Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

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: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

Some outrages are so outrageous that I don’t even want to talk about them.

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.* Israel's ruthless, 2-year invasion of Gaza has already killed 59,000 Palestinian civilians – more than half of them women and children.* That's as many killings as our soldiers suffered during the entire Vietnam War.* 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.* Excruciating death by starvation – especially among children – is now at epidemic levels in Gaza, creating a dystopian horror.* 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.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

To paraphrase British historian Lord Acton: “[Money] tends to corrupt, and absolute [money] corrupts absolutely.”

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.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

🚨🚨🚨 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… 🚨🚨🚨

Last week, Hightower had the opportunity to introduce a webinar training with Blue Horizon Texas for rural progressives who are thinking about running for office, featuring elected officials from the Outrun Coalition.

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?

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.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

Big news!

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.”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

The debut issue of our new long-form series

A major political group says that to solve America’s environmental problems, we must let Big Oil Have more control over public policy.

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!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

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.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

News flash: One of the president’s media handlers has inadvertently issued a political statement that’s actually true!

In these days of domineering corporate rule, where can we commoners go to find even a little bit of justice?

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.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

Don’t let it be said that the superrich care only about themselves, always taking from society and giving nothing back.

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.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

All of us here in Hightower’s office (especially Hightower!) have come across some amazing, hard-working candidates over the years, and those candidates bring us hope and optimism for the future.

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?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

Surprisingly, top Republicans in Congress and the White House have recently been praising labor!

How embarrassing.

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 somethingWant to support veterans and fight for justice with them? Here are two orgs we love:* Common Defense* About FaceAlso, here are some graphics from The Poster Project that you can share and use as talking points: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

Helping everyday people tell the stories of what's happening in the US right now

Gosh, I miss the old days of CEO greed, when the pay gap between Boss Hog and everyday employees was merely gross.

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.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.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

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.”

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.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.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

Find your local protest, and other ways to contribute if you're not able to attend

How sweet it is to be a corporate criminal these days!

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.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.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

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?

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. 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.orgExtra, 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 B******s produced on him in late 2024.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

Let’s say you like shrimp.

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!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.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

The right-wing routinely demonizes family-friendly policies of liberals as “social engineering.”

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!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.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

My 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

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.

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!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.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

There is a species of birds named “superb starlings,” and I propose that we elect one of them to be our next president.

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.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 Dani Cook has created a series of Medicaid graphics for states with large rural contingents here. 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

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.

You might be alarmed to learn that a little-known group in America is being treated inhumanely, denied even the most basic human rights.

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.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.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

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.

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.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.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

Time to get back into our regular deep-dives into issues and topics we love