At a time when communities across America are literally under siege by secretive data center powers intent on seizing our land, water, electric grid, and even our local democracy – that’s when you’re grateful to have a president who’ll stand with you, fighting for the people’s rights!

Let’s hope we can get one those sometime soon.

Instead, we’re now stuck with a wholly corporatized, pusillanimous president who is waving the flag of surrender at AI data center invaders. Worse, America’s self-proclaimed supreme leader is publicly mocking the gutsy local groups – of all political stripes – who are daring to oppose the global technocratic order being devised by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaire profiteers.

The president of our people’s republic recently belittled the millions of grassroots democracy rebels who oppose the robber barons’ Brave New World. He pompously sneered that the only reason that they don’t want data centers is “they want to end up being backwards and poor.”

Wow! Keen insight, Mr. President!

He even proposes an AI monarchy: If your communities, “want to be successful and rich,” he says, “let data reign.” Reign? Yes, a US president has actually declared that artificial intelligence should rule over us, meaning that Musk, Bezos, and other royal billionaires who own AI will rule.

Trump & Company warn that if you democracy rebels “kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.” But perhaps he doesn’t realize that the Golden Goose is a fable – a self-laudatory myth. “Golden Eggs” are not laid by a goose, but by humanity, communities working together, and investing in the Common Good.

Do something!

If you’re unsure about what “AI” and “data centers” really mean, check out the plain-English explainers we published recently: part 1 on AI, and part 2 on data centers.

Here are a few hubs of data center action that will help you find your way to join the rebellion:

* Data Center Opposition Report: A regularly-published comprehensive report on the numbers of fights out there, with case studies for inspiration

* The Stop Data Centers Coalition has a list of member organizations who are calling for a national data center moratorium

* The Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development, a Minnesota based organization, has published a map of Facebook groups all over the country fighting data centers

* One of our top go-to resources are the toolkits that MediaJustice has created

* Kairos Fellowship also has a slew of guides and is developing a hotline that local groups can call for advice.

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Growing up, I received a wealth of working-class values from my parents, including this nugget about egalitarianism: “Nobody is better than you,” they said, “and you’re no better than anybody else.”

That’s the ethical underpinning for “We’re all in this together” – it’s what Thomas Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and it’s what Lincoln consecrated in his Gettysburg address; it’s in our own pledge of allegiance to “liberty and justice for all;” it’s what the Statue of Liberty welcomes; it’s Woody Guthrie’s anthem to the Common Good; and… well, it’s AMERICA!

Unless, of course, you’re Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or other far-out, plutocratic supremacists who do indeed consider themselves better than the rest of us. For this ilk of technocratic elites, government’s role is not to promote the Common Good, but to protect their wealth from the Common Good.

Their grandiose sense of self-esteem is as silly as it is dangerous, but it is not new, and we commoners have risen up many times in our history to beat down such crushing arrogance. For example, John C. Calhoun, a venerated “statesman” of the mid-1800s, led a national crusade to convert all workers to slave laborers owned by monied masters; and in the Civil War, a family of profiteering bankers got one of their sons exempted from duty in the Union Army by asserting “there are plenty of lives less valuable” than his; and in the 1920s, a prominent, anti-woke academic proclaimed that races are inherently un-equal, so “democracy is an unrealizable absurdity.”

This is the legacy of moral and political failure that Musk, Thiel, et al are trying to ride to victory today. Let’s rise up… and crush them again.

Do something!

Did you know that there are wealthy people in America who don’t think the economy should be rigged for them? Us either! Check out patrioticmillionaires.org.

Also, we’re hearing great things about Gil Durán’s new book, The Nerd Reich. (Several of you also mentioned it in the comments on our AI explainers, thank you!) He’s got a newsletter 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.

Let’s all gather ‘round the campfire, Buckaroos and let Ol’ Cactus Jim here tell you about some of today’s hardy, hard-working cowboys. Yes, those manly men who live free-spirited, yippy-ti-yi-yo, cowboy lives out in the rustic ranch country of the Rocky Mountain West.

Oh, wait – that was a century ago. The “cowboys” who’re now humming “Home On The Range” across Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming are multimillionaire and billionaire corporate titan and celebrities like Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates. They don’t really live there nor mix with locals, no do they actually “ranch” their spectacular 300,000-acre spreads, since they don’t know how.

So they hire real ranching outfits to bring in some cattle, sheep, and other ranching accruements, then they fly in on private jets occasionally and strut around like John Wayne. They are in a word, pathetic.

But they surely are land barons, spending up to $200 million each for their vast spreads. Indeed, