Podcast appearances and mentions of Jim Hightower

A headline on a recent news article caught my eye, for it declared, “Americans Disagree on Everything.”I said to myself: “I disagree with that!”Indeed, the untold story of today's America is the good news that We the People fundamentally agree on more than what supposedly separates us. It is true that our daily media feed does relentlessly push political negativity and discord, and it's true that hyper-partisan politicians grab attention by hammering their narrow views into swords of hatred. But that's them, not the greater us.Even hot-button issues which dominate the Internet and talk-shows are actually not all that divisive for the majority of us. For example, nearly 90 percent of Americans (including two-thirds of Republicans) oppose the right-wing attempt to whitewash our nation's history by restricting teachers, museums etc. from addressing such realities as slavery.More significantly, consider the real needs of ordinary workaday families. Basics like living wages, protecting Social Security, busting-up monopolies, cleaning up pollution, providing affordable housing, funding our parks and libraries, stopping price gouging. Overwhelmingly, Americans in red, blue, and purple areas agree on what government ought to be doing – and disagrees with what it is doing. But the plutocratic moneyed elites that now fund and perpetuate Americas corrupt and dysfunctional government profit by promoting hatreds to pit us against each other, praying that all of us don't focus on them.Don't succumb to their self-serving lies, but seek ways to unite in what we Americans do agree on – specifically our historic commitment to the democratic values of economic fairness, social justice, and equal treatment for all. Anything less is BS.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

Texas: What the Hell? The Lone Star State's government, a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary, solidified its ranking this year as America's #1 innovator of really bad public policies.Branching out from their usual corrupt collusion with Big Oil, industrial polluters, and other profiteering hucksters, the governor and top lawmakers came up with a whole new batch of legalized slick-um, specifically to protect and profit a new Texas stock market for big money dealers. Who needs it? After all, beaucoup markets already exist for speculators and such. Yes – but those markets are at least loosely regulated to protect investors – plus, some states want to tax stock-trading profits.So here come Texas politicos, pushing a cutely-named “Y'all Street” stock exchange, promising that it'll be “speculator friendly.” Friendly means limp regulation, little public disclosure of schemes, and hostility to taxation.For example, to spare rich stock profiteers from paying their share of taxes (like working stiffs do), Republican leaders have graciously acted to prevent state taxation on the massive profits speculators get from selling stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. And, to prove their undying plutocratic love for the rich, lawmakers plan to engrave this special tax break in the Texas Constitution, effectively closing off rich people's ill-gotten gains as a source of revenue for the state's future needs.This Lone Star stock market is a cynical big-government scam to further enrich the privileged few hoping to shift the cost of basic public services away from those most able to pay onto the backs of workaday families. If you wonder how inequality happens, study the Texas example. And hurry – the right-wing intends to bring it to your state next.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

Roaring 20s novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”Well, yes… they're rich!But maybe you're doing pretty well these days, counting yourself among the rich. That's charming, but let's check the latest wealth indicator: Do you have a “private concierge?” You might live in a megahouse, have a maid and a nanny, travel First Class – but having a private concierge is what separates you commonplace millionaires from the filthy rich.What do these personal servants actually do? “We fix problems,” says one owner of a boutique firm that offers “hyper-personalization” services to select clients worldwide. Want to get a table tonight at a fully-booked restaurant in Paris? Don't call the restaurant – call your fixer, gets it done. If you're going to a formal ceremony in Hong Kong but – OMG you left your tuxedo back home in Oshkosh. Your concierge will find a courier to deliver it on time.In addition to dealing with such upper-class urgencies, these “lifestyle managers” also relieve the überrich of having to cope with everyday details of real life. No need to call a plumber, plan a birthday party, shop for basics, and such – that's why you pay about $75,000 a year to have your own handler. They've become such a must-have emblem of luxury that even Chase Bank and American Express now offer concierges to their high-end clients.What's at work here is a decadent ethic of royal entitlement. It's a grandiose (and socially-destructive) assumption of superiority by the filthy rich – who misinterpret their wealth as worthiness. Oh, and we common taxpayers get to subsidize these personal concierges.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

When will top Democratic party officials recognize that today's electorate is not made up of moderate centrists?Rather, most Americans are anti-establishment rebels who've been knocked down, kicked out, and told that they don't matter. Indeed, our country's true political spectrum doesn't run right to left, but top to bottom. Right-wing/left-wing is ideology. Top to bottom is life. And most people know that they're no longer in shouting distance of the moneyed elites at the top.This cries out for a “little-d” democratic party that goes right at the billionaires, autocrats, and kleptocrats. Instead, we get Chuck Schumer. This Senate Democratic leader's idea of battling right-wing extremism is to say, “I sent a letter” in protest.Worse, the corporatized hierarchy controlling the once-proud Party of the People reserve their aggressiveness for – guess what? – battling progressive Democratic activists and candidates! Yes, they keep blocking true Democrats who can win, nominating corporate-branded centrists instead – then wondering why voter turnout plummets and an angry electorate reaches for the Trump Hammer.They are trying to do it to us again right now in Maine, where a plain-spoken, working-class progressive is poised to defeat a Trump Republican for a U.S. Senate seat. Graham Platner, a maverick, 41-year-old combat veteran and oyster farmer is drawing huge crowds, enthusiasm, volunteers, money… and grassroots hope. He's a winner – exactly what Democrats need to become relevant again.Yet, rather than embracing the grassroots enthusiasm to win the senate seat, Schumer is raising corporate cash to defeat Planter! The party's leader is its own worst enemy. To learn more, go to: GrahamForSenate.com.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 in Juarez, Mexico, I wandered into a carnival sideshow that flabbergasted this Texas country boy. Stumbling out, I murmured: “Now I've seen everything… and then some.” But now, decades later, I've been even more stupefied by the news that convicted Wall Street swindler Michael Milken has just opened his own bizarre freak show in Washington, DC.Touted as a “tourist attraction,” his museum glorifies predatory capitalists (like him), hailing them as heroic American geniuses! The infamous junk-bond scammer grandiosely labels his monument the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. It's located right across the street from the White House (though it's rumored that even his buddy Trump considered Michael's “Monument to Mammon” to be too explicitly obscene to attach it directly to the East Wing).In a perverse bit of symbolism, the thing occupies the former headquarters of a bank that was forced to close 20 years ago because of a money-laundering scandal. How's that for Karma? But, to gloss over such ugliness, Milken has gilded his legacy mausoleum with Trumpian gold. The rooms, draperies, furniture – and even a fake tree in the atrium – all gleam with gold leaf, emphasizing Milken's credo that the goal of life is money… and the power to get it.Educational exhibits include an interactive game on compound interest, as well as a display of Mike's high school cheerleading uniform. Missing, though, is any mention of the full presidential pardon this avaricious criminal wrangled from Trump in 2020, letting the racketeer escape prison for stealing a billion dollars from people who trusted him.Still, if you visit his Washington freak show, the gift shop offers a memento that sums up his life: A $22 Milken money clip.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 country's magnificent National Park System has been called “America's greatest idea.”These 433 treasures – along with our rich diversity of national museums and historical sites – each have their own stories to tell. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, for together they express America's egalitarian sprit and “little-d” democratic possibilities, urging us to keep pushing for economic fairness and social justice for all.And that's exactly why Trump and his cabal of moneyed elites and right-wing extremists are out to purge, erase and officially censor the parks' historical presentations. After all, it's hard to impose plutocratic autocracy if such tangible examples of historic truth and democratic rebellion are openly displayed!Thus, as dictated by the GOP's secretive anti-democracy clique, Project 2025, Trump's ideological Thought Police have set themselves up as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” to sanitize and Disneyfy the telling of our people's real history. For example, Trump complains that parks and museums hurt America's self-image by telling “how bad slavery was.”Hello, Donald – that's not an image, it's reality, as central to our national character as our historic commitment to equality. And the explosive conflict between ugly repression and flowering egalitarianism is ever present today. Consider the push by Sen. Eric Schmitt and others in the GOP's Christian Nationalist movement to deny the unifying principle that “all men are created equal.”There's not enough whitewash in the world to cover up the deep ugliness of slavery, and it's self-destructive for government to try. The fundamental purpose of recording our shared history is to learn from it.Do something!You might've heard about the Alt National Park Service, but they might not be quite who they say they are, as it turns out. To support park rangers fighting the good fight in their work and off-duty, check out Resistance Rangers.On the museum front, AFSCME and the American Library Association are actively fighting to block the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).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 MAGA government is shoveling massive giveaways of public money to corporate elites. Worse, though, are its takeaways of people's power to battle the abuse of those same plutocratic corporations. Consider just three recent examples:Travel. Perhaps your family plans a holiday flight to visit grandma. Flying itself has become dicey, but at least the government is requiring airlines that cause long delays or cancellations to compensate us passengers for our loss. Uh… no, no more. Trump's transportation secretary (who was previously a LOBBYIST for the big airlines!) is “loosening” the rules so monopolistic airlines owe nothing to abused customers.Job opportunities. One of the nastiest wage suppression tactics of corporate bosses has been their collusion to make employees sign “noncompete” contracts. These amount to indentured servitude, preventing workers from quitting to take a better job with a competing firm. This corporate lockdown costs American workers some $40 billion a year in wages they could get in an open job market. The FTC was finally moving to ban these noncompete gimmicks – but Trump installed a corporate lackey at the FTC to snuff out this spark of workplace liberty.Pollution. Corporate lobbyists and MAGA lawmakers are rigging the rules to let industrial giants escape responsibility for their massive environmental contamination. For example, the profiteering greedheads who've deceptively caused tons of deadly “forever chemicals” to be spread on our land, water, communities, and families are to be let off the hook by the new, corporate-hugging EPA honcho. He says we taxpayers must pay for the toxic cleanup, not the polluters.If you're unclear about the meaning of “plutocracy,' there it is: Government by and for the despotic rich.Fighting plutocracy on multiple fronts is challenging work, and that's why we recommend getting involved with Public Citizen—they're strategic and have a long track record of protecting Americans on many issues. Check them out at citizen.org.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, cosmic oddities come together in comic ways. For example, Google positions the biography of right-wing Texas governor Greg Abbott right under the one for yesteryear's slapstick comedians, Abbott and Costello.It's almost cruel for Gov. Greg to be juxtaposed with that quick-witted duo, for he's a dour, slow-witted, plutocratic pol, with no perceptible sense of humor. As governor, he has focused on demonizing poor people, rigging elections, and doing favors for moneyed elites. Unsurprisingly, only four out of 10 Texas voters now support him. Yet – don't laugh – in a move of burlesque absurdity, Abbott now says he might choose to become president. Yes, of the US!Filled with pomposity, he recently proclaimed, “I will be guided by God.” Well, maybe so, since the god he faithfully follows is Mammon. Indeed, his major credential for becoming the GOP nominee for prez is that he is a pro at the Pay-to-Play game of using taxpayer money to entice special interests to fund his political career. “You pay me, then I pay you” is his corrupt game plan, which he has used to amass a whopping $87 million for his next election.For example, watchdog group Public Citizen has documented some $3 million that Abbott got from executives of eight corporations. In turn, those eight were given nearly a billion dollars in no-bid state contracts – a 33,000% profit on their donations to Abbott!This is Jim Hightower saying… For high rollers, Abbott is better than a winning Powerball lottery ticket. Buy him, and the Pay-to-Play merry-go-round keeps spinning at taxpayer expense. To fight such big money corruption, go to Public Citizen: citizen.org.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

It's been my honor to know a few real heroes – people who've selflessly dared to fight greed and oppression to advance the common good. Diane Wilson, for example.For forty years, this fiery, fourth-generation fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf Coast has battled tenaciously for the rights and very survival of the area's hardscrabble fishing families. She and her grassroots allies have taken on Formosa Plastics, a $250 billion, global corporate beast that has routinely dumped its chemical waste around Matagorda Bay, poisoning life and livelihoods.But in 2019, in a lawsuit based on massive evidence collected by Wilson and her armada of volunteer kayakers, she won a stunning court victory, forcing the contaminator to pay $50 million for its malfeasance.Wilson's fight was not just for her, and she did not get a penny from the Formosa settlement. But she won something richer than money – “It felt like justice,” she said of the court's judgement.Importantly, the court didn't award the $50 million to some regulatory agency, but to a public trust administered by – guess who? – Wilson's allies! So she has been working tenaciously ever since to make sure the money directly benefits the poor families Formosa ran over. Especially promising is the trust's major grant to create the people's own Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative. It will provide dock space, supply contracts, processing ability, local jobs… and the power for local people to forge their own future.Why fight against overpowering odds for 40 years? Because of her strong principles… and sheer stubbornness. “It's my home,” Wilson says of the bay and its working-class community, “and I completely refuse to give it to that company to ruin.”Learn more about Diane and support her work: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 a progressive idea I picked up from the unlikeliest of sources: Corporate CEOs!For decades, these chieftains of our economic order have been steadily implementing a very visionary process for establishing corporate wage levels. The essence of it is this: Let the workers set their own pay! Since the 1970s, when the idea began taking hold in Corporate America, pay levels have zoomed up by more than 1,000 percent.Well… not for you. This set-your-own pay movement has only been available to top corporate executives, whose median paychecks now top $16 million a year! But since it's been a boon for this test group, I say it's time to expand the no-hassle compensation concept to all employees. This would greatly boost grassroots purchasing power, economic growth, and fairness for all.“Omigod no!” squawk corporate apologists, rushing to say that, technically, CEOs do not directly set their pay. Rather, the bosses have attached their earnings to their corporations' ever-rising stock prices. Thus, astronomical rewards go to those who obsessively focus on jacking-up the price of their own stock, even though that's a selfishly-narrow and false measure of a corporation's performance.Also, stock price is no indicator of a CEO's worthiness. Even bosses who're blockheads can still get a boost simply because they've rigged the system to hitch a free ride on inflated stock value.This is Jim Hightower saying… Still, if it's good enough for them, why not an equal deal for working stiffs, who actually deliver the products and services that give a corporation some true value. I say, each worker should get the same percentage increase in pay that the top honcho takes. It's a very simple process… and it's only fair.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

May we take a minute to talk about your death?And mine, too. I certainly don't want to rush either one, but there is a matter we should all consider ahead of the “event.” Namely, the funeral.The nature of one's bodily disposal is, of course, unpleasant to discuss. So mostly we don't. Thus, at our death, loved ones frantically try to decide between crematorium or a coffin.Both processes are awful to contemplate, are environmentally harmful, can be exorbitantly expensive, and are often emotionally unsatisfying for survivors. I can't say there's any good way to go, but is there a better way?Yes, says an interesting “green burial” movement, offering the alternative of an affordable “adios” that truly does bring life full circle. With no need for embalming, burning, or steel sarcophagus, it provides a simplicity and an organic authenticity to life's end.The essence of it is minimalism. The expired body is literally and gently covered with heated plant material for a month or so, accelerating the work of microbes and fungi to convert us into soil. Yes, in short order, we become about a cubic yard of compost – new nutrient-rich earth that family or others can even spread to foster future life.Adding to the wholistic ethic, a cottage industry makes available home-made woven baskets, linen shrouds, and other organic provisions for our dearly departed. Also, rather than wearing mournful, black clothing to the funeral plot, mourners at a green burial gather in work clothes to assist in the farewell.It's a participatory continuum, carrying life forward. Maybe it's not for you and yours – but maybe it is. To learn more, go to GreenBurialCouncil.org.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! Another far-right-wing mob, spurred on by Trump, is storming our US Capitol!Only, these are not uncouth MAGA marauders wearing buffalo horns, breaking in, and attacking Capital police. No, this is a very couth, richly-attired, well-mannered political mob laying siege on Congress. And look: Instead of fighting or fleeing, Republican lawmakers are holding the Capitol's doors wide open for this incursion! That's because this is a swarm of always-welcome corporate lobbyists and campaign funders. In particular, they're an army of global pesticide giants.Led by Bayer, the multibillion-dollar German biochemical conglomerate, they're demanding that Congress keep us commoners from interfering with their poisonous profiteering. Bayer reaps billions of dollars selling a killer pesticide named Roundup, which scientists increasingly consider a cause of cancer, especially in children. Thousands of afflicted families have filed major lawsuits holding Bayer responsible.Of course, Bayer honchos did the honorable thing. Ha! Just kidding. Instead, its lobbyists rushed to Trump and GOP congressional leaders, who – shhhh – quietly tucked a corporate “gotcha” into this month's must-pass budget bill. It would effectively hand retroactive immunity to chemical manufacturers, quashing all those lawsuits filed by families of Roundup victims. Sneaky, huh? Infuriated, grassroots leaders of MAHA (The “Make America Healthy Again” movement) say the Republican Party is being corrupted by false information from the pesticide companies.This is Jim Hightower saying… Actually, what's corrupting the Party's lawmakers is the gusher of campaign money they take from the poison pushers. For information and action on stopping this capitulation to what a Bayer, go to FoodAndWaterWatch.org.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

All across the country, nonprofit hospital chains are literally upping their game.These corporate entities receive special tax exemptions because they provide some free and reduced-cost medical services to poor families. But, as one CEO put it, many chains are now going the extra yard to serve local folks “in new and exciting ways.”Great! Our whole health system desperately needs better quality, more-affordable care for all!Uh… no… that's not what they mean.Rather, the exciting new thing being pushed by non-profit hospitals is to spend big chunks of their tax-free revenue on their area's professional and college sports teams. For what? Get this: To buy the naming rights to the teams' stadiums and ballparks! A children's hospital in Fresno, California, for example, has put down $10 million to slap its name on Fresno State University's football stadium. And a Tennessee “safety-net” hospital has committed millions to emblazon its corporate name on the ballpark of Chattanooga's pro-baseball franchise.Sweet Jesus, what the hell? One university marketing professor even tried to rationalize these diabolical, high-dollar transactions by comparing them to community-spirited doctors buying jerseys for a town's Little League team! Excuse me, but this is a big-league perversion of the healthcare mission. Indeed, the Fresno State deal included special perks for the hospital's top honchos – including a skybox suite at FSU games, food & drink for them, seats on the team's charter plane, and a bundle of free tickets to home games.This is Jim Hightower saying… As the Republican mayor of Chattanooga gently noted: “At a time of severe nursing shortages and quality of care concerns, this decision is hard to explain.”Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

