At last, Washington is going to eliminate government waste!

Trump & Company’s budget-whacking crew even brandished a big ol’ chainsaw to show us hoi polloi that they’re serious. So goodbye to those ridiculous, multibillion-dollar giveaways to politically connected corporate elites, right?

Upgrade your subscription

Uh… don’t get silly. The chainsawers-in-chief are Elon Musk, Trump and a mess of ultra-rich GOP cabinet appointees, and their fortunes are built on fat checks from the government, so they will NOT be targeting any of their boondoggles. Instead, they’re aiming at programs offering modest help to middle-class and poor families.

For example, the Agriculture Department regularly mails out billions of dollars in “farm subsidies,” but most real farmers don’t get a penny, while about 80 percent of the taxpayers’ money goes to the richest 10 percent of agribusiness owners, including city-dwelling billionaires and corporate giants.

But rather than touching their giveaways, the Ag Department has just made a political show of zeroing-out a very successful farm-to-market program that enables small producers to sell their fresh goods to local school districts and food banks. This is government at its best—serving as a catalyst to “free up the enterprise” of small businesses by allowing them to bypass monopolistic middlemen and provide top-quality fresh foods to their communities.

Big Food, however, hates competition. Thus, Brooke Rollins (a corporate-hugging, far-right-wing lawyer who is Trump’s new Ag Secretary) summarily cancelled this enterprising local food initiative, announcing on Fox News that it was “nonessential” waste.

This is Jim Hightower saying… So there you have their guiding ethic of these “waste warriors.” Programs helping regular Americans are just waste to be eliminated—but giveaways to the rich are “essential” waste to be protected.

Leave a comment

Share

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Look up the word “mainstay,” and you’ll find such strong synonyms as backbone, linchpin, pillar, sustainer… and good right arm.

You might also find a picture of Carlton Carl, for he was all of those things throughout his decades of persistent, creative, and uplifting work in the trenches of the Texas progressive movement. In our state’s ongoing, feisty efforts to advance people power over moneyed elites, Carlton was at the heart of the struggle as a grassroots organizer, legislative strategist, journalist, scrappy fighter… and mainstay.

His most recent venture was to do something that more progressives should do: He moved to a Central Texas rural county considered to be conservative. There, in Caldwell County, he’s been successfully building a local political network around kitchen-table issues of progressive populism.

As a longtime friend and grassroots champion, Carlton will be sorely missed. But rather than merely missing him, let's emulate him! We need to celebrate and elevate the Carlton Carls of our movement—and recruit more of them. They are the steady builders of a durable democratic politics—the continuum that, over time, puts the progress in progressive. 

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Eeeeeek, there’s a mouse in the house! Oh wait—it’s just Little Mike Johnson. He’s harmless.

Mike is Speaker of the House of Representatives, which used to be a vital part of America’s national government. The Constitution empowers the House to oversee the federal budget, public policies, and the actions of presidents. But Johnson has meekly surrendered these core powers (and his own relevance) to Trump’s autocratic executive branch.

Upgrade your subscription

Mike even failed to be Squeaker of the House, for he issued no peep of protest as the authority of elected lawmakers was seized and pocketed by a corrupt chief executive claiming that he’s the law of the land. As Rep. Jamie Raskin put it, instead of standing against imperious one-man rule, Johnson applauded, reducing himself to Trump’s “little buddy.”

Even more pathetic is seeing Johnson and the GOP’s entire congressional caucus kowtow to Elon Musk, sheepishly obeying the right-wing dictates of an over-privileged, South African finagler who’s never been elected by anybody to anything. Having bought his way into Trump’s golden orbit of billionaires in the last election, Musk is now prancing around as America’s acting president, while Johnson cheers.

But Trump, Musk, and Little Buddy have a problem that they don’t seem to grasp: “We the People” simply don’t support what they’re doing to us. It’s now obvious that they’re waging a billionaires-know-best, chainsawing rampage against public programs that benefit us commoners—especially any program that protects us from the unbounded greed of billionaires like… them.

This is Jim Hightower saying… These corrupt, wannabe monarchs have been sipping their own bathwater, thinking it’s champagne. But the public is onto them… and on the move against them.

Leave a comment

Share

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Our friends over at have been steadily collecting incredible stories from the rabble-rousin’ rebels of Texas throughout time, and we thought you all would appreciate this article focusing in on the powerful women from our movements. Enjoy!

In recognition of Women’s History Month, People’s History in Texas celebrates the innumerable contributions of Texan women with our educational articles, documentaries, and podcasts.

