejorative that he considers clever, so he wears it out attacking his endless list of enemies. His current favorite is “lunatic,” hurling the slur at women reporters, most foreign leaders, all Democrats, protestors, and… well, everyone who offends him.
But if he wants some real lunatics to belittle, why not that menagerie he’s appointed to top government positions? Such as Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC attack dog who keeps yapping that he’s gonna abolish NPR.
Failing at that, Carr has now gone from silly to ridiculous, pushing a phantasmagoric scheme that truly is lunacy. It comes from some Elon Musk protégés who apparently noticed that our planet gets dark as night falls. Eureka, they exclaimed, we need to “light the night!”
Why? Well, they say, to illuminate all city streets and rural roads, make crops grow faster, and stuff like that. But how to generate the light? Easy, the geniuses explain: Mirrors.
They want government support to deploy a global network of orbiting space mirrors that could reflect sunlight onto Earth’s rotating dark areas. Lots of mirrors – the schemers propose to put 50,000 in our skies by 2030, with each of the largest ones shining as bright as 100 full moons!
Nothing could go wrong with that, right? Bedazzled, Carr didn’t ask. Instead, with no public input, he just rubber-stamped an initial launch of this “novel technology,” blandly assuring us that “harms are unlikely to occur.”
To oppose this lunacy, connect with the American Astronomical Society: aas.org.
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Executives climbing the corporate ladder to the top seem to lose IQ the higher up they get.
That might explain why John Deere’s top corporate bosses have imposed an astonishingly stupid policy on America’s farmers. For years, they’ve decreed that while a farmer “technically owns” a tractor or other John Deere product, the owner is prohibited from making any repairs when the machinery breaks down, stalls out, etc. Instead, owners must call an authorized Deere dealer to fix what most farmers could handle by themselves.
The monopolistic profiteer refuses to make its repair manuals available to customers or local repair shops, so… gotcha!
But in 2020, Walter Schweitzer rallied with other mad-as-hell farmers and ranchers to rebel. The Montana rancher’s tractor had gone kaput in hay baling season – but, “no,” said a Deere dealer, a technician is not available; and “no,” you can’t have access to the diagnostic computer to do it yourself. So, he had to wait weeks before Deere finally got his tractor running – a fairly basic job worth about $600… but they billed Walter nearly $4,000.
That’s what’s called “a monopoly fix.” But they messed with the wrong farmer. Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, mobilized grassroots pressure from five states, forcing federal officials to sue Deere. This month, Deere’s aloof executives settled that suit, finally letting its farm customers take charge of the equipment that – hello! – they own!
Schweitzer points out that this landmark win over the arrogance of Deere executives is just one stepping stone to a right-to-repair law for all products. To help push this right forward, go to repair.org.
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Here they come again: Billionaires, wailing that Congress must – MUST! – act immediately to slash the monthly Social Security checks that middle-class and poor retirees count on.
Plutocratic elites and their anti-government ideologues periodically erupt in outrage that elderly Americans who’ve earned retirement benefits are depleting the Social Security Trust Fund. So, they exclaim, government must cut the payments these old folks are getting.
But wait – it’s not “the government’s money.” It belongs to the retirees themselves. They’ve paid monthly payroll taxes into the fund for years on the guarantee that they would later draw benefits out.
Maybe so, bark opponents, but the money well is going dry, so the only way to “save” the program is to chop payments owed to beneficiaries.
In three words: That’s a lie.
What the superwealthy don’t want us to notice is that the Social Security tax is spectacularly unfair. If your yearly income is less than $185,000 (which includes 95% of us) – every penny of your earnings is subject to retirement tax. But if you’re paid a million a year, or a billion, or even more – everything over $185,000 is tax free. Sweet!
Wait, there’s more. Instead of being paid wages, most über-wealthy people draw their annual income from a Wall Street scheme called “unrealized capital gains.” Big surprise – those gains are totally exempted from our nation’s retirement tax.
This is Jim Hightower saying… So, let’s make Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and other tax-dodging billionaires pay on all of their income like the rest of us do. That’s only fair. Then America can increase benefits so everyone can have a dignified retirement. Now that’s true fairness!
Do something!
To get involved with the fight to make sure Social Security and other social safety net programs stay strong, check out Social Security Works at socialsecurityworks.org.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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What a show, huh? Big-name corporations went all out this July 4th with a patriotic ad blitz professing their devotion to America’s democracy.
But it amounted to a Firecracker of Hypocrisy, for many of these showboat patriots have been backroom funders of the Trump regime’s repression of our people’s democratic rights.
Also, there’s an internal level of cynical dishonesty in their flashy show-of-support for egalitarian values. In the past few years, a clique of these Silicon Valley and Wall Street giants have been monkeywrenching the rules of their own corporate governance to crush the very idea of “shareholder democracy.”
Yes, such a concept has existed, at least in theory. For decades, big business profiteers have been given special privileges over the rest of us by claiming to be “democratic enterprises,” governed by masses of common shareholders who get one vote for each share of stock they own. (Actually, that makes a corporation more of a plutocracy, since the more stock you own, the more votes you get.)
Today, though, even plutocracy is too democratic for monarchial billionaire bosses like Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX. So, they’ve invented a super-class of shareholders – mostly themselves and their cronies. These elite owners get domineering voting power, exceeding all other investors combined. For example, Musk owns about 40 percent of the stock in SpaceX, but in his self-created system, he gets more than 80 percent of shareholder votes. Among other advantages, his skewed voting power makes Musk “unfireable” -- unless he votes to fire himself.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Beware of billionaires professing any allegiance to America’s democratic values. In fact, just beware of billionaires, period.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
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Greetings, Lowdowners!
When I was down visiting with Hightower in May, I asked him a question that I’ve always wanted to know the answer to, but never put directly to him: Why did he decide to run for office? Before he became Agriculture Commissioner, he had been a legislative aide to Sen. Ralph Yarborough in Washington, the founder and co-director of the Agribusiness Accountability Project (which produced Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times), then a journalist and editor at the Texas Observer. What brought on the desire to become an elected official? And why this office?
His answer took us through an adventure of what activism can look like when you take the outside inside, and you run a real grassroots campaign based on the values of the people you’re hoping to represent.
Transcript:
Well, for me, I was born a populist. I didn’t know it. And I was taught about populism.
The essential political essence of populism is that too few people control too much of the money and power, and they use that control against the rest of us to get more money and power for themselves. So that’s the great fight of American politics, in the big scale, but also in the very local scale.
America’s legal system proclaims that even lifeless man-made, paper entities called “corporations” are endowed with the human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But if a fabricated, inanimate, corporate thing can have enforceable rights to legal protections and life privileges – why not natural beings like… well, nature? Not just favored animals, but all complex, living, breathing, sentient, cooperative, reproductive beings. Trees, for one obvious example. Or rivers, prairies, marshes, and other organic bodies that have a life of their own and a reason to exist beyond our exploitation of them.
That’s why the townspeople of Vaudreuil in Quebec, Canada, have unanimously approved a “Declaration of the Rights of Trees,” proclaiming that these beneficial and beautiful neighbors have an inherent right to exist, thrive, and enjoy the protections of law. This is the latest advance of the “Rights of Nature” movement. It maintains that forests, waterways, and other interconnected living beings of nature are not mere “property” of human profiteers to be poisoned, clearcut, excavated, and otherwise destroyed. Rather, they must be regarded as full-citizens of our world, with essential, legally-enforceable rights of their own – especially the most basic right: The right to exist.
Corporate opponents to the Rights of Nature movement cry that the very idea is unnatural – a tree can’t even speak, so there is no way it can exercise a legal right.
Excuse me, but corporations can’t speak either, for they are mere paper constructs. So, lawyers are hired to speak for them. The same system of representation can and should apply to nature. For information and action, go to CenterForEnvironmentalRights.org and Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (garn.org).
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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From Q-Anon nuttiness to JD Vance’s “Deep State” quackery, wacko right-wing conspiracies have oozed into the center Republican politics.
But don’t let their goofiness obscure the fact that there is indeed a very real plot to rig America’s economic and political system, causing wealth and power to flow uphill – from the workaday majority to moneyed elites.
This rigging is not done by some cartoonish cabal of ogres in a secret lair, but by prominent AI tech barons and other Poo-Bahs of America’s corporate royalty. They are soft-handed thieves, discreetly robbing us from the cozy confines of corporate boardrooms, ornate courtrooms, and legislative backrooms. Why should they dirty their hands in public scuffles with workers, consumers, local communities, and others “pests” when they can deploy public officials to do their grub work.
Consider the gabillionaire huckster, Elon Musk. He barged into Mississippi to build a massive AI data center that would have 57 gas turbines spewing toxic pollution over several Black neighborhoods – without even bothering to get required environmental permits.
It was a gross violation of the Clean Air Act – so the endangered families sued in April to stop the imperious profiteer.
But instead of facing the perp himself – Surprise! – the locals were confronted by federal lawyers deployed by Trump to kill the people’s lawsuit and protect Musk’s toxic project. Going further, Trump’s “Justice” department asserted that we citizens have no legal right to pursue Clean Air enforcement if the federal government objects.
Did I mention that Musk gave $157 million to Trump’s last election campaign? And that’s how the system gets rigged against us.
Do something!
Support the people fighting Musk in this lawsuit:
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NAACP
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Southern Environmental Law Center
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Earthjustice
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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High-dollar corporate executives and Wall Street bankers keep telling us that it’s lonely at the top. Well, they should try toiling at the bottom of America’s pay scale.
The radical rise of inequality in our society is a function of the vast political inequality separating the working class from the power structure. The elite rich have many friends in high places paying close attention to their needs, but the further one tumbles down the economic ladder the lonelier you are when your interests conflict with the bosses and big shots. As Ray Charles sang, “Them that’s got is them that gets.”
Consider waiters, bartenders, and other restaurant workers. Generally these jobs are poorly paid and routinely abusive, yet lawmakers mostly ignore all that, cozying up to the abusers, because… well, they’re rich and politically connected. As a result, most of today’s restaurant workers are paid a sub-minimum wage that was set 32 years ago at $2.13 an hour! That’s not a wage, it’s an insult. Yet most lawmakers refuse to raise it, bowing to the piles of campaign cash they get through a lobbying front called the National Restaurant Association, dominated by multibillion-dollar food chains.
Worse, in the past decade, this consortium of greedy wage suppressors even devised a diabolical scheme to make restaurant workers pay for the industry’s lobbying campaigns to hold down wages! The Association bought an outfit that provides hokey food safety training to workers, then it lobbied to get California, Florida, Illinois, Texas, and other states to require that all employees not only undergo the silly on-line training course, but also making them pay $15 each for the training.
Guess what? NRA then uses those worker training fees to fund its lobbying efforts that let restaurants pay poverty wages. And that, kids, is how inequality happens.
Do something!
One Fair Wage is on the front lines of organizing service industry workers, minimum wage workers, and other working class people to get the pay these workers deserve.
Extra credit: the history of tipping in the US is entirely rooted in racist antebellum culture as a way to exploit the labor of formerly enslaved people.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
Question: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg? Answer: Four – calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it one.
Likewise, calling a small group of partisan lawyers a “supreme” court doesn’t make it one. There’s nothing supreme about the six-pack of far-right-wing political activists who are presently soiling our people’s ideals of justice by proclaiming their own anti-democratic biases to be the law of the land. On issues of economic fairness, women’s rights, racial justice, corporate supremacy, environmental protection, theocratic rule, and other fundamentals, these unelected, black-robed extremists are imposing an illegitimate elitist agenda on America that the people do not want and ultimately will not tolerate.
Indeed, the imperiousness of the six ruling judges has already caused the court’s public approval rating to plummet, to a mere 38 percent, an historic low that ranks down there with Trump, and threatens to go as low as Congress.
This has led to a flurry of officials attesting to the honesty and political impartiality of the reigning supremes. Unfortunately for the court, these ardent defenders were the six culprits themselves.
The “integrity of the judiciary is in my bones,” pontificated Neil Gorsuch, who now stands accused of having lied to senators to win his lifetime appointment.
“[We are not] a bunch of partisan hacks,” wailed Amy Coney Barrett, a partisan extremist jammed onto the court in a partisan ploy by Trump in the last few hours of his presidency.
“Judges are not politicians,” protested John Roberts, who became Chief Justice because he was a rabid political lawyer who pushed the Supreme Court in 2000 to reject the rights of voters and install George W. Bush as president.
Remember, in America, The People are supreme! We don’t have to accept rule by an illegitimate court. For reform, go to FixTheCourt.com.
PS— The most recent season of Slate’s Slow Burn podcast traces the rise of Neil Gorsuch. Recommended!
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
Greetings, Lowdowners — Deanna here!
Friday we told you what was coming: Hightower on the main stage at the Texas Democratic Party Convention, introducing Clayton Tucker, the Lampasas rancher carrying the populist torch into this year’s fight for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.
Well, it happened. And it’s everything we hoped it would be!
Listen to that crowd roar as Hightower names the “six Bs” — bosses, bankers, billionaires, big shots, b**s, and bullshitters. That clip has been tearing up social media all weekend! Here’s the full five-minute speech: the introduction, the history, and Jim handing the mic to Clayton with the kind of send-off that doesn’t happen unless you’ve been in the fight together for a long, long time.
This is the kind of thing you get every week as a Lowdown subscriber: not just the clip everyone’s sharing, but the full context behind it. Consider upgrading today if you can!
PS—I think my personal favorite moment is watching the ASL interpreter figure out how to translate “greedheads and boneheads.” Chef’s kiss!
Transcript
Announcer: Let’s welcome our former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Jim Hightower.
Hidey ho! As one former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, who came out of a progressive campaign with Ann Richards and Jim Mattox and Garry Mauro, a unity ticket. Now to the next era of victories by progressive forces, led by Clayton Tucker, James Talarico, Gina Hinojosa, right on down the line, a lineup of winners.
It just makes me happier than a flea at a dog show to be standing up here, looking out at all you Democratic Party champions of economic fairness, you corporate greedwhackers, you Republican butt-kickers, as we rally to take Texas back from the GOP, from the GOP autocrats and plutocrats, so our team of grassroots Democrats can move Texas forward. We don’t want to go back. We want to go forward and forward with all the people of our state, not just the rich elites.
And this November fight is a landmark populist battle, putting pitting the greedheads and boneheads who are the powers that be against the powers that ought to be, the ordinary work of day people of our state, the workers, the farmers, the teachers, the consumers. The everyday Texans who do the everyday work that makes Texas work.
Now you might say, well, Hightower, what do you by the powers that be? Well here’s what I mean. I call ‘em the six Bs. They are the bosses, the bankers, the billionaires, the big shots, b**s and bullshitters.
They’ve been running roughshod over us. They’re thinking they’re the top dog and we’re just a bunch of fire hydrants out here in the countryside. That’s why Clayton Tucker is so important. So important to this election, so important to the Democratic ticket, so important to Texas, a true son of Texas populism, a rancher raising goats out in Lampasas County. The very place where populism began, by the way, it was born in Lampasas County in the 1870s. He’s a rancher, been a kindergarten teacher. That’ll help him when he deals with the legislature.
He’s a grassroots organizer, battling the data center billionaires. He even puts it right on his campaign button here. “Stop AI data centers.” Clayton Tucker. He battles the monopolists and the extremists. I’m gonna tell you that Clayton Tucker is gonna drive the Republican leaders crazy. Of course, that’s a pretty short drive for some of them.
Most important, as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Clayton will make us proud again, as so few office holders these days do. He comes out of West Texas. West Texas ranchers and the old cowboys out in West Texas used to have a saying. They said, “speak the truth, but ride a fast horse.”
Clayton is going to speak the truth to the powers that be. And they’re going to call him, just as they’re calling Talarico and Gina Hinojosa and our whole Democratic lineup, they’re going to call them agitators. Agitators. What the hell is wrong with being an agitator? Agitation is what built America.
So I’m here to ask you to join me in welcoming the People’s Agitator, Clayton Tucker, from Lampasas, Texas.
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Greetings, Lowdowners—Deanna here!
Last week we gave you the pesticide hearing story — Willie Nelson, Barbara Jordan, and a fight Hightower and his team won by building a movement before he ever needed the movie stars. This week, we’re going back further. All the way back to where the whole populist tradition in this country actually started.
Here’s Hightower telling it: in the 1870s, four farmers in Lampasas, Texas, were getting squeezed out of existence. Railroads gouging them on getting crops to market. Bankers gouging them on their mortgages. So they did the only thing they could — they sat down around a kitchen table and started talking about it.
That conversation didn’t stay in Lampasas. It spread to neighboring counties, then across Texas, then into 43 states. It elected U.S. senators and members of Congress. It built cooperative banks and grain storage so farmers didn’t have to sell at the bottom of the market just to survive. Historians call it the Populist Movement. Hightower calls it people figuring out they had to organize or get run over.
We’re telling you this story right now for a reason. Tonight, Hightower’s on the main stage at the Texas Democratic Convention, introducing a candidate he’s worked with for years: Clayton Tucker, who’s running for the same office Hightower once held — Texas Agriculture Commissioner.
Clayton’s from Lampasas.
No one planned that. Texas just keeps producing people who grow up with that kitchen table in their blood and decide to do something about the Powers That Be. Clayton’s campaign is built around the same basic fight those four farmers were having: rural Texans getting run over by power they have no say in. Corporate data centers draining water and electricity from small towns that never got a say. Federal regulators sitting on tools Texas ranchers need right now to fight the New World Screwworm, leaving the state to fight it understaffed and underequipped while the threat spreads. Different villains, same basic math — somebody with more power than you, making decisions about your land and your livelihood from somewhere else.
Almost a hundred and fifty years on, same county, new fights, same fight.
This is the kind of connection-the-dots storytelling our paid subscribers get from us regularly — the history that explains the present, not just the outrage of the week. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, this is a good week for it.
Thanks for being in the fight with us, as always!
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Sometimes, little things can be a big deal. For example, in considering ways to help protect Mother Earth from global environmental rampages by us humans, look out your window.
In many cities and most suburbs, chances are you’re looking at a lawn – a grass-carpeted yard that looks almost the same as the one next door, the one next to it, etc. Some see a lush expanse of green grass as the ultimate in landscaping beauty, and some even consider a well-manicured lawn to be a measure of one’s moral character.
Beauty and piety aside, though, the spread and intensification of “lawn culture” has become an environmental extravagance that is already unsustainable in whole sections of our country, and it adds up to a steadily-increasing burden on Earth’s essential resources. Grass itself is natural, but keeping it alive across thousands of square miles is not, for it requires a deluge of chemicals and endless rivers of water applied again and again, yard after yard, trying to keep these plots green. And – O, the irony! – their “green” includes eliminating bees, butterflies… and, well, nature. One statistic tells the tale: Americans use more than 10 times more poison per acre than all of America’s farmers use on their crops.
Just glance around you, and you’ll see the grass lawn imperative at work throughout your community – it surrounds local schools, “greens-up” corporate complexes, spreads across college campuses, forms miles of golf courses, etc.
This is not a diatribe against grassy plots, which can be natural joys. But let’s get real, get creative, and get in touch with the full balance and beauty of nature. You can promote ground cover sanity right where you live with native plants, xeriscaping, organic methods, rain gardens, and “re-wilding” your yard with things like prairie grass. For help, go to Rewild.org/Rewild-Your-Life.
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Once upon a time, conservative ideologues opposed government interference in the holy magic of the marketplace.
Take energy policy, for example. Right-wing cheerleaders of fossil fuels demanded that government must keep its fat thumb off the scale of free market competition between Big Oil and those frilly new “alternative” sources of energy.
Where did those market “purists” go? Into the White House, the Cabinet, and Congress – where they’ve mutated into big government bullies, attacking renewable energy enterprises while hyping and subsidizing the corporate profiteers of dirty energy. Trump himself hasn’t merely put his thumb on the scale, he’s hauled his entire hulk onto it!
For example, this month he lavished a $700-million gimme of our tax dollars to prop up coal production, a dirty fuel the market is abandoning.
Wait, there’s more: he paid another 700+ million of our dollars to Invenergy, an offshore wind energy firm – not so it could produce electricity, but to cancel four wind farms it had planned to build. Yes, he paid the company to not produce wind energy! Trump declared that even though wind power is less costly than coal, he found windmills “ugly.”
So, here’s my advice to the wind industry: Gold-plate your turbines and label them “Trump Towers.” And maybe stage a series of cage fights on some of them. Trump is all about hype and spectacle – so there you go.
Meanwhile, the actual marketplace is loudly saying “no” to fossil fuels and YES! to renewables. Get this: Wind now routinely surpasses coal as a supplier of electricity to America. And, last month, solar power also surpassed coal. Political bullying aside, renewables are the future.
Do something!
At a time when the federal government is actively dismantling progress on climate change, the NDRC is calling for states to lead the way—and tracking the work that’s being done. Start with this news update from them, and then take action.
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Greetings, Lowdowners—Deanna here!
This summer, we're doing something a little different. Over the next few weeks, we're opening the gates a bit — giving free subscribers a taste of some of the exclusive stories, video, and behind-the-scenes Hightower that paid subscribers get regularly. If you've been on the fence about upgrading, consider this your invitation to see what you've been missing.
To kick things off, I spent a day with Hightower in Austin last month, beer in hand at ABGB, talking with him about fifty-plus years of fighting the b**s. We’ve got a summer’s worth of material to share with you, and I wanted to kick things off with the one that shows what organizing really looks like.
Here’s the setup: Hightower’s Agriculture Commissioner, and he’s just put forward the most progressive pesticide regulation in the country. The pesticide lobby is furious. So they get the governor to introduce legislation to gut his authority and make his office appointed instead of elected. Standard playbook—except for what happened next.
The hearing room they’d booked was tiny. They had to move it to the House Chamber because Hightower’s first witness was Willie Nelson. His second was Barbara Jordan. His third was the chairwoman of the Dallas Republican Women’s Organization, who didn’t love the idea of pesticides in her kids’ food either.
Not one committee member would make the motion to pass the bills. They lost without a vote.
Here’s the part I actually wanted to talk to him about, though: the celebrities weren’t the strategy. They were the payoff. Hightower’s team spent six months before that hearing building an actual coalition—farmers, farmworkers, consumers, local press. Willie and Barbara Jordan showed up because there was already a movement there to show up for. “They are the punctuation point of a movement that has already been built and is moving,” he told me. “Their presence encourages the movement,” but it doesn’t replace it.
It’s a lesson that’s aged exactly zero days in forty years: you don’t win by getting a famous person to show up at your rally. You win by doing the unglamorous work first, and then the famous person shows up because there’s something worth showing up for.
It’s your support that enables us to keep bringing the outside in, to keep sharing the ways we can fight together and have fun together. We know times are tighter than ever, and it makes your support mean even more to us. Thank you!
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I’ve always supported small business, including having my own little media operation that has long allowed me to run my mouth for a living.
One of the greatest aspects of being small – as opposed to corporation, conglomerate, or chain – is that you’re the boss. I don’t mean bossy, autocratic, “The Big Jerk.” I mean you have the flexibility to shape the enterprise according to deeper values than selfish profit and business “efficiency.” Concepts like fairness, integrity, community, diversity – even fun – come to the fore.
Despite today’s corporatized, politically-rigid economic order, such value-driven small business mavericks flourish all across America. For example, P. Terry’s Burger Stand here in Austin. Started 20 years ago by Patrick and Kathy Terry, it’s a small local chain of 38 restaurants embracing the down-home ideals of quality, affordability, and community support.
But they also nurtured a core element of good business that is too often disregarded: Employees. As Kathy put it: “We believed that taking care of people – and building a great business – were not competing ideas.” Fair wages, basic needs, respect, belonging, advancement, happiness – these are the “inputs” that actually matter to the people who do the work and, through them, generate business success.
Now the Terry’s are taking two big steps to expand their ideals. One, they’ve set up a company-wide profit-sharing system so their 1,800 employees get a share of business income in addition to their paycheck. And two, they’ve created a special trust to provide employee ownership that can carry the values into the future.
To learn more about businesses that live up to such progressive ideals, go to the National Center for Employee Ownership: nceo.org
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Step right up folks! Please don’t crowd! No need to shove, plenty here for everyone!
Welcome to the Bonanza Extravaganza of the Artificial Intelligence “BOOM.” Silicon Valley billionaires are now proposing a scheme to deliver an unbelievable windfall to “every citizen.” Tech titans like Sam Altman of OpenAI are pushing the federal government to create a “public wealth fund” to let us commoners be investment partners in building the AI wonderworld.
Lest you worry that this might be a corporate scam, note that Donald Trump, the deal-maker-in-chief, exults that letting the American public buy into the tech booms is a sure bet to “make them rich.” And Altman adds that a public investment fund would allow Joe and Jill Schmo to “participate directly in the upside of AI-driven growth.”
Wow – benevolent capitalism!
But wait – aren’t AI barons infamous greedheads who constantly rig the system for themselves, sneer at the public, and openly disdain government programs? Well… yes.
And wait again – they say We would “share in the upside” of AI, but what about the downside? Far from profitable, all of the industry’s powerhouses, including OpenAI, are losing hundreds of billions of dollars while carelessly adding trillions in new debt and – shhhh – quietly admitting that their razzle-dazzle computer fantasies might not work.
They won’t tell you this, but going bust is a real possibility. And that is why AI’s private-enterprise whizzes are now so desperately pushing us taxpayers to become their socialist “partners.” If and when they fail, your and my role is to save their bacon by demanding that “the public” deserves a government bailout.
Do something!
Want to help keep an eye on what Big Tech is trying to do with AI? Check out The Midas Project, a new AI watchdog nonprofit.
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Millions of us are mad as hell at the moneyed establishment for constantly rigging the system against America’s workaday majority.
Those riggers could save face by making some basic reforms, but instead, they’re getting mad at us for saying the system is rigged! Indeed, corporate powers have launched a PR offensive assailing what they call a “populist trend” of disgruntled people declaring that “everything is rigged.” They’re condemning anyone who talks about corporate oligarchies ripping off consumers, workers, students, and others.
But wait – that’s not a “trend,” it’s peoples’ real-life experiences with the shameful corporate health care system, price gouging by food giants, the rapacious greed of AI billionaires, the flagrant theft of people’s voting rights, the gutting of public education… and so awful much more? You don’t have to be in Who’s Who to know What’s What: The system isrigged.
Yet, the riggers demand that we “riggees” stop saying that word. One right-wing pundit whines that it’s socially destructive for malcontents to suggest our laws are being manipulated to give more and more power to corporate elites. He asserts that even talking about it “undermines voters’ faith and trust in our government.”
Trust in our government? Come on! The majority of our lawmakers openly sell themselves to corporate bidders, the White House is a shopping mall for rich donors, and the Supreme Court functions as a corporate subsidiary. It’s no secret that corrupt officials now routinely rig America’s economic and political systems for the rich. Far from prissily shutting off discussion of this scandal, we must drag it into the center of American politics… and crush it.
Do something!
To get involved in the dragging and crushing of these corrupt scandals, head over to our friends at Common Cause, commoncause.org.
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Remember long, long ago in the old-timey days of politics, way back… maybe 10 years or so?
In those olden times, if someone or some corporations gave a million dollars to a political candidate, the donation was scandalous news – a bribe!
Ahhh, I miss those innocent days when ethical outrage could erupt over a mere million. These days, a high-dollar campaign would indignantly return such a paltry check to the donor, demanding that a couple of zeroes be added. Welcome to our glorious age of billion-dollar bribery.
But a lot of people get lost in the illions, thinking that the “B” number is just an inflated “M.” So perhaps they assume the level of corruption hasn’t gotten that much worse. Uh… wrong! To clarify, think of those Ms and Bs not as dollars, but time – specifically seconds on the clock. A million seconds, is 11 days. But a billion seconds? That’s 32 years!
And that’s a whopping difference in political punch. Aside from letting the insanely-rich buy particular government favors, billionaire bribery also allows that exclusive class to prevent policies that people actually want from getting on the public agenda.
One glaring example is the overwhelming grassroots demand by bipartisan majorities to STOP! the ever-rising deluge of corrupt political cash that’s drowning American democracy. Congress can do this with two basic reforms. But both political parties have their heads stuck in money bags, so there is zero action by our “representatives” to do what America desperately needs.
We the People have to be the cattle prod to move the system. To help, go to Campaign Legal Center: campaignlegal.org.
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Last week, Hightower and I sat down for a couple beers with author Cory Haala, who’s just released When Democrats Won the Heartland and who is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. Cory has brilliantly documented how, as the national Democratic Party moved towards corporate cash in the 1980s, maverick politicians throughout the Midwest and Plains states practiced good ol’ fashioned populism—and won. Not only did they win, but they also executed on the policies that they had championed while campaigning. Imagine that!
With Hightower being part of the coalition of Texas populists who took the 1980s by storm, and who traveled to the northern states Cory covers to campaign, speechify and rally the grassroots, he’s featured prominently throughout the book. My favorite Hightower highlight comes right in the introduction:
Rather than give a handout, they believed the role of government was to give a hand up. Put more bluntly by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower: “If we’d have been liberals,” discussing struggling watermelon growers in Texas, “we’d have retrained them to do something else. As populists, we changed the market structure that was f***ing them over. That’s the difference.”
Paid subscribers can watch the whole video above, and also read an excerpt of Cory’s book below. Enjoy!
From corporate polluters to political bosses, power elites try to create a myth of inevitability, trying to make workaday people feel helpless, too small to change the injustices of the system. Don’t bother is their message.
But the feisty residents of Boxtown, Tennessee, definitely did bother when they learned that a couple of profiteering fossil fuel giants were targeting them. Boxtown, a historic Black neighborhood of Memphis settled by former slaves 160 years ago, was considered by Valero Energy and Plains All-American Pipeline to be politically powerless, so when these multibillion-dollar petro powers decided to ram a dirty and dangerous pipeline through the Memphis area, Boxtown was their chosen route. The rich Texas oil barons even sneeringly called the lower-income community, “The point of least resistance.”
Boy did they get that wrong! Those “small” people of Boxtown resisted fiercely and smartly. Most flat-out refused to sell their family land at the thieving price offered by the oil slicks. They forged a unified grassroots coalition (Memphis Community Against the Pipeline), reached out to other neighborhoods, and educated locals about the terrible safety records of the two corporate plunderers. They also enlisted environmental groups to help beat back the strong-arm attempt by Valero and Plains All-American to seize the people’s property through eminent-domain. It’s a long story, with many ups and downs, but the inspiring essence of it is that local “nobodies” defeated the big money and raw racist arrogance of a powerhouse duo of absentee corporate elites that disrespected – and misjudged – them.
It gets little national media attention, but regular grassroots communities and coalitions are mounting – and winning – such gutsy fights against corporate exploiters all across America. We’re not helpless or too small – remember this: Even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building! To learn more, contact MemphisCAP.org.
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A core role of the US Department of Justice is to protect people from abusees by giant corporations.
But DOJ’s present inhabitants have twisted that mission bassackwards – using the agency to protect corporate abusers from people seeking justice. For example: Big Oil. This massive polluter is insisting that government authorities must save it from its own transgressions. For decades, multibillion-dollar behemoths like Exxon have known that their fossil fuel emissions are increasing climate change, causing catastrophic destruction and deaths from intensified fires, floods, etc. Numerous lawsuits have now been filed demanding that the profiteers behind these horrific losses pay a fair share of the damage they’ve done.
“Noooo,” whined the petro-perpetrators, scampering to Washington and to Republican statehouses to lobby for retroactive blanket immunity from all responsibility. Sure enough, top GOP officials are racing to bail out this murderous industry, which – by the way – finances the political campaigns of those oily officials.
But wait… there’s much more:
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Our so-called “Justice Department” has sued Hawaii and Michigan to deny a “state’s right” to sue energy corporations that cause climate change.
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A GOP group of state attorneys general are proposing a nationwide “liability shield” that would preemptively excuse oil, gas, and coal polluters from any responsibility for climate damages.
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The same group wants the federal government to cut funding to any state or city that sues energy corporations.
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And King Donald has decreed that the justice department stop all laws, policies, and suits that “threaten” fossil fuel production.
This is blantantly corrupt plutocracy… not to mention stupid! To help stop it, go to Center for Climate Integrity. ClimateIntegrity.org
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Has your family consumed its lump of coal today?
One of the most perverse presidential moves ever is Trump’s Big Government decree to force feed “King Coal” to Americans. Proclaiming an “energy emergency,” he unilaterally ordered five electric utilities to re-open their old, coal-burning power plants.
These are toxic bombs, that continuously spew mercury, carbon dioxide, and a mix of other killer pollutants into our air, water, and bodies. Mercury emissions are especially vicious, causing early death in adults and permanent IQ damages to fetuses and children. Even the president’s own health secretary has excoriated mercury pollution from coal-fired utilities as “the most powerful neurotoxin we know of in the universe.”
That’s why We the People have rebelled against the greed of coal barons in past years, finally replacing their deadly fuel with wind power, solar, and other renewable energy sources – which also lowers consumers’ electric bills.
So why push to re-impose a horrific corporate poison that the people have already rejected – and that progressive utilities have moved beyond?
Crass corruption. By hailing dirty coal as “beautiful,” while demonizing and defunding clean energy, Trump has been showered with millions of dollars from old-line coal profiteers. And never underestimate vanity – he even got a custom bronze trophy from the polluters, hailing him as the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.”
After America began replacing coal with clean energy, mercury pollution plummeted. But by restarting coal-fired utilities last year, Trump has already increased mercury emissions by 9 percent. Since he tries to merchandize everything, though, you might be able to buy an autographed lump of coal from him.
Do something!
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The Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign is a great place to find all kinds of resources for taking action, making local change, and more.
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Money in politics remains the thorn in our collective sides, so you can also check out End Citizens United to get involved on that front.
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REMINDER! Join us TONIGHT at 6pm CT for happy hour live with Cory Haala, author of “When Democrats Won the Heartland.”
Other than the fact that they are such blood-sucking greedheads, why have today’s multibillionaires, high-tech barons of AI become so despised by so many grassroots Americans?
By “so many,” I mean they’ve sparked a hell-raising mass revolt, originating in farm country, spreading through working-class suburbs, into community colleges, and other centers of Middle America – now including environmental, religious, and democracy movements.
This is a genuine populist rebellion of workaday families against the corporate oligarchy of Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, Bezos, and other “geniuses” of artificial intelligence. The billionaires are racing to install millions of supersmart A.I. robots in nearly every workplace, from manufacturing to health care, farming to finance.
Amazingly, the tech elites consider themselves to be “humanitarians,” for they say turning work over to A.I. would free humans to… well, do what? Geniuses can’t bothered with such mundane details, so they’re not interested of soon-to-be displaced masses of people who’ll be “made redundant.”
So – hello – people are revolting (in the very best sense of that term). Interestingly, some of the strongest backlash is coming from a huge group generally assumed to be politically apathetic or enthusiastic about all technology: Young people. Columnist Michelle Goldberg reports that several tech honchos who’ve given college commencement speeches this month were startled when they launched into gushing praise for the glorious future promised by A.I. They were practically driven off-stage by roaring cascades of boos from the students!
The pain that A.I. profiteers are imposing is one thing, but an even greater cause of this spreading revolt is the imperious arrogance and stupidity of royal elites who think ordinary people don’t matter. Did these oligarchs never hear about the revolution of 1776?
Do something!
To stay on top of the rapid development of AI and its impact on the public interest, check out the work of the AI Now Institute, ainowinstitute.org.
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In this day of AI smart tools, it’s easy to forget that we humans once relied on “dumb” hand tools like saws, drills, screwdrivers, and wrenches.
For decades, a major maker of these trusty instruments has been a company in New Britain, Connecticut, appropriately named The Stanley Works.
Today, having taken over other big brands like Craftsman and Black & Decker, Stanley is a $15-billion-a-year conglomerate, and many former-workers are asking, “Stanley works for whom?” That’s because corporate top executives have quietly orchestrated a decades-long move of Stanley factories out of our country, abandoning the skilled machinists who literally made the brand successful.
The final blow comes this week, when Stanley will shut down the last of its redbrick factories in New Britain. An odd move, since workers there produced one of Stanley’s most iconic products: The “PowerLock” tape measure. It is enormously popular – indeed, I have two of them. Yet, corporate bosses claim that cheaper, foreign-made tape measures now dominate the market, so – Poof! – goodbye 300 American jobs.
But wait, Stanley didn’t eliminate the jobs, it just moved them. To Thailand, where labor is paid 75% less than in Connecticut. Indeed, the major foreign competitor to Stanley turns out to be… Stanley! It has been building modernized production factories in Thailand, even as it divested in US factories and increased shipments of its foreign-made tape measures to the US.
Stanley’s CEO was paid $7.6 million last year. Nice, but now, the paychecks of 300 more workers can be reallocated to global shareholders… and give another hike in the chief’s pay. And that’s how the Inequality Merry-Go-Round keeps spinning… round and round and round.
Do something!
To fight for good jobs and an economy that benefits everyone, check out and support the work of Jobs with Justice, jwj.org.
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In America’s frontier days, anyone diverting a town’s creek water to their private, profiteering purpose was not merely considered wrong, but guilty of Biblical-level immorality.
That was BBE, however – “Before Billionaire Ethics.” Today, a cohort of über-rich hucksters – including Bezos, Altman, Musk, and Zuckerberg – have unilaterally decreed that they are above such moral fussiness, entitled to exploit the scarce water resources of millions of Americans, especially in rural areas.
They’re not irrigating crops, but continuously spritzing hundreds of thousands of the super-computers they’re “planting” in the hyperscale AI data centers being built across the country. These are “computer ranches,” digesting and constantly spewing out electronic data to run artificial intelligence bots that the tech billionaires are creating to replace us human workers.
Jobs aside, each of these concrete complexes is a massive water hog. Amazon, Meta, and the rest use millions of gallons a day of fresh, unrecycled water, just to keep their computers cool. Hello – states like Texas face recurring drought, yet billionaires insist on draining our aquifers and rivers to water their computers! In Texas alone, more than 400 of these sprawling data centers have already been built or are under construction.
Meanwhile, a grassroots “What The Hell” movement is spreading across the country. But don’t expect billionaires to show even an iota of respect for the Common Good. Indeed, they’re now funding an all-out PR blitz and political campaign to demonize these local rebellions. Worse, they are doubling down on their plutocratic power grab, demanding that Congress pre-emptively outlaw state and local officials from regulating, much less barring, these invasive schemes.
To help battle these profiteering b**s, go to www.mediajustice.org/tools.
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Years ago, when America was mired in the horror of the Vietnam war, Pete Seeger wrote a lament about the stupidity and vanity of leaders who keep plunging us into such mindless disasters. It was a song about the Big Muddy:
“The captain told us to ford a river,That’s how it all begun.We were knee deep in the Big MuddyBut the big fool said to push on.
“It’ll be a little soggy, but just keep sloggingWe’ll soon be on dry ground.We were waist deep in the Big Muddy,And the big fool said to push on.
“All we need is a little determination.Men, follow me, I’ll lead.We were neck deep in the Big MuddyAnd the big fool said to push on.”
Unfortunately, the big fool is back, this time miring our nation in another of those witless wars of choice that he had ridiculed when running for President. But, doing the bidding of Israel’s corrupt government, Trump attacked Iran. He blustered that the “skirmish” would be over in days, Iran would surrender everything, our gasoline prices would go down, peace would blossom throughout the Middle East, and world leaders would rally ‘round America.
None of that happened. Instead, Trump has splurged 25 billion of our dollars on this foray (so far), Iran’s leadership has outwitted Trump’s feckless Pentagon chief, and they now control the global price of oil.
To divert attention from the embarrassment of his needless war, our huckster-in-chief is now doing PR events touting the “grandeur” of that billion-dollar luxury ballroom he wants to tack onto our White House – a rich-boy add-on that only the billionaire class will go into.
Of all the things America actually needs, he is focused on a sparkly ballroom. And the big fool says to push on.
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Washington’s Democratic Party establishment keeps demanding that progressive members tone down their criticism of billionaire oligarchs and corporate autocrats. Why? Because the insiders want to rebrand the party as ideologically moderate. “Time to get serious,” they bark.
Two things: First, on the ideology question, I’m with Woody Guthrie: “Right-wing, left-wing, chicken wing,” he said. I think Woody meant that most workaday people don’t put 10-cents worth of faith in doctrinaire promises of political ideologues. Rather, they’re looking for honest answers to the old labor song: “which side are you on” – the bosses, bankers, and billionaires, or the rest of us?
Second, on the matter of seriousness, I find that both the Democratic party and the larger progressive movement have gotten way too serious. They’ve become lost in their latest 21-point plan, email “outreach” strategies, hourly fundraising targets, zoom meet-ups, and other digitalized corporate metrics of how-to-manipulate politics.
But wait – what is “politics?” My dictionary says it’s “The science and art of forming a community effort to seek and exercise power in public affairs.” Why would we try to make such a spirited, unifying, social pursuit into a rote, tedious, manipulative “game”? Instead, what if Democrats actually brought people together, not to recite pre-cut positions, but around community interests? And let’s create events that people (especially newcomers) might want to go to – mix the politics and issues with a little food, beer, and wine, live music, and… well, fun.
When I first ran for office, my lifelong co-conspirator, Susan DeMarco, came up with the perfect expression for such politicking. She said, “Let’s put the party back in politics!”
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CGB stands for the Cult of Goofy Billionaires, and they are way, way, waaay goofier than you might imagine.
I’m talking about prestigious, frontline, brand-name billionaires: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and other Silicon Valley Royals who perceive themselves as otherworldly geniuses. As such, they feel entitled to redesign your, my, and humanity’s future – whether we want them to or not.
So, for months, these techno-oligarchs have been furtively imposing a multitrillion-dollar network of invasive data centers all across America. Why? To power a whole new mechanomorphic species they call “generative AI chatbots.” Musk gushes that the super-intelligent bots will be “more human than humans” able to reproduce themselves, evolve, and displace us primitives in nearly every workplace.
Which raises the question: Could this gaggle of billionaire megalomaniacs get any goofier?
Gosh, yes! Musk, Thiel, and others have become disciples of a Swedish “philosopher” named Bostrom. He idealizes a “post-human future” in which us biological earthlings literally merge into the digital machine race. Indeed, Judd Legum investigative Substack, Oligarch Watch, reports that Musk has already launched a venture to produce implants to fuse human brains with computers.
Meanwhile, Thiel, the PayPal/Palantir billionaire, says policymakers should stop worrying about little problems like world wars and climate change, for “transhumanism” technology will create a digital species that is immortal. He also warns ominously that anyone who tries to regulate AI is doing the bidding of “The Antichrist.”
Then there’s Google’s goofy billionaire, Larry Page, who blithely says “if we let digital minds be free… the outcome is almost certain to be good.” Almost certain? Sure, Larry, unbridled tech never goes bad, right?
Do something!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been at the forefront of the fight to protect humans from and with tech advances for decades, and their work on the impact of AI is vital. Dive in here to join up with them.
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Years ago, Ray Charles sang: “Them that’s got is them that gets, and I ain’t got nothin’ yet.”
Millions of workaday Americans today are wailing that blues refrain, thanks to price increases caused by Donald Trump’s slap-happy tariff policy. He gloated that by imposing import levies of $166 billion on foreign companies, they would be forced to lower the prices they charge us. But, Professor Trump, nearly all tariffs are passed along to us consumers, so you’re raising our prices! Indeed, on average, his tariffs have jacked up costs for every American household by about $1,500 a year!
But the Supreme Court has now decreed Trump’s tariffs illegal, so those who paid them are entitled to refunds. Great! Walmart rushed to the front of the line, demanding a $10 billion refund, while other giants are demanding paybacks of more than a billion each.
But wait. What about you? Those corporations had paid Trump’s tariffs with money they got by raising prices on you and me. In short, WE THE CONSUMERS paid about 90 percent of that $166 billion out of our pockets. So where’s our refund?
So far, only Costco has publicly pledged to pass the refund back to its customers, while other corporate giants just wink and pocket the cash. For example, a Walmart executive simply announced that “[We will] certainly avail ourselves” of any refund process.
Economists have a technical word for that process: “Stealing.” The Walmarts jack up their prices to pay for Trump’s tariff scam, then grab the refunds that workaday consumers are owed. As Ray Charles sang in another blues number: “Why you treat me so mean?”
Do something
Tired of corporations stealing from you? Our friends at Public Citizen have a whole catalog of resources dedicated to tariffs—get involved here.
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“Mingy” is a useful word. It merges stingy with mean, pretty well summing up the prevailing ethic of today’s corporate bosses.
Take mingy CEOs of multibillion-dollar powerhouses like Amazon and 7-Eleven. They’ve been refusing to accommodate even the simplest needs of – get this – their pregnant employees.
As the New York Times reports, women who’re heavy with child can suffer acute health crises if they’re on their feet too long. For example, a pregnant Amazon warehouse worker in upstate New York became breathless and lightheaded, so her doctor told her to work sitting down periodically. She got a chair and felt better. But uh-uh, an Amazon manager took her chair away and insisted she stand! This caused her to be hospitalized several times. Then, Amazon fired her for having too many medical absences.
Or take the 27-year-old pregnant check-out clerk at Speedway, the gas station chain owned by 7-Eleven. To ease the strain of standing for hours, she was allowed to sit on some milk crates as she worked the counter. No, barked higher-ups, who took her crates away. She soon had a pregnancy emergency, and her doctor told her not to work for several days. So, Speedway put her on “involuntary unpaid leave.” But, technically she wasn’t fired, so the corporate giant prevented her from getting unemployment pay.
This is corporate assault, targeting women in low-wage jobs. It’s so common that Congress had to pass a law, the “Pregnant Workers Fairness Act,” to say: Stop it! But it hasn’t stopped, for Trump officials are not eager to punish multimillion-dollar corporate bosses. But that raises the fundamental ethical question: Why don’t bosses stop themselves?
Have I mentioned that “boss,” spelled backwards, is double-S-O-B?
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There are towns in Texas named New Deal, Fair Play, Progresso, Utopia—and even Buck Naked!
But what you won’t find is any town called “Moderate, Texas.” I offer this curiosity to the monied powers and milquetoast party leaders who keep insisting that Democrats must moderate their progressive policies, abandon their egalitarian commitments, and become more… well, more corporate.
Hello – today’s majority hates the everyday arrogance, avarice, and abuse that corporate supremacy has unleashed on workers, consumers, local businesses, family farmers, the poor, the sick, the “different,” our environment… and democracy itself.
The time when “captains of industry” were admired is long-gone. Today’s billionaire prigs – such as Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg – are clownishly greedy and foolish, becoming so reviled that they can’t go out in public. As journalist Perry Bacon points out in New Republic, even moderate Democrats aren’t moderate anymore: “Around 70 percent” of them, he reports, bemoan the fact that Party leaders are “too timid in taxing the rich, taxing corporations, and cracking down on companies that break the law.”
Polls aside, you can find out how moderates (and even conservatives) feel about moving the Party of the People to the middle of the road by visiting rural areas in Virginia, Illinois, Texas, or other states being invaded by autocratic corporate billionaires trying to usurp vast amounts of land water and energy for their AI data centers. Locals are furious at this plutocratic power grab and wondering if anyone will stand with them in full-force populist rebellion against the profiteers.
We’re in a 1932 moment. Far from becoming a corporate kiss-up party, people want and need Democrats to be the kick-ass party!
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Congress keeps churning out laws that the great majority of us have explicitly, consistently, and loudly said we do not want! Are those lawmakers deaf?
No, their ears are stuffed with ever-increasing wads of political cash from corporations and the superrich, so our words can’t reach their eardrums. Take Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican elected two years ago to the US Senate. He quickly proved to be a tail-wagging fetcher of more plutocratic tax-giveaways and most anything else the billionaire class desires.
Why? Money. His campaign was launched and supercharged by such barons of Wall Street and Silicon Valley as Steve Schwarzman. Honcho of a private equity powerhouse, Schwarzman greased Sheehy’s political skids with an $8 million check. A New York Times analysis later found that at least 63 other billionaire families bought a piece of the fledgling Montana senator that year.
He’s not their only purchase, of course. The Times’ tally found 300 billionaire families invested more than $3 billion in federal candidates in 2024.
Meanwhile, not only does Congress do what We the People don’t want, they also refuse to do what we do want. Most emphatically, that includes a huge, bipartisan majority who want all corporate money out of political races and solid limits on donations by the rich.
Big Money is a stark threat to America, says Marc Raciot, Montana’s former Republican governor. It’s turning our democratic republic into a place where a few wealthy people can legally spend millions to direct how the government runs. “Does any reasonable person on the planet think that’s appropriate,” he asks?
To help assert a people’s democracy over corporate plutocracy, go to EndCitizensUnited.org.
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Even in this ugly era of political divisiveness under “King Donald,” some things remain bigger than partisan politics.
For example, travel deep into Southwest Texas to the Mexican border, and you’ll witness two powerful forces of political harmony in Big Bend National Park. First is the true majesty of nature – 1,200 square miles of high desert beauty, spectacular canyons, the Chisos Mounains’ “sky islands,” black bears and jaguars, ancient artifacts of native peoples, etc.
But you could also experience the marvelous rebellious spirit of today’s Big Bend people who are battling the White House’s ideological extremists. At issue is “The Wall,” the xenophobic piece of nastiness pushed by Stephen Miller, the Trump government’s tyrannical, anti-immigrant chief. Build a multi-billion-dollar, 30-foot-high steel wall atop the Rio Grande’s fragile, thousand-foot high cliffs, Miller maniacally commanded!
Hello – such a monstrous wall would destroy the cliffs, devastate the economic, cultural, and other essential cross-border relationships that Big Bend communities rely on – and do nothing to stop desperate refugees. So, in a grassroots, non-partisan rebellion against such ideological bullstuff, a majority coalition of ranchers, environmentalists, local sheriffs, native Americans, and just folks have momentarily stalled the scheme. As a longtime Republican resident puts it: “Those advocating for this insane project should… acknowledge their nonsensical, aesthetically, and environmentally quixotic conduct, so their names may be indelibly placed on that border wall and remembered forever in infamy.”
This is Jim Hightower saying… Trump is expected to push ahead, but the feisty grassroots champions are not intimidated. “We will be civil,” says one leader, “but we don’t have to be polite.” Stay connected to them at nobigbendwall.org.
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“Stand back,” shout Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires, “geniuses at work!”
They refer to themselves, of course, demanding that public officials, farmers, towns, environmentalists, and all others get out of their way as they impose their massive AI data centers over rural America. “Our Big Money and Big Brains,” they exclaim, “will remake nature and produce phenomenal wealth.”
Haven’t we heard this before? Yes… and from these same über-rich zealots. Just a decade ago, they declared they intended to replace farmland agriculture with a techno-marvel they called “vertical farms.” Yes, instead of relying on messy, natural stuff like soil, food would henceforth be produced on sanitary plastic strays stacked to the ceilings of windowless factory warehouses controlled by computer networks. Big Tech investors like Jeff Bezos, Walmart, and Japan’s SoftBank plowed hundreds of billions of dollars into their “reinvention” of agriculture.
But what the geniuses actually produced was a bumper crop of bankruptcies, for the tech bros knew nothing about farming. Sure, displacing nature meant saving money to till the soil and feed the hogs, but those costs are nothing compared to the piles of capital required to pay for the ever-rising costs of corporate infrastructure, computers, utilities, executive salaries, administrative overhead… and capital itself.
Worse, the clueless corporatizers were surprised to discover that consumers are not actually motivated to buy a head of lettuce just because it was “vertically farmed.” So, with exorbitant costs and zero market appeal, the tech geniuses’ ag revolution fizzled.
Let us all recall this as Bezos and his billionaire coterie now insist we must follow them into their Brave New World of artificial intelligence.
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There’s a clique of plutocratic, high-tech billionaires who think they’re entitled to turn America’s farmlands and rural communities into their personal domain of predatory AI “data centers.” But a little bookstore in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recently hit those puffed-up elites where they’re most vulnerable: The funny bone.
Magic City Books put up a sign that rocketed through the Internet, mocking the fatuous potentates:
SUPPORT THESE DATA CENTERS
Schools
Libraries
Bookstores
Arrogantly, though, the likes of Amazon, Google, and Meta are frontloading trillions of dollars into creating a new social order managed by super-intelligent bots. This scheme, however, requires them to divert vast amounts of rural land, water, and energy to build and run their Orwellian empires. Yet, breathing the fumes of their own egos, the billionaires actually assumed that locals would welcome this dazzling bot wonderworld.
Bad assumption. Even in bastions of rural Republican rule, majorities are saying, “Uh… Hell No!” Indeed, at least 48 data centers were stopped last year by coordinated local opposition, and public fury has largely driven data center developers out of Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, and Wisconsin. In Texas, corrupt governor Greg Abbott openly takes AI cash to push data centers, yet rural counties are rejecting them – and the state’s far-right Republican Party has now voted to oppose building more of them.
Even Wall Street money managers are blinking, for there’s growing doubt that investors can get their money back. What’s happening is that the billionaire hucksters have run head-first into the rock-solid political belief that The People get to decide our common destiny, not a handful of techno-scammers.
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Here they come again. Every couple of decades another infestation of smiling, winking, fast-talking, corporate hucksters descends on rural America.
The scammers have varied from Big Oil’s notorious land men to peddlers of private prisons. But this one is the biggest, most important flimflam yet, with Silicon Valley billionaires and Wall Street speculators rushing through the countryside buying up vast tracts of land.
Why? Because Amazon, Google, Meta, and dozens of other tech profiteers are converting their corporations into Artificial Intelligence robotic empires, and each AI facility is absolutely humongous, requiring airport-size swaths of land.
Acreage is the least of it though, for the data centers consume Niagara Falls-levels of water. So local families, farms, factories, and businesses suddenly find their essential water supply being raided by faraway corporate water suckers.
Also, local utility bills skyrocket as profiteers drain enormous amounts of electric power from the area’s grid. Worse, corporate lobbyists squeeze local officials to subsidize this thievery! For example, a private equity predator named Apollo Global Management recently fleeced a New York county for $1.4 billion in “job-creation” subsidies for a sprawling data center that will – get this – employ only 125 people. Yes, that’s $11 million per job – with actual workers only getting a pittance of it.
You don’t need a big schnoz to smell this stink. The good news is that county officials across the country are beginning to say “NO” to AI’s money grab. Also, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed a national moratorium on this corporate frenzy to impose an AI future that We the People do not want. For more information and action, go to foodandwaterwatch.org.
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Given the increasing dominance of right-wing politics by arrogant, super-rich Tech Bros, here’s a question about wealth inequality for you barroom philosophers to ponder: Does one have to be born a jackass to become a billionaire, or does becoming a billionaire cause jackassim?
Either way, they do seem to go together – as in Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and so forth, ad nauseum. Oddly, the richer they get, the whinier they become, devolving into over-privileged crybabies.
Consider the appalling example of that California clique of Thiel, Zuck, and other Silicon super-richies. They’ve been caterwauling that if voters approve a proposed wealth tax on billionaires, By Gollies, they’ll just up and abandon the state. So? Do they not know that voters know that nearly all tax subsidies have long profited undeserving vainglorious elites like them at everyone else’s expense? So excuse us if we don’t join their pity party. In fact, most of us commoners would gladly trade that whole pack of pompous plutocrats for a dozen good kindergarten teachers.
Besides, it’s possible to be both very rich and a decent human being! I’ve known such people. For example, Texas businessman, Bernard Rapoport, who devoted millions to advancing labor, women, and our state’s progressive movement. Or my friends, Ben & Jerry, who’ve spent their lifetimes and fortunes delivering financial help – and even ice cream! – to grassroots democracy fighters. Then there’s the example of heirs to the Pillsbury family fortune – calling themselves the “Pillsbury Doughboys,” then later, “Doughgirls.” They have donated their inheritances to progressive causes benefitting the Common Good.
As an East Texas farmer pointed out to me years ago: “Money is like manure. You can’t just pile it up. It only works if you spread it across the grassroots.”
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Most people believe the American economy is being rigged by and for bankers, CEOs, and other superrich elites, because… well, because it is!
With their hired armies of lawmakers, lobbyists, lawyers, and the like, they fix the economic rules so even-more of society’s money and power flows uphill to them. Take corporate CEOs. While the economy somewhere between a downer and devastating for most people, the CEO class made out like bandits, with each of the three top paid corporate honchos pocketing as much as a billion dollars in personal pay!
Are they geniuses, or what? What. All three of their corporations ended with big financial losses and declining value. So how can such mediocrity produce such lavish rewards? Simple – rig the pay machine.
Today’s corporate system of setting compensation for top executives is a flimflam disguised as a model of management rectitude. On its face, it sounds good – “Pay for performance,” it’s called, meaning the CEO does well if the company does well.
But who defines “doing well?” The scam at most major corporations is that the standard of corporate performance that the chief must meet to quality for a huge payday is set by each corporation’s board of directors. Guess who they are? Commonly, board members are the CEO’s handpicked brothers-in-law, golfing buddies, and corporate cronies. So, they set the bar for winning multimillion-dollar executive paychecks so low that a sack of concrete could jump over it.
This is Jim Hightower saying, well, can’t corporate shareholders just vote no on any executive excess? Yes, but corporate rules decree that votes by shareholders are merely advisory, meaning top executives can ignore them, grab the money, and run. The system is fixed and we need to break it!
Do something!
There’s a growing movement to crack down on excessive CEO pay that has us pretty excited— check out this resource guide from Inequality.org to join up!
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Our future was pronounced dead last week.
I mean that glorious future of The Metaverse, promised to us by Silicon Valley’s tech and financial geniuses. Just a decade ago, they were promising us that by now we’d all be playing, working, and relating as digital avatars of ourselves, living out our lives in a phantasmagoric new world of virtual reality.
They boldly proclaimed that the next Big Thing in tech, replacing smart phones and all other personal devices would be a “Metaverse,” digitally connecting everyone everywhere. They exclaimed that by purchasing goofy-looking, reality-augmenting headsets, interactions could be done without any in-person human contact. And who better to sell this future than the super-goofy gabillionaire, Mark Zuckerberg?
The CEO of Facebook, he was so bedazzled by the digital hokum of the metaverse that he even renamed his corporation “Meta.” Then he pumped a whopping $80 billion into developing and marketing his wondrous new world, including peddling a Meta brand of those magical headsets.
Not wanting to miss out on a bonanza, other tech billionaires geniuses joined the virtual reality rush. But it was just fool’s gold, for the geniuses had failed to consider an essential factor: Customers. Far from dazzled, buyers pronounced the meta-mess: goofy.
Even Zuckerberg has now pulled the plug on his fantasy of a digital, virtual, immersive, avatar world of tech “reality.” Don’t think, however, that goofy, avaricious, egomaniacal billionaires have gained any modesty from their Metaverse misadventure. They are the same ones now hurling trillions of public and corporate dollars into erecting intrusive, massive, wasteful AI data centers all across America. Why? To power their profiteering fantasy of replacing humans with AI bots.
Do something!
Has Big Tech got you down? Ensuring emerging technologies are safe, useful and accessible can feel daunting, but here are 2 great organizations who’ve been fighting for our rights for a long time:
-
Electronic Frontier Foundation: eff.org
-
Fight for the Future: fightforthefuture.org
On the AI data center front, our friend Clayton Tucker, who is running for Agriculture Commissioner here in Texas, has made this issue a centerpiece of his campaign— these data centers are being forced upon rural areas all over the country. Follow along with his campaign to see how the fights are being won.
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Oh, gosh, there goes another one – another billionaire “flighty bird,” angrily flitting away from the home nest that long nurtured him.
This latest one is Howard Schultz, the high-flying avaricious avian who tucked away a multibillion-dollar personal fortune as the monopolistic, exploitative CEO of the Starbucks coffee chain. Howard has recently fallen into a deep pout over the downright rudeness he says he’s received from officials in his home base of Washington State.
What’s his gripe? Haven’t you heard, he squawks, the state legislature intends to make rich corporatists like me start paying income taxes!
Indeed, Washington is one of only nine states with no income tax, even on billionaires. Instead, to fund public needs, it relies on regressive sales taxes paid by poor and middle-income consumers. So, in an overdue stand for fairness and the Common Good, the state is levying a minimal tax on those few elites who haul in more than a million bucks a year – with the money going to such crucial public needs as child care.
But damn the need, Billionaire Schultz is foot-stomping furious that he would have to pay his fair share for the upkeep of the state that has helped him thrive. So, Howard has taken flight, winging clear across the country to Florida, where the right-wing governor and legislature shields the rich from pesky taxes.
Proving that “Birds of a feather flock together,” the aristocratic chieftains of such other corporate fiefdoms as Amazon, Meta, and Google are also now nesting in Florida’s tax-evasion enclaves. When billionaires declare “We’re all in this together” – they don’t mean you me – only themselves and their tax lawyers.
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We Americans are barraged these days with multiple crises, so, I hate to add anything else to our list of worries.
But I’m told this one is an epic disaster, so we must respond! It started in California, and one financial leader there now calls it “the greatest tragedy this state has ever felt.” Holy Titanic! What can it be?
Uh… it’s a tax. Does that mean it would add to the burden of hard-hit poor and middle-class families? No, it wouldn’t apply to them at all, or even to mere millionaires. Rather, it’s a ballot initiative to put a one-time wealth tax on the über-rich – the billionaire class. Indeed, only about 200 royally rich California folks would pay anything under this proposal.
But those billionaires are squealing like stuck pigs, and they’ve hired hoards of lobbyists, lawyers, PR flacks, and front groups to try killing the proposal. Such overprivileged plutocratic ninnies as Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg have even declared that, By Gollies, they will just pack up and leave California if required to pay a pittance of their fortunes to support the basic needs of common people.
Californians, though, seem not to care. In recent surveys, only 28 percent of the state’s voters oppose the wealth tax. Indeed, nationwide, 60 percent of us want billionaire tax dodgers to start paying their fair share.
People are sick of the greed of… well let’s call them what they are: The filthy rich. There’s a fast-spreading attitudinal shift from the right-wing’s long insistence that the rich are to be admired and coddled. Instead, majorities today are reconnecting to the eternal truth that “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
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At last, someone with some common sense in their head, some basic humanity in their heart, and some fundamental democratic values in their soul – is speaking out.
Many someones, actually. Indeed, a coalition of dozens of progressive groups representing millions of Americans is uniting in straightforward populist opposition to the far-out right wing’s loopy assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Bizarrely, Trump’s menagerie of extremist Republican politicos has been waging a furious war against these basic egalitarian ideals, trying to turn DEI into a partisan bugaboo. That’s goofy and ultimately self-defeating, for they are asking voters to reject their lifelong admiration for these positive social goals. Consider the value of D, E, and I:
One, diversity. That’s “us,” the marvelous mix of common people, cultures, and beliefs that gives America vitality and resilience.
Two, equity. That’s just another word for “fairness,” so why do they want to demonize that?
Three, inclusion. Hello – that’s what “democracy” means – we all belong and our voice matters.
Yet, the Trumpians are using brute authoritarianism to try ripping these core democratic values out of the fabric of our society. And, pathetically, many major corporate powers, universities, media outlets, and other institutions that ought to stand against these Orwellian dictates, have pusillanimously capitulated, hoping the GOP’s imperious regime will reward them with financial favors.
When institutions fail the people, We the People have to rise up. That’s the momentous rallying cry of some 70 nationwide groups of gutsy democracy fighters organized by Color of Change to stand up for the invaluable Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that make America… America! To connect, go to ColorOfChange.org.
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Trust me when I say that a home on Indian Creek Island is not for you.
First of all, you’re not a billionaire. But even a billion bucks wouldn’t buy your way onto this island in Florida’s Biscayne Bay. It’s the exclusive domain of such multi-multi-billionaires as Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Ivanka Trump… and now Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and Instagram.
Mark, nicknamed “Zuck,” has just paid $170 million for a piece of this very special speck of turf, including a “cottage” with 9 bedrooms, 11 baths, a gym, a massage room, and a 1,500-gallon aquarium. Also, he built-in his own personal hair salon, plus a library with – get this – a secret passageway. No clue as to whether he reads any books, or just uses the passage to escape.
Secondly, you wouldn’t really be happy on Indian Creek Island, because it’s a pretentious fake. This high-value enclave was constructed for low-value hucksters who’ve amassed outrageous fortunes by screwing over masses of workers, competitors, taxpayers, and others. Even the “island” is fake – it’s a man-made landfill built in the Bay so ten very, very rich swells can isolate themselves from us commoners. Also, it’s more of a doomsday compound than a community, with each of the über-rich hunkered down in what’s been dubbed “Billionaire Bunker.”
These demigods of gross inequality can buy any piece of paradise, but then they’re so spooked they lock themselves behind $170-million walls, afraid of their own shadows. So, here’s my free advice to Zuck to soothe his plutocratic trepidations: Steal a little less, practice being slightly likable, maybe downsize to only a $70 million mansion… and live more. You’re welcome.
Do something!
Want to help force billionaires to pay their fair share? Check out Americans for Tax Fairness at americansfortaxfairness.org.
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Greetings, Lowdowners—Deanna here!
In January, paid subscribers got 45 minutes of unfiltered Hightower at our Happy Hour Q&A. If you missed it—or if you’re a free subscriber wondering what these gatherings are like—here’s a taste.
We asked readers to bring questions, stories, anything. What we got was one of the best evenings we’ve had: Hightower on organizing in red states, the horror of what’s happening with ICE, why the Democrats need big ideas, and—because it’s Hightower—some absolutely wild stories from campaigning across Texas in small planes held together with duct tape and optimism.
The clip above is one of my favorite all-time stories: the famous beer run with Melvin Lowry out in West Texas. When you're a broke statewide candidate in Texas, you get where you're going however you can. In Hightower's case, that meant farmers with planes, county roads as landing strips, and pit stops for six-packs. "The secret to the high wire is never look at the high wire. You just land."
If you thought the beer run was something, wait until you hear about the plane where Hightower’s passenger seat was a kitchen chair with a seatbelt—and the only way to get airborne was for two guys to hold up the tail and run down the runway. “I am a serious candidate for statewide office in the state of Texas.”
One last gem from that night covers while the Populist movement of the late 1800s was so successful: they knew that politics couldn’t be just a bunch of committee meetings. They created fun. Here, Hightower shares an insight that Pete Seeger once told him about how he discovered politics through the Chautauqua movement.
These are the kinds of evenings paid subscribers get—stories you won’t hear anywhere else, and a chance to actually ask Hightower what’s on your mind.
The full 45-minute video, including Hightower on why organizing together beats just calling your red state Senator, how Democratic leadership is responding to our grassroots pressure, and the vision for getting money out of politics, is is available to paid subscribers here.
If last week’s C-SPAN video was a window into Hightower’s world, this is a seat at the table. More on that next week.
Happy Friday, everyone.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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Bribery of a lawmaker used to be a straightforward retail transaction between the special interest briber and a specific bribee. But the Silicon Valley billionaires now invading rural America with hundreds of their exploitative AI data centers are out to buy state lawmakers in bulk.
Instead of slipping cash-filled envelopes to individual politicos, tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI, are putting up hundreds of millions of dollars in this spring’s midterm elections to pay for the campaigns of candidates who pledge to back their intrusive, water-sucking, energy-wasting, AI schemes. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has two super-PACs doling out $65 million to state and local politicians who will oppose any regulation of sprawling data centers he wants to impose on rural Texas and Illinois.
Why such a barrage of corporate money in local legislative races? Because the countryside is aflame with fury that arrogant, avaricious AI profiteers think they’re entitled to walk over local communities – so these locals are demanding that their legislators regulate or even ban AI data centers.
Unable (or unwilling) to win political support honestly, the corporate giants intend to overpower the democratic will of the people by effectively bribing submissive legislators with campaign cash – or by funding opponents for lawmakers who refuse to be bought.
Of course, bribers and bribees alike will piously pretend that the corporate ruse of buying government policy by buying legislative seats is technically not a bribe. But hello – rigging the system so billionaire donors can crush local democracy is not a “technicality.” If it looks, smells, and has the impact of a bribe… it is one.
Do something!
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To follow fights around the country and learn more about AI data centers, subscriber to Data Center Watch Briefing: datacenterwatch.substack.com
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MediaJustice has developed a toolkit to understand and fight data centers, and were key in forcing a major setback to a planned data center in West Texas.
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The Democratic Party establishment is rolling out its arsenal of big funders and political consultants, trying to defeat… Democrats.
Huh? Yes, led by Sen. Chuck “Don’t-Rock-the-Corporate-Boat” Schumer, the party’s Washington hierarchy has been working to eliminate upstart Democratic contenders who are unabashedly progressive and popular! These candidates are generating new grassroots energy and hope for the party by bluntly challenging Washington’s meek, business-as-usual politics that Schumer embodies.
Pundits say Democrats need to find candidates who can appeal to workers. Well, here’s one who is full-blooded working class: Graham Platner. A 41-year old military combat veteran, Platner is a plain-spoken oyster farmer who’s running right at “the oligarchy – the billionaires who pay for it and the politicians who sell us out.” Platner’s fiery populist spirit has sparked statewide grassroots support, volunteers, funding, and enthusiasm that Maine Democrats have not had in years.
But, uninvited, here came Chuck – lugging his ponderous wet blanket of high-dollar corporate politics to the state. Trying to stop a real democrat from being the party’s nominee, Schumer recruited Maine’s lame-duck, milquetoast governor to run against Platner, knowing she would not challenge the corporate order. He raised truckloads of corporate cash for her, hoping to suffocate the oysterman’s populist uprising.
But by assaulting Platner with a barrage of out-of-state of corporate money, Schumer and his hand-picked candidate are actually assaulting the “little-d,” working-class democrats who’ve rallied to the maverick. Attacking your own constituents is an odd strategy, and sure enough, it doesn’t seem to be selling in Maine – a recent poll of likely Democratic voters shows Platner with a 38-point lead over Schumer’s choice to be Maine’s senator.
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Greetings, Lowdowners—Deanna here.
This spring, we’re doing something a little different. Over the next few weeks, we’re opening the gates a bit — giving free subscribers a taste of some of the exclusive stories, video, and behind-the-scenes Hightower that paid subscribers get regularly. If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading, consider this your invitation to see what you’ve been missing.
And we’re kicking it off with a doozy.
Reader Elliot K. shared with us this video from C-SPAN that we didn’t know existed—and it’s a rollicking time capsule that you don’t want to miss. Hightower hosts a storytelling evening over beers with friends Molly Ivins, Ed Wendler, Ty Fain, Buck Wood, and more, plus a surprise visit (and great story) from State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos.
Scholz Garten in Austin, the setting for this gathering, is historic for a number of reasons, but it’s long been a watering hole for politicos of all stripes. As Buck Wood, then the director of Common Cause Texas, explains:
Some of [the legislative bills] were literally hammered out right down here in the beer garden. There’s been some great political fights here, there’s been some pretty good fist fights here for years. Usually over political matters.
There are too many stories in here nail the spirit of Texas politics, but my favorite is a spicy one from heroine Molly Ivins that I’d never heard before:
One of great ongoing literary attractions of Scholz Beer Garden is the graffiti in the restrooms. And I myself have never frequented the men’s room here, no matter how serious the cause. I do remember an exchange. This was back when Frank Erwin, he was chairman of the UT Board of Regents, he was Lyndon Johnson’s man, and he really was in many ways a miserable sumbitch. I went to the ladies room one night and there was a note on the wall saying, “Do a good deed today, give Frank Erwin the clap.” Underneath which somebody else had written, “Give it to him? Hell, charge him for it!”
Happy Friday everyone—let us know your favorite parts in the comments.
PS—If you haven’t seen the documentary “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins,” get thee to a streaming service immediately!
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To see how the game of “Rig the System” is played, consider the shameful corporate gaming of the horror of California wildfires that have been devouring lives and entire communities.
Many of the worst fires have been ignited by the faulty wires, transformers, and other poorly functioning equipment of such profiteering electric utilities as Southern California Edison. The safety failures of this multibillion-dollar giant have been so awful that state lawmakers and regulators have rushed out fire-protection laws – not for the people, but for the corporate owners! A 2019 law literally protects utilities from paying for fire damages they cause, instead passing the costs to state taxpayers.
Wait, says Edison, if our annual safety record is poor, our top executives are punished with a cut in their annual bonuses. Ouch! Well, not really – the reduction is capped at 5 percent.
Take last year’s fire that destroyed nearly every home and building in the town of Altadena, killing 19 people. “It’s just a tragedy,” lamented Edison’s CEO, though he admits it was sparked by an Edison transmission line. Sure enough, the chief “suffered” a 5-percent bonus hickey. Hold your pity, though, for that means he still collected 95 percent of his 2025 performance bonus, plus pocketing his extravagant salary, stock options, and benefits. In all, the man-in-charge of this corporate-made “tragedy” walked away with nearly $14 million in personal pay.
Meanwhile, Edison went to the Public Utility Commission, demanding that its customers be forced to pay 10 percent more on their electric bills. To keep score on utilities rigging the system, go to TURN, The Utility Reform Network: turn.org.
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America’s present president is like those egos who feel entitled to carve their name into every park bench they sit on, apparently to “make their mark” and shout to the world, “I wuz here!”
Indeed, Trump has demanded that our government patch his “Donald J. Trump” onto such public facilities as the Kennedy Center, the Institute of Peace, Dulles Airport, Penn Station, the Hudson Tunnel – and he might as well add the US Capitol since he treats Congress like his personal possession.
Insecurity is what’s driving his egomaniacal rebranding frenzy. As Trump candidly explains, “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one will remember you.”
Oh, Donald, like the demagogic Joe McCarthy and other narcissistic politicos, you’re destined to be long remembered… and mocked! Moreover, those vainglorious, gold-plated Trump nameplates you’re tacking onto every public space will soon be unceremoniously stripped off and dumped into the trash bin of history.
My friend, Fred Harris, a great populist senator from Oklahoma, told about the fickle nature of political fame. It was a true story about a governor who backed a boondoggle construction project after lobbyists promised to name the structure after him. They did, but as soon as the governor left office, his name was removed. Fred said if anyone ever dedicated a bridge or building to him, he wanted his name built into the structure itself, so if they later tried to remove his name, “the damned thing would fall down.”
So don’t despair that this president seems omnipresent. This too, will pass. Keep whacking at the autocratic, plutocratic structure of Trumpism – it’s not built to withstand the winds time, much less the winds of democratic rebellion.
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Here’s something we don’t get to say very often: “Way to go Mississippi!”
This state has long been ranked dead last in important measurements like healthcare, workers’ wages, and rural opportunities. In recent years, though, Mississippi has steadily been advancing to the top in one vital category: Best places for a poor child to get a good education. What a miracle!
No. It’s the product of ordinary citizens who got fed up with plutocratic state rule that lavishes taxpayer funds on corporate elites, while shortchanging the basic needs of workaday people. In the past decade, savvy grassroots coalitions like Mississppi United have arisen and spread, gaining local political punch in county after county that could not be ignored by legislators.
Early on they achieved major state investments in pre-K education, producing remarkable advances, especially by low-income children in many of the state’s poverty-stricken, rural counties.
This year, building on that success, the movement scored two huge educational victories. First, they produced a unanimous senate vote to defeat a school privatization scheme pushed by the right-wing governor, the corporate establishment, out-of-state school profiteers… and Donald Trump! Then, to emphasize and expand on the state’s commitment to quality public education, the legislature passed a $5,000 teacher pay raise.
As a legislative leader from Starkville said after the senate vote: “Our public schools are the cornerstone of every community in this state, and this unanimous rejection sends a clear message: Mississippi will not abandon the students and families who depend on quality public education – no matter how much out-of-state money tries to buy our legislators.”
To learn more about the uplifting “Mississippi Miracle” go to ACLU-MS.org.
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In 1988, I was one of only two white elected Democratic officials in all of America to endorse Jesse Jackson to be our party’s nominee for President. (The other was Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington Vermont).
As a Texas politico, my endorsement of the fiery Black leader was both derided as political suicide and hailed as gutsy. But it was neither – it was just the right thing to do. As I had learned from an old-time Texas Democrat, “Every now and then, a politician ought to do something just because it’s right.”
In the 1970s and 80s, I had gotten to know and work with Jackson. A renown orator, he was an even more effective thinker and uniter. For example, he was able to link white, conservative dirt farmers in common cause with impoverished farmworkers and inner-city families battling chain-store profiteers.
So, when he ran for president, I had to ask myself: If this guy (1) is standing for the progressive populist values I believe in, (2) is standing with the grassroots families I’m fighting for, and (3) has the populist grit to stand up to the moneyed elites – why am I not standing with him?
Millions of us responded to his deliberate campaign trying to forge a multi-racial populist movement, and it’s up to us to carry that historic mission forward. But Jackson’s “Rainbow” vision was not one of fluffy hope however, but one of profound “intentionality.” That means doing the grunt-level political work of strategizing, organizing, and mobilizing to make good things happen. Especially in these dark Trumpian times, emphasizing Jesse’s deliberate determination is the best way to honor this true champion of democracy.
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How are monopolistic corporations able to gain their economic dominance? They get politicians to give it to them.
Consider the old robber barons. They weren’t brilliant investors or managers, they were ruthless exploiters of government giveaways, and they routinely bribed lawmakers and other officials to permit their monopolistic thievery.
Likewise, today’s monopoly players have captured local, state, and national markets – not through honest competition, but by getting public officials to subsidize their expansion and to rig the rules against small competitors. Monopolizers buy this favoritism with the legalized bribes of dark-money campaign donations they lavish on compliant lawmakers.
Investigative digger Stacy Mitchell recently documented how this corrupt political favoritism has allowed massive retail chains like Walmart, Kroger, and Dollar Store to crush thousands of local grocers. This has left millions of Americans living in “food deserts” – worker class, poor, and rural communities with no food store.
What happened? As grocery chains spread from local to regional to national, they demanded that food manufacturers give them big discounts – a dramatic monopoly pricing advantage over independent rivals, so hometown grocers began hemorrhaging customers. This raw, anti-competitive, price discrimination was a flagrant violation of America’s anti-monopoly law – but here came Big Money to protect the monopolists.
In 1980, as Ronald Reagan was railing against “silly” consumer protection laws, supermarket lobbyists poured campaign cash into top officials of both parties. What they bought was bipartisan agreement to simply stop enforcing that “rusty” old antitrust law that had protected a competitive grocery economy for nearly 50 years.
But good news! That useful, highly-effective law is still on the books, so let’s build a long-term grassroots campaign to rejuvenate it and re-outlaw monopolization, redlining, and price gouging by food giants. For more information, go to ilsr.org.
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Except for Zorro and Batman, people who put on masks to hide their identity when going to work are rarely up to any good.
And as Americans learned decades ago when Ku Klux Klanners covered themselves from head to toe, the bigger the mask, the greater the evil hiding behind it. Which brings us full circle to “Operation Metro Surge.”
OMS is the muy macho PR slogan for the Republican Party’s militaristic invasions of Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and other American cities they hate. Deploying ICE and other bastions of authoritarian power, thousands of massively armed federal belligerents in full assault gear have been rampaging through peaceful neighborhoods in violent and murderous mass sweeps.
This is an un-American attack by America’s own government on America’s founding ideals of liberty and openness. The defining symbol of this government repression is that its forces are all hiding behind full-face masks.
Of course, if I was doing some of the stuff ICE commandos are doing, I’d want to cover my face, too. But, like the Klan, masking up the oppressors is not merely about cloaking their personal shame — it’s an added ploy by the perpetrators to terrify anyone who might dare to stand up to them.
As usual, though, the authoritarian powers misunderstood America and underestimated the deeply rebellious nature of our gutsy, grassroots people. Some 30,000 volunteers in Minneapolis, for example, have become trained “constitutional observers” to police the police, and a citywide “whistle brigade” rushes like Paul Revere to alert neighbors when ICE agents invade their neighborhoods.
Their ethic of neighbors-helping-neighbors recognizes their power to “do what’s right.” It’s the best of America standing up to confront the worst.
Do something!
Our friends at the Working Families Party are leading the charge to pressure Democrats to vote NO on any DHS bill that does not work to stop ICE’s reckless attacks. You can text “ICE OUT” to 30403 or dial 833-636-3260 to call your Senators. Need a sample script? Here you go:
When you connect, say your name and where you live to show that you’re a constituent. Then, you could say something like:
“ICE’s reckless and illegal attacks on our communities must be stopped. But instead of ending and investigating ICE’s abuses, the DHS spending bill would empower this rogue agency to terrorize and kill even more of our neighbors. As your constituent, I urge you to vote against the DHS funding bill and stand up to ICE.”
Here’s a whole set of actions they’ve compiled to help direct your energy.
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George Orwell spoke bluntly about the nefarious nature of advertising, calling it “the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”
Even Orwell, though, would’ve been astonished by the cacophony of swill bucket advertising currently being blasted at us by Amazon, Google, Meta, and other profiteering tech giants. What are they trying to sell?
Pure hogwash. Having spent billions to develop artificial intelligence so humanoid robots can displace workers, the tech geniuses are now rushing to build thousands of vast computer data centers necessary to power their Brave New AI World. Each center wills suck up local water supplies, drastically raise people’s utility bills, create monstrous industrial blight and pollution, and enthrone such autocratic thugs as Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg as absentee bosses with domineering power over each locality.
But the billionaires forgot something: You and me. “We the People” are in open rebellion against this Orwellian future, with officials in multiple states and localities “Just Saying Hell No” to the profiteers’ invasive scams.
Thus, the billionaire hucksters are frantically rattling their swill sticks. For example, Mark Zuckerberg – whose Meta goliath already operates 26 massive data centers and is now spending $600 billion to plop more of them in our communities – has launched a multimillion-dollar offensive to beat back local opponents. It’s running BS television ads in state capitol cities, financing political candidates to hype the data centers, deploying untold numbers of lobbyists to rig the rules against opponents, and hiring an army of “community affairs” agents to spread AI propaganda.
The swill bucket brigade has the fat cats, but a groundswell of us alley cats that has them on the run. To get involved, go to mediajustice.org/tools.
Do something!
The Center for Media Justice has been leading the way in fighting data centers in lots of communities around the country— here’s how they beat back one in Amarillo, TX, for example. Get involved at mediajustice.org!
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Years ago, when I announced that I was leaving my job as editor of The Texas Observer to run for political office, I had to admit that into politics is the only downward career move one can make from journalism!
But being a both a journalist and a politician does hone in one’s ability to detect the smell of BS – and we Americans are presently getting a noxious blast of that stench from our warmongering Department of Defense.
The vast, trillion-dollar Pentagon is the ultimate Big Brother bureaucracy, literally empowered to compel thousands of Americans to die in foolish military misadventures cooked up by political partisans and profiteering corporate contractors. That’s why it’s so alarming that Trump’s “Project 2025” autocrats are now rushing to slam an iron door of censorship on reporters trying to inform us commoners about the militaristic schemes and corporate fraud that come from inside this government fortress.
In the name of defending freedom, Trump’s palace guards are banning media outlets that displease his royal highness. Also, “Pretty Boy Pete Hegseth,” Trump’s made-for-TV Pentagon honcho, has even decreed that reporters must be tightly monitored by military escorts while doing interviews, reviewing documents, and otherwise exorcising the essential Constitutional rights of our nation’s free press.
The good news is that rather than kowtowing to the autocrats, dozens of media organizations have told Pete to stuff it, choosing to do old-school outsider digging into this insider war machine.
Meanwhile, the “Project 2025” authoritarians hail their clamp down on free press rights by touting their “fresh relationship” with what they call their “new Pentagon press corps.” Right – it’s their partisan press corps, not ours.
Do something!
Our friends over at Free Press have launched a newsletter, “Pressing Issues,” to cover the future of media—and advocate for the freedoms we need in journalism. Check it out at pressingissues.org.
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While the production of my Lowdown commentaries is high-tech, I confess that I’m antiquated.
I still write each piece in longhand, applying my ballpoint to paper. This has caused bewildered glances from some who see me scribbling away in local coffeeshops and bars. Recently, one fellow sidled up and whispered: “Watch out! If they see you doin’ this, they’ll haul you off to the Smithsonian.”
But we handwriters might not be as obsolete as the key-tappers assume. A fast-spreading grassroots movement is calling for schools to reemphasize the value of writing and printing by hand, instead of being wholly-dependent on machines. Already, 24 states – as varied as Mississippi and California– now require public schools to teach cursive handwriting in third-through fifth grades.
This squares with new understanding of how brains absorb information. While keyboards are faster, the slower, more tactile act of handwriting creates longer lasing comprehension of letters – and better retention of the thoughts they convey. Neuroscientists find that rote keystrokes on a computer require little mental engagement, while physically drawing out words and ideas takes coordination of multiple areas of the brain to focus memory, eyes, and fingers on creating a written product.
Just writing this piece conjured up a fond remembrance of my early childhood: Sitting on the floor of our home learning to draw the ABCs, both print and cursive, on those lined practice pads. It was both an artistic exercise and the development of a foundational tool for a life of learning.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Yes, computer literacy is an indispensable element of today’s childhood curriculum --- but so is the richer development of human thinking through putting pen to paper. So let’s teach both!
PS—Here’s a post we did a couple years ago about how Hightower’s work goes from handwritten on paper to whooshing through the ether into your inboxes:
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There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries like Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco – that persistently do rotten things.
Then there is the nursing home industry – where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life “experience” can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of natural indignities bedeviling us, and good nursing homes help gentle this time. In the past couple of decades, though, an entirely unnatural force has come to dominate the delivery of aged care: Profiteering corporate chains and Wall Street speculators.
The very fact that this essential and sensitive social function, which ought to be the domain of health professionals and charitable enterprises, is now called an “industry” reflects a total perversion of its purpose. Some 70 percent of nursing homes are now corporate operations run by absentee executives who have no experience in nursing homes and who’re guided by the market imperative of maximizing investor profits. They constantly demand “efficiencies” from their facilities, which invariably means reducing the number of nurses, which invariably reduces care, which means more injuries, illness… and deaths. As one nursing expert rightly says, “It’s criminal.”
But it’s not against the law, since the industry’s lobbying front – a major donor to congressional campaigns – effectively writes the laws, which allows corporate hustlers to provide only one nurse on duty, no matter how many patients are in the facility. A humane nurse-staffing requirement has been proposed, but the profiteering “industry” furiously opposes it… and Congress is dutifully bowing to industry profits. After all, granny doesn’t make campaign donations.
To help push for sanity and humanity, contact TheConsumerVoice.org.
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Thanks to all of you who joined us last night for our first experiment with Substack’s live video feature! After reviewing the questions that you left for us last week, we got to tackling a few of them—Hightower gave advice to Maria in Wyoming, who’s frustrated with calling her Republican representatives, and the role of grassroots organizing in red states. We also got to hear some big stories about tiny airplanes (thanks, Shira!), and Hightower’s opinion about why some elected Democrats are loud and proud, while a lot of senators have not been taking strong action against the fascist invasion and occupation of many cities in the US, which was Fred’s question. Richard asked about a left-wing “Project 2025,” and as part of that answer, Hightower gave a rough estimate of how old Ralph Nader is— not to be missed.
We ironed out a few of the initial technical glitches, by the way, and I’m also working on making sure comments from everyone are enabled for the next live event, because we really missed hearing your live feedback! Let us know what your favorite parts were in the comments. Thanks again for watching!
Reminder: Join us TONIGHT at 6pm CT for Happy Hour with Hightower!
The US military has long been an easy mark – for our own avaricious corporate contractors, that is.
During the Civil War, for example, J.P. Morgan sold rifles to the Union army that cost him only $3.50 each, but he charged the military $22 each. Worse, his rifles were defective, blowing off the thumbs of soldiers who fired them. Still, a Congressional committee ruled that Morgan had a “legal” contract and had to be paid in full.
Which brings us to the screwball contracts the Pentagon routinely signs these days with multibillion-dollar corporate con artists hawking weaponry. These gougers, though, have streamlined their taxpayer thievery by automatically inserting a corporate gotcha in nearly every Pentagon contract. It makes it illegal for the military to repair the weapons and systems they have bought!
A drone won’t fly? An AI system goes haywire? Anti-aircraft rockets fail? DON’T touch the systems! No — you must call a corporate-approved tech repair person, or take the malfunctioning gizmo to the manufacturer.
Yes, this is insane, unworkable, immoral… and the very definition of “snafu.” But corporate profiteers have made it the law. At last, though, soldiers, battleground commanders and common-sense members of both parties are rebelling, supporting Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “Warrior Right to Repair Act.” Pathetically, Congress and avaricious contractor lobbyists recently defeated this bill, wailing contractor property rights is more important than authorizing soldiers to make lifesaving repairs in the field.
The fight goes on, though, and you can help. Two lawmakers who engineered this travesty are Mike Rogers of Alabama and Adam Smith of Washington State, both of whom take hundreds of thousands of dollars from the war profiteers. To fight their insanity, go to pirg.org/repair.
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Reminder: Join us live this Thursday at 6pm CT for Happy Hour with Hightower!
If you’re ever asked to define the word oxymoron, just say, “Congressional ethics.” People instinctively burst out guffawing at the absurdity of linking Congress to upright behavior.
But, surprisingly, Republican congressional leaders say they’re now taking a bold stand for a little less corruption among their own members, targeting lawmakers who’ve been secretly enriching themselves through “insider stock trading.” Actually, the leaders were forced to support this bit of reform because of public outrage over the dirty dealing of Rep. Rob Bresnahan. This multimillionaire Republican was caught using his insider position last year to profit from the GOP’s gutting of Medicaid benefits for poor people.
So, last month, the party’s designated ethics watchdog, Bryan Steil, rose on his hind legs to introduce the Stop Insider Trading Act. “If you want to trade stocks,” Steil howled in operatic outrage, “go to Wall Street.”
Bravissimo! Except it was a fraud. Far from stopping the self-enriching stock scams of lawmakers like Bresnahan, Steil’s bill basically legalizes their corrupt transactions. For example, members could keep trading stocks in corporations they supposedly oversee. And, in the loopiest of loopholes, sneaky lawmakers are authorized to have their spouses buy and sell stocks on the member’s behalf.
Then, showing his party’s true colors, Steil exclaimed that we outsiders should not even push Congress to pass an honest, outright ban on insider trading – because that would discourage wealthy business executives from choosing to enter “public service.”
Hello, that gives us two reason to demand a ban – (first) to impose a minimal ethical standard on lawmakers, and (second) to shoo off self-serving monopolists and plutocrats from controlling the public’s agenda.
Do something!
If you’re fed up with rigged congressional systems of corruption, check out Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who call Steil’s act a “joke,” and are working to pass the Restore Trust in Congress Act.
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WARNING: News headlines can give you a headache.
For example, take typical headlines on today’s environmental stories:
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Earth’s climate getting catastrophically hotter, faster
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Greenhouse pollution increasing again
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President calls global warming a “hoax”
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Fracking executive now runs Energy Department
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US funding new coal plants
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White House abruptly cancels wind-power projects.
Whew! My head hurts. The negativity in such headlines tells people that grassroots activism demanding clean energy and environmental sanity is futile, for government has been shanghaied by a political cabal of corporate executives.
But wait – while it doesn’t get front page treatment, a bracing wind of change is blowing in from the countryside! It turns out that producers, funders, and consumers of alternative energy have not rejected a brighter, sustainable future just because profiteers and politicians command us to follow them off the cliff.
Indeed, here’s a surprising development that the calcified defenders of dirty monopolized fuels could not have imagined only 10 years ago: Even in the fossilized Kingdom of Texas,solar power now provides more electricity to our people than does King Coal! Despite relentless efforts by our corrupt governor and top Republican officials to rig the marketplace against renewable energy, solar arrays and wind turbines are soon to pass Big Oil’s fracked gas as the top supplier of electricity to Texas homes and businesses.
Here’s an uplifting headline for you: Last year, wind, sun, and other renewable sources surged past coal as America’s number one source of electric power. As a leading climate scientist concludes: “We are at the end of the fossil fuel economy.” So, keep pushing.
Do something!
Want to keep pushing for environmental wins in Texas? Check out the Texas Campaign for the Environment, who have scored some great wins and continue to push for more.
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One of the most obnoxious sounds in nature is the whine of a Wall Street banker. It’s a cross between the tantrum of a peevish brat and the blathering of a sputtering old plutocrat.
Consider the long, piteous whimper of Jamie Dimon, potentate of the powerful JPMorgan Chase banking empire. He constantly whines about laws to restrict banker greed, even toting around a Rube Goldberg-style cartoon depicting a tangle of rules that, he squeals, is choking poor Wall Streeters like him.
Before you break into tears about Jamie’s plight, though, notice that he and his bank are not choking on rules, but gorging on riches. Dimon himself pocketed – get this -- $770 million in personal pay last year.
Golly, we should all suffer like poor Jamie!
And he’s hardly alone in singing the “Talking Banker Blues,” for that elite clique has long pouted that they’re paupers compared to the billionaires of high tech. So, mounting an odd boardroom “labor action,” bankers have been getting drastic payhikes. The CEO of Citigroup, for example, recently set a new bottom line expectation for top-floor bankers: A 2025 paycheck of more than $100 million!
How can a business lavish such a windfall on one guy? Easy. The CEO slashed tens of thousands of bank employees from Citi’s payroll last year, so he got their pay.
Woody Guthrie once wrote a parody of such predatory behavior, singing “I am a jolly banker, A jolly banker am I.” Today’s Wall Street aristocrats are jolly, too, bloating their extravagant wealth by taking wages and livelihoods from thousands of their own employees. As Woody might sing, that’s how inequality “happens.”
Do something!
Wanna fight the bankers and their rigged systems? Americans for Financial Reform thinks that “the financial system should serve an economy where everyone can thrive, not just enrich a powerful few.” Sounds great to us! Check them out at ourfinancialsecurity.org.
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Interesting fact: While all federal officials take an oath that they will support the US Constitution, Supreme Court justices must also take a second (and very profound) oath of office.
As New York Times judicial columnist Adam Liptak reports, each of the nine “supremes” must swear that they will “do equal right to the poor and the rich.” Yes, class fairness is not only a core element of justice, but it’s supposed out to be a formal measure of Supreme Court behavior.
Every justice is aware of this consequential, ethical requirement, since each one took the oath. How damning, then, that the Court’s right-wing ideologues feel no twinge of conscience about flagrantly and frequently violating their own word of honor! Call the roll: Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. In case after case that pits corporate power against workers, consumers, small business, voters, communities, our environment, farm families—i.e., you and me—this plutocratic cabal rules for the rich.
This month, an independent study of decisions by the Roberts Court revealed that two-thirds of its rulings favor wealthy powers over middle-income and poor people. Thus, our so-called “court of justice” is a primary pusher of inequality, especially through its farfetched decree that unlimited corporate political cash is “free speech,” and that corporations are “people.”
Chief Justice Roberts smugly proclaims that the Constitution tells him whether the corporate giant or “the little guy” should win. “That’s the oath” I took, he sniffs.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Bovine excrement! It’s obvious that plutocratic ideologues like him are using the Constitution like a ventriloquist dummy. And—hello, your honorableness—what about that other oath you took about equal fairness for the poor?
Do something!
There are groups that are working on holding the mighty Supremes accountable—what a world that will be! Check out:
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The Alliance for Justice
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Common Cause
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Brennan Center for Justice
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In my childhood years, I got to experience something I’ve cherished ever since: Starry nights.
I was lucky to spend time during the summers on my Aunt Eula’s and Uncle Ernest’s tenant farm in Northeast Texas. With no TV or electronics, we made our own entertainment in the evenings, including “turning on” nature’s Big Show. This meant rolling an old bed outdoors as darkness fell, so we could lay back, look up, and marvel at the endless expanse of constellations, comets, the Milky Way, planets, and other wonders of the cosmos. Today, though, 80 percent of Americans never see the starry night, for the artificial glare of city lights blots out nature’s spectacular display.
But wait – billionaires to the rescue! Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and other high-tech demigods who’re spending trillions to foist a brave new world of artificial intelligence on us, claim that their scheme will actually relight the night sky!
For real? Of course not.
It turns out that they can’t get enough cheap land and energy on Earth to supply the phantasmagoric sprawl of data centers their AI hustle will demand. So, they’re going to put massive clusters of these systems into orbit, tethered to miles of solar mirrors stretching across our sky. While that means nature’s stars-and-stuff will be even more obscured, they say that instead of watching the cosmos, we Earthlings can enjoy the artificial twinkle of their corporate data centers.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Lest you think that, surely they wouldn’t do this, note that those arrogant billionaire Lords of the Night are already investing humongous sums of money in space data centers As the CEO of one called “Starcloud” bluntly says: “It’s not a debate. It’s going to happen.”
Do something!
Not surprisingly, fighting for a quiet night sky is a difficult and overlooked area of activism. Here are some folks we found working on the issue—if you know of more, leave ‘em in the comments!
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Dark Sky International works to create and preserve localities from light pollution, and they’ve started to address the impact of satellites, too. Here’s a paper they released late last year.
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On the nerdier side of things, the International Astronomical Union (IAU)’s Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky (CPS) — if that isn’t a mouthful, we don’t know what is — is working to mitigate the negative impact of satellite constellations. (The image used above is courtesy of the IAU.)
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Recent polling confirms what you’d hear if you talked to people at most any Chat & Chew Café across America – namely, our political system is broken.
In fact, nearly all of us feel that way. While people strongly believe that representative democracy is the best system, they can plainly see that what we have today is neither democracy nor representative. Washington and most state governments routinely enact policies and budgets benefitting über-rich political donors, while cutting programs that regular people want and need.
It’s not just that the system is failing to do what grassroots America wants done, while doing what most people oppose, but that the insiders in charge, whether Republican or Democrat, don’t listen… or really care.
At the core of this dangerous disconnect is the fact that our highly-touted democratic ambitions have devolved into a moneyed autocracy, a self-perpetuating political system operating independent of the popular will. The issue of all 2026 issues is this: Money rules. Very Big Money, mostly anti-democracy, billionaire money.
Trump, Congress, the courts, governors – and especially the billionaires – know this. They wink at it, rely on it, and even cynically proclaim that giving and receiving unlimited, secret, political money is the new coin of democratic policy making – even superior to winning electoral votes.
Now, however, We the People are also clearly seeing this perversion of our fundamental democratic ideals and rights. Some 80 percent of Americans (including 72% of Republicans) say people who donate to campaigns have too much influence. Our job in 2026 is to confront the billionaire corrupters and political takers head-on, turning people’s rising awareness and anger into “little-d” democratic action.
Do something!
To fight the influence of big money in politics, check out these organizations’ work:
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Public Citizen
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Our Revolution
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Common Cause
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Brennan Center
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Move to Amend
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There’s greed… and then there’s the nauseating greed of profiteering corporations that make a killing – literally – by knowingly contaminating people’s water, air, land, and families.
Such rank, moral corruption is hard to fathom... but it’s not hard to find. For one breathtaking example, consider Freeport-McMoRan.
This global mining behemoth is one of America’s most aggressive spoliers of land, air, water, and health – including from its sprawling copper smelter near Phoenix, Arizona. This operation is a major spreader of lead pollution, a neurotoxin that’s particularly harmful to children, causing pain, seizures, and learning disabilities.
But wait, where’s our Environmental Protection Agency? Good question. In fact, until last year, EPA was requiring Freeport to install technology to cut those poisonous emissions. The giant squealed like a stuck pig, though, crying that the $60 million cost for the lifesaving equipment was too “burdensome” – even though that wouldn’t even be a drop in Freeport’s $2-billion-a-year bucket of profits.
Sure enough, in October, Trump’s new EPA honcho rushed to provide pollution protection. Not for the children, but for the polluter! Indeed, Trump’s corporate-coddling agency “super-streamlined” the regulatory process by essentially eliminating it – no public hearing required, no presentation of facts, to chance for victims to object. All Freeport had to do was send an email requesting regulatory relief, and – BAM! – Trump promptly exempted its Arizona smelter from having to clean up its act.
Not only is this “free pass to pollute” a blunt proclamation of corporate rule, it also expresses Trump’s deep contempt for working-class people. Imagine if that smelter was in Florida, poisoning the elites in his Mar-a-Lago resort. Then, he’d jump on it like a gator on a poodle.
Do something!
The Environmental Defense Fund was one of the primary organizations working on the Freeport-McMoRan issue; they've launched a Trump EPA Pollution Pass map that shows you all the places that have applied for presidental exemptions from pollution laws. Support their work by getting involved at edf.org.
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Dare we think that the New Year holds tremendous promise for progressive change?
Yes! As practically every pundit notes, Trump’s White House menagerie of billionaires, grifters, haters, prima donnas, and ideological kooks has soured even many MAGA faithful. More importantly, grassroots progressives have been organizing and mobilizing across the country, and – like eager ball players looking forward to a good season – they’re pumped up!
So, what could go wrong?
Don’t look now, but the National Democratic Party’s “Washington Club” of high-dollar donors, clueless consultants, corporate lobbyists, and old-line politicos are still controlling much of the Party’s money, strategy, and message. Possessing all the magnetism of their go-slow leader, Chuck Schumer, their game plan is the same as always: Run a Big Money, don’t-rock-the-boat, Washington-based campaign, shove-aside grassroots activists, rely on negative attack ads, and tell everyone (again) that Trump will defeat himself.
As Casey Stengel wailed when he managed the comically inept 1962 New York Mets baseball team – “Can’t anyone here play this game?”
Luckily, though, those insider losers are no longer our real Democratic team. While they’ve been piddling around in Congress playing wiffle ball with the Trumpers, Bernie-style progressives have been rebuilding the Party of the People in every state with hard-hitting, slick-fielding, big-league DEMOCRATS.
And voters are responding with an enthusiastic YES! From Coast to coast – already lifting Zohran Mamdani to victory in New York, Katie Wilson in Seattle, and state legislative races in Iowa, Georgia, and Mississippi.
Let’s keep pushing to make 2026 the year we quit moaning about the lackluster Democratic Party… and turn it into the bright new majority party.
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As we head into a momentous election year, with state and national legislative seats up for grabs, even let-them-eat-cake Republicans are scrambling to sound sympathetic to today’s hard-hit working-class families.
Of course, tongue-clucking concern doesn’t mean actually doing anything to help this majority of Americans – and most legislatures are doing exactly that: Nothing.
In fact, you’d think the ones hurting in America are billionaires, for those same tongue-clucking lawmakers have been laser-focused this year on delivering monopoly protections, multibillion-dollar government subsidies, exclusive tax breaks, and even top government positions to the richest and greediest corporate profiteers. This is personally disgraceful and socially destructive… yet it has become business as usual.
Why? What’s causing America’s so-called “representatives” to disregard the needs of a majority of their own constituents? The corrupting power of corporate money, of course, but a more fundamental cause is this: The class make-up of practically every legislative body. Millionaires-and-up now dominate. But most-telling, is who you don’t’ see: Working stiffs.
While more than half of Americans are wage workers who overwhelmingly support progressive reforms to advance economic fairness and social justice, the elitist legislative structure shuts them out. Consider America’s 7,300 state legislative seats – only one percent of Republican members and two percent of Democrats are working class! Ten states have zero working class members!
As an old adage notes: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Labor laws, health care, campaign finance, AI regulation… again and again, workers are put on the corporate menu, because the lawmaking system is rigged to keep them from being at the table to represent themselves.
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In keeping with the season, I offer a little political anecdote about Christmas.
More specifically, it’s about the moral teachings of the biblical Jesus, which formed the ethical foundation of Christmas and gives Christianity itself its true gravity.
The story is about a political clash some 60 years ago in Houston, when a boorish right-winger accosted the feisty mother of a renowned progressive populist lawmaker, US Rep. Bob Eckhardt. Bob, whom I later got to know and learn from, was a fierce battler for racial equality in a time when not all Texans were singing in Kumbaya harmony.
Sure enough, at a public forum where Bob’s mom was representing him, this bonehead loudly demanded to know why her son was trying to make “them [Black people] equal to whites.” Ms. Eckhardt cut off the fellow’s ugly diatribe by, of all things, offering an apology! Her son’s advocacy, she said, was not his fault, but hers: “You see, I raised him to be a Christian.”
Today, however, Mother Eckhardt’s put down might lack the clarity it had back then. This is a strange Christmas – concluding a year in which far right extremists have relentlessly perverted the profound and love-based Christianity of Jesus into a partisan ethic promising brutish rule. As we’ve seen, their “beatitudes” include repression of the poor, worship of Mammon, turning away strangers, hatred of thy neighbor… and so awful much more that rejects the values of Jesus – all in the name of establishing something they call “Christian Nationalism.”
This is Jim Hightower saying… God bless America. And please hurry! But remember, God helps those who help themselves. That means you and me. So, let’s work together to create a merrier, truer Christmas next year.
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The high priests of Holy High Tech are in a huff, wailing that they’re being bothered by you busybodies, Luddites, and commoners – ie, The People.
Grandiose gabillionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos assert that they’re not merely rich, but visionary pioneers! Stand back, they bark, for we’re going to re-populate the world with a new species of artificially-superintelligent humanoids. Yet, to their astonishment, rather being hailed as geniuses, the oligarchs are being widely berated by us old-fashioned humans. Indeed, the level of public outrage has goaded lawmakers in all 50 states to enact some minimal protections for workers, communities… and humanity.
Of course, Musk, Bezos, & Company have no tolerance for the democratic will, so they jetted to Congress, demanding passage of a 10-year ban on enforcing any state law regulating artificial intelligence. Shockingly, however the US Senate, normally a total corporate toady, rose up 99 to 1 to vote against the Silicon Valley potentates. Ninety-nine to one!
So, the billionaires are now playing their trusty Trump card. Having greased the corrupt pay-to-play president with about a billion-dollars in campaign cash and personal deals, the AI profiteers got their payback this month. Quicker than you can say “quid pro quo,” Trump issued an executive order that – get this – orders himself to block our state governments from enforcing their own AI laws.
This is Jim Hightower saying… And here’s an extra fun fact: Trump didn’t even have to write the special interest executive order himself. A Silicon Valley AI profiteer generously sent a draft for the president to sign, effectively awarding more power and wealth to the profiteer. And that’s how Big Money rigs the system against you and me.
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Ho-Ho-Ho, wait till you hear about the gifts I’m giving to some of America’s power elites for Christmas.
To each of our Congress critters, I give my fondest wish that from now on they receive the exact same income, health care, and pensions that we average citizens get. If they receive only the American average, it might make them a bit more humble – and less cavalier about ignoring the needs of regular folks.
To the stockings of GOP leaders who’ve so eagerly debased themselves to serve the madness of Donald Trump, I’m adding individual spritzer bottles of fragrances like “Essence of Integrity” and “Eau de Self-respect” to help cover up their stench. And in the stockings of Democratic congressional leaders, I’m giving “Spice of Viagra” and “Bouquet du Grassroots” to stiffen their spines and remind them of who they represent.
For America’s CEO’s, my gift is a beautifully boxed, brand-new set of corporate ethics. It’s called the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Going to pollute someone’s neighborhood? Then, you have to live there, too. Going to slash wages and benefits? Then, slash yours as well. Going to move your manufacturing to sweatshops in China? Then, put your office right inside the worst sweatshop. Executive life won’t be as luxurious, but CEO’s would glow with a new purity of spirit.
To the Wall Street hedge-fund hucksters who’ve conglomerated, plundered, and degraded hundreds of America’s newspapers, I’m sending copies of “Journalism for Dummies” and offered jobs for each of them in their stripped-down, Dickensian newsrooms. Good luck.
And what better gift to the Trump family – Donald, Ivanka and Jared, Eric, Donnie Jr., and the whole nest of them – than to wish that they live with each other constantly and permanently. No, really, each of you deserve it.
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Ahh, Christmas time! The joy of children’s laughter! A time for caring, sharing, and giving!
So, why not make this Christmas a time for giving something that most American children, families, and communities are now denied – and desperately need: a good child care system.
This is a basic element of civilization, yet the leaders of our fabulously-rich nation have not only failed to provide a world-class care system, but they’ve left the pre-school children of working-class families with a failed, expensive mishmash that is no system at all. These are the same so-called “leaders” who’re frantically spending trillions of dollars to create a new humanoid species powered by artificial intelligence – but they lack the common sense to invest a fraction of that on an early care network to nurture the human potential of America’s human infants and pre-school children.
The good news, however, is that we do not have to sit helplessly, wishing that Congress, Trump, or Santa Claus would deliver universal childcare to us. Rather We the People can give this gift to ourselves… and to our children’s future. For inspiration, look to New Mexico.
Twenty years ago, this very-low-income state ranked dead-last in child well-being. Finally, though, agitated parents, teachers, and children themselves became the agitators. Forging a fast-growing coalition called Invest in Kids Now, they organized, protested, confronted and ran against the state’s moneyed establishment. With perseverance, their grassroots activism is now producing the change they want. 70 percent of voters approved the coalition’s constitutional amendment requiring state funding for early childhood education. And last month, New Mexico became the first state in America to offer free childcare to every family.
For more on the work of the coalition, go to InvestInKidsNow.org.
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Having grown up in a small-business family, I’m a big proponent of free enterprise. But I detest corporatism.
The corporate powers try to co-opt the enterprise label, but in fact they are direct opposites and opponents. Indeed, the word “free” in free enterprise is not a benign adjective, but a fiery verb. It expresses the constant struggle by families like mine – Main Street businesses, farmers, artists, co-ops, and others – to free-up their enterprises from the monopoly control and raw political force of domineering financial elites.
That’s why I admire the spunk of Azalea Fresh Market in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a new supermarket offering high-quality fresh foods at affordable prices to the people in a poor, inner-city neighborhood. Until Azalea opened, a few sad convenience store bananas were the only “fresh” grocery items sold in the area. City officials kept trying to entice major corporate grocery chains to open a store to serve that community. But it was always “no.” Mayor Andre Dickens says: “That totally burned me up.” So, “Screw it,” he declared, “We’re gonna do it ourselves.”
And they have! Partnering with a small local chain of enterprising grocers, Atlanta’s public development fund financed Azalea, which is now providing good food at good prices for customers long disdained by corporatists.
Corporate ideologues mindlessly bark that the public should not be involved in business. Hogwash! When the corporate establishment fails to deliver such basic needs as healthy food, housing and health care, the public can – and must – step into the void. To learn more about the benefits and potential of public enterprises, go to Institute for Local Self-Reliance: ilsr.org.
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What a mess.
I mean America’s corporatized, bureaucratic, profiteering medical system. It’s as though the Marx Brothers and Franz Kafka conspired to create it.
Yet, in the midst of that mess, there is one saving grace – namely the everyday workforce of dedicated nurses, therapists, hygienists, and other skilled, hands-on professionals who are the true heart of health care.
Astonishingly, though, when Trump & Co. bellowed this year that they intended to reform the medical system and slash costs, guess who they targeted for cuts? Certainly not the lavishly-paid CEOs and corporate price gougers who donate billions to Trump. Instead, they’re going after our frontline caregivers, the one segment of the system that prioritizes patient health over corporate profits.
Yet, channeling Kafka’s surrealism and Groucho’s slapstick, Trump and his GOP Congress are not only downgrading this vital workforce, but denigrating it. They’ve directed the US Education Department to decree that nurses are no longer “professionals.”
One immediate impact is that many young people who want to pursue careers in patient care will no longer be eligible for the government’s student loans for advanced medical courses. This means that non-rich students will effectively be blocked from earning specialized degrees … and higher salaries. In the bigger picture, Trump’s insult to these essential medical professionals amounts to government-enforced plutocracy, mandating inequality, as well as inferior health care.
Moreover, three-fourths of the health-provider jobs Trump wants to degrade are filled by women. Apparently, it’s part of his increasing attempts to belittle and bully women. As one nurse says of his attack on her profession: “It’s just a smack in the face.” For information and action, go to NationalNursesUnited.org.
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Let’s all sing the holiday classic: “All I want for Christmas… Is Something Not Made of Plastic.”
Easier sung than done. Plastic is now ubiquitous in toys, electronics, tools, air, water… and us. And don’t forget the plastic Baby Jesus in Christmas tableaus.
What is plastic, anyway? It’s a toxic synthetic material mostly manufactured from petroleum by such giants as ExxonMobil, the globe’s top purveyor. So much is produced by these profiteers that plastic trash is now a planetary disaster.
But not to worry, for Big Oil’s lobbyists assure us gabillions of plastic bags, bottles, and such are being recycled, keeping them out of our landfills, water, bodies, etc. Swell! Except… they’re lying.
After all, Exxon is the same for-profit contaminator that lied for years that fossil fuels were not causing climate change, even though top executives knew they were. Their ethic of deceit continues today – Big Oil knows that94 percent of US plastics are not recycled. Indeed, they can’t be.
Faced with growing public alarm about the ever-growing glut of plastic pollution, the industry has doubled down on deceit by offering a snappy new PR slogan: “Advanced Recycling.” They say it’s a magical process dubbed “pyrolysis.” Only… it doesn’t work, it’s inordinately expensive, and it increases climate change emissions. Still, Exxon exclaims its AR will soon be processing half a million tons of plastic waste! But that’s not even a drop in the plastic bucket, for more than 400 million tons of plastic waste is discarded each year –and the oil industry is planning to double plastic production by 2040.
The only real way to stop runaway plastic pollution of us and our planet is to use less plastic. To learn more and help, go to Beyond Plastics: BeyondPlastics.org.
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Look out – the corporate cat is out of the bag!
This particular “cat” is the fast-metastasizing software technology called “artificial intelligence.” A cadre of multibillion-dollar high-tech giants have surreptitiously been advancing AI for a couple of decades, literally creating a new, autonomous species of thinking beings. These are computer-powered humanoid bots, increasingly-able to do the intellectual, creative, managerial, and other complex jobs that millions of human beings now do.
The billionaire pushers of this brave new bot economy know that this amounts to placing a neutron bomb in the American workplace, so they have intentionally lied about its job-obliterating impact. However, after years of hush-hush development, the AI technology is now so advanced and the corporate investment in it is so gargantuan that the perpetrators no longer care what the public thinks.
This year, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, and other Silicon Valley oligarchs have been feverishly dumping hundreds of billions of dollars each into a global corporate gold rush to supplant humans with AI bots in practically every economic sector. They expect to automate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. And one Silicon Valley outfit (bluntly named “Mechanize”) calculates that its plan “to fully automate work” can be acheived within 30 years. Indeed, BotWorld is now urging today’s AI technology to create super-intelligent systems that can out-think humans. Yes – bots themselves are working to produce more powerful bots to speed up AI’s bot takeover of work.
This is Jim Hightower saying… If you think that, surely, this isn’t really happening, note that Trump’s GOP Congress recently imposed a 10-year ban on any state laws attempting to regulate AI. Just unleash the bots… and see what happens.
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These days, with so much economic greed and political meanness in the news, it’s hard to lift your head up and notice the common goodness and community spirit that’s actually flourishing all around us.
So, this Thanksgiving season, why not shake off some of that debilitating negativity by focusing on the many, seemingly-small efforts by ordinary people who’re helping to make life just a little bit better… more connected… more joyful even! Consider, for example, a very neighborly phenomenon presently spreading across our country: “Repair Cafes.”
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The idea is simple and practical – rather than trashing that broken lamp, torn pair of jeans, wobbly chair, or blinking electronic device – repair them! Only, we’ve become a nation that doesn’t know how, and our corporate consumer economy – based on planned obsolescence – tells us to just throw it all away.
But that ignores a marvelous community asset: Grassroots talent. Every neighborhood and small town is blessed with many locals who’re “good with their hands.” So, in some 200 American communities, volunteer crews of these skilled repairers gather weekly or monthly, inviting us “under-skilled” folks to bring in practically any of our household “junk” to be fixed – for free – rather than sending it to the landfill.
There is one requirement though – we have to watch, listen, and participate in the repair, so we learn to trust our own hands… and maybe teach someone else later on. These repair cafes don’t merely provide a community service, they create community. Stuff gets fixed, but most importantly, as a café founder in East Harlem puts it, as “mostly we just spend time together.”
Why not do that where you live? For guidance, go to RepairCafe.org.
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Oh, thank goodness for Donald Trump!
As millions of families struggle with the ever-rising price of groceries, The Donald is bragging that his economic policies have miraculously lowered prices, just in time for Thanksgiving. As proof, he points to Walmart, America’s largest food marketer, boasting that it cut the price of its “complete Thanksgiving dinner package” by a whopping 25 percent from a year ago! “That’s a tremendous number,” Trump exclaimed.
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But wait – before we swallow that whole, let’s peek inside Walmart’s dinner package to see what’s in there… and what’s NOT. Sure enough, using a trick called “shrinkflation,” the corporate giant has quietly removed basic Thanksgiving items that were in last year’s package, including cornbread mix, sweet potatoes, and pie. Then, it shrank the size of the servings of other items, such as cranberries and soup.
By shorting the food in each package, this year’s Walmart dinner actually costs more than last year’s. How tremendous is that?
Yet (like his wrecking ball demolition of the White House) Trump keeps trying to destroy the very idea of presidential honesty. He now rants that there is no affordability crisis in America. It’s “a complete CON JOB” by the media, he barks, consumer prices are “tumbling down”, we have “the greatest economy in history.” People should stop complaining and be grateful!
The problem for politicians who peddle such lies is that people’s everyday life experiences instantly reveal the huckster’s deception. Even for MAGA believers, it must be hard to give thanks for a president who demands praise for helping one of his profiteering backers scam millions of working-class families, who’re just trying to put food on their tables.
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As one who ekes out a modest living running my mouth on radio and Substack, I hesitate to critique others who do the same – even though I might disagree entirely and emphatically with them.
But occasionally, I see influential purveyors of conventional wisdom tromping into my area of real-life experience, pushing some political nonsense that is not only wrong, but delusive. That’s when I intrude.
Like now, a whole posse of pundits is bellowing these days that Democrats have only one path forward to avoid perpetual defeat by MAGA Republicans: “Shift to the right!” For example, New York Times right-wing sermonizer Ross Douthat, recently proclaimed that the wisdom of Democrats “repositioning” their issues and message away from progressivism “ought to be plain to anyone with eyes.” To which I say: Bovine excrement.
What’s plain to most voters (and especially to fed-up nonvoters) is that cynical partisan shiftiness is what’s wrong with both parties, creating a plutocratic realpolitik run by and for avaricious moneyed powers. I’m no New York Times pontificator, but my ground-level experience in Texas tells me that what common people really want is not more precisely-calculated positioning, but an honest stand on “little-d” democratic principle. Say what you believe… and do it!
On the very day that the Times ran a Douthat column lecturing Democrats on how to “play politics,” Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City. He won by running an aggressively-progressive campaign against corporate elites, exciting the city’s widely-ignored working-class and poor voters. Instead of trying to manipulate the electorate, Mamdani expanded and inspired it. That is plainly the Democratic Party’s future.
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Years ago, Woody Guthrie wrote “Mean Talking Blues,” a stinging satire of malicious right-wing officials who take perverse pleasure in demonizing, holding down, and punishing poor people:
“I’m a big disasterJust goin’ some place to happen
I’m an organized famineStudying how I can be a little bit meaner
I laugh my loudestWhen other people cry
I hate everybody don’t think like meI’m just mean.”
What a perfect theme song for Trump’s “Project 2025” – a MAGA crusade to stomp on millions of America’s poorest families, trying to deny them access to the most basic human needs.
Needs like… food. Brooke Rollins, Trump’s multi-millionaire agriculture secretary, made crude political jokes about poor people during the GOP’s government shutdown, laughing as she schemed to cut off their food stamps. She was an “organized famine,” illegally maneuvering to deny food for 42 million hard-hit American citizens.
In addition, Project 2025 operatives want to yank health coverage from the poor – and just for meanness – they propose killing the modest program that helps impoverished families afford to have heat in their homes.
Meanwhile, Trump poses as The Great Gatsby, living in tacky opulence, while ignoring the economic mess and rank inequality created by his Roaring 20s plutocratic presidency. Indeed, the inequality is widening as he doles out hundreds of billions of our tax dollars in new giveaways to billionaires (including to his own sons).
Far from “Making America Great Again,” Trump’s most tangible achievement is to have had the White House’s Lincoln bathroom remodeled. And, in a royal touch, Trump even had a chandelier installed above the toilet. Imagine how proud Honest Abe would be.
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Oh, happy day! Thanksgiving, I mean – 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: The term is “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:
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A Butterball turkey costing you $2.42 a pound, pays the farmer 6 cents per pound.
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Potatoes costing $4 a bag returns only 55 cents to farmers.
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Wheat farmers only get 13 cents from a $4.50 loaf of whole wheat bread.
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Top sirloin steak cost $16.50 per pound, but ranchers get under $4.
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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 greedheaded monopolies. For connections, go to Family Farm Action: farmaction.us.
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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 plays 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 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.
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How about some good news for a change? News that has nothing to do with Donald Whatzizname. News you might even use.
It’s about “The Library of Things,” a real library, but different. Just as our public libraries share a wealth of publications – this one in Brunswick, Maine, also maintains a wealth of tools, devices, equipment, and other “things” for people to check-out, use, and return.
Hazel Onsrud, a creative, can-do spirit on the staff of Brunswick’s Curtis Memorial Library, initiated this commonwealth of some 1,500 products that locals can borrow for free. TheNew York Times reports that residents are flocking to this pragmatic, beneficial resource for the common good. And why wouldn’t they? After all, not everyone can afford a $350 KitchenAid mixer of their own, and a roto-tiller you might use once a year could be shared by many. Also, a bullhorn, a grain mill, a ukulele, an embossing machine – seriously, we should borrow, rather than thinking each of us must buy and store these things… or do without.
This concept reduces each family’s expenses, waste, and accumulation of “stuff,” while advancing cooperation and community. And the public library infrastructure is already in place to make it available.
This idea is not new, nor is it unique to Brunswick. In fact, America’s progressive populist movement of the 1870s built an entire economic alternative to corporate monopoly around this very concept. And today, some 2,000 “libraries-of-things” are already functioning worldwide, giving ordinary people a grassroots way to avoid profiteering, corporate consumerism.
Hazel Onsrud has issued a challenge to us: “If a few of us can do this in Maine,” she says “anyone can.” And you and I are the anyones to do it.
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An essential part of our children’s education is learning proper moral behavior. And who better to deliver that ethical guidance than politicians?
Huh? Bizarre, yet this is the conclusion of the GOP’s theocratic Christian Nationalist faction. They are demanding that legislatures across the country must intervene in local educational policy to require that all public schools plaster every classroom with Christianity’s Ten Commandments. It’s in-your-face religiosity, forcing one religious dogma on students of every faith. It’s also ludicrously hypocritical – after all, legislators are notorious for committing adultery, stealing from the poor, killing in the name of the state, bearing false witness against immigrants, bowing down to false gods… and otherwise mocking the Christian religion’s own commandments. Who do these nationalists and their politicians think they’re fooling?
Certainly not America’s free-thinking students. If you wonder whether young people will just go along, take heart in the uplifting thoughts of Arjun Sharda, a high-school freshman in Round Rock, Texas. In a recent op-ed piece, he went right at the humbuggery of the state’s Republican leaders: “The same lawmakers who preach about freedom and limited government,” he wrote, “are now legislating what we must hang on our classroom walls... But faith loses its power when it’s forced. True belief comes from conviction, not compulsion… Texas prides itself in independence, yet this law enforces conformity.”
The Christian Nationalist autocrats are not only trying to turn public classrooms into their exclusive pulpits, but to establish their repressive theology as America’s official religion. As Sharda warns, “Texas should stop confusing religion with righteousness – before the wall between church and state becomes just another thing we’ve torn down.”
Do something!
To work on the fight to keep church and state actually separate, check out the Freedom from Religion Foundation at ffrf.org.
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A headline on a recent news article caught my eye, for it declared, “Americans Disagree on Everything.”
I said to myself: “I disagree with that!”
Indeed, the untold story of today’s America is the good news that We the People fundamentally agree on more than what supposedly separates us. It is true that our daily media feed does relentlessly push political negativity and discord, and it’s true that hyper-partisan politicians grab attention by hammering their narrow views into swords of hatred. But that’s them, not the greater us.
Even hot-button issues which dominate the Internet and talk-shows are actually not all that divisive for the majority of us. For example, nearly 90 percent of Americans (including two-thirds of Republicans) oppose the right-wing attempt to whitewash our nation’s history by restricting teachers, museums etc. from addressing such realities as slavery.
More significantly, consider the real needs of ordinary workaday families. Basics like living wages, protecting Social Security, busting-up monopolies, cleaning up pollution, providing affordable housing, funding our parks and libraries, stopping price gouging. Overwhelmingly, Americans in red, blue, and purple areas agree on what government ought to be doing – and disagrees with what it is doing. But the plutocratic moneyed elites that now fund and perpetuate Americas corrupt and dysfunctional government profit by promoting hatreds to pit us against each other, praying that all of us don’t focus on them.
Don’t succumb to their self-serving lies, but seek ways to unite in what we Americans do agree on – specifically our historic commitment to the democratic values of economic fairness, social justice, and equal treatment for all. Anything less is BS.
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Texas: What the Hell? The Lone Star State’s government, a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary, solidified its ranking this year as America’s #1 innovator of really bad public policies.
Branching out from their usual corrupt collusion with Big Oil, industrial polluters, and other profiteering hucksters, the governor and top lawmakers came up with a whole new batch of legalized slick-um, specifically to protect and profit a new Texas stock market for big money dealers. Who needs it? After all, beaucoup markets already exist for speculators and such. Yes – but those markets are at least loosely regulated to protect investors – plus, some states want to tax stock-trading profits.
So here come Texas politicos, pushing a cutely-named “Y’all Street” stock exchange, promising that it’ll be “speculator friendly.” Friendly means limp regulation, little public disclosure of schemes, and hostility to taxation.
For example, to spare rich stock profiteers from paying their share of taxes (like working stiffs do), Republican leaders have graciously acted to prevent state taxation on the massive profits speculators get from selling stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. And, to prove their undying plutocratic love for the rich, lawmakers plan to engrave this special tax break in the Texas Constitution, effectively closing off rich people’s ill-gotten gains as a source of revenue for the state’s future needs.
This Lone Star stock market is a cynical big-government scam to further enrich the privileged few hoping to shift the cost of basic public services away from those most able to pay onto the backs of workaday families. If you wonder how inequality happens, study the Texas example. And hurry – the right-wing intends to bring it to your state next.
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Roaring 20s novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”
Well, yes… they’re rich!
But maybe you’re doing pretty well these days, counting yourself among the rich. That’s charming, but let’s check the latest wealth indicator: Do you have a “private concierge?” You might live in a megahouse, have a maid and a nanny, travel First Class – but having a private concierge is what separates you commonplace millionaires from the filthy rich.
What do these personal servants actually do? “We fix problems,” says one owner of a boutique firm that offers “hyper-personalization” services to select clients worldwide. Want to get a table tonight at a fully-booked restaurant in Paris? Don’t call the restaurant – call your fixer, gets it done. If you’re going to a formal ceremony in Hong Kong but – OMG you left your tuxedo back home in Oshkosh. Your concierge will find a courier to deliver it on time.
In addition to dealing with such upper-class urgencies, these “lifestyle managers” also relieve the überrich of having to cope with everyday details of real life. No need to call a plumber, plan a birthday party, shop for basics, and such – that’s why you pay about $75,000 a year to have your own handler. They’ve become such a must-have emblem of luxury that even Chase Bank and American Express now offer concierges to their high-end clients.
What’s at work here is a decadent ethic of royal entitlement. It’s a grandiose (and socially-destructive) assumption of superiority by the filthy rich – who misinterpret their wealth as worthiness. Oh, and we common taxpayers get to subsidize these personal concierges.
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When will top Democratic party officials recognize that today’s electorate is not made up of moderate centrists?
Rather, most Americans are anti-establishment rebels who’ve been knocked down, kicked out, and told that they don’t matter. Indeed, our country’s true political spectrum doesn’t run right to left, but top to bottom. Right-wing/left-wing is ideology. Top to bottom is life. And most people know that they’re no longer in shouting distance of the moneyed elites at the top.
This cries out for a “little-d” democratic party that goes right at the billionaires, autocrats, and kleptocrats. Instead, we get Chuck Schumer. This Senate Democratic leader’s idea of battling right-wing extremism is to say, “I sent a letter” in protest.
Worse, the corporatized hierarchy controlling the once-proud Party of the People reserve their aggressiveness for – guess what? – battling progressive Democratic activists and candidates! Yes, they keep blocking true Democrats who can win, nominating corporate-branded centrists instead – then wondering why voter turnout plummets and an angry electorate reaches for the Trump Hammer.
They are trying to do it to us again right now in Maine, where a plain-spoken, working-class progressive is poised to defeat a Trump Republican for a U.S. Senate seat. Graham Platner, a maverick, 41-year-old combat veteran and oyster farmer is drawing huge crowds, enthusiasm, volunteers, money… and grassroots hope. He’s a winner – exactly what Democrats need to become relevant again.
Yet, rather than embracing the grassroots enthusiasm to win the senate seat, Schumer is raising corporate cash to defeat Planter! The party’s leader is its own worst enemy. To learn more, go to: GrahamForSenate.com.
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Years ago in Juarez, Mexico, I wandered into a carnival sideshow that flabbergasted this Texas country boy. Stumbling out, I murmured: “Now I’ve seen everything… and then some.” But now, decades later, I’ve been even more stupefied by the news that convicted Wall Street swindler Michael Milken has just opened his own bizarre freak show in Washington, DC.
Touted as a “tourist attraction,” his museum glorifies predatory capitalists (like him), hailing them as heroic American geniuses! The infamous junk-bond scammer grandiosely labels his monument the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. It’s located right across the street from the White House (though it’s rumored that even his buddy Trump considered Michael’s “Monument to Mammon” to be too explicitly obscene to attach it directly to the East Wing).
In a perverse bit of symbolism, the thing occupies the former headquarters of a bank that was forced to close 20 years ago because of a money-laundering scandal. How’s that for Karma? But, to gloss over such ugliness, Milken has gilded his legacy mausoleum with Trumpian gold. The rooms, draperies, furniture – and even a fake tree in the atrium – all gleam with gold leaf, emphasizing Milken’s credo that the goal of life is money… and the power to get it.
Educational exhibits include an interactive game on compound interest, as well as a display of Mike’s high school cheerleading uniform. Missing, though, is any mention of the full presidential pardon this avaricious criminal wrangled from Trump in 2020, letting the racketeer escape prison for stealing a billion dollars from people who trusted him.
Still, if you visit his Washington freak show, the gift shop offers a memento that sums up his life: A $22 Milken money clip.
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Our country’s magnificent National Park System has been called “America’s greatest idea.”
These 433 treasures – along with our rich diversity of national museums and historical sites – each have their own stories to tell. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, for together they express America’s egalitarian sprit and “little-d” democratic possibilities, urging us to keep pushing for economic fairness and social justice for all.
And that’s exactly why Trump and his cabal of moneyed elites and right-wing extremists are out to purge, erase and officially censor the parks’ historical presentations. After all, it’s hard to impose plutocratic autocracy if such tangible examples of historic truth and democratic rebellion are openly displayed!
Thus, as dictated by the GOP’s secretive anti-democracy clique, Project 2025, Trump’s ideological Thought Police have set themselves up as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” to sanitize and Disneyfy the telling of our people’s real history. For example, Trump complains that parks and museums hurt America’s self-image by telling “how bad slavery was.”
Hello, Donald – that’s not an image, it’s reality, as central to our national character as our historic commitment to equality. And the explosive conflict between ugly repression and flowering egalitarianism is ever present today. Consider the push by Sen. Eric Schmitt and others in the GOP’s Christian Nationalist movement to deny the unifying principle that “all men are created equal.”
There’s not enough whitewash in the world to cover up the deep ugliness of slavery, and it’s self-destructive for government to try. The fundamental purpose of recording our shared history is to learn from it.
Do something!
You might’ve heard about the Alt National Park Service, but they might not be quite who they say they are, as it turns out. To support park rangers fighting the good fight in their work and off-duty, check out Resistance Rangers.
On the museum front, AFSCME and the American Library Association are actively fighting to block the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
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Washington’s MAGA government is shoveling massive giveaways of public money to corporate elites. Worse, though, are its takeaways of people’s power to battle the abuse of those same plutocratic corporations. Consider just three recent examples:
Travel. Perhaps your family plans a holiday flight to visit grandma. Flying itself has become dicey, but at least the government is requiring airlines that cause long delays or cancellations to compensate us passengers for our loss. Uh… no, no more. Trump’s transportation secretary (who was previously a LOBBYIST for the big airlines!) is “loosening” the rules so monopolistic airlines owe nothing to abused customers.
Job opportunities. One of the nastiest wage suppression tactics of corporate bosses has been their collusion to make employees sign “noncompete” contracts. These amount to indentured servitude, preventing workers from quitting to take a better job with a competing firm. This corporate lockdown costs American workers some $40 billion a year in wages they could get in an open job market. The FTC was finally moving to ban these noncompete gimmicks – but Trump installed a corporate lackey at the FTC to snuff out this spark of workplace liberty.
Pollution. Corporate lobbyists and MAGA lawmakers are rigging the rules to let industrial giants escape responsibility for their massive environmental contamination. For example, the profiteering greedheads who’ve deceptively caused tons of deadly “forever chemicals” to be spread on our land, water, communities, and families are to be let off the hook by the new, corporate-hugging EPA honcho. He says we taxpayers must pay for the toxic cleanup, not the polluters.
If you’re unclear about the meaning of “plutocracy,’ there it is: Government by and for the despotic rich.
Fighting plutocracy on multiple fronts is challenging work, and that’s why we recommend getting involved with Public Citizen—they’re strategic and have a long track record of protecting Americans on many issues. Check them out at citizen.org.
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Sometimes, cosmic oddities come together in comic ways. For example, Google positions the biography of right-wing Texas governor Greg Abbott right under the one for yesteryear’s slapstick comedians, Abbott and Costello.
It’s almost cruel for Gov. Greg to be juxtaposed with that quick-witted duo, for he’s a dour, slow-witted, plutocratic pol, with no perceptible sense of humor. As governor, he has focused on demonizing poor people, rigging elections, and doing favors for moneyed elites. Unsurprisingly, only four out of 10 Texas voters now support him. Yet – don’t laugh – in a move of burlesque absurdity, Abbott now says he might choose to become president. Yes, of the US!