My life goals have never included making a lot of money… and I've certainly succeeded in that regard.Yet, I do consider myself rich. Not like the Wall Street “richie-rich,” but in the modest sense of middle-class well-being – basically, enough to make ends meet. It's not my good looks that puts me in this lucky zone, but one particular public asset that has long been serving the common good for decades, lifting millions of workaday Americans to some decent level of shared prosperity: Social Security.Plutocratic elites and their political puppets constantly wail that it's a socialist scam, a wasteful giveaway to old people. But regular folks know that's hokum, since nearly all of us pay into the plan every month of our working lives. In short, it's our money!Moreover, each of our Social Security accounts steadily build up. So, consider this: The most valuable financial asset for 9 out of 10 American families, is not their houses or Aunt Tillie's will – but their Social Security holdings. Even for rock-solid, middle-class families, Social Security provides for about a third of their total lifetime wealth.This is Jim Hightower saying… When right-wingers screech that “fiscal prudence” demands they slash the program's benefits, that's bank-robber code for looting wealth you've banked for years in this People's retirement system. Plus, there is absolutely no excuse for such thievery, since an honest, fair, and simple adjustment would keep the program fully funded in perpetuity: Rather than letting gabillionaires like Elon Musk put practically none of their massive incomes into this egalitarian effort to provide a decent retirement for all, make them pay Social Security taxes exactly like regular workers do.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 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty scornfully declares that, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.”So what does “woke” mean? It's become the pet political aspersion that today's kooky right-wing hucksters hurl at liberals, but the hurlers would be whopperjawed to learn that it's was actually coined by and for progressives! Indeed, it admonishes people to be awake to the dangers posed by hate-filled bigots and reactionaries like… well, like today's right-wing extremists.SURPRISING HISTORICAL TIDBIT: The first person reported to have used the word was Huddie Ledbetter, the legendary Black blues artist known as Lead Belly. Among his many classic songs was “Scottsboro Boys,” about nine Black teenagers falsely accused in 1931 of raping two Alabama white women. As a Black musician who traveled the backroads of the Jim Crow South, Lead Belly warned others to pay attention when in a viciously racist state: “Best stay woke,” he cautioned.But—out of blind ignorance, blind arrogance, or both—today's adaptors of the Jim Crow mentality have perverted common-sense wokeness into a verbal whip to lash African-Americans, immigrants, Democrats, women, LGBTQ+ people and all others they don't like (pretty much everyone who looks, thinks, prays and acts different from them). How kooky? They've declared librarians, science, Mickey Mouse, and Bud Light to be their evil enemies. “Don't be woke,” they bark, demanding autocratic, plutocratic, and theocratic laws to coerce compliance with their own retrogressive bigotries.This is Jim Hightower saying… Bear in mind that this is no longer a fringe cult, but the mainstream of the Republican Party, including its top congressional leaders, presidential wannabes, and state officials. Actually, you can easily comprehend what these Humpty-Dumpties really mean by their “Don't Be Woke” war cry. Just substitute the word “sane” for “woke.”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

Nearly all Americans agree that Congress has become a sad joke – a blight of irritating gnats.How exciting, then, that a consultant to top Republican lawmakers has figured out how to make Congress better. Ready? Raise the members' pay!Golly, why didn't I think of that? After all, who wants to work for only $174,000 a year (plus full health care, a really nice lifetime pension, and a flock of personal staffers to do the heavy lifting)? This congressional insider insists that such compensation is way too paltry for the best-and-brightest types Congress needs, so they choose Wall Street or corporate careers, rather than public service.“Ask any corporate leader,” he asserts, and they'll say “talent is everything.” And, he explains, it takes serious bucks to “attract and retain talent.” So, the answer to getting a better Congress is easy, he writes: “Let's start by doubling their salaries.”Excuse me, but let's not.While money is the reason Congress fails to represent the common good of America's workday majority, their paychecks aren't to blame. Rather, it's the corrupting power of the unlimited dollars that corporations and billionaires are spewing into our elections and lobbying campaigns, literally buying the special-interest Congress that Americans despise.The obvious problem with Congress is not that members don't get enough money, but that they take too much. Don't even think about raising congressional pay before outlawing congressional payoffs! Besides, anyone who'll only commit to public service work if their pay is doubled is not committed to the public, to service, or even to work. They're narcissists, committed to themselves – and Congress already has an excess of those.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Some days I don't know whether to rage in fury, weep quietly, or just throw up.This, however, is definitely a throw-up day. That's because our US Secretary of State (a once-honorable position that advocated humanitarian values) has just decreed that war-torn Palestinian children from Gaza will be denied medical visas that would let them come here for life-saving surgeries. Yes, innocent children horribly maimed by the US bombs, bullets, and billions of our tax dollars that our government sends to prop up the corrupt Israeli regime of Netanyahu, have now had America's door slammed in their faces by Trump's nutball extremists.How extreme? Even bulldog right-winger Marjorie Taylor Greene is appalled that top USA officials have turned so cold as to reject common decency for “Palestinian kids who had their limbs and bodies blown apart.” But Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who reportedly once had a smidgeon of political integrity, immediately snapped to attention when someone named Laura Loomer – one of Trump's loopy “influencers” – proclaimed that these Palestinian medical seekers were “pro-Hamas.”Hello… they're children! To which the Loomer lady summoned this piece of ignorance from deep within her dark soul: “They are not that sick if they can sit on a plane for 22 hours to get to America.”Okay, she's just a doofus, but Rubio? He's a practicing Catholic, so he surely knows Jesus' biblical admonition: “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Yet, he has officially banned them from the compassionate arms of the American people, darkly warning: “It's not just kids… a bunch of adults are accompanying them.”Yeah – their parents, guardians, good Samaritans. Gotta watch out for those types.To stay on top of everything happening to Gaza, and to find solid actions you can take to fight and end the genocide, we recommend following Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American organizer and strategist who was also a surrogate for Bernie Sanders during his 2016 campaign.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

Bobby Kennedy, Jr. seemed on the right track when he launched his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.Well, not the wacky-quacky part of that agenda, where he teeters off into the prickly thicket of medical voodoo and vaccine bugaboos. But he was onto something fundamentally important when he began to rally public opposition to the arrogance, greed, and willful destructiveness of pesticide peddlers and other Big Food profiteers.As Secretary of Health, Kennedy pushed Trump's “presidential commission on children's health” to take long-overdue action to rein-in those agribusiness contaminators of our food supply and natural resources. He called for limits and outright bans on industrial ag and food processing abuses that grow corporate profits at the expense of healthy kids.Great!But wait – the commission's draft report is now out, and none of Kennedy's most meaningful stuff is in it. None! There's no suggestion, for example, that even the most toxic cancer-causing pesticides should be outlawed, permanently removed from food products and our environment.What happened? Money. While Kennedy was publicly talking a good game, Big Food profiteers were paying a million dollars each to have intimate talks at private dinners with Trump. And when money talks, political integrity walks.Sadly, rather than resigning in protest of Trump's whitewash and rallying America's families to carry this betrayal into next year's elections, Kennedy is hyping the report's empty calories as a people's victory! But he can't make chicken salad out of chicken manure. Grassroots groups themselves call the gutted report “beyond laughable,” “profoundly disappointing” and “dangerous.”For genuine, structural change in food policy, go to Environmental Working Group: ewg.org.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 about 12 years of age, I began working for my father, loading bundles into the two delivery trucks used in his small business. This required that, first, I back the trucks down an alley and into the loading bay. Thus, I learned to drive going backward, which probably says something fundamental about me.But even at 12, I didn't get stuck in reverse, as today's Republican Congress has. The GOP's autocratic ideologues and corporate toadies are spurning hard-won, economic, social, environmental, and other progress made by generations of grassroots Americans. They are trying to drive our people back to Robber Baron rule and Jim Crow law.Indeed, no progressive advance today escapes the wrath of the GOP's ideological swat squad. Consider the operatic political frenzy they're now stirring up over Post Office trucks. Yes, that ubiquitous fleet of red, white, and blue mail delivery vehicles you see on every street and rural road in America.Those gas-powered workhorses, now 35 years old, are way overdue for replacement. Sensibly, the Postal Service is buying fuel-efficient, non-polluting, electric vehicles, which include such basics as airbags and air conditioning.But no, squealed extreme right-wingers like Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. She condemns the very idea of a battery-powered fleet as lefty “wokeness.” So she's demanding that Congress literally defund the purchase of EVs, forcing the Postal Service to go backward to inefficient, polluting trucks fueled by Big Oil – an industry that just happens to be a generous funder of her career.To get a clear-eyed view of which are the best vehicles to take us way forward, don't ask a corporate-owned ideologue; ask the postal workers who drive them. Go to apwu.com.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 a 2006 documentary, I assailed Texas Republican lawmakers for ramming a brutish gerrymandering scheme into law, doing my report from a street sign in central Austin.That sign was the exact location the GOP had used as the pin point for slicing up the city's one congressional district into four pieces like a pizza. Each slice radiated far out of town, merging into Republican suburbs in distant cities – thus suppressing Austin's progressive voice in Congress.Now here they come again, assaulting progressive voters throughout the state with a gerrymandering gang bang. At the command of Donald Trump, our so-called “representatives” are submissively shoving millions of Texans into jerry-rigged Trump enclaves, solely to serve his political desires.Far from being just another corrupt hyper-partisan political manipulation, this GOP ploy is stripping away America's fundamental principle of representative democracy. Instead of grassroots communities sorting out their differences and choosing their own governing representatives in local elections, political hacks in Washington and the state capital are cynically relocating people's political “locality” (with no participation at all by the people).Yes, instead of constituents choosing their members of Congress, gerrymandering lets members choose their constituents. So “your” representative doesn't need to know you, much less serve you. Thus, the issues that Congress considers don't percolate up from local communities, but are chosen by national and state political operatives and multimillion-dollar campaign donors. It's the nationalization of local elections, ignoring the real needs of hometown people.Why shouldn't you have a representative who's at least from your community, maybe even knows your name… and gives a damn about something more constructive than Trump's anti-democratic, plutocratic agenda.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

