Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

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.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

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.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

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. 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

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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit jimhightower.substack.comGreetings, 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. 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 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:* NAACP* Southern Environmental Law Center* EarthjusticeJim 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

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!TranscriptAnnouncer: 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.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!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!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

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.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

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.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!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! 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'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.orgJim 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

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.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

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.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

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.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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit jimhightower.substack.comLast 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.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

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:* Our so-called “Justice Department” has sued Hawaii and Michigan to deny a “state's right” to sue energy corporations that cause climate change.* 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.* The same group wants the federal government to cut funding to any state or city that sues energy corporations.* 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.orgJim 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

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!* 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.* 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.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

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.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

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.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

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.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

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.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

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!”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

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.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

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 somethingTired of corporations stealing from you? Our friends at Public Citizen have a whole catalog of resources dedicated to tariffs—get involved 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

“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?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 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!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

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.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

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.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

“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.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'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 CENTERSSchoolsLibrariesBookstoresArrogantly, 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.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

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.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

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.”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

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!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

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.orgOn 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.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

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.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

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.”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

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.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

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.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!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. 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

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!* To follow fights around the country and learn more about AI data centers, subscriber to Data Center Watch Briefing: datacenterwatch.substack.com* 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.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 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.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.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!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 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.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

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.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

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.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

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.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