Filled with pomposity, he recently proclaimed, “I will be guided by God.” Well, maybe so, since the god he faithfully follows is Mammon. Indeed, his major credential for becoming the GOP nominee for prez is that he is a pro at the Pay-to-Play game of using taxpayer money to entice special interests to fund his political career. “You pay me, then I pay you” is his corrupt game plan, which he has used to amass a whopping $87 million for his next election.
For example, watchdog group Public Citizen has documented some $3 million that Abbott got from executives of eight corporations. In turn, those eight were given nearly a billion dollars in no-bid state contracts – a 33,000% profit on their donations to Abbott!
This is Jim Hightower saying… For high rollers, Abbott is better than a winning Powerball lottery ticket. Buy him, and the Pay-to-Play merry-go-round keeps spinning at taxpayer expense. To fight such big money corruption, go to Public Citizen: citizen.org.
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It’s been my honor to know a few real heroes – people who’ve selflessly dared to fight greed and oppression to advance the common good. Diane Wilson, for example.
For forty years, this fiery, fourth-generation fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf Coast has battled tenaciously for the rights and very survival of the area’s hardscrabble fishing families. She and her grassroots allies have taken on Formosa Plastics, a $250 billion, global corporate beast that has routinely dumped its chemical waste around Matagorda Bay, poisoning life and livelihoods.
But in 2019, in a lawsuit based on massive evidence collected by Wilson and her armada of volunteer kayakers, she won a stunning court victory, forcing the contaminator to pay $50 million for its malfeasance.
Wilson’s fight was not just for her, and she did not get a penny from the Formosa settlement. But she won something richer than money – “It felt like justice,” she said of the court’s judgement.
Importantly, the court didn’t award the $50 million to some regulatory agency, but to a public trust administered by – guess who? – Wilson’s allies! So she has been working tenaciously ever since to make sure the money directly benefits the poor families Formosa ran over. Especially promising is the trust’s major grant to create the people’s own Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative. It will provide dock space, supply contracts, processing ability, local jobs… and the power for local people to forge their own future.
Why fight against overpowering odds for 40 years? Because of her strong principles… and sheer stubbornness. “It’s my home,” Wilson says of the bay and its working-class community, “and I completely refuse to give it to that company to ruin.”
Learn more about Diane and support her work:
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Here’s a progressive idea I picked up from the unlikeliest of sources: Corporate CEOs!
For decades, these chieftains of our economic order have been steadily implementing a very visionary process for establishing corporate wage levels. The essence of it is this: Let the workers set their own pay! Since the 1970s, when the idea began taking hold in Corporate America, pay levels have zoomed up by more than 1,000 percent.
Well… not for you. This set-your-own pay movement has only been available to top corporate executives, whose median paychecks now top $16 million a year! But since it’s been a boon for this test group, I say it’s time to expand the no-hassle compensation concept to all employees. This would greatly boost grassroots purchasing power, economic growth, and fairness for all.
“Omigod no!” squawk corporate apologists, rushing to say that, technically, CEOs do not directly set their pay. Rather, the bosses have attached their earnings to their corporations’ ever-rising stock prices. Thus, astronomical rewards go to those who obsessively focus on jacking-up the price of their own stock, even though that’s a selfishly-narrow and false measure of a corporation’s performance.
Also, stock price is no indicator of a CEO’s worthiness. Even bosses who’re blockheads can still get a boost simply because they’ve rigged the system to hitch a free ride on inflated stock value.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Still, if it’s good enough for them, why not an equal deal for working stiffs, who actually deliver the products and services that give a corporation some true value. I say, each worker should get the same percentage increase in pay that the top honcho takes. It’s a very simple process… and it’s only fair.
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May we take a minute to talk about your death?
And mine, too. I certainly don’t want to rush either one, but there is a matter we should all consider ahead of the “event.” Namely, the funeral.
The nature of one’s bodily disposal is, of course, unpleasant to discuss. So mostly we don’t. Thus, at our death, loved ones frantically try to decide between crematorium or a coffin.
Both processes are awful to contemplate, are environmentally harmful, can be exorbitantly expensive, and are often emotionally unsatisfying for survivors. I can’t say there’s any good way to go, but is there a better way?
Yes, says an interesting “green burial” movement, offering the alternative of an affordable “adios” that truly does bring life full circle. With no need for embalming, burning, or steel sarcophagus, it provides a simplicity and an organic authenticity to life’s end.
The essence of it is minimalism. The expired body is literally and gently covered with heated plant material for a month or so, accelerating the work of microbes and fungi to convert us into soil. Yes, in short order, we become about a cubic yard of compost – new nutrient-rich earth that family or others can even spread to foster future life.
Adding to the wholistic ethic, a cottage industry makes available home-made woven baskets, linen shrouds, and other organic provisions for our dearly departed. Also, rather than wearing mournful, black clothing to the funeral plot, mourners at a green burial gather in work clothes to assist in the farewell.
It’s a participatory continuum, carrying life forward. Maybe it’s not for you and yours – but maybe it is. To learn more, go to GreenBurialCouncil.org.
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Here they come again! Another far-right-wing mob, spurred on by Trump, is storming our US Capitol!
Only, these are not uncouth MAGA marauders wearing buffalo horns, breaking in, and attacking Capital police. No, this is a very couth, richly-attired, well-mannered political mob laying siege on Congress. And look: Instead of fighting or fleeing, Republican lawmakers are holding the Capitol’s doors wide open for this incursion! That’s because this is a swarm of always-welcome corporate lobbyists and campaign funders. In particular, they’re an army of global pesticide giants.
Led by Bayer, the multibillion-dollar German biochemical conglomerate, they’re demanding that Congress keep us commoners from interfering with their poisonous profiteering. Bayer reaps billions of dollars selling a killer pesticide named Roundup, which scientists increasingly consider a cause of cancer, especially in children. Thousands of afflicted families have filed major lawsuits holding Bayer responsible.
Of course, Bayer honchos did the honorable thing. Ha! Just kidding. Instead, its lobbyists rushed to Trump and GOP congressional leaders, who – shhhh – quietly tucked a corporate “gotcha” into this month’s must-pass budget bill. It would effectively hand retroactive immunity to chemical manufacturers, quashing all those lawsuits filed by families of Roundup victims. Sneaky, huh? Infuriated, grassroots leaders of MAHA (The “Make America Healthy Again” movement) say the Republican Party is being corrupted by false information from the pesticide companies.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Actually, what’s corrupting the Party’s lawmakers is the gusher of campaign money they take from the poison pushers. For information and action on stopping this capitulation to what a Bayer, go to FoodAndWaterWatch.org.
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All across the country, nonprofit hospital chains are literally upping their game.
These corporate entities receive special tax exemptions because they provide some free and reduced-cost medical services to poor families. But, as one CEO put it, many chains are now going the extra yard to serve local folks “in new and exciting ways.”
Great! Our whole health system desperately needs better quality, more-affordable care for all!
Uh… no… that’s not what they mean.
Rather, the exciting new thing being pushed by non-profit hospitals is to spend big chunks of their tax-free revenue on their area’s professional and college sports teams. For what? Get this: To buy the naming rights to the teams’ stadiums and ballparks! A children’s hospital in Fresno, California, for example, has put down $10 million to slap its name on Fresno State University’s football stadium. And a Tennessee “safety-net” hospital has committed millions to emblazon its corporate name on the ballpark of Chattanooga’s pro-baseball franchise.
Sweet Jesus, what the hell? One university marketing professor even tried to rationalize these diabolical, high-dollar transactions by comparing them to community-spirited doctors buying jerseys for a town’s Little League team! Excuse me, but this is a big-league perversion of the healthcare mission. Indeed, the Fresno State deal included special perks for the hospital’s top honchos – including a skybox suite at FSU games, food & drink for them, seats on the team’s charter plane, and a bundle of free tickets to home games.
This is Jim Hightower saying… As the Republican mayor of Chattanooga gently noted: “At a time of severe nursing shortages and quality of care concerns, this decision is hard to explain.”
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My life goals have never included making a lot of money… and I’ve certainly succeeded in that regard.
Yet, I do consider myself rich. Not like the Wall Street “richie-rich,” but in the modest sense of middle-class well-being – basically, enough to make ends meet. It’s not my good looks that puts me in this lucky zone, but one particular public asset that has long been serving the common good for decades, lifting millions of workaday Americans to some decent level of shared prosperity: Social Security.
Plutocratic elites and their political puppets constantly wail that it’s a socialist scam, a wasteful giveaway to old people. But regular folks know that’s hokum, since nearly all of us pay into the plan every month of our working lives. In short, it’s our money!
Moreover, each of our Social Security accounts steadily build up. So, consider this: The most valuable financial asset for 9 out of 10 American families, is not their houses or Aunt Tillie’s will – but their Social Security holdings. Even for rock-solid, middle-class families, Social Security provides for about a third of their total lifetime wealth.
This is Jim Hightower saying… When right-wingers screech that “fiscal prudence” demands they slash the program’s benefits, that’s bank-robber code for looting wealth you’ve banked for years in this People’s retirement system. Plus, there is absolutely no excuse for such thievery, since an honest, fair, and simple adjustment would keep the program fully funded in perpetuity: Rather than letting gabillionaires like Elon Musk put practically none of their massive incomes into this egalitarian effort to provide a decent retirement for all, make them pay Social Security taxes exactly like regular workers do.
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In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty scornfully declares that, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.”
So what does “woke” mean? It’s become the pet political aspersion that today’s kooky right-wing hucksters hurl at liberals, but the hurlers would be whopperjawed to learn that it’s was actually coined by and for progressives! Indeed, it admonishes people to be awake to the dangers posed by hate-filled bigots and reactionaries like… well, like today’s right-wing extremists.
SURPRISING HISTORICAL TIDBIT: The first person reported to have used the word was Huddie Ledbetter, the legendary Black blues artist known as Lead Belly. Among his many classic songs was “Scottsboro Boys,” about nine Black teenagers falsely accused in 1931 of raping two Alabama white women. As a Black musician who traveled the backroads of the Jim Crow South, Lead Belly warned others to pay attention when in a viciously racist state: “Best stay woke,” he cautioned.
But—out of blind ignorance, blind arrogance, or both—today’s adaptors of the Jim Crow mentality have perverted common-sense wokeness into a verbal whip to lash African-Americans, immigrants, Democrats, women, LGBTQ+ people and all others they don’t like (pretty much everyone who looks, thinks, prays and acts different from them). How kooky? They’ve declared librarians, science, Mickey Mouse, and Bud Light to be their evil enemies. “Don’t be woke,” they bark, demanding autocratic, plutocratic, and theocratic laws to coerce compliance with their own retrogressive bigotries.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Bear in mind that this is no longer a fringe cult, but the mainstream of the Republican Party, including its top congressional leaders, presidential wannabes, and state officials. Actually, you can easily comprehend what these Humpty-Dumpties really mean by their “Don’t Be Woke” war cry. Just substitute the word “sane” for “woke.”
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Nearly all Americans agree that Congress has become a sad joke – a blight of irritating gnats.
How exciting, then, that a consultant to top Republican lawmakers has figured out how to make Congress better. Ready? Raise the members’ pay!
Golly, why didn’t I think of that? After all, who wants to work for only $174,000 a year (plus full health care, a really nice lifetime pension, and a flock of personal staffers to do the heavy lifting)? This congressional insider insists that such compensation is way too paltry for the best-and-brightest types Congress needs, so they choose Wall Street or corporate careers, rather than public service.
“Ask any corporate leader,” he asserts, and they’ll say “talent is everything.” And, he explains, it takes serious bucks to “attract and retain talent.” So, the answer to getting a better Congress is easy, he writes: “Let’s start by doubling their salaries.”
Excuse me, but let’s not.
While money is the reason Congress fails to represent the common good of America’s workday majority, their paychecks aren’t to blame. Rather, it’s the corrupting power of the unlimited dollars that corporations and billionaires are spewing into our elections and lobbying campaigns, literally buying the special-interest Congress that Americans despise.
The obvious problem with Congress is not that members don’t get enough money, but that they take too much. Don’t even think about raising congressional pay before outlawing congressional payoffs! Besides, anyone who’ll only commit to public service work if their pay is doubled is not committed to the public, to service, or even to work. They’re narcissists, committed to themselves – and Congress already has an excess of those.
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Some days I don’t know whether to rage in fury, weep quietly, or just throw up.
This, however, is definitely a throw-up day. That’s because our US Secretary of State (a once-honorable position that advocated humanitarian values) has just decreed that war-torn Palestinian children from Gaza will be denied medical visas that would let them come here for life-saving surgeries. Yes, innocent children horribly maimed by the US bombs, bullets, and billions of our tax dollars that our government sends to prop up the corrupt Israeli regime of Netanyahu, have now had America’s door slammed in their faces by Trump’s nutball extremists.
How extreme? Even bulldog right-winger Marjorie Taylor Greene is appalled that top USA officials have turned so cold as to reject common decency for “Palestinian kids who had their limbs and bodies blown apart.” But Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who reportedly once had a smidgeon of political integrity, immediately snapped to attention when someone named Laura Loomer – one of Trump’s loopy “influencers” – proclaimed that these Palestinian medical seekers were “pro-Hamas.”
Hello… they’re children! To which the Loomer lady summoned this piece of ignorance from deep within her dark soul: “They are not that sick if they can sit on a plane for 22 hours to get to America.”
Okay, she’s just a doofus, but Rubio? He’s a practicing Catholic, so he surely knows Jesus’ biblical admonition: “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Yet, he has officially banned them from the compassionate arms of the American people, darkly warning: “It’s not just kids… a bunch of adults are accompanying them.”
Yeah – their parents, guardians, good Samaritans. Gotta watch out for those types.
To stay on top of everything happening to Gaza, and to find solid actions you can take to fight and end the genocide, we recommend following Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American organizer and strategist who was also a surrogate for Bernie Sanders during his 2016 campaign.
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Bobby Kennedy, Jr. seemed on the right track when he launched his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.
Well, not the wacky-quacky part of that agenda, where he teeters off into the prickly thicket of medical voodoo and vaccine bugaboos. But he was onto something fundamentally important when he began to rally public opposition to the arrogance, greed, and willful destructiveness of pesticide peddlers and other Big Food profiteers.
As Secretary of Health, Kennedy pushed Trump’s “presidential commission on children’s health” to take long-overdue action to rein-in those agribusiness contaminators of our food supply and natural resources. He called for limits and outright bans on industrial ag and food processing abuses that grow corporate profits at the expense of healthy kids.
Great!
But wait – the commission’s draft report is now out, and none of Kennedy’s most meaningful stuff is in it. None! There’s no suggestion, for example, that even the most toxic cancer-causing pesticides should be outlawed, permanently removed from food products and our environment.
What happened? Money. While Kennedy was publicly talking a good game, Big Food profiteers were paying a million dollars each to have intimate talks at private dinners with Trump. And when money talks, political integrity walks.
Sadly, rather than resigning in protest of Trump’s whitewash and rallying America’s families to carry this betrayal into next year’s elections, Kennedy is hyping the report’s empty calories as a people’s victory! But he can’t make chicken salad out of chicken manure. Grassroots groups themselves call the gutted report “beyond laughable,” “profoundly disappointing” and “dangerous.”
For genuine, structural change in food policy, go to Environmental Working Group: ewg.org.
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At about 12 years of age, I began working for my father, loading bundles into the two delivery trucks used in his small business. This required that, first, I back the trucks down an alley and into the loading bay. Thus, I learned to drive going backward, which probably says something fundamental about me.
But even at 12, I didn’t get stuck in reverse, as today’s Republican Congress has. The GOP’s autocratic ideologues and corporate toadies are spurning hard-won, economic, social, environmental, and other progress made by generations of grassroots Americans. They are trying to drive our people back to Robber Baron rule and Jim Crow law.
Indeed, no progressive advance today escapes the wrath of the GOP’s ideological swat squad. Consider the operatic political frenzy they’re now stirring up over Post Office trucks. Yes, that ubiquitous fleet of red, white, and blue mail delivery vehicles you see on every street and rural road in America.
Those gas-powered workhorses, now 35 years old, are way overdue for replacement. Sensibly, the Postal Service is buying fuel-efficient, non-polluting, electric vehicles, which include such basics as airbags and air conditioning.
But no, squealed extreme right-wingers like Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. She condemns the very idea of a battery-powered fleet as lefty “wokeness.” So she’s demanding that Congress literally defund the purchase of EVs, forcing the Postal Service to go backward to inefficient, polluting trucks fueled by Big Oil – an industry that just happens to be a generous funder of her career.
To get a clear-eyed view of which are the best vehicles to take us way forward, don’t ask a corporate-owned ideologue; ask the postal workers who drive them. Go to apwu.com.
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In a 2006 documentary, I assailed Texas Republican lawmakers for ramming a brutish gerrymandering scheme into law, doing my report from a street sign in central Austin.
That sign was the exact location the GOP had used as the pin point for slicing up the city’s one congressional district into four pieces like a pizza. Each slice radiated far out of town, merging into Republican suburbs in distant cities – thus suppressing Austin’s progressive voice in Congress.
Now here they come again, assaulting progressive voters throughout the state with a gerrymandering gang bang. At the command of Donald Trump, our so-called “representatives” are submissively shoving millions of Texans into jerry-rigged Trump enclaves, solely to serve his political desires.
Far from being just another corrupt hyper-partisan political manipulation, this GOP ploy is stripping away America’s fundamental principle of representative democracy. Instead of grassroots communities sorting out their differences and choosing their own governing representatives in local elections, political hacks in Washington and the state capital are cynically relocating people’s political “locality” (with no participation at all by the people).
Yes, instead of constituents choosing their members of Congress, gerrymandering lets members choose their constituents. So “your” representative doesn’t need to know you, much less serve you. Thus, the issues that Congress considers don’t percolate up from local communities, but are chosen by national and state political operatives and multimillion-dollar campaign donors. It’s the nationalization of local elections, ignoring the real needs of hometown people.
Why shouldn’t you have a representative who’s at least from your community, maybe even knows your name… and gives a damn about something more constructive than Trump’s anti-democratic, plutocratic agenda.
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Is Elon Musk OK?
Just a few months ago, the prancing right-winger was constantly in the news. Today, though – poof! – he has vanished from media coverage. But fret not -- Elon always finds money to take care of Number One. Indeed, this month he was handed a $30 billion pay raise by his car company. Yes, BILLION.
Odd, since his stewardship of Tesla in the past couple of years has been disastrous. Sales, profit, quality, and market share are in the ditch, along with his own reputation. Yet, in a gushing letter to shareholders, the corporation’s board of directors asserted that its $30 billion handout was a “critical” gesture to induce Elon to show up for work. Apparently, $29 billion would not have been enough.
Who are these board members who supposedly “govern” the corporation and its CEO? One is Kimbal Musk. Yes, Elon’s brother! Others are close pals and lackeys, each of whom is extravagantly paid. For example, the board member who “negotiated” that ridiculous giveaway to His Supremeness has pocketed more than half a billion dollars in profits from Tesla stock options she has been granted.
Well, declare apologists for Musk and his captive board, if $30 billion was excessive, the shareholders who technically own Tesla could’ve sued to stop payment. Uh… no, they couldn’t. Last year, Musk moved Tesla’s official residence to Texas, where the corrupt governor dutifully passed a law dictating that only shareholders owning at least three percent of the stock can sue on matters of corporate governance. Basically, that eliminates all shareholders except: Musk.
And that’s how the corporate merry-go-round is rigged to keep spinning around and around and around.
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A gaggle of self-righteous multimillionaires are now in charge of America’s poverty agencies and policies, and they’ve been flaunting their deeply-held ignorance about poor families – almost none of whom they actually know.
Consider the national embarrassment of Brooke Rollins, a patrician ideologue, who is Trump’s plutocratic Secretary of Agriculture. Besides promoting a corporatized food and farm system, Rollins is advocating a program of back-to-the-future peonage for poor people. “We have way too many people that are taking government program that are able to work,” she snorts.
Bad grammar aside, she falsely asserts that “34 million able-bodied adults” are freeloading on public health care. They’re taking Medicaid benefits that they ought to have to “earn” by hard labor, she recently decreed. Her Dickensian solution: Put the moochers to work in the fields!
Noting that Trump’s militarized assault on immigrants has terrorized agricultural workers, thus creating a farm labor crisis, Rollins wants to hitch America’s poor families to the plow. Voilà – labor shortage solved, and the poor are forced to earn their medical care. What a brilliant leader!
Except for her rank ignorance. First, 64 percent of Medicaid recipients are already working and nearly all of the rest are retirees, unable to work, or struggling to find jobs. Second, she’s obviously unaware that agriculture is skilled work – you can’t just bus city and suburban people out to the country and say “grow stuff.”
And third, it is beyond arrogant for a rich government autocrat – who takes $220,000 a year from taxpayers, plus platinum healthcare benefits and a fat pension – to be pontificating about forcing “undeserving” poor into hot fields to produce a nice leafy salad for her lunch.
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Will Rogers joked that when thousands of rural Oklahomans fled the 1930s Dust Bowl and migrated to California: “It raised the intellectual level of both states.”
Following that line of thought, it occurred to me that America could benefit mightily if the Democratic Party’s overbearing corporate contingent were to migrate to their natural domain, the Republican Party. Seriously, as Robert Reich recently wrote: “Who in the world needs corporate Democrats?”
Thomas Jefferson warned of the democracy-crushing threat of America’s emerging “moneyed corporations.” And, sure enough, here they are today – literally owning the White House, Congress, Judiciary, most state governments… and suppressing democracy itself.
They’re entrenched not because they’re championed by the Republican Party, but because the once-proud party of America’s broad working class has also yoked itself to corporate money and embraced Republican policies of corporate supremacy. Where does that leave the great majority of working stiffs on election day? Staying home, feeling abandoned as both parties cater to the moneyed elite.
While many corporate Democrats insist they’re “social progressives,” it would be a profound public service for them to carry those social values directly into Republican primaries, softening that party’s raw minginess a bit. At the same time, their departure would free the Democratic Party from being financially shackled to the corporate agenda, letting it return to its roots as the unequivocating champion of working-class, little-d democrats.
By clarifying the core policy differences of both parties, elections could matter to most people again, presenting honest choices between a democratic or a plutocratic future. Pie-in-the-sky? Maybe, or even probably. But baking a pie starts by turning on the heat.
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Frenetic crowds are storming the White House like a Black Friday mob at Walmart!
Only these are not shoppers scrambling for family needs – these are CEOs, lobbyists, and billionaires out to “get theirs” in the huge Trump-a-Thon sell-off of Presidential favors. Common folks need not apply, since MAGA, Inc. (Trump’s political fundraising sack) charges a million bucks or more just to buy access to his golden throne.
Once there, everything is for sale. One cryptocurrency huckster, for example, delivered his million to get into a candlelight dinner at Mar-a-Lago, where he pitched a business deal to Trump himself. Then, for an extra $200,000, the crypto-guy was allowed to “sponsor” the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn. Yes – they’ve even financialized and corporatized an apolitical, publicly-funded event for children!
Not only is Trump being bought by Big Money, but he’s also available for short-term lease. For example, rich businesswoman Elizabeth Fago leased him in April for some heavy lifting on a household chore. Her son Paul had been found guilty last year of tax crimes and was headed to prison. But a million dollar check to MAGA Inc. put her in direct touch with Mister Fix-It. Sure enough, once her check was cashed, the fortunate son was granted “a full and unconditional” presidential pardon – no jail time, no payment of restitution to his victims.
When the New York Times asked about such corrupt selling of official favors, MAGA Inc. declared that Trump treats every American the same. So, there you have Trump’s million-dollar definition of “American.” If you’ve got the million, you’re in the club. If you don’t, you’re not.
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Has your family visited any of America’s phenomenal national parks or historical sites this summer? What treasures they are!
Also, visits to these jewels are enriched by the deeply-knowledgeable Park Service staff. And, of course, there’s the extra-special bonus that the Trump regime has added to our public parks this year: Political censorship.
With Trump issuing his dizzying blizzard of right-wing executive orders, you might’ve missed the one in March commanding the Park Service to scrutinize all of its public exhibits, signs, websites, videos, and other materials. Why? To flag and delete any scrap of information that Trump’s right-wing cultural cops consider to be “negative” historical content about America.
Sure enough, the Interior Department’s political overseers promptly compelled staffs at the Park Service’s 433 locations to go on a witch hunt for ideological impurity. In particular, any suggestion that racism, oppression, autocracy, and violence have been common features of the American experience have been decreed verboten. And, to assure a thorough cleansing of history, MAGA posses have been invited to go to historic sites and tag items they don’t like. Trump operatives say that by mid-September, they will have removed, deleted, or – get this – physically covered-up the inconvenient truths of our people’s history.
They’re like one-year-olds who think if they cover their eyes, we can’t see them. Well, peek-a-boo! A rebellious coalition called “Save Our Signs,” is asking grassroots people to take photos and videos of Park Service exhibits before they’re hidden away. Then, SOS will display samples of the banned material online so We the People can see the inanity of Trump’s 1984ish Newspeak censorship. Link to SOS at jimhightower.com/SaveOurSigns.
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In 2018 my newspaper died. Well, actually, the emaciated carcass of the Austin American Statesman still had a feeble pulse. But its journalistic voice and soul were gone, stripped out by the notorious financial predators of Gannett, the huge media conglomerate that had recently bought the paper.
Happily, though, the Statesman has made a near-miraculous recovery, thanks to a small-but-feisty band of actual journalists who believe in local newspapers. They fought Gannett bosses tenaciously, gaining a voice by forming a union, striking, and finally compelling the giant to sign a union contract. Victory!
Uh… not yet. Just months later, Gannett sold the newspaper to Hearst, another massive media conglomerate. This new relationship started well, but soon turned sour when Hearst honchos abruptly refused to honor the paper’s contract with the union. Then they began firing employees and jacking around with the newsroom’s healthcare and retirement benefits. Adding pettiness to greed, Hearst honchos even refused to let Statesman journalists take a holiday that corporate managers get. What the hell?
Bear in mind that Hearst is a phenomenally profitable, $13-billion-a-year, multi-media behemoth. It’s CEO, Steven Swartz, pockets millions of dollars a year and lives in luxury. Also, Austin is a booming media market worth gazillions to Hearst! No need to be so pathetically mingy!
So, the hardy members of the Austin News Guild are back doing what working people have to do – organizing and mobilizing for a little more justice. “We’re no strangers to the petty tactics of corporate elites,” they say, so the guild is relaunching its grassroots campaign to battle the b**s, fight for fairness, and protect local news. To track progress, go to: AustinNewsGuild.org.
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If you want to learn how to play the game, boys and girls, forget all that old-fashioned stuff like “do your best,” “be a good sport,” and “respect the game.”
No, no, that’s loser talk. Today, the name of the game is winning. You’re Number One, or you’re nothing, so forget fair play and do whatever it takes to WIN! Of course, the gold medal champion of gaming the system is Trump, and to see the master in action, look at his current electoral manipulation in Texas.
With only a slim majority in the US House, and with his job-approval rating plummeting, Trump recently realized he’s in danger of losing his iron grip on Congress in next year’s mid-term elections. Gosh, what to do? Simple – rig the election! And no place is better at that than Texas.
So, Lord Donald ordered Greg Abbott, the right-wing partisan hack who is governor of this once-proud Lone Star State, to convene a special legislative session to redraw our congressional districts. Never mind that the districts had already been gerrymandered by Abbott only four years ago, Trump is demanding that voters be herded like cattle into even more convoluted districts. The goal is to oust five Texas Democrats from the House, thus stacking the Congressional deck with more Republicans so he can keep ruling the place. It’s political game-playing at its worst, disrespecting voters and the very idea of a House of Representatives.
Of course, there is an honorable way for the GOP to elect more of its own without engaging in political perversion: Stop trying to push far-right-wing nonsense that the great majority of voters don’t want. Instead, put up decent candidates who don’t need a Trump script to know what they stand for… and don’t need a Trump map to find the district that they supposedly “represent.”
Do something!
To stay on top of all-things-progressive in Texas, we can’t recommend Michelle H. Davis’ Substack enough: Lone Star Left. Here are a couple of her recent posts:
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Some outrages are so outrageous that I don’t even want to talk about them. But that’s when we must speak out.
Indeed, let’s rage against our government’s wholly-unprincipled embrace of (and direct participation in) the Israeli government’s ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people.
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Israel’s ruthless, 2-year invasion of Gaza has already killed 59,000 Palestinian civilians – more than half of them women and children.
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That’s as many killings as our soldiers suffered during the entire Vietnam War.
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Israel’s military has forced nearly all of Gaza’s two million citizens to abandon their homes and towns, herding them into distant camps, many without food, water, toilets, etc.
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Excruciating death by starvation – especially among children – is now at epidemic levels in Gaza, creating a dystopian horror.
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When masses of desperate Palestinians rush to sporadic and inadequate deliveries of humanitarian aid, Israeli snipers and other forces have opened fire on them – just since May, more than a thousand unarmed Palestinians have been assassinated in such ambushes.
Yes, fiendish Hamas terrorists, who literally operate underground in Gaza, are guilty of sadistic brutality against Israelis. But moral retribution requires going after Hamas, not mounting an inhumane onslaught to wipe the Palestinian people off the Earth.
A majority of Israelis are now openly rebelling against their government’s barbaric abandonment of their people’s best values. But what about us? Those sniper bullets and rockets have your and my names on them; those wasted children who’re dying in the agony of starvation belong to us; and it’s our politicians who’re propping up Israel’s corrupt prime minister and war machine. To stop this perversion of our own humanitarian values, go to International Rescue Committee: rescue.org.
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To paraphrase British historian Lord Acton: “[Money] tends to corrupt, and absolute [money] corrupts absolutely.”
During my time as a Texas elected official, I happened to witness an almost vaudevillian performance of Lord Acton’s axiom on the floor of our state senate. A multimillionaire named Bo Pilgrim, baron of a factory chicken empire called Pilgrim’s Pride, had come to the Capitol to speak against a bill requiring corporations like his to provide decent workers’ compensation benefits. Bo didn’t speak in words, however – he simply walked onto the senate floor and brazenly handed out $10,000 checks to compliant senators.
Today, corporate political money doesn’t just talk, it screams – drowning out the voices of all who oppose the special favors the corrupt “donors” buy. And these days, a $10,000 check is considered almost charming in its innocence.
Take Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a far-right-wing demagogic politico who prides himself on demonizing and directly harming poor and powerless people, while scooping up fantastic donations from the financial powers he serves. This year, after railroading a slew of corporate gimmies into law, Abbott cashed in. Last month alone, he pocketed four million-dollar checks – one each from a real estate titan, a ruthless pipeline autocrat, a Trump backing money manager, and one of Elon Musk’s corporate operatives.
Excuse me for speaking out, but this is a gross example of kakistocracy – government by and for the very worst people in society. If they didn’t shower him with cash, even Greg Abbott wouldn’t speak to them. It’s time to start calling this what the dictionary plainly says it is: Bribery.
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🚨🚨🚨 From the Lowdown’s “Early Political Warning System” comes this Code Red alert… 🚨🚨🚨 a fast-moving front of corporate corruption is sweeping westward from the White House… 🚨🚨🚨… Residents are urged to seek higher ethical ground immediately… 🚨🚨🚨
This is not a test, but a warning of an unnatural disaster: A plutocratic cabal of corporate elites is aiming to gut and eventually eliminate America’s National Weather Service! Yes, that’s the extensive network of scientific analysts, monitoring systems, researchers, emergency responders, and others trying to anticipate, prepare for, and protect us from the worst of storms, floods, wildfires, and other calamities.
In the name of “efficiency,” Republican politicos are now defunding and cancelling essential storm warning centers, hurricane monitoring staffs, flood rescue teams – and they’re even closing some forecast offices at night (as though bad weather checks out at sunset). Why?
Greed. Wall Street profiteers – including Trump appointees and political funders – have long lusted to privatize the weather service. While no one can control the weather, it is possible to control, commodify, and monopolize the collection, interpretation, and distribution of forecasting data. So, Trump Inc. intends to stop providing these functions as a public service for the benefit of all. Instead, weather data would become a corporate profit center, packaged and sold at premium prices to media conglomerates, insurance giants, private resorts, and others who can afford it.
These privatizing profiteers are shameful. They’re deliberately demonizing, destaffing, and dismantling a public servicethat is essential to America’s common good – just so they can steal it for their own profit. To rebel against their destructive greed, check out Union of Concerned Scientists: UCS.org
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In addition to protecting children from internet pornography—shouldn’t we protect them from seeing congress critters shamelessly sucking up to Trump and publicly prostituting themselves to billionaires?
Consider the raw obscenity of the GOP ramming its gross budget bill into law. Even many conservatives gagged at the depravity of forcibly taking food stamps and Medicaid from millions of everyday people, just so a few extremely rich elites can satisfy their insatiable lust for tax breaks.
The stench of greed in their law is so offensive that Republicans are now trying to perfume their minginess by branding all those who’re being denied access to food and health care as moochers. Get off welfare and go find a job! These shameless lawmakers even insist they’re helping the poor by “transitioning” them “from Medicaid to employer-provided health care.”
It's always instructive to hear $174,000-a-year, taxpayer-insured politicos scold hard-hit families for “taking” public aid. Apparently, it never dawns on these pecksniffs that dead-end jobs available to the poor don’t come with any health care. Well, sniff GOP leaders, that’s why we pushed through this “big, beautiful” tax cut for billionaires—it’s our anti-poverty program!
Huh? Yes, they explain, it’s simple: (1) cut spending on poor people; so (2) we can lower the taxes that rich people and corporations pay; thus (3) giving them billions to invest in good jobs for the poor.
This is Jim Hightower saying… I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. Notice that their Billionaire Boondoggle includes no requirement at all that recipients invest even one dollar in jobs. So, they won’t. This bill is not just ugly, it’s morally revolting.
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Big news! The Trump4Sale shop next door to the Office of the President, has just issued an exciting new product: “Trump Fragrance.” Yes, it’s officially-certified Trump perfume, allowing you and your loved ones to reek of the essence of The Donald—only $249 for a 3-ounce bottle.
I wondered, with so much going on, why is he busy hawking perfume? But then I saw nearly every congressional Republican cravenly cave in to White House demands that they approve Trump’s truly stinky budget plan. Ah-ha! They are the perfume’s target market! Voting to slash food and health care funding for poor families, just so those dollars can be lavished on tax giveaways for millionaires and billionaires, is extremely unpopular. So Trump was offering them an odoriferous spritz.
Some will need gallons of it. Not only did they vote to harm to millions of people, but they rushed back to their districts, loudly demanding that the humanitarian disaster they created be fixed by state and local officials.
Then, there is Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a rich Pennsylvania Republican. He owned corporate stock in a big Medicaid provider named Centene, but as a legislative insider Rep. Bresnahan knew that Trump’s bill would gut Medicaid and crash Centene’s stock value. So, he dumped that stock just one week before the House approved the budget. And, yes, after protecting himself, Rob voted for the Medicaid gut job that caused the stock price to plummet.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Even one of Bresnahan’s Republican colleagues, Brian Fitzpatrick, was appalled: “We need American leaders who are accountable, transparent, and wholly committed to serving the public—not their stock portfolio,” he said, rightly adding that members of Congress “should be banned from trading individual stocks—period.”
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A major political group says that to solve America’s environmental problems, we must let Big Oil Have more control over public policy. That group is Big Oil.
Indeed, such giants as Exxon and Shell Oil have long complained that environmentalists, consumers, and other busybodies, keep using legislation and lawsuits to interfere with their environmental “innovations.” But now, top state officials in (where else?) Texas have found a solution: Just ban the public from meddling in oil industry business.
At issue is a scheme by oil barons to sell the wastewater they use in “fracking,” a notoriously destructive way of forcing oil out of the ground. It’s also terribly wasteful, requiring five barrels of water to get one barrel of oil. But, “Eureka!” cried industry profiteers – we can treat that “backwash” with some chemicals and market it as “produced water.” Letting us pump this fracking product right into the state’s lakes, rivers, aquifers, and other waterways, they say, will replenish the state’s dwindling water supply.
But is that safe? Rather than answer, the corporate powers rushed to the governor and legislature – not seeking protections for the people, but to protect themselves and their profits from the people. Sure enough, the state’s corporate corrupted politicos dutifully passed a law decreeing that companies producing, selling, or transporting recycled fracking water cannot be held liable for any “consequences” suffered by those using the product. Consequences? Yes, like poisoned crops, illnesses… and death!
When the Sierra Club demanded safety studies on the obvious dangers of spewing oil wastewater on and in everything, an industry functionary scoffed, declaring: “We’ve studied this problem to death.” Ooooo – bad choice of words!
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News flash: One of the president’s media handlers has inadvertently issued a political statement that’s actually true!
She didn’t mean to. She was responding to the damning revelation that Trump has just given a huge government benefit to a global corporate criminal from Brazil – after – that corporation donated a whopping $5 million to fund his extravagant inaugural party. Trying to dismiss this obvious quid pro quo, the spokeswoman declared that Trump “is not bought by anyone.”
Right. Not by “anyone,” but by many ones. The most flagrantly corrupt president in US history, Trump’s Oval Office theme song is, “If you’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.” Remember, last year he bluntly instructed Big Oil to deliver a billion dollars to him, promising he would deliver many billions-worth of government favors to them. They did… and he is.
So, now, high-tech billionaires, foreign dictators, Wall Street elites, and other oligarchs are lined up at the White House, offering personal and political gimmies to entice him to rig the system for them. Take that $5 million pay-to-play money from Brazil. It came from JBS, the global factory farm monopolist infamous for price fixing, child labor abuse, vast environmental crimes, etc. Even our anything-goes stock exchange refused to sanction JBS’ immorality. But then Trump took the money and enthroned JBS in the prestigious New York Stock Exchange.
His sellout means the Brazillian bully can now raise billions in new capital through our stock market, jacking up its monopoly power over US farmers, consumers, businesses, and environment. Doing it all with a presidential seal of approval – bought for only $5 million.
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In these days of domineering corporate rule, where can we commoners go to find even a little bit of justice?
Right where they’ve been found throughout human history: Within ourselves. Specifically, in our rebellious spirit, our willingness to confront the greedheads and boneheads who feel entitled to run roughshod over us.
For example, The Formosa Four.
You probably haven’t heard of them, since the mass media powers don’t cover something as consequential and uplifting as a nation of Davids challenging Goliath – such as “The Formosa Four.” They are members of a tenacious and scrappy coalition that has dared to confront one of the most flagrant corporate criminals on the globe: Formosa Plastics. It’s a $6 billion-a-year profiteer that constantly and carelessly spews millions of tons of plastic contaminants into our environment and ourselves.
But last summer, the bully tried to play victim. When about 70 protestors defiantly converged on Formosa’s US headquarters in New Jersey, corporate executives had four of the leaders arrested and charged with criminal trespass – a power play to prevent free speech and scare off future protestors.
Yes, a global behemoth that’s a deadly polluter and serial human rights violator had our government arrest and prosecute grassroots critics for the “high crime” of trespassing. Such is the pettiness – but liberty-busting seriousness – of today’s arrogant forces of plutocracy.
Justice fighters, though, aren’t easily spooked by bullies, and the movement succeeded last week in having all charges dismissed. As one protester said, it takes “regular people putting their bodies on the line to make these things happen. One victory today, and many more in the future.” For more information, go to Formosa4.org.
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Don’t let it be said that the superrich care only about themselves, always taking from society and giving nothing back.
Consider the generous billionaires who live on an island in Florida’s Biscayne Bay. Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos lives there, as do Ivanka Trump and her hubby, Jared Kushner. Actually, their so-called island is fake, built in the bay so a few dozen absurdly rich sparklies don’t have to mix with commoners living in the adjacent town of Surfside.
Snootiness aside, though, the billionaires have literally been giving “of themselves” to Surfside’s people. Specifically, their bodily waste has long been leaking from the septic systems of their mansions, polluting the town’s environment. Yes, the rich are actually defecating on commoners.
Facing public scorn, the Bezos-Trump-Kushner clan proposed piping their excrement into Surfside’s sewer system. Okay, but when the city asked for $10 million to help cover the pipe’s cost, the billionaires squealed like stuck hogs!
Come on! Ten million for them is like 10 dollars for you and me. Of course, moneyed elites didn’t get rich by playing fair, but by playing the system. So, they dispatched their lobbyists and lawyers to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Sure enough – BAM! – Republican officials suddenly and secretly approved a new state provision decreeing that local communities like Surfside cannot interfere with or even demand payment for such special-interest sewer projects as the Bezos-Trump-Kushner hookup. Then, again with no publicity, DeSantis signed the billionaires’ corrupt law – no doubt assured that they would reward his kindness later on.
Ironically, the word “defecate” is derived from a Latin verb meaning “to cleanse.” But there’s not enough soap in Florida to clean the hands of these dirty dealers.
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Surprisingly, top Republicans in Congress and the White House have recently been praising labor!
Oh, wait – they’re not hailing America’s laborers, but touting the existential virtue of “laboring.” “Work,” exclaim these politicos, provides “dignity” to all who labor.
Dignity? Obviously, they’ve never been inside a meatpacking plant, done roofing jobs for a wage-thieving developer, been paid a pittance to clean office buildings at midnight… or otherwise fully experienced the “dignity of labor.”
Years ago, Sen. Fred Harris was accosted at a political event by a rich businessman who demanded that Democrats reduce taxes by cutting the wages of government workers. The guy sputtered in disbelief that “mere garbagemen” were being paid $6 an hour. Fred stopped him right there, curtly asking: “Is that too much? What would it take to get you to do that job?”
Unfortunately, the guy’s crass classism is now official policy in Washington. In the name of “cutting waste” and lowering taxes on billionaires, a gaggle of narcissistic plutocrats – including Trump, “Chainsaw” Musk, cabinet appointees, and congressional extremists – have ganged up to fire valuable public service workers and slash essential assistance for poor families.
There is no sugar coating for the vulgarity and moral depravity of such elites whupping up on middle- and low-income families for their own gain. Moreover, their disdain for the value and creativity of those who do the daily work that makes America work is stupid … and socially suicidal.
Plus, their self-esteem is ludicrous. Indeed, if you pitted social value of a sanitation worker to any of Trump’s budget-slashing cabinet czars – guess which one the public would say is overpaid… and dispensable?
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How embarrassing. Our show-biz president’s glorious $45 million military parade – fssssst – fizzled. The gods rained on it, the thing dragged on, and Trump himself kept nodding off in his chair. Sad.
What his show needed was some of the reality-TV drama that defines this president. For example, he could’ve had a phalanx of food trucks rumbling down the street, being chased by hundreds of hungry US soldiers, waving empty plates and chanting, “Feed the Troops!”
Besides being entertaining, that spectacle would’ve brought long-overdue public attention to an outrage that really rankles rank-and-file soldiers – namely, hunger. Yes, the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget that overflows with waste and boondoggles for corporate contractors actually leaves military families struggling to have enough to eat, much less being well-fed.
Indeed, about 25 percent of service members are so poorly paid and poorly served on US Army bases that that they are officially “food insecure,” relying on food stamps and local food pantries for their bare bones nutritional needs. Last November, for example, it was reported that the base dining hall at Fort Carson, Colorado, was serving a miserly “meal” consisting of one slice of toast and spoonful lima beans. Some bases are only offering gas-station-style grab-and-go snacks.
More scandalous, soldiers have a $460 “food tax” automatically deducted from their meager paychecks each month to pay for food. But the Army brass quietly diverts two-thirds of the soldiers’ money to other purposes – which they won’t disclose.
Congress knows about this and does nothing. Trump doesn’t even want to know. And Pentagon honcho Hegseth is lost in the fog of his own incompetence. To help raise awareness and Hell, go to FeedingAmericaAction.org.
Do something
Want to support veterans and fight for justice with them? Here are two orgs we love:
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Common Defense
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About Face
Also, here are some graphics from The Poster Project that you can share and use as talking points:
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posterproject.usWhen you heard about Trump’s Project 2025 & DOGE gutting of federal agencies and programs, did the impact of those whacks on your own daily life or your community’s health hit you right away? For many of us, those huge numbers are a little abstract and can sometimes make our eyes glaze over. When you start to break it all down and really look at where things are going, especially with the Hefty Horrible Bill moving through Congress, it becomes clear really fast that we are in a certain very well-known handbasket that we’ve got to get out of.
Who has time to break it all down, though? Luckily, for the past several months, an all-volunteer group of people from across ideological and geographic spectrums have come together to do that for you. It’s called The Poster Project, and it’s a catalog of free infographics showing the disastrous impact of this slash ‘n’ burn on every state and territory, plus tools to help you tell the stories that need telling with those graphics.
Full disclosure, I’m part of this effort, and what we’re trying to achieve here is not just to get the information out, but to also help people connect the dots and feel confident in being able to do things like write a letter to the editor, or to call in to shows on their local radio stations to talk about the cuts in real, human ways. We know that statistics don’t change minds, but stories do; we also know that legislators at every level care a lot about what their local media are saying about them.
To that end, in addition to the state-by-state graphics, there are also links to tools that can help write that letter to the editor, and that will give you some straightforward talking points for calling into those radio shows. Your story can help change the public perception of how government investment in our country’s well-being benefits them and their communities! For example, not many people know how dependent our hospitals, especially rural hospitals, are on Medicaid payments. They think, “Well, I’m not on Medicaid, so I don’t have to worry about that.” But no! If Medicaid gets slashed, hospitals and health centers who already operate in the red will close entirely.
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Gosh, I miss the old days of CEO greed, when the pay gap between Boss Hog and everyday employees was merely gross.
Today, the guiding ethic for top executive enrichment is to have no ethics. Grab as much as you can as fast as you can, everyone else be damned. And never mind that as chief, you did absolutely nothing to “earn” that exorbitant stash of cash.
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How exorbitant? Corporations try to hide the actual numbers, but under an insider accounting measure called “compensation actually paid” reveals the obscene truth. Last year, America’s 10 highest paid CEOs averaged more than a billion dollars each in pay. One person, one year, one billion.
And the Number One highest-paid corporate honcho last year, Alex Karp, made off with nearly $7 billion! That’s $560 million a month in personal pay. With the exceptions of Jesus and Dolly Parton, no one is worth anywhere near that!
And what does Alex do? He’s the CEO of Palantir, a high-tech outfit now working for Donald Trump to collect and computerize all of your and my personal data, creating government dossiers so federal agents can monitor us. Sleazy, but in today’s Corporate America, that’s a path to untold riches.
Still, for the insanely rich, too much is not enough. So, they, their lobbyists, and Republican congress critters are now furiously pushing for what Trump calls a “Big Beautiful Bill.” It would cut Medicaid, food stamps, and other basic human needs for America’s lowest-paid working families. Why? To give a billion-dollars more in annual tax cuts to hucksters like Karp… and Trump himself. This is worse than kleptocracy – it’s sleazocracry.
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If the barrage of MAGA nuttiness and raw meanness is getting you down, ponder this passage from the classic novel, Don Quixote: “It is not possible for the bad or the good to last forever… and since the bad has lasted so long, the good is close at hand.”
Of course, the good only comes when fed-up people openly rebel against the bad. And, sure enough, Trump’s awful tyranny is revving up a majority movement for the common good.
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Soaking in self-delusion, tyrants start sipping their own bathwater, thinking it’s champagne. So, today’s Washington MAGA moguls, drunk on narcissism, are imperiously rigging the rules so their clique can grab more wealth and power from the rest of us. Maybe they thought we commoners wouldn’t notice… or care. But we did and do, so the rebellion is on and gaining steam with nationwide protests and a surge in grassroots populist defiance.
Predictably, Trump & Co. is now resorting to the same losing tactic that panicky despots always fall back on – deploying police and military to subjugate the people. He has commanded the Army and Marines to shut down public protests. Then, posturing as a “strongman,” this 1960s draft dodger spent 45 million of our tax dollars to stage a made-for-TV, Stalin-style military parade on his birthday, letting him strut around as warrior-in-chief.
These are not shows of strength, but pathetic confessions of personal insecurity and presidential weakness. Sad. Don Quixote was right – the good is close at hand. So, to all of you in the growing democracy movement, keep pushing, push harder, push further! Thanks to you, we’re getting there. And we’ll get there sooner rather than later.
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Chances are, if you’re a subscriber to this publication, you’ve heard about the ramping up of fascism here in the U.S.— obviously for a while now, but very acutely this week. We wanted to make sure you’ve got information that you need so that you can contribute meaningfully to the work at hand. Protesting, yes, but also, there’s a myriad of other ways to help defeat this authoritarian escalation.
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Look at all these scheduled protests for Saturday, June 14th! If you’re still looking for one to attend, check out the No Kings website for locations, resources, toolkits and more.
What if I can’t attend a protest? Am I a bad progressive?There are a million reasons that folks won’t be able to attend an actual protest: Disability! Work conflicts! Family care! Safety! You don’t have to justify your reasons for not putting your body out there. But, if you’re committed to solidarity, this is also not the time to hide under the covers and hope it all goes away, either. Let’s find something that you can do.
One of my favorite resources has been making the rounds this week. Longtime movement strategist and generally excellent human created this framework for understanding all of the roles that need to be filled for a successful social movement.
An Instagram post from Alyssa, founder of Queer Latines, talks about how she sees this particular moment: protests are where the disrupters and frontline responders can show up and be highly effective. But we also need caregivers (can you watch someone’s kids while they attend? Can you make and hand out free food and water to folks?), storytellers (can you write a letter to the editor of your local paper?), builders (can you donate some time or money to structural needs?), and all the other roles laid out in Deepa’s map.
dontcallmelysA post shared by @dontcallmelysThe media focuses on protests because protests create a spectacle that’s easy to feature. And showing up to protests when we’re able is absolutely critical to show others that they’re not alone, and that people are fighting for the common good. Our culture and media don’t get interested in many things that aren’t spectacles, so you don’t often see people working on jail support for arrested protesters, making donations to organizing or showing up for mutual aid work. And because of that, us everyday people don’t necessarily feel like we’re having an impact. This is where we’ve got to trust in our solidarity with one another, that all of our “smaller” actions are contributing to changing the future.
I’m reminded of a concept I learned from Judaism called “tikkun olam.” The definition that was taught to me was that, early on, the universe had shattered into a bazillion little pieces, and it's up to each of us to take one little tiny shard and put it back together. No one person can put the whole universe back together, but we all have a responsibility to put our two shards back together. What are the shards you can grab right now?
If you’d like to dig a little bit deeper into the The Social Change Map, don’t hesitate to reach out to Deepa—she does deep dives, workshops, conversations and more into and with the framework, helping groups and coalitions apply it.
In the meantime, leave your favorite suggestions in the comments for how people can support the organized resistance in all the myriad of ways this map lays out! We love as a daily source of inspiration for these— here are the recommendations for tomorrow:
Chop Wood, Carry WaterChop Wood, Carry Water 6/12Hi, all, and happy Thursday…Read more8 days ago · 215 likes · 51 comments · Jess CravenLeave a comment
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How sweet it is to be a corporate criminal these days!
I don’t mean common price gougers, polluters, and such, but full-fledged, executive-suite mobsters. They run huge corporate syndicates, treating fraud and even murder as necessary business tools. For example, Boeing Incorporated.
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In 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX passenger jet suddenly nose-dived into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board. A freak accident, declared top bosses of the multibillion-dollar giant, disavowing any responsibility. Indeed, even though he knew that the MAX had a fatally flawed maneuvering system, the CEO rushed out to assure fliers that the jet was “as safe as any airplane that has ever flown the skies.”
But, oops – five months later, another MAX nosedived in Ethiopia, killing 157 more people. Whistleblowers and federal investigators later revealed that the bosses had long been shortchanging safety in order to jack up profits… and their own pay. Last summer – in a rare legal victory over business-as-usual coddling of corporate abuses – Boeing had to admit that it “knowingly” defrauded safety regulators and was, in fact, guilty of the criminal violations. So, justice!
Uh… not quite. Just a few weeks later, Trump happened, and he immediately turned the Justice Department into a full-service corporate whorehouse. So, after Boeing donated a cool million bucks in tribute to the new president, Trump’s attorney generally obligingly decreed that the confessed corporate criminal could simply “withdraw” its guilty plea, pay a minimal fine for killing 346 people… and “move on.”
Politicians bark at us commoners: “Do the crime and you’ll do the time.” Unless, of course, you can buy a corporate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card from a corrupt president.
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Ok, let’s have a show of hands: How many of you voted to hand ALL of your most personal data to Trump’s intrusive government?
By “all,” I mean he is setting up one Silicon Valley “data aggregator” to collect, store, and control your Social Security number, bank codes, health records, tax filings, voting history, biometrics… and, well, the whole statistical YOU. This aggregator will vacuum up all these unconnected data points and reconstruct them into a full computerized profile of your life, behavior, and beliefs.
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This mass surveillance infrastructure isn’t some 1984ish fiction, but a fast-moving reality spun from Trump’s Project 2025. In an executive order quietly issued in March, he decreed that every federal agency must dump our personal data into a new centralized computer system, effectively creating government dossiers on each of us. Like every tyrant everywhere, Trump says his order is benign, merely “streamlining” data searches to increase government “efficiency.”
But this is no paper-shuffling decree, for Project 2025 operatives have already moved into the IRS, ICE, Social Security, the Pentagon, etc. – putting the technology in place to aggregate the master file.
Trump has – with no public input – already appointed a right-wing, high-tech data espionage outfit to be America’s surveillance overlord. Named Palantir, it was created and financed by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley Republican billionaire, anti-democracy crusader, and self-absorbed plutocrat. Palantir bluntly declares that its role in amassing and rummaging through our private information is “the finding of hidden things.”
You think you have “nothing to hide,” right? But tyrants can “find something” on everyone. To help stop Trump’s thugs from weaponizing ourselves against ourselves, go to Electronic Frontier Foundation: eff.org
Extra, extra: For more on just how lousy (and dangerous) of a human Peter Thiel is, check out the 4-part series that the podcast Behind the Bastards produced on him in late 2024.
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Let’s say you like shrimp. Whether you go for a chain restaurant’s happy hour shrimp boil or a pricey plate of “shrimp à la grandioso” at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort – a good question to ask is: Where do they get their shrimp?
Even if the restaurant has an ocean view and a shrimp boat out front, chances are its crustaceans come from industrial aquaculture farms thousands of miles away in India, Ecuador, Vietnam and Indonesia. Astonishingly, our country now imports 94 percent of the shrimp we eat!
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Astonishing, because our oceans have an abundance of top-quality shrimp, and we are blessed with highly-skilled shrimping families. Worse, those foreign industrial operations, financed by Wall Street and global profiteers, are infamous for using forced labor, banned antibiotics, and destructive environmental methods. Then they dump their grossly-cheap product into the US market, pushing out our superior-quality domestic product and devastating entire shrimping communities.
Yet, restaurant and supermarket prices for shrimp are at historic highs, with no disclosure to us consumers of where the product is from. The import industry effectively bribes lawmakers to avoid exposing, much less punishing, this multibillion-dollar swindle of American producers and eaters alike. The bait-and-switch conspiracy is now so pervasive that at last year’s National Shrimp Festival, four out of five vendors were – shhhh – quietly serving industrially-raised imported shrimp.
Of course, corporations have no conscience, but our tough-on-crime political leaders are so pusillanimous that they won’t even stand up for their own local shrimpers. A recent Louisiana law, for example, “boldly” requires restaurants to disclose if they’re peddling imported shrimp. But, the legislature meekly provided no penalty if violators ignore the law. So… they do.
For information on real reform, connect with SanAntonioBayWaterKeeper.org.
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The right-wing routinely demonizes family-friendly policies of liberals as “social engineering.”
But look out! Here come those same politicians, putting on MAGA hardhats and firing up their political bulldozers to push one of the most arrogant and intrusive social schemes imaginable. They intend to re-engineer the American family! These “pronatalists” want families to conform to a Christian Nationalist family structure – specifically, a dominant man married to a subservient stay-at-home woman, having beaucoup children. Not a couple of kiddos but six, 12, or more!
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For example, extremist MAGA senator Josh Hawley has become a cheerleader for a federal policy to entice women to quit work, stay home, and have more babies. He proposes a tax credit of $5,000 per child, gushing that this would cause working families to exclaim, “Oh, my gosh, we can actually raise our kids.”
Well, “gosh” right back at you, Josh! Just giving birth can cost more than $5,000 – and raising a child is multiples above that every year. So, you want to take away a mom’s job and her income, and add thousands in costs to the family budget – in exchange for a government tax credit? The slickest loan sharks aren’t that diabolical.
Oh, wait. Right-wing pronatalists have another government incentive to jack-up birth rates. Incredibly, Trump officials have proposed a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women who have six or more children! Wow, what should that medal look like, be made of, and say? And when and where should it be worn? Also, will un-medaled women socially ostracized?
If right-wingers actually wanted to help families, they’d be backing family-level wages, free child care, and Medicare for all. Everything else is political BS.
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Photo: Alan PogueMy fondest memory of Ronnie Dugger is him in his cluttered cubbyhole of an office, his brow furrowed and his mind whirring as he pounded away on an old Royal typewriter, churning out another punch to the snout of the moneyed and right-wing elites
Dugger was once my boss, and we became longtime friends, and progressive allies. He died this week at 95, and most obituaries rightly hailed him as a “titan of journalism,” praising his smart, insightful and often-elegant writing. True enough, but an equally true side of Ronnie is that he was a boisterous, joyful brawler for life’s underdogs and an uncompromising champion of democratic values.
A working-class, rumpled digger of hard truth, he was founding editor of the scrappy Texas Observer when he was only 24, and he subsequently spent a lifetime traversing backroads and poking into backrooms as a relentless investigative journalist. His importance is that he went beyond the surface “story” that most media cover, not only revealing who was doing what to whom, but also who was behind it… and why. But Dugger always went further. He was not a dispassionate reporter of fact, but a believer that the truth only matters if there is action behind it—so he mobilized, organized, and inspired others (like me) to do the same. He was a true journalist-with-a-purpose.
Moreover, he rejoiced in the fight. Cursing and laughing at the same time, Ronnie believed that that battling the bastards is just about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Every journalism school in America ought to have a course on Becoming Ronnie Dugger.
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The most embarrassing thing about the ballyhooed war-on-government-waste, run by Elon “Chainsaw” Musk, is not even that it has generated more waste than it has cleaned up. More damning is that the clean-up crew quietly tiptoed around the biggest and stinkiest piles of waste – namely the billions of our tax dollars doled out annually to corporate welfare moochers. Such as – Hello – Elon Musk!
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Son of a South African diamond dealer, Elon glided from a life of privilege all the way to being filthy rich, transported by extravagant taxpayer subsidies and government favors. And now he’s back at the trough, demanding a blank government check for his biggest boondoggle of all: Rocketing to Mars.
Not him (unfortunately), but you and me. A flaming megalomaniacal flimflammer, Musk says he’s a genius rocket scientist who will “save civilization” by relocating our human species to the Red Planet. Proclaiming that our Blue Marble is doomed to a hellish future, he is already using millions of earthly tax dollars to fund his fever dream.
Getting there, however, would be the cheap and easy part. Mars is already hellish, with killer levels of surface radiation, toxic dust, and so-called air that analysts say “will boil the saliva off your tongue before it asphyxiates you.”
The only real question is why the hell anyone is listening to this narcissistic flimflammer. He can’t run a government waste project, much less a planet. Speaking of waste, why is he so eager to throw away Earth? Our salvation lies not in the stars, Musk, or other techno-profiteers, but in our democratic values, connection to nature, and down-to-Earth creativity.
Let Musk go to hell – I’m sticking with the home team.
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There is a species of birds named “superb starlings,” and I propose that we elect one of them to be our next president.
That’s because these wise creatures have figured out how to make egalitarianism central to their society, with a diversity of birds actively supporting each other. When bringing food back to their chicks, for example, adult starlings commonly share some with hatchlings of an unrelated flock. In turn, those birds repay the good deed in later breeding seasons.
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Contrast this bird-nest ethic of the Common Good with the culture of right-wing minginess now being pushed furiously by Trump’s kakistocracy of billionaires and despotic ideologues.
Four of his overprivileged cabinet appointees, for example (Bobby Kennedy, Mehmet Oz, Brooke Rollins, and Scott Turner) recently ganged up on hard-hit poor families who receive modest public help for essential human needs, like food and health care. The four politicos piously wailed that welfare programs are an intolerable burden on wealthy taxpayers, so they intend to slash spending by forcing the poor to take jobs before getting any public help.
But their claim that hordes of worthless sponges are living high on food stamps and Medicaid is the same BS such plutocrats always spread when trying to keep our society from being as smart, decent, and ethical as starlings. Their scolding dictate that “you must work” is pointless grandstanding. Nearly all Medicaid recipients, for example, already have jobs – or they are children, seniors, or disabled.
There’s a four-letter vulgarity that fits Kennedy, Oz, Rollins, and Turner: “Mean.” Okay, technically, “mean” is not an obscenity, but when powerful tax-paid elites like them are mean to poor people for political gain, they are, in fact, obscene… and disgusting.
Do something!Medicaid cuts don’t just affect people on Medicaid— they hurt us all. For example, many hospitals, especially rural hospitals, rely on the revenue they receive from Medicaid reimbursements just to survive.
A number of people around the country are encouraging everyday folks to share the facts about Medicaid in their areas, and are creating infographics for you to use to tell your stories. Calling your representatives is always good, but we’re also finding that local media coverage is having a huge impact (in part because your representatives deeply care about how they’re perceived in your local media).
Here’s where you can find all the Medicaid graphics for each state; additionally, activist has created a series of Medicaid graphics for states with large rural contingents here.
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You hear us chanting our mantra constantly: All politics is local. Local politics are the unsung heroes of grassroots movements, but they often don’t feel as exciting or impactful as the spectacles happening at the national level, so everyday people don’t get involved as much. But! Local politics not only affect our daily lives in every possible way—including being important and effective pushbacks on those national spectacles—they’re also often training grounds for politicians with higher aspirations. The Christian nationalist right-wing knows this, and has been attempting to take over school boards for years. We’ve got a great way for you to fight back before the end of May!
Some of you may remember us featuring EducateUS last year (“Sex Ed Is a Great Prophylactic Against Fascism”), and they’re back this year with a great local action you can take: Send sex ed to your school board!
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You might be alarmed to learn that a little-known group in America is being treated inhumanely, denied even the most basic human rights.
I refer to our society’s callous treatment of AI bots.
Who? AI bots are not an ethnic group, but the rapidly-evolving species of advanced “artificial intelligence beings,” spawned in recent years by the high-tech demi-gods of Silicon Valley. Unbeknownst to most of us natural-born humans, profiteering corporations are already deploying millions of these “thinking machines” across our country, taking an ever-widening array of jobs that require a measure of cognitive, human-level abilities – from architects to therapists, lawyers to journalists.
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However, rather than focusing on the deep ethical and pragmatic questions that this techno-corporate displacement poses for real-life people, the developers of AI’s Brave New World are trying to divert social concern to the bots. A recent headline urgently asks, “Should AI Systems Have Rights?” And a leading maker of those systems is proclaiming that society must be concerned about the “mental welfare” of bots. Meanwhile, corporate owners are urging that their machine creatures be given a moral status to assure that they are “ethically treated.”
Excuse me, but who are these greedmeisters to set ethical standards? The billionaires of tech have enriched themselves, not by any genius, but by ruthlessly exploiting workers, carelessly polluting our environment, arrogantly violating our laws, stealing from their competitors and consumers, and bribing government officials. They are sleaze.
Besides, corporate bots need to go the back of the line! Before we give rights to machines, let’s secure the rights that moneyed elites have denied to women, the poor, nature… and democracy itself.
Do something!To learn more about AI, ethics, privacy and more, and to support sane advocacy around technology in general, check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation at eff.org.
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I am a product of George Washington University Law School, so I feel I have an insider’s right to comment on the super-elite law firms that’ve suddenly been kowtowing to Trump.
Well… actually, I only lasted a week-and-a-half in law school. Still, you don’t need to be a legal scholar to see that these butt-kissing, billion-dollar firms are – to use a judicial term – scuzz.
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It’s certainly true that Trump is a vindictive, petty president who routinely turns his office into a weapon of personal political revenge. And he especially despises lawyers who have defied his many blatantly-illegal power grabs, so he’s been deploying the crushing force of big government to punish such prominent Democratic firms as Paul Weiss. Trump stripped security clearances from Weiss lawyers, barred them from entering federal buildings, and threatened to cancel their clients’ government contracts.
No one said battling a despot would be easy. But, as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently put it, “If you’re not used to fighting and losing battles, then don’t become a lawyer.”
Rather than fight, the Weiss firm pathetically tucked tail and ran whimpering to Trump, begging forgiveness for challenging his unconstitutional acts. They even made a $40 million payoff to get in Lord Donald’s good graces!
Senior partners in the Weiss firm, each of whom are paid some $20 million a year, are not only gutless, but greedy as well. They sold their integrity to a mobster like Trump, so he would “let them” keep drawing that fat check. It shows that the opposite of courage is not merely cowardice, but conformity.
If lawyers will so meekly abandon their own democratic rights, why would any of us pay them to stand up for ours?
Do something!To find and support lawyers who actually support The People, check out the National Lawyers Guild at nlg.org.
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By popular demand (and thanks to your steady support for our weekly online commentaries) the Hightower Lowdown team is offering this new feature on Substack: Long-form articles, like those that once comprised the print version of the Lowdown newsletter.
When we made the hard decision to move to an all-digital publication, we weren’t sure what kind of capacity and resources we’d have, and we also weren’t sure what kind of appetite you subscribers would have for articles requiring more time to read online.
But many of you have mentioned how much you’ve missed those articles that went went into depth on big issues. And we had to admit we also missed having more space to expound on who’s-doing-what-to-whom-and-why. (If you’re unfamiliar with the print version of the Lowdown, aka, America’s feistiest little newsletter, the archives of 20+ years of our work are still available online!)
Thanks to your generous ongoing support and belief in the importance our work, we’re now slowly getting to a point of enough financial stability that we can focus on producing more that we hope is useful to you. Thank you for coming along with us for the ride on this long, often-bumpy road of progressive populism.
We’re going to be playing with the format of the new, long-form pieces as well. A chunk of the new issues will be text-based articles, and some will be videos and interviews with strategists, organizers and activists working on the front lines. The Lowdown’s new long-form issues will be available to paid subscribers, while our twice-per-week short commentaries will remain free and open to all.
So, now we want to hear from you: What topics would you be interested in having us cover in the longer format? Just leave your ideas in the comments—we’re eager to dive in and work with you for a brighter future for all.
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In this dark age of Trumpian rule, is there any glimmer of hope?
Yes – lo and behold: Texas!
I’ll bet you were not expecting that answer. Well, for sure, the Republican clique of arrogant billionaires and Christian supremacists who thought they owned Texas politics didn’t expect the comeuppance voters delivered to them in this month’s local elections.
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In city and school board contests across the state, Texans bluntly said to right-wing operatives and officials: We’re sick of you – your constant attempts to divide and dictate, ban and bully, privatize and profiteer at the expense of the common good.
For example, in the flashing-red suburbs of Fort Worth, where GOP front groups have spent millions in dark-money to take over school boards, Democratic challengers won 11 of 11 races! In Mansfield, the county’s third largest city, all five right-wing extremists running for mayor and school board lost. “Mansfield has gone to Hell,” screeched one of the Christian Nationalist activists!
No, it’s being yanked back to its senses, rejecting hyper-partisan nutballism and church dictatorship in favor of, you know, educating children!
Also, voters in Katy, Fort Bend, Plano, Richardson, and other big suburbs – long written off as solid red bastions – produced sweeping progressive victories.
This grassroots turnaround is no accident. It’s largely the product of a young generation of progressive activists revitalizing the tried-and-true practice of “little-d” democratic organizing – which means showing up in-person, day-in and day-out to connect with workaday people, focusing on their real problems.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Of course, this doesn’t mean Texas is suddenly blue – but it’s on the right path, and that offers hope in other red and purple areas. Remember: The first rule of politics is to show up.
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Hightower at an early farmers’ market in 1980s TexasWell, habemus papam—welcome, Pope Leo! Bless him… and us.
I hope no one thinks me blasphemous, but I go to a church nearly every Saturday that is not denominational, nor is it held in any sort of ornate cathedral, temple or mosque. It’s a plain wooden, open-air shed with a metal roof and a loose brick floor—but it’s filled with goodness, joy and a diversity of devotees who share in the bounty of nature. It’s the Boggy Creek Farmstand, one of more than a dozen farmers’ markets flourishing in my hometown of Austin, Texas.
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Indeed, thousands of these secular-but-soulful gathering places that nurture body and spirit have cropped up all across America. From big city neighborhoods, to rural towns, they provide a genuine grassroots alternative to factory food and monopoly megamarts.
The spread of this good food movement has been neither “miraculous” nor the product of some corporate conclave. Rather, it’s the organic result of hundreds of local coalitions—small farmers, consumer advocates, environmentalists, community officials, and others dedicated to real, lasting progress of, by and for workaday people.
When organizing a Texas network of these cooperative ventures in my years as state agriculture commissioner, we followed a path blazed by (shhhh, don’t tell anyone) New York City. There, a pragmatic visionary named Barry Benepe and his can-do cohort were showing that small farmers could bypass the corporate system and profit by selling directly to consumers in the city.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Our friend Barry passed away last month at 96, but what a legacy—45 Greenmarkets in New York City alone, and a national farm-to-table movement! To help extend its reach into your town, go to farmersmarketcoalition.org.
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Like locusts swarming a wheat field, corporate lobbyists are all over our nation’s capital this spring, trying to get special favors, handouts, and insider deals from the White House huckster-in-chief.
It’s a corrupt-money sleazefest with lobbyists blatantly offering high-dollar political donations in exchange for presidential and congressional favoritism. Hundreds of these corporate requests are so selfish and unfair that it’s been hard to single out any one as exceptionally sleazy. Until now.
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Meet the “Coalition of Recyclers of Residual Organics.” Well, recycle and coalition sound sorta positive, right? But what are “residual organics?” Uh… poop. Specifically, sewage sludge, including human waste. Piped from our homes, it goes through sewer systems to utility plants, which treat it and filter out the water, leaving a thick sludge of “biosolids.”
And what does “recycling” mean? Corporate giants like Synagro (which is owned by Wall Street financier Goldman Sachs) buy it and simply rebrand the stuff as “fertilizer.” They reap huge profits selling the sludge to unsuspecting farmers and ranchers, not mentioning that it can contain deadly levels of “forever chemicals.” Millions of acres across America have already been contaminated – along with water sources, livestock, and families.
So now, lobbyists for sludge peddlers are demanding that Trump’s government intervene. Not to help victimized families, but literally to take away the legal right of those families to sue the corporate profiteers that poisoned them.
Unsurprisingly, Republican lawmakers are siding with the poisoners. Meanwhile, Synagro continues to sell sludge as fertilizer, and Trump officials are even pushing EPA to stop designating “forever chemicals” as hazardous.
Has everyone gone crazy!? No. To find sanity in this mess, go to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: peer.org
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Donnie Trump – what a joker, huh?
Remember his promise to end Russia’s war against Ukraine on Day One of his presidency? No joke, he bragged: “It’ll be done within 24 hours. You watch.”
Well, here we are at Day One Hundred, with the war still raging. So Trump either lied… or failed. But The Donald had a Joker up his sleeve – he now claims that, “when I said [Day One] it was in jest.”
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Horsefeathers. First it was a core campaign promise, which he talked about at length in at least 53 of his widely publicized events (including two nationally-televised) debates. Second, he repeatedly assured his MAGA devotees that he was not joking, but literally would end Putin’s war in a day.
He became the joke, because he knows nothing about war and has surrounded himself with Fox News blowhards who know even less. I don’t mean that as an idle put-down, but as a screaming civil-defense warning of incoming danger. Unbeknownst to nearly all of us, Commander Trump and his menagerie of macho ne’er-do-wells are quietly-but-rapidly pulling America once again into the Big Muddy.
They’ve blundered into another “forever war,” dumping billions of our dollars into high-tech bombing raids against Houthi militia. Who? Houthis are tenacious guerilla fighters in the small impoverished nation of Yemen. Like the Viet Cong some 60 years ago, they are clever and resilient – and they’re confounding arrogant White House and Pentagon autocrats who keep thinking they can bomb their way to world domination.
As Pete Seeger put it in his Big Muddy song, “The big fool says to push on.” But we don’t have to obey. To push back, go to PeoplesAction.org.
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Top officials of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau erupted in cheers this month.
How odd. The cheers were for a federal court that had just ruled in favor of letting big banks gouge us with exorbitant feeds when we’re late making a credit card payment. Bizarrely, agency officials joined jubilant bank executives in declaring, “This is a win for consumers.”
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Huh? The court’s blatantly plutocratic ruling lets financial giants slap us credit card customers with punitive fees of $32 or more for every late payment. The court is legalizing their consumer robbery, allowing credit card lenders to pluck an extra $10 billion a year in excess fees from our pockets. Adding to their shame, the profiteering bankers will mainly squeeze this windfall from low-paid working families who’re living paycheck to paycheck, having to rely on credit to make ends meet.
So why in hell are the government’s consumer protectors cheering this? Because these officials are no longer “ours,” but corporate operatives been installed by Trump’s brigade of billionaires. The supreme goal of their autocratic government is to further empower the rich over the rest of us.
Indeed, displacing consumer protectors with agents who’ll protect corporations from consumers was an explicit goal of Project 2025. That extremist manifesto was co-authored by Russell Vought, a fanatical right-wing politico from the Christian Nationalist cult. What’s he doing now? Trump has put Vought in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Thus, a national agency meant to help average consumers have a bit more of a fighting chance against financial greed has been perverted by Trump into just another tool helping moneyed elites rip off working families. How great does that make America?
Do something!Consumer Reports and the Consumer Federation of America are both working to save the CFPB; additionally, a lawsuit has been filed by Gupta Wessler, a high-stakes litigation firm in D.C., on behalf of the National Treasury Employees Union, National Consumer Law Center, NAACP, Virginia Poverty Law Center, Pastor Eva Steege, and the CFPB Employee Association.
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Photo by Clayton TuckerAs we’ve seen more and more people recognizing the power of rural progressives, Hightower has been spending time with a number of journalists these last few months, sharing his perspective on the origins of populist power (and we mean “populist” in the real sense of the word, not the ridiculous notion that loud, authoritarian extremists are somehow “of the people”). There has been a particular focus on Texas, which we find heartening: is it maybe finally time that more people understand that Texas is not a “red” state, but a nonvoting, gerrymandered-to-high-heaven state with loads of people who have progressive values? Here’s Hightower explaining how the Democrats abandoned its rural voters years ago, but maybe—just maybe—they’re starting to realize that we’re a powerful force that can stitch lots of different kinds of people together.
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Meme courtesy LoveAndViscera on RedditOh, swell – here it comes again.
It’s the “Great Man” theory of history, trotted out periodically by plutocrats, patricians, royalists, and assorted other proponents of an elitist social order. They insist that great progress does not come from political movements, unions, and other grassroots forces, but from the genius and benevolence of individual, derring-do, capitalist innovators.
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In a declaration this month, for example, a group of laissez-fairyland hucksters asserted that it wasn’t labor’s long bloody struggle that advanced worker rights, but industrial America’s generous bosses! These befuddled revisionists of corporate history proclaimed that “unions did not create weekends, the 8-hour work day [or] a living wage.” No? Who then? “Henry Ford did [it] in 1926,” they say, adding emphatically that “CAPITALISM & COMPETITION creates higher wages and better working conditions.”
Excuse me, boss, but capitalism constantly tries to destroy any competitive market, and it thrives by holding down wages, repressing worker rights, and eliminating jobs.
Forget the right-wing’s cartoonish portrayal of Henry the Great as a working-class savior. He was a Nazi-admiring, antisemitic, industrial magnate. Contrary to the revisionists, unions did indeed create their own progress, having fought for wage and hour protections since the 1860s. They rallied popular support with this slogan: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.”
This is Jim Hightower saying… And here’s an inconvenient fact that causes the hair of today’s corporate myth makers to burst into flames: It was not some genius capitalist who first established the 8-hour day as our national standard – it was government! President Ulysses Grant instituted it for all federal workers in 1869 – half a century before Ford finally trailed behind.
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NOTE: Hurricane Helene has wreaked horrific damage all across Appalachia and the Southeast. Some terrific rural organizers have put together this comprehensive document of resources for people affected, as well as ways to help.
Give / Get Hurricane Helene Help Here
Perhaps you’ve noticed from the shrinkage (or total elimination) of your local newspaper that this source of hometown journalism has become monopolized, nationalized, and trivialized by conglomerate owners.
How uplifting then, to see a national consortium of saviors rallying to reestablish a “thriving news media” for our democracy. How? Well, say the saviors, by promoting “brand stability” for potential advertisers. Huh? Who are these “saviors?
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Unfortunately, they are predatory media giants such as the USA Today chain and other national news conglomerators and shrivelizers. Hello—they are the cause of the real instability in local news! These powers are using the people’s cry for media decentralization and localization as a ruse to goose up their own ad revenue, allowing them to further monopolize and trivialize print journalism.
But here’s a better idea: Advance true media democracy by creating your own local, non-corporate newspaper. Ha, scoff the barons of Big Media, that’s impossible! But as an activist friend of mine puts it: “Those who say it can’t be done should not interrupt those who’re doing it.”
Across the country, communities are taking charge. Here in Texas, the Caldwell/Hays Examiner was launched in 2022, with a focus on rural issues up and down the I-35 corridor. In Western Iowa, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Art Cullen has co-founded a nonprofit that supports local news efforts through grants. And in Colorado, a group of folks mobilized to buy a local newspaper chain before a hedge fund operation could sweep in and snatch it up.
This is Jim Hightower saying… To learn more about how you can rebuild your local news outlets, visit the Institute for Nonprofit News at inn.org.
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Greetings, friends! Deanna the Sidekick here to report in on some great activities that have come across our path in the last few months. I’ve been participating in some remarkable discussions and actions that are lifting up the rural voices in this country, and that are engaging rural voters’ participation in a system that, frankly, hasn’t treated them too well for a long, long time. The work happening out in the countryside and in small towns by everyday progressive populists has been making my heart burst with joy on a regular basis, and I wanted to take a quick second to bring you all along for some of this ride.
My enthusiasm and energy for this work was exponentially magnified by attending my first Farm Aid last weekend. You may think of Farm Aid as that famous concert with Willie Nelson and his pals, but more than just the incredible music, it’s a festival of ideas and concrete actions for revitalizing the culture in agriculture. Hightower and I co-emceed the afternoon session of the Farmer Forum, which you can still watch here:
Follow along with Farm Aid’s advocacy and program work, and stay tuned for more collaborations with them down the road.
Host or Attend a VP Debate Watch PartyWe’re big fans of Tim Walz, with Hightower having campaigned for his first congressional run back in 2006. And we’re clearly not big fans of JD Vance, aka Silicon Valley’s Pet Redneck, so we can’t wait to see them debate each other on Tuesday, October 1st. As a general rule, we’ll make up any excuse to attend a good party, so the debate watch parties that folks are organizing are right up our alley.
If you live in a rural area, and want to host a watch party, use this button to share your party with the campaign!
Create a RURAL watch party here
It doesn’t have to be public, either—even if you plan to watch at home with a few friends, go ahead and tell them about it, and mark it as private. What this does is signal to the Democrats that rural voters are loud and proud, and that can make it easier for advocates like Hightower and others to show them that the rural agenda is critical to taking America forward, no matter what happens this election cycle.
If you’re not up for hosting, but are looking for a party to attend near you, you can check out this full list of watch parties here.
Rural Voters Talking to Rural VotersWe’re always on the lookout for actions that don’t involve the usual suspects that we often see, especially during big election cycles. We love the idea of rural people talking to each other about candidates and issues, and have seen the powerful effects that happen when people who share cultural and geographic backgrounds talk with one another. That’s why I’m excited to share an effort from our friends at the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative have launched: Let’s Hear Rural Voices.
They’re building an army of rural people who are willing to write letters to the editor of local papers and post on social media about issues facing rural America, and how candidates will make a difference in our lives. They’ll help you develop talking points and share how good federal investments paired with solid policies have supported rural areas. Additionally, they’re partnering with our friends at Rural for Harris, where I’ve been volunteering, on getting phone banks together for rural people to talk to each other about the presidential election. Sign up here to be connected with RUBI.
And if you’re not in a rural area, but are still looking for ways to participate in the election, check out some of these organizations that we’ve profiled before:
- Movement Voter Project
- Seed the Vote
Your turn!What are some other great rural voting actions that you’re seeing out there? Let us know in the comments so we can help get the word out. Happy Friday, y’all!
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Hightower outside the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, OKWoody Guthrie’s prescription for inequality in America was straightforward: “Rich folks got your money with politics. You can get it back with politics.”
For Guthrie, “politics” meant more than voting, since both parties routinely cough-up candidates who meekly accept the business-as-usual system of letting bosses and bankers control America’s wealth and power. It’s useless, he said, to expect change to come from a “choice” between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. Instead, common folks must organize into a progressive movement with their own bold change agenda, become their own candidates, and create a politics worth voting for.
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Pie in the sky? No! Periodic eruptions of progressive grassroots insurgencies have literally defined America, beginning with that big one in 1776. Indeed, we could take a lesson today from another transformative moment of democratic populism that surged more than a century ago, culminating in “The Omaha Platform of 1892.” This was in the depths of the Gilded Age, a sordid period much like ours, characterized by both ostentatious greed and widespread poverty, domination by monopolies, rising xenophobia, institutional racism – and government that ranged from aloof to insane.
But lo – from that darkness, a new People’s Party arose, created by the populist movement of farm and factory mad-as-hellers. They streamed into Omaha to hammer out the most progressive platform in US history, specifically rejecting corporate supremacy and demanding direct democracy.
That platform reshaped America’s political agenda, making the sweeping reforms of the Progressive Era and New Deal possible. As one senator said of the Omaha rebellion, it was the start of robber baron wealth flowing “to all the people, from whom it was originally taken.” And that’s what Woody Guthrie meant by “politics.”
Note: Due to Hightower’s travel schedule last week, this is a re-release of this commentary, if you’ve feel like you’ve heard it before. 🤠
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An iconic Texas band, the Austin Lounge Lizards, has a song that nails the absurd self-righteousness of Christian supremacists: “Jesus loves me… but he can’t stand you.”
I think of this refrain when I behold today’s right-ring proselytizers wailing that the blessed rich should not be taxed to assure that everyone has the most basic human needs. Seems very un-Jesusy to me.
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One bizarre focus of their religious wrath is a wholly sensible and Biblically sound national policy: Subsidizing school districts to assure that every child has healthy meals to fuel their daily learning. Yes, in the Christian Nationalists’ book of public abominations, government feeding of children is a holy no-no. Project 2025, the Republican blueprint to impose theocratic rule over America, proclaims school meals a socialist/Marxist evil to be eradicated.
The extremist cry that if there is any free-lunch “giveaway,” it must be narrowly restricted to truly-destitute students. But wait – publicly singling out those children would stigmatize them. Plus, how odd to hear Republicans demanding an intrusive, absurdly-expensive, bureaucratic process empowering government to decide who’s eligible to eat!
In fact, the student lunch subsidy runs as low as 42 cents a meal, so it’s far cheaper, fairer, and (dare I say it?) more Christian simply to offer it to all. Indeed, the program is akin to the Biblical story of Jesus providing fishes and loaves to the multitude. He imposed no income test – everyone got a fish.
Interestingly, the same lawmakers opposing 42-cent meals for kiddos today routinely and enthusiastically feed billions of our tax dollars to corporate ethically-challenged profiteers who love money above all. As I recall, Jesus couldn’t stand people like that.
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Since its inception in the 1980s, Farm Aid has always been much more than just a spectacular festival with incredible performers—it’s been a hub of farmer and rural advocacy. Each year before the concert, they host an annual Farmer Forum to convene everyday people and rural advocates in one place to take on the challenges that face us all. The year, Hightower and Deanna will be co-emceeing the afternoon session on Friday, Sept. 20th.
The whole program runs from 9am - 5pm on Friday, and we’re looking forward to seeing friends new and old! Right before our sessions on rebuilding rural coalitions and rebuilding rural/local news, we’ll hear from the wonderful Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party (check out our interview with him in 2021 here, where he talks about despair as a project of the right, amen). You can come back here on Friday and click the video above to watch.
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Speaking of rural news…Our friends over at Barn Raiser have launched an essential newsletter that will cover the election and rural issues— subscribe to it here!
Just a few of the great stories they have coming down the pike include:
- A look at the dark money behind Moms for Liberty and other “parents’ rights” groups that want to abolish public education;
- How Project 2025 threatens the existence of public lands and would open Alaska and national monuments to plunder by oil and mining companies;
- An exposé of the Pentecostal sect that Donald Trump turns to for spiritual guidance.
Finally…We’ve got a bunch more to share about the election and rural folks when we get back from Farm Aid! Lots of great stuff coming from the Harris/Walz campaign, who’ve named our friend Matt Hildreth of RuralOrganizing.org their national director of rural outreach. Matt’s bonafides give us a lot of hope that people in more mainstream parts of Democratic politics might actually be listening to the needs of rural people.
If you want to be part of the rural contingent that shows up for the campaign, we have loved collaborating with the Rural Americans for Harris folks—join their movement here.
Tonight! Remember all of those different affinity group Zooms and calls for the Harris campaign, kicked off by #WinWithBlackWomen? Well, all the groups are getting together tonight, Thursday, 9/19, for one big unity gathering hosted by… Oprah Winfrey! And the rural contingents have been invited to represent as well, so we’d love to see as many of you there as possible to help show the campaign the strength of our numbers. Register here.
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If you name your $4-billion food conglomerate “The Wonderful Company,” you probably should strive extra hard not to let it become the horrible company.
This outfit spends a fortune painting itself as an environmentally sensitive purveyor of healthy products – like “POM,” its brand of pomegranate juice and its bottled “Fiji Water.” Moreover, its billionaire owners, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, have marketed themselves as generous philanthropists and powerhouse donors to the Democratic Party.
Wonderful.
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But the corporation’s rap sheet includes false advertising, hogging of the public’s scarce water supplies, massive fossil fuel pollution, and – most abhorrent – exploitation of the low-paid farm workers who produce the crops that enrich the Resnicks.
Stewart, hailed as “the wealthiest farmer in the US,” has been spending lavishly on high-dollar lawyers and lobbyists, furiously fighting the United Farm Workers, who’re seeking fair wages, decent treatment, and simple respect from him. Worse, the politically-connected land baron is going all out to bust the entire union by pushing activist judges to outlaw California’s “card check” system. This is a democratic process enabling widely dispersed farm laborers to vote in unionization elections.
By trying to kill it, Stewart is engaged in a massive voter suppression effort to deny a smidgeon of justice to poorly-paid oppressed workers. It’s a raw power play by Stewart and his brotherhood of billionaire agribusiness barons, to further enrich themselves by taking away hard-won fair labor laws – and re-subjugating workers to the autocratic whims of owners.
What’s wrong with the Reznicks? They’re fabulously rich, and their company is enormously profitable. Yet they’re trying to nickel and dime one of the hardest working and poorly treated groups of workers in America. Nothing wonderful about that… or them.
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Photo courtesy wiscnews.comBaraboo, Wisconsin is known as home base for the Ringling Brothers Circus. But even that extravaganza of acrobats and clowns could not surpass the dazzling tent show playing out in Baraboo this month, starring the Sauk County Board of Supervisors. Only… you couldn’t have seen it, because the tent was zipped-tight to keep the public out.
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The Baraboo spectacle is one of several now playing across the Badger State, produced by health care profiteers trying to privatize county-owned nursing homes. These locally-controlled public entities get 5-star ratings and are treasured by families in rural Wisconsin – so people overwhelmingly oppose privatization. Thus, to somersault over local democracy, corporate tricksters have joined with right-wing county officials to impose autocratic control.
Back in Baraboo, for example, people lined up at the tent to speak against any move by supervisors to sell the People’s senior nursing center. But terms of the sale had already been negotiated in secret, supervisors had decreed that the buyer would not be revealed until after the sale was approved, and the board’s discussion about the sale was held in closed session.
Adding to the mayhem, Wisconsin’s Republican nominee for US Senate astonished people by declaring that old people in nursing homes should not even be allowed to vote, since they “only have five, six months life expectancy.”
Crazy, yet the right-wing’s Baraboo sellout succeeded, right? Not so fast. One, any maneuver affecting the county budget requires a two-thirds vote of supervisors – not the bare majority this clown trick got. And, two, while devious supervisors arrogantly blocked the democratic will of the people, feisty locals are not surrendering to corporate greed and devious politicians. The Battle of Baraboo continues! Stay tuned!
Do something!Interested in learning about how locals in Baraboo are fighting this fight? Our good friend is releasing a new season of his podcast, “To See Each Other,” next week. In it, you’ll find some heart-pounding moments of intrigue, along with what it takes to fight a good fight. You can subscribe here (ITunes), here (Spotify), or wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Fundamentals of OrganizingIf You Organize Long Enough...If you organize long enough you get to be part of a handful of very special organizing campaigns, ones where the tenacity and soul of the people you are working with seems too good to be true. I am blessed to be part of one of those fights right now…Read more10 days ago · 1 like · George GoehlLeave a comment
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A farmer was asked what he’d do if he won a million-dollar lottery. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’d just keep farming ‘til the money runs out.”
Trying to make a living as a farmer is not for the fainthearted. You have to take out high-interest loans from cold-eyed bankers to put in a crop and buy supplies. Then you’re also at the mercy of everything from bugs to monopolistic middlemen. And here’s a cruel twist: If you defy the odds and produce a great crop, you lose money!```
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This is happening right now. With unusually-good weather this year, corn and soybean harvests are expected to set records. But this abundance creates a market glut, allowing middlemen to knock down prices paid to farmers. A bushel of Illinois corn, for example, costs farmers $4.30 to produce, but they’re only getting $3.70 for it.
Meanwhile, the cost of such basics as seed, fertilizer, and tractors are skyrocketing. High costs coupled with low crop prices means that farmers’ income is expected to drop by 25 percent this year.
You might call this good crop-bad price phenomenon “ironic.” But it’s deliberate – an inevitable product of America’s perverse agricultural policy that pushes farmers to over produce in order to keep commodity prices low for giant processors and retailers. Little known fact: Our national “farm policy” is not written by farmers but by corporate lobbyists, lawyers, and economists – people who couldn’t run a watermelon stand if we gave them the melons and had the highway patrol flag down the customers for them.
That has got to change. To join an effort to demand a farm bill written by and for farmers, consumers, workers, and our environment, go to: FarmAid.org/Take-Action.
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Photo by Ben Rosett on UnsplashIt never ceases to amaze me that corporate, political, media, religious, and other power elites routinely speak and act in the name of the masses – without ever consulting us hoi polloi.
This disconnect is the source of a lot of the arrogance, stupidity, and inequality afflicting our society.
Consider the huge, very troubling takeover of US Steel by the Japanese conglomerate, Nippon. This buyout was being quietly hustled to conclusion by both giants. But – boom! – suddenly the deal hit a steel wall, specifically the furious opposition of America’s United Steelworkers union. The corporate elites had smugly cut a backroom deal without ever mentioning it to the union! Thousands of workers had their livelihoods arrogantly treated as irrelevant. So, the union just said uh-uh, and the executive boneheads’ big buyout went from done to life support.
The stupidity gene has also imbedded itself in the brains of Christian authoritarians. They are hell-bent on forcing their holier-than-thou church dogma on all of us – without, of course, asking whether we want to be “saved” by them. So here comes one Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s hyper-Christian superintendent of public schools. In a Burning Bush moment, Ryan felt God ordained him to decree that every classroom must henceforth display a Bible, and all teachers must alter their lesson plans to teach from it – even math teachers!
But a funny thing happened to this un-elected flaming theocrat: Local school boards and teachers simply ignored him. Ryan, brimming with ego, had not bothered to consult parents, school boards, teachers, or legislators – so no Bibles have been purchased and no curriculums have been changed.
However, his dictatorial theatrics did get the attention of one major group: Oklahoma’s GOP lawmakers are now investigating his “rogue behavior.”
Do something!If you also feel queasy about the encroachment of Christian nationalism into our schools, check out the work from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
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Every once in a great while, a major media celebrity comes along who puts his or her talent and – well, celebrity – to work for the Common Good.
Many generous artistic souls support good causes – and bless them for that! But there are a few who put the public interest at the center of their professional calling, and it’s been my joy to know a couple of them. We just lost a special one: Phil Donahue.
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For 30 years, he brought a high-energy mix of unscripted fun, freewheeling grassroots democracy, serious issue exchanges, and public purpose to the unlikeliest of venues: Daytime TV talk shows. “Donahue” – the person and the show – defied studio bosses and conventional wisdom about what would appeal to “the great unwashed.” His crazy idea was to confront biases directly, with the audience as the stars. He put big issues in front of mainstream audiences before most TV bosses knew they were issues – abortion, medical price gouging, gender identity, atheism, NAFTA, Native Americans, AIDS, nuclear power, prison reform, family farmers, and so much more. And he did it daily, not talking to a pre-selected audience of like-minded people, but engaging disparate viewpoints directly in (often fiery) broadcasts.
Moreover, he brought genuine activists (not just sparklies) onto the show as guests. Even I made a couple of appearances. We were not invited to peacock and pontificate, but to provide a bit of insight and, most importantly, offer ways for viewers to fight back for fairness, justice, and a little more sanity in our world.
Phil Donahue is the model of what democratic media ought to be – an open exchange with regular people to promote the Common Good. See some Donahue for yourself at jimhightower.com/donahue.
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Seeing two bloated egos like Elon Musk and Donald Trump hug-up recently in their marriage of political convenience, made me think: “Boy, there’s two who really do deserve each other!” The only question is which one will betray the other first.
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My money is on Musk. Yes, Trump has built his entire career on the art of high-profile betrayals, from real estate scams to marriages. But Elon’s crass duplicity is even more naked (please excuse that image). He routinely shifts his core beliefs from one “rock-solid principle” to the opposite, coldly turning on trusting partners and allies, all for personal gain.
Take his 2022 denunciation of Joe Biden’s climate change proposal, which promised massive support for the electric vehicles sold by Musk. Just two years earlier, the Tesla CEO had proclaimed himself to be “super fired up” about Joe’s plan. But his ego got ruffled by some perceived slight by Biden, so he called for killing the entire climate initiative, smugly declaring Tesla didn’t need public money.
Ha! Far from being some bootstrap, up-from-nothing corporate genius, Musk is the fortunate son of a South African emerald dealer. He didn’t create Tesla, he bought it, then enriched himself by extracting giant subsidies from American taxpayers and ruthlessly cheating workers and suppliers. Tesla’s first factory was built with half a billion federal dollars, he has been milking a public regulatory fund for $9 billion so far, each car he sells gets up to $7,500 in federal subsidies – and he continues to draw about a billion a year in tax breaks from that Biden law he condemned.
Musk says it’s all ethical, because the money is there for the taking. Yeah – and so is his integrity.
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Just before Labor Day, FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan kicked off a momentous antitrust lawsuit, challenging the $24 billion monopolistic plan by grocery giant Kroger to take over the Albertson supermarket chain. The mega-merger would drastically shrivel competition, raise our grocery prices, eliminate thousands of jobs, and reduce bargaining power for unionized workers.
Top executives of the two chains would make a killing, as would the Wall Street bankers and elite law firms engineering the merger. It’s a textbook case of how inequality is intentionally created.
Media coverage of such cases focuses almost entirely on legal tactics and on which side is winning the ballgame. But for the 700,000 employees caught up in this merger, it’s not a game. Instead of economic statistics and arcane corporate law, the merger is about lives, family, equality, cold betrayal, and personal loss.
Years ago, I wrote about the human cost and social rupture that are inherent (though mostly ignored) in these high-flying money deals. In my 1997 book, There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos, I told the story of Ruth Shaver. A proud and valuable frontline worker in a Safeway supermarket for 22 years, her future was suddenly slammed from out of nowhere by a group of profiteering Wall Street raiders. They used a junk-bond scam to take over the Safeway chain… and Ruth’s life.
Here's her story, which, all these years later, is directly relevant to Kroger’s current takeover scheme—and a vivid reminder that Labor Day is not a holiday, but a call to action.
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Hey y’all, Deanna, here!
As someone who grew up in a rural area (where’re my Southern Tier of New York people at?!), it’s often frustrating to see how people who aren’t from the countryside react to rural politics. We make a lot of assumptions, and I’ve long felt like those assumptions have cost us in electoral votes and solid policy.
But working with Hightower for the last few decades has always given me a ray of hope that we might someday get things right. There’s a lot of incredible organizing work happening in rural areas, and I’ve been grateful to follow along with and learn from the people on the front lines. I decided to put together a little explainer cartoon about how and why rural America ended up the way it has, and to show the promise of the work that’s happening there. And lucky for me, Hightower agreed to do the voiceover!
Enjoy as you head into your Labor Day Weekend.
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Right-wing ideologues are mounting a three-pronged fraud trying to delegitimize Social Security, slash its benefits, then – zzzzzt – kill it.
First, they tried to demonize our public retirement program as a socialist horror. That hasn’t worked, since this pension literally works, allowing millions of workaday American families to escape old age poverty.
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So, in Lie Number Two, they shriek: “Social Security is bankrupt – you future retirees will be left penniless in old age!” Uh… no. The bulk of retiree benefits are covered by payroll taxes, which continue to flow in, so the program is in no danger at all of folding.
Well, they exclaim in Lie Number Three, even to keep the program on life support requires gutting it by raising people’s retirement age to 70 or older and slashing monthly payments to retirees.
Uh… gosh, no again. Such a gut-job would be immoral – half of America’s workers get no retirement benefits except Social Security. Plus, such callousness is totally unnecessary, because there’s an obvious, easy, and fair fix: Apply the Social Security tax to everyone!
While working stiffs pay this tax on every dollar they earn, millionaires and billionaires are taxed only on the first $170,000 of their astronomical pay. Take Elon Musk, the richest man in America, who claimed a $45 billion paycheck last year. But under current law he only pays Social Security taxes on $170,000 of that – meaning 44 billion, 999 million, 830 thousand dollars of his income goes untaxed. Why shouldn’t he pay like everyone else?
Tax everyone equally – the rich as well as the working class – so everyone can have a secure, dignified retirement. That’s what the American concept of the Common Good means.
Photo by Timothy Krause on Flickr.
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“I’ve got those
Payday-Friday
Grocery store blues.”
That working-class-lament is from an old bluegrass song, but millions of working stiffs are singing it today. While many workers have finally seen an uptick in their paychecks, they’ve been dismayed to see the increase quickly gobbled up by jacked-up grocery prices. What the hell?
Kamala Harris has had the honesty to call it what it is: Gouging. And, to put some bite in her bark, she’s proposing a long-overdue, national ban on rip-off pricing by food giants. Of course, this produced outraged squeals by corporate functionaries. But some of the most furious squealing is coming from a supposedly unbiased corner of America’s economic structure: Economists.
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A little-known secret of this occult profession is that most economists are schooled by and working for the corporate order, generally hostile to consumers, workers and other competing interests. One absolute rule they learn is that NONE of the inequities and iniquities of America’s laissez-fairyland economy are to be blamed on corporate greed.
Thus, a whole pack of mainline economists raced to poo-pooh Harris’ price-gouging charge, asserting that grocery prices have naturally surged due to what they benignly call “price pack architecture.”
Bovine excrement! Price gouging cannot be perfumed by semantics – it is mass swindling, and people can detect it by its stench. So, let’s follow that stench to its anti-free enterprise source: Monopoly. For the past half century, economists in both Republican and Democratic administrations have looked the other way, allowing food giants to consolidate and conglomerate, shut out competitors, monopolize every aspect of the food economy… and steal.
It’s that theft that Harris is daring to challenge, and Americans will cheer her on – no matter how furiously establishment economists squeal.
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As summer is starting to wind down, our gang here thought we’d share a little bit from what’s been on our radar the last few weeks. What have you been reading, watching and listening to? Let us know in the comments!
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“Big Boss Man,” an old song by blues legend Jimmy Reed, still packs a potent political punch for today’s working class:
You got me workin’, boss man, working round the clock
I wanna little drink of water, but you won’t let Jimmy stop
Big boss man, can’t you hear me When I call?
But then, Reed urges workers to see how small the boss man really is:
Well, you ain’t so big, you just tall that’s all.
Well, I’m gonna get me a boss man, one gonna treat me right
Work hard in the day time, rest easy at night.
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That could be the anthem of millions of Americans today, who are rebelling against soulless corporate jobs and layers of bosses demanding longer hours doing tedious tasks. These workplace uprisngs are not about another dollar a day – rather the idea of work itself is being confronted.
People are realizing that their time, energy, and their very lives are being consumed a day at a time to profit faraway Big Boss Men. It’s also dawning on more and more workers that their jobs are BS – generating paperwork that no one sees, babysitting computer systems, making electronic downloads that are silly, etc.
Thus, large numbers of workers are saying: Who needs it? Is this my “life?” What’s the point? My “job” could – poof! – disappear tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter. How am I to take any pride or find a smidgeon of personal fulfillment in surrendering the biggest chunks of my life to that?
This is Jim Hightower saying… Big Billionaire Bosses like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos bark that it’s time for employees to double down on the “work ethic” – yet there’s no ethical core to the work they demand. Bosses don’t get it, but what’s happening today is not merely a labor rebellion, but a revolution for humanity to be valued for itself… and for workers to become their own bosses.
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Here’s a hard-right political twist I wasn’t expecting, and Tim Walz is probably surprised, too.
Within the confines of Trump’s MAGAworld, some are appalled by Walz’s wealth. Wealth? They’re claiming this former high school teacher is rich? No… and that bothers them.
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Walz gets a gubernatorial paycheck and a modest public pension. That’s it. No portfolio of Wall Street stocks, no deferred payouts on corporate bonuses, and he doesn’t even own a house, much less a vacation home. While this pegs him as a regular middle-class American, it seems to put off a covey of moneyed Trumpsters who see his lack of riches as a personal weakness.
The Wall Street Journal recently featured one such partisan, who says he prefers “a high net worth” politician, like JD Vance. Being rich, explained the partisan, means a candidate “has financial acumen, business and investment savvy….” Righto! For example, Vance was savvy enough to kiss-up to right-wing Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who has pumped millions into the fictional “hillbilly,” turning Vance into a pretentious “Hillwilliam.” And please stop pretending that rich candidates are less corrupt since they aren’t dependent on special-interest funding. Trump himself put the lie to that, when he recently begged a BigOil group. to give a billion dollars to his campaign – in exchange for his promise to slash their taxes.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Most bizarre is the assertion by Walz critics that his failure to be invested in Wall Street stocks means he’s out of touch with the financial concerns of “the average American.” Hello, nearly all stocks are owned by the superrich, like Trump and Vance. In fact, the average American family owns zero stocks – just like Walz.
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Challenging conventional wisdom can advance society’s understanding of truth. Good. Arrogantly challenging the complex balance of nature, however, can go kablooie! Very bad.
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In recent times, there’s been an unfortunate tendency for some scientific hot shots to send society off on techno-tangents to “remake” nature, promising miracles. About 70 years ago, for example, a so-called ag-science genius promised that dumping synthetic pesticides on monoculture crops across the globe would end hunger. Chemical giants and governments rushed to do the dump, but the “fix” ultimately resulted in the ongoing poisoning of Earth’s land, water, food, and people – while enriching agricultural monopolists and allowing hunger to rage.
Unfortunately, insistence by technologists and profiteers that they can outsmart and overwhelm nature is now being pushed with cosmic vengeance. A covey of arrogant academics and billionaire backers are saying: “Trust us, we can handle that little global warming issue.”
One is named David Keith, running a $100 million “stratospheric solar geoengineering” scheme named SCoPEx. Keith proposes to solve global warming by – get this – dispensing volumes of sulfur dioxide into the Earth’s stratosphere to “regulate” the amount and location of sunlight around the globe.
Gosh, what could go wrong with that? Never mind the unknown consequences of tampering with basic nature, argues Keith, for his bold techno-fix to global warming bypasses the political difficulty of ending our fossil fuel addiction – so we should just do it.
Keith does admit he can be “inappropriately forceful – I’m intense,” he says. Well then, let’s all chip in a for some therapy sessions to help him overcome his megalomania before he makes an irreversible mess of the only planet we have that sustains life.
Do somethingLooking for real environmental change? Look no further than the youth! I wrote about them in this post, but we recommend teaming up with and supporting the following groups:
- Gen-Z for Change
- Zero Hour
- Black Girl Environmentalist
- Our Children’s Trust
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We’ve recently learned about Project 2025, the GOP’s scheme to let corporate agents take over our government. But what about the less-visible effort to make Democrats install corporate-subservient officials who’ll expand their monopoly power?
High-finance finaglers of Wall Street and Silicon Valley are quietly demanding that Kamala Harris commit to appointing their designated toadies to oversee America’s so-called “free-enterprise” structure. Their primary target is the Federal Trade Commission, a little-known agency meant to protect and extend economic competition.
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The FTC is now headed by Lina Khan, a tenacious opponent of anti-consumer, anti-worker mergers and takeovers. She rightly recognizes that the “free” in free enterprise is not an adjective, but a verb, requiring aggressive public action to free-up the enterprise of people who’re now routinely shut out of the market by monopolistic giants. So, says Khan, if we really want free markets, let’s free them.
Oh, how the money vultures screeched! “She’s a dope,” raged takeover bully Barry Diller in a dopey fury. And, since many of the monopolistic titans who’re offended by Khan’s otherwise very popular progressive populism are from the Democratic Party’s high-dollar donor class, they have undue clout. Thus, they are bluntly demanding her head as their price for financially backing Harris’s presidential run. Commissioner Khan, they exclaim, simply does not understand “the way the Washington game is played.
Oh, yes, she does – and she’s flat out rejecting it! She’s the first real anti-trust champion America has had in years – but will the party’s higher-ups have the guts and integrity to defend her? Or will the business-as-usual powers be ushered back in? The answer to that will be an early measure of Harris’s commitment to economic democracy.
Do somethingWant to fight monopolization and the centralization of markets? Here are a few places to start:
- The American Economic Liberties Project is part of a growing, cross- ideological movement to combat monopolistic corporations and the systems that entrench their power.
- The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has a thorough resource for starting in your town, from banking and broadband to pharmacy and food: Fighting Monopoly Power: How States and Cities Can Beat Back Corporate Control and Build Thriving Communities
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Who is JD Vance, you might ask?
Well, which JD? He keeps flipping his bio, politics, and persona, trying to advance his fortunes. A decade ago, he was posing as a Kentucky hillbilly spokesman – only, he’s not from Kentucky and expresses disdain for actual hillbillies.
Still, he did go from a hardscrabble childhood to an Ivy League law school, later boasting that he’s a self-made success, with no rich daddy pulling strings for him. Well unless you count his Sugar Daddy. From those Ivy League days forward, “just plain JD” has been a protégé of a Silicon Valley multibillionaire right-winger, Peter Thiel, who put Vance in cushy, high-tech jobs, then arranged $120 million in funding to make him a rich vulture capitalist.
Suddenly, the “hillbilly” was a “Hillwilliam” – a full-fledged, rich man’s Republican. But he was not yet a right-wing nut, even denouncing Donald Trump in 2016 as “America’s Hitler.” Then, JD decided he should be a US Senator, and Daddy Thiel promptly put up $10 million to buy the seat. But oops – Trump owned the Ohio GOP, so Vance grew a MAGA-macho beard, and squirmed down to Mar-a-Lago to beg The Donald’s forgiveness for that Hitler faux pas, obsequiously pledging to be a Forever Trumper.
So now, Vance is Trump’s VP nominee… but with a wandering eye, looking to establish himself as the anti-democracy, Christian nationalist champion of the authoritarian Project 2025. Kookier yet, Vance embraces a new McCarthyism cult supporting a violent purge of progressives from our society, saying that such Americans are “Unhumans,” who must be treated as prey.
Absurd? Yes! But there he stands, the new public face of extremist, right-wing nuttiness that surpasses even Trump’s monarchial fantasies.
Having a hard time keeping up with Vance’s chameleon forms? We are, too! Thank goodness Ohio activist Rachel Coyle is keeping track. Check out her work at shillbilly.info.
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Photo: Tim Walz on FacebookIn 2006, I went Walzing across southern Minnesota in support of a “nobody” named Tim Walz. At the time, he was running an upstart, underdog congressional campaign as a plain-spoken progressive populist in what was then considered a solid-red rural district. He didn’t have a chance against the lobbyist-funded, Bush-backed GOP incumbent.
Except… Tim won! He did it the new “old-fashioned” way: By being himself, appealing directly to working class families, unabashedly confronting corporate power, and rallying volunteers in a door-to-door grassroots campaign.
Some Minnesota friends asked me to do a bit of stumping with him, and it was both exciting and great fun to team up with such a genuine, down-home Democrat. I later learned that while he was a first-time candidate, he came prepared—he had honed his political organizing knowledge by going through Camp Wellstone.
That was the unique, highly-effective, how-to school for progressive candidates and activists, created by the family and staff of my friend Paul Wellstone (the sorely missed US senator, joyful anti-establishment agitator, and grassroots strategist). Those Wellstone camps produced thousands of local people across the country skilled in the nuts and bolts of good, “litte-d” democratic politics. Sadly, Paul is gone, but we sure need to revive his camps! (Two great places to start: these resources from RuralOrganizing.org, and our friend ’s Fundamentals of Organizing.)
Here's a short piece about Walz/Wellstone that Susan DeMarco and I highlighted in our 2008 book, Swim Against the Current:
**Walzing to Congress**
Tim Walz is a salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner who simply got fed up with Bush's war and autocratic arrogance, as well as with Congress's constant kowtowing to corporate interests. So this high school teacher, football coach, and twenty-nine-year veteran of the Army National Guard from Mankato, Minnesota, decided to take a stand by running for Congress. The political pros totally dismissed him as being hopelessly out of his league. How was this novice, this complete unknown, even going to break 20 percent against the well-funded, six-term incumbent in a rural district that George W. had carried twice?
But Tim went to school. In 2005, he went through Camp Wellstone's candidate program. One of his top staffers, Leah Solo, was also a Wellstone grad, having completed the advanced campaign management school. They put together a grassroots organization, and Tim's straightforward populist message began to resonate with voters. He didn't do focus groups or play games with words. He was true to himself. He also absolutely devoured the Bush-hugging incumbent in a televised debate. To the surprise of the cognoscenti (including the National Democratic Party, which had ignored him), Walz got 53 percent of the vote, becoming one of four Camp Wellstone grads elected to Congress in 2006.
Walz is not a pig in a poke, but a proven progressive in his years as a lawmaker and governor. Dare we risk being enthusiastic, rallying to push the democratic values and political potential of the Harris-Walz ticket?
Yes.
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You know that American politics is turning into a sad joke when a supposedly-serious presidential campaign tries to demonize laughter.
Yet, bizarrely, Donald Trump’s humorless gaggle of strategists decided that their first point of attack on Kamala Harris would be: Her laugh. No, seriously! Donald himself launched the offensive – “I call her Laffin’ Kamala,” he snorted. “You ever watch her laugh?” he implored listeners, declaring, “She’s crazy. She’s nuts.”
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Uh… no. Like normal people, she laughs – often, naturally, and joyously. So do I. Maybe you do, too. But, one GOP outfit sniffed that this is “inappropriate” for a woman running for president. And a Republican senatorial doofus from Louisiana even barked that Harris should act more like Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s former right-wing prime minister, pointing out that she “didn’t giggle.” The sour old senator then mansplained that Harris’ laughter made people think she’s “a ding-dong” – even though the dinging seems to be coming from his own head.
Interestingly, though, Trump’s orchestrated snark attack on Harris’ laughter is working. For Harris! By repeatedly pointing out that she has unscripted moments of laughter, Republicans actually make people feel positive toward her. I can attest from my own time politicking in a supposedly conservative state that laughter unites people – I quickly learned that humor is a key that can unlock the mind.
Moreover, the GOP’s churlish demonization of laughter only highlights the fact that, in contrast to Kamala, Trump is a grump! Note that we never see him laugh. He smirks, gloats, and often puts on a smarmy grin – but he never has a joyous belly laugh or shows any genuine sense of fun. Sad for him… but sadder for us if we let his dour demeanor define our America.
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Are you fired up to make sure that The Donald doesn’t get a chance to implement his and his cronies’ authoritarian agenda this fall?
If you’re a Lowdowner, we suspect that you also want to not just cheer folks on from the sidelines, but to actually do something. It can be confusing in ordinary times to figure out how best to spend your time on election work, and in an extraordinary election year like this one, it’s even more so. That’s why we’re highlighting the work of Seed the Vote for our grassroots group this week.
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Photo by Ron Cogswell on FlickrTed Cruz actually spoke the truth once. In 2016, when running for president against Trump, he said: “Donald has a problem with strong women. This is not subtle; it’s not complicated.”
Right! This truth is resurfacing now that Trump finds himself unexpectedly matched against a very formidable woman: Kamala Harris. Resorting to his old slap-em-down style, Trump immediately called Harris “dumb as a rock,” even as he mispronounced her name. He then had his press secretary flail at Harris as “weak” – yet adding that’s she “dangerously liberal.” So, she’s “weak…” yet dangerously strong.
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Pathetically, MAGA-world is resorting to overtly racist, anti-female tropes to attack Harris, proclaiming her to be a “DEI vice president” – i.e., chosen solely because she’s a woman of color. “When you go down that road,” bellowed Rep. Tim Burchett, “you take mediocrity.” Tim, a mediocre, ethically-corrupt Trump-acolyte from Tennessee, has only one claim to fame: He once sponsored a bill to legalize the eating of roadkill.
Meanwhile, Trump’s own VP choice, J.D. Vance, piled on the Harris DEI attack. That’s awkward, since Vance, who falsely poses as a senatorial “hillbilly,” is the ultimate DEI product. A Yale law school graduate, he was hand-picked by Silicon Valley elites for plum jobs, then financed by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel to run a hedge-fund hustle. Then Thiel gave $10 million to put Vance in US Senate. The smug senator now trashes Harris and her women supporters as “a bunch of childless cat ladies.”
Trump & his rich bros think trashing a strong woman is a “winner” – but they’re about to learn that this is an inclusive America… and Harris’ diversity is a strength.
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When it was announced that JD (James Donald Bowman/Hamel, then James David Vance, then rebranded as JD Vance…. so, whatever he is calling himself this week) would be Trump’s running mate, we were perplexed. We’d followed along with his trajectory since his book came out—hell, one of us even read it to give him a chance (the rest of us decided to read Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash, instead). But his empty soul and willingness to sell himself out to the highest bidder were on clear display since the beginning of it all! We couldn’t believe the fawning mainstream media coverage of the book (well, okay, we could), and then his election to the Senate. Did no one else see through this fake hillbilly ruse?!
Turns out, lots of people, especially rural people, see right through him, and instead of those voices getting pushed aside, for once they’re squarely in the middle of the conversation. And thanks to the internet’s love of memes, we have been having a ball seeing how fellow rural folk are helping to educate the rest of the country on what a self-serving joke this guy is (albeit a dangerous, authoritarian one).
Here then, for a little break from the intensity of the last few weeks, are some of our team’s favorite jokes about good ol’ JD, the tech billionaire’s pet fake redneck. And, thanks to that business about the couch, some of them may be NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Teehee.
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Suddenly, the presidential election has turned dynamic… even fun!
The handoff from Biden to Kamala Harris has not only energized Democrats, but it’s also driving the Trump Party’s top leaders absolute…
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Hightower was under the weather and unable to record new commentaries for this week, so we wanted just to quickly let our podcast listeners know that you can check out new written content being posted to our Substack all week, at jimhightower.substack.com.
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My instant feeling upon hearing that President Biden was stepping down was not political anxiety (aw jeez, another earthquake!), and certainly not any joy in seeing Joe deposed—but pure relief. Suddenly, the deck was shuffled, and now (not a moment too soon), we have a good hand, allowing us to focus squarely on Donald’s dangerous dementia, Project 2025, and the assault on America’s democracy by the combined forces of authoritarian elites and Christian nationalist theocrats.
Kamala Harris is our logical political choice to head up job number one: Discombobulate and defeat Trumpism. An accomplished woman, a woman of color, and a child of immigrants, she’s an experienced and forceful former prosecutor with the smarts to nail the convicted criminal opposing her… and us. Sure, her policies are not as progressive as I want them to be, but neither were Biden’s, and her views are something we can continue to work on. If Trump wins in November, we won’t have even a slight chance to shape the future of an America that stands for, and with, everyone.
While the urgent need in the next 104 (!) days is to focus on the November election, I can’t stress enough that we are in this for the long haul. Campaigns end, movements don’t. We must continue to invest in the local, grassroots organizing that actually bends that long arc of justice, building the capacity to have policies and people that represent the real values of America: fairness, equity and opportunity for all.
Jon Stewart said it best at the end of a recent episode of The Daily Show:
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“Summertime, and the living is easy, fish are jumping, and”… wait a minute, what the hell is this?
A summer camp for kids – but with a disturbing corporate twist. Some outlets of Chick-fil-A, the fast food chicken chain, are promoting a summer camp where children as young as 5 can learn “how to be a Chick-fil-A worker.”
Isn’t this fun? The corporation says that while the chickadees won’t actually be doing the work of regular employees, they will learn how to “take orders, deliver orders, make drinks, and be a hostess.”
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Of course, the little campers don’t get paid – indeed their families must pay to let the company give them an early dose of the good ol’ American work ethic and a “behind-the-scenes look” inside the hierarchal corporate order. You can’t start ‘em too young on these life lessons! The kiddos do get compensated, sort of, with their very own Chick-fil-A nametag and t-shirt.
Okay, this is not the Dickensian dystopia of 19th century England – but is that our modern standard? There is nothing wrong with young kids working… but 5-year-olds? And – as was the case in the pre-teen tasks I had in my father’s small business and on my Aunt Eula’s farm – the objective ought not be indoctrination into the corporate culture of low-wage franchises. Rather, I was learning to help the family and how to contribute to the larger community. My reward was not merely a token stipend, but a recognition that I belonged – that I had a role and was valued as part of that community. People didn’t need a corporate name tag to know who I was.
This is Jim Hightower saying… There’s so much more that an $11 billion nationwide giant like Chick-fil-A could do for the communities that provide its profits. Can’t they think of anything less selfish than promoting a fast-food future for children.
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What’s wrong with Neil Gorsuch? His soul, I mean.
As one of the domineering right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court, Gorsuch routinely supports enthroning plutocracy, autocracy, and his own brand of Christian theocracy over people’s democratic rights. But he also uses his unelected, unchecked judicial position to take power and justice away from America’s least powerful, most vulnerable people – including the homeless.
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For example, he ruled last month that an Oregon city’s ban on homeless residents sleeping outdoors was NOT cruel and unusual punishment. Never mind that the city provided nowhere else for homeless individuals and families to bed down, Gorsuch saw no problem with penalizing people who have to sleep or camp out in parks, on the street, etc. After all, he blithely explained, it was not a ban on homelessness, but merely on sleeping outdoors.
“It makes no difference,” exclaimed His Supremeness, whether the violator is homeless… or “a backpacker on vacation.” Or, I suppose he’d say, a Supreme Court justice sleeping under a bridge. To punctuate his cluelessness, Gorsuch actually asserted that the law applied equally to everyone. Except, of course, that the homeless can’t just go home after being kicked out from under the bridge.
This is Jim Hightower saying… It’s rank injustice for Gorsuch – a child of a politically-powerful and rich family, product of Ivy League schools and high-dollar law firms, possessor of enormous personal wealth and multiple homes – to dictate “let-them-eat-cake” rules for homeless people he’ll never know or understand. Yes, homelessness is a complex social scourge, but cavalierly criminalizing its victims is itself a judicial crime that solves nothing. Neil is not morally fit to judge poor people – so how about replacing him with a homeless person who actually knows something about real life.
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You may remember that we wrote a new post on Saturday about Project 2025 and the dictatorial implications for American democracy:
As soon as we posted it here, we started sharing it to our social media platforms to help get the word out. Within minutes, we got a notification from Facebook saying, “We removed your post. It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way. This goes against our Community Standards on spam.”
Um, excuse me, what? This has never happened to us before, with any link to anything we’ve ever posted since 2008.
There was a button to ask Facebook to review this removal, so I clicked on it, and within a few minutes, it was reinstated. Soon, our comments and inbox were flooded with reports from other people that the same thing was happening to them. I also tried posting it to my personal Facebook page, same results—the post was removed within minutes, and then reinstated after review. Then, another 24 hours later, the posts were gone from Facebook again altogether, sometimes without even being notified! Fascinatingly enough, other platforms—even Elon Musk’s platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter hellhole—had no problem with our post.
Facebook (and their parent company, Meta) are removing posts containing links to left-leaning information about Project 2025.
I started asking colleagues who work in progressive communications and technology if they’d heard about things like this happening. We’ve now found out that this has been a pattern happening to other organizations publicizing the harm that Project 2025 (“P25”) could do to the country. Here’s what we know so far:
- Facebook uses a network of media “partners” to fact-check news being shared on their site. Some of those are reasonably reputable, and others… not so much. One Facebook partner that’s been called out in discussions about the removal of P25 posts is The Dispatch, a right-wing media outlet. The Dispatch has an article on its own site outright saying that most social media posts about P25 are false.
- We’ve also been told that so-called fact-checkers for Facebook are using very niggling excuses to claim a post has misinformation. For example, the P25 section on banking regulations calls for the elimination of those regulations, which would eliminate the FDIC. But, since the document doesn’t explicitly say “eliminate the FDIC,” any statement about that is being flagged as false.
- Other links about Project 2025 that have been removed from Facebook include some from Just Security, an online publication based at the NYU School of Law. A user named dandle on Reddit says: “UPDATE: I tried again to post the same Just Security piece to my personal Facebook page, using different text in my post. The privacy settings were again set to friends only. I weakened the suggestion that my friends read it, but I did include ‘Project 2025’ in the text. Facebook again flagged and blocked the post as spam.” Another website having problems is Democracy Docket.
We’re working with partners and friends who take on Big Tech with their madness regularly to find out what’s going on, and what we can all do. We’re big fans of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and we hope they’ll look more into this. If you’re interested in the freedom of anything technological, they deserve your support!
Facebook quietly implemented a feature this year to show users very little political content unless they choose to see it, and now it seems to be censoring valid information about the consequences of this election. This is not just Orwellian in its conception, but also an extreme escalation of the censorship that corporate media have been engaging in for decades. Their claims of being purely unbiased have long fallen flat, and now we see Meta/Facebook following in their footsteps.
It’s a good reminder that Facebook (and other social media platforms) are not free public squares or even public utilities, but for-profit corporate conglomerates, with key shareholders like, in Meta’s case, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, as well as BlackRock and JP Morgan.
We’ll keep you updated as we learn about what’s happening, but for now, perhaps it’s finally time to get off Facebook and find other ways to stay in touch with the friends and family we all have there. Stay tuned.
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We’ve seen a ton of social media posts and emails in the last week or so about Project 2025, and although we’re still working on a fuller analysis to give you the lowdown on what it means to you, as well as tools to fight it, we felt it was urgent to get some solid info into Lowdowner’s hands as soon as we could. Y’all are quite the army of activists (we see the results when you take action!) and we know that if we offer up the goods, you can take them and run with them.
Here’s our brief primer on what this mess is, what’s at stake, and what you can start to do.
What is it?If you don’t know what Project 2025 is, or would like a brief summary to use to alert others about it, here you go:
It’s a painstakingly detailed, 922-page step-by-step plan to impose an American dictatorship of moneyed authoritarians and Christian nationalists, removing your and my democratic rights. Yes, this is an actual coup.
It sounds insane, yet there it is—a document written and being loudly promoted by a power-mad cluster of Trump bosses, Putin-esque despots, Reagan-loving economists and Ayn Rand-ian academics, moneyed corporate donors, and general far-right quacks and media blowhards. It’s innocuously coded “Project 2025” because the intent is to launch their full assault on the democratic fabric and structure of our national government next January, on Day 1 of another Trump presidency.
This scheme has been devised by The Heritage Foundation, a DC think tank set up in 1973 to promote the elitist economic and cultural doctrines of its über-rich founding funders, Joseph Coors (yes, that Coors) and Richard Mellon Scaife (yes, that Mellon). In recent years, Heritage has gone from merely being right-wing zealots to off-the-charts Trumpists… and now they’re going deep into the distant extremist cosmos. Thus, the head cosmonaut, Kevin Roberts, has megalomaniacally exulted that Project 2025 is “the second American revolution.” Unfortunately, it’s a dangerous devolution, with little tin-hat Kevin acting out what he pretends is a heroic coup.
This would be silly and inconsequential, except the Trump Party has become alarmingly treacherous. Ominously referencing the January 6th violent assault on democratic rule, Kevin said that his coup “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Of course, “the left”—i.e., sane democracy fighters like you and me—do not acquiesce to tyrannical wannabes.
But his ace is that The Donald, despite his denials, has hailed Heritage’s authoritarian agenda as his own and has cheered its plan to fire thousands of public employees on Day 1, replacing them with a lockstep army of enforcers that Heritage and others say they’ve already recruited to seize and Trump-ize every federal agency. This, combined with Trump’s own pledge to use the US military to enforce his political will, is where Project 2025’s subversive coup gets real.
Here are just a few of the steps we’ve learned so far that Heritage autocrats intend to implement:
- Nearly eliminating abortion access altogether at the national level.
- Cutting Social Security benefits.
- Giving ever-more tax breaks to corporations and gabillionaires.
- Selling off national parklands, wetlands, wildlife sanctuaries and other public properties
- Eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR, PBS).
- Imposing a “biblically-based” definition of marriage and families.
- Eliminating the Department of Education.
- Preventing LGBTQ+ couples from adopting children.
- Eliminating the food stamp program (SNAP) and the free school lunch program.
- Putting the Department of Justice and other independent agencies under the direct political control of the President.
- Eliminating organic food promotion, conservation programs, and most climate policies of the Agriculture Department
For more in depth reading, check out this series from the Center for American Progress.
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Why is this different from previous right-wing agendas?One, they were piecemeal proposals, like Bush the Second’s failed attack on Social Security, or they were just sloganeering war whoops, like Grover Norquist’s empty call to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub.
Two, Project 2025 is a comprehensive, all-in-one blueprint for a radical plutocratic and theocratic takeover of our government, surreptitiously advanced by many of the same anti-democracy corporate supremacists and billionaires who’ve already seized control of the judicial branch.
Three, the Republican Party is perfectly willing to submit to and grovel at the feet of moneyed extremists, media demagoguery, and political thuggery—even in support of stupid, poisonous policies the American people overwhelmingly reject.
Four: Donald.
What can I do?Right now, the most important thing you can do is to tell your friends and family about this terrifying agenda. Right-wingers are currently attacking the media reporting on this, calling progressives and even moderates who oppose the coup “Chicken Little”-types, trying to minimize this elitist assault on America itself. We cannot let them.
The most important people to share it with are not your super conservative relatives that drive you nuts, but rather people who may be feeling ambiguous about voting for a Democrat (whoever that is ends up being) for President. You’re not going to change the people who’ve already gone over to the crazies, but you have a chance at inspiring more undecided voters to at least vote against an explicitly un-American, Christian Nationalist, fascist ideology.
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If the six right-wing dogmatists who now literally rule the Supreme Court wonder why 70 percent of the American people consider them somewhere between politically corrupt and grotesque, they might re-read their Kafkasesque decision last month perverting the meaning of bribery.
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Appropriately enough, the case involved garbage trucks. A smalltown mayor had funneled a million-dollar contract for new garbage trucks to a local seller, which then made a $13,000 payoff to the mayor. Obvious graft. But no, the six supremes decreed that the payoff was not illegal, because it was given to the mayor after the garbage truck contract was issued. Taking money before would be a bribe, they babbled, but money given afterwards is an innocent “gratuity” – like tipping a waiter for good service.
The court’s distortion of kindergarten-level ethics was written by Brett Kavanaugh, infamous for his own frat-boy moral contortions. In his formal opinion, Brett rhetorically asked if such after-the-fact kickbacks should be considered bribes. “The answer.” he proclaimed,” is no.”
Of course, as any reasonable person would tell the black-robed fabricator, the obvious answer is: “Hell yes!”
Kavanaugh even tried to trivialize such official bribery, calling it no more sinister than parents sending a gift basket to thank their child’s teacher for a job well done. Hello, Mr. Clueless, this was a $13,000 gift basket!! The truck dealer was obviously rewarding the mayor for handing out a million taxpayer dollars to it!
Do something!We’re collaborating with friends to build out fresh actions you can take, and in the meantime, check these out:
- Share the Justice Can’t Wait updated website.
- Share Stand Up America’s Supreme Court Voter website, which aims to educate and mobilize voters on the impact the next president will have on the future of the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Join United for Democracy in calling on Congress to rein in the out-of-control Supreme Court.
- Demand Justice has been advocating for the Judiciary Act, which would expand the court by four seats. They’re asking people to call their representatives, and to join their rapid response team.
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What is a SCOTUS? Sounds like a prehistoric critter scuttling along some seabed. But, no, it is the acronym for our Supreme Court of the United States.
SCOTUS is meant to be the impartial arbiter of legal disputes over what our laws mean. Yet, who are these arbiters, how are they elected, why don’t we even know their names, and if they go rogue, imposing their personal autocratic beliefs on our nation’s democratic ideals… what then?
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Well, structurally, SCOTUS is undemocratic, a relic of monarchial rule. Unlike the 535 members of the legislative branch, who are elected from diverse districts across America, there are only nine supremes, and none of the current bunch have ever faced the people, even in an election for dogcatcher. They are hand-picked by political and moneyed elites, and most blatantly lie to win approval for their lifetime appointments. Once enthroned, they have no accountability to us commoners, who are expected to blindly obey their edicts.
Today, out of 330 million Americans, six right-wing SCOTUS members have seized control of the court… and our government. They claim supremacy over the People, the President, and the Congress – arbitrarily dictating what is “legal” for elected officials and the public to do. Indeed, they are now making up laws on abortion, presidential power, voting rights, environmental protection, and much more to suit their personal political and religious biases. Moreover, they operate behind closed doors, with no disclosure of their conflicts of interest.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Call this what it is: A right-wing extremist power grab. And it is fast supplanting our people’s historic democratic progress with a kleptocracy of autocratic, plutocratic, theocratic rule. The only remedy is a head-on people’s rebellion to democratize this totally unAmerican court.
Do something!We’re collaborating with friends to build out fresh actions you can take, and in the meantime, check these out:
- Share the Justice Can’t Wait updated website.
- Share Stand Up America’s Supreme Court Voter website, which aims to educate and mobilize voters on the impact the next president will have on the future of the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Join United for Democracy in calling on Congress to rein in the out-of-control Supreme Court.
- Demand Justice has been advocating for the Judiciary Act, which would expand the court by four seats. They’re asking people to call their representatives, and to join their rapid response team.
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Being a lifelong Texan, I’m used to hot summers. But what the hell – 99 degrees in June! Last year, we had 80 days of 100-plus temperatures, and we’re looking at 90 days this year. I can’t moan in self-pity, though, for the globally-warming furnace is now searing the whole country, even in northern climes where people are used to having days in August when they need “summer sweaters.”
As we crank up our air-conditioners, however, let’s pause for a moment to consider some 50 million workers in your and my communities who are exposed throughout the day to the full intensity of the sun’s power. They are roofers and landscapers, warehouse workers and farm laborers, street pavers and letter carriers. These have always been hot jobs, but now they’re deadly—heat kills more Americans today than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined.
So surely there are basic workplace rules assuring that these exposed people get water, shade breaks, etc. No…. and when such humanitarian codes are proposed, industry bosses coldly reject them. For example, after several Texas cities began enacting worker protections, corporate lobbyists rushed to their hireling, Gov. Greg Abbott, who obediently snuck a state pre-emption into law,banning local officials from setting their own heat standards. That year, a record 450 people died of heat exposure in Texas, but Abbott just snarled that his preemption “increases economic liberty.”
Mercifully, President Biden is pushing national heat rules. Of course, industry lobbyists are out to kill his anti-killing reforms, calling them “unreasonably complicated.” Really? Providing water and shade is too perplexing for our corporate geniuses? Why don’t we put them on roofing jobs in August – and let them think about it?
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For us Texans, there’s nothing new about Bible-thumping politicians bedevilling us with the foolishness of their dogmatic Christian piety. A century ago, for example, a proposal was made to offer bilingual education to Spanish-speaking school kids. But it was quashed by the governor, who solemnly declared: “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas.”
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But suddenly, Louisiana’s demagogic Christian officials have surged past Texas on the far right. The Pelican State’s governor, an Elmer Gantry wannabe, has decreed that every single public school classroom must henceforth prominently display the Ten Commandments to indoctrinate the tykes in his religion. That way, babbled a legislative backer of the state edict, students can “look up and see what God says is right and what he says is wrong.”
Actually, the Christian bible itself is a little wobbly on that, offering three different versions of holy commandments, including this: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in it is mother’s milk.”
Wobbliest of all, though, is the moral authority of depraved politicians hypocritically preaching to school kids about such sins of adultery, stealing, and (hello MAGA zealots!) worshiping false gods. Plus, their piousness doesn’t work. Young people are not so dull and docile that they’ll mindlessly obey what some self-serving, immoral politicos put on a poster.
Louisiana could have consulted Texas on this. For some 60 years, a 6-foot-tall granite slab engraved with the Ten Commandments has stood outside our State Capitol building. Yet, those inside, the Capitol – including our governor – routinely violate those engraved moral sentiments.
If so-called “leaders” don’t give a damn about honoring the values they put on classrooms posters, why should students?
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It’s July 4th week!