People’s History in Texas presents Talkin’ Union, a four-part oral history of four women who organized labor unions in Texas in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

The women are Alberta Snid, participant in the 1938 Pecan Shellers Strike in San Antonio, the largest strike in the Southwest during this period; Charlotte Graham, leader of the 1935 Dallas garment worker strike and member of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union; Olivia Rawlston, president of the Black ILGWU local in Dallas for twelve years; and Andrea Martinez, leader of the ILGWU in Laredo during the 1950s and 1960s. Talkin’ Union raises significant issues about women in the Texas workforce. In 1930, one in four women worked outside the home. Today, one in two women work. The problems women faced in 1930 are the problems they face now: low pay for women’s work with few benefits and poor working conditions. Though some of their attempts to win better pay and improve working conditions failed, they remain convinced of the importance of their experience in their own lives and the lives of others. The documentary is an hour long and is broken into four segments for internet viewing purposes. It is black and white. It was produced in 1977 by People’s History in Texas with the use of National Endowment of the Humanities Youth Grant, and can be viewed in full here.

Harry Truman once proclaimed: “No man should be president who doesn’t understand hogs.”

Upgrade your subscription

That might explain the calamitous mess that President Trump-Musk is making of our government today. Clearly, Don and Elon know nothing about four-legged farm animals, but they certainly know how to squeeze government to fatten their own two-legged breed of corporate swine. Thus, the billionaire hucksters are bulldozing agencies that serve people’s real needs, while preserving those that subsidize corporate greed.

For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A once-proud agency created by Abraham Lincoln to serve tillers of the soil, but USDA today has become a bottomless feeding trough for agribusiness giants and other financial powers that “till” taxpayers.

Our country’s Farm Program, meant to be a safety net for hands-on dirt farmers, is now a $20-billion-a-year subsidy that pays zero to the vast majority of farm families. Instead, 75 percent of our money goes to the biggest and richest 10 percent of corporate fiefdoms, including billionaire speculators who never get any dirt under their fingernails.

Actually, the Trump-Musk chainsaw crew is whacking some USDA programs—such as food stamps for poor families, helping school districts buy from local farmers and ranchers, and other efforts providing modest help to grassroots people and communities. But not a peep from the duo about the bales of taxpayer cash hauled every year to their own class of rich elites.

This is Jim Hightower saying… A Department of Agriculture is as needed today as in Lincoln’s time. But an honest overhaul is necessary to return it to its democratic roots of serving the workaday people of rural America, freeing it from the corporate interests now running roughshod over those same people. For more information, go to Environmental Working Group at ewg.org.

Leave a comment

Share

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A classic a bumper sticker posed this alarming question: “Where are we going, and what am I doing in this handbasket?”

What we’re in today is an Orwellian basket to political hell, propelled by Trump himself. He has assembled a cohort of anti-democracy zealots, who are autocratically cutting off people’s fundamental freedoms—including speech, press, travel, and even thought.

Upgrade your subscription

The first Trump term unleashed a gaggle of right-wingers promoting mass ignorance by demonizing books, librarians, teachers, scientists, and our own people’s history. Next came a maniacal MAGA assault on America’s most essential, unifying democratic value: The reality that we are a proudly diverse bunch of people, striving to achieve the ideal of equality for all. “Heresy,” shouted Trump’s GOP, demanding that the pursuit of such goals literally be outlawed.

And now comes all-out, Kafkaesque crazy, with Trump going on a binge of mass censorship and goofy executive dictates. Consider just two of his recent commands. One bans government cafeterias from using paper straws! Another suspends a law that made it illegal for US corporations to bribe foreign officials. There’s the new morality: Paper straws, OUT; corporate bribery, IN.

More dangerous for our freedom, though, is the MAGA regime’s purging of words and ideas it doesn’t like, trying to force its government-approved Newspeak on America. Trump’s minions are now going through every agency’s documents and websites, literally deleting hundreds of common words to be officially verboten—including: Equality, injustice, pollution, transgender, race, women… and, of course, Gulf of Mexico.

This is Jim Hightower saying… These are not just words, but values and people. A president that starts by censoring our freedom of expression is a weakling, admitting that he’s afraid of free-thinking people.

Leave a comment

Share

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Greetings, Lowdowners! As you know, our crew here loves political cartoons, and we try to highlight some of our favorites whenever we can. This week, we wanted to bring back one of our longtime friends for a guest post—Jen Sorensen. Jen is a cartoonist for Daily Kos, The Nation, In These Times, Politico and other publications throughout the US. She received the 2023 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning from the National Press Foundation, and is a recipient of the 2014 Herblock Prize and a 2013 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She is also a Pulitzer Finalist.

Not only is Jen a great cartoonist, but the posts that she writes to go with each cartoon always add extra nuance and info to the work she shares each week. If you enjoy her work, please consider subscribing to her newsletter here!