Is Elon Musk OK?Just a few months ago, the prancing right-winger was constantly in the news. Today, though – poof! – he has vanished from media coverage. But fret not -- Elon always finds money to take care of Number One. Indeed, this month he was handed a $30 billion pay raise by his car company. Yes, BILLION.Odd, since his stewardship of Tesla in the past couple of years has been disastrous. Sales, profit, quality, and market share are in the ditch, along with his own reputation. Yet, in a gushing letter to shareholders, the corporation's board of directors asserted that its $30 billion handout was a “critical” gesture to induce Elon to show up for work. Apparently, $29 billion would not have been enough.Who are these board members who supposedly “govern” the corporation and its CEO? One is Kimbal Musk. Yes, Elon's brother! Others are close pals and lackeys, each of whom is extravagantly paid. For example, the board member who “negotiated” that ridiculous giveaway to His Supremeness has pocketed more than half a billion dollars in profits from Tesla stock options she has been granted.Well, declare apologists for Musk and his captive board, if $30 billion was excessive, the shareholders who technically own Tesla could've sued to stop payment. Uh… no, they couldn't. Last year, Musk moved Tesla's official residence to Texas, where the corrupt governor dutifully passed a law dictating that only shareholders owning at least three percent of the stock can sue on matters of corporate governance. Basically, that eliminates all shareholders except: Musk.And that's how the corporate merry-go-round is rigged to keep spinning around and around and around.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 gaggle of self-righteous multimillionaires are now in charge of America's poverty agencies and policies, and they've been flaunting their deeply-held ignorance about poor families – almost none of whom they actually know.Consider the national embarrassment of Brooke Rollins, a patrician ideologue, who is Trump's plutocratic Secretary of Agriculture. Besides promoting a corporatized food and farm system, Rollins is advocating a program of back-to-the-future peonage for poor people. “We have way too many people that are taking government program that are able to work,” she snorts.Bad grammar aside, she falsely asserts that “34 million able-bodied adults” are freeloading on public health care. They're taking Medicaid benefits that they ought to have to “earn” by hard labor, she recently decreed. Her Dickensian solution: Put the moochers to work in the fields!Noting that Trump's militarized assault on immigrants has terrorized agricultural workers, thus creating a farm labor crisis, Rollins wants to hitch America's poor families to the plow. Voilà – labor shortage solved, and the poor are forced to earn their medical care. What a brilliant leader!Except for her rank ignorance. First, 64 percent of Medicaid recipients are already working and nearly all of the rest are retirees, unable to work, or struggling to find jobs. Second, she's obviously unaware that agriculture is skilled work – you can't just bus city and suburban people out to the country and say “grow stuff.”And third, it is beyond arrogant for a rich government autocrat – who takes $220,000 a year from taxpayers, plus platinum healthcare benefits and a fat pension – to be pontificating about forcing “undeserving” poor into hot fields to produce a nice leafy salad for her lunch.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

“Texas Democrats who left the state to stymie Republicans over redistricting have returned to Austin,” Politico reports, “ending a two-week standoff over President Donald Trump's plan to carve out five new GOP congressional seats.” The end of the Texas lawmaker walkout means that the Texas legislature will now be able to proceed with passing a vote on Republicans' gerrymandered Congressional map—so what did the walkout achieve? In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with legendary populist and former Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Jim Hightower about the significance of the political showdown in Texas, and the longer-term fight ahead for Democrats and for working people of all stripes in the face of MAGA authoritarianism and corporate tyranny.Guest:Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow. From 1983-1991, Hightower served as Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture. He publishes “Jim Hightower's Lowdown” on Substack.Additional resources:Liz Crampton, Politico, “Texas Democrats have returned home, ending redistricting standoff”Marc Steiner, The Real News Network, “'Death Star' State: The GOP's War on Democracy (DOCUMENTARY)”Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Republicans are trying to rig the midterms. Will Democrats actually fight back, or cave?: A conversation with Beto O'Rourke”Credits:Producer: Rosette SewaliStudio Production: Cameron GranadinoAudio Post-Production: Stephen FrankFollow The Marc Steiner Show on Spotify Follow The Marc Steiner Show on Apple PodcastsHelp us continue producing The Marc Steiner Show by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Sign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

“Texas Democrats who left the state to stymie Republicans over redistricting have returned to Austin,” Politico reports, “ending a two-week standoff over President Donald Trump's plan to carve out five new GOP congressional seats.” The end of the Texas lawmaker walkout means that the Texas legislature will now be able to proceed with passing a vote on Republicans' gerrymandered Congressional map—so what did the walkout achieve? In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with legendary populist and former Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Jim Hightower about the significance of the political showdown in Texas, and the longer-term fight ahead for Democrats and for working people of all stripes in the face of MAGA authoritarianism and corporate tyranny.Guest:Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow. From 1983-1991, Hightower served as Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture. He publishes “Jim Hightower's Lowdown” on Substack.Additional resources:Liz Crampton, Politico, “Texas Democrats have returned home, ending redistricting standoff”Marc Steiner, The Real News Network, “'Death Star' State: The GOP's War on Democracy (DOCUMENTARY)”Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Republicans are trying to rig the midterms. Will Democrats actually fight back, or cave?: A conversation with Beto O'Rourke”Credits:Producer: Rosette SewaliStudio Production: Cameron GranadinoAudio Post-Production: Stephen FrankFollow The Marc Steiner Show on Spotify Follow The Marc Steiner Show on Apple PodcastsHelp us continue producing The Marc Steiner Show by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Sign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

Will Rogers joked that when thousands of rural Oklahomans fled the 1930s Dust Bowl and migrated to California: “It raised the intellectual level of both states.”Following that line of thought, it occurred to me that America could benefit mightily if the Democratic Party's overbearing corporate contingent were to migrate to their natural domain, the Republican Party. Seriously, as Robert Reich recently wrote: “Who in the world needs corporate Democrats?”Thomas Jefferson warned of the democracy-crushing threat of America's emerging “moneyed corporations.” And, sure enough, here they are today – literally owning the White House, Congress, Judiciary, most state governments… and suppressing democracy itself.They're entrenched not because they're championed by the Republican Party, but because the once-proud party of America's broad working class has also yoked itself to corporate money and embraced Republican policies of corporate supremacy. Where does that leave the great majority of working stiffs on election day? Staying home, feeling abandoned as both parties cater to the moneyed elite.While many corporate Democrats insist they're “social progressives,” it would be a profound public service for them to carry those social values directly into Republican primaries, softening that party's raw minginess a bit. At the same time, their departure would free the Democratic Party from being financially shackled to the corporate agenda, letting it return to its roots as the unequivocating champion of working-class, little-d democrats.By clarifying the core policy differences of both parties, elections could matter to most people again, presenting honest choices between a democratic or a plutocratic future. Pie-in-the-sky? Maybe, or even probably. But baking a pie starts by turning on the heat.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

Frenetic crowds are storming the White House like a Black Friday mob at Walmart!Only these are not shoppers scrambling for family needs – these are CEOs, lobbyists, and billionaires out to “get theirs” in the huge Trump-a-Thon sell-off of Presidential favors. Common folks need not apply, since MAGA, Inc. (Trump's political fundraising sack) charges a million bucks or more just to buy access to his golden throne.Once there, everything is for sale. One cryptocurrency huckster, for example, delivered his million to get into a candlelight dinner at Mar-a-Lago, where he pitched a business deal to Trump himself. Then, for an extra $200,000, the crypto-guy was allowed to “sponsor” the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn. Yes – they've even financialized and corporatized an apolitical, publicly-funded event for children!Not only is Trump being bought by Big Money, but he's also available for short-term lease. For example, rich businesswoman Elizabeth Fago leased him in April for some heavy lifting on a household chore. Her son Paul had been found guilty last year of tax crimes and was headed to prison. But a million dollar check to MAGA Inc. put her in direct touch with Mister Fix-It. Sure enough, once her check was cashed, the fortunate son was granted “a full and unconditional” presidential pardon – no jail time, no payment of restitution to his victims.When the New York Times asked about such corrupt selling of official favors, MAGA Inc. declared that Trump treats every American the same. So, there you have Trump's million-dollar definition of “American.” If you've got the million, you're in the club. If you don't, you're not.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