Sure, do a few 12-ounce elbow bends and set off some sparklers in celebration of our people’s democratic values. But wait – why are we celebrating the Spirit of ‘76, but meekly accepting the recent tsunami of autocratic, plutocratic dictates from a sextet of extremist, right-wing, partisan lawyers?
These six unelected Republicans, put on the Supreme Court by a tiny group of billionaire-funded political operatives, are routinely imposing their anti-woman, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-environment, theocratic agendas on the vast majority of us who want none of the above.
Start with the fact that they are liars. Each one duped senators into giving lifetime appointments to them by loudly promising that they would never even consider rewriting the fundamental laws and legal precedents that form the egalitarian fabric of American society. Nor, each insisted, would they ever dream of being a part of a cabal working to turn the judicial branch into a repressive force routinely eliminating democratic power in order to erect a government of-by-and-for right-wing elites.
Then they proceeded, case-by-case, to do exactly what they swore on their honor they would not do. And now, with yesterday’s Trump v. United States edict, the six have haughtily attempted to rewrite the Constitution and 248 years of our People’s history by proclaiming, on their own whim, that America has an imperial presidency with executive authority to act with impunity.
We the People do not have to put up with their imperious crap.
They’ve turned the Supreme Court into a political operation – so it’s the duty of us grassroots democracy champions to fight their usurpation, not only in the presidential race, but carrying the fight into every political forum. Don’t wait on national “leaders” – they lack the guts for standing up to runaway power.
And while no individual can fix our democracy, a movement can. I think of a small hardware store here in Austin that had a can-do attitude, offering to help customers handle even the biggest tasks. The store’s slogan was “Together, we can do it yourself.”
We’re collecting actions that grassroots people can take, and are collaborating with longtime friends and allies to light a fire under the butts of Democratic Party leaders. We’ll keep you updated on those efforts, but to start, here are two groups to join up with.
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Demand Justice has been advocating for the Judiciary Act, which would expand the court by four seats. They’re asking people to call their representatives, and to join their rapid response team.
We’ve long been a fan of Lisa Graves (you can watch our 2022 Chat ‘n’ Chew episode with her here), and she’s teamed up with the folks at Court Accountability for a new round of intense actions called Justice Can’t Wait. They’ve shared with us a list of things you can do:
- Share the Justice Can’t Wait updated website.
- Raise awareness of the seeds being planted by Trump and his allies to deny the results of the 2024 election if it doesn’t go their way. Trump has refused to commit to accepting legitimate election results if he does not win, and his allies are laying the groundwork for election denial through lawsuits and false claims about election fraud.
- Urge Congress to pass reforms clarifying the Insurrection Act, which Trump plans to invoke to deploy the military against the American people, on his first day in office.
- Share Stand Up America’s Supreme Court Voter website, which aims to educate and mobilize voters on the impact the next president will have on the future of the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Educate Americans on the economic threats that the extremist Project 2025 poses. Economic concerns “consistently rank as top issues among likely voters,” and people need to understand the likely consequences and chaos for our economy and American families if Project 2025 affiliates are able to carry out their dangerous agenda.
- Join United for Democracy in calling on Congress to rein in the out-of-control Supreme Court.
- Drive home that this is Trump’s Supreme Court. Trump installed the corporatist majority that has taken away women’s fundamental freedoms and stripped away protections for Americans’ health and safety. Even after Trump led an insurrection, the Court that Trump built is now tipping the scales to help him win again in November and protect him from accountability for his actions.
- From the Hightower staff: And let’s not forget how the Supremes view actual bribery: as nothing more than a tip or a token of thanks for a job well done. They’re basically creating loopholes to legalize their own corruption!
Stay tuned for more, and let us know what other concrete actions and organizations you’re hearing about—the comments on this post are open to all subscribers. Let’s do this!
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“OMG, it’s all over! We’re doomed! Biden lost the debate!”
But wait, the election is not a debate contest. It’s a choice between two visions of what America is and what it can become. We’re not just electing a person, but a government… and a future.
Of course I wish Biden had performed better Thursday night, but we’re not choosing “debater of the year.” It’s We The People who’re being tested in this election—will we pursue the democratic values and progressive policies the great majority of us want for our children? Or will we fall into the egomaniacal autocracy and corporate kleptocracy that Trump is openly promising? Biden’s got his weaknesses, but we at least have a shot at pressuring him to enact good policy and holding him accountable when he doesn’t. A future with Trump’s special brand of authoritarianism and tyranny holds zero chance for us.
Sure, I wish we had better choices—and we have to work toward that happy day. As Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson of the Highlander Center said this morning, “Sweet freedom dreams of a world where we have the power to never be in conditions like this again.” But right now, here we are. Sulking about it elects Trump. So, I don’t care if Biden is a sack of cement, I’m going to help haul him to the finish line.
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We see it everywhere these days, don’t we? Glorious, beautiful Pride flags all around—even in the store windows and on the websites of major mainstream corporations. Wow, we think, equality for all sexualities is really hitting its stride! And then we see that those same corporations are donating to MAGA conservatives, hateful Republicans, and other groups that don’t just threaten queer folks’ rights, but threaten their very lives. And then, bowing to pressure from those tiny minorities, they’re scaling back their Pride efforts altogether!
Since this coming weekend is the official Pride celebration in the city that started it all—and let’s remember, the first Pride was a riot—we wanted to highlight an organization that’s doing the tough grassroots work out in the field, per our Friday Signpost tradition. And since y’all seemed to love the idea of sex ed advocacy, we thought you’d like to meet an organization who’s been doing grassroots queer sex ed for all, focusing on young people, for over 25 years: Scarleteen!
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Wow: Big political news, folks!
In an astonishing twist, some far-right-wing Republican groups and politicians are demanding that their longtime corporate allies – such as Walmart, the Koch brothers, GE, and Wall Street banks – stick to their business and stop interfering in the people’s political decisions. One group, the National Center for Public Policy Research, bluntly declares that it now prefers “corporate behavior without partisan influences.” It’s even urging corporate shareholders to pass resolutions requiring top executives to halt their overbearing political intrusion. What an unbelievable breakthrough for progressive reform!
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Well, it would be… if true. But it’s a fraud. NCPPR only wants corporate powers to stop politicking against right-wing issues. Specifically, the tricksters demand that corporations cease all efforts to advance diversity, equality, and inclusiveness in American society. Also, they oppose any corporate embrace of Pride events, or corporate acknowledgement of America’s history of institutional racism. And, they say, corporations should stop all efforts to combat climate change, since right-wing orthodoxy says global warming is a hoax. Forget head-in-the-sand politics, NCPPRers want to bury political reality itself in the sand.
Now for the Good News: They’re buffoons. Even profiteering investors aren’t buying their hokum. Their “anti-WOKE” resolutions are being rejected by 98 percent of shareholders’ votes! Even in the rigged system of corporate voting, that’s a stunning rejection. Meanwhile, shareholder proposals to support progressive ideals and policies have been gaining ground, now winning a fourth to a third of the vote. That’s three times better than the support that such proposals got 20 years ago.
This is further proof that the fundamental political barrier to right-wing extremism is that the vast majority of Americans actually believe in economic fairness, social justice… and reality.
Photo via Dissent Pins.
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Here’s a member of Congress with too much time on his hands… and way too little of anything on his mind.
Greg Steube of Florida, is a run-of-the-mill, extremist Republican specializing in such partisan slapstick as trying to nullify Joe Biden’s election and install GOP loser, Donald Trump, as president.
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But Steube went full-tilt ridiculous when he excitedly announced that, “Tomorrow I will introduce legislation to rename our coastal waters after… Donald Trump!” This would brand all the seas round America’s entire coastline with “TRUMP” logos – like trapping all of America in a big fat Trump bear hug.
But – isn’t it rather blah to “honor” an ex-president with obscure boundary waters? It’s like a town council voting to put the ex-mayor’s name on a drainage ditch. Still, Stuebe hoped that this would charm the MAGA demi-god, prompting him to smile on Greg’s future election ambitions. Believe it or not, this is what is considered serious congressional business by the GOP!
Republican congress critters are in a frenzy to kiss up to their convict-in-chief, proposing multiple government gifts for him. Arizona’s Paul Gosar, for example, is demanding that the US treasury print $500 bills bearing a portrait of the Donald. And Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna proposes to tarnish the Congressional Gold Medal by bestowing it on the political mad dog who launched the January 6 mob attack on – yes, Congress! How cynical – especially since Steube and other Donald worshippers had opposed giving the congressional medal to police officers who had risked their lives to protect them from Trump’s rampaging mob.
Meanwhile, how about a more fitting honor for the huckster: Name a federal prison “Trump Tower.” Put it in big gold letters!
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When it comes to agitating and organizing for change, there are lots of tools at our disposal: protesting, running for office, legal actions, and, of course, VOTING. And the right is making it increasingly more difficult to get to the polls, to get to the correct polls, to know who—and what—is on the ballot… ugh. Fortunately, there’s a nationwide organization that we love who is doing the hard work of getting local and regional organizers what they need: Movement Voter Project. And I’ll be speaking at their happy hour next week—join me?
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What if Labor Day was not about giving working families one measly Monday off to sleep in, rush to the beach, do some 12-oz elbow bends – then report back first thing Tuesday to start another 364 days of pulling the corporate plow?
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Instead, imagine if working stiffs themselves took hold of this day, putting it to work rallying and reinvigorating a rebellious labor movement to achieve economic fairness and social justice for all in America. This was, after all, the purpose of the original Labor Day, held in 1882. Thousands of bricklayers, machinists, piano makers, longshoremen, and other unionized workers in the New York City area defied corporate bosses to declare their own day off. They were not taking a vacation, but making “a public show of organized strength,” energizing labor’s demand for an end to the tyranny of 12-hour days, 6-day weeks, and $2 a day in pay.
In an audacious affront to the plutocracy, a miles-long parade of common workers marched six abreast, accompanied by union floats, and boisterous bands. They pointedly traversed right in front of the gilded mansions of robber barons living along Fifth Avenue, the most ostentatious corridor of wealth and power in America. The day culminated in a sprawling picnic and festival, with 25,000 union celebrants enjoying food, beer, dancing, each other… and a shared sense that the working class was on the move.
Why not again? Auto workers, flight attendants, fast-food workers, and others are clearly on the move, so why not make a new “public show of organized strength,” directly confronting the corporate greedheads and political boneheads who’re stealing our democracy. Ralph Nader called for this two years ago – to see his ideas for “A Workers Action Day,” go to: nader.org.
Do something!In addition to Nader’s article, here are more resources for staying up to date on labor’s resurgence in the US:
- Labor Notes, a media and organizing project that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement since 1979
- Cornell ILR School’s Labor Action Tracker
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You all may remember this Chat & Chew episode with Hightower and Sharon Lavigne from Rise St. James in Louisiana.
Sharon is a retired special education teacher turned environmental activist. Over the course of her lifetime she saw her beautiful thriving community where families could live off the land (farm, grow fruits and vegetables, have a some livestock, fish in the Mississippi) turn into “Cancer Alley” – a polluted, petrochemical-factory-filled section of land in Louisiana along the Mississippi where deaths from cancer are much higher than average.
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Excellent news, people: Republican officials are mounting an all-out political push for a massive cut in our taxes next year!
Well… by “our taxes,” they don’t mean yours. Rather, here they come with another absurd sob story about giant corporations and the super-wealthy suffering unbearably from excessive taxation. Claiming to feel the pain of these multibillionaires, the GOP is riding to their rescue, promising to extend the trillion-dollar tax boondoggle Donald Trump handed to the rich in 2017, and vowing to add an extra trillion-dollars-worth of new breaks for them.
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Ludicrously, the lawmakers, lobbyists, and corporate front groups pushing this garish plutocratic giveaway loudly insist that the real beneficiaries are not the privileged few, but [cue the patriotic music] America! Lowering taxes on the corporate rich, they exclaim, will let those elites invest more in new jobs and enterprises, expanding the economy for all.
Of course, that’s the same ball of dung they keep rolling up Capitol Hill again and again, and it gets stinkier every time, especially now that monopolies control everything from high tech and health care to oil and food prices. Why reward them? Far from creating jobs, they’re frantically automating them, and rather than increasing competitiveness, monopolies buy up or squeeze out competitors. Plus, if they get another tax windfall, the oligarchs will just use it to jack-up their stock prices, artificially making them richer and more dominant over us.
Another “gotcha” in the GOP’s giveaway would gut the IRS’ ability to investigate and prosecute these filthy rich scofflaws who annually cheat us out of billions of dollars they owe for the upkeep of America. For information and action on this massive ripoff, go to AmericansForTaxFairness.org.
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Attacks on reproductive freedom! Attacks on queer & trans folk! Attacks on books! It’s enough to make you want to scream into the void. Thankfully, there’s an alternative to screaming into the void that you might not have heard of yet—and solid action you can take. Let us introduce you to EducateUS.
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We should pay attention to corporate America’s fluctuating wordplay, for their frequent contortions of language disguise ploys to dupe, confuse, and rip off us hoi polloi – i.e., their customers.
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For example, here’s a mouthful that’s been gaining popularity among manufacturers of food products: Price Pack Architecture. It’s a bit of gobbledygook meant to obscure the profiteering practice of – shhhh – ever so quietly shrinking the size and contents of their packages – without lowering prices. Economists dubbed this “shrinkflation,” but that too clearly implied gouging. Thus, corporate image-makers invented the incomprehensible nonsense phrase of PPA to cloak their anti-consumer trickery.
This convoluted codeword also allows the tricksters to brag openly about their cleverness to their Wall Street investors. Here’s Coca-Cola’s CEO, for example, doing corporate-speak to bankers in February: “We are leveraging our revenue growth management capabilities to tailor our offerings and price pack architecture to meet consumers’ evolving needs.”
English translation: Consumers will need to pay us more for less Coke. You could almost hear the bankers weep for joy over Coke’s sneaky scheme to stiff its customers.
Perhaps you’ve wondered what big-time corporate CEOs actually do to rake in their exorbitant salaries, now averaging more than $8,000 an hour! Well, there it is: The CEO’s main job is to keep workers’ pay low, monopolize markets, and constantly invent slick ways to squeeze another dime from each consumer’s pocket.
It’s not honest work, but it does pay well. Coca-Cola’s CEO James Quincey, for example, hauled in $25 million in pay last year. That’s 1,800 times more than the annual income of the typical Coca-Cola worker, who’ll now pay more for a sip of Coke, thanks to Quincey’s “price pack architecture.”
Photo courtesy Alley of Ashes on Flickr.
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Sam Alito is so ugly that he can’t even see his ugliness.
I don’t mean looks, but the deep inner ugliness of character that keeps oozing from this so-called “supreme” judge. Start with the unabashed lies he told senators to win his lifetime appointment to America’s powerfully-undemocratic judicial branch. Lie Number One was his promise not to mess with women’s constitutional right to reproductive freedom. But, once he put on his authoritarian black robe, he wrote the Court’s edict ripping that right from every woman.
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Later, Alito got caught secretly accepting a freebie trip to a luxury fishing lodge, paid for by a billionaire vulture capitalist. Far from embarrassed, he haughtily asserted that as a Supreme he has no ethical duty even to report such gifts of “personal hospitality.” Indeed, he’s led the Supreme Court’s corrupt refusal to adopt an enforceable code of ethics (which every other public office must do).
Which brings us to Alito’s current flag flap, revealing a clownish show of tone-deaf arrogance. Abandoning any pretense of judicial impartiality, he’s had flags flying at both his home and beach house, ostentatiously trumpeting his embrace of MAGA extremism and his opposition to President Biden. How, then, can he be a fair judge of upcoming cases concerning Trump’s anti-democratic power grabs?
No problem, said Alito, imperiously waving off proper demands that he remove himself from ruling on these cases. Trying to deflect a tsunami of criticism, the black-robed scoundrel resorted to the classic “gentleman’s dodge”: He blamed his wife. “My wife is fond of flying flags,” he said, insisting that the never even noticed them flapping in front of his houses for the world to see.
That’s not just ugly, it’s supremely stupid.
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To wrap up our weekend, we thought we’d take a few minutes and share what each of us here at Hightower HQ has been reading and listening to in recent weeks. What recommendations do you have? Leave ‘em in the comments!
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Remember Donald Trump, the “swamp drainer”?
In 2016, candidate Trump promised to end the grubby money corruption of American politics. “The special interests, lobbyists, donors,” he rightly and righteously noted “make large contributions to politicians and they have total control of those politicians.” Asserting that he knows the political rot better than anyone, he said he’d “fix that system, because that system is wrong.”
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Eight years later, here comes the Donald again – but the swamp is bigger and suckier than ever. And instead of bold talk about draining it, Trump is auctioning off the swamp, flagrantly offering direct presidential benefits to Big Oil, Wall Street hucksters, high-tech tycoons, and all other moneyed interests that “make large contributions” to him.
How large? The Washington Post reports that one businessman asked to have lunch with Trump, promising a million-dollar check. “I’m not having lunch,” Trump retorted. “You’ve got to make it $25 million.” He has also demanded a cool billion bucks from a covey of Big Oil executives. Promising to cut their corporate taxes and deliver an array of other special benefits, the presidential wannabe punctuated his itemization of political goodies with an unsubtle monetary nudge, saying, “be generous, please.”
Since a Supreme Court majority of extreme partisans opened the floodgates 14 years ago, corrupt corporate cash has gone from merely polluting American democracy to now swamping it. Trump is not the only bribe huckster, but he is the most blatant, shamelessly nuclearizing the going rate for buying public policy, mocking the ideal of a citizens’ government. Trump himself is fond of telling fatcat donors that he doesn’t spend 10 minutes with anyone who can’t give $10 million. Hello – where does that leave you and me? And our country?
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One group of oppressed Americans has become especially outspoken this election year, contending that top government officials (Democrats in particular) are ignoring their community’s basic needs and stifling their pursuit of economic advancement.
I speak, of course, about the tragic plight of our nation’s downtrodden multi-billionaire class. While it’s true that Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and these other Silicon Valley sad sackers and weepy Wall Streeters have vastly increased their wealth under Joe Biden’s presidency, they wail that he has not properly courted and coddled them. Indeed, Biden set their hair on fire this March by calling out their outrageous tax-dodging ploys, demanding they start providing their fair share of support for America by paying a “billionaire tax.”
Thus, these poor, put-upon moneyed elites have been jetting around to Hollywood, Palm Beach, and other posh enclaves, holding secret strategy sessions and rallying the über-rich class to defeat Biden this fall. Of course, since self-centered, plutocratic billionaires are less popular than bed bugs, they can’t win with their ideas and votes, but only by buying elections – and these gilded conspirators intend to do just that, amassing billions to bury Biden.
But, oops, one money confab in April exploded into public view when some 20 poobahs of such oil giants as Chevron, Exxon, and Occidental conferred with Trump himself. In a straight-out bribery offer, he pledged to repeal environmental protections the industry dislikes –if they pony up one billion dollars for his presidential campaign.
This sordid palace intrigue is the product of the right-wing Supreme Court’s 2010 edict letting selfish wealthy interests secretly dump unlimited sums of corporate money into our elections. They’re turning our democratic ideals into a kleptocracy.
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Hot on the heels of our 1980s playlist… we’ve got … drumroll… the 1990s in political movement music ready for you! We love seeing how the music really spreads through genres in this decade, continuing the roots of branches sprung prior ones. Let ‘er rip!
Prior playlists:
- 1960s
- 1970s
- 1980s
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If you’re wondering whatever happened to Ron DeSantis, he’s now re-ensconced in Florida… goofier than ever.
Last year, backed by a covey of billionaires, Governor Ron was all set to be our next president until national voters discovered he has the personality of a dirt clod and the political sensibility of a tin-pot totalitarian.
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Even in the GOP primaries, most voters gagged at his ruthless anti-abortion absolutism, his Fahrenheit 451 book bans, his vigilante rampages against local librarians, his dictate that textbooks whitewash American history, his cruel toying with desperate asylum seekers, and so awful much more.
Thus, the Potentate of Tallahassee limped back home. But far from chastened, Ron has doubled down on political goofiness, frittering away his remaining prestige and gubernatorial credibility on right-wing hokum. For example, he has banned the sale of alternative meat products in Florida. Also, in a bizarre commandment he calls “Freedom Summer,” he has decreed that Florida’s bridges can only be lit up in hues of red, white, and blue – no “liberal” colors like green or purple.
His latest tilt-at-windmills stunt is to repeal state efforts to fight climate change! He’s reversing state policies encouraging agencies to switch to electric vehicles, prohibiting several wind and solar-powered projects, and eliminating state incentives for energy efficient homes. As sea levels rise all around Florida – flooding its coastal cities – DeSantis rants against “the agenda of radical green zealots,” maniacally declaring: “We’re restoring sanity” to energy policy.
If Republican Party strategists wonder why voters think the GOP has gone nuts, look no further than Florida’s authoritarian governor, who’s busy dictating people’s meat choices – and the color of bridges – while his state sinks into the sea.
Do Something!There’s a lot happening in progressive Florida politics these days—no, really! Check out FloridaRising.org to get involved.
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A Republican senator once tried excusing the egomaniacal right-wing nastiness of his colleague, Ted Cruz declaring, “sometimes Ted is his own worst enemy.” I said to myself: “Not while I’m alive he’s not.”
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But now, I’m reassessing, because Cruz keeps descending deeper into self-pity and self-destruction. For example, he’s recently been trying to gut a consumer-friendly rule requiring airlines to make automatic, hassle-free refunds to passengers when their flights are unduly delayed or cancelled. However, kissing up to his airline political donors, Ted’s amendment would put the hassle back in refunds, requiring abused passengers to file written requests to the various impenetrable corporate bureaucracies of airlines to get their money back – maybe… someday.
In fairness, though, Cruz has been working hard to make air travel much easier for one class of travelers: US senators and House members, plus their staffs and families! He wants to make us common taxpayers fund “airport security escorts” for him and other privileged ones, moving them ahead of everyone and zipping them through the screening and boarding process. This, Ted explained, will help in “keeping the flying public safe.”
He really means keeping the public from seeing or interacting at airports with public officials like him. You might recall that, while hundreds of Texans were literally dying during the state’s power grid’s failure in 2021’s calamitous deep freeze, Ted was photographed in tropical attire at Houston’s airport, waiting to board a flight to Cancun, fleeing the cold and his constituents. By getting special airport escorts, though, so-called public servants like Cruz won’t be exposed to public view.
Hello – of all the public needs crying out today for taxpayer funding – where would you rank providing an airport escort for Ted Cruz?
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There have been so many incisive cartoons and memes coming out in the last few weeks that we decided we’d share some of our favorites with you. There’s something about sharp and fierce critique of the world we live in combined with wit that opens things right up that helps a lot of us feel a tiny bit of relief and a little less alone in this world gone mad. With that, enjoy these finds from our field of view, and leave some of your own recent favorites in the comments!
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Whatzamatta with Congress? And most of our state legislatures, too?
Why do these so-called representative bodies keep stiffing middle-class and poor families, refusing to respond to the most urgent ne…
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Let me be clear that I mean no disrespect to reptiles when I note that Jonathan Mitchell is a snake.
An extremist right-wing Texas lawyer, Mitchell is actually creepier and all-together more diabolical that your average serpent could think of being. Jonathan slithers around the country as a self-appointed anti-abortion vigilante, terrorizing women’s advocates, health clinics, and doctors. And now (turning truly creepy), he’s singling-out individual womenwith his bullying legalistic theatrics.
By perverting an obscure judicial procedure, called Rule 202, Mitchell threatens to publicly expose and sue women who make an entirely-legal, out-of-state trip to terminate a pregnancy. Moreover, he threatens to sue any of her family, friends, and others who aid or encourage her pursuit of reproductive freedom. Moreover, even without actually suing them, Mitchell proclaims that he can use the coercive power of government to compel each of them to be interrogated.
This gross assertion of theocratic power, wielded by a religious partisan with zero public authority, goes beyond mere tyranny. He is resurrecting the hysterical demagoguery and satanic extremism of Cotton Mather and the Puritan fanatics who fomented the Salem witch trials and executions of the 1690s. Mitchell and his theocratic clique are trying to weaponize Rule 202 so any woman who suffers a miscarriage or is accused by a scorned lover of having an abortion can be subjected to a hostile court-ordered grilling. Mitchell’s witchcrafters don’t need to win or even actually file such frivolous and venomous legal actions, for their goal is raw intimidation. Simply accusing vulnerable women of being abortion witches would force them to hire lawyers and endure public inquisition – or surrender their liberty without due process.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Vipers are not this vicious! To help reject Mitchell’s misogynistic scheme, go to Abortion Access Front: AAFront.org.
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Remember late last year when we asked you for your favorite political and protest songs? We’ve listened to the 1960s, and the 1970s, so now it’s time for… you guessed it… the 1980s! Since GenX comprises half of the staff here at Hightower HQ, we were especially jazzed to see this decade’s list— we grew up with a mainstream culture of Reagan and “greed is good” BS, but music always gave us both a lot of hope in our working class lives that things could be different. From rap to folk to punk to metal to pop, our collective playlist hits a lot of radical notes.
We’re still taking your suggestions for songs from either pre-1960, or from the year 2000 and beyond. Share ‘em in the comments!
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Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity’s Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order, “above and before every other duty.”
Really – even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America’s corporate-care system? Well, gosh, they say, let’s not go crazy with this religious stuff! There’s morality… and then there’s business.
Consider how today’s monopolized and financialized hospital networks treat nurses – the high-touch frontline people who do the most to put care in “healthcare.” Paid a pittance, thousands of nurses across America are now organizing and unionizing against the inequities of this system. The nurses core grievance, however, is not their pay, but the gross understaffing imposed on them and their patients by profiteering hospital chains.
In a national survey, more than half of nurses feel “used up” and “emotionally drained.” Why? Primarily because executives keep goosing up profits by eliminating care providers, making it impossible for the remaining, stretched-out staff to meet their own high moral standard of care. That’s demoralizing for nurses… and deadly for patients.
Yet, corporate-care lobbyists loudly squawk that hospital chains can’t afford to pay fair wages and fully staff-up. Ironically, one of the loudest squawkers is the hospital mega-chain, Ascension, a Catholic church offshoot proclaiming to be “rooted in the loving ministry of Jesus as healer.” Some healer. In a devilish partnership with a Wall Street huckster, Ascension has been slashing nursing staffs while paying its CEO $13 million a year, hoarding $18 billion in cash, and allotting a pitiful two percent of its budget for charitable care of the poor.
What the hell! To help battle health care greed, go to NationalNursesUnited.org.
Photo courtesy National Nurses— Austin nurses locked out after a strike.
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We Texans are long-accustomed to enduring stormy outbursts of corruption among our top state legislators. The spectacle of lawmakers taking corporate bribes to provide legislative favors, tax breaks, government contracts, and such is as common as Spring tornadoes – and even more destructive to the public good.
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The state’s prevailing ethical standard was articulated several years ago when a powerful legislator (nicknamed “Bull of Brazos”) was caught personally profiting from a bill he was pushing: “I’d just make a little bit of money,” he explained dismissively. “I wouldn’t make a whole lot.”
Before rolling your eyes at Crazy Texas, though, consider the sneak attack that Corporate America is now making to legalize the wholesale bribery of every public official in America. Their ploy is a cynical effort to redefine bribery. Paying officials to do corporate favors, they insist, should only be considered a bribe if the payoff is arranged before the favor is done. Yes, with a straight face, these finaglers claim that if the payment comes after an official delivers the goods, it’s not a bribe, but simply a “gratuity.” Like tipping a waiter for good service.
Even the flimflammers Congress would balk at voting for such a blatant perversion of language and public integrity. So, the corporate connivers have slinked over to the corrupt plutocratic partisans on the Supreme Court, beseeching them to – Hocus Pocus! – autocratically decree that wrong is right. And they probably will, since a majority of the Supremes have themselves accepted corrupt freebies from corporate patrons. Take Clarence Thomas, please! He’s been given millions in corporate bribes (excuse me, “gratuities”), so he’s hardly an unbiased judge of official corruption.
To fight the stench of this legal freak show, go to Campaign Legal Center: campaignlegal.org.
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Gather ’round, friends, and let us learn a little bit Mother’s Day, or rather Mothers’ Day (plural possessive, that is).
Today’s lesson is not just a lesson in history – it’s also a lesson in feminism. Women* have often pulled together to help each other, through times of war, oppression, and frankly, basic survival. They are the glue that has held many important social movements together. Julia Ward Howe, a writer, poet, and activist, understood this notion. She saw Mothers’ Day as unifying force for peace—to reunite families torn apart by the Civil War and to appeal to pacifists globally to stop support for the Franco-Prussian War happening outside our borders.
Recognizing the toll that war has on families (and that the perpetrators of war were almost always men) Howe issued “An Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World” in 1870:
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Right-wing culture warriors have been relentlessly attacking people’s personal liberties – running hellish crusades to deny our freedom to vote, to read what we want, to form labor unions, to make our own reproductive decisions… etc.
Now, apparently having run out of freedoms to ban, here they come with a twisted attempt to politicize another of our inalienable rights: The pursuit of happiness! They’ve launched a campaign of psycho-babble, preaching that those who embrace progressive ideas and causes are doomed to a life of perpetual unhappiness. “Don’t go there!” they squawk.
This babbaloney is even being advanced by such self-proclaimed “serious” conservatives as New York Times pundit, Ross Douthat. He recently opined that “The left-wing temperament is, by nature, unhappier than the moderate and conservative alternatives.” Yes, Douthat insists that we progressives are hampered by “a refusal of contentment,” unlike the joyful serenity enjoyed by right-wingers.
Golly, Ross, how could we have missed the conservative blissfulness inherent in Donald Trump’s perpetual glower and nastiness? And that snarling, right-wing gaggle of quacks, prima donnas, and haters in Congress sure offers a fine public example of intrinsic conservative conviviality.
But Douthat plunges deeper into his dark rabbit hole, theorizing that “youth unhappiness” increases “the further left you go.” Not sure how many progressive youngsters he’s actually met, but I’ve been lucky to meet and work regularly with young champions of environmental justice, union organizing, women’s rights, etc. They have continuously lifted my spirits with their optimism, sense of fun, and jubilant camaraderie.
And, by the way, young progressives don’t need me – much less an aloof, dour conservative – speaking for them. They have their own voice and are on the way up – laughing at the likes of Douthat.
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Hoo boy… DeJoy!
Woe is us (the American people) for having our jewel of a national Postal Service saddled with a corporate-minded Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. Formerly CEO of a private shipping contractor, DeJoy’s chief qualification for running this invaluable public service is that he’s been a major donor to Republican politicians – including Donald Trump, who appointed him to the post.
In 2020, the new honcho put forth a 10-year scheme to “save” the people’s post office by imposing boilerplate corporate tactics – downsize staff, cut service, and raise prices. He gave his plan a zippy PR slogan: “Delivering for America.” But delivering less for more is a hard sell, and people soon started rebelling against absurdly late delivery, closure of local branches, long lines at understaffed postal counters, and relentless price hikes, including another 8-percent increase this year.
Excuse my bad play on words, but there is no joy in seeing an essential public service needlessly gutted. Millions of us rely on timely mail delivered by the amazing network of public postal workers. Their linking of any one zip code to all others is a pillar of our democracy, not only servicing the well-off and corporate elites, but crucial to small businesses, rural communities, people getting medicines by mail – as well as to millions of us wanting to vote by mail this November.
Four years of DeJoy’s corporate gimmicks to “improve” our postal service by shriveling it have proven disastrous – and the harm is spreading. Enough! This is a time when your voice can matter, for a bipartisan outcry is demanding that Congress and/or the postal board of governors step in pronto to terminate DeJoy’s political meddling. For information and ACTION go to: TakeOnWallSt.com.
Photo: Rachel Bradshaw and Norwood News
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A farmer friend of mine once bemoaned the fact that the Democrat we’d both supported for president, Bill Clinton, was hugging up Wall Street and stiffing family farmers. “I don’t mind losing when we lose,” my friend said, “but I hate losing when we win.”
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Agreed. Yet, losing in politics is sometimes a prelude to winning, calling not for despair, but a doubling down on principle and organizing. Take the revolutionary presidential platform put forth by the upstart, unabashedly progressive People’s Party in 1892. It was stunning in its little-d democratic boldness, directly challenging corporate power. The populists became the first to support an 8-hour day and minimum wage for labor, women’s suffrage, graduated income taxes, government farm loans to bypass bank monopolies, veterans’ pensions, direct lawmaking by citizen initiatives… etc.
Wall Street and the two-party duopoly soon conspired to crush the People’s Party. But they could not stop its ideas, which grew in popular support and were largely enacted by state and national governments. This democratic reformation occurred because (1) the populists were unabashedly bold, (2) their ideas were solid, benefitting the Common Good, and (3) their political heirs were organized and persistent.
That same rebellious spirit remains at the heart and soul of today’s people’s politics. For example, while 2011’s Occupy Wall Street uprising was autocratically crushed, resurgent labor progressives are now carrying its ideals forward… and winning! Likewise, America’s scrappy democratic soul is being expressed every day by grassroots groups of rural poor people battling corporate polluters, child care workers struggling for decent pay, local people standing up to Silicon Valley arrogance and Wall Street greed… etc.
Americans are on the move against plutocratic and autocratic rule. They need a party to move with them.
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Cesar Chavez looks on as Hightower speaks at the 1984 United Farm Workers conference in San Juan, CAWhile we here in the US celebrate Labor Day in September, the rest of the world is celebrating its workers today, May 1st. From the Wikipedia summary, here’s a good overview:
Traditionally, 1 May is the date of the European spring festival of May Day. In 1889, the Marxist International Socialist Congress met in Paris and established the Second International as a successor to the earlier International Workingmen's Association. They adopted a resolution for a "great international demonstration" in support of working-class demands for the eight-hour day. The 1 May date was chosen by the American Federation of Labor to commemorate a general strike in the United States, which had begun on 1 May 1886 and culminated in the Haymarket affair four days later. The demonstration subsequently became a yearly event.
We asked Hightower for his thoughts about May Day, and here’s what he had to say:
“On May Day, I think of champions of the struggle for the democratic rights of working people, like Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta. Also of spiritual activists who confront a materialistic, elitist culture with barbs about the absurdity of inequality in our land of unparalleled wealth. Agitators like Dorothy Day and Hélder Câmara, who noted: ‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.’”
Voice of America explains why Americans moved their Labor Day to September:
Following the Haymarket affair, a strong anti-union movement arose in the United States. Over the years, May Day became more associated with the political far left, while Labor Day, held in September, was recognized by a growing number of municipalities and states. When the United States began to seriously consider creating a national holiday for workers, U.S. President Grover Cleveland did not want to choose the May date because of its association with the [Haymarket] bombing, so instead picked the alternative day in September.
Back in 2015, Hightower shared more of this history in a (U.S.) Labor Day article about the state of workers organizing—enjoy!
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Hightower outside the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, OKWoody Guthrie’s prescription for inequality in America was straightforward: “Rich folks got your money with politics. You can get it back with politics.”
For Guthrie, “politics” meant more than voting, since both parties routinely cough-up candidates who meekly accept the business-as-usual system of letting bosses and bankers control America’s wealth and power. It’s useless, he said, to expect change to come from a “choice” between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. Instead, common folks must organize into a progressive movement with their own bold change agenda, become their own candidates, and create a politics worth voting for.
Pie in the sky? No! Periodic eruptions of progressive grassroots insurgencies have literally defined America, beginning with that big one in 1776. Indeed, we could take a lesson today from another transformative moment of democratic populism that surged more than a century ago, culminating in “The Omaha Platform of 1892.” This was in the depths of the Gilded Age, a sordid period much like ours, characterized by both ostentatious greed and widespread poverty, domination by monopolies, rising xenophobia, institutional racism – and government that ranged from aloof to insane.
But lo – from that darkness, a new People’s Party arose, created by the populist movement of farm and factory mad-as-hellers. They streamed into Omaha to hammer out the most progressive platform in US history, specifically rejecting corporate supremacy and demanding direct democracy.
That platform reshaped America’s political agenda, making the sweeping reforms of the Progressive Era and New Deal possible. As one senator said of the Omaha rebellion, it was the start of robber baron wealth flowing “to all the people, from whom it was originally taken.” And that’s what Woody Guthrie meant by “politics.”
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Hightower is on the road again this weekend, this time visiting Madison, WI to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fighting Bob La Follette’s independent run for the presidency.
Fighting who? What?
If you’ve never heard of Robert La Follette, you’ve got a treasure trove of rabble-rousing history awaiting you in his story. And our friends at The Progressive magazine are celebrating this weekend with an exhibit at the State Historical Society, events and discussions, local tours, and a Saturday night celebration of all-things-progressive at the Barrymore Theater. That’s where Hightower will join luminaries like Bernie Sanders, John Nichols, Mandela Barnes and more to “party” back in party politics.
Not in Madison? You can help support this work by donating to The Progessive here.
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Years ago, Coca-Cola excitedly debuted a new formula for its soda, dubbing it “New Coke.” Consumers hated it, and sales plummeted – a marketing fiasco.
But here comes Coke again, pushing an even worse product: “A Better Plastic Bottle,” trumpeting it as “100% Recycled.” Coke really needs an environmental PR goose-up, because today’s consumers know and care a lot about the massive plastic contamination of our planet – and Coke has been ranked as the globe’s number one plastic polluter for six years in a row!
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Problem is, the corporation’s recycling hype is a fraud, for plastic is a fossil fuel polymer that essentially is forever. Even though most of us dutifully put throw-away containers in recycling bins, the industry’s dirty secret is that 95 percent of plastics can’t be recycled, so they’re simply burned, dumped in landfills, or tossed “away.” In a February report, The Center for Climate Integrity reveals that the plastics-industrial-complex has been like Big Tobacco and Big Oil – intentionally fabricating, promoting, and profiting from a mass-market scam for decades. As the Climate Center commented, “The only thing the plastics industry has actually recycled is their lies, over and over again.”
But, taking another lesson from tobacco and oil, Big Plastic figures that if one lie stops working, tell a bigger one. So, Coca-Cola is presently gushing about “better” plastic bottles, while plastic manufacturers are so desperate to keep peddling environmental contamination that their new media blitz frantically insists, “Recycling is Real!”
Of course, their “new” claims are nothing but re-fabricated prevarications. Meanwhile, the industry is planning to dump 300 percent more plastic on us in the next few years. Hello, let’s get real – the only way to stop planet-choking plastic contamination is to stop making the stuff.
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original car illustration by donkeyhotey on flickrWhile 4,300 workers in Volkswagen’s auto factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, were about to vote on whether to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), thus making their plant the first in the South to have a unionized workforce, suddenly the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas burst on the scene.
Tootin’ and hollerin’, the GOP jesters scrambled out of their tiny clown car and proceeded in slapstick style to demand that the workers vote against the UAW. Why? Because, explained the gaggle of laissez-fairyland governors in a side-splitting routine, getting fair pay, family benefits, and democratic say-so over working conditions will be “a detriment [to] American workers.”
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And now: A special report from the Department of Really Bad Ideas. And this one is a doozie.
It comes from Hizzoner Eric Adams, the present mayor of New York City. Like mayors everywhere, Adams is routinely expected to respond to city council members, state reps, members of Congress, and other elected officials who ask for help on city issues and problems affecting the people they represent. After all, that’s how it’s supposed to work – local folks have an issue needing city attention, so they go to officials in their local community who can carry this issue to the top level. Most of these matters are resolved by – hello – relevant officials simply having a phone call, a quick meeting, or even an email exchange.
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But no – the Big Apple’s mayor has decreed that elected officials needing to discuss concerns of their constituents may NOT speak directly to him. Nor may they simply speak with his staff, meet with, or engage with agency heads, or other mayoral personnel who could help the people. Rather, Adams has decreed that supplicants wanting to approach the city’s public servants must submit a seven-page, online “engagement request.” The mayor’s intergovernmental office will review each one, then decide whether to grant or deny any official engagement.
An Adams gatekeeper hailed this bureaucratic intake process as a “new and exciting tool” to “impose operational efficiency and streamline requests.” Golly – even George Orwell couldn’t have conjured up a statement as soul-sucking as that!
Streamlined efficiency is the ultimate virtue for automatons and authoritarian regimes – NOT for public officials in a democratic society. Democracy is necessarily slower-paced, deliberative, and inclusive. And it does not require – or accept – filling out a seven-page form to “engage” with your mayor.
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When we hear the term “canvassing” with regard to politics, it often brings up ideas of well-meaning volunteers going door-to-door in communities outside of their own to help persuade those residents to vote one way or another. It turns out, this kind of canvassing is not that successful in moving the important needles of tight races, and can even create resentment in areas that are otherwise abandoned by national and regional political machinery.
Enter “deep canvassing.” This is a style of door-to-door work where you, the volunteer, are not proselytizing, but rather, listening. And listening goes a long way towards building and rebuilding lost solidarity among the poor and working people of this country.
But listening is hard! And time consuming! And what do you do when you hear something you really disagree with?!
People’s Action has you covered. We here at Hightower HQ have long been fans of the variety of work and advocacy that they and their affiliates do around the country, especially in rural areas, but their organizer trainings are some of the most helpful we’ve ever run across.
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If you think the GOP’s Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest, pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us – you haven’t been to Texas.
It’s widely known, of course, that Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and most other top Republican officials here are obsequious Trump acolytes. Thus, Texas is infamously racing against Florida to be declared the stupidest, meanest, most-repressive state government in America, constantly making demonic attacks on women’s freedom, immigrants, voting rights, public schools, poor people, and so on. But I’m confident Texas will win this race to the bottom for one big reason: GOP crazy runs extraordinarily deep here.
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We have a county-level layer of ultra-MAGA cultists constantly pressing the state’s far-right officials to march all the way to the farthest edge of extremism – then leap into absurdity. Therefore, the party officially supports abolishment of labor unions, elimination of the minimum wage, privatization of social security, legalization of machine guns, and… well, you get the drift. Now, though, local mad-dog Trumpistas are pushing their party straight into the abyss of autocracy by declaring war on H-E-B.
What’s that? H-E-B is a Texas chain of supermarkets beloved in communities throughout the state. “Beloved,” because the stores fully embrace the rich diversity of all people in our state, has affordable prices, values employees, and supports community needs.
Nonetheless, county Republican zealots screech that H-E-B violates their party ideology by accepting food stamps, opposing privatization of schools, and (horrors!) sponsoring some LBGTQ pride events. So, they’re demanding official condemnation of the grocery chain for – GET THIS – “advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.”
Yes, violating the party platform is to be criminalized. It’s the reincarnation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: Be MAGA… or else.
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Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King once opposed a bill because, he said, he feared it would “open a whole box of Pandoras.”
An odd rhetorical twist, but it would be helpful if today’s ego-bloated, high-tech billionaires and corporate profiteers had a bit of self-restraint, rather than thinking their money equals genius. For example, such doofuses are presently pushing convoluted schemes to “solve” our globe’s technology-caused climate crisis with – what else? – technology.
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Their latest box of Pandoras includes a grandiose plan to “geoengineer” carbon dioxide, the destructive gas spewed into our air by the production and use of fossil fuels. The geniuses say they have the techno-knowhow to suck-up that bad gas and pump it a mile deep into the Earth. See, problem gone! All they need, they say, is for taxpayers to put up trillions of dollars.
Who’s behind this hustle? Oil giants. Yes, the same prevaricating snake oil salesmen who cause most of the suffocating CO2 pollution that’s rapidly cooking our planet! Such petro-peddlers as Occidental Petroleum are now trying to re-brand themselves as “carbon management” experts, asking us to trust them to re-engineer our atmosphere. But they’re frauds – their magical “Vacuum Cleaner in the Sky” won’t remove even one-percent of the new carbon emissions released every year.
Worse, Occidental says it intends to keep much of the CO2 it vacuums up, using the gas to force more oil out of the ground – thus creating more global warming! As Occidental’s CEO gleefully puts it, geoengineering “gives our industry a license to continue to operate for… 60, 70, 80 years.”
Razzle-dazzle technology is not a climate solution. It’s a business-as-usual lie told by profiteers desperate to keep burning fossil fuels – and our globe.
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Hello Lowdowners! DZ here. Apologies for the delay getting the recording of last week’s Happy Hour out to you all— there was a problem with the audio which took a minute to find a fix. You’ll hear that Hightower still sounds a little distorted here and there, and I apologize for that! I figured out what went wrong when we recorded, so, fingers crossed, it shouldn’t happen again.
We covered a LOT of ground in this session: breaking the two-party duopoly, poor people’s food, Netanyahu versus Gaza, how Texas turned red, who’s doing good grassroots organizing, Thomas Paine, and much more. Plus a lot of laughs (and a few extra tech snafus) along the way! Below you’ll find the links we put into the live chat, as well as a full transcript of the video. Enjoy, and we’ll see you at the next one!
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Before there was a USA – before our Constitution was adopted, and even before our 1776 Declaration of Independence – one of America’s best democratic institutions was already delivering for the people: The Post Office.
But it’s important to realize that, for 250 years, this invaluable public service has delivered more than mail. It was – and is– a core element of our national unity. Its network of local employees go door-to-door, coast-to-coast, six days a week in every zip code, physically linking America’s widely dispersed, wildly diverse people into one country. It is a universally-popular and essential government service that works!
Yet – as we’ve seen with such other valued public assets as our schools and parks – no flower is so beneficial to the Common Good that selfish corporate opportunists won’t try to pluck it for their private gain. So for years, corporate profiteers and laissez-faire ideologues have been plucking apart the budget, staff, branches, and historic mission of the Post Office.
Their scheme is to shrivel service, foment public dissatisfaction with the agency, demand evermore cuts in staff and branches – then push for a corporate takeover and downsizing of this universal, nationwide delivery network. It’s not just a piece of government they’re trying to eliminate, it’s the core idea of America itself, namely our people’s can-do democratic spirit and commitment to the Common Good.
Rather than meekly accepting this corporate retreat from our egalitarian ideals, let’s reassert our rebellious spirit. For starters, we can help the feisty American Postal Workers Union push a “People’s Postal Agenda.” It outlines ways to reinvent and expand the public services that this grassroots network of employees and local branches is uniquely able to provide. For info and action go to apwu.org.
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“Somebody better investigate soon.”
That’s a lyric in Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town,” a 1962 song deploring the relentless murdering of Black people and civil rights activists in the Deep South. The line mocks the refusal of racist officials to punish the White murderers, instead cynically covering up atrocities by promising do-nothing “investigations.”
Six decades later, the depraved ethic of Oxford Town is allowing Israel’s indiscriminate carpet-bombing of Gaza, wreaking horror at a genocidal pace on the Palestinian people. So far, some 33,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, with another 75,000 horribly injured – and two-thirds of these victims are children and women. Hundreds of thousands more face imminent starvation because their homes, cities, and entire economy have been blown to smithereens. Adding to the depravity, Israel’s fanatical ruler, Benjamin Netanyahu, restricts humanitarian aid from reaching the Palestinian people.
Yet our government is Netanyahu’s biggest international apologist and enabler! Oh, for sure our officials condemn each of his atrocities, loudly demanding “a full investigation.” But even when investigations happen, they produce no punishment… and no change in our shameful open-ended policy of annually supplying the billions of US dollars and mega-weapons he’s now using to exterminate the innocent men, women, and children of Gaza. Thus, the horrendous 2,000-pound bombs he’s dropping on Palestinians bear our US flag.
President Biden said last week that he’s heartbroken by the relentless killing of innocent Palestinians, calling it “unacceptable.” Then he accepted it! Even as he expressed anguish, Biden authorized a shipment of another $18 billion-worth of US bombs and jets to Netanyahu.
Washington keeps sending killer weapons to – then, when they’re fired at innocents, we piously demand useless investigations and request (pretty please) that Netanyahu “bomb responsibly.” Gosh, why isn’t that working?
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Just a quick reminder to join us TOMORROW, Tuesday night, for happy hour! More info below—leave us your questions for Hightower in the comments on that post.
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If your home or business is suddenly being engulfed in flames, you count on a quick response from the fire department. But who rushes to aid firefighters when so many of the burning buildings they enter are contaminated with chrysotile asbestos – a cancer-causing product so deadly that it’s banned in over 50 countries? So far, no one.
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This nasty toxic (widely used in construction materials, car parts, and even water systems), infiltrates lungs and kills some 40,000 Americans a year, especially firefighters. For the last 30 years, victims, health advocates, and others have been pushing to stop using the deadly stuff – but chemical profiteers and the politicians they pay kept defeating these efforts.
In 2016, though, Congress finally empowered the EPA to ban it.
Great! But that same year, Trump happened. With his usual deep analysis, concern for workers, and respect for science, he mindlessly proclaimed asbestos “100 percent safe,” even declaring that the movement to ban it was “led by the mob.” Thus, his EPA did nothing… and deaths continued.
Then came Joe Biden, and – Hallelujah! – EPA has now announced that it is “finally slamming the door on manufacturing, importing, and using chrysotile asbestos.” When? Twelve years from now. What? Yes, that’s a very sloooow-motion slamming. Biden wanted the ban to take effect in two years, but industry lobbyists screeched. So, our government chose not to “rush” to aid firefighters and others who’ll be killed by this policy of putting corporate profits over their lives.
Remember this whenever political hucksters demand that you vote to eliminate “regulatory burdens.” Burdens for whom – asbestos peddlers or firefighters? And beware: Here comes Trump again, promising to eliminate public regulations if he’s elected. Really? Who will benefit from that?
Do something!To learn more about fighting toxic chemicals and to advocate for sound policy, check out the Environmental Working Group.
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Hey everyone! DZ the sidekick/nerd, here.
It has been a while since we’ve all gotten together, hasn’t it?! Hightower and I thought it was time we gathered round the kitchen table, poured ourselves something to drink and had a chat. It’s time for our next Paid Subscriber Roundtable on Tuesday, April 9th, at 7:00pm ET. Ever wanted to ask Hightower a question? Here’s your chance! This is how it’ll work:
- Start leaving comments below with your questions for Hightower. Just about anything is on the table— questions about Texas, political history (especially populist history!), current affairs, favorite recipes, recommended reading, you get the idea.
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- Come back here on Tuesday evening with your favorite beverage— we don’t discriminate against anyone’s choices for their 12-oz elbow bend workouts—and watch the video below live as Hightower and I do our best to answer them together.
- Feel free to keep asking questions and responding to our answers live in the video’s chat feature! I’ll also try to keep checking the comments here, but you’ll have a better chance of reaching us in the video chat.
Questions that we can’t get to might end up being grist for future sessions and posts, too. Ask us anything!
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Free Market ideologues fabricate some of the most preposterous yarns trying to justify their assertion of corporate greed over public need.
Consider their far-fetched of Laissez-fairyland tale that by allowing corporate giants to dodge the billions of tax dollars they owe to our country, the top executives of those corporations will plow that money into new jobs, products, and services for the Common Good. The ideologues assure us innocents that this is the “magic of the marketplace.”
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But remember: Magicians don’t perform magic – they perform illusions. In this case, since the law does not require that such tax windfalls be invested for the public good, they aren’t. Instead, the corporate barons simply pocket the money.
A diligent watchdog group, Institute for Policy Studies, recently documented this by analyzing financial data of 35 enormously profitable giants, including Tesla, T-Mobile, and Duke Energy. Over a four-year period, these 35 lavished pay of $9.5 billion on their honchos. Even for giants, that’s an extravagant payout. Where’d the money come from? Tax dodging. Combined, these outfits paid zero in federal taxes, and even extracted nearly $2 billion in refunds.
To rationalize this handout, free market ideologues clam that corporations are just like ordinary taxpayers, merely taking a few legal deductions to lower their tax bill. But wait – tax laws aren’t handed down on stone tablets, applying equally to everyone. When’s the last time Congress asked you to help write one law? Instead, America’s tax code is an arcane work of gobbledygook literally written in back rooms by corporate lobbyists – which is why powerful corporations get special breaks to evade taxes… and you don’t.
To see through such corporate scams and help end this corruption, connect with Institute for Policy Studies: ips-dc.org.
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If you’re concerned about fossil fuels and climate change, consider an energy source that, according to its backers, will make everyday living “comfortable and healthier.”
What is this miraculous substance? Oil.
Huh? Yes, that filthy scourge of our planet and health, is being ballyhooed as our globe’s energy and environmental salvation! By whom? Of course: The American Petroleum Institute, the powerhouse lobbying front for ExxonMobil and other petro-profiteers. API recently bragged that it will pour tens of millions of dollars into a PR Blitz during this year’s presidential election to demonize clean energy sources and demand that government promote more fossil fuel production.
API’s campaign slogan is “Lights On Energy” – but the luminosity of its media message is mighty dim. Start with the fact that Big Oil has zero public credibility, having routinely gouged us on prices for years and knowingly lied to us for decades about not causing climate change.
Second, the demand by oil barons that government “quit intruding into the free market” by encouraging alternative energy is a whiney embarrassment. Hello – for more than a century, oil corporations have gorged on billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts – and they are in line to keep getting $2.5 billion a year in corporate welfare for the next decade! (Didn’t their mommas ever teach them not to talk with their mouths full?)
Also pathetic is their partisan wail that President Biden is restricting their production and profits. Hello again: US oil production reached a record high last year, Big Oil’s profits are soaring, and they’re now jacking up our gas prices again. Meanwhile, 2023 was the hottest year our globe ever recorded.
Let’s reflect the heat back on these greedheads. For facts and action items, go to fossilfree4health.org.
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When a fox attacks a hen house, is it uncivil for the hens to raise a ruckus?
Two Supreme Court justices say it is. Elevating collegiality above social justice, right-wing extremist Amy Coney Barrett and progressive jurist Sonia Sotomayor have jointly been hailing America’s top Court as a model of genteel political discourse, claiming that the six Republicans and three Democrats disagree agreeably. “We do not interrupt one another, and we never raise our voices,” Barrett primly lectured to a recent conference of civics teachers. Sotomayor chimed in that Court decorum frowns on any internal comments that “could be viewed [by other justices] as hurtful.”
How sweet that the Supremes are so judiciously cordial inside their marble sanctuary. But how bitter that the Court’s lockstep Republican ideologues are so crudely slapping down women’s rights, running roughshod over our environmental protections, stomping on voting rights, enthroning plutocracy, imposing theocracy… and so awful much more. Yet, when any of the three progressive justices do publicly assail these blatantly partisan, anti-democratic edicts, Barrett decorously decries their “stridency,” demurely chiding that “the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”
Yoo-hoo, Madame Supreme, can you even hear yourself? Your very elevation to the High Court was a strident affront to our democracy and to the very idea of justice, rammed through in a flagrantly partisan power play by a lame-duck president and a corrupt Republican senator. Please, spare us your phony lectures on judicial propriety!
America would still be an English colony if the rebels of 1776 had not “stridently” risen up and impolitely confronted the kind of elitist governmental authoritarianism that Barrett & Company wants to re-impose on us. Come on, progressives – get rude! Democracy demands that we be confrontational… not courtly.
Do something!We love to recommend FixTheCourt.com for ideas and resources on overhauling the Supreme Court. If you’ve got more organizations or people to recommend, leave them for us in the comments!
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Photo by Michael on Flickr.
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Too many American newspapers have shut down or shriveled to irrelevance, but, luckily, we still have such bastions of local journalism as the Chicago Chronicle and New York News Daily.
But wait… those aren’t real newspapers, aren’t local, and aren’t even American. They are Russian fake-news outlets, created in recent weeks by Putin’s propagandists to interfere in our presidential election. They are web publications with names and designs that mimic real US news sites, but have no reporters or local newsrooms. Rather, they exist solely to fabricate “news reports” that appear legitimate, getting picked up and re-reported as fact in under-staffed, chain-owned newspapers, then promoted on right-wing social media sites.
This is what happens to people and democracy when local journalism is stripped away or hollowed out – no one is on regular watch, allowing charlatans, profiteers, and propagandists to dupe unsuspecting residents. Not only have hundreds of papers been eliminated, but half of the remaining dailies are now owned by Wall Street predators like SoftBank, the Japanese hedge fund that controls the huge USA Today/Gannett chain. Their interest is not in your town or quality journalism, but in slashing news coverage to jack up their profits. Such absentee owners have eliminated nearly 60 percent of America’s reporters and other newsroom staff in just 20 years.
Let’s be clear: Real journalism is labor-driven. No reporters on the ground, no local news. Hello – “news” is the lifeblood of democracy, so why hold it hostage to a handful of corporate profit-seekers? Are we such unimaginative clods that we can’t figure out how to finance honest, non-plutocratic news for our democracy?
For ideas on how to revive local news in your town, contact rebuildlocalnews.org – and give news democracy a boost.
Do something!In addition to Rebuild Local News, check out these groups working to save local news and newsrooms:
- National Trust for Local News
- Cherry Road Media
- Institute for Rural Journalism
- The News Guild
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Did you know that that yesterday was National Agriculture Day? We didn’t! In fact, some of us didn’t even know such a designated day existed until we saw Farm Aid’s post about it on Facebook. While the holiday itself is driven by a nonprofit with rather questionable members (hello, Walmart, the Farm Bureau, and… Bayer?!), we couldn’t help but want to also share some agriCULTURE from Hightower’s own history, including a picture from his childhood, from the second Farm Aid concert, and more from his work as the Texas Agriculture Commissioner. Enjoy! —dz
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Poor Katie Britt, the Republican senator from Alabama. She was set up by her party’s operatives to do the GOP’s televised response to Joe Biden’s State-of-the-Union speech.
Sadly, her moment in the national limelight was widely panned, even by Republicans, for her presentation was overwrought and – well, cringey. But the visuals pale to insignificance when you consider that her partisan presentation was based on an intentional, abject lie – exacerbated by her shameful exploitation of a woman who had been brutally raped.
Britt told about a 12-year-old Mexican girl who was the victim of multiple rapes, implying the girl’s horror was caused by “Biden’s border crisis.” Unfortunately for the senator, an alert investigative reporter blew the whistle on her political lie. Yes, the grotesque rapes happened – but 20 years ago, not on Biden’s watch. Indeed, Republican George W. Bush was president! Also, her nightmare occurred in Central Mexico, far from the US border, and it had nothing to do with migrants.
Britt knew she was lying as she dramatically concluded that Biden’s Latino “invasion” (as Republicans demagogically brand desperate refugees) is “almost entirely preventable.” Yes, but guess who helped negotiate a bipartisan bill to end the border crush – then cynically voted to kill the bill because Donald Trump told her to? Katie Britt.
And what about that Mexican woman whose trauma Britt cruelly exploited? She’s now working in Mexico for a non-profit trying to stop human trafficking. Yet, Britt and the GOP didn’t even have the grace to tell her they were going to pervert her story for partisan politics. “I thought it was very strange,” she said when later informed of Britt’s crude re-exploitation of her – adding pointedly that, “The work I do is not a game.”
Do something!To get involved in the fight against actual human trafficking, and to support survivors, check out organizations like GEMS and the United Way.
Be extremely careful when getting involved with organizations claiming to work on human trafficking; many are fronts for right-wing conspiracy theorists and exploit their communities themselves.
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Yesterday, Hightower had the great pleasure to head over to the Luck Reunion, an annual festival of music, food and more held on Willie Nelson’s infamous Luck Ranch. It’d be enough to just attend and experience such a wonderful cross-cultural gathering, but Hightower was invited to speak on a panel discussion organized by Farm Aid and the Bread and Roses Collaborative. Shorlette Ammons, Farm Aid’s Program Director, moderated this lively discussion with Hightower and Deydra Stern of BlackGold Resourcing on the topic of the legacy of farming in Texas & beyond, and what people can learn about building movements that bring together foodies, farmers, workers, artists, and everyone. After all, it’s called agriCULTURE for a reason! Here are a few photos from the event:
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Little Kevin McCarthy has again been cowed by his House Caucus of Rabid Hyenas, this time bowing to their squeals to investigate whether there's anything to investigate in Joe Biden's past. In turn, a Democratic lawmaker is shoving McCarthy's wimpyness up his nose by demanding an
Last week, I wrote about how Labor Day was created in the 1880s by rebellious workers, but I’m celebrating the spirit again this week because a momentous new energy has been building in today’s union movement. Indeed, renewed union rebelliousness has put labor back in Labor Day!
We human beings sometimes do some terrible things in pursuit of the almighty dollar. But to our credit, one moral line we humans don’t cross is to profiteer by gouging sick people on the price of medicines their lives depend on.
Unless, of course, you count executives of giant pharmaceutical corporations as human beings. Gouging patients is their preferred business model.
It’s a scream then to watch Big Pharma fall into a sky-is-falling fit over our government’s long-overdue move to give us patients some bargaining power over this monopolistic industry. Under President Joe Biden’s anti-inflation policy passed early this year, our Medicare program can now negotiate drug prices on our behalf.
This will drastically lower what you and I are now forced to pay to the profiteers. For decades, Congress has coddled the corporate gougers (who maintain by far the biggest lobbying army in Washington), allowing them to manipulate the patent laws and rig the system. Thus, we Americans pay two-to-three times more than people in other countries for the exact same medicines.
Oh, wail drug executives, bloated profits give us the incentive to keep developing innovative new cures. Hold it right there, Slick – most basic drug development is done by tax-funded medical researchers, not brand-name market hucksters. Mega-drug outfits like Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Bristol Myers spend more on advertising, exorbitant executive salaries, lobbying, and big stockholder payouts than on research. Still, these same greedhounds are suing Biden, howling that making them negotiate is an unconstitutional “taking” of their income. But, hello, these scoundrels have been taking our income, health, and lives for years.
I’m with Biden on this – as is 80 percent of the public (including 77 percent of Republicans) who favor making the gougers negotiate. You go, Joe! To stay informed and involved, connect with Public Citizen at citzen.org.
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Listen now (2 mins) | A few days ago, the city of Savannah, Georgia took an important symbolic step toward racial inclusiveness, naming one of Savannah’s 23 historic public squares for a Black woman. Susie King Taylor, born in 1848 to enslaved parents, became a renowned educator, setting up schools for emancipated children and adults – a laudable role model in America’s ongoing struggle to extend equal opportunity to all. Before adding Taylor’s name, though, the name that had been plastered on that square 170 years ago –
Do you want to help flip Texas blue?A lot of people talk about wanting to flip so-called red states, but there are actually people doing it. And they need your help!
Next week, I’ll be joining activists at the Caldwell County Democrats’ annual fundraiser with Rep. Greg Casar and Monique Alcala, president of the Texas Democratic Party. There’s an opportunity in this rural Central Texas county to win two Commissioner seats, which would turn the tide for real change on the ground.
Power-building and party-building are long-haul practices, and I’m in it for that long haul. Join me?
Donate to the Caldwell Democrats
Ed. note: Here’s a throwback to an archived edition of the Lowdown, sharing the history of America’s Labor Day holiday. We hope you enjoy it while getting that last bit of rest and fun in! —dz
Labor Day Fan by Brian DuffyIt’s a bit odd that in America’s thoroughly corporatized culture we have no national day of honor for the Captains of Industry, and yet we do have one for working stiffs: Labor Day! Where did it come from? Who gave this day off to laboring people? History books that bother mentioning Labor Day at all usually credit president Grover Cleveland with its creation: He signed a law in July 1894 that proclaimed a holiday for workers in Washington, D.C., and the federal territories.
Cleveland? Holy Mother Jones! He was an extreme laissez-faire conservative, a “Bourbon Democrat” who never lifted a presidential pinkie to ameliorate the plight of exploited workers. To the contrary, in that same month of 1894, Cleveland enshrined himself in Labor’s Hall of Eternal Infamy: At the behest of robber baron George Pullman and other railroad tycoons, he ordered some 12,000 U.S. Army troops in to crush the historic Pullman Strike, which was being led by union icon Eugene V. Debs. Thirty workers were killed, Debs was arrested on trumped-up charges of conspiracy, and all workers who supported the strike were fired and blacklisted.
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The people are revolting (in the very best meaning of that word)!
An inspiring example of people rising up against a trifecta of economic, cultural, and political oppression has just come to us from a community of seemingly-powerless people living in a very of isolated place. Long exploited, lied to, disrespected, and robbed, they revolted, daring to take on the biggest, richest, most-politically-connected industrial power on the globe: BigOil. Astonishingly – after a decade of protesting, organizing, coalition building, suing, petitioning, and otherwise resolutely rebelling against injustice – these tenacious people just won an inspiring grassroots victory over BigOil profiteering.
One reason you probably haven’t heard about it is that it didn’t happen in any of the usual centers of media focus – but in the Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador. Also, this revolt was not led by some brand-name environmental group or charismatic political honcho, but by the Tagaeri and Taromenani tribes and other indigenous Waorani people living in the rich biodiversity of Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park.
Directly challenging the exigent crisis of climate change, the Waorani rallied the region’s young people into a potent political force. They successfully organized behind a national referendum to (1) ban oil drilling in the region, (2) compel the profiteers to remove their wells and pipelines, and (3) pay for remediation and reforestation. Significantly, they specifically called for leaving oil in the ground so it would not add to climate destruction. Moreover, the proposed ban was binding, unable to be overturned by future lobbyists and officials.
A resounding 58 percent of Ecuadorians voted “Yes!” As a Waorani leader noted this is “the day the planet started to win.”
The victory also says to environmental leaders everywhere, “Be Bolder! Trust the people – grassroots organizing wins. Go for it!”
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Jacksonville, Florida: Another overtly-racist slaughter of Black people by a young, radicalized, right-wing white man. He cravenly armed himself with military guns and a perverse self-righteousness, even posing for a TikTok video of himself in military gear just before firing 11 shots into a Black woman sitting in her car outside a Florida Dollar General store. Then, he went into the store and gunned down two totally unsuspecting Black customers and tried to kill several more Black shoppers, before killing himself.
Listen now (2 mins) | Peggy Lee struck a mournful chord with her hit song, “Is That All There Is?” It was about the vapidity of life, and I found myself subconsciously singing along last week as I pondered the GOP presidential debate. Of course, these made-for-TV spectacles are more akin to mud-wrestling than actual policy debates. Still, I dared hope for some tiny element of civic seriousness. After all, the eight aspirants were auditioning to be (“Oh, say can you see…”) the next President of the United States!
One of my personal gripes about the media establishment is that it discounts the importance of grassroots movements and progress. Thus, the media consistently looks up to power centers as the source of “news,” failing to see and understand (much less cover) consequential democratic developments at ground level. This fosters a debilitating climate of negative news, ingraining a public myth that “little people” can’t make a difference.
After Norfolk Southern’s 2-mile long freight train derailed in February, dumping toxic chemicals and exploding in an Ohio town, its corporate PR machine zoomed into panic mode. Facing nationwide condemnation, lawsuits, and political outrage—the $12.7-billion-a-year giant suddenly embraced a congressional package of safety reforms that it had vehemently been fighting right up to the day of its disastrous derailment. Yes, that’s pure self-serving corporate cynicism, but we have to grab progress where we can, and Norfolk’s embrace put bipartisan oomph behind the Railway Safety Act, pushing it forward.
Listen now (2 mins) | Last week, T-Mobile (my cell phone provider) pinged me with a rude message: Henceforth we will screw you out of an extra $5 a month. WHAT?! Had I done something wrong? No. Would I be getting some added benefit for my five bucks? No. It seems that T-Mobile bean counters have just arbitrarily decided that we customers who use credit cards to pay our phone bills online must pay an extra fiver each month as a payment processing fee. Yes, we’re to pay them to take our money. Bonnie and Clyde were not that brazen!