Check out Jen Sorensen's newsletter here

The sheer chutzpah of these billionaire technofascists who assume it's their right to take over the country, destroy our government, and financially terrorize millions is simply beyond me. I find it a little strange, though not surprising, that we rarely heard the words "radical libertarianism" in the mainstream media before the election, and as far as I know, we still aren't hearing much about the extremist ideology behind the current chaos (admittedly, I haven't been paying close attention to these outlets lately). Not that there hasn't been excellent reporting elsewhere. I highly recommend reading Wired magazine these days -- in particular, this article about plans for corporate-controlled cities operating outside the scope of pesky federal regulations like environmental protection and worker rights.

What a hoot to see so many once-cocky, Big Boss Men of corporate America completely surrender their policies, principles, and personal pride to grovel at the feet of Trump!

Upgrade your subscription

Even egomaniacal tech billionaires like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are publicly debasing themselves with a cringey eagerness to kiss-up to The Donald. Indeed, CEOs in practically every industry – from oil to food – have suddenly converted to MAGA nuttiness. And to prove their devotion, each is loudly pledging to sacrifice all of their corporate programs that advance such core American values as equal rights, workplace fairness, and environmental protection. Parroting Trump’s decree that DEI egalitarianism is “immoral,” the barons piously insist their reversals is a matter of ethics.

Hogwash. Their morality starts and ends with money, and as the Bible points out: “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Consider the case of Paramount, the multibillion-dollar media giant. Although much of its wealth now comes from diversity programming on its MTV and BET networks, the top brass is bowing to TrumpSpeak, obediently killing Paramount’s diversity policies – and even scrubbing the word “inclusion” from its corporate vocabulary!

Why? M-O-N-E-Y. Paramount is presently pushing a multibillion-dollar merger with another entertainment giant to extend its control over our media market, empowering it to gouge more cash from you and me. But the merger had to be okayed by a federal commission headed by an anti-diversity, Trump political hack – so top executives cravenly heaved Paramount’s principles overboard.

This is Jim Hightower saying… That is now what passes for corporate ethics, with smug honchos abandoning all pretense that they’re guided by any higher morality than the love of money.

Leave a comment

Share

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Last week, the Democratic Party’s top congressional leaders finally took a bold stand against Trump’s assault on our democracy when he came to Congress to tout his autocratic agenda.

Traditionally, when a president arrives to address Congress, a bipartisan escort committee leads the dignitary to the podium. But, by gollies, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries showed their toughness by – get this – refusing to have Democrats join the escort committee.

Wow – imagine how that uplifted the millions of people being stomped on by Trump’s rampage!

Upgrade your subscription

Is this feeble response better than nothing? Believe it or not – “do nothing” is another “strategy” proposed by former Bill Clinton operative James Carville. He says the “smart” thing for Democrats to do is to roll over and play dead. Seriously. Carville actually declares that fighting Trump is futile, so just “allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.”

Excuse me, but wasn’t that the party’s theory in 2016 and 2024 – let Trump rant, and he’ll defeat himself?

Instead, how about this? Literally get out of Washington. The party’s lawmakers should spend most of their congressional time away from the capital—out where masses of people are already agitating and organizing. Get with them, listen to them, roll up your sleeves, and serve them.

This is Jim Hightower saying, this is not just another legislative tiff we’re in, but a grassroots rumble, and the usual partisan name-calling and parliamentary nitpicking won’t win it. Inside Washington, the deck is stacked for Trump’s Autocratic America. Out here, though, the numbers and political dynamic favor democracy fighters. This is where the Democratic Party belongs.

Leave a comment

Share

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Uh-oh. Trump is hearing voices again.

And the voices are telling him to do something truly stupid. As he puts it, “There is a lot of talk about the Postal Service being taken private,” adding that “It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time.”

Hmmm, I haven’t heard even one voice say our phenomenal public mail service should be privatized. Indeed, it is a widely popular government agency because it works for everyone – rich and poor, urban and rural.

Upgrade your subscription

When he claims that “a lot of people” like the idea of postal privatization how many? Six? Six million? And what kind of people? Working stiffs, poor people, rural residents… who? He gives a coded answer to that when he refers to the Post Office being “taken” private. Oh? Taken by whom? Of course – by the corrupt profiteering billionaires who funded Trump. Their business plan is to have him hand the agency to them in the name of instituting “corporate efficiency” – meaning the privateers will go to three-day mail delivery, cut-off service to unprofitable poor and rural communities, raise prices, and fire legions of experienced postal workers.

They’re out to steal an essential public treasure, but they’re also trying to censor opposition to their political control of government. The Postal Service was created in 1792 in part to prevent royalists and oligarchs from controlling communications. If you think that’s not a problem in modern America, reflect on the blunt media censorship being imposed right now by Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and other petty potentates of corporate plutocracy.

To learn more, visit the American Postal Workers Union: apwu.org.

Leave a comment

Share

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.