Has your family visited any of America's phenomenal national parks or historical sites this summer? What treasures they are!Also, visits to these jewels are enriched by the deeply-knowledgeable Park Service staff. And, of course, there's the extra-special bonus that the Trump regime has added to our public parks this year: Political censorship.With Trump issuing his dizzying blizzard of right-wing executive orders, you might've missed the one in March commanding the Park Service to scrutinize all of its public exhibits, signs, websites, videos, and other materials. Why? To flag and delete any scrap of information that Trump's right-wing cultural cops consider to be “negative” historical content about America.Sure enough, the Interior Department's political overseers promptly compelled staffs at the Park Service's 433 locations to go on a witch hunt for ideological impurity. In particular, any suggestion that racism, oppression, autocracy, and violence have been common features of the American experience have been decreed verboten. And, to assure a thorough cleansing of history, MAGA posses have been invited to go to historic sites and tag items they don't like. Trump operatives say that by mid-September, they will have removed, deleted, or – get this – physically covered-up the inconvenient truths of our people's history.They're like one-year-olds who think if they cover their eyes, we can't see them. Well, peek-a-boo! A rebellious coalition called “Save Our Signs,” is asking grassroots people to take photos and videos of Park Service exhibits before they're hidden away. Then, SOS will display samples of the banned material online so We the People can see the inanity of Trump's 1984ish Newspeak censorship. Link to SOS at jimhightower.com/SaveOurSigns.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 2018 my newspaper died. Well, actually, the emaciated carcass of the Austin American Statesman still had a feeble pulse. But its journalistic voice and soul were gone, stripped out by the notorious financial predators of Gannett, the huge media conglomerate that had recently bought the paper.Happily, though, the Statesman has made a near-miraculous recovery, thanks to a small-but-feisty band of actual journalists who believe in local newspapers. They fought Gannett bosses tenaciously, gaining a voice by forming a union, striking, and finally compelling the giant to sign a union contract. Victory!Uh… not yet. Just months later, Gannett sold the newspaper to Hearst, another massive media conglomerate. This new relationship started well, but soon turned sour when Hearst honchos abruptly refused to honor the paper's contract with the union. Then they began firing employees and jacking around with the newsroom's healthcare and retirement benefits. Adding pettiness to greed, Hearst honchos even refused to let Statesman journalists take a holiday that corporate managers get. What the hell?Bear in mind that Hearst is a phenomenally profitable, $13-billion-a-year, multi-media behemoth. It's CEO, Steven Swartz, pockets millions of dollars a year and lives in luxury. Also, Austin is a booming media market worth gazillions to Hearst! No need to be so pathetically mingy!So, the hardy members of the Austin News Guild are back doing what working people have to do – organizing and mobilizing for a little more justice. “We're no strangers to the petty tactics of corporate elites,” they say, so the guild is relaunching its grassroots campaign to battle the b******s, fight for fairness, and protect local news. To track progress, go to: AustinNewsGuild.org.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

If you want to learn how to play the game, boys and girls, forget all that old-fashioned stuff like “do your best,” “be a good sport,” and “respect the game.”No, no, that's loser talk. Today, the name of the game is winning. You're Number One, or you're nothing, so forget fair play and do whatever it takes to WIN! Of course, the gold medal champion of gaming the system is Trump, and to see the master in action, look at his current electoral manipulation in Texas.With only a slim majority in the US House, and with his job-approval rating plummeting, Trump recently realized he's in danger of losing his iron grip on Congress in next year's mid-term elections. Gosh, what to do? Simple – rig the election! And no place is better at that than Texas.So, Lord Donald ordered Greg Abbott, the right-wing partisan hack who is governor of this once-proud Lone Star State, to convene a special legislative session to redraw our congressional districts. Never mind that the districts had already been gerrymandered by Abbott only four years ago, Trump is demanding that voters be herded like cattle into even more convoluted districts. The goal is to oust five Texas Democrats from the House, thus stacking the Congressional deck with more Republicans so he can keep ruling the place. It's political game-playing at its worst, disrespecting voters and the very idea of a House of Representatives.Of course, there is an honorable way for the GOP to elect more of its own without engaging in political perversion: Stop trying to push far-right-wing nonsense that the great majority of voters don't want. Instead, put up decent candidates who don't need a Trump script to know what they stand for… and don't need a Trump map to find the district that they supposedly “represent.”Do something!To stay on top of all-things-progressive in Texas, we can't recommend Michelle H. Davis' Substack enough: Lone Star Left. Here are a couple of her recent posts:Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Some outrages are so outrageous that I don't even want to talk about them. But that's when we must speak out.Indeed, let's rage against our government's wholly-unprincipled embrace of (and direct participation in) the Israeli government's ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people.* Israel's ruthless, 2-year invasion of Gaza has already killed 59,000 Palestinian civilians – more than half of them women and children.* That's as many killings as our soldiers suffered during the entire Vietnam War.* Israel's military has forced nearly all of Gaza's two million citizens to abandon their homes and towns, herding them into distant camps, many without food, water, toilets, etc.* Excruciating death by starvation – especially among children – is now at epidemic levels in Gaza, creating a dystopian horror.* When masses of desperate Palestinians rush to sporadic and inadequate deliveries of humanitarian aid, Israeli snipers and other forces have opened fire on them – just since May, more than a thousand unarmed Palestinians have been assassinated in such ambushes.Yes, fiendish Hamas terrorists, who literally operate underground in Gaza, are guilty of sadistic brutality against Israelis. But moral retribution requires going after Hamas, not mounting an inhumane onslaught to wipe the Palestinian people off the Earth.A majority of Israelis are now openly rebelling against their government's barbaric abandonment of their people's best values. But what about us? Those sniper bullets and rockets have your and my names on them; those wasted children who're dying in the agony of starvation belong to us; and it's our politicians who're propping up Israel's corrupt prime minister and war machine. To stop this perversion of our own humanitarian values, go to International Rescue Committee: rescue.org.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Air Date: 7-27-2025 Back when I worked in the climate movement, just after the turn of the century, we knew that the extreme weather we were warning about would become ever-more clear to see in people's lived experiences and assumed that any doubts people had about the science of climate change would be wiped away with the evidence they could see with their own eyes as weather became more intense and less predictable. Of course, we didn't foreseen that we were headed straight into the eye of a storm of partisan conspiracism that would fully take over a third of the political spectrum. But here we are, head for high ground. The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue by Mike Tidwell Ebook Audiobook Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991, message us on the infamous Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Full Show Notes Check out our new show, SOLVED! on YouTube! BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! KEY POINTS KP 1: Flooding Is Common in Texas Hill Country. This Was Different - Consider This - Air Date 7-7-25 KP 2: Trump Press Secs Fury at Media Over Texas Flood Exposes Worst of Maga - The Daily Blast - Air Date 7-9-25 KP 3: Why Kristi Noems Incompetence Matters Part 1- Bulwark Takes - Air Date 7-10-25 KP 4: Republicans Get Exposed on Fox Live - The Adam Mockler Show - Air Date 7-10-25 KP 5: Weekly Roundup: Texas Floods and the Vengeful Theology of Kristi Noem + Why the Concentration Camp Had to Be in Florida - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 7-11-25 KP 6: The Real Conspiracy Behind the Texas Floods - More to the Story - Air Date 7-16-25 KP 7: Disasters, Natural and Man-made Part 1 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 7-8-25 (00:51:08) NOTE FROM THE EDITOR On why we need to fight ignorance with research The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue by Mike Tidwell Ebook Audiobook DEEPER DIVES (00:57:45) SECTION A: FLOOD DETAILS A1: Texas Flooding Tragedy Was Both Predictable and Predicted Part 1 - The Bradcast - Air Date 7-7-25 A2: Flooding Is Common in Texas Hill Country. This Was Different Part 2- Consider This - Air Date 7-7-25 A3: Texas Flooding Tragedy Was Both Predictable and Predicted Part 2 - The Bradcast - Air Date 7-7-25 A4: This Is Not a Good Time to Cut Funding for Weather Forecasting - Even More News - Air Date 7-8-25 (01:33:24) SECTION B: FASCIST REGIME B1: Texas Floods and the Vengeful Theology of Kristi Noem + Why the Concentration Camp Had to Be in Florida Part 2 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 7-11-25 B2: Why Kristi Noems Incompetence Matters Part 2 - Bulwark Takes - Air Date 7-10-25 B3: Devastating Texas Floods Highlight Stakes of Vital Weather Services Amid Reckless Trump Cuts - The Rachel Maddow Show - Air Date 7-8-25 B4: Trump Press Secs Fury at Media Over Texas Flood Exposes Worst of Maga Part 2 - The Daily Blast - Air Date 7-9-25 B5: Disasters, Natural and Man-made Part 2 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 7-8-25 B6: GOP's Conspiracy Theorist Problem Worsens as Flood Disasters Trigger Misinformation Frenzy - The Briefing - Air Date 7-11-25 (02:13:59) SECTION C: CLIMATE POLICY CAPTURE C1: A Brighter Climate Future Really Part 1 - The Insurgents - Air Date 7-12-25 C2: The War on Climate Change Policy W/ Lauren Windsor Part 1- The Majority Report - Air Date 7-18-25 C3: Idea: Let Big Oil Dump Its Fracking Into Our Lakes, Rivers, Etc. - Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown - Air Date 7-10-25 C4: The War on Climate Change Policy W/ Lauren Windsor Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-18-25 C5: How the 'big Beautiful Bill' Is Bad for the Climate Part 1 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 7-8-25 C6: A Brighter Climate Future Really Part 2 - The Insurgents - Air Date 7-12-25 C7: How the 'big Beautiful Bill' Is Bad for the Climate Part 2 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 7-8-25 SHOW IMAGE CREDITS Description: Photograph of a damaged bridge in Kerr County, TX over the high river running under it in the wake of the deadly July flood. Credit: “Texas Floods Devastate Local Communities” by World Central Kitchen, Flickr | License: CC BY 4.0 | Changes: Cropped   Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Listen Anywhere! BestOfTheLeft.com/Listen Listen Anywhere! Follow BotL: Bluesky | Mastodon | Threads | X Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com