Listen now (2 mins) | Today’s train robbers don’t need masks or guns, for they are railroad executives wearing $3,000 suits and robbing us by railroading the political system. With their gangs of lobbyists and hopper cars of campaign cash, they get Congress to do their dirty work, gutting public safety protections and muting railway unions. Thus, rich investors get richer, while regular people are hit by an astonishing level of derailments, injuries, destruction… and death.
Listen now (2 mins) | When your political opponents push extremist public policies that would be disastrous for America, should you wring your hands in dread… or applaud? Consider “Project 2025,” put together by former Trump officials and the Koch brothers’ network of billionaire plutocrats. Their strategy is to win the presidency next year by demonizing all environmental protections and promising to halt all national efforts to cope with the obvious crises of climate change. Their proposals include
When I met Sen. John McCain a decade ago, his first words to me were: “You are the very personification of a maverick.” I’m pretty sure he meant that as a compliment. And I certainly took it as such, for the people I most admire are mavericks—the free spirits who defy the corporate order and carve out a new path, not just for their own gain, but for the common good.
Listen now (2 mins) | Quick announcement: Drop Your Lawsuits, Drop Your Prices! Hightower is joining Public Citizen Texas, the Texas Organizing Project, Families USA and many more organizations on Wednesday, August 16th at the Federal Courthouse in Austin to demonstrate against Big Pharma’s greed. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association sued to prevent the Inflation Reduction Act from taking effect; many cities around the country are holding a series of actions calling on pharmaceutical corporations, PhRMA, the U.S. Chamber and other chambers of commerce to drop their lawsuits and instead negotiate lower drug prices.
Listen now (2 mins) | How about a little bit of good news for a change? Specifically, good news about news. The demise of local newspapers has been a very depressing story in the last few years, with several thousand of them gobbled up by Wall Street profiteers. Those money powers loot the publications’ assets, then callously shut down each community’s paper, or reduces them to empty news shells. So that’s that – local print journalism is passé, right?
Watch now (36 mins) | Hightower's talk from the Witliff Collections' celebration of populism
Listen now (2 min) | Weather forecasters across the Southwest are having a hard time this summer coming up with descriptive taglines for each day’s ever-rising heat. If 105° is “hot”—what to call 110°… and up? Some have quit trying, simply labeling each day: “Again.”
Welcome to our Friday open thread for August! If you’re wondering what an open thread is, check out this post from July for all the info. Our premium subscribers get full access to all of our work, and the ability to comment on all posts, so let’s get together in the comments and chat! (Not sure how to post comments?
Listen now (2 min) | Little-known fact: A leading cause of death in Texas is Gov. Greg Abbott. Yes, by intentional actions and deliberate inactions, Abbott has used his gubernatorial policies to kill thousands of Texans, including: his calculated refusal to extend Medicaid to millions of poor Texans (including nearly a million children)… his intentional denial of water breaks for outdoor workers broiling under this year’s 100-plus-degree heat dome… his lethal deregulation of utilities causing the state power grid to collapse for days in the deep freeze of 2021 with hundreds dying for lack of heat and water… his shameful prioritizing of gun extremism over the lives of school children... and his despicable grandstanding stunts at the Mexican border, killing untold hundreds of migrant families by design.
Gather ‘round, students, for this week’s history lesson. This week we look at one true American hero, who single-handedly saved our country from a fascist takeover in 1933. That alone should make this hero a household name—and what a name he has.
Listen now (2 min) | Sen. Tom Cotton, a far-out, right-winger, is to good public policy what a boll weevil is to a good cotton crop: totally destructive. But he is politically candid – rather than disguising his racial bigotry, for example, Tom flaunts it, as he did last month in an open letter to the retail giant, Target. While the senator is usually a devoted corporate-hugging Republican, he lashed out at Target for business policies that he furiously condemns as racially discriminatory…
Writers in the entertainment industries have been on strike since May 2nd, and then this month, the actors have joined them. Hollywood seems like one of those glamorous industries rolling in cash, far removed from the reality of everyday life in America. But, that’s not the whole picture, and these strikes have revealed some ugly truths about worker exploitation, and how this fight is about much more than pay rates-- it’s about the future of work for us all.
Listen now (2 min) | As John Mellencamp sings: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” True. And here’s and equally true twist on that aphorism: “If you stand for everything, you won’t amount to anything.”
The old saying goes that no one wants to see how the sausage gets made. But, that’s the kind of stuff that Hightower and the rest of us here love to learn about! So, we thought you’d enjoy a peek behind the curtains and see how Hightower’s work gets from his brain to your eyeballs and eardrums.
Listen now (2 min) | Rube Goldberg would marvel at Sen. Joe Manchin’s wacky, convoluted machinations to rig the system so fossil fuel polluters can run roughshod over nature, local people, and democracy. Goldberg was a master of satirical cartoons, drawing hilarious schematics of convoluted contraptions to do silly tasks. His “Self-Operating Napkin,” for example, involved a spoon, cracker, toucan, skyrocket, sickle, and a pendulum attached to a napkin – all operating sequentially to automatically wipe the chin of a soup eater.
Our first Friday Open Thread yielded such a cornucopia of comments and recommendations, it’s taken us a couple weeks to read through them all. Here are a few that stood out to me.
Listen now (2 min) | Unfortunately, it’s 1984 again in America. Not the year. The book. George Orwell’s classic novel tells of a far-right totalitarian clique that uses “newspeak” and “doublethink” to impose their rigid, anti-democratic doctrine on society. Their regime held power through mind control – they had T a “Ministry of Truth” for perverting language and manipulating facts, while their “Thought Police” enforced ideological purity and suppressed dissent.
Yes, the 4th of July has passed, but beaucoup summer picnics lie ahead, so here are the makings of a classic State Fair staple: The American Corn Dog! This is the original. Way before Hebrew National franks and the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile came into play, Mesoamericans pioneered
Listen now (2 min) | All those firecrackers on July 4 got me thinking about the headline revolutionaries who signed the 1776 Declaration, fought the Brits for independence, hammered out the Constitution and installed our Bill of Rights. Old Ben, Monticello Tom, General George, Alex, “Pamphleteer Tommy” Paine, Jimmie and Dolly, Tea Party Sam, and others got America’s democratic experiment started, and they’re rightly saluted today, from school rooms to political gatherings of both major parties, as true patriots.
Listen now (2 min) | Here’s an embarrassing turn of events: The six right-wing ideologues now controlling the Supreme Court recently decreed that helping some students get into college through affirmative action programs is henceforth unconstitutional.
Watch now (2 min) | It’s been 35 years since Jesse Jackson’s landmark presidential campaign, and an important gathering of progressives is taking place in Chicago this weekend. In tribute to Jesse Jackson, in celebration of progressive advocacy—and as a call to re-energize Jackson’s democratic model of leadership. The Jackson family will be there, Bernie Sanders, too—and you can be there, via a Word Network cable broadcast and internet streaming.
Listen now (2 min) | About 150 years ago, Gen. Philip Sheridan was sweltering in the relentless heat of a Texas summer. He was not happy: “If I owned Texas and all Hell,” he groused, “I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
Happy Friday, y’all! Today we’re launching a new weekly feature for our premium subscribers: the Friday Open Thread. If you’ve never heard of an “open thread” before, it’s a term from the early days of blogging, where writers would ask their communities to share what’s on their minds (as related to the topic of the blog, at least, heh). Hightower is always looking for stories—especially stories of strong grassroots success!—that might not be on his radar, and we want you to help shape the work we’re doing here. You can also use this space to ask Hightower questions, and we’ll be answering the best ones. Other ideas to share: recipes (we’re huge foodies, unsurprisingly), music, films, shows, other culture on your radar. Try to keep your rants to a minimum—there’s plenty to rant about, but we want to make sure no one overwhelms the whole conversation.
Listen now (2 min) | Two pieces of good advice: (1) “Never sign nothin’ by neon,” and (2) “Never negotiate with snakes.” But Joe Biden violated both rules this year, getting out-negotiated by Senate Republicans (and their tag-along Democrat, Joe Manchin). As a result, Biden completely surrendered an urgently-needed program for America: Universal child care.
Listen now (2 min) | The political extremists demanding that government control every woman’s personal reproductive decisions claim that they are “pro-life.” But that’s a rhetorical fraud. Look at their overall policy agenda and you’ll see that they are merely
Listen now (2 min) | When you think of Americans whose music has made a lasting difference, you might think of Scott Joplin, Woody Guthrie, Maybelle Carter, Harry Belafonte… or Roger Payne. Who? I came across Payne in a June obituary, reporting that he’d died at age 88 (yes, I occasionally scan the obits, not out of morbid curiosity, but because these little death notices encompass our people’s history, reconnecting us to common lives that had some small or surprisingly large impact).
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio is a “Hillbilly Hero.” We know this, because the Republican lawmaker keeps telling us it’s so, regularly bragging that he rose from hardscrabble rural Appalachia to become the political “voice of the Rust Belt,” the champion of America’s working class.
Listen now (2 min) | In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty scornfully declares that, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.” So what does “woke” mean? It’s become the pet political aspersion that today’s kooky right-wing hucksters hurl at liberals, but the hurlers would be whopperjawed to learn that it’s was actually coined by and for
Listen now (2 min) | Years ago, a Texas lawmaker got caught using his official position to enrich himself by taking money from special interests, in exchange for voting their way. The culprit did not deem this as corrupt, but just the normal ethic of an enterprising business transaction: “I seen my chances,” he explained, “and I took ‘em.”
Listen now (2 min) | The six-person majority of far-right “Supremes” who presently dominate America’s judicial system seems intent on demonstrating that having a seat on our Supreme Court does not mean there is anything Supreme about them.
Listen now (2 min) | As Scottish literary giant Robert Burns wrote, “The best-laid schemes of mice and men/Go oft awry.” His 1785 poem, titled “To A Mouse,” could be directed today at the right-wing sloganeers who’ve been scheming so furiously to turn their hokey “woke” snobbery into a winning political stratagem. “Your local librarian is woke!” they screech. “So is Disney, Inc.! Some of your churches, too, plus all Democrats, and – OMG – even Bud Light!!!” Creeping Wokeism is the new Red Scare, Welfare Queen, and Willy Horton political bugaboos rolled into one, forming the main “issue” of Republicans now running for President, Congress, and dogcatcher.
Listen now (2 min) | The beauty of impeaching a public official is that it recalibrates the standard for political morality, letting other politicos gauge just how low they can go. Consider two recent Texas examples. First came Rep. Bryan Slaton, a howling right-wing culture warrior who specialized in demonizing LGBTQ people as “perverted.” But the 45-year-old Republican – a former Southern Baptist youth pastor who was elected on a “family values” platform – got caught getting a 19-year-old intern drunk, having sex with her, then warning her to keep quiet. But she outed the pervert, so his pious
Listen now (2 min) | During the big Washington showdown over the government’s debt ceiling, it looked possible for a brief moment that Joe Biden might bully GOP leader Kevin McCarthy into hurting one of America’s most vulnerable minorities: The überrich.
Wendell Berry is a national treasure. Indeed, I would propose that he be declared one of America’s Most Precious Natural Resources – but we’ve seen how profiteering corporations and their politicians strip-mine, clearcut, frack, extract, and carelessly contaminate these precious treasures, so I wouldn’t want to endanger him.
The best homage we could pay to Berry – and the best favor we could do for ourselves and our country – is simply to read and spread every word of dirt-level common sense that this 88-year-old Kentucky farmer/essayist/poet/Little-d democrat writes. I’ve known, worked with, and enjoyed Wendell for years. His language and demeanor are at once soft, fierce, and inspiring, filled with a spirt of hope and perseverance that has sustained his lifetime of striving for a world with just a little more humanity and humility.
For a current example of his work, try a short, but typically sharp piece in which he confronts the aloof liberal establishment for its harmful ignorance and stereotyping of rural people. It’s just been published in Barn Raiser, a feisty newsletter that itself is a new progressive resource worth checking out. Read it at: https://barnraisingmedia.com/wendell-berry-new-york-review-of-books-rural-america/
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Protest sign in Lille, France that reads: “Tax the billionaires, not our grandmothers.” Photo by ev on UnsplashDo mass protests matter anymore? Even when large numbers turn out with a high level of outrage directed at abusive corporate or governmental elites, the Powers That Be usually just hunker down and wait for the fury to pass.
But the one form of protest that really gets to even the most aloof elite is cultural caricature. In recent decades, the creative deployment of giant puppets, satirical songs, pop-up parodies, and other forms of social mockery has pierced the ego shields of haughty corporate chieftains and puffed-up politicos. They ignore angry speeches, but public ridicule stings the them personally, energizing the larger community.
Consider how common household utensils can rally the people’s discontent, rattle the establishment, and deliver a message of revolutionary protest. In recent years, mass rebellions, armed with nothing but kitchenware, have noisily made their points in such disparate places as Chile and Iceland.
And today, the people of France are bedeviling their country’s aristocratic wannabe, President Emmanuel Macron, with a ceaseless, mass clanging of skillets, saucepans, spoons and other plebian cookware brought from their French kitchens into the streets of every region. They are protesting the president’s imperious, decision to undercut their pensions, as well as his tone-deaf refusal even to hear their complaints. So their “voice” has become the incessant banging of pots. Now, Macron can’t go anywhere without being greeted – and often drowned out – by the cacophony of “cassarolades” (the saucepan movement).
The protest is driving Macron crazy, which seems to be a very short ride for him. Clearly irritated by the commoner’s cleverness, his government is now using antiterrorism laws to ban “the use of portable sound devices” in protests.
Of course, the crazier he gets about pots and pans, the more effective their “voice” becomes – and the louder people laugh at their “leader.”
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Hollywood! Glamour! Riches!
Yet, people who make a living writing movies, TV shows, and streaming programs are on strike! Most people find it hard to relate to complaints about working on projects with multimillion-dollar budgets, A-list stars, and famous studio moguls. So what’s wrong with this picture?
It’s a faded picture taken in the long ago golden age of Hollywood when creative writing was prized by industry’s barons and writers got respect and decent paychecks. In today’s reality, projects are rich, but writers are poor, for Hollywood has shifted to the same model of plutocratic inequality that has swamped banking, high-tech and other monopolistic sectors.
Wall Street now rules. While we consumers still pay top-dollar for tickets and monthly fees, practically all of the money flows upstream to financiers and corporate poohbahs. This has sunk the real creators (writers, directors, actors, tech crews, and craftpeople) into the quicksand of low-wage, temporary jobs. Legacy production giants like Disney, Paramount, and Universal, (along with überrich new players like Amazon, Apple, Comcast, and Netflix), kowtow to Wall Street, stiffing the people who actually have talent, squeezing corporate profits from their labor.
This is the blue-collar reality of Hollywood you don’t hear about, and battling the same old rank greed of elite bosses is what this strike is about. Instead of making art, today’s industry is focused on slashing labor costs to artificially jack up corporate stock prices.
The pay increase sought by the 10,000 members of the Writers Guild of America is easily affordable by studio powers. Indeed, just one big boss, David Zaslav at Warner Brothers, gets $250 million a year – enough to pay every WGA writer the minimal annual income asked for in this strike.
To help stop the financialization and gigification of yet another workplace go to wga.org.
DO SOMETHINGWant to support the strikers? The WGA Strike Hub has all the actions: https://www.wgacontract2023.org/strike-hub
Daily updates on picketing and other actions can be found on this Google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G0KN43AkhLQXlz1n6FoWi8wQKq09NsZJS_TEgzz1DqM/edit
To learn more about fighting the gig economy state-by-state, check out this in-depth article from the Economic Policy Institute: https://www.epi.org/publication/state-misclassification-of-workers/
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If poohbahs of the national Democratic Party wonder why working-class families, which once formed the party’s solid base of political support, have gone astray – they might ponder the awful message they’re sending by constantly smooching Sen. Joe Manchin’s flabby tail.
The multimillionaire, West Virginia coal baron and anti-democratic “Democrat” is demanding that a massively-polluting pipeline, named Mountain Valley, be rammed through rivers, watersheds, national parks, towns, farmlands, homesteads – and down the throats of the people of West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Why? Money. The senator’s fossil fuel funders, who own the project, want the federal government to mandate construction of their corporate boondoggle.
For a decade, gutsy grassroots groups have rebelled and defeated these Wall Street profiteers, and the people of this Appalachian region are still adamantly opposed. But here comes Biden to rescue Manchin and his fossil fuelers with a dirty backroom deal overruling the will of the people. Proclaiming that he wants to advance America’s conversion from fossil fuels to renewable energy, Biden is pushing a bill to make it easier and faster to get federal approval for new energy projects. Fine. But his bill specifically greases the skids for more fossil fuel projects. And guess which one is first in line for quick approval? Yes, Brother Joe Manchin’s Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Continually pumping fracked gas across three states would produce a mess of leaks and spills, but the project would also emit some 40 million metric tons of planet warming gas a year – equivalent to the annual pollution of 10 coal plants. As the Natural Resources Defense Council puts it, “We won’t build the clean energy economy of the future by doubling down on the dirty fuels of the past.”
For information and action on this raw deal by the two Joes, connect with Appalachian Mountain Advocates: appvoices.org.
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Cartoon via FFRF.org5/25/2003 — Update below.
Once again, the Texas Legislature leads by example! Erroneous and wrongheaded example, but, Bless Their Little Hearts, they’re just not real good at thinking complicated things through.
The present lawmaking adventure of the GOP-controlled Lege is an attempt to impose a militant brand of Christian Nationalism as the official public religion of Texas. Throughout history, such right-wing attempts to subvert a pluralistic society’s sense of the Common Good with the narrowest mindset of one particular pietistic group has led to both great harm and unintended hilarity. Indeed, the Lone Star State has a long and daffy history of getting the Bible jumbled up in public policy. In the 1920s, for example, Governor Miriam A “Ma” Ferguson rejected a proposal for bilingual education in our schools: “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ,” she explained, “it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas.”
Likewise, today’s trio of Republican numbskulls running our state government – the governor, lt. guv, and attorney general – are acting as Bible-thumping Pentecostals. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick recently rose up on his hind legs to proclaim that ours is “a Christian nation,” that “there is no separation of church and state,” and that God Almighty himself “wrote the Constitution.” To enshrine this religious absolutism into law, these sanctimonious Texas politicos are now enacting a dictate that all public schools must conspicuously display The Ten Commandments “in every classroom,” and the nitpicking autocrats even specify that the displays “must be at least 16-by-20 inches.” It’s rule by rulers.
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Photo: Morgan on FlickrIt’s an odd marketing strategy for an industry to assail its own consumers.
Yet, that’s what the monopolistic meatpacking industry (led by such huge conglomerates as Tyson, Smithfield, JBS, and Hormel that control nearly 70 percent of America’s pork market) is doing. “Just shut up and eat your bacon,” the industry shrieks! The target of their corporate tantrum is the growing grassroots movement of consumers, animal rights advocates, farmers, chefs, retailers, and others who are dismayed and disgusted by Big Pork’s profiteering on animal cruelty.
“None of your business!” shout the executives, lobbyists, lawyers, and for-rent politicians who run the tortuous system.
But gutsy groups like the Humane Society, made their way inside the industry’s animal factories, videoing such mass horrors as thousands of pregnant sows locked for 16 weeks at a time in gestation crates so small the animals can’t even turn around. In 2018, such exposés prompted 60 percent of California voters to approve a ballot initiative outlawing the use of the inhumane crates.
Adding plutocratic stupidity to their greed, the pork barons then sued the people for overreaching their power! Yes, the pork profiteers actually asserted that democracy (ie, people power) must not interfere with “sound business practices.”
Never mind that few of us uncorporatized commoners consider animal suffering to be a sound practice. Even the corporate-coddling Supreme Court gagged at the industry’s claim that it has the sovereign power to dictate what type of pork chops are available to the public. This month, in an odd-fellow 5-4 decision rendered by two progressive judges and three corporatists, the Court ruled that “policy choices like these usually belong to the people.” Well, yes, and to the animals!
This is an example of how grassroots activism matters in important ways. To stay involved in this issue, go to humanesociety.org/animals/pigs.
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Oftentimes, when you suspect you’re being gouged by corporate price fixers – you are.
Take the rat-a-tat-tat of today’s price jumps at supermarkets and chain restaurants. They make you want to race to the cash register before they raise prices again!
No, no cry the CEOs of food giants, it’s not us, it’s “supply chain disruptions;” then corporate politicians and economists chime in with old platitudes about the invisible hand of “supply and demand;” and media know-nothings also pile on, blathering about “ne’er-do-wells” causing a labor shortage.
But, hogwash – your suspicions are right: It’s plain ol’ price fixing by avaricious food monopolies. Top executives even brag about it when talking to their bankers and stockholders. McDonald’s for example, recently told investors that “strategic menu price increases” in the past three months had boosted profits by 63 percent. Big Mac’s CEO exulted: “I’m really proud of how our system has executed pricing.” Never mind that it’s their customers being executed.
Well, say free-market proselytizers, just buy from a competitor. But in nearly all segments of today’s food economy, a handful of giants control the market, with each one in on the fix. For example, Chipotle, a McDonald’s rival, also jacked up prices in the same three-month period, manufacturing an 84 percent profit increase. It’s CEO then gloated to Wall Streeters: “I think we’ve demonstrated we do have pricing power.”
By the way, these same giants are also fattening their profits by ripping off their workers. The federal poverty level is now $25,000 a year, with fast-food workers typically getting only $3,000 a year more than that bare minimum for a 40-hour week. But there’s the “gotcha” – the profiteering executives hold each worker to about 26 hours a week, creating a sub-poverty labor force for this multi-billion-dollar industry.
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There’s a common political refrain among Texas Progressives: “Thank God for Mississippi.”
Our own state government, run by corporate lobbyists and right-wing nutballs, is a notorious hellhole for efforts to provide even a little more fairness for the poor, the working class, and the environment. So, Lone Star progressives need some straw to grasp to keep from tumbling into the ditch of total despair. Mississippi has been that straw – no matter how mingy our state officials are, Texans can count on the Magnolia State to be one digit worse.
But – Have Mercy! – Texans are suddenly in danger of losing our reputational buffer, for Mississippi is close to making a momentous upgrade this election year. An unabashed working-class Democrat with a program of For-The-People reforms and an anti-plutocrat campaign for governor has already pulled even with the right-wing incumbent!
Brandon Presley is the upstart’s name. A “little-d” democratic populist elected at 23-years-old to be mayor of his small hometown (where he still lives), he’s now in his fourth term as a highly effective, widely popular member of the state utility commission. There, he has successfully battled the electric power giants and telecom profiteers on behalf of everyday ratepayers, workers, and the environment.
Presley (who actually is an Elvis cousin!) is not a pure liberal – he’s pro-gun and anti-choice. But this is Mississippi, and while it’s essential to strive for the pure light of liberalism, a multi-racial, majority of workaday Mississippians see Presley as a pure champion of basics they’ve long been denied – from health care to voting rights. So, they’re rallying for change – after all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked!
The people of Mississippi know they’re being kicked by the moneyed powers, and Brandon Presley is saying, “Let’s kick back.” To learn more, go to brandonpresley.com.
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Tiptoeing around the democratic process, Indiana’s Republican legislature has become the latest of that ilk to slap its local school librarians with an idiotic book ban.
Snuck into law behind closed doors, the partisan Hoosier law requires librarians to pull books that the learned lawmakers consider “harmful to minors.” Just to juice up the ignorance and arrogance of their ban, the law criminalizes failure to comply by punishing librarians with up to two-and-a-half years in prison and a $10,000 fine! What constitutes “harmful to minors”? Indiana’s priggish politicos declare nudity, sexual references, and “offensive content to community standards” to be violations.
Obviously then, books commanding that rape victims marry their rapists, as well as celebrating daughters who seduce their father to bear his children, plus endorsement of bestiality, copulation in church, women boiling their children for food – and so God awful much more – have to be ripped from the shelves and burned! Only all of this is enshrined in The Bible, which is urged on Indiana’s youngsters in Sunday Schools, conveniently placed in the bedstands of every chain hotel… and cited by pious lawmakers as their moral compass.
The so-called “Good Book” is replete with the gross and explicit sexual material that Republican book censors call “harmful.” Indeed a feisty civil libertarian organization named Freedom From Religion Foundation gives away book labels you can stick in Bibles, warning that “literal belief in this book may endanger your health and life.”
The books that right-wing autocrats want to ban are not pornographic, they just explore ideas that those politicians don’t like – ideas that young people are already grappling with. And, by the way, why not require these pious lawmakers to disclose what licentious material they’ve been reading – before they dictate what we can read?
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Hey everyone! DZ the sidekick/nerd, here.
We’re experimenting with all kinds of features and offerings for our paid subscribers, and we’re hosting our first-ever live Reader Roundtable on Tuesday, May 16th, at 7:00pm ET. Ever wanted to ask Hightower a question? Here’s your chance! This is how it’ll work (we hope):
- Start leaving comments below with your questions for Hightower. Just about anything is on the table— questions about Texas, political history (especially populist history!), current affairs, favorite recipes, recommended reading, you get the idea.
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- Come back here on Tuesday evening with your favorite beverage— we don’t discriminate against anyone’s choices for their 12-oz elbow bend workouts—and watch the video below live as Hightower and I do our best to answer them together.
- Feel free to keep asking questions and responding to our answers live in the comments below! I’ll be monitoring the incoming as we broadcast.
Questions that we can’t get to might end up being grist for future sessions and posts, too. Ask us anything!
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Original chicken photo: Ben Schumin, FlickrI’m a child of privilege. Not the privilege of money (I come from a family of small-town working people). But it was my privilege to grow up in the public schools of Denison, Texas.
There I received the rich blessings of dedicated classroom teachers, a diverse student body, playground socialization, librarians, coaches, cafeteria and custodial workers, student politics, vocational training… and a deep appreciation for the unifying value of community and the Common Good.
That’s why I’m flabbergasted by today’s clique of corporate profiteers, theocratic zealots, and laissez-faire knuckleheads who’re lobbying furiously across the country to demonize, defund, and dismantle this invaluable social benefit. If ignorance is bliss, they must be ecstatic!
Public schools do have some real problems: Politicians constantly slashing education budgets, professional burnout created by understaffing and low pay, the devastating strain of a killer pandemic, and a new-normal of assault-rifle murders. But the profiteers, theocrats, and knuckleheads aren’t interested in those, instead focusing on what they say is the fatal flaw in public education: Teachers.
Yes, the claim is that diabolical educators are perverting innocent minds by teaching America’s actual history, showing students that the full diversity of humankind enriches our society, and presenting our Earth as something to be protected, not plundered. And worse – OMIGOSH – many classroom teachers are union members! So, teachers suddenly find themselves political pawns in the GOP’s culture war. “Our schools are a cesspool of Marxist indoctrination,” squawked Sen. Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump squealed that schools are run by “radical left maniacs” and “pink-haired communists.”
These right-wing Chicken Littles are demonizing America’s invaluable educators because they need someone for people to hate, providing cover for their unpopular plot to privatize education. But hate can easily backfire on hatemongers – and local teachers are a whole lot more popular than conniving politicos and profiteers.
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Photo taken by the wine guy at Central MarketAre you as excited as I am that we got the King of England crowned this weekend? At least that’s one chore we can scratch off our to-do list!
Since I’m not a fan of royalty, I was paying no attention to the coronation’s solemnity/silliness (depending on your orientation to the crown), but one thing did catch my eye: The crown. That is some hat!
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While the Powers That Be constantly warn us about foreign threats to our democracy from Russian trolls, TikTok, etc. – there is scant coverage of an actual assault on our people’s democratic liberties by forces on our own soil.
It’s coming from extremist, right-wing Republican lawmakers who have autocratic control over more than a score of America’s state governments. Their obscure anti-democracy weapon is called “preemption” – the dangerous power of state officials to nullify laws passed by local people.
It’s supposed to be used rarely, carefully, and only in emergency situations, but today’s radical Big Government Republicans have weaponized it, routinely overturning local actions that the GOP’s corporate funders don’t like. Local decisions to protect worker safety, outlaw loan sharking, shut down puppy mills, prevent workplace discrimination, stop pollution, control political corruption… and so many more popular democratic reforms are being abolished by Republican autocrats in service to plutocrats. Some 500 more of those usurpations are moving through state legislatures across the country now – with practically no public notice.
Embarrassingly, GOP leaders in my state of Texas have been leading this charge against the people’s democratic will, and they’re now enacting a nuclearized escalation of their attack. Their new weapon has been dubbed “Death Star” – a state law that will preemptively ban cities and counties from passing corporate regulations stronger than state regulation (which is infamously feeble). The ban – gleefully pushed by a horde of lobbyist for brand-name corporate elites – includes letting corporations overturn existing local protections for workers, consumers, small business, the environment, and others. “We hate cities and counties,” grumped the sponsor of the Death Star law.
This is a wholesale usurpation of your and my liberty to govern ourselves. In exchange for political funding, GOP officials are literally outsourcing the people’s democratic authority to private profiteers. Learn more at www.supportdemocracy.org.
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When public officials get themselves mired in the muck of corruption, they can always count on Sen. Ted Cruz to issue a moral judgement: If the offender is a Democrat, he pronounces the corruption inexcusably grotesque; if it’s a Republican, he wails that the offender is the victim.
For example, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was recently caught (yet again) butt-deep in judicial immorality, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of freebies from a Texas real estate baron who has both a partisan and corporate interest in Thomas’ court rulings. So, Cruz to the rescue! No judicial impropriety here, he squawks, for this is nothing but a diabolical plot by Democrats to “smear” poor Clarence.
But Thomas is busy smearing himself, so Dems can just take the advice of Woodrow Wilson: “Never attempt to murder a man who’s committing suicide.” From the start of his court tenure, Thomas has been a shameless seeker of personal gain, tucking untold sums from untold sources in the inner pockets of his judicial robes. He learned to hide his corruption in 2004, when he actually reported taking pricey gifts from a special interest, which got him widely condemned. So, he “reformed” – no he didn’t quit taking gimmes, he just quit disclosing them!
Thomas is a supreme grifter, but sadly he’s not alone. Many recent justices have fallen from the pedestal of judicial integrity, cozying up to the moneyed interests. Gifts aside, we now have a hyper-partisan, right-wing Republican majority taking their judicial opinions from those same interests, turning America’s unelected Third Branch of government into an autocratic, plutocratic political agency. Then they wonder why their public approval rating – and legitimacy – are in the ditch!
Since they won’t reform themselves, We the People must do it for them. To help, go to fixthecourt.com.
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Photo: Kayla Padilla/Texas Public RadioGiven the rabid rightwingism of most Republican officeholders in my state of Texas, you might assume that the climate here is only fit for rattlesnakes, scorpions, and venomous critters of pious political extremism.
Yet, the true Texas political character (historically and currently) is vehemently anti-corporate and deeply rooted in the uniting ethic of the Common Good. For an historic example, look to the state’s first constitution – it outlawed banks and required a two-thirds vote of the legislature to form a corporation!
And today, grassroots Texans in the rural town of Llano have just demonstrated the power of progressive community values that are common in this supposedly-conservative state. The issue was book-banning – a batch of political extremists had decided to purge the public library of 17 books. Porno! they shrieked. Yet, none are pornographic. They are simply about ideas and realities that Republican culture-war zealots don’t like – namely books documenting the history of institutional racism in America and the normality of America’s LGBTQ community.
Common sense Llano locals rebelled, suing the county government for autocratically trying to control the people’s freedom to read and learn. And, a federal judge has now ruled that the book banning was flagrantly unconstitutional, ordering the targeted titles back on the shelves.
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Do you find it as charming as I do when some leisure-class corporate chieftain whines that America’s working stiffs are a bunch of slackers?
We’re hearing that now from Wall Street plutocrats, grumping that employees no longer have that old nose-to-the-grindstone, “yes-boss” work ethic of old-school capitalism that has created such fabulous wealth. Of course, “wealth for whom” and “work for what?” are at the root of today’s questioning of the old culture and structure of work. But the grumpers don’t want to hear that, so they simply carp that America has “gone soft.”
The latest high-flying scolder is Steven Rattner, the Wall Street huckster who was fined $6 million in 2010 for running a kickback scheme and banned from investment banking for two years. But now he’s back in the financial hustle, feeling free to chastise you for what he sees as your lack of hustle on the job.
In particular, Steve is peeved at you work-from-home people, asserting with no actual evidence you’re not really working. He claims it will inevitably lead to “a lower standard of living” – a standard he measures strictly in money, not quality of life. Indeed, he says that your life should be work – pointing with envy to China’s “996” system, a grinding ethic of expecting people to work from 9am to 9pm 6 days a week. Then Rattner offers a grand solution to dissuade work-from-home arrangements: Housing. Why, he asks, have a big majority of European workers already returned to their offices? Simple, he says – most people there live in small apartments and houses, making stay-at-home work less comfortable. Voila! Put America’s workers in tiny houses and office space will fill up.
See – life is simple if you view it from the heights of Wall Street. Thank you, Steve. Now go away.
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You’ve probably heard the news out of Texas, Missouri, Michigan, Idaho and more— sudden and inexplicable protests against books and demands that they be removed from libraries. And you’ve also probably noticed that the books getting banned seem to have things in common with one another, like the prominence of LGBTQ+ characters, or themes that explore racial justice—or the lack thereof—in America. Could this seemingly “spontaneous” movement represent something more?
Hightower welcomes Emily Drabinski, incoming president of the American Library Association, and Nadine Farid Johnson, managing director of PEN America Washington and and Free Expression Programs, to discuss… and talk about actions you can take to protect your local library.
Links we discussed:
- Unite Against Book Bans: https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/
- American Library Association: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks
- PEN America’s Banned Books resources: https://pen.org/issue/book-bans/
- Boundary County, Idaho’s ban of books it didn’t own
- People of Llano County, Texas, supporting their library
- Queer Northshore in St Tammany Parish, LA
- More on running for your local library board from Emily
- The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish
- Freedom from Religion Foundation’s full list of sexual references in the Bible
- Author George M Johnson’s mother testifies before a local board on their behalf
We’re working on a full transcript of the show! We’ll update this page when we have it ready.
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An actual board game from the late 1970sThese days, America’s top economic officials tend to speak in unintelligible bureaucratic gobbledygook. But, once upon a time, there was a plainspoken White House economist, and he even had a sense of humor. He didn’t last.
Alfred Kahn was chastised by the White House in 1978 for speaking clearly and honestly about the looming possibility of a depression: “Too blunt… use softer words!” So Kahn started calling the downturn a looming “banana.” When banana industry lobbyists complained, he switched to “kumquat.”
In that spirit, let me warn you about an unemployment “taco” that the autocratic Federal Reserve system is cooking up for working families. The Fed (as it is called by jolly bankers who run it) says it is imposing “the restoration between supply and demand in the labor market.” They soothingly add that “there will very likely be some softening in labor market conditions.”
You can almost hear them humming Rock-a-bye Baby, but don’t nod off. As Bryce Covert, the insightful economic digger and truthteller recently explained, there’s nothing soft about the Fed’s arbitrary policy – it means “fewer raises and more people out of work… which means about 1.5 million people will lose their jobs.” She documents that, historically, such a jolt of unemployment will probably (get ready for scary words) “trigger a recession.” Or a “taco” if that makes you feel better.
The mumbo-jumbo of economists aside, what we have here is the same old power play of moneyed elites putting the jobs and wages of working families on the chopping block to jack up the exorbitant profits of monopolistic corporations. When the Fed bankers say they’re “restoring balance,” they mean restoring the power of corporate bosses to rule unilaterally over America’s workaday majority.
In plain language, this is blatant class war by the privileged few against the many.
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Way to go, Wisconsin!
In a momentous progressive win, voters there elected County Judge Janet Protasiewicz to their state supreme court. She thumped a mega-MAGA-Republican by 11 points in a pivotal race, ending a dark decade of unbridled right-wing partisan extremism by that court’s GOP majority.
But the vote has profound implications reaching far beyond the Badger State. Its deeper meaning was brought home to me on election eve when the Republican candidate – a Trump-hugging, gerrymandering, antichoice lawyer – complained that, “Doing a statewide campaign… is kind of hard.” Well, yes, but to paraphrase a song by a band called the Austin Lounge Lizards, “Campaigning is hard/But it’s harder when you’re stupid.”
Not that the lawyer lacked intellect, but smart is as smart does. What the swing state of Wisconsin showed is that this right-wing candidate and other arrogant GOP fanatics are stupid if they think people won’t care that (1) Republicans are shutting people out of the voting booth, and (2) they’re running as ideological autocrats promising to use state power to outlaw the inherent right of a woman to make her own, deeply-personal decision about abortion.
Moreover, Judge Janet’s big win sends a gut-check message to meek Democratic Party officials and donors who continually admonish candidates and local activists to be middle-of-the-roaders, compromising the people’s “little-d” democratic principles in hopes of winning some Republican votes. Protasiewicz was straight with voters, proudly campaigning to be a pro-choice, pro-worker, pro-democracy justice.
Because of both the integrity and clarity of her message, she generated a record turnout, greatly increased participation by women and young voters, and – especially noteworthy – made significant inroads in rural and working-class counties that had been considered Trump country. She showed that if Democrats stand up for the people – hello – people will stand up for Democrats.
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Hey everyone, Deanna here!
You may remember our live pandemic web show, Happy Hour at the Chat & Chew Cafe. And many of you have asked for longer audio posts from Hightower, so we figured we’d combine these ideas into one brand-new series! That’s right, the Chat & Chew is moving from a TV show to a podcast.
Next week, we’re going to be in the studio with some pretty amazing new guests— Emily Drabinski, the 2023-24 president of the American Library Association, and Nadine Farid Johnson, who is the Managing Director of PEN America Washington and Free Expression Programs. And we’d love to have our paid subscribers join us to watch the live recording!
On Tuesday, 4/18 at 10:00am ET, we’ll be chatting together live to talk about the infuriating and implausible attacks on books, free speech, librarians and writers. From Texas to Missouri to Michigan and more, this coordinated and concerted effort in the name of “protecting” children is poisoning so many parts of our cultures, it’s hard to keep up. But everyday people are fighting back! And there’s tons you can do.
We also want to hear from you! To ask questions of our illustrious guests, go ahead and leave them in the comments below. When you do, and if you feel comfortable, let us know where you are geographically, too— we love seeing folks from all over the country. I’m still working out the nitty-gritty, but there may also be a live chat feature in the studio that you can participate in as well.
So, if you’re a paid subscriber and you want to watch the live version of our chat, click the link below at 10am ET on Tuesday. And if you can’t make it, don’t worry— everyone will be able to listen to the final version of the episode when we release it during National Library Week on April 24th.
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My city’s daily newspaper has gotten so emaciated it should be in hospice care.
Its front “section” is down to six pages, half of which are cheap ads, and nearly all of its articles are out-of-date, cut-and-paste pieces bought from out-of-state “content providers.” This embarrassment, put out by the Gannett chain of over 1,100 cadaverous papers, pretends to be the “news” source for Austin, a vibrant city of a million people and the capitol of the second-largest state in America! Gannett, owned by a multibillion-dollar Japanese hedge fund, profits by buying up local papers, firing most of the news staff, raising prices, selling off the papers’ assets, then killing the paper.
If your town’s publication is a now a Gannett property, look to Salinas, California for its future. The 152-year-old Salinas Californian was this important region’s main news artery until its hedge-funders started hacking. The paper was down to one reporter last December, but that lone journalist quit – and the Californian is now a “newspaper” without reporters – meaning no coverage of elections, city hall, sports, police, workplace issues… etc.
The Salinas paper is technically alive, overseen until recently by another Gannett paper – located 300 miles away! Now, says the chain’s comically-named “Center for Community Journalism,” Salinas residents can get their news by reading Gannett’s national paper, USA Today.
In fairness, Gannett’s bosses are making major investments. In themselves. CEO Mike Reed’s salary this year is $8 million for helping gut local news. And while the global chain’s owners won’t pay for a reporter in Salinas, they will spend $100 million for a stock buyback scheme that will artificially jack up their own wealth. This is a blockbuster story of real news affecting real people and democracy itself. So how man Gannett “news” papers do you guess are covering it?
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It’s always instructive to hear powerful political officials declare that in the name of democracy, they must usurp the people’s democratic authority.
This has become all too common, as even so-called democratic regimes in France and Israel have infuriated their people by trying to ram vastly unpopular, anti-democratic schemes into law by executive fiat. Luckily, though, our US of A remains committed to The People’s rule right? Moreover, our leaders agree that local government is best, for it is closest to the people, right?
Uh… no… and no. Since the once-conservative Republican Party has turned extremist and downright goofy during the past decade, its governors and lawmakers have become knee-jerk autocrats, imposing their unpopular policies through a crude power play called “Preemption.”
This is the despotic use of arbitrary state power to cancel any town, city, or county policies that Republican politicians don’t like. Preemption is an extreme governing tool meant to be rarely used in emergency situations, but GOP-controlled statehouses in Florida, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere now use it routinely as an ideological sledgehammer, crushing the right of local people to govern themselves.
This has let extremist Republican officials force some of their racist, homophobic, and xenophobic nastiness on communities that vehemently oppose them. But most Republican preemptions are issued in service to corporate elites. For example, when local communities try to raise the minimum wage for working families, stop Big Oil fracking abuses, or prevent corporate money from corrupting local politics – corporate-serving governors rush to outlaw the people’s will and preserve the abusive power of rank profiteers.
Texas lawmakers are even trying to supersize and privatize preemption with a blanket decree that all local ordinances restricting corporations are overruled by state law – even proposing that corporate executives themselves can overturn local actions. To fight these autocrats, go to www.supportdemocracy.org.
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Hightower and resident nerd, DeannaGreetings, all!
It’s your friendly neighborhood nerd, Deanna, here. I’m thrilled you’re coming along for the new digital adventures here on Substack!
Some of you have written in with questions about this whole shebang, and I’ve finally got a free moment to answer them. I hope this helps!
“Hey, I’ve got a subscription/made a donation, why are you asking me to pay?”Those of you who’ve made donations in the past, or were digital subscribers to our old website, hightowerlowdown.org, were brought into this fold about a month ago with extended free trial periods of an “all-access” Substack subscription. Many of those trial periods are expiring this week, and we hope you’ll be willing to continue as a paid subscriber.
An additional number of you are migrating over from our print publication, the Hightower Lowdown newsletter. Thank you! And thanks for your patience, too – this transition has posed some tech challenges for our tiny team. But it’s happening!
Every couple of days, I take batches of several thousand of you, match you against our print subscriber database, and then add you to Substack with an extended free “all-access” period that matches the remaining value of your print subscription. Substack notifies you of this and calls it a “complimentary subscription,” but what we really mean is, this is the period we owe you for your paid print subscription.
The best way to transfer your print subscription remains filling out the form here:
Transfer my print subscription
“But what if I can’t pay, or can’t pay right now?”Have no fear, friends! Substack offers both paid and free subscriptions. The paid subscription has some nice special perks, but even if you can’t upgrade to a paid subscription, we’ll still send you emails with Hightower’s freely available content (like his twice-per-week commentaries). Of course, if you can afford to pay for a subscription, it really goes a long way to keeping the lights on and Hightower writing and agitating.
“I’ve got a problem with the Substack website.”Whenever you run into a technical problem with Substack, the best thing to do is get help from Substack. They run all the internal workings of the site, and especially if you’ve encountered an issue entering your credit card details, checking with Substack is the best way to go.
“I don’t want so many emails!”We get it! Right now, there’s not a way to create email “digests” on Substack that allow us to consolidate notifications, but we’re hoping that feature becomes available. Until then, you can go to your account settings and choose how you’d like to be notified of new posts.
Any other questions? Drop them in the comments!
I have to concede one point: Today’s far-right Republican party does not discriminate against women. In fact, the GOP is giving its female political buffoons a higher profile than its male bozos.
Consider Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas, who became a star in the new Republican Crusade to bring back child labor abuse. Pushed by their corporate backers, GOP governors and lawmakers exclaim that the answer to America’s so-called “labor shortage” is not to make jobs more attractive, but to fill them with cheap, compliant children.
Huckabee Sanders rushed to the aid of these corporate powers, eliminating a bothersome Arkansas law that required Tyson, Walmart, and other big employers to get a special state permit to put any child under 16 to work. “The meddling hand of big government creeping down from Washington, DC,” she bellowed, “will be stopped cold… We will get the overregulating, micromanaging, bureaucratic tyrants off your backs.”
So she is using the meddling hand of big state government to creep into the lives of vulnerable children. She is not alone. Ohio’s Republican controlled state government is moving to extend the number of hours bosses can make children work; Iowa wants to let 14-year-olds work in industrial freezers and laundries; and Republicans in Congress have shrunk the number of investigators and lawyers policing child labor abuse, so abusive corporate managers know there is little chance they’ll be caught.
Most damning, these corporate politicians value children so little that they’ve set the maximum fine for violating the workplace safety of minors at $15,138 per child. For multimillion-dollar conglomerates, that devaluation makes it much cheaper to endanger children than protect them.
America should not even be talking about child safety rules in dangerous workplaces – it’s shameful to have any children working there.
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Photo: US Dept of LaborWith new outrages erupting every day, I find some comfort in knowing that We the People have at least eliminated certain particularly-ugly plutocratic abuses. Child labor, for example – outlawed in 1938, right?
Well, outlawed, yes; stopped, no. Recent reports reveal that thousands of children, ages 12 to 17, are toiling illegally at dangerous jobs, in manufacturing, construction, food processing, etc. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with teenagers working – they help their families, gain experience, or just earn a few bucks. Indeed, I worked part-time throughout my high school and college years, and while I did gripe some, overall it was positive.
So, this is not about children working – it’s about corporate child abuse, plain and simple. For example, last year Packers Sanitation Services was caught “employing oppressive child labor” in meatpacking plants to clean saws, head splitters, and other butchering machines. In a typical incident, one 13-year-old was badly burned by the caustic cleaning chemicals they used during long night shifts – which ran from 11pm to at least 5am!
Once caught, top executives of Packers Sanitation tried to sanitize their reputation by proclaiming they have “zero tolerance for any violation” of child labor laws. Oh? Ask that 13-year-old. These executives would be comical, except they’re completely disgusting and morally repugnant. Yet, our worker protection laws are so weak that Packers’ multiple violations, involving 102 children in this one case, resulted in a fine of… $1.5 million.
That’s not even peanuts for this nationwide giant, which is owned by Blackstone, a trillion-dollar Wall Street hucksters run by with well-manicured executives who pretend they know nothing about the children they endanger for profit.
How about we make a few of the teenage children and grandchildren of Blackstone profiteers work some midnight shifts cleaning meatcutting machinery? I’m guessing they would stop the abuse overnight.
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It’s always useful in a moment of national urgency to have level-headed experts explain what’s happening. Experts like extremist right-wing politicos.
For example, when two high-flying banks crashed this month, these screechers flocked to blame it all on their latest ideological bugaboo: “Wokeness.” Their loopy contention is that everything bad in our country is happening because such institutions as schools, libraries, corporations, and even banks are responding to America’s long history of systemic inequality by pursuing “politically-correct” policies promoting liberal values like fairness, equality, and diversity.
Hello – oppression of the many by the few is in fact a reality in America. Two, pursuit of those liberal values is what makes America historically important. And… banks? You’re actually asserting that high-finance is now motivated by a liberal, share-the-wealth mentality?
Yes indeed, squawk these self-proclaimed knowledgeable ones, singling out the recently-failed Silicon Valley Bank. “They were one of the most woke banks,” moaned a GOP lawmaker who specializes in conspiracy theories. Gov. Ron DeSantis piled on, barking that “this bank, they’re so concerned with [diversity]… and all kinds of stuff.” Then Donald Trump offered his usual deep assessment, lecturing that the collapse “is what happens when you push leftist/woke ideology.”
Bovine Excrement! As has now been documented, these bankers were not woke, but greedy, incompetent, and reckless. Worse, our bank regulators had been intentionally put to sleep by a 2018 law that specifically let such banks escape careful public supervision. Guess whightower hat? Trump was the one who initiated this disastrous regulatory exemption, Ron DeSantis cheered and voted for it, and the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank led a lobbying campaign to ram it into law.
Stay alert folks – these politicos and profiteers are the ones who crashed the bank – and now they’re trying to put us to sleep with their hokey “anti-woke” PR stunt.
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Willie Nelson, a very lively 89-year-old, has recorded a playful little tune refuting speculation by some that he had become the late Willie Nelson. Not so fast, protested the people’s troubadour, singing:
“I woke up still not dead again today
The Internet said I had passed away
But if I died I wasn’t dead to stay
I woke up still not dead again today.”
The same protest could now be warbled by the venerable Texas Observer, the feisty, maverick voice of progressive politics and dig-it-out anti-establishment journalism in the Lone Star State.
On Monday, this “journal of free voices” (which maintains independence by accepting no corporate advertising, even though that means it constantly has to scramble to stay afloat), was abruptly pronounced dead. An article by a competing publication, the multimillion-dollar corporate funded Texas Tribune, practically gloats: “Texas Observer Closing… an end to 68 years of publication.”
Rumors of its death, however are just that. Yes, the Observer’s finances are severely strained, and the board of directors should’ve been alert to the fact that the magazine was spending at an unsustainable/irresponsible level. But the Tribune’s claim that the board abruptly voted for “closing” down is false, wrong, untrue! To the contrary, the board only voted for a temporary hiatus. At the same time, it committed to raising large sums of money, while reorganizing for a healthy financial future. Far from rushing to the cemetery, board members, staffers, previous donors, and former editors (a majority group the Tribune did not interview before issuing its obituary) has stepped forward to help with this rejuvenation.
Full disclosure: I’ve been a loyal Observerite since my college days; I was a longtime friend and neighbor of legendary Observer editor Molly Ivins; and I followed her as the publication’s populist-spirited editor for two years. So I’m fully in the revivalist camp.
However, that doesn’t make me naïve. There is no question that financial clots and a series of internal editors-v- board conflicts have weakened the publication in the past couple of years – but you don’t then just snuff out its fiery spark of progressive activism, which is needed now more than ever!
Of course the Observer must adapt and streamline. Such national writers as Ralph Nader, Michael Moore, Ijeoma Oluo, Heather Cox Richardson, Judd Legum, and myself are moving from print to email delivery on innovative platforms like Substack to connect with today’s diverse progressive community. Since the time of the revolutionary pamphleteers, leftist communicators/agitators have had to make such structural media adjustments, and we must do so now… unless we just quit and rely on corporations to finance the acceptable political views.
Indeed, the Observer exists because it must – for the same reason it was founded in 1954. In that time, the state’s media barons deliberately avoided offending their readers with unpleasantness about racism, labor exploitation, legislative corruption, etc. For example, even if 3,000 people rallied in Dallas to oppose the poll tax – not a peep about it the next day in the Dallas Morning News. The city’s impish liberals even coined a banner quote for that paper: “If It Happens In Dallas, It’s News To Us.”
So scrappy groups of progressives from across the state pooled grassroots donations to create their own source of news, information, and ideas: The Texas Observer. It still provides journalism that matters, challenging the Powers That Be, and rallying the Powers That Oughtto Be.
Despite one alarmist, misleading article, the Observer, is not dead. And, in the spirit of Willie’s song, even if it had “died” this week, it wouldn’t be “dead to stay,” because it’s not just a publication – it’s both an idea and a political necessity.
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Until recently, kids were thrilled when their parents said: “We’re going to Disney World!” But that was in the beforetimes, before Florida’s autocratic governor put Disney World under the control of his state’s thought police, turning it into “DeSantis World.”
Having made kid-friendly Disney kowtow to his own magic kingdom of right-wing ideological conformity, Governor Ron is now demanding that the entire Sunshine State convert to the darkness of DeSantis World. A major tactic in his push is to rewrite the state’s school books to “protect” young ones from having to learn that such historical unpleasantness as racism and sexism have shaped their society… and are still doing so.
To advance RonThink, he has rammed his “Stop WOKE Act” into law, requiring teachers to – shhh – soften or just eliminate references to America’s racial problems. Pretend it never happened, is Professor DeSantis’ instruction.
Indeed, one educational publisher obediently followed his dictate rewriting the uplifting 1955 story of Rosa Parks confronting the flagrant, institutional racism of Montgomery, Alabama’s public bus service. Before DeSantis, the publisher told the story straight. “In her city, the law said African Americans had to give up their seats… if a White person wanted to sit down. [Parks] would not give up her seat. The police came and took her to jail.”
Now, after DeSantification, here’s the publisher’s re-write: “One day, [Parks] rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat. She did not. She did what she believed was right.” Hmmm. No reference to her even being African-American or to the law requiring her to bow to any White person’s demand for her seat. And no mention of police hauling her to jail because of the color of her skin.
DeSantis World is where people’s dream of social justice goes to die.
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What’s wrong with us? Our nation’s moral compass, I mean.
I don’t like being a downer, just focusing on wrongs, but some wrongs stand out as morally abominable, such as this one. It’s about hundreds of thousands of our low-income elders who, toward the end of life (when frail and most vulnerable) find themselves cast into a part of the Medicaid system that has been deliberately structured by Congress to subject them to needless deprivations and daily indignities.
These are our loved ones with serious health problems who need long term care in nursing homes, and two-thirds of them rely on Medicaid to cover their costs. To get this benefit, they surrender all of their income, which goes to defray their nursing home expenses. Of course, for a decent existence beyond mere survival, we all rely on a few little things that are basic to our humanity. So, Medicare authorizes each state to set a monthly “personal needs allowance,” so their elderly patients can cover their hygiene and grooming products, a book or CD, a small gift for grandchildren, a chocolate bar, etc.
Good! But then Mr. Mingy walked in. In 1987, Congress set the minimum for this allowance at a meager $30 a month – under $8 a week! Congress has not raised it in the 36 years since, and most states still provide only a pittance, despite inflation and monopoly price gouging on practically everything. So, our state and national “leaders” (who freely dole out massive corporate subsidies and tax giveaways to billionaires) are leaving ill seniors with so little spending money that they must ration their toothpaste and scrimp pennies to buy a rare treat from the vending machine.
I know this is small in the global scale of human indignities, but that makes it an even bigger moral failure for our society. It would take so little to do so much for so many.
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Exciting News, people: Utopia is on the rise!
Space Commander Elon Musk has announced that His Magnificence (ie, him) intends to construct his very own private town on 3,500 acres of farmland near his new Tesla plant southeast of Austin, Texas. More than a town, Musk explains that he will create utopia in Texas, promising an “ecological paradise” where his Tesla workers can live and do fun things like swimming, pickleball... and paying rent to him.
The gabillionaire is certainly rich enough to erect his own Muskopolis. But, alas, the “utopia” name is already taken. Indeed, I’ve been to Utopia, Texas, a small town west of San Antonio that was founded in 1855 by (cover your ears, Elon!) Swiss Socialists. Of course, history shows that a company town is ruled by the company, not by residents (much less socialists). And Musk has made clear at Tesla, Twitter, etc. that his personal whims rule over workers, consumers, our environment… and even truth.
Which brings us to that ecological worker’s paradise he’s promising. Even as one arm of his empire was extolling his vision of a Garden-of-Eden situated along the beauty of the Colorado River, another arm was scheming to pollute it! Musk is asking Texas’ corporate-controlled regulators to let him use the site to dump 140,000 gallons a day of his industrial wastewater into the Colorado.
Excuse me, but that turns Elon’s ecological paradise into a fraud. Worse, it adds up to Musk pouring 50 million gallons a year of his waste into the river, fouling the main water source for dozens of towns and hundreds of farms downstream.
Musk seeks to extend the long sordid history in our country of company town hucksters, and his latest Texas scam is proof that we should never trust a billionaire promising us paradise.
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I would call Josh Hawley a fool, but he keeps demonstrating the proof of that faster than I can say the word.
The latest embarrassing stunt by the right-wing senatorial harlequin from Missouri is to try matching wits with Woody Guthrie! Apparently, Hawley thought (always a danger zone for him) that no one would notice if he appropriated and totally perverted Woody’s most famous anthem for his own political gain. So when Josh introduced a racist, anti-immigrant bill that would ban thousands of Chinese-Americans from owning US farmland, he decided it would be clever in a Super-MAGA-Patriot sort of way to title his piece of legislative nastiness the “This Land Is Our Land Act.” It’s a crude attempt to cancel Woody’s For-the-People message, twisting his uplifting words of democratic inclusiveness and diversity into a nativist snarl of demagogic exclusivity.
To Hawley’s chagrin, though, someone did notice his scurrilous effort to exploit Woody’s spirit of honest, grassroots populism: His daughter, Nora. Every bit as feisty and straight-talking as her father, she condemned Josh as a common political thief who is not “in any way a representative of Woody’s values.”
Layering ignorance atop his buffoonery, Hawley seems clueless that Woody’s music and life were primarily a struggle against the plutocrats and autocrats that Hawley serves. In addition to the commonly sung verses of “This Land,” Guthrie wrote many others, prominently including this one:
As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
Let’s hear Josh Hawley sing that verse at the Republican National Convention. Until then, he should keep Woody Guthrie’s name out of his mouth.
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Profiteering is always bad, but there are degrees of profiteer. Level 1 includes your everyday price gougers, like banks and airlines. At Level 2, you’ll find the more demonic outfits like loan sharks and for-profit college hucksters. Then top of the heap at Level 3, you’ll find Eli Lilly.
This $288 billion drug making colossus is America’s primary peddler of insulin, the diabetes drug that some seven million Americans must constantly take literally to stay alive. By having both monopoly power over the market and such a huge base of captive customers, Lilly has gleefully jacked up its prices again and again over three decades, with it now costing each sufferer as much as $1,000 a month! Finally, under intense political pressure to stop it’s extreme, life-threatening gouging, the giant recently announced it would soon cut its insulin price by a whopping 70 percent! In full-page ads, Lilly hailed its corporate generosity, magnanimously declaring that “everyone deserves affordable options.”
But – hello! – it has intentionally charged unaffordable rip off prices for 30 years, wallowing in monopoly profits. And – Hello again – if Lilly says it can keep profiting on its insulin product despite slashing the price by 70 percent, that means it has been overcharging patients by 70 percent all this time! Yet, its rich executives want us to thank them? No thank you.
Even with the price cut, they’re still charging $66 for a single vial of insulin. Guess what? It costs Lilly less than $7 to produce that vial, and it could be sold profitably for under $9.
Meanwhile, note that the ballyhooed price cut is voluntary, meaning Lilly can raise the price again at any time. Indeed, David Ricks (who personally pockets $19 million a year from the profiteer) has refused to pledge that he’ll keep the medicine affordable.
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Got a question for Hightower? Drop us a line, and join us for our first Happy Hour live online chat, coming soon.
Over on Twitter, Brandon posted:
Brandon Rottinghaus @bjrottinghausI can’t tell if this is real. Guard donkeys. c1989. @JimHightower ? #txlege 5:47 PM ∙ Mar 13, 2023
9Likes1RetweetHightower answers:
Oh yezzz, of the many times I've been called a political ass, this is one moment of kindred pride when I could parade out donkeys, llamas, and other friendly creatures that really do align with us human beasts to protect sheep and other critters we herd for our food & fiber. Poison is not the only way to go--a vicious kick, spit, bark, and other natural deterrents will back off coyotes, etc. You don't need to be gouged by DuPont or Dow if you've got a real honest ass working for you.
Interested in more gems like this from Hightower’s time in office? Plus other incredible archives of Texas history? Check out The People’s History in Texas!
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Not so long ago, book burnings were considered a festive group activity by assorted right-wing zealots. Today, though, burning seems so old-fashioned, and well… crude.
Yet, the concept is burning hotter than ever among a gaggle of testosterone-driven Republican leaders eager to show voters that they will go to extremes to incinerate progressive ideas and people’s personal liberties. Rather than lighting bonfires, though, the new fad for GOP politicians is simply to use government power to ban the offending books (thus saving the expense of matches and lighter fluid).
It might not surprise you to learn that our Lone Star State’s extremist political operatives are leading today’s book-banning frenzy. One Jonathan Mitchell, for example, is going from town to town pushing Texas Republican officeholders to pass local ordinances he labels “Safe Library Patron Protection.” Yes, patrons, censoring what you can read is necessary to “protect” you. The GOP ban prohibits libraries from having books, videos, etc. that contain “immoral content,” which he defines as depictions of nudity, sexual behavior, mentions of masturbation, LGBTQ life, etc. It’s also autocratically homophobic, making it illegal for librarians to display LGBTQ flags or even mentioning “LGBTQ Pride Month.”
This repressive monomania stabs even deeper into our freedom of expression by concocting a “right” of right-wing vigilantes to enforce the ordinances. Yes, self-appointed bands of bounty hunters would be authorized to roam the countryside suing local libraries (and individual librarians) for having “banned” books on the shelves. To spur this political malice, Wallace’s scheme provides a $10,000 reward for every violation a vigilante finds (or fabricates).
This is Jim Hightower saying… Well, you say, thank God I don’t live in Texas! But – Hello – repression doesn’t recognize state borders, so the pernicious idea of paid library marauders is spreading across the country. To help defend your freedom from them, go to the American Library Association: ala.org.
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Hightower recounts the story of longtime activist John Henry Faulk’s appearance at a community meeting about an X-rated movie theater on South Congress Avenue in Austin. Featuring the brilliant and much-missed Molly Ivins!
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Obviously, the main social problem in America is that Black people run everything and us white folks as a group just can’t get a fair break, right? So says Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
As a lifelong white Texan, I can’t tell you how “amazing” it is to see our governor, come out unapologetically for a return to old-time institutional bigotry. Absolutely Freaking Amazing! Apparently, Abbott fantasizes that hordes of Black people are seizing control of our government, universities, banks, media… and other power centers, shoving aside more qualified and entitled whites. Going from fantasy to hallucination, he concludes that this takeover is caused by corporate and government hiring policies that bolster diversity and inclusiveness in our society. Even attempting to implement this democratic goal, he barks, is illegal because – get this – it violates federal law against discrimination.
Yes, in GregWorld, fighting discrimination against minorities discriminates against the white majority. So his excellency has actually issued an edict directing state agencies and universities to shut down all hiring programs that include diversity goals! His official injunction declares that deliberately trying to stop excluding minorities from full access to employment opportunities leads to the “alienation of individuals from the workplace.” He means, of course that some white people are alienated that non-white people are getting job opportunities – never mind that minorities routinely suffer extreme “alienation from the workplace” – ie, exclusion. By the way, Abbott’s attack on diversity not only opens the door to even more job discrimination against Black Americans, but also against women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, all people of color, and veterans. Give him credit: He’s an equal opportunity abuser!
Abbott and his right-wing ilk should realize that the price of creating an exclusive society with no diversity is that they would then be stuck living with people like themselves.
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Many of today’s right-wing governors and state legislators have a problem. By constantly pushing an extremist ideological agenda of nonsense about nutty conspiracy theories – while imposing autocratic laws to ban everything from voting to library books – they’ve become widely ridiculed as some combo of kooky, clownish, and embarrassingly corrupt.
That’s why it’s significant that Missouri’s GOP lawmakers have not only recognized their image problem, but have actually made an effort to demonstrate that they are serious-minded public officials concerned about their professionalism. Namely, the state house of representatives has adopted a dress code. Seriously.
Specifically, the “attire mandate” addresses the pressing state issue of female lawmakers who come to work dressed normally – but without jackets. Disapproving legislative leaders clucked that this fashion faux pas was undermining the public’s respect for them. But now, says GOP Rep. Ann Kelley, sponsor of the new code, “It has been fixed.” Henceforth, all women legislators in the “Show Me” state must wear blazers or cardigans in order to, as Kelley explained, “always maintain a formal and professional atmosphere” in the House.
Professional? Excuse me, but these far-right state legislatures totter between being goofy policy forums and carnival sideshows. The only proper attire for many of these so-called legislative “leaders” would be straitjackets. Indeed, trying to rationalize the Missouri legislature’s expenditure of state time, money, and credibility on dictating women’s attire, Kelley’s GOP colleague Brenda Shields declared it was about protecting freedom! The clothing mandate, she explained, eliminates the possibility that the state will “be the clothing police.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking of moving to Missouri! It must be wonderful to live in a state where the government has already fixed all the big problems people really care about, letting the legislative body focus on properly clothing its women members.
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Photo: Paula R. Lively on Flickr“The Wreck of the Old Ninety-Seven” is a classic bluegrass song recounting a spectacular train crash in 1903, caused by the company’s demand that the engineer speed down a dangerous track to deliver cargo on time.
One hundred twenty years later we have the “Wreck of the Norfolk Southern” – a devastating crash caused by the corporate demand that it be allowed to run an ill-equipped, understaffed, largely-unregulated, 1.7 mile train carrying flammable, cancer-causing toxics through communities, putting profit over people and public safety.
This rolling bomb of a train was hardly unique, for the handful of multibillion-dollar railroad giants that control the industry also control lawmakers and regulators who’re supposed to protect the public from public-be-damned profiteers. A measure of their arrogance came just two years ago, when an Ohio legislative committee dared to consider a modest proposal for just a bit more rail safety. Norfolk Southern executives squawked like Chicken Little, asserting a plutocratic doctrine of corporate supremacy on such decisions. They even imperiously proclaimed that state lawmakers have no right to interfere in safety matters.
Ohio’s Chamber of Commerce dutifully echoed Norfolk’s concern for profit over people, testifying that “Ohio’s business climate would be negatively impacted” by the bill. Never mind that Ohio’s public safety climate can literally be “negatively impacted” by train wrecks! Plunging deeper down the autocratic rabbit hole, the Chamber insisted that corporate control over workers is sacrosanct. It postulated that a crew-safety provision in the Ohio bill is illegal because it “would interfere with the employment relationship between employers and their employees.” Yes, that’s a corporate claim that executives have an inalienable right to endanger workers.
Sure enough, bowing to the corporate powers, Ohio lawmakers rejected the 2021 safety bill. And that, boys and girls, is why train catastrophes keep happening.
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Photo by Andrew Karn on UnsplashStuff happens, right?
I mean, who could’ve thought that in these modern times of digital monitoring of everything, something as massive as a freight train could become a toxic fireball rolling undetected and unslowed into an Ohio town? But a Norfolk Southern train did just that, derailing in East Palestine and contaminating the air, water, land, and families with tons of cancer-causing chemicals. Gosh exclaimed Norfolk Southern’s CEO; gosh exclaimed the Ohio Governor; gosh exclaimed the US transportation chief; gosh exclaimed the GOP chair of the rail transportation committee – this is a terrible, unexpected accident, and we’re all appalled by it!
Only… all of these officials knew full-well that this disaster would happen (though they didn’t know exactly where). Indeed, far from unexpected, there are more than 1,000 preventable train derailments in the US every year (Norfolk Southern had another only days after the one in Ohio). And these things don’t just happen – they are causedby the profiteering greed of the monopolistic industry’s top executives and rich investors.
