Jim Hightower's Lowdown

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.”

Woody 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

“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.”

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.

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.”

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?

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,”

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. T

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.

In my view, the greatest of America’s “Founding Fathers” was not Washington or Jefferson – nor, technically, he wasn’t even an American. Rather, he was a British immigrant and itinerate agitator for real democracy, enlightenment, and universal human rights.

Well, well, well – look who’s waking up and raring to go: Mr. and Ms. WOKE! We so-called “woke” people have been the target of far-right politicos and front groups that are frantically trying to ban us and our ideas from America’s political discourse. In the past few years, such thuggish gubernatorial demagogues as Ron DeSantis have perverted the power of Big Government to attack teachers, librarians, public agencies, and even

Although the sun is an essential life force, we need to protect ourselves from its relentless glare. Sunglasses? Check. Beach umbrella? Check. Tinted car windows? Check. A huge, multi-trillion-dollar parasol floating in outer space to reduce global warming

In 1863, humorist Artemus Ward wrote a satire on hucksterism, making up a tale of Abe Lincoln being asked to endorse a piece of quackery about spiritualism. Not wanting to offend, the Lincoln character slyly offers non-committal praise: “Well for people who like that kind of thing, I think that is just about the kind of thing they’d like.”

“Corporate crises consultants” (yes, there are such creatures) have patented a formula allowing their wrongdoing clients to champion reform while simultaneously killing it. A classic case is now unfolding around last year’s derailment of a 2-mile-long Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio. The community’s air, soil, water, and people suffered a massive spill of toxic chemicals.