To paraphrase British historian Lord Acton: “[Money] tends to corrupt, and absolute [money] corrupts absolutely.”During my time as a Texas elected official, I happened to witness an almost vaudevillian performance of Lord Acton's axiom on the floor of our state senate. A multimillionaire named Bo Pilgrim, baron of a factory chicken empire called Pilgrim's Pride, had come to the Capitol to speak against a bill requiring corporations like his to provide decent workers' compensation benefits. Bo didn't speak in words, however – he simply walked onto the senate floor and brazenly handed out $10,000 checks to compliant senators.Today, corporate political money doesn't just talk, it screams – drowning out the voices of all who oppose the special favors the corrupt “donors” buy. And these days, a $10,000 check is considered almost charming in its innocence.Take Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a far-right-wing demagogic politico who prides himself on demonizing and directly harming poor and powerless people, while scooping up fantastic donations from the financial powers he serves. This year, after railroading a slew of corporate gimmies into law, Abbott cashed in. Last month alone, he pocketed four million-dollar checks – one each from a real estate titan, a ruthless pipeline autocrat, a Trump backing money manager, and one of Elon Musk's corporate operatives.Excuse me for speaking out, but this is a gross example of kakistocracy – government by and for the very worst people in society. If they didn't shower him with cash, even Greg Abbott wouldn't speak to them. It's time to start calling this what the dictionary plainly says it is: Bribery.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

In addition to protecting children from internet pornography—shouldn't we protect them from seeing congress critters shamelessly sucking up to Trump and publicly prostituting themselves to billionaires?Consider the raw obscenity of the GOP ramming its gross budget bill into law. Even many conservatives gagged at the depravity of forcibly taking food stamps and Medicaid from millions of everyday people, just so a few extremely rich elites can satisfy their insatiable lust for tax breaks.The stench of greed in their law is so offensive that Republicans are now trying to perfume their minginess by branding all those who're being denied access to food and health care as moochers. Get off welfare and go find a job! These shameless lawmakers even insist they're helping the poor by “transitioning” them “from Medicaid to employer-provided health care.”It's always instructive to hear $174,000-a-year, taxpayer-insured politicos scold hard-hit families for “taking” public aid. Apparently, it never dawns on these pecksniffs that dead-end jobs available to the poor don't come with any health care. Well, sniff GOP leaders, that's why we pushed through this “big, beautiful” tax cut for billionaires—it's our anti-poverty program!Huh? Yes, they explain, it's simple: (1) cut spending on poor people; so (2) we can lower the taxes that rich people and corporations pay; thus (3) giving them billions to invest in good jobs for the poor.This is Jim Hightower saying… I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. Notice that their Billionaire Boondoggle includes no requirement at all that recipients invest even one dollar in jobs. So, they won't. This bill is not just ugly, it's morally revolting.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Big news! The Trump4Sale shop next door to the Office of the President, has just issued an exciting new product: “Trump Fragrance.” Yes, it's officially-certified Trump perfume, allowing you and your loved ones to reek of the essence of The Donald—only $249 for a 3-ounce bottle.I wondered, with so much going on, why is he busy hawking perfume? But then I saw nearly every congressional Republican cravenly cave in to White House demands that they approve Trump's truly stinky budget plan. Ah-ha! They are the perfume's target market! Voting to slash food and health care funding for poor families, just so those dollars can be lavished on tax giveaways for millionaires and billionaires, is extremely unpopular. So Trump was offering them an odoriferous spritz.Some will need gallons of it. Not only did they vote to harm to millions of people, but they rushed back to their districts, loudly demanding that the humanitarian disaster they created be fixed by state and local officials.Then, there is Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a rich Pennsylvania Republican. He owned corporate stock in a big Medicaid provider named Centene, but as a legislative insider Rep. Bresnahan knew that Trump's bill would gut Medicaid and crash Centene's stock value. So, he dumped that stock just one week before the House approved the budget. And, yes, after protecting himself, Rob voted for the Medicaid gut job that caused the stock price to plummet.This is Jim Hightower saying… Even one of Bresnahan's Republican colleagues, Brian Fitzpatrick, was appalled: “We need American leaders who are accountable, transparent, and wholly committed to serving the public—not their stock portfolio,” he said, rightly adding that members of Congress “should be banned from trading individual stocks—period.”Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

A major political group says that to solve America's environmental problems, we must let Big Oil Have more control over public policy. That group is Big Oil.Indeed, such giants as Exxon and Shell Oil have long complained that environmentalists, consumers, and other busybodies, keep using legislation and lawsuits to interfere with their environmental “innovations.” But now, top state officials in (where else?) Texas have found a solution: Just ban the public from meddling in oil industry business.At issue is a scheme by oil barons to sell the wastewater they use in “fracking,” a notoriously destructive way of forcing oil out of the ground. It's also terribly wasteful, requiring five barrels of water to get one barrel of oil. But, “Eureka!” cried industry profiteers – we can treat that “backwash” with some chemicals and market it as “produced water.” Letting us pump this fracking product right into the state's lakes, rivers, aquifers, and other waterways, they say, will replenish the state's dwindling water supply.But is that safe? Rather than answer, the corporate powers rushed to the governor and legislature – not seeking protections for the people, but to protect themselves and their profits from the people. Sure enough, the state's corporate corrupted politicos dutifully passed a law decreeing that companies producing, selling, or transporting recycled fracking water cannot be held liable for any “consequences” suffered by those using the product. Consequences? Yes, like poisoned crops, illnesses… and death!When the Sierra Club demanded safety studies on the obvious dangers of spewing oil wastewater on and in everything, an industry functionary scoffed, declaring: “We've studied this problem to death.” Ooooo – bad choice of words!Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

News flash: One of the president's media handlers has inadvertently issued a political statement that's actually true!She didn't mean to. She was responding to the damning revelation that Trump has just given a huge government benefit to a global corporate criminal from Brazil – after – that corporation donated a whopping $5 million to fund his extravagant inaugural party. Trying to dismiss this obvious quid pro quo, the spokeswoman declared that Trump “is not bought by anyone.”Right. Not by “anyone,” but by many ones. The most flagrantly corrupt president in US history, Trump's Oval Office theme song is, “If you've got the money, I've got the time.” Remember, last year he bluntly instructed Big Oil to deliver a billion dollars to him, promising he would deliver many billions-worth of government favors to them. They did… and he is.So, now, high-tech billionaires, foreign dictators, Wall Street elites, and other oligarchs are lined up at the White House, offering personal and political gimmies to entice him to rig the system for them. Take that $5 million pay-to-play money from Brazil. It came from JBS, the global factory farm monopolist infamous for price fixing, child labor abuse, vast environmental crimes, etc. Even our anything-goes stock exchange refused to sanction JBS' immorality. But then Trump took the money and enthroned JBS in the prestigious New York Stock Exchange.His sellout means the Brazillian bully can now raise billions in new capital through our stock market, jacking up its monopoly power over US farmers, consumers, businesses, and environment. Doing it all with a presidential seal of approval – bought for only $5 million.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

In these days of domineering corporate rule, where can we commoners go to find even a little bit of justice?Right where they've been found throughout human history: Within ourselves. Specifically, in our rebellious spirit, our willingness to confront the greedheads and boneheads who feel entitled to run roughshod over us.For example, The Formosa Four.You probably haven't heard of them, since the mass media powers don't cover something as consequential and uplifting as a nation of Davids challenging Goliath – such as “The Formosa Four.” They are members of a tenacious and scrappy coalition that has dared to confront one of the most flagrant corporate criminals on the globe: Formosa Plastics. It's a $6 billion-a-year profiteer that constantly and carelessly spews millions of tons of plastic contaminants into our environment and ourselves.But last summer, the bully tried to play victim. When about 70 protestors defiantly converged on Formosa's US headquarters in New Jersey, corporate executives had four of the leaders arrested and charged with criminal trespass – a power play to prevent free speech and scare off future protestors.Yes, a global behemoth that's a deadly polluter and serial human rights violator had our government arrest and prosecute grassroots critics for the “high crime” of trespassing. Such is the pettiness – but liberty-busting seriousness – of today's arrogant forces of plutocracy.Justice fighters, though, aren't easily spooked by bullies, and the movement succeeded last week in having all charges dismissed. As one protester said, it takes “regular people putting their bodies on the line to make these things happen. One victory today, and many more in the future.” For more information, go to Formosa4.org.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Don't let it be said that the superrich care only about themselves, always taking from society and giving nothing back.Consider the generous billionaires who live on an island in Florida's Biscayne Bay. Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos lives there, as do Ivanka Trump and her hubby, Jared Kushner. Actually, their so-called island is fake, built in the bay so a few dozen absurdly rich sparklies don't have to mix with commoners living in the adjacent town of Surfside.Snootiness aside, though, the billionaires have literally been giving “of themselves” to Surfside's people. Specifically, their bodily waste has long been leaking from the septic systems of their mansions, polluting the town's environment. Yes, the rich are actually defecating on commoners.Facing public scorn, the Bezos-Trump-Kushner clan proposed piping their excrement into Surfside's sewer system. Okay, but when the city asked for $10 million to help cover the pipe's cost, the billionaires squealed like stuck hogs!Come on! Ten million for them is like 10 dollars for you and me. Of course, moneyed elites didn't get rich by playing fair, but by playing the system. So, they dispatched their lobbyists and lawyers to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Sure enough – BAM! – Republican officials suddenly and secretly approved a new state provision decreeing that local communities like Surfside cannot interfere with or even demand payment for such special-interest sewer projects as the Bezos-Trump-Kushner hookup. Then, again with no publicity, DeSantis signed the billionaires' corrupt law – no doubt assured that they would reward his kindness later on.Ironically, the word “defecate” is derived from a Latin verb meaning “to cleanse.” But there's not enough soap in Florida to clean the hands of these dirty dealers.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Surprisingly, top Republicans in Congress and the White House have recently been praising labor!Oh, wait – they're not hailing America's laborers, but touting the existential virtue of “laboring.” “Work,” exclaim these politicos, provides “dignity” to all who labor.Dignity? Obviously, they've never been inside a meatpacking plant, done roofing jobs for a wage-thieving developer, been paid a pittance to clean office buildings at midnight… or otherwise fully experienced the “dignity of labor.”Years ago, Sen. Fred Harris was accosted at a political event by a rich businessman who demanded that Democrats reduce taxes by cutting the wages of government workers. The guy sputtered in disbelief that “mere garbagemen” were being paid $6 an hour. Fred stopped him right there, curtly asking: “Is that too much? What would it take to get you to do that job?”Unfortunately, the guy's crass classism is now official policy in Washington. In the name of “cutting waste” and lowering taxes on billionaires, a gaggle of narcissistic plutocrats – including Trump, “Chainsaw” Musk, cabinet appointees, and congressional extremists – have ganged up to fire valuable public service workers and slash essential assistance for poor families.There is no sugar coating for the vulgarity and moral depravity of such elites whupping up on middle- and low-income families for their own gain. Moreover, their disdain for the value and creativity of those who do the daily work that makes America work is stupid … and socially suicidal.Plus, their self-esteem is ludicrous. Indeed, if you pitted social value of a sanitation worker to any of Trump's budget-slashing cabinet czars – guess which one the public would say is overpaid… and dispensable?Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