While Norfolk’s boardroom elites have been pocketing record profits in recent years, they’ve used armies of lobbyists and multimillion-dollar political donations to kill safety protections that would prevent such a disastrous record. To cut costs and jack-up profits, railroad bosses have rigged the rules to run trains that are absurdly long, go too fast, carry ever-heavier loads of undisclosed toxics in weak tanker cars, have no fire detectors, use outmoded braking systems – and have as few as one crew member on board. One!
This is Jim Hightower saying… Norfolk’s derailed train was made to derail. It pulled 149 cars, stretching nearly two miles down the track, and it was unequipped to detect fires and other problems. This disaster was not an “accident” – it (and those that will come next) was mandated by the corporate and government officials now professing outrage.
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“The Wreck of the Old Ninety-Seven” is a classic bluegrass song recounting a spectacular train crash in 1903, caused by the company’s demand that the engineer speed down a dangerous track to deliver cargo on time.One hundred twenty years later we have the “Wreck of the Norfolk Southern” – a devastating crash caused by the corporate demand that it be allowed to run an ill-equipped, understaffed, largely-unregulated, 1.7 mile train carrying flammable, cancer-causing toxics through communities, putting profit over people and public safety.This rolling bomb of a train was hardly unique, for the handful of multibillion-dollar railroad giants that control the industry also control lawmakers and regulators who’re supposed to protect the public from public-be-damned profiteers. A measure of their arrogance came just two years ago, when an Ohio legislative committee dared to consider a modest proposal for just a bit more rail safety. Norfolk Southern executives squawked like Chicken Little, asserting a plutocratic doctrine of corporate supremacy on such decisions. They even imperiously proclaimed that state lawmakers have no right to interfere in safety matters.Ohio’s Chamber of Commerce dutifully echoed Norfolk’s concern for profit over people, testifying that “Ohio’s business climate would be negatively impacted” by the bill. Never mind that Ohio’s public safety climate can literally be “negatively impacted” by train wrecks! Plunging deeper down the autocratic rabbit hole, the Chamber insisted that corporate control over workers is sacrosanct. It postulated that a crew-safety provision in the Ohio bill is illegal because it “would interfere with the employment relationship between employers and their employees.” Yes, that’s a corporate claim that executives have an inalienable right to endanger workers.Sure enough, bowing to the corporate powers, Ohio lawmakers rejected the 2021 safety bill. And that, boys and girls, is why train catastrophes keep happening.
Stuff happens, right?I mean, who could’ve thought that in these modern times of digital monitoring of everything, something as massive as a freight train could become a toxic fireball rolling undetected and unslowed into an Ohio town? But a Norfolk Southern train did just that, derailing in East Palestine and contaminating the air, water, land, and families with tons of cancer-causing chemicals. Gosh exclaimed Norfolk Southern’s CEO; gosh exclaimed the Ohio Governor; gosh exclaimed the US transportation chief; gosh exclaimed the GOP chair of the rail transportation committee – this is a terrible, unexpected accident, and we’re all appalled by it!Only… all of these officials knew full-well that this disaster would happen (though they didn’t know exactly where). Indeed, far from unexpected, there are more than 1,000 preventable train derailments in the US every year (Norfolk Southern had another only days after the one in Ohio). And these things don’t just happen – they are causedby the profiteering greed of the monopolistic industry’s top executives and rich investors.While Norfolk’s boardroom elites have been pocketing record profits in recent years, they’ve used armies of lobbyists and multimillion-dollar political donations to kill safety protections that would prevent such a disastrous record. To cut costs and jack-up profits, railroad bosses have rigged the rules to run trains that are absurdly long, go too fast, carry ever-heavier loads of undisclosed toxics in weak tanker cars, have no fire detectors, use outmoded braking systems – and have as few as one crew member on board. One!This is Jim Hightower saying… Norfolk’s derailed train was made to derail. It pulled 149 cars, stretching nearly two miles down the track, and it was unequipped to detect fires and other problems. This disaster was not an “accident” – it (and those that will come next) was mandated by the corporate and government officials now professing outrage.
Your doctor is out and unable to see you now. Not out for lunch or out on vacation -- but out of medical practice.America’s perverse health care system, which sublimates care to the profiteering demands of Wall Street speculators who essentially own today’s system, has been driving out hordes of nurses, pharmacists… and now doctors. These practitioners take their Hippocratic Oath seriously: “First, do no harm.” Yet, again and again they see corporate managers of hospital chains, physician clinics, etc. doing severe harm, routinely slashing staffing levels, eliminating services, rejecting low-income patients… and raising prices. All to prop-up the profits of rich, absentee investors.A prominent physician recently wrote that in 2021 alone four times more doctors quit the profession than joined. He says his colleagues are demoralized by “the diseased systems for which we work.” The disease is money. The primary measure of “care” is now how much profit the system generates for its uncaring corporate owners, so one’s health is largely dependent on one’s wealth. The morally abominable result is that hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths are occurring each year. Yes, profit-based health care is a killer.This is Jim Hightower saying… It’s time to be blunt: For-profit health care is the creation of profiteers and the politicians they buy. It’s insane to let their greed dictate the allocation and quality of this essential human need. Luckily, a better way is right in front of us: Medicare. This enormously-popular public program of universal coverage for each and every American over 65 has proven to be an effective and fair system that is far cheaper and much, much more caring than Wall Street’s privatized scheme. So, let’s eliminate the profiteers by extending Medicare to all of us – every woman, man, and child in our society. To help go to: ourrevolution.com/issues.
No one needs another outrage to worry about, but here’s one that could literally be your last worry. Our hospitals are killing us.Not that the staffers are going room to room snuffing our patients, of course, but hospital owners and top executives are nonetheless killing thousands of ill Americans entrusted to their care. They are doing by deliberately short-staffing their facilities and shortchanging sick and injured people they’re richly paid to serve.At the core of this outrage is a fatal structural flaw in our healthcare system, namely that these are no longer “our” hospitals. Instead of being public or non-profit entities for the Common Good, focused squarely on patients, hospitals today tend to be private operations controlled by corporate profiteers. Pitting patients against profits is no way to run a hospital, for it means money will ultimately rule over health (and over life itself). Ask a nurse.These dedicated professionals are the solid pillars of American health. More than doctors and way more than administrators, nurses make a hospital function, providing the primary care and constant, on-site monitoring that are the essence of an ethical, healthy system. Yet, thousands have already fled the work they love, another third plan to leave this year – and thousands more are going on strike.Why? Because the profit system demands massive staff cuts, leaving way too few nurses to meet the basic needs of patients, causing burnout among nurses… and unnecessary deaths of the people they care for. A damning 2021 study revealed that forcing fewer nurses to tend to an ever-larger caseload effectively killed more than 4,000 New York hospital patients in the previous two years alone.This is Jim Hightower saying… Yet, the corporate powers insist on treating nurses just as a cost to be cut, arguing that hospitals must have “staffing flexibility.” In other words: Cut nurses/Raise profits.
There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries like Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco – that persistently do rotten things.Then there is the nursing home industry – where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life “experience” can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of natural indignities bedeviling us, and good nursing homes help gentle this time. In the past couple of decades, though, an entirely unnatural force has come to dominate the delivery of aged care: Profiteering corporate chains and Wall Street speculators.The very fact that this essential and sensitive social function, which ought to be the domain of health professionals and charitable enterprises, is now called an “industry” reflects a total perversion of its purpose. Some 70 percent of nursing homes are now corporate operations run by absentee executives who have no experience in nursing homes and who’re guided by the market imperative of maximizing investor profits. They constantly demand “efficiencies” from their facilities, which invariably means reducing the number of nurses, which invariably reduces care, which means more injuries, illness… and deaths. As one nursing expert rightly says, “It’s criminal.”But it’s not against the law, since the industry’s lobbying front – a major donor to congressional campaigns – effectively writes the laws, which allows corporate hustlers to provide only one nurse on duty, no matter how many patients are in the facility. When a humane nurse-staffing requirement was proposed last year, the lobby group furiously opposed it… and congress dutifully bowed to industry profits over grandma’s decent end-time. After all, granny doesn’t make campaign donations.So, as a health policy analyst bluntly puts it, “The only kind of groups that seem to be interested in investing in nursing homes are bad actors.” To help push for better, contact TheConsumerVoice.org.
Please be my Valentine!That is not only a warm, sweet, sometimes romantic sentiment people express in mid-February on a frilly, red card. It’s also the name of a third-century saint who literally lost his head, a ninth-century pope whose reign lasted only 40 days, three Roman emperors, a very good Mexican hot sauce… and a tiny town in Texas.That town has a genuinely sweet story to tell and a unique role to play in the sending of thousands of Valentine’s Day sentiments to people around the world. Valentine, Texas, population 217, was founded by the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1880s and reportedly was named for one of the corporation’s big shareholders. Nothing romantic about that.But in recent years, would-be cupids have turned the town’s name and – believe it or not – its one-room post office into a center of affectionate expression. What happened is that romantics from distant places began to batch-up their pre-addressed, stamped Valentines and zip them to this postal outpost way out on the Texas-Mexico border. Why? Because, to give their sentimental missives extra oomph, they wanted them to bear the special touch of being mailed from an actual place named Valentine.The greatest thing about our public postal workers is that they literally deliver, and the Valentine branch goes the extra mile to provide this loving gesture – at no extra charge. Ismelda Ornelas, Postmaster of the 79854 office, handstamps each envelope herself. Indeed, the Valentine post office is now officially designated the “Love Station.” Moreover, the local school district holds an annual art contest among students to design each year’s Valentine postmark, which is then stamped on each envelope.See, while the media tells us our world is going to hell, here’s another grassroots example of loving, creative people going the other way. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Why would anyone believe anything that a big corporation tells us?Corporate powers use lies as a core element of their business strategy. I’m not even counting the tsunami of polished, poll-tested lies they call “advertising.” Rather, I mean their secret perversions of facts to hide the deadly harms they and their products cause, all pushed by top executives and elite investors in cynical efforts to keep profiteering at the expense of customers and society at large. Pharmaceutical price-gougers, Wall Street bankers, tobacco giants, gun makers, and pesticide peddlers are notorious examples – but none can top the perfidy and raw greed of Big Oil.For example, a new report reveals that Exxon Mobil’s executives not only were aware that their petro-products might soon lead to catastrophic climate change, but their own scientific analysts had proven it beyond a doubt – and told them so in 1977! Indeed, Exxon’s internal findings turn out to have been much more accurate and damning than the warnings issued by government scientists and officials.So, did Exxon’s executive hierarchy meet the scientific and ethical challenge presented to them? No. The simply lied to everyone – Congress, the media, the people. In 1999, CEO Lee Raymond tried to BS his way past the truth, snorting that global warming projections “are based on completely unproven climate models, or more often, on sheer speculation.” Exxon’s contemptable dishonesty continues to pour out of corporate headquarters today. Asked recently if Exxon has misled the public about looming climate danger from its fossil fuel profiteering, current CEO Darren Woods proclaimed that the corporation’s previous lies were “entirely consistent” with the scientific consensus of the time.Obviously, that’s another flagrant lie, which is entirely consistent with the corporation’s profiteering model. And don’t forget, CEOs are lavishly-paid liars – Woods pockets $23 million a year to prevaricate-for-profit.
People are baffled by the surreal saga of George Santos, the bizarre Republican congress critter who is a bottomless sink hole of lies. How could he think that he, a highly visible public figure, could get away with such blatant fabrications?Perhaps he thought he was a corporation.After all, these multibillion-dollar brand-name outfits routinely lie about who they really are. Crass polluters shamelessly run PR campaigns claiming to be environmentalists, price gougers pose as consumer champions, and economic downsizers glorify themselves as visionary creators. They gild their resumés for their own profit… and they get away with it. So George might’ve thought: I’ll follow the corporate model – just make stuff up.Like soulless tobacco executives do. For decades, they killed millions of people for profit, flat-out lying that nicotine was not addictive, that their cancer-sticks were not deadly, and that they did not target their ads to children in order to hook them early. But wait – today’s tobacco titans claim to be born-again public health champions! “We have an unprecedented opportunity to move beyond smoking,” said the head honcho of the Phillip Morris brand, asserting that Big Tobacco would henceforth back the public push for a “smoke-free future.”Phillip Morris garnered widespread praise for this bold stand. But it was a deliberate lie. Even as the executive’s lips moved, the tobacco giants were spending billions on lobbyists and PR campaigns to gut state and national proposals to prevent addiction and actually lead to a smoke-free future.Yes, we should be outraged that Santos, a flagrant political fake, has swindled his way into Congress, and he should be ousted. But what will Congress do about the far more destructive corporate deceivers who are George Santos’ role models? Their lies kill people, yet they’re still welcome in the halls of Congress.
An old political saying notes that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. However, given the proliferation of today’s goofball culture wars and fanatical right-wing phobias, that truism should be updated to say: Evil swarms when power-hungry leaders unleash the crazies.Which brings us to the US House of Representatives, now led by a run-of-the-mill corporate Republican, Kevin McCarthy. He’s always been a crassly-ambitious political climber untethered to any moral principle larger than his own ego, so he’s not trusted, even by GOP lawmakers. Indeed, in an almost-comical public spectacle, it took four days and 15 rounds of voting in January before Kevin cut enough desperate deals to get the slimmest majority of his own Republican colleagues to make him speaker of the House.To squeak out his win, though, he had to hand big chunks of his official power to a gaggle of extremist, far-right-wing legislators who are – in a word – BONKERS. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and other members of the GOP’s Kooky Kaucus promote unhinged QAnon conspiracy theories, warn that Jews are firing lasers from outer space to start wildfires, lionize Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler, call for the execution of Democratic leaders, and insist that the government is staging school shootings as an excuse to outlaw guns.Okay, they’re nuts. And politics makes strange bedfellows. But McCarthy has not just climbed into bed with them, he’s snuggling up tightly, naming them to powerful committees, publicly legitimizing their screwballism, and intentionally bringing the evil of bigotry, intolerance, and even fascism in from the fringe of politics – to sit in the seat of power.That’s not merely ridiculous and shameful, it’s dangerous. Evil swarms whenever so-called leaders meekly give permission for crazies to use government power to rule over us.
Big news from Congressional Republicans: After years of failing to unearth any proof that America’s elections are corrupted by flagrant cases of voter fraud, the GOP has now found a whopper!Unfortunately for the Party’s voter integrity police, though, what they’ve uncovered is not some nefarious Democratic plot, but a scheme of mass deception by one of their own congress critters: George Santos. Last November, he effectively stole a New York City congressional seat.How? By making himself up. Santos invented a fictional “George” that hid his criminal record and touted an amazing storybook past he never lived. No, he is not Jewish, his grandparents were not Holocaust survivors, he was not a volleyball star at a prestigious college he never even attended, he was not a renowned Wall Street banker (though he did help run a Florida Ponzi scheme), he was not a New York City real estate baron, and the mystery money that financed his campaign apparently came from nowhere.Naturally, when Congress’ fraud-busting Republican leaders learned that this hyper-fraudster came from their own ranks, they promptly expelled him. Ha-ha-ha! Just kidding. Instead, Kevin McCarthy, the GOP’s unscrupulous congressional leader, has fully embraced this defrauder as an honorable member of his legislative team, sanctimoniously declaring: “The voters elected [Santos] to serve.” That makes Kevin even more dishonest than George. One, the people did not elect Santos, but voted for the caricature he concocted to fool them. Two, McCarthy doesn’t give a damn about the integrity of elections – he’s only clinging to George because his own support in the House is so iffy that he needs Santos’ vote to save his own worthless political hide.Santos is a pathetic congenital liar. But McCarthy is worse – a truly-disgusting, self-serving political hack. And neither one should be in public office.
High-dollar corporate executives and Wall Street bankers keep telling us that it’s lonely at the top. Well, they should try toiling at the bottom of America’s pay scale.The radical rise of inequality in our society is a function of the vast political inequality separating the working class from the power structure. The elite rich have many friends in high places paying close attention to their needs, but the further one tumbles down the economic ladder the lonelier you are when your interests conflict with the bosses and big shots. As Ray Charles sang, “Them that’s got is them that gets.”Consider waiters, bartenders, and other restaurant workers. Generally these jobs are poorly paid and routinely abusive, yet lawmakers mostly ignore all that, cozying up to the abusers, because... well, they’re rich and politically connected. As a result, most of today’s restaurant workers are paid a sub-minimum wage that was set 32 years ago at $2.13 an hour! That’s not a wage, it’s an insult. Yet most lawmakers refuse to raise it, bowing to the piles of campaign cash they get through a lobbying front called the National Restaurant Association, dominated by multibillion-dollar food chains.Worse, in the past decade, this consortium of greedy wage suppressors even devised a diabolical scheme to make restaurant workers pay for the industry’s lobbying campaigns to hold down wages! The Association bought an outfit that provides hokey food safety training to workers, then it lobbied to get California, Florida, Illinois, Texas, and other states to require that all employees not only undergo the silly on-line training course, but also making them pay $15 each for the training.Guess what? NRA then uses those worker training fees to fund its lobbying efforts that let restaurants pay poverty wages. And that, kids, is how inequality happens.
I don’t usually cover sob stories, but this one is so touching it might make you cry. Or throw up.It’s about some workers who toiled all last year in the caverns of New York City, only to find at year’s end that their pay was being cut by up to 50 percent. Actually, it’s not their salaries that were cut – but their bonuses. You see, these are Wall Street investment bankers whose annual salaries total only a few hundred-thousand-dollars each (poor babies), but they always expect to double or triple that in bonus money. After all, theirs is a dirty job – they engineer multibillion-dollar corporate mergers that increase monopoly power, eliminate the jobs of thousands of regular workers, and further enrich the superrich. It’s devilish work – hence the big bonus payouts to keep them doing it.Last year, though, the number of whopper deals plummeted, the revenues of Wall Street investment banks sank… and, oh, how sad it was to hear the wails of so many poor Wall Street millionaires whose bonuses were whacked.See, I told you it was a sob story.But worse than the loss of money for these hard-hit financial toilers is the tragic crimping of their lifestyle. The New York Times reports, for example, that Wall Street’s bonus bust has already resulted in fewer of these dealmakers buying hundred-thousand-dollar luxury cars this year. Can you imagine the pain of that? The dinging of annual bonuses is even stirring radical sentiments among these restive rich workers – in one survey of financial professionals, 72 percent said they would consider quitting if their bank cut their bonus.Now there’s an enticing new source of labor activism for unions that’re organizing at Starbucks, Amazon, McDonald’s, etc. Why not a Wall Street banker union? Solidarity forever, brothers and sisters!
Growing up, I absorbed a lot of values from my Ol’ Texas Daddy – a strong commitment to the Common Good, a healthy work ethic, and a lively sense of humor. But one thing about him I’ve rejected: His determination to have a perfect yard of thick, verdant, St. Augustine grass.Lord, how he worked at it – laying sod, (watering), fertilizing, (watering), weeding, (watering), spreading pesticides, (watering), mowing… (more watering). But it was too hot, too dry, too infested with blight, bugs, slugs, and such. He was up against Texas nature, and he just couldn’t win.So, I’ve gone in the opposite direction – slowly nurturing a natural yard of native trees, drought-tolerant plants, and a general live-with-nature ethic in my little landscape. I’m hardly alone in this rejection of the uniform “green grass imperative.” A spontaneous yard rebellion is taking hold across our country as more and more households, neighborhoods, businesses, etc. shift to a nature-friendly approach. A particularly encouraging push for change is coming from school kids – elementary level through college – who’re appalled by the poisoning of our globe and organizing locally to do something that both makes a difference and makes a statement. One exemplary channel for their activism is a student movement called Re:wild Your Campus.Of course, some people consider wild yards to be scruffy, ugly… unruly. That’s their choice, but some also insist that tidy grass lawns must be everyone’s choice. So they proclaim themselves to be the yard police, demanding that cities and homeowner associations make green-grass uniformity the law, filing busybody lawsuits and running right-wing social media campaigns targeting people and groups that disobey.These attacks are silly because... well, they are silly, and also because they’re attacking the future, which is nearly always a loser strategy. To work for yard sanity and choice, go to Rewild.org.
Sometimes, little things can be a big deal. For example, in considering ways to help protect Mother Earth from global environmental rampages by us humans, look out your window.In many cities and most suburbs, chances are you’re looking at a lawn – a grass-carpeted yard that looks almost the same as the one next door, the one next to it, etc. Some see a lush expanse of green grass as the ultimate in landscaping beauty, and some even consider a well-manicured lawn to be a measure of one’s moral character.Beauty and piety aside, though, the spread and intensification of “lawn culture” has become an environmental extravagance that is already unsustainable in whole sections of our country, and it adds up to a steadily-increasing burden on Earth’s essential resources. Grass itself is natural, but keeping it alive across thousands of square miles is not, for it requires a deluge of chemicals and endless rivers of water applied again and again, yard after yard, trying to keep these plots green. And – O, the irony! – their “green” includes eliminating bees, butterflies… and, well, nature. One statistic tells the tale: Americans use more than 10 times more poison per acre than all of America’s farmers use on their crops.Just glance around you, and you’ll see the grass lawn imperative at work throughout your community – it surrounds local schools, “greens-up” corporate complexes, spreads across college campuses, forms miles of golf courses, etc.This is not a diatribe against grassy plots, which can be natural joys. But let’s get real, get creative, and get in touch with the full balance and beauty of nature. You can promote ground cover sanity right where you live with native plants, xeriscaping, organic methods, rain gardens, and “re-wilding” your yard with things like prairie grass. For help, go to Rewild.org/Rewild-Your-Life.
As many of its own members privately admit, Congress has become a pay-to-play lawmaking casino – closed to commoners, but offering full-service access to corporate powers.But there’s another government entity that’s even more aloof from workaday people – and it has become a handmaiden to the corporate elites trying to increase their dominance over us: The Supreme Court. The six-member, right-wing majority on this secretive powerhouse now routinely vetoes efforts by workers, environmentalists, students, local officials, voters, and all others who try to rein in corporate greed and abuses.Appointed for lifetime terms, this autocratic tribune takes pride in being sealed off from democracy, even bragging that they make rulings without being influenced by special interests. But wait – in make-up and ideology, today’s court majority is a special interest, for it consists of corporate and right-wing lawyers who’ve obtained their wealth and position by loyally serving corporate power. And far from now being isolated from moneyed elites, the judges regularly socialize with them and attend their closed-door political meetings.There’s even a special little club, called The Supreme Court Historical Society, that frequently reveals the cozy, symbiotic relationship that exists between today’s judicial and corporate cliques. Such giants as Chevron, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, and Home Depot pay millions of dollars to this clubby society, gaining notice by and the appreciation of the supremes. And, yes, these special interest gifts to the court are gratefully accepted, even when the corporations have active cases before the court, seeking favorable rulings from the very judges they’re glad-handing at Society soirees.Of course, the judges insist there’s no conflict of interest because this access to them is “open to all.” Sure – all who can pay $25,000 and up to get inside! Yet the clueless judges wonder why their credibility is in the ditch.
Question: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg? Answer: Four – calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it one.Likewise, calling a small group of partisan lawyers a “supreme” court doesn’t make it one. There’s nothing supreme about the six-pack of far-right-wing political activists who are presently soiling our people’s ideals of justice by proclaiming their own anti-democratic biases to be the law of the land. On issues of economic fairness, women’s rights, racial justice, corporate supremacy, environmental protection, theocratic rule, and other fundamentals, these unelected, black-robed extremists are imposing an illegitimate elitist agenda on America that the people do not want and ultimately will not tolerate.Indeed, the imperiousness of the six ruling judges has already caused the court’s public approval rating to plummet, to a mere 38 percent, an historic low that ranks down there with Trump, and threatens to go as low as Congress.This has led to a flurry of officials attesting to the honesty and political impartiality of the reigning supremes. Unfortunately for the court, these ardent defenders were the six culprits themselves.The “integrity of the judiciary is in my bones,” pontificated Neil Gorsuch, who now stands accused of having lied to senators to win his lifetime appointment.“[We are not] a bunch of partisan hacks,” wailed Amy Coney Barrett, a partisan extremist jammed onto the court in a partisan ploy by Trump in the last few hours of his presidency.“Judges are not politicians,” protested John Roberts, who became Chief Justice because he was a rabid political lawyer who pushed the Supreme Court in 2000 to reject the rights of voters and install George W. Bush as president.Remember, in America, The People are supreme! We don’t have to accept rule by an illegitimate court. For reform, go to FixTheCourt.com.
Sometimes, stupid political ideas beget even stupider political tactics.For example, a faction of right-wing Republicans want to stop public discussion and actions involving two ideas they hate: (1) racism always has been and still is a systemic problem in American society; and (2) LGBTQ people are a normal and welcome part of... well, of us – America’s richly diverse society.Aside from the raw ignorance behind the GOP’s denial of these realities, consider the boneheadedness of their current campaign to impose their bigotry on America: Book banning. At least 50 extremist groups are roaming from city to city, funded by deep pocket right-wingers like the Koch brothers’ political network, to demand that books they don’t like be removed from schools and libraries. Worse, their open assault on knowledge and our freedom to read includes the nasty tactic of demonizing and threatening librarians who resist their dictates. Librarians! As a group, these truly helpful people are a national treasure, serving the common good – yet they’re getting physical threats and being fired by these little right-wing mobs.The good news is that their surreptitious attacks are being exposed, and local folks are rising up against the book banners and partisan thugs spreading their ignorance and usurping people’s freedom to learn. For example, when two high school girls in Leander, Texas, asked to check out a few books from their library, they were stunned to learn that the school district had banned all the titles they requested. Students had not been informed of this censorship much less consulted. Rather than whine, the two feisty girls organized the Banned Book Club in their school, reading “prohibited” titles as a group, then meeting twice a month to discuss the books, including the ban.This is Jim Hightower saying... To get more information and to fight this right-wing repression, contact American Library Association: ala.org.
Excuse me for using explicit language here, but it seems to me that today’s most vulgar expression of right-wing extremist dogma is its unhealthy obsession with banning books. It’s a political perversion that, ironically, its participants usually rationalize by claiming they are “battling vulgarity.”And, boy, are they hot to trot! There’s a surge of them these days, because stripping books out of schools and public libraries has become a favorite way for autocratic right-wingers to stimulate their supporters’ political passion for engaging in culture wars against their neighbors... and common sense.Until recently, there were only a couple of hundred isolated book challenges a year in our entire country, and local school boards and city councils generally handled them properly – without starting an uncivil war. But now, attempted book bans are erupting everywhere, orchestrated by a few extremist political groups and a flock of opportunistic Republican politicians. PEN, a nonprofit watchdog that monitors these attacks on our freedom of expression, has documented 2,532 copycat campaigns across America in the past year to ban more than 1,600 works from our schools. They’ve even targeted the Bible!They uniformly assert that they are defending “parental rights” and protecting children from “sensitive materials” that raise topics like slavery and sexual identities. Bovine excrement. First, their naked censorship is just a power play to impose their hang-ups on you and your children. In a recent poll, 71 percent of Americans oppose these partisan efforts to ban library books in the name of “protecting” young people. Second, have these political nannies not heard of the Internet? I can assure them that most of their own children already know about the truths these so-called adults are trying to censor.Nothing is so foolish – or wrong – as trying to put blinders on young people’s natural curiosity.
There’s a new “ism” creeping into America’s vocabulary… and into our social order: Bossism.Being a boss can merely mean you’re in charge – but in this age of glaring inequality and autocratic corporate rule, bossing implies being overbearing, tyrannical… a jerk. Amazingly, then, it’s precisely those detestable qualities that are drawing a group of uber-rich, Silicon Valley executives and financiers into an emerging cult of bossism. These high-tech elites are united in a belief that America’s workers have become too powerful, too uppity, and too “woke,” so the geniuses at the top of the corporate totem pole are unifying to impose a new era of harsh labor policies that’ll “show em who’s boss.”It’s the Revolt of Pampered Plutocrats against the democratic activism of people who do the creative and physical work that make the bosses ridiculously rich. Bossism’s top-down arrogance is incredibly narcissistic, managerially disastrous, and stupid. A measure of the tech execs’ stupidity is that they’ve embraced the most thuggish boss in the land as their idol and movement symbol: Elon Musk. Yes, the petty and petulant crybaby billionaire who botched his takeover of Twitter, then ham-handedly devastated its workforce by impetuously firing half of them and driving away hundreds more with his spoiled brat, anti-worker antics. He’s made himself such a symbol of brutish bossism that he now gets booed in public!Yet, Silicon Valley’s little Elon Wannabes have chosen him as their poster boy, hoping he will lead America back to a robber baron ethic of iron-fisted honchos who fire at will, dictate rules, and tolerate no dissent from those down below.Their problem, though, is you – the workaday majority who refuse to bow down to the bossism of old. As the defiant blues song puts it, “Big Boss Man, You ain’t so big, You’re just tall, that’s all.”
The craziest political word of the year is “woke,” as in “Don’t be woke!” It’s a command barked by far-right-wing fomenters of culture war and their political toadies.Their intent is to demonize and shut up school teachers, preachers, librarians, historians, musicians, students, websites, business executives, and any sensible human who dares speak (and act on) the truth that racism, sexism, poverty, environmental degradation, and such are systemic blights in America. These pious censors of reality demand that anyone presenting less than a morally pure portrait of our history and society is a traitor whose voice must be suppressed. Indeed, these extremists demand that government act to ban public discussion and awareness of the injustices and prejudices that still shape and disgrace us.The venality of the “Don’t be woke” crowd is fully embodied in the bloated ego of Florida’s autocratic governor, Ron DeSantis, who growls (like Bull Conner segregationists of old) that his state is “where woke goes to die.”That bit of nastiness reminded me of my own woke experience years ago. As a child of the mid-century South, I was raised to accept the racial order and educated in totally segregated White classrooms, mindlessly going along with the blatantly racist system. In high school, though, I was blessed with some honest teachers, I began to read about reality, I watched public authorities on TV brutalizing civil rights protesters, I lucked into attending an integrated state college, I made black friends… and I awoke!Social, economic, and cultural awakenings are what have made America historically significant. A political party screaming “Don’t be woke,” is a party afraid of the people, wanting you, me, and civil society to be asleep, out of it, in dreamland, torpid, inactive... dead. Are they stupid, or do they just hope we are?
Why, you might ask, is there so much labor activism these days? Right-wing Republicans claim it’s the work of union agitators fomenting class warfare. Bovine excrement!Rather, it’s the accumulation of years of actual class warfare waged against America’s workaday majority by avaricious corporate executives. As labor leaders know, unions don’t create organizing drives – bad bosses do. And our economy has become dominated by self-enriching, worker-abusing, bad bosses. So, fed-up working families are now rebelling.Consider the ongoing revolt by railroad workers against the profiteering egos who run America’s monopolistic freight train system, which is dominated by just four giants. Forced to work without contracts since 2019, various rail unions joined this year in demanding reforms and prepared to go on a nationwide strike over abusive working conditions.With a strike date looming in November, antsy corporations were close to agreeing to a contract. But in a last-minute act of raw greed, the bosses rejected a key worker demand that they get a few days of paid time off for family illnesses or to see a doctor! This was purely vindictive bossism, for the monopolists are rolling in cash, hauling off $21 billion in profits this year alone, Plus, the same honchos squawking that workers aren’t worthy of the basic human need for sick leave were drawing up to $20 million each in personal pay, while also getting luxury health care benefits and extensive time off with full pay.Yet, Joe Biden and the Congress caved in to the railway bosses, arbitrarily forcing an “agreement” on the unions that provides only one day a year of paid sick leave for America’s essential rail workers. One day! The message is clear: Don’t count on the bosses or Bidens – workers must build a new politics with environmentalists, farmers, consumers, and other “outsiders.”
'Tis the season of gift giving – including Time magazine handing out its somewhat pompous “Person of the Year” award.My beef with this gift is that it perpetuates the fallacy that social progress comes from some wondrous individual. It diminishes the more-inspiring fact that progress (and even the “greatness” of any one person) comes from the extended family – the group, the movement, the many – who sustain the alleged Person of the Year. It’s in that democratic spirit, then, that I suggest 2022 as THE YEAR OF THE WORKERS.Hardly a week has gone by without another group of employees daring to rise up here, there, and everywhere to fight for union representation, family-sustaining wages, basic health care, rational work schedules, safe workplaces … and, well, respect for the fundamental American values of fairness and justice. Grassroots organizing has swept across most economic sectors this year, from teaching to railroads, but also in corporate workplaces previously assumed to be un-unionizable, like Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, Dollar General, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, and Uber.What makes this rebellion even more worthy of recognition is that it signifies a tectonic democratic shift in our nation’s zeitgeist. For half a century, America’s dominant social/economic ethic has empowered elite corporate bosses to rule, decreeing that the mass of people who actually produce goods and services must obey… or else.But what if very large numbers of non-elites suddenly started choosing “or else” – saying “We’re not going to take it anymore… we demand fairness, or we quit”? That’s what ordinary workers have done in 2022, providing new possibilities for creating a fairer, more dynamic society.No one person could possibly have done this. So, with apologies to the “deciders” of Time magazine, I designate this as “The Year (maybe the Era) of The Workers.”
If you sometimes wonder whether Congress is obtuse, narcissistic, or just stupid, Sen. Joe Manchin is evidence that the answer is: Yes.Plus, these days, the West Virginia corporate Democrat is mad – in both senses of the word. First, he’s mad at Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Raul Grijalva, Ro Khanna, and other gutsy progressive members of the US House. They rose up against their own Party leaders this month to kill Manchin’s corrupt, backdoor effort to force his massive Mountain Valley Pipeline project down the throats of rural and small-town people in his own state. Local people have repeatedly defeated this foul fossil fuel boondoggle, but their senator kept conniving with industry lobbyists and congressional leaders to revive it, trying to stiff the public will.His latest gambit was to hide the MVP scam in the humongous $850 billion military budget, hoping no one would notice. But Jayapal, Grijalva, and a few other progressive leaders did notice… and they had the chutzpa and the votes to strip it out of the Pentagon bill.This drove the plutocratic senator from being mad (as in angry) to going mad (as in nutty). The defeat of his political scheme, he wailed, was the result of “toxic tribal politics,” adding that “This is why the American people hate politics in in Washington.”Get a grip, Joe! You’re the one in Washington sneaking around to help the superrich corporate tribe rig government rules to extract more profit from actual toxic contamination of people, whole communities, and Mother Nature. You, and your corrupt cohorts, are why millions of Americans hate Washington politics.Oh, by the way senator, if you really think toxic gas pipelines are essential for America’s energy future– why don’t you and your industry funders run some under your neighborhoods for a change?
Dick Tuck, a political prankster who made a satirical run for public office years ago, got less than 10 percent of the vote. Conceding defeat, he quipped, “The people have spoken, the bastards.”Tuck’s jab at voters was in jest, but it exposed an awkward political truth: While people generally have little respect for today’s elected officials, many officials harbor even less regard for The People they supposedly serve.Exhibit A: Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. A multi-millionaire coal baron, Manchin is devoted to serving the machinations of profiteering fossil fuel corporations, so he doesn’t even disguise his disdain for “busybodies” (unions, town leaders, nature defenders, farmers, climate activists, et al) who dare stand up to any God-awful scheme of plunder and pollution the barons dream up.In the last year, Joe’s been especially POed at thousands of commoners who’ve blocked his latest political pipe dream – the 300-mile-long Mountain Valley Pipeline. Pushed by a consortium of huge utilities, it would pump toxic fracked gas through watersheds, towns, farms, etc. in three states for export abroad. “NO!” shouted locals, who spent years exposing the destruction MVP posed, successfully denying permits to build the thing. The people won!Then, thanks to Joe, they lost. Manchin cut a secret dirty deal with top Democrats, including Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to pass a special federal requirement that the MVP be built – the people be damned. Worse, the cabal agreed to slip it into law without Congress even voting on it.But hold it – progressives in Congress rallied grassroots people all across the country to rebel against the raw stench of this arrogant, autocratic power play. In October, they defeated it, forcing Manchin into a Dick Tuck moment, blasting his own constituents as radical bastards for opposing his pipe dream.
This country needs highway signs on every interstate to caution the public about an extreme danger that lies ahead – “WARNING: GENIUSES AT WORK!”The danger comes from multibillionaire capitalists who proclaim themselves the crypto-meta wunderkinds of high tech. They say their class of high-wealth geniuses are the ones to save civilization. Among these “saviors” is Elon Musk, who’s so brilliant he’s on the verge of losing the $44 billion he stupidly paid for his egomaniacal takeover of Twitter – a colossal business blunder that, in a plutocratic panic, he compounded by impetuously firing half of Twitter’s employees.Granted that civilization could use a good dose of smarts, given our acceleration of climate change, spread of inequality, etc. But Elon Musk?Forget savior, his scheme for saving “the future of our species” is, as usual, solely to glorify himself. Musk is a promoter of an elite cult of uber-rich “pronatalists.” They smugly assert that their enormous wealth is derived from their equally enormous IQs, making them the ones to seize “control of human evolution.”How? By having large herds of babies – each of which would be certified as “genetically superior” humans qualified to rule society, since… well, their parents are rich! Musk and other techie money lords in this prenatal movement actually see themselves as heroic for being willing to sacrifice their sperm and eggs for civilization, replicating themselves as much as possible. Indeed, each member is urged to pop out 8 to 14 babies in their lifetimes (Musk already has 10 children by three different women). Each child is then raised in the cult’s elitist doctrine, requiring them to produce their own large litters of Little Elons. In just a few generations, they calculate this mass breeding of elites will create enough rich geniuses to rule over society... and save civilization.But who’ll save us from them?
Here’s an interesting fact: Dinosaurs dominated Earth for 165 million years – and they assumed they always would.Which brings us to... well, us. We bipedal, far-ranging, Homo sapien primates have certainly established our dominance over modern-day Mother Earth. And even though our reign has only lasted about 200,000 years, we 21st Century humans grandly assume that we’re ordained by the gods to rule ad infinitum over our planet (and beyond).But – oops! – unfortunately we’ve based our preeminence on the unsustainable consumption of our domain, rather than on stewardship for the ages. Under the global misguidance of corporate, political, religious, academic, and other Powers That Be, our large-brained species has ended up making an awful mess of the nest we inherited. Elite plunderers and profiteers have imposed an ethic of greed, inequality, and even inhumanity that is devouring everything from Earth’s climate to our basic human values of fairness and justice.Leading this careless assault is a clique of arrogant and abusive high-tech gabillionaires who consider themselves geniuses because, well… they’re rich! Consider Elon Musk, presently the richest of the world’s richest, who postures as an uber-brained deep thinker, social engineer, and whirling corporate dervish. He presently runs not one, but three mega-corps (Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX) while also rewriting the rules of free speech, telling American’s how to vote, and claiming he’ll save humanity by colonizing Mars.But wait – strip away the hype, and Musk is just another self-serving plutocratic ravager, a cartoonish robber baron whose “genius” lies in (1) taking credit (and profit) from other people, (2) demanding subsidies and special breaks from government, (3) cheating workers and customers, and (4) suing everyone for his failures.If billionaire humanoids like Elon really wanted to save us from extinction, they should do the honorable thing... by going first.
Breaking news: After years of failed Republican efforts to uncover any proof of widespread voter fraud by Democrats, Republican Governor Ron “Tough Guy” DeSantis of Florida has found not one, but 20 ineligible people casting ballots!
Like Donald Trump and a gaggle of other GOP governors, DeSantis has used the phony bugaboo of an illegal voting epidemic as a political ploy to keep true believers believing. They spend millions of taxpayer dollars on partisan wild goose chases, and DeSantis even created a new police bureaucracy, the “Office of Election Crimes,” to snoop on voters. It was all just silly political nastiness, but then – aha! –Ron’s dragnet scooped up 20 of the diabolical culprits. Vindication!
Who were they? All are former convicts who had previously been stripped of their right to vote, but each one unwittingly cast ballots in 2020, wrongly believing that their rights had been restored after serving their time. Who cares what they thought, bellowed the bullish governor? He trashed them as “election criminals” (conveniently ignoring their Constitutional right to be presumed innocent unless convicted by a jury).
Well, gosh, why did all 20 think they could vote? Because each one had properly submitted voter registration applications that went to DeSantis’ state agency responsible for determining eligibility. But – oops – Ron’s own administration boo-booed, erroneously authorizing all 20 to get official voter ID cards. In short, the governor himself effectively told them they could vote – then he had them arrested and publicly condemned for doing so!
This self-serving political thug now wants to be our next president, even claiming in a PR video this month that God has chosen him to rule because he’s “a fighter.” But – hello – Saint Ron fights the people, rather than fighting for them. He’s a bully – and there’s nothing godly about that. Nothing presidential either.
This election year has added a new season to our country’s calendar: The silly season.
Not silly as in fun – but as in asinine... and pernicious. Forget any notion that America’s elections should be about lofty ideals, important issues, and real ideas. Instead, right-wing screwballs have turned the GOP into the Goofy Old Party, running campaigns based on frat-boy stunts, horror movie scaremongering, and moronic games of hate-your-neighbor.
For example, the GOP reached a new level of political degradation this year by literally gamifying its obsession with non-existent voter fraud. Party honchos have repeatedly been humiliated by failing to produce any proof of their wild claims that Democrats are running a massive illegal voting operation across America.
So, they’ve turned their snipe hunt into a national game, forming online posses of GOP voter fraud vigilantes who compete to find and out illegal voters. Post the name of an unqualified person supposedly scheming to cast a ballot, and you get two points. Name a group planning to bus illegal voters to the polls – Bingo! – you get 50 points. There are also bonus points if you report someone trying to vote by using the name of their pet or a dead person. Isn’t this fun?
But the funnest part of this “sport” is that you score simply by posting names – no need for any evidence that it’s a real person, much less an illegal voter. What’s the prize? If you get enough points, you get to be called a “master.” Wow, this isn’t just silly... it’s pathetic.
Far worse, though, given the screwball fantasies of today’s right-wing extremists, this “game” is deadly dangerous. Some of the GOP’s vigilante’s say they’ll personally go door to door to get proof of fraudulent voting. What could possibly go wrong with promoting such unhinged confrontational zealotry? Ask Paul Pelosi.
America certainly has an abundance of food (even though many Americans do not), yet we face a momentous choice of whether to pursue a food future rooted in the ethic of sustainable agriCULTURE - or one based on the exploitative ethic of agriINDUSTRY.
What better symbol of agri-industry's vision of "food" than that ubiquitous Thanksgiving bird, the "Butterball" turkey. The Butterball has been hoisted onto our tables by huge advertising budgets and regular promotion payments to supermarkets. The birds themselves have been grotesquely deformed by industrial geneticists, who created breasts so ponderous that the turkeys can't walk, stand up, or even reproduce on their own (thus earning the nickname "dead-end birds'). Adding torture to this intentional deformity, the industry sentences these once-majestic fowl to dismal lives in tiny confinement cages inside the sprawling, steel-and-concrete animal factories that scar America's rural landscape - monuments to greed-based corporate "husbandry."
As the eminent farmer-poet-activist Wendell Berry tells us, eating is a profound political act. It lets you and me vote for the Butterball industrial model or choose to go back to the future of agriculture, which is the art and science of cooperating with, rather than trying to overwhelm, nature. That cooperative ethic is the choice of the remarkable "Good Food Uprising" that has spread across the country in the past 30 years. Now the fastest-growing segment of the food economy, it is creating the alternative model of a local, sustainable, small scale, community-based, organic, humane, healthy, democratic - and tasty! - food system for all.
To take part in the good food movement and find small-scale farmers, artisans, farmers markets, and other resources in your area, visit www.LocalHarvest.org.
Let's talk Turkey!
No, not the Butterball sitting in the Oval Office. I'm talking about the real thing, the big bird, 46 million of which we Americans will devour on this Thanksgiving Day.
It was the Aztecs who first domesticated the gallopavo, but leave it to the Spanish explorers to "foul-up" the bird's origins. They declared it to be related to the peacock – Wrong! They also thought the peacock originated in Turkey – Wrong! And, they thought Turkey was located in Africa – well, you can see the Spanish were pretty confused.
Actually, the origin of Thanksgiving is confused. The popular assumption is that it was first celebrated by the Mayflower immigrants and the Wampanoag natives at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1621. They feasted on venison, furkees (Wampanoag for gobblers) eels, mussels, corn, and beer. But wait, say Virginians, the first precursor to our annual November Food-a-Palooza was not in Massachusetts – the Thanksgiving feast originated down here in Jamestown colony, back in 1608.
Whoa, there, hold your horses, pilgrims. Folks in El Paso, Texas, say it all began way out there in 1598, when Spanish settlers sat down with people of the Piro and Manso tribes, gave thanks, then feasted on roasted duck, geese and fish.
"Ha!" says a Florida group, asserting the very, very first Thanksgiving happened in 1565 when the Spanish settlers of St. Augustine and friends from the Timucuan tribe chowed-down on "cocido" – a stew of salt pork, garbanzo beans and garlic - washing it all down with red wine.
Wherever it began, and whatever the purists claim is "official," Thanksgiving today is as multicultural as America. So let's enjoy! Kick-back, give thanks we're in a country with such ethnic richness, and dive into your turkey rellenos, moo-shu turkey, turkey falafel, barbecued turkey...
America’s political, corporate, and media establishments were cocksure about their prognostications that a powerful “red wave” was about to hit America in this month’s elections. It would sweep Democrats out and push Republicans into office all across America, they exclaimed.
How shocking and embarrassing, then, that their raging wave turned out to be just a little ripple. Republicans ran poorly, and many Democrats ran well. Still, the Dem Party as a whole could’ve done even better if its meek, don’t-rock-the-boat leadership had been gutsier, more progressive, and – yes – more Democratic, in the FDR mold. Well, murmur the Party’s Washington hierarchy, we can’t get too far ahead of the people.
Really? Why not ask the people themselves? That’s the virtue of the “ballot initiative” system. It allows grassroots groups to put issues up for a vote, rather than letting the public agenda be controlled by a clique of lobbyists, legislators, and party-line followers. This year, there were 132 of these initiatives on the ballots in 37 states, and more on local ballots. And vote after vote showed that the people are way ahead of the political insiders in support of strong progressive policies.
By big margins, three states said “to hell with the Republican Supreme Court,” enshrining women’s abortion rights in their state constitutions. South Dakota, supposedly a right-wing bastion, shoved their GOP governor and legislators aside to expand Medicaid health coverage to the state’s low-income families. In bright red Nebraska, nearly 60 percent of voters said yes! To a $15 minimum wage. A big majority in Illinois amended the state constitution to guarantee collective bargaining rights for workers. Seventy percent of New Mexico voters made funding of early childhood education a constitutional requirement.
It’s not easy, but when politicians fail us, We The People can act. For more information go to Ballotpedia.org/Ballot_Measures_overview.
What hit the Republican party on election day was… well, the Republican Party.
Blow number one, of course, was from the party’s president and cult boss, Donald Trump, who wields his narcissism like a political bludgeon. But then Republicans got an even more damaging gut punch from the party’s own Supreme Court majority of six partisan hacks. They chose this election year to assert their personal ideological view that the government should control every woman’s birth decisions. Not popular! Then, like a karate chop to the party’s own neck, its congressional leaders let loose with a pre-election announcement that, if put in charge, the Grand Old Party would go after people’s Social Security and Medicare benefits.
But Republicans also got hit with something beyond their control: A bevy of new, unabashedly-progressive Democratic candidate running on real populist issues that matter to workaday people, backed up by legions of energized grassroots activists. Candidates like Summer Lee, who’ll be the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania. Championed by Working Families Party, Our Revolution, and other little-d democratic groups, she beat back concerted attempts by corporate powers in both major parties that tried to demonize and defeat her, including a last-minute dump of $1 million into her GOP opponent’s campaign by the American-Israeli SuperPAC. Another is Lina Hidalgo, the feisty people’s advocate who is the top county official in Houston, Texas. She faced down a pack of ultrarich oil magnates, developers, and other corporate interests who put up $9 million in a failed effort to boot her.
The Republican Party has put its future on the rutted road of right-wing extremism and corporate sovereignty. Grassroots progressives, however, showed in this election a promising path to democratic rejuvenation: Run aggressive campaigns offering real change from the business-as-usual politics and policies of both parties.
America exists today as a bizarre anomaly – we profess to be an electoral democracy, yet we are ruled by a governmental plutocracy.
One especially gross example of this incongruity is the overwhelming power of big money over the people’s will. By a wide margin, Americans of all political stripes want to ban the distorting force of huge, electoral campaign donations by favor-seeking corporations and ultra-rich elites. Yet… nothing. National and state lawmakers take the plutocratic money and promptly bury democratic reforms that could stop the gusher of corrupt cash.
An analysis of donations in this year’s congressional races shows that this plutocratic perversion of our politics and government has reached absurd levels. Historian Nancy McLean and public interest advocate Frank Clemente have documented that the two main SuperPACs trying to put Republicans in Congress got about half of their $188 million election fund from just 27 billionaires. Also, a corporate front that backs GOP candidates, Club for Growth, got nearly $35 million from only three billionaires. Thanks to years of congressional stonewalling and the steady partisan stacking of our top courts with corporate idealogues, there is essentially no limits on this purchase of lawmakers. Indeed, the biggest donors are even allowed to undermine democracy in secret, not revealing their identity.
The money-dealing in politics translates directly into anti-democratic public policies. Lawmakers elected with this money not only support the billionaires’ special-interest agenda (which the people don’t want), but also are fierce opponents of any reforms to increase voter participation in our governing process (which people do want).
That’s why, for example, efforts to guarantee every eligible American a Constitutional right to vote have not moved forward in Congress – even though the great majority of people favor it. It’s a simple political equation: Plutocratic money quashes democratic will, producing plutocratic public policies.
Every election day, we’re told “Go Vote!” Your vote is sacred they tell us, it’s your Constitutional right.
Well... yes to voting, but most people (including most politicians) would be astonished to learn that America’s Constitution contains no declaration that We The People have a right to vote! In the founding document of our democratic republic, voting is mentioned 37 times, but none of them embrace access to the ballot as a fundamental right.
This is no oversight, for most of the founders of the 1780s were unabashed plutocrats who wanted suffrage restricted to White, male property owners, fencing out the “democratic rabble.” James Madison himself, author of the Bill of Rights, insisted that only the wealthy be allowed to vote, calling them “the safest repositories of republican liberty.” He warned that poorer classes could be swayed by populist anger at the propertied elites.
Among the prominent founders, only Benjamin Franklin had the temerity to dissent from Madison’s institutionalization of plutocratic rule, pointing out that the vast majority of those who had fought, bled, and died to establish the new nation were landless commoners. He also rudely noted that the wealthy were at least as corruptible as the poorest of the poor, so disenfranchising the masses would do nothing to improve a government’s virtue.
Slowly, painfully, generations of grassroots commoners have inched open the American ballot box to more of us, extending the legal possibilities of democratic participation. But as we see in this year’s blatant, violent, mob efforts by the right-wing minority to shut out millions of legitimate voters, the few can still overrule the many in America.
Meanwhile, bills calling for a Constitutional Amendment to affirm every citizen’s fundament right to cast a ballot have been introduced in Congress for years. None have even been given a hearing, much less a vote.
Although we haven’t even gotten through this year’s midterm congressional elections, it’s still not too early to start examining some of the characters who hope you’ll make them president in 2024.
I know, you don’t want to… but we must. That’s because corporate elites have already chosen their favorites, and they intend to use massive sums of money, lies, more money, PR slickum, and even more money to slide their toady into the Oval Office, hoping you don’t discover until it’s too late that their chosen one really is a toad.
Take Ron DeSantis. The GOP’s far-right, power hungry, narcissistic Florida governor promises to be the next Donald Trump – only more effective and not as nice. For example, his favorite gubernatorial hobby is the Orwellian practice of monitoring and censoring people’s speech and thoughts, culling out ideas he deems objectionable.
“Don’t Say Gay,” is his most infamous dictate to the state’s teachers, but he has also outlawed any teachings that might “denigrate the Founding Fathers.” Nor will he tolerate the study of institutional racism in America. Indeed, he has even mandated that social studies textbooks (Get this!) must not include concepts of social justice. Ron adamantly opposes what right-wingers call a “woke” society – he wants one that’s asleep.
Sound asleep. He recently rallied his right-wing cadre to ban some math textbooks. Yes, Math! They screech that some real-life topics like wage disparities are being used to make math problems relevant to today’s students – so it was Fahrenheit 451 for those books. Thus far, DeSantis’ censorship binge has nixed 42 math books for “incorporat[ing] prohibited topics.”
Imagine what he could ban as president! Did I mention that DeSantis is also forming his own gubernatorial military force – a state army he can deploy in “emergencies”? What’s an emergency? He says he’ll decide.
How about Ron DeSantis? The Florida governor is the new darling of the right-wing media, funders, and other establishment powers who’re pushing him to be your next president.
“Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party,” gushed one arch-conservative media maven. That’s odd, since what characterizes Ron’s tenure (and is causing a collective swoon for him within the rightist hierarchy) is his Big Government authoritarianism. Just yesterday, these same so-called conservatives said such use of government power was evil. But here comes DeSantis, who puts the bull in bully – bellowing “culture war” hooey, demonizing immigrants, fabricating claims of voter fraud, promoting Covid lies, and so forth. Then he imperiously asserts government power to bully local communities, workers, the poor, Florida’s environment, truth, fairness, honesty, and democracy.
Consider one of his recent maneuvers to overturn the people’s democratic will. Like most other Republican-run states, DeSantis’s Florida keeps trying to block African-Americans from the polls. In 2018, however, Floridians themselves rebuked the suppressors by approving a ballot measure to expand the electorate. A whopping 65% said YES to eliminating a vindictive lifelong ban on voting by ex-felons – people who had served their time. This long overdue measure of simple justice (approved, in fact, by a much bigger margin of voters than DeSantis got that year) re-enfranchised about 1.4 million former felons.
But wait – DeSantis had old Jim Crow up his sleeve! In 2019, he rammed a technical gotcha into state law, preventing former felons from voting until they pay in full all court fines (many arbitrarily and unfairly assessed years ago for things like marijuana possession). The fines can run thousands of dollars, so DeSantis’ new law created a partisan poll tax to price a big percentage of these newly eligible voters out of democratic participation.
Remember, he’s the “new” Republican Party.
Perhaps you remember Sen. Barry Goldwater, the GOP’s fringy, far-right-wing 1964 presidential nominee who famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Today, however, the core of the Republicans Party has gone so far beyond the fringe that they would boo Goldwater’s right-wingism as insufficiently rabid. Instead, their new rallying cry is: “Nuttiness in the defense of extremism is no vice.”
The GOP’s mainline officialdom now proclaim themselves The Party of Extremism. They are openly embracing The Crazy, including conspiracy theorists, neo-confederates, and Q-Anon cultists, hoping to harness the fanatical horsepower of these antidemocratic groups to the party’s true purpose of entrenching the supremacy of corporate and moneyed elites.
Now, this extremism is about to erupt in the GOP’s presidential primary, for a whole covey of these cooing right-wingers have fantasies of taking the groups’ radical agenda to the White House. All of them are trying to out-extreme each other with raw meat bigotry and autocratic posturing, but two wannabes have emerged as both the most bullish and bullying: Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida.
For months, these big state governors have been locked in a far-right kook-off including outlawing free speech, banning books, viciously attacking immigrants, preempting local elections and governments, and denying health care to poor people. Bear in mind that Abbott and DeSantis are not merely pontificating, posturing, and promising what they might do in the White House–as governors they’re actually practicing it right now!
I don’t know if Abbott and DeSantis are the worst that the GOP will try to put in the Oval Office in 2024, but please pay attention now, for today’s Republican elites intend to pull our democracy down into the plutocratic, autocratic, and theocratic maelstrom they are creating.
In the 1990s, renowned Texas progressive writer Molly Ivins regaled (and appalled) readers with her reports on the tragicomic awfulness of George W. Bush’s two terms as Texas’ governor. His tenure was notable for his deep ignorance, frat-boy arrogance, and flagrant servility to corporate interests. But those very qualities made America’s moneyed powers decide that–Wow!– he’d make a dandy president! Molly warned that this was madness, but in the 2000 race, W’s patrons stuffed him with money, buffed him up with PR Shinola, pulled off a post-election political heist… and squeegeed him, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and that whole regime of horrors into office.
Americans soon began expressing astonishment at how shallow, imperious, and dangerous Bush & Company were proving to be, leading Molly to say: “Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.”
Don’t look now, but another Texas gubernatorial goober, named Greg Abbott, is coming at you, insisting he should be your next president. Sadly, Molly is gone, but I think I can speak for her on this matter of national import: Hell No!
Excuse the redundancy here, but right-wing extremism has become extremely extreme, and Abbott is vying to be the “extremiest” of all. A clue to his loopiness is his vituperative anti-abortion absolutism, forcing victims of rape to give birth to their rapists’ spawn. Not a problem, proclaimed Abbott, for he’s the Lone Star Wizard. He declared that he intends to go out and arrest all rapists – get this – before they rape anyone!
Abbott, a governor with no talent for governing, has run up a record noted for spectacular program failures, corporate bootlicking, widening inequality, corruption, political buffoonery… and so awful much more. If that’s your idea of a president, there he is.
Throughout the country, newspaper subscribers are asking questions like: Hey, who took my Saturday paper? What happened to those political cartoons and columns that I liked? Why does it take two days to get election results and sports scores? How did my local paper get filled with filler? Oh... and who doubled the price of the damn thing?
The cause of all of the above is a Wall Street concept called “financialization” – a euphemism for corporate plundering. Multibillion-dollar hedge funds like SoftBank Group, Alden Global Capital, and Chatham Asset have bought up thousands of our dailies and weeklies. They extract enormous profits, not by making a better journalistic product for customers and the community, but by eliminating reporters, selling off each paper’s real estate and assets, shriveling and standardizing content… and jacking up the paper’s price. Like avaricious airlines, the profit strategy of these Wall Street newspapers is to monopolize the market, then charge more for less.
But won’t readers stop subscribing? Of course – they’re leaving in droves, but hedge fund profiteers don’t care, for their plan is to strip-mine the business of every dime it has, take the profits, and leave town. For example, SoftBank, the Japanese owner of the Gannett chain, has pillaged hundreds of our local papers, and it’s now making another round of deep cuts in its newsrooms, including dumping some 800 more journalists. The financializer are also requiring other employees to take unpaid leave and are suspending payments to their pensions. SoftBank bosses simply said, “we need to ensure our balance sheet remains strong.”
Sure, take care of Number One! But what about ensuring that local journalism remains strong, providing the information and connections that communities must have for strong democracies? But don’t be silly – that’s not part of the hedge fund business model.
My newspaper died.
Well, technically it still appears, but it has no life, no news, and barely a pulse. It’s a mere semblance of a real paper, one of the hundreds of local journalism zombies staggering along in cities and towns that had long relied on them. Each one has a bare number of subscribers keeping it going, mostly longtime readers like me clinging to a memory of what used to be and a flickering hope that, surely, the thing won’t get worse. Then it does.
Our papers are getting worse (at a time we desperately need them to get better) because they are no longer mediums of journalism, civic purpose, and local identity. Rather, they’ve been reduced to little more than profit siphons, steadily piping local money to a handful of distant, high-finance syndicates that have bought out our hometown journals. My daily, the Austin American-Statesman, was swallowed up in 2019 by the nationwide Gannett chain, becoming one of more than 1,000 local papers Gannett presently mass produces under its corporate banner, “The USA Today Network.” But even that reference is a deception, for the publication doesn’t confide to readers that it’s actually a product of SoftBank Group, a multibillion-dollar Japanese financial consortium that owns and controls Gannett.
SoftBank has no interest in Austin as a place, a community, or even as a newspaper market, nor does it care one whit about advancing the principles of journalism. It’s in the profit business, extracting maximum short-term payouts from the properties it owns. This has rapidly become the standard business model for American newspapering. Today, more than half of all daily papers in America are in the grip of just 10 of these money syndicates.
That’s why our “local” papers are dying. It’s not failure of journalism, but of absentee corporate owners plundering journalism.
The problem with our so-called “free market” is that it’s not free for you and me. It’s largely controlled by monopolies, which are free to inflate prices just because they can, letting gougers gleefully extract unwarranted monopoly profits from us.
This milking of consumers by tightly consolidated industries is propelling today’s surging price hikes. Brand name corporations claim they’re being forced to mark-up price tags just to cover rising costs for raw materials, labor, transportation, etc. But in a competitive marketplace, they’d have to eat much of those increases by taking a bit less in profits. Instead, monopolies are now raising prices simply to squeeze even greater profits from hard-hit consumers – a game of corporate greed that socks America with more inflation.
Consider diapers. A year ago, Procter & Gamble announced that the pandemic was driving up its production costs, forcing it to raise prices for its Pampers brand. At the time, it had just posted a quarterly profit of $3.8 billion, so P&G could easily have absorbed a temporary rise in its costs. But instead of holding the price to ease their customers’ economic pain, the conglomerate used a global health crisis to justify upping diaper prices. Six months later, P&G’s quarterly profit topped $5 billion. And – in that same quarter – P&G spent $3 billion to buy back shares of its own stock, a Wall Street manipulation that artificially bloats the wealth of top execs and other big shareholders. In short, P&G used the excuse of inflation to inflate the price of diapers, then used the extra money it extracted to inflate the value of its stock to benefit rich shareholders.
Well, couldn’t consumers just switch to Huggies, the brand sold by P&G’s main “competitor”? No, for it’s a co-monopolist, having also goosed up its prices. Welcome to the monopoly merry-go-round.
Today, CEOs of big corporations are playing the tricky “Inflation Blame Game!”
Publicly, they moan that the pandemic is slamming their poor corporations with factory shutdowns, supply chain delays, wage hikes, and other increased costs. But wait – inside their board rooms, executives are high fiving each other and pocketing bonuses. What’s going on?
The trick is that these giants are in non-competitive markets operating as monopolies, so they can set prices, mug you and me, and scamper away with record profits. In 2019 for example, before the pandemic, corporate behemoths hauled in roughly a trillion dollars in profit. In 2021, during the pandemic, they grabbed more than $1.7 trillion. This huge profit jump accounts for 60% of the inflation now slapping US families!
Take supermarket goliath Kroger. Its CEO gloated last summer that “a little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” adding that “we’ve been very comfortable with our ability to pass on [price] increases” to consumers. “Comfortable” indeed. Last year, Kroger used its monopoly pricing power to reap record profits, then it spent $1.5 billion of those gains not to benefit consumers or workers, but to buy back its own stock – a scam that siphons profits to top executives and big shareholders. Or take the fast-food purveyor McDonalds’s. It bragged to its shareholders that despite the supply disruptions of the pandemic and higher costs for meat and labor, its top executives had used the chain’s monopoly power in 2021 to up prices, thus increasing corporate profits by a stunning 59% over the previous year. And the game goes on: “We’re going to have the best growth we’ve ever had this year,” Wall Street banking titan Jamie Dimon exulted at the start of 2022.
Hocus Pocus, this is how the rich get richer and inequality “happens.”
Last year’s gubernatorial race in Virginia was narrowly won by Republican Glenn Youngkin. An elite Wall Street multimillionaire, he was going to lose – until he discovered a right-wing racist bugaboo called Critical Race Theory. Glenn suddenly turned into an anti-CRT attack dog, fomenting parental fear and promising to sweep all teaching of the theory out of Virginia classrooms.
But, golly, CRT was not actually taught in any of the state’s public schools. To help Youngkin dodge this inconvenient fact, a partisan front group called Metric Media created 25 fake news sites in Virginia that ran nearly 5,000 articles during the election, spreading the CRT bugaboo. While these “papers” have no subscribers and no significant readership, they allow demagogues like Youngkin to use such lies in speeches, ads, etc. – laundering them as facts by simply saying: “As reported in the Such-and Such newspaper…”
With success in Virginia, Metric Media and other fake sites are pumping out CRT sludge in Florida, Texas, and other states with gubernatorial races this year. Indeed, the lie has become its own political industry, with such billionaire extremists as the Koch brothers’ pumping money into it.
This is why America must have actual local newspapers (widely available and affordable, either in print or online) that have the community commitment and journalistic resources to do the job of nurturing truth and democracy. Otherwise, we’re ceding “news” to the shams and scams that are inevitable under hedge fund profiteers and networks of partisan hacks that already dominate wide swaths of America’s media landscape.
Journalism is not a private commodity to be controlled by a few for their personal profit or political advancement – it is an essential public resource, key to democratic self-government. And America should start investing in it as such, providing adequate public funding for local, independent, watchdog reporting.
It’s been an all-time record year of runaway wealth for America’s billionaires, with this tiny clique vastly widening the chasm separating them from us hoi polloi. For example, Amazon jefe Jeff Bezos hauled in $190 billion for the year. That pays him more than $360,000 a minute, for every single minute of the year.
So much taken by so few who do so little while harming so many. Bezos erected his corporate empire on the backs of non-union workers he routinely exploits, plus millions of taxpayers he bilks. Indeed, his recent surge of wealth comes not from innovation or hard work, but from the windfall of bloated Wall Street stock prices, making him richer without lifting a finger.
Yet media and politicians hail Jeff as a Big Thinking Genius! Seriously? This self-centered ego’s top achievement this year was to have the world’s largest superyacht built for him – a 400 foot-long, sea going palace. But – oops! – Jeff’s pleasure craft can’t get to the ocean, because it’s too tall to go under a bridge just downriver from the Dutch city where he’s having it built. No problem for a billionaire “genius,” though – Boss Bezos simply instructed local officials to dismantle their historic bridge so his toy could pass through. But, no go, for outraged locals learned of his imperious scheme and quickly organized a massive rotten-egg brigade, pledging to pelt the colossal yacht (and possibly Jeff). Very bad political optics. So, the American mogul’s billions were not allowed to buy his way out.
It’s still unclear how he’ll get it out to sea. But one Dutch wag helpfully pointed out to him: “You can still take your giant boat out for short trips down to the bridge and back.” If these mega-rich privileged ones are so smart, why are they so stupid?
It’s been an all-time record year of runaway wealth for America’s billionaires, with this tiny clique vastly widening the chasm separating them from us hoi polloi. For example, Amazon jefe Jeff Bezos hauled in $190 billion for the year. That pays him more than $360,000 a minute, for every single minute of the year.
So much taken by so few who do so little while harming so many. Bezos erected his corporate empire on the backs of non-union workers he routinely exploits, plus millions of taxpayers he bilks. Indeed, his recent surge of wealth comes not from innovation or hard work, but from the windfall of bloated Wall Street stock prices, making him richer without lifting a finger.
Yet media and politicians hail Jeff as a Big Thinking Genius! Seriously? This self-centered ego’s top achievement this year was to have the world’s largest superyacht built for him – a 400 foot-long, sea going palace. But – oops! – Jeff’s pleasure craft can’t get to the ocean, because it’s too tall to go under a bridge just downriver from the Dutch city where he’s having it built. No problem for a billionaire “genius,” though – Boss Bezos simply instructed local officials to dismantle their historic bridge so his toy could pass through. But, no go, for outraged locals learned of his imperious scheme and quickly organized a massive rotten-egg brigade, pledging to pelt the colossal yacht (and possibly Jeff). Very bad political optics. So, the American mogul’s billions were not allowed to buy his way out.
It’s still unclear how he’ll get it out to sea. But one Dutch wag helpfully pointed out to him: “You can still take your giant boat out for short trips down to the bridge and back.” If these mega-rich privileged ones are so smart, why are they so stupid?
Let me say one word to you: Nuts.
Now, let me say one name to you: Ted Cruz.
They’ve become synonymous, with the Texas lawmaker perennially topping national lists of goofy, right-wing political goobers. Only, Ted can’t rightly be called a lawmaker, for he’s not a serious participant in that process, instead devoting his senatorship to political stunts and picking silly PR fights with a growing list of enemies.
Running out of people to attack, Ted has found another species for his vitriol: Fictional icons. He’s been padding his right-wing credentials by going after Mr. Potato Head, Mickey and Pluto, and, believe it or not, Muppets. This US senator has dedicated the power and public resources of his office to demonize popular creatures on “Sesame Street,” specifically Big Bird and loveable little Elmo. Ted rants he has proof that Muppets are covert tools of “government propaganda.” So, this ridiculous excuse of a senator is saving America from… Muppets.
But for a whole bag of assorted nuttiness, you can’t beat Sen. Rick Scott’s 11-point plan to “Rescue America.” A disgraced former healthcare mogul, this mega-millionaire reinvented himself as a wingnut Florida senator, and he now chairs a policy arm of the Republican Party.
In February, he set forth a stunning agenda of far-out right-wing extremism that he says his party will push if they re-take the senate this November, including: 1. Implementing new federal taxes on the poorest half of Americans. So – as Scott puts it – they’ll “have skin in the game.” 2. “Stopping socialism” by terminating Social Security and Medicare. 3. Spending unlimited billions to build Donald Trump’s folly of a border wall (and, ironically, naming the scam after The Donald).
Fiddle-faddlers like Cruz and Scott have turned the once-proud US Senate into The Little Nut Shoppe on the Hill.
Question: What does a packet of M&M’s and your local veterinarian have in common? Answer: Both are owned by Mars Inc., the global candy monopolist.
Since the 1980s, we’ve seen massive consolidations in industry after industry – from airlines to newspapers, the internet to candy. These monopolists run roughshod over consumers, workers, communities, suppliers, and our nation’s commitment to the Common Good. And now the corporate attitude seems to be, “what the Hell, why not let monopolization go to the dogs?”
This change has been led by “private equity groups.” They are corporate-takeover sharks that borrow billions of dollars to buy out, plunder, then sell off the remnants of established businesses. They target enterprises that can be grabbed on the cheap but have assets like a loyal customer base. Then the sharks raise prices on those customers while cutting staff and quality of service.
This has been happening to thousands of local vet practices and hospitals, which have quietly been plucked by Wall Street entities bearing non-descript acronyms like IVC, JAB, KKR, and VCA. At first locals don’t notice the takeover, because the corporate outfit not only buys your friendly “Dr. Barry Bones” vet service, they also buy the Doc’s name. As an IVC takeover consultant confided: “People like to take their dog to local vets and not feel like it’s a corporate machine.”
But increasingly, it is. Solo practitioners who became veterinarians to provide friendly, community-based service now must answer to bean counters at headquarters – and, foremost, they must serve profit over animals. Veterinary Center of America (VCA), for example, is one of the most aggressive monopolizers, controlling access to and prices charged by 1,000+ vet facilities in 43 states. In 2017, VCA was taken over by Mars Inc.
One feisty group battling monopolizers is the National Veterinary Professionals Union – Get info at natvpu.org.
For many people, the animals they adopt and love become more like family members than pets. We have deep relationships, with cats, dogs, parrots, goats, horses, and other fellow critters – who at least pretend to love us back, providing comfort and joy all around.
Sadly though, life for all of us animals is a spin around the wheel of fortune, so illness and injuries happen. That’s why one of the most valued members of every community are the staffers in our local veterinarian office. Practically all vets, nurses, technicians, and support staff are there chiefly because they love animals and get personal satisfaction from providing care for them.
When I say they are “there,” I not only mean 9 to 5, but this group of independent health providers are committed to being there when needed – including off hours and days off, for animal misfortune and suffering don’t go by clocks and calendars. Local practitioners also try to be there for low-income people, offering deferred payment plans and even discounted fees so their animals can get the treatment they need.
But wait – sound the ambulance sirens! Something is going horribly wrong! This venerable profession has recently been collapsing into a corporate model of Wall Street owned chains. They are monopolizing markets, reducing staff, gutting service, and prioritizing the love of money over the love of animals. It’s not uncommon these days for franticly-worried customers to bring an ill or injured pet into their old reliable vet office only to find it has quietly come under chain ownership, is understaffed, and is unwilling to accept the patient, forcing a desperate scramble to find emergency care, often out of town.
This is Jim Hightower saying... The same profiteering corporate mentality that has proven disastrous for human health care is now rapidly locking down pet care – and that’s an act of animal cruelty.
What makes a newspaper great? Many say it’s having street-savvy reporters and editors with the integrity to shine the light of investigative journalism on the power structure’s abuses.
But, no, says Fred Ryan, top executive of the Washington Post – the secret is attendance. Ryan, a corporate manager and former Ronald Reagan staffer, was handpicked to be CEO of the legendary paper by Jeff Bezos in 2014, when the Amazon billionaire bought the Post. But on Ryan’s watch, readership is in decline, which he blames on newsroom sluggards who don’t spend enough time in the office. So, he’s become the hall monitor, measuring reporters’ productivity by their office attendance.
Fred seems unaware that a good reporter’s real work is out on the beat, not sitting in front of a computer. No doubt he would’ve fired Woodward and Bernstein for being out of the office so often to meet with Deep Throat to uncover Nixon’s Watergate scandal. In Fairness, though, he apparently has a 2-part plan to boost team spirit: (1) Eliminate 100 reporters, and (2) judge the output of those remaining by counting the number of video conferences they attend each week.
But that’s hardly the totality of Ryan’s innovations. The big news is that he’s hired not one, but two, high-dollar PR firms to create a cutting edge “branding strategy” for the Post. Already they’ve come up with a spiffy new corporate slogan: “We don’t just break news. We break ground.” Wow – how great is that? (Never mind that some wags have changed the second line to, “We break wind”).
When overpaid incompetents like Ryan substitute slogans and computer metrics for real solutions, they’re admitting that they are the problem – that they simply don’t know how to motivate and manage a creative workforce. They should resign in embarrassment.
For generations, workers have been punished by corporate bosses for watching the clock. But now, the corporate clock is watching workers!
Called “digital productivity monitoring,” this surveillance is done by an integrated computer system including a real-time clock, camera, keyboard tracker, and algorithms to provide a second-by-second record of what each employee is doing. Jeff Bezos, boss of Amazon, pioneered use of this ticking electronic eye in his monstrous warehouses, forcing hapless, low-paid “pickers” to sprint down cavernous stacks of consumer stuff to fill online orders, pronto – beat the clock, or be fired.
Terrific policy! exclaimed taskmasters at hospital chains, banks, tech giants, newspapers, colleges, and other outfits employing millions of mid-level professionals. So, they’ve been installing these unblinking digital snoops to watch their employees, even timing their bathroom breaks and constantly eying each one’s pace of work. They’ve plugged in new software with such Orwellian names as WorkSmart and Time Doctor to count worker’s keystrokes and to snap pictures every 10 minutes of workers’ faces and screens, recording all on digital scoreboards. You are paid only for the minutes the computers “see” you in action. Bosses hail the electronic minders as “Fitbits” of productivity, spurring workers to keep noses to the grindstone, and also to instill workplace honesty.
Only... the whole scheme is dishonest. No employee’s worthiness can be measured in keystrokes and 10-minute snapshots! What about thinking, conferring with colleagues, listening to customers, etc.? No – zero “productivity points” are awarded for that work. For example, the New York Times reports that the multibillion-dollar United Health Group marks its drug-addiction therapists “idle” if they are conversing off-line with patients, leaving their keyboards inactive.
Employees call this digital management “demoralizing,” “toxic,” and “just wrong.” But corporate investors are pouring billions into it. Which group do you trust to shape America’s workplace?
In the world of work, what two occupations might seem to have the very least in common? How about long-haul truck drivers… and school librarians? Yes, an odd pairing, but solidarity forever!
Start with truckers, The job is literally a grueling haul. You’re wrangling massive 18-wheelers some 500 miles a day for 2-3 weeks straight, putting up with traffic jams, storms, bad roads, lunatic drivers, helter-skelter scheduling, truck stop food, sleeping in the truck – and battling fatigue, aches, your bladder, and loneliness.
Trucking used to be a good union job, with decent pay and conditions – until the deregulation craze four decades ago brought in Wall Street profiteers and fast buck hustlers who turned the industry into anti-union exploiters. As a result, the yearly quit-rate for drivers is almost 100 percent! But rather than retaining drivers by upping pay and stopping their torturous treatment, the corporate bosses have rushed to Washington demanding access to an even cheaper pool of low-wage workers: Teenagers. Yes – put an 18-year-old in that 18-wheeler… and keep them profits rolling!
And here’s another good job suddenly turned ugly: School librarian. Yes, while student enrollments rise and the need for these nurturers of our society’s literacy is greater than ever, their quit-rate is soaring. Not because of pay or long hours, but because of raw right-wing politics. These dedicated, invaluable educators are literally being abused by demagogic GOP politicians and their extremist partisans who’ve launched an anti-librarian crusade, including book banning and witch hunting. Come on – how twisted are you to pick on librarians? Yet, they are under attack by political hacks, condemned by reprobate preachers, and physically threatened by frenzied parents… and being fired by wimpy school boards.
Forget the “law” of supply and demand, today’s job market is being ruled by greedmeisters and political lunatics.
For more than a year, America’s corporate chieftains have been moaning about “The Great Resignation” – the recent phenomena of workers just up and quitting their jobs. And now comes “Quiet Quitting,” workers who don’t leave their jobs, but only do what they were hired to do, quietly rejecting the endless extra (unpaid) tasks and weekend assignments that bosses try to pile on. What’s at work in the heads of all these workers?
Simple, barked one taskmaster way back in 1894, “nobody wants to work.” And here’s an anti-New Deal baron in 1940, snorting that “trouble is everybody is on relief or a pension – nobody wants to work.” Then in ’52, came the same refrain, everybody is “too damned lazy and nobody wants to work anymore.” Year after year, the exact same wail is repeated from on high, including this group gripe expressed in a corporate survey this year: “1 in 5 executive leaders agree [that] ‘No one wants to work.’”
Given the historic continuum of executive-suite disdain for working stiffs, it’s no surprise that the top dogs are blaming “sluggish” workers for today’s rampant job dissatisfaction. But it’s both hilarious and pathetic that high-dollar bosses are so inept at employee relations that they can’t keep the rank and file on the job, much less happy. Their response has been to put a silly band-aid on this serious problem. They’ve created new executive positions like “Chief people officer” and hired consulting firms with such names as “Woohoo” and “Happy Ltd” to come up with treats, trinkets, and gimmicks, trying to make the workplace a playscape: Beer tastings! Ping Pong games! Meditation periods! A Lizzo concert! Office slides! Company water bottles! Wine Wednesdays!
Seriously? Memo to CEOs: Try decent pay and benefits, rational scheduling, meaningful goals, real teamwork, and personal respect. In a word: Dignity.
Corporate acolytes and right-wing moralists constantly preach to laboring stiffs about the uplifting dignity of work.
Of course, that’s “dignity” as defined and controlled by corporate elites, not by workers, and the reward for it frequently includes on-the-job injuries… and death. Not that CEOs and well-heeled investors intend to sicken, maim, and kill thousands of laborers every year – but they certainly do put them in positions that assure such unhappy results. For example, they demand that farmworkers go sunrise to sunset picking crops in California’s 105° desert heat, and that construction crews toil in the muggy, dog days of Florida summers tarring condo roofs. Low-paid, powerless workers die, but no one in the corporate hierarchy did the deed, right? Heat was the killer.
But wait, not only are aloof, air-cooled bosses the ones who knowingly subject subordinates to deadly heat, but they’re also the ones who hire squads of lobbyists and lawyers to kill simple, inexpensive rules to stop these deaths – such rules as requiring ample water at work sites; ensuring paid rest breaks in cool spaces; training on-site managers and employees to detect and react to signs of heat stress; requiring good ventilation and proper clothing; establishing emergency response procedures; fostering a safety-first culture; and imposing serious punishments for violators.
Such sensible steps have repeatedly been proposed as official workplace policy for at least the last 50 years – but intense industry lobbying has killed the adoption of all attempts to prevent what amounts to workplace murder by corporate profiteers. Instead, the US government pretends to “protect” workers by printing posters admonishing employees to beware of heat, basically telling them, “Goodbye and Good Luck.”
But at last, a real proposal has been put on the table by more than 110 grassroots groups. See it – and join it – by contacting Public Citizen: Citizen.org.
Here’s a hot topic for Labor Day: Heat.
It’s been a hell of a hot summer, exploding the top off thermometers with triple-digit readings across the country. As we’re learning, week after week of this debilitating heat intensifies wildfires, causes electric grids to fail, kills millions of wild animals (including fish!), burns up crops, and concentrates toxic air.
But there’s another impact that draws little notice: Heat kills workers. Indeed, searing days of 95-100-110 degrees are killing and injuring more US workers each year than all the floods, hurricanes, and tornados combined. Those toiling outdoors – including farmworkers, roofers and carpenters, airport ground crews, landscapers, road and street repairers, letter carriers, and trash collectors – are in the direct line of fire for this invisible, insidious killer. But working indoors is no better if there’s no AC, for metal and stone warehouses and manufacturing plants become ovens.
Then, welcome to climate change – 20 of the last 21 years gave us the hottest temperatures on record. Unsurprisingly, the yearly number of worker heat deaths in that period doubled. Also, researchers have determined that extreme workplace heat is causing about 170,000 people a year to suffer injuries on the job. The impact of heat is poorly understood, even by workers. A sudden heat stroke is not the only worry, for rising body temperatures can quickly fuzz the mind, weaken muscles, numb concentration. So, workers fall, their hands get caught in machinery, they touch the wrong wire, etc.
America’s power elites – sitting in climate-controlled executive suites, distant legislative chambers, and comfortable editorial offices – literally don’t feel the intensity of this heat, so the richest country in the history of the world continues to subject millions of its people to senseless suffering and death, not even talking about this embarrassment, much less stopping it.
Let’s all gather ‘round the campfire, Buckaroos and let Ol’ Cactus Jim here tell you about some of today’s hardy, hard-working cowboys. Yes, those manly men who live free-spirited, yippy-ti-yi-yo, cowboy lives out in the rustic ranch country of the Rocky Mountain West.
Oh, wait – that was a century ago. The “cowboys” who’re now humming “Home On The Range” across Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming are multimillionaire and billionaire corporate titan and celebrities like Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, and Bruce Willis. They don’t really live there nor mix with locals, no do they actually “ranch” their spectacular 300,000-acre spreads, since they don’t know how.
So they hire real ranching outfits to bring in some cattle, sheep, and other ranching accruements, then they fly in on private jets occasionally and strut around like John Wayne. They are in a word, pathetic.
But they surely are land barons, spending up to $200 million each for their vast spreads. Indeed, these dilettantes rule the availability of ranchland and scenic wilderness, pricing out people who really want to ranch and locking out families who want to experience some of nature’s most majestic rivers and mountains. Fifteen years ago, the biggest private landowners held 27 million acres; now they’ve grabbed 42 million acres for themselves.
Well, say apologists for wealth concentration, they bought the land with their money, so it’s fair and square. But hold on slick. They don’t come just for the views, hunting, and exclusivity – their ranches get generous land subsidies, plus, states like Wyoming provide no-tax hideaways for their wealth.
This is Jim Hightower saying… So, even though you and I are shut out of these gated land baronies, at least we can take pride in knowing that it’s our tax dollars that help the rich buy them… and lock the gates.
The “old homeplace” is a classic theme of Americana, expressed in everything from Norman Rockwell paintings to Woody Guthrie’s powerful folk lament, “I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore.”
But for a heart-rending, modern-day version of the emotional pull of home, you can’t beat the poignant wail of a new song entitled: “The Low-down Down-home Atherton Rich Man Blues.” Warning: You might need a box of tissues to get through this sad saga.
Atherton, California, is a very small town of some 7,500 souls who face a dreadful housing crisis. Unlike most situations, though, they are alarmed by a looming threat of too much housing! It seems that a recent California law requires cities to provide some affordable, multi-family houses to help cope with a growing statewide shortage of homes, meaning Atherton needs to put in about 350 townhouse units as its share.
“Townhouses!” shrieked the locals. “This can’t be! Un-rich people live in townhouses!”
You see, Atherton is a precious enclave in the heart of the Silicon Valley, where only tech gabillionaires are allowed. The price of their mansions averages about $8 million, with each one secluded on at least an acre of land. So… townhouse people? No way. As one affordable housing advocate put it, “Atherton talks about multifamily housing as if it was a Martian invasion.” In a letter to the city council, the multi-billionaire Andreessen family, wailed that allowing more than one residence per acre “will MASSIVELY decrease our home values [and] quality of life of life.” I’m sure you weep for them, so grab a tissue.
Yet, some Athertonians are at least trying to find solutions. One denizen suggests that all of the residents’ swimming pool cabanas should count toward the town’s affordable housing requirements.
If that won’t make you cry, nothing will.
Sen. Joe Manchin – a one-man political steamroller in Washington – is a Democrat. Except when he’s not, which is most of the time. A multimillionaire, West Virginia coal executive, he’s the darling of fossil fuel and pipeline lobbyists, as well as Republican opponents of progressive Democratic policies. Indeed, he’s funded by Republican billionaires.
But Washington lobbyists and billionaires are not the only source of personal political power that allows him to hold office and block “little-d” democratic policies that the American majority wants and needs. Back home, Joe has maintained a tight, authoritarian grip on West Virginia’s Democratic Party structure, rigging the rules to put Little Joes in each and every party position. In turn, this has long given Boss Manchin control over who gets to run as Democrats for down-ballot elected offices in the Mountain State.
Until June 18, that is. That’s when a statewide democratic rebellion that had been organizing for six years elected its slate of over 50 candidates to oust the Manchinites on the Party executive committee, replacing all but one of the top Party officers with grassroots activists. It truly was a diverse, people-run victory. Selina Vickers, a social worker, was chief strategist, and Mike Pushkin, a cab driver, is now the Party Chair. Danielle Walker (now vice-chair of the committee and the first person of color in state history to sit on the Party’s governing body) summed up the significance of this turnaround: “There’s a new beacon of light shining down on the government with people energized and ready to strategize with a return to the democratic process.”
For guidance on bringing this kind of progressive reform to your local/state Dem Party hierarchy, go to Our Revolution, the one national group that is prioritizing work on this fundamental democratic change to the Democratic Party. (OurRevolution.com).
From corporate polluters to political bosses, power elites try to create a myth of inevitability, trying to make workaday people feel helpless, too small to change the injustices of the system. Don’t bother is their message.
But the feisty residents of Boxtown, Tennessee, definitely did bother when they learned that a couple of profiteering fossil fuel giants were targeting them. Boxtown, a historic Black neighborhood of Memphis settled by former slaves 160 years ago, was considered by Valero Energy and Plains All-American Pipeline to be politically powerless, so when these multibillion-dollar petro powers decided to ram a dirty and dangerous pipeline through the Memphis area, Boxtown was their chosen route. The rich Texas oil barons even sneeringly called the lower-income community, “The point of least resistance.”
Boy did they get that wrong! Those “small” people of Boxtown resisted fiercely and smartly. Most flat-out refused to sell their family land at the thieving price offered by the oil slicks. They forged a unified grassroots coalition (Memphis Community Against the Pipeline), reached out to other neighborhoods, and educated locals about the terrible safety records of the two corporate plunderers. They also enlisted environmental groups to help beat back the strong-arm attempt by Valero and Plains All-American to seize the people’s property through eminent-domain. It’s a long story, with many ups and downs, but the inspiring essence of it is that local “nobodies” defeated the big money and raw racist arrogance of a powerhouse duo of absentee corporate elites that disrespected – and misjudged – them.
It gets little national media attention, but regular grassroots communities and coalitions are mounting – and winning – such gutsy fights against corporate exploiters all across America. We’re not helpless or too small – remember this: Even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building! To learn more, contact MemphisCAP.org.
We're trying something new here at the Lowdown! We've been having a blast with our live talk show, so we're dropping the audio from the show right into the podcast feed, so that our audiophile friends can easily join in the fun. Let us know what you think!
Urgent alert to top Dem party poohbahs: Too many would-be Democratic voters are disillusioned by your tone-deaf, wishy-washy incrementalism! On our next Chat & Chew Happy Hour, progressive champion Ro Khanna joins Hightower for a lively discussion of how the Dems can fire up people bearing the brunt of unrestrained corporate power and an economy tilted toward the rich.
Watch the episode here.
America’s stringent system of corporate capitalism keeps carving out new depths of worker exploitation.
Take Chick-fil-A, a right-wing, Atlanta-based, fast-food operation boasting that it follows “biblically-based” principles. Like slavery? Well, Chick-fil-A hasn’t gone quite that Biblical yet, but one of its franchises recently pioneered a novel labor compensation innovation that comes close – literally paying some workers “chicken feed.” This outlet of the $11-billion-a-year chain called on area residents to staff its new Drive Thru Express – but in lieu of wages, they were offering chicken sandwiches! Join the Express team, and you’d be “paid” five chicken items per shift. That worked out to less than minimum wage… plus indigestion.
What we have here is one more absurd illustration that America’s sanctified work ethic is a fraud, an empty promise that you’ll get ahead if you just work hard enough, keep your nose to the grindstone, and stay loyal to the corporate order for life – no matter how vacuous.
But the game is up, for workers across the economy are now seeking more from life than 50-years of serving the company. They’re even organizing anti-workaholism groups like “I don’t want a career,” “Rest is Resistance,” and the “Nap Ministry.” But don’t mistake this rebellion as mere satire by a few puckish slackers. Today’s nationwide shortage of workers (from truck drivers to teachers) is not a momentary economic blip, but a defiant declaration of independence from a form of work that is life-sucking.
People are not afraid of hard work, nor averse to long hours… if the task and the cause are worth both time and effort. And “worth it” is increasingly being measured in higher values than dollars alone. Fair compensation means work that includes a sense of purpose, community, respect, fairness, and fun! In short, true worthiness… not a chicken sandwich.
“Work your fingers to the bone - whadda ya get? Boney Fingers.”
This 1960s song mocking the vaunted virtue of working hard is being sung today with new meaning by all kinds of employees – from factory workers to teachers… and even a few upper-floor executives.
The rebellion here is not merely over low pay, but particularly about the unrelenting nature of work itself – the all-consuming “job imperative,” as if that’s your life: Go 40 to 60 hours a week 50 to 52 weeks a year for half a century or more… then die. Is that all there is? Is that all we are?
Amazingly, this existential, truly-revolutionary question is one that millions of hard-working people throughout our top-down corporate system are asking themselves, their families, and friends. Why are we working like this, why does it matter, what else is there?
Airline pilots, for example, have stunned the industry by prioritizing non-monetary demands in their current contract negotiations with the big Four monopolistic airline giants. The bosses have offered 14 percent pay hikes, but pilots are demanding something more meaningful: Structural changes to improve their quality of life. They’re routinely frustrated by management’s inept scheduling, inadequate staffing, and onerous work rules that leave them stressed out, dangerously fatigued, and often stranded far from home. The bottom line is not to get another dollar, but being able to plan and enjoy a non-work life. “You absolutely cannot address quality of life with money,” says the president of the pilots’ union at Southwest Airlines. “You’re never going to pay someone enough for a lost piano recital with their daughter or a lost baseball game.”
There are many compromises required to make a living these days, but we humans are finally beginning to say: Enough – you can buy my hard work, but not my life.
Is it a good deal to sell out your personal integrity for cash from notorious scoundrels?
Depends on your sell-out price, chortle some 48 ethically-stunted professional golfers who’ve peddled both their honor and honesty to the murderous moneyed monarchs who rule Saudi Arabia. The golfers, who are already millionaires, rushed to grab money thrown at their feet by the royal kingdom, which oddly thinks it can launder its public image by sponsoring a money-soaked global golf tour. Of course, a golf tournament needs golfers, but the Saudis had none, so they simply bought some. First, former stars Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman signed away their integrity to join, taking at least $200 million apiece. Then Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau took $150 million each from Team Saudi, and the likes of Brooks Koepka and Sergio Garcia quicky scrambled to get theirs.
Worse than the golfers’ unsightly money grubbing, however, is their insufferable dishonesty, trying to whitewash their taking of what is literally blood money. Mickelson faked moral outrage at the Kingdom’s rulers, calling them “less than savory individuals” and piously proclaiming that he did not condone “human rights violations.” But he certainly has condoned (and cashed) the checks written to him by the violators.
But Greg Norman, the former pro who led recruitment of golfer talent for the Saudis, offered the most pathetic moral excuse for selling out. Asked how he could link arms with a potentate so barbarous as to have had a critic of the regime murdered and chopped into pieces, Norman said: “look, we’ve all made mistakes.”
There’s a word that describes what these golfing multimillionaires are doing: “Disgusting.” The good news is that most pros – including bigger-name stars like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Justin Thomas – have some values that they refuse to trade for dollars.
Republican politicos are all over Joe Biden for failing to stop inflation. Perhaps you wonder, though, what these squawkers would do if they were in charge?
No need to wonder – just look back to 1974, when Americans were being pummeled by price spikes that topped 12%, nearly double what we’re enduring today. But by Gollies, President Gerald Ford and his Republican contingent in Congress met the challenge head-on with a new magical program of economic uplift they called WIN – Whip Inflation Now! But it was nothing – just a political slogan with no magic and no action behind it. Price controls? Antitrust action? No, no, GOP Inc. didn’t want to offend, much less punish, corporate titans for a little profiteering, so they shifted the blame for inflation to consumers, demanding that families just say no to price gouging.
Ford himself went on national TV, urging fellow citizens to join him in buying “only those products and services priced at or below present levels.” The core of the Republican “program,” then, was telling hard-hit wage earners to battle the monopolistic behemoths of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Food, et al on their own by simply refusing to pay inflated prices for the gasoline, medicines, groceries, and such that–hellllooooo–they had to have.
As a reward, everyone who signed a form promising be an “Inflation Fighter” was sent a nifty WIN button, indicating their patriotic participation. Sure enough, Americans responded enthusiastically – with an avalanche of ridicule. Even Ford’s own top economic advisor, Alan Greenspan, was whopper jawed by the GOP’s idea that the substance of their policy was a political button: “It was surreal. …I said to myself. ‘This is unbelievable stupidity.’”
Yet, this time, Republican leaders are more surreal, not even pretending to have solution… and we don’t even get a button.
Although we haven’t even gotten through this year’s midterm congressional elections, it’s still not too early to start examining some of the characters who hope you’ll make them president in 2024.
I know, you don’t want to… but we must. That’s because corporate elites have already chosen their favorites, and they intend to use massive sums of money, lies, more money, PR slickum, and even more money to slide their toady into the Oval Office, hoping you don’t discover until it’s too late that their chosen one really is a toad.
Take Ron DeSantis. The GOP’s far-right, power hungry, narcissistic Florida governor promises to be the next Donald Trump – only more effective and not as nice. For example, his favorite gubernatorial hobby is the Orwellian practice of monitoring and censoring people’s speech and thoughts, culling out ideas he deems objectionable.
“Don’t Say Gay,” is his most infamous dictate to the state’s teachers, but he has also outlawed any teachings that might “denigrate the Founding Fathers.” Nor will he tolerate the study of institutional racism in America. Indeed, he has even mandated that social studies textbooks (Get this!) must not include concepts of social justice. Ron adamantly opposes what right-wingers call a “woke” society – he wants one that’s asleep.
Sound asleep. He recently rallied his right-wing cadre to ban some math textbooks. Yes, Math! They screech that some real-life topics like wage disparities are being used to make math problems relevant to today’s students – so it was Fahrenheit 451 for those books. Thus far, DeSantis’ censorship binge has nixed 42 math books for “incorporat[ing] prohibited topics.”
Imagine what he could ban as president! Did I mention that DeSantis is also forming his own gubernatorial military force – a state army he can deploy in “emergencies”? What’s an emergency? He says he’ll decide.
How about Ron DeSantis? The Florida governor is the new darling of the right-wing media, funders, and other establishment powers who’re pushing him to be your next president.
“Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party,” gushed one arch-conservative media maven. That’s odd, since what characterizes Ron’s tenure (and is causing a collective swoon for him within the rightist hierarchy) is his Big Government authoritarianism. Just yesterday, these same so-called conservatives said such use of government power was evil. But here comes DeSantis, who puts the bull in bully – bellowing “culture war” hooey, demonizing immigrants, fabricating claims of voter fraud, promoting Covid lies, and so forth. Then he imperiously asserts government power to bully local communities, workers, the poor, Florida’s environment, truth, fairness, honesty, and democracy.
Consider one of his recent maneuvers to overturn the people’s democratic will. Like most other Republican-run states, DeSantis’s Florida keeps trying to block African-Americans from the polls. In 2018, however, Floridians themselves rebuked the suppressors by approving a ballot measure to expand the electorate. A whopping 65% said YES to eliminating a vindictive lifelong ban on voting by ex-felons – people who had served their time. This long overdue measure of simple justice (approved, in fact, by a much bigger margin of voters than DeSantis got that year) re-enfranchised about 1.4 million former felons.
But wait – DeSantis had old Jim Crow up his sleeve! In 2019, he rammed a technical gotcha into state law, preventing former felons from voting until they pay in full all court fines (many arbitrarily and unfairly assessed years ago for things like marijuana possession). The fines can run thousands of dollars, so DeSantis’ new law created a partisan poll tax to price a big percentage of these newly eligible voters out of democratic participation.
Remember, he’s the “new” Republican Party.
“It’s over.” “Biden’s numbers are in the ditch.” “Democrats are doomed.” “Call the priest.”
These are Democrats talking! Even before November’s congressional elections are run, many conventional-thinking Democratic operatives are surrendering to a presumed Republican sweep. You don’t need a political science degree to know that if you start out announcing that you’ll lose, chances are you will – after all, who wants to vote for a party that shows no fighting spirit, no confidence in the appeal of its own ideas?
What’s happening here is that the Party’s top leaders have decided their candidates can’t win in rural areas and smaller factory cities – so they’ve quit trying. Worse, they blame the voters, claiming that Trumpism, Fox News BS, and culture war nonsense have poisoned the minds of people “out there.” Thus, Party leaders have retreated from the countryside to focus entirely on big urban areas. Democratic Congressional leaders even killed their rural outreach programs, and the Party’s chairman in 2018 meekly declared: “You can’t door-knock in rural America.”
Actually, sir, you can. And if you choose to abandon this whole working-class constituency – surprise! – it will abandon you. Worse, than failing to campaign along America’s dirt roads and factory streets, national Democrats have actively been pushing corporate policies that have ravaged families living there – including trade scams that sucking out union jobs; shamefully bailing out Wall Street bankers who crashed our real economy (while ignoring millions of devastated workaday people); and doing nothing about the corporate-caused farm depression still ripping across our land. Washington Democrats have largely betrayed this vital, FDRish constituency of millions that they now blithely dismiss as irredeemable.
Did Party poohbahs think voters wouldn’t notice or care how they’re being treated? If we want them back on our side, then let’s go to them… and get back on their side!
President Biden recently flew off to Taiwan to assure allies there that he will fight for them. And next he’s headed over to Saudi Arabia to “repair ties” with those oil monarchs.
This flurry of foreign travel might be strategically important for international realpolitik, but – Hello – another strategically important piece of real politics is looming right here at home: The November congressional elections! Taiwan and Saudi Arabia don’t get a vote, but Texas and South Carolina do. So how about spending a bit more time flying or even whistle stopping to such places, where many hard-hit working-class families would like to see President Joe fight for and repair ties with them.
In fairness, much of Biden’s progressive agenda has been deliberately gummed up by such congressional blobs of do-nothingism as Mitch McConnell and Joe Manchin. But blaming them isn’t winning any points for him – nor does it help the families now struggling with baby formula shortages, $5 gasoline, a farm and factory depression, etc.
Instead of blame or surrender, more of Harry Truman’s feisty, can-do spirit is called for – get out of the Beltway Bubble and go straight to the people with an urgent program of Big Actions that they want and need. To hell with placating McConnell and Manchin –you’re the president Joe, not them, and you’re not powerless. For example, Rep. Ro Khanna points out that you should use the government’s emergency authority to do “preemptive buying” on the open market to stop runaway food and fuel prices. The authority to do this is already on the books, so no need to kiss McConnell’s butt – just take direct presidential action for ordinary Americans.
This is the difference between giving speeches telling voters you’re on their side… and actually being there, so they can see it for themselves. It’s honest politics.
“Equal Justice Under Law.” That’s the noble principle carved into the marble façade of the temple-like Supreme Court building.
Today, though, six right-wing, corporate-dominated activist judges control the present Court, and they’re implementing an elitist creed mocking that ideal. By putting the interests and power of the wealthy over the rest of us. They’re turning “justice” into an antidemocratic concept of “just us.” In ruling after ruling, today’s supremes are political operatives taking power from the many to further-empower and enrich the few.
One huge change occurred in 2010, when the five Republican judges decreed that corporations be given a Constitutional right to spend unlimited sums of their cash to dominate our elections – and to pack our courts with judges who serve them. Sure enough, a majority of Supremes are now in harness to the corporate agenda.
Consider their constant push to rig the rules against workers. While the federal judiciary has aided corporate bosses for decades by chipping away at hard-won legal protections for working families, the chisel has become a jackhammer in the last few years. The Supreme Court’s Republican majority routinely pounds precedents, logic, truth, and the Constitution itself to demolish the structural pillars of labor rights and organizing.
In a 2018 case, for example, the GOP judges undermined the funding of unions by arbitrarily striking down their process for collecting dues–a practice the court itself had authorized 41 years earlier. As Justice Elena Kagan bluntly put it in her dissenting opinion, there was no reason for the court to barge into this matter of long-settled law … except that the Republican majority simply didn’t like the previous decision and overruled it “because it wanted to.”
This is not justice, it’s raw politics – yet another open-and-shut case of black-robed partisans supplanting America’s hallowed rule of law with their own anti-labor whim.
Usurping the fundamental rights of women to control their own bodies.
Authorizing corporate giants to buy our elections.
Nullifying the right of organizers to talk to workers about unionizing.
Who is rigging America’s legal system against workaday people? The Supreme Court’s right-wing extremists, that’s who. Just a handful of aloof, unelected judges have been turning what’s supposed to be a citadel of justice into an unrestrained political instrument for instituting autocratic, plutocratic, theocratic power over us. If that sounds like a coup, it is! A slow-motion power grab has quietly been underway for years, with a core group of corporate billionaires and far-right political operatives working (with practically no media exposure) to stack federal and state courts with partisan activists.
There’s even a smoking gun revealing this plot: A confidential memo to the Chamber of Commerce, written in 1971 by Lewis Powell – a corporate lawyer and consigliere for Big Tobacco. Powell lamented that such upstanding corporate citizens as tobacco giants were not getting the respect they deserved, nor did they have enough power over the nation’s political system.
That was absurd, of course, but Powell was dead-set on returning America to pre-New Deal days when corporate barons were the supreme, domineering force over America’s government, economy, and society. To get there, Powell’s memo noted that “with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change” – by which he meant structural changes that empower moneyed interests over workers, consumers, et al. Just two months after Powell sent his memo, President Nixon awarded him a seat on the Supreme Court!
After decades of political maneuvering by a consortium of laissez-faire ideologues, dark-money billionaire funders, secretive front groups, and top GOP politicos, we now have the Supreme Court corporations want. Powell’s memo has literally come to life.
When Supreme Court member Sam Alito’s secret plan for canceling the constitutional right of women to end their pregnancies leaked out to the public – Republican politicos went ballistic! Over the leak, that is.
The Court’s Republican Chief Justice, John Roberts, called the unauthorized disclosure an “affront” to the majesty of the Supremes. Likewise, Republican congressional leaders have furiously demanded to know who dunnit and why! Way beyond their political screeching and posturing, however, a Pennsylvania woman quietly wrote a letter to the New York Times that calmly posed a couple of honest, more-fundamental questions: “Why are Supreme Court votes and processes so hidden in the first place?” And “How did this grip on secrecy become so sacrosanct?”
After all, as important and enormously-powerful as this tiny body is, it’s still a governmental agency doing public business that affects every American. So the legal work that the nine members of this ultimate judicial authority do – including their internal machinations to reach such awesome decisions as nullifying fundamental human rights – ought to be transparent to all who will be affected.
The ugly truth is that today’s Third Branch of government has needlessly, dangerously, and rather ludicrously become a black-robed autocracy. Bear in mind that these nine individuals are enrobed for life, choose the cases they consider, make up their own rules of ethical conduct, operate almost entirely behind closed doors, can conspire to issue decrees – and the bare majority of only five of them can arbitrarily overrule president’s, congresses, states, other courts, voters… and your own personal life-decisions.
And now comes a six-person GOP majority of supreme justices determined to entrench corporate plutocracy, right-wing theocracy, and Republican sovereignty over all of us. That’s why we must finally lift the medieval level of secrecy the partisan judges are using to shroud their actions.
Mitch McConnell, the perpetually sour old goose who heads the Senate Republican Caucus, had a hissy fit when the news leaked out that American women are about to have their most fundamental constitutional right taken from them by a cabal of Supreme Court judges.
What made Mitch twitch, of course, was not the bad news for women… but the leak. He huffed that revealing the right-wing Court’s scheme to the public was a “stunning breach,” spewing that it’s “an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court.” Uh, Mitch… the so-called Supremes have been meeting behind closed doors specifically to plot an all-out attack on the independence of some 170 million women to control their own bodies. Why aren’t you opposing the secrecy, rather than supporting the Court’s subversion of women’s liberty?
Perversely, the entire Republican leadership is outraged by the leak, rather than the attack on women. Right-wing blowhard Ted Cruz, for example, yapped that informing the public “will do lasting damage to the integrity of the Court.” Uh, Ted… you and your ideological ilk annihilated the Court’s integrity – and its legitimacy – when you stacked it with a covey of corporate-coddling partisan hacks like Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas.
Then came Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a Trump acolyte, ludicrously blathering that the leak of the judicial plan is “despicable.” Why? Well, he explained to us commoners, the Court “is not a political body.” If ignorance is bliss, Mike must be ecstatic! The GOP majority on this court is so immersed in its own partisan biases that it is routinely ruling against workers, the environment, women, voting rights, local communities… and democracy itself.
No surprise then that public trust in the integrity of these “arbiters of justice” is crashing. If the Court won’t respect our democratic ideals, the people won't respect the Court.
Here are two terms you don’t expect to see together: “The state of Alabama” and “progressive leader.” (Ok, I’m a Texan, so I have no standing to point at the rank regressiveness of any other state government … but still, Alabama?) And yet, the Camellia State has flowered as a model of strong progressive action in one area of critical public importance: Quality child care.
It’s a cliche to say “our children are our future,” but it’s also true. Why, then, do we invest so little in our littlest ones, our future? America’s childcare system is a national disgrace, failing to provide safe places for children of working parents, and failure to boost the education of pre-kindergarten tykes. Moreover, the abject failure of state and national officials to meet this basic social need is spreading inequality, rolling back opportunities for women, and severely restricting economic progress.
Yet, Alabama officials have recently been setting the national standard for effective pre-K programs by making a major investment in its 4 &5-year-olds, operating a statewide child care network in about 1,300 neighborhood and rural areas. A major factor in its success is a two-generation approach, not only educating the kiddos, but also providing support materials and coaching so that parents engage as their children’s “first teachers.”
Producing demonstrable results year after year, the state’s public network gets bipartisan support and funding from the Alabama Legislature. The program is free and available to all, with special attention devoted to enlisting often overlooked families in rural, poor, and people-of-color communities. Rather than treating teachers as low-pay babysitters, Alabama is paying (and respecting) them as the professionals they are and investing in their career development.
If one of our poorest states can rise to meet this basic human need, what’s wrong with the richest country in the history of the world?
Question: What does a packet of M&M’s and your local veterinarian have in common? Answer: Both are owned by Mars Inc., the global candy monopolist.
Since the 1980s, we’ve seen massive consolidations in industry after industry – from airlines to newspapers, the internet to candy. These monopolists run roughshod over consumers, workers, communities, suppliers, and our nation’s commitment to the Common Good. And now the corporate attitude seems to be, “what the Hell, why not let monopolization go to the dogs?”
This change has been led by “private equity groups.” They are corporate-takeover sharks that borrow billions of dollars to buy out, plunder, then sell off the remnants of established businesses. They target enterprises that can be grabbed on the cheap but have assets like a loyal customer base. Then the sharks raise prices on those customers while cutting staff and quality of service.
This has been happening to thousands of local vet practices and hospitals, which have quietly been plucked by Wall Street entities bearing non-descript acronyms like IVC, JAB, KKR, and VCA. At first locals don’t notice the takeover, because the corporate outfit not only buys your friendly “Dr. Barry Bones” vet service, they also buy the Doc’s name. As an IVC takeover consultant confided: “People like to take their dog to local vets and not feel like it’s a corporate machine.”
But increasingly, it is. Solo practitioners who became veterinarians to provide friendly, community-based service now must answer to bean counters at headquarters – and, foremost, they must serve profit over animals. Veterinary Center of America (VCA), for example, is one of the most aggressive monopolizers, controlling access to and prices charged by 1,000+ vet facilities in 43 states. In 2017, VCA was taken over by Mars Inc.
One feisty group battling monopolizers is the National Veterinary Professionals Union – Get info at natvpu.org.
For many people, the animals they adopt and love become more like family members than pets. We have deep relationships, with cats, dogs, parrots, goats, horses, and other fellow critters – who at least pretend to love us back, providing comfort and joy all around.
Sadly though, life for all of us animals is a spin around the wheel of fortune, so illness and injuries happen. That’s why one of the most valued members of every community are the staffers in our local veterinarian office. Practically all vets, nurses, technicians, and support staff are there chiefly because they love animals and get personal satisfaction from providing care for them.
When I say they are “there,” I not only mean 9 to 5, but this group of independent health providers are committed to being there when needed – including off hours and days off, for animal misfortune and suffering don’t go by clocks and calendars. Local practitioners also try to be there for low-income people, offering deferred payment plans and even discounted fees so their animals can get the treatment they need.
But wait – sound the ambulance sirens! Something is going horribly wrong! This venerable profession has recently been collapsing into a corporate model of Wall Street owned chains. They are monopolizing markets, reducing staff, gutting service, and prioritizing the love of money over the love of animals. It’s not uncommon these days for franticly-worried customers to bring an ill or injured pet into their old reliable vet office only to find it has quietly come under chain ownership, is understaffed, and is unwilling to accept the patient, forcing a desperate scramble to find emergency care, often out of town.
This is Jim Hightower saying... The same profiteering corporate mentality that has proven disastrous for human health care is now rapidly locking down pet care – and that’s an act of animal cruelty.
What is so supreme about the Supreme Court?
I mean besides being housed in an imposing marble building, being the final stop on America’s judicial train, and having its nine members look photogenically authoritarian in those full-body black robes. And, yes, its existence is written into the Constitution – but so is Congress, and no one thinks of it as anything supreme.
We 330 million Americans are told we must obey “the law,” as defined by a half dozen unelected lawyers on this court. Why should we democratic citizens do that? After all, these legalistic elites have no actual power to force their personal beliefs on us – there’s no Supreme Court army. In fact, their sole source of power is one that is intangible, extremely fragile, and easily frittered away: Public trust.
We should go along with their rulings only if they appear to be fair and honest, not based on personal whim or partisan ideology, and not meant to extend plutocratic power over the people. As Justice Elena Kagan rightly put it, “The only way we can get people to do what we think they should do is because people respect us.”
That’s where the present majority of far-right-wing appointees have failed so abjectly. Rather than meeting a lofty standard of judiciousness, all six have pulled the court down into the mire of crass Republican politics. They’ve corrupted the system and jiggered the law to decree that corporate campaign cash is “free speech,” that the state can take over women’s bodies, that the Republican Party can unilaterally shut millions of voters out of America’s voting booths… and so awful much more that enthrones the few over the many.
Respect? Trust? The Republican court is already down to 40 percent public approval rating, having surrendered its legitimacy to be a governing authority over us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.”
Today, America has not one, but six guests in our national home babbling about their integrity. They are the six extremist Republican judges who now control our Supreme Court, and it’s a bit unsettling to hear them go on and on, almost frantically pleading with us to believe in their judicial impartiality. For example, the Court’s newest members, Amy Coney Barrett, suddenly blurted out at a public forum in September that “this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”
Whoa – better count our spoons!
In fact, each of the six were installed on the court by right-wing Republicans specifically because they had proven to be devout partisan hacks. Interestingly, Barrett made her unprompted and strained assertion of judicial integrity at the McConnell Center – named for Mitch McConnell, the rabidly-partisan GOP senator who pulled a fast one last year, rushing Barrett onto the bench on a party-line vote just before Republicans lost control of the senate. Indeed, old Mitch himself, introduced Barrett at the forum where she gave her “we-are-not-partisan-hacks” speech. He grinned proudly at the pure hackery of his partisan protégé.
Another hard-core partisan on the court, Sam Alito, whined in October that critics accuse the Court’s GOP majority of being “a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its way.” Well golly Sam, yes, we do think that, because again and again you partisans sneak up on the Constitution and We The People to twist the law to fit your political bias and personal whims. If you don’t want to be considered political hacks – stop being political hacks.
Keep On Trucking’ was an iconic underground cartoon created in 1968 by comic master Robert Crumb. Featuring various big-footed men strutting jauntily through life, the caricature became widely popular as an expression of young people’s collective optimism. “You’re movin’ on down the line,” Crumb later explained, “It’s proletarian. It’s populist.”
But today the phrase has become ironic, for America’s truck drivers themselves are no longer moving on down the line of fairness, justice, and opportunity. What had been a skilled, middle-class job in the 1960s is now largely a skilled poverty-wage job, thanks to the industry’s relentless push for deregulation and deunionization, decoupling drivers from upward mobility. Trucking has been turned into a corporate racket, with CEOs arbitrarily abusing the workers who move their products across town and country. To enable the abuse, corporate lawyers have fabricated a legal dodge, letting shippers claim that their truck drivers are not their employees, but “independent contractors.”
Thus – Hocus Pocus! – drivers don’t get decent wages, overtime pay, workers comp, Social Security, health care, rest breaks, reimbursement for truck expenses (including gasoline, tires, repairs, and insurance) … and, as “contractors,” drivers are not allowed to unionize. This rank rip-off has become the industry standard, practiced by multibillion-dollar shipping giants like XPO, FedEx, Penske, and Amazon. The National Employment Law Project recently reported that two-thirds of truckers hauling goods from US ports are intentionally misclassified as contractors, rather than as employees of the profiteers that hire, direct, set pay levels, and fire them.
Of course, corporate bosses try to hide their greed with a thin legalistic fig leaf – “We believe our [drivers] classifications are legal,” sniffed an XPO executive. Sure they are, sport, since your lobbyists write the laws! But might doesn’t make right, “legal” doesn’t mean moral, and “boss” spelled backwards is double-S.O.B.
The recent traffic-clogging protests by truck drivers in the US and Canada is about drivers being angry over COVID-19 vaccine mandates – right?
Uh… no. That’s the line being put out by right-wing extremists trying to use the legitimate gripes of truckers for their own political gain. The extremists are nuts… not the truckers.
My Uncle Emmitt was a highballing trucker in the 1960s, when driving offered an honest job – decent pay, union protections, benefits, and normal hours. Then came the deregulation craze of the 1980s, pushed by corporate profiteers and right-wing ideologues who cast unions aside, crashed driver pay, and turned the job into a punishment.
Pay today is so abysmal that most truckers have to drive dangerously-long shifts of well over 60 hours a week (with many topping 100 hours) to make a bare-bones living. It’s a grind, too – you can’t stand up for hours, you travel alone, dinner is a gas station burrito, bathroom breaks mean pulling out the plastic jug you carry along… and you won’t get home for days. Exhaustion is a constant companion and a real hazard – drivers call these big rigs “40-tons of death.”
Yet corporate, political and media elites – oblivious to all of the above – whine that America has a trucker shortage. Not so. There are plenty of licensed drivers, but – get this – nine out of 10 quit within a year of getting a job! That’s not because of a vaccine mandate, as right-wing political manipulators want us to believe. It’s because truckers are underpaid, overworked, endangered, and even dehumanized by bosses who install surveillance cameras, sensors, and other technology to record and report every twitch a driver makes.
Today’s explosive truck-convoy protests are not a right-wing expression – it’s a rebellion against the plutocratic system that the right-wing has imposed on truckers… and on America.
Right-wing Republicans and corporate Democrats have become a pathetic bunch of "No-can-do Nancys."
Faced with an economy reeling from the plutocratic policies that these same lawmakers pushed down upon us, they are now whimpering that America is too weak to meet the obvious needs of its own people. "We must surrender to the Gods of Economic Despair," they cry. At a time when history calls for our leaders to step forth with a bit of FDR boldness and rally grassroots people to rebuild our economy, they trumpet for retreat, giving up on America's historic ideal of the common good.
A jobs program? "Everyone for themselves," they shout. Health care for all? "Go to the emergency room," they scream. Social Security? "Socialism," they screech, "run away from it!" Public education? "Can't afford it," they tell us, as they turn their backs on hundreds of thousands of teachers soon to be fired. Repair America's rotting infrastructure? "Too big for us, " they wail, "leave it to the next generation."
Wagging teabags rather than picking up the tools of real recovery, the woeful voices of American failure insist that they speak for the People. Hogwash. Americans are a strong, community-minded, democratic-spirited, can-do people. Indeed, the latest Gallop poll shows that 60 percent of the public favors "additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy."
"But we must balance the budget," whine the naysayers. Of course we should, and big majorities say we should do that by putting people to work, taxing the superrich to pay their fair share of Social Security and other public needs, as well as by slashing the $12 billion a month we're spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's time for our "leaders" to stop whining – and catch up to the people.
"DeMarco note on budget balancing," July 2010.
"Cost of War," www.nationalpriorities.org, July 2010.
"Labor's New Critics: Its Allies in Elected Office," The New York Times, June 28, 2010.
"More Stimulus Needed to Reduce Unemployment," www.cepr.net, June 24, 2010.
"Afghan war costs now outpace Iraq's," www.usatoday.com, May 13, 2010.
Let’s talk pills. To treat everything from allergies to heart problems, half of Americans take a prescription medicine every day, and nearly all of us reach for the pill bottle on occasion.
It's perfectly safe, though, because the Food and Drug Administration regulates the ingredients that go into those medicinal compounds, right? Yes – assuming they’re produced in the USA.
Uh, aren’t they?
Mostly, no. Take antibiotics. The New York Times reports that ingredients for the majority of these bacteria fighters are "now made almost exclusively in China and India,” as are the components of dozens of other major drugs. Unbeknownst to most Americans (and to our doctors), China has become the world’s pre-eminent supplier of medicines. As one major drug company puts it: “If tomorrow China stopped supplying pharmaceutical ingredients, the worldwide pharmaceutical industry would collapse.”
What's at work here is mindless globalization and deregulation. Our politicians threw open the US market to drug imports, while also letting foreign manufacturers go uninspected and unregulated. So, companies located in China can cut corners and undercut our own regulated pill makers. America’s last producer of penicillin’s ingredients, for example, shut down in 2004, leaving us dependent on China.
FDA – our supposed watchdog – doesn’t even know where a drug’s ingredients come from. Why? Because drug companies say they don’t like to reveal their sources – so they don’t. The Times found that one federal database lists the existence of about 3,000 foreign drug plants that ship to the US, while another lists 6,800. No one knows which is correct, if either.
This is ridiculous. For the sake of America’s health, security, and economy, let’s regulate all pill makers and rebuild our own industry.
“Drug Making’s Move Abroad Stirs Concerns,” The New York Times, January 20, 2009.
In CorporateSpeak, there are no “job cuts.” Instead, firings are blandly referred to as “employment adjustments.”
Now, though, corporate wordsmiths will need a whole new thesaurus of euphemisms, for masses of job cuts are coming for employees in the higher echelons of the corporate structure. Don’t look now, but an unanticipated result of the ongoing pandemic is that it has given cover for CEOs to speed up the adoption of highly-advanced RPAs (Robotic Process Automation) to replace employees once assumed to be immune from displacement. As one analyst told a New York Times reporter, “With RPA you can build a bot that costs $10,000 a year and take out two to four humans.”
Prior to the COVID crisis, many top executives feared a public backlash if they pushed automation too far too fast. But, ironically, the economic collapse caused by the pandemic has so discombobulated the workplace and diverted public attention that corporate bosses have been emboldened to rush ahead. While the nationwide shut-down of offices and furloughing of employees has caused misery for millions, one happy purveyor of RPA systems notes that it has “massively raised awareness among executives about the variety of work that no longer requires human involvement.” He cheerfully declares: “We think any business process can be automated,” advising corporate bosses that half to two-thirds of all the tasks being done at their companies can be done by machines.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Conventional corporate wisdom blithely preaches that all new technologies create more jobs than they kill, but even those pollyannish preachers are now conceding that this robotic automation of white-collar jobs is being imposed so suddenly, widely, and stealthily that losses will crush any gains. “We haven’t hit the exponential point of this stuff yet,” warns an alarmed analyst. “And when we do, it’s going to be dramatic.”
Hunters have come up with euphemisms to make what they do sound… well, less unpleasant. For example, animals aren’t killed, they’re “harvested.”
Corporate America is now adopting this verbal ploy, for CEOs urgently need to soften the image of their constant hunt for ways to kill jobs. Their urgency is that they’re now pushing a huge new surge in cuts – this time targeting college-educated, white-collar professionals. Their weapon is the same sort of neutron bomb they’ve used to dispatch millions of blue-collar workers: Robots.
But robot is a negative term, so it’s been replaced with a nondescript acronym: RPAs – “Robotic Process Automation.” These sophisticated automatons are armed with artificial intelligence, enabling them to take over cognitive work that had been the niche of such highly-paid humans as financial analysts, lawyers, engineers, managers, and doctors.
More than just an incremental extension of a long, slow automation process, this is a Big Bang. It’s presently ripping through the workforce at warp speed and most of America’s vulnerable employees have no idea of what’s coming. In a survey of corporate executives last year, nearly 80 percent of them had already put some forms of RPA in place, with an additional 16 percent planning to do so within three years. That’s 96 percent of corporate employers! McKinsey, the world’s biggest corporate strategy consultant, had calculated in 2019 that the thinking robotics would displace 37 million US workers by 2030. Now, seeing the current corporate stampede to impose RPAs on US workplaces, McKinsey has upped its projection to 45 million job losses in this decade.
Returning to the hunting analogy, professional jobs requiring human-level judgement have been presumed to be beyond the range of robotic firepower. But, as one labor economists now notes, with the mass deployment of RPA technology, “that type of work is much more in the kill path.”
Last July, several GOP senators combined their 5-watt intellects to charge that inflation was rising because of the “insane tax and spending spree of President Biden and the Democrats.”
Never mind that the “insane” spending is for such sensible, productive, and enormously popular national needs as childcare and jobless benefits, Mitch McConnell’s rabidly partisan flock saw the chance to politicize the public’s legitimate worries about rising prices. You poor consumers are made to pay more for basics, they squawked, because of “Socialist Joe’s” investments in grassroots people!
Follow the ricocheting pinball of the GOPs logic:
ONE, they say that helping hard-hit families induces them to refuse to go to work; TWO, this creates blockages in the global supply chain; THREE this causes shortages of everything; FOUR, this “forces” corporate bosses to raise all prices; which, FIVE, slams the middle class and poor; so SIX, lazy workers cause inflation.
Whew! Rube Goldberg couldn’t have dreamed up a more fantastical diagram to deflect attention from what’s really happening, namely that instead of an inflation problem, we have a corporate greed problem.
Of course, the greedmeisters insist that their pursuit of excess corporate profit has not driven any price surges. In our economy of free market competition, they snap, prices are established by the Law of Supply and Demand. It’s the magic of the marketplace, they explain.
But magicians don’t do magic, they perform illusions. And the illusion of free market competition implodes when it hits the reality that our economy doesn’t remotely resemble a competitive marketplace. For some 40 years, corporate-directed government policies have intentionally promoted mega-mergers and green-lighted anticompetitive business tactics. Thus, in short order and with practically no public awareness, much less discussion, America has been transformed into Monopoly Nation – letting the few gouge the many. That’s where inflation comes from.
Republican politicos are all over Joe Biden for failing to stop inflation. Perhaps you wonder, though, what these squawkers would do if they were in charge?
No need to wonder – just look back to 1974, when Americans were being pummeled by price spikes that topped 12%, nearly double what we’re enduring today. But by Gollies, President Gerald Ford and his Republican contingent in Congress met the challenge head-on with a new magical program of economic uplift they called WIN – Whip Inflation Now! But it was nothing – just a political slogan with no magic and no action behind it. Price controls? Antitrust action? No, no, GOP Inc. didn’t want to offend, much less punish, corporate titans for a little profiteering, so they shifted the blame for inflation to consumers, demanding that families just say no to price gouging.
Ford himself went on national TV, urging fellow citizens to join him in buying “only those products and services priced at or below present levels.” The core of the Republican “program,” then, was telling hard-hit wage earners to battle the monopolistic behemoths of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Food, et al on their own by simply refusing to pay inflated prices for the gasoline, medicines, groceries, and such that–hellllooooo–they had to have.
As a reward, everyone who signed a form promising be an “Inflation Fighter” was sent a nifty WIN button, indicating their patriotic participation. Sure enough, Americans responded enthusiastically – with an avalanche of ridicule. Even Ford’s own top economic advisor, Alan Greenspan, was whopper jawed by the GOP’s idea that the substance of their policy was a political button: “It was surreal. …I said to myself. ‘This is unbelievable stupidity.’”
Yet, this time, Republican leaders are more surreal, not even pretending to have solution… and we don’t even get a button.
Our local newspapers are being merged, purged, shrunk, shut down, and looted by Wall Street profiteers – yet there’s good news. In the towns those media vultures are torching, a phoenix is rising!
Hundreds of determined locals, often led by people of color, are finding new ways to pay for and revive top-quality, local journalism. For example, the Ferndale (CA) Enterprise moved to an old Victorian home, renting upstairs rooms to vacationers to subsidize the paper. Also, while aloof Wall Street owners have no connection to us or our towns, the scrappy new community papers are stressing their grassroots connection by moving into friendlier, more central, street-level spaces – such as public libraries and community centers – so that regular people can see them and have direct access to their reporters and editors. Then there’s the editor of the Sahan Journal in Minneapolis, who moves his weekly editorial meeting to the offices of various grassroots groups so their members can help shape the paper’s coverage. And in Marfa, Texas, the Big Bend Sentinel is literally serving the public, not only with a good weekly, but also with The Sentinel – a combo coffee shop, cozy bar, cafe, event space, and hangout for locals to meet and greet.
In ways big and small, dedicated local journalists are experimenting with funding, structures, staffing, etc., to produce the news that democracy requires. Note to Wall Street vultures: These newspaper ventures aren’t interested in “scaling-up” to maximize investor profits. As they know, it was corporate cost-cutting, consolidation, and “scaling” that got us into today’s mess of journalistic collapse. Instead, by sharing ideas and resources, these local innovators help each other succeed. And, unlike the Wall Street model, their success is not measured simply by financial return, but also by how they do at keeping citizens informed and engaged.
Now that’s real journalism.
Mega-investor Warren Buffett once held a big portfolio of daily and weekly newspapers, and he specialized in squeezing out competitors so each held a local monopoly. Then he’d chop staff and news content, letting him glean annual profit margins above 30%.
But alas for poor Warren, along came the internet, allowing people to root around for free to find local information missing from his hollowed-out papers. They began losing readers, advertisers, and profits, so, in 2020, Buffett sold out his entire portfolio. But rather than concede that maybe his slash-and-burn, profit-maximization approach had produced inferior products, “The Oracle of Omaha” (as Wall Street had labeled him) blasted the whole idea of local newspapers as dinosaurs. They’re “toast,” he proclaimed.
But wait your Oracleness, when done right, local publications both chronicle and help shape a community’s story. And that’s a social benefit that’s as valuable – and as marketable – as ever. It’s not that people have given up on local news, but that corporate owned papers did – they’re not local, not newsy, and not of, by, and for the workaday people in our communities.
For example, nearly every corporate daily publishes a business section, which mostly amounts to yesterday’s stock prices, corporate press releases, and syndicated filler. Does even 1% of the population read that stuff? Meanwhile, how about economic news of interest to the great majority of locals who’re workaday families? Where’s the regular section that digs into the area’s wages, job losses and openings, workplace conditions, childcare availability, unionizing efforts, and other real-life issues that confront this majority on a daily basis?
The relevant indicator of the wellbeing of nearly every American family is not the Dow Jones Average (which newspapers cover obsessively), but the Doug Jones Average. How are Doug and Donna doing? That’s news that would sell papers.
The rich are different from you and me. For one thing, they’re rich.
Among the super-rich, though, there tends to be a peculiar sense that their net worth is a testament to their true worthiness. Thus, they seem to cling desperately to the very idea of being extremely wealthy. This leads to one specific difference between them and us: Most of us favor a wealth tax to help bridge the gaping chasm of inequality in our society; the rich do not.
Indeed, we hear shrieks of abject horror and cries of doom coming from corporate board rooms and other defenders of the plutocratic order. It would be comical if they weren’t so pathetic. They exclaim that such a tax will “destroy” entrepreneurial motivation, “sap’ innovation, “punish’ success, and – get this – “spur” a wave of divorces! The psyches of the rich are so fragile, goes this line of bull, that a tiny tax on people with more than $50 million in wealth would keep them from getting out of bed in the morning.
Jamie Dimon, a billionaire Wall Street banker, disingenuously asserts that super-wealthy people like him would “be happy to pay more in taxes.” But he fears the government would just squander it on giveaways “to interest groups and stuff like that.” I have to admit that Jamie does know his “stuff” – after all, he weaseled billions of dollars from us taxpayers to bail out his bank during the 2007 Wall Street crash. Far from squandering revenues on such welfare cases as Dimon, those supporting the wealth tax specifically call for the money to fund universal access to higher education, free healthcare for All, restoration and expansion of our national infrastructure, and other direct efforts to restore the common good.
To help advance passage of the wealth tax – and our nation’s democratic ideals – go to Citizens for Tax Justice: www.ctj.org.
“For or Against, Taxing the Rich Rouses Passion,” The New York Times, October 2, 2019,
Many Americans can't believe that political coups are part of our country's history – but consider from the Wall Street Putsch of 1933.
Never heard of it? It was a corporate conspiracy to oust Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had just been elected president. With the Great Depression raging and millions of families financially devastated, FDR had launched several economic recovery programs to help people get back on their feet. To pay for this crucial effort, he had the audacity to raise taxes on the wealthy, and this enraged a group of Wall Street multimillionaires.
Wailing that their "liberty" to grab as much wealth as possible was being shackled, they accused the president of mounting a Class War. To pull off their coup, they plotted to enlist a private military force made up of destitute World War I vets who were upset at not receiving promised federal bonus payments. One of the multimillionaires' lackeys reached out to a well-respected advocate for veterans: Retired Marine general, Smedley Darlington Butler. They wanted him to lead 500,000 veterans in a march on Washington to force FDR from the White House.
They chose the wrong general. Butler was a patriot and lifelong soldier for democracy, who, in his later years, was critical of corporate war profiteering, and he was repulsed by the hubris and treachery of these Wall Street aristocrats. He reached out to a reporter, and together, they gathered proof to to take to Congress. A special congressional committee investigated and found Butler's story "alarmingly true," leading to public hearings, with Butler giving detailed testimony.
This is Jim Hightower saying... By exposing the traitors, this courageous patriot nipped their coup in the bud. But their sense of entitlement reveals that we must be aware of the concentrated wealth of the imperious rich, for it poses an ever-present danger to majority rule.
Corporate CEOs are mostly sedentary, well-heeled money people who would hardly be considered athletic. Yet, every now and then a few of these soft elites bust out as championship players of an old game called Duck & Dodge.
It’s a sport of political finesse played when social conditions reach a boiling point, threatening problems for the corporate order. In such moments, executives sometimes leap forth as social activists, claiming to side with the aggrieved. Ducking and dodging their own responsibility for the grievances, these corporate players insist that they’ll fix the system. But when public attention drifts, so do the fixers, returning to business as usual.
Remember a year ago, for example, when our very democracy was under siege, not only by seditious right-wing extremist groups that stormed the US Capitol, but also by a clique of pusillanimous, right-wing congress critters who joined the coup attempt. “Outrageous!” shouted members of the corporate establishment, pledging that they would save our democracy. How? By cutting off the huge campaign donations they’d been giving to those 147 Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn the election.
But wait – these born-again democracy champions are the very same corporations that use special-interest cash to purchase lawmakers wholesale and steal the people’s political power. Yet they now want us to believe they’re our saviors?
Sure enough, they quickly reverted to their true selves. Within weeks of so sternly chastising the seditious members of Congress, the corporate donors quietly returned to lavishing bribery bucks on them. AT&T, Boeing, Citigroup, GM, and Pfizer are among the 700 corporate phonies that slipped $2.4 million in donations last year to members of Congress they were publicly condemning as unAmerican.
It’d make more sense to trust a coyote to guard your last lamb chop than to think that corporations value anything but their own profit.
In this year’s Beijing Olympics, the top team performance has been Corporate America’s breathtaking “Double-twist Ethical Backflip.”
This group of corporate giants loudly tout their code of ethics, pledging to stand against repressive regimes that abuse human rights. But here came the Olympics, posing a direct test… and they flopped!
Human rights advocates worldwide had asked that corporations withhold their sponsorship of the propagandistic use of the Olympics by China’s brutally oppressive rulers. CEOs were simply asked not to endorse a Chinese dictatorship that is routinely committing acts of genocide and political suppression against Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kong citizens, and others under their rule. Corporate leaders would not even have to speak out or publicly stand up to the oppressors – just don’t show up, don’t pay millions of their shareholders’ dollars to link arms and reputations with rank repression.
Well, if you’ve watched any of the Olympic broadcasts, you’ve seen which side corporate America chose – they’ve done a collective backflip from the high ethical bar of human rights into the pits of crass, unprincipled commercialism. A who’s who of America’s corporate all-stars are flying their flags in Beijing, having paid more than a billion dollars to strut their stuff as sponsors of the regime’s Olympic show.
It looks bad, though, to admit that they value humanity less than money, so sponsors are piously proclaiming that sports should not be politicized. As one put it, offending China’s autocrats “would not advance the cause of sport in which our commitment lies.” Really, how sporting is genocide? Another barked that “nobody, nobody cares what happens to Uyghurs, OK?” No, it’s not OK, and also not true. And yet another clueless corporate boss cavalierly dismissed ethics by declaring, “Ski and sport have no business in politics… It’s common sense.”
No, it’s cowardice, stupidity, and clearly un-Olympian.