How embarrassing. Our show-biz president's glorious $45 million military parade – fssssst – fizzled. The gods rained on it, the thing dragged on, and Trump himself kept nodding off in his chair. Sad.What his show needed was some of the reality-TV drama that defines this president. For example, he could've had a phalanx of food trucks rumbling down the street, being chased by hundreds of hungry US soldiers, waving empty plates and chanting, “Feed the Troops!”Besides being entertaining, that spectacle would've brought long-overdue public attention to an outrage that really rankles rank-and-file soldiers – namely, hunger. Yes, the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget that overflows with waste and boondoggles for corporate contractors actually leaves military families struggling to have enough to eat, much less being well-fed.Indeed, about 25 percent of service members are so poorly paid and poorly served on US Army bases that that they are officially “food insecure,” relying on food stamps and local food pantries for their bare bones nutritional needs. Last November, for example, it was reported that the base dining hall at Fort Carson, Colorado, was serving a miserly “meal” consisting of one slice of toast and spoonful lima beans. Some bases are only offering gas-station-style grab-and-go snacks.More scandalous, soldiers have a $460 “food tax” automatically deducted from their meager paychecks each month to pay for food. But the Army brass quietly diverts two-thirds of the soldiers' money to other purposes – which they won't disclose.Congress knows about this and does nothing. Trump doesn't even want to know. And Pentagon honcho Hegseth is lost in the fog of his own incompetence. To help raise awareness and Hell, go to FeedingAmericaAction.org.Do somethingWant to support veterans and fight for justice with them? Here are two orgs we love:* Common Defense* About FaceAlso, here are some graphics from The Poster Project that you can share and use as talking points:Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Gosh, I miss the old days of CEO greed, when the pay gap between Boss Hog and everyday employees was merely gross.Today, the guiding ethic for top executive enrichment is to have no ethics. Grab as much as you can as fast as you can, everyone else be damned. And never mind that as chief, you did absolutely nothing to “earn” that exorbitant stash of cash.How exorbitant? Corporations try to hide the actual numbers, but under an insider accounting measure called “compensation actually paid” reveals the obscene truth. Last year, America's 10 highest paid CEOs averaged more than a billion dollars each in pay. One person, one year, one billion.And the Number One highest-paid corporate honcho last year, Alex Karp, made off with nearly $7 billion! That's $560 million a month in personal pay. With the exceptions of Jesus and Dolly Parton, no one is worth anywhere near that!And what does Alex do? He's the CEO of Palantir, a high-tech outfit now working for Donald Trump to collect and computerize all of your and my personal data, creating government dossiers so federal agents can monitor us. Sleazy, but in today's Corporate America, that's a path to untold riches.Still, for the insanely rich, too much is not enough. So, they, their lobbyists, and Republican congress critters are now furiously pushing for what Trump calls a “Big Beautiful Bill.” It would cut Medicaid, food stamps, and other basic human needs for America's lowest-paid working families. Why? To give a billion-dollars more in annual tax cuts to hucksters like Karp… and Trump himself. This is worse than kleptocracy – it's sleazocracry.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

If the barrage of MAGA nuttiness and raw meanness is getting you down, ponder this passage from the classic novel, Don Quixote: “It is not possible for the bad or the good to last forever… and since the bad has lasted so long, the good is close at hand.”Of course, the good only comes when fed-up people openly rebel against the bad. And, sure enough, Trump's awful tyranny is revving up a majority movement for the common good.Soaking in self-delusion, tyrants start sipping their own bathwater, thinking it's champagne. So, today's Washington MAGA moguls, drunk on narcissism, are imperiously rigging the rules so their clique can grab more wealth and power from the rest of us. Maybe they thought we commoners wouldn't notice… or care. But we did and do, so the rebellion is on and gaining steam with nationwide protests and a surge in grassroots populist defiance.Predictably, Trump & Co. is now resorting to the same losing tactic that panicky despots always fall back on – deploying police and military to subjugate the people. He has commanded the Army and Marines to shut down public protests. Then, posturing as a “strongman,” this 1960s draft dodger spent 45 million of our tax dollars to stage a made-for-TV, Stalin-style military parade on his birthday, letting him strut around as warrior-in-chief.These are not shows of strength, but pathetic confessions of personal insecurity and presidential weakness. Sad. Don Quixote was right – the good is close at hand. So, to all of you in the growing democracy movement, keep pushing, push harder, push further! Thanks to you, we're getting there. And we'll get there sooner rather than later.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

How sweet it is to be a corporate criminal these days!I don't mean common price gougers, polluters, and such, but full-fledged, executive-suite mobsters. They run huge corporate syndicates, treating fraud and even murder as necessary business tools. For example, Boeing Incorporated.In 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX passenger jet suddenly nose-dived into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board. A freak accident, declared top bosses of the multibillion-dollar giant, disavowing any responsibility. Indeed, even though he knew that the MAX had a fatally flawed maneuvering system, the CEO rushed out to assure fliers that the jet was “as safe as any airplane that has ever flown the skies.”But, oops – five months later, another MAX nosedived in Ethiopia, killing 157 more people. Whistleblowers and federal investigators later revealed that the bosses had long been shortchanging safety in order to jack up profits… and their own pay. Last summer – in a rare legal victory over business-as-usual coddling of corporate abuses – Boeing had to admit that it “knowingly” defrauded safety regulators and was, in fact, guilty of the criminal violations. So, justice! Uh… not quite. Just a few weeks later, Trump happened, and he immediately turned the Justice Department into a full-service corporate whorehouse. So, after Boeing donated a cool million bucks in tribute to the new president, Trump's attorney generally obligingly decreed that the confessed corporate criminal could simply “withdraw” its guilty plea, pay a minimal fine for killing 346 people… and “move on.”Politicians bark at us commoners: “Do the crime and you'll do the time.” Unless, of course, you can buy a corporate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card from a corrupt president.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Ok, let's have a show of hands: How many of you voted to hand ALL of your most personal data to Trump's intrusive government?By “all,” I mean he is setting up one Silicon Valley “data aggregator” to collect, store, and control your Social Security number, bank codes, health records, tax filings, voting history, biometrics… and, well, the whole statistical YOU. This aggregator will vacuum up all these unconnected data points and reconstruct them into a full computerized profile of your life, behavior, and beliefs. This mass surveillance infrastructure isn't some 1984ish fiction, but a fast-moving reality spun from Trump's Project 2025. In an executive order quietly issued in March, he decreed that every federal agency must dump our personal data into a new centralized computer system, effectively creating government dossiers on each of us. Like every tyrant everywhere, Trump says his order is benign, merely “streamlining” data searches to increase government “efficiency.”But this is no paper-shuffling decree, for Project 2025 operatives have already moved into the IRS, ICE, Social Security, the Pentagon, etc. – putting the technology in place to aggregate the master file.Trump has – with no public input – already appointed a right-wing, high-tech data espionage outfit to be America's surveillance overlord. Named Palantir, it was created and financed by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley Republican billionaire, anti-democracy crusader, and self-absorbed plutocrat. Palantir bluntly declares that its role in amassing and rummaging through our private information is “the finding of hidden things.”You think you have “nothing to hide,” right? But tyrants can “find something” on everyone. To help stop Trump's thugs from weaponizing ourselves against ourselves, go to Electronic Frontier Foundation: eff.orgExtra, extra: For more on just how lousy (and dangerous) of a human Peter Thiel is, check out the 4-part series that the podcast Behind the B******s produced on him in late 2024.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

Let's say you like shrimp. Whether you go for a chain restaurant's happy hour shrimp boil or a pricey plate of “shrimp à la grandioso” at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort – a good question to ask is: Where do they get their shrimp?Even if the restaurant has an ocean view and a shrimp boat out front, chances are its crustaceans come from industrial aquaculture farms thousands of miles away in India, Ecuador, Vietnam and Indonesia. Astonishingly, our country now imports 94 percent of the shrimp we eat!Astonishing, because our oceans have an abundance of top-quality shrimp, and we are blessed with highly-skilled shrimping families. Worse, those foreign industrial operations, financed by Wall Street and global profiteers, are infamous for using forced labor, banned antibiotics, and destructive environmental methods. Then they dump their grossly-cheap product into the US market, pushing out our superior-quality domestic product and devastating entire shrimping communities.Yet, restaurant and supermarket prices for shrimp are at historic highs, with no disclosure to us consumers of where the product is from. The import industry effectively bribes lawmakers to avoid exposing, much less punishing, this multibillion-dollar swindle of American producers and eaters alike. The bait-and-switch conspiracy is now so pervasive that at last year's National Shrimp Festival, four out of five vendors were – shhhh – quietly serving industrially-raised imported shrimp.Of course, corporations have no conscience, but our tough-on-crime political leaders are so pusillanimous that they won't even stand up for their own local shrimpers. A recent Louisiana law, for example, “boldly” requires restaurants to disclose if they're peddling imported shrimp. But, the legislature meekly provided no penalty if violators ignore the law. So… they do.For information on real reform, connect with SanAntonioBayWaterKeeper.org.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

The right-wing routinely demonizes family-friendly policies of liberals as “social engineering.”But look out! Here come those same politicians, putting on MAGA hardhats and firing up their political bulldozers to push one of the most arrogant and intrusive social schemes imaginable. They intend to re-engineer the American family! These “pronatalists” want families to conform to a Christian Nationalist family structure – specifically, a dominant man married to a subservient stay-at-home woman, having beaucoup children. Not a couple of kiddos but six, 12, or more!For example, extremist MAGA senator Josh Hawley has become a cheerleader for a federal policy to entice women to quit work, stay home, and have more babies. He proposes a tax credit of $5,000 per child, gushing that this would cause working families to exclaim, “Oh, my gosh, we can actually raise our kids.”Well, “gosh” right back at you, Josh! Just giving birth can cost more than $5,000 – and raising a child is multiples above that every year. So, you want to take away a mom's job and her income, and add thousands in costs to the family budget – in exchange for a government tax credit? The slickest loan sharks aren't that diabolical.Oh, wait. Right-wing pronatalists have another government incentive to jack-up birth rates. Incredibly, Trump officials have proposed a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women who have six or more children! Wow, what should that medal look like, be made of, and say? And when and where should it be worn? Also, will un-medaled women socially ostracized?If right-wingers actually wanted to help families, they'd be backing family-level wages, free child care, and Medicare for all. Everything else is political BS.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

The most embarrassing thing about the ballyhooed war-on-government-waste, run by Elon “Chainsaw” Musk, is not even that it has generated more waste than it has cleaned up. More damning is that the clean-up crew quietly tiptoed around the biggest and stinkiest piles of waste – namely the billions of our tax dollars doled out annually to corporate welfare moochers. Such as – Hello – Elon Musk!Son of a South African diamond dealer, Elon glided from a life of privilege all the way to being filthy rich, transported by extravagant taxpayer subsidies and government favors. And now he's back at the trough, demanding a blank government check for his biggest boondoggle of all: Rocketing to Mars.Not him (unfortunately), but you and me. A flaming megalomaniacal flimflammer, Musk says he's a genius rocket scientist who will “save civilization” by relocating our human species to the Red Planet. Proclaiming that our Blue Marble is doomed to a hellish future, he is already using millions of earthly tax dollars to fund his fever dream.Getting there, however, would be the cheap and easy part. Mars is already hellish, with killer levels of surface radiation, toxic dust, and so-called air that analysts say “will boil the saliva off your tongue before it asphyxiates you.”The only real question is why the hell anyone is listening to this narcissistic flimflammer. He can't run a government waste project, much less a planet. Speaking of waste, why is he so eager to throw away Earth? Our salvation lies not in the stars, Musk, or other techno-profiteers, but in our democratic values, connection to nature, and down-to-Earth creativity.Let Musk go to hell – I'm sticking with the home team.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

There is a species of birds named “superb starlings,” and I propose that we elect one of them to be our next president.That's because these wise creatures have figured out how to make egalitarianism central to their society, with a diversity of birds actively supporting each other. When bringing food back to their chicks, for example, adult starlings commonly share some with hatchlings of an unrelated flock. In turn, those birds repay the good deed in later breeding seasons.Contrast this bird-nest ethic of the Common Good with the culture of right-wing minginess now being pushed furiously by Trump's kakistocracy of billionaires and despotic ideologues.Four of his overprivileged cabinet appointees, for example (Bobby Kennedy, Mehmet Oz, Brooke Rollins, and Scott Turner) recently ganged up on hard-hit poor families who receive modest public help for essential human needs, like food and health care. The four politicos piously wailed that welfare programs are an intolerable burden on wealthy taxpayers, so they intend to slash spending by forcing the poor to take jobs before getting any public help.But their claim that hordes of worthless sponges are living high on food stamps and Medicaid is the same BS such plutocrats always spread when trying to keep our society from being as smart, decent, and ethical as starlings. Their scolding dictate that “you must work” is pointless grandstanding. Nearly all Medicaid recipients, for example, already have jobs – or they are children, seniors, or disabled.There's a four-letter vulgarity that fits Kennedy, Oz, Rollins, and Turner: “Mean.” Okay, technically, “mean” is not an obscenity, but when powerful tax-paid elites like them are mean to poor people for political gain, they are, in fact, obscene… and disgusting.Do something!Medicaid cuts don't just affect people on Medicaid— they hurt us all. For example, many hospitals, especially rural hospitals, rely on the revenue they receive from Medicaid reimbursements just to survive.A number of people around the country are encouraging everyday folks to share the facts about Medicaid in their areas, and are creating infographics for you to use to tell your stories. Calling your representatives is always good, but we're also finding that local media coverage is having a huge impact (in part because your representatives deeply care about how they're perceived in your local media).Here's where you can find all the Medicaid graphics for each state; additionally, activist Dani Cook has created a series of Medicaid graphics for states with large rural contingents here. Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

You might be alarmed to learn that a little-known group in America is being treated inhumanely, denied even the most basic human rights.I refer to our society's callous treatment of AI bots.Who? AI bots are not an ethnic group, but the rapidly-evolving species of advanced “artificial intelligence beings,” spawned in recent years by the high-tech demi-gods of Silicon Valley. Unbeknownst to most of us natural-born humans, profiteering corporations are already deploying millions of these “thinking machines” across our country, taking an ever-widening array of jobs that require a measure of cognitive, human-level abilities – from architects to therapists, lawyers to journalists.However, rather than focusing on the deep ethical and pragmatic questions that this techno-corporate displacement poses for real-life people, the developers of AI's Brave New World are trying to divert social concern to the bots. A recent headline urgently asks, “Should AI Systems Have Rights?” And a leading maker of those systems is proclaiming that society must be concerned about the “mental welfare” of bots. Meanwhile, corporate owners are urging that their machine creatures be given a moral status to assure that they are “ethically treated.”Excuse me, but who are these greedmeisters to set ethical standards? The billionaires of tech have enriched themselves, not by any genius, but by ruthlessly exploiting workers, carelessly polluting our environment, arrogantly violating our laws, stealing from their competitors and consumers, and bribing government officials. They are sleaze.Besides, corporate bots need to go the back of the line! Before we give rights to machines, let's secure the rights that moneyed elites have denied to women, the poor, nature… and democracy itself.Do something!To learn more about AI, ethics, privacy and more, and to support sane advocacy around technology in general, check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation at eff.org.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe

I am a product of George Washington University Law School, so I feel I have an insider's right to comment on the super-elite law firms that've suddenly been kowtowing to Trump.Well… actually, I only lasted a week-and-a-half in law school. Still, you don't need to be a legal scholar to see that these butt-kissing, billion-dollar firms are – to use a judicial term – scuzz.It's certainly true that Trump is a vindictive, petty president who routinely turns his office into a weapon of personal political revenge. And he especially despises lawyers who have defied his many blatantly-illegal power grabs, so he's been deploying the crushing force of big government to punish such prominent Democratic firms as Paul Weiss. Trump stripped security clearances from Weiss lawyers, barred them from entering federal buildings, and threatened to cancel their clients' government contracts.No one said battling a despot would be easy. But, as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently put it, “If you're not used to fighting and losing battles, then don't become a lawyer.”Rather than fight, the Weiss firm pathetically tucked tail and ran whimpering to Trump, begging forgiveness for challenging his unconstitutional acts. They even made a $40 million payoff to get in Lord Donald's good graces!Senior partners in the Weiss firm, each of whom are paid some $20 million a year, are not only gutless, but greedy as well. They sold their integrity to a mobster like Trump, so he would “let them” keep drawing that fat check. It shows that the opposite of courage is not merely cowardice, but conformity.If lawyers will so meekly abandon their own democratic rights, why would any of us pay them to stand up for ours?Do something!To find and support lawyers who actually support The People, check out the National Lawyers Guild at nlg.org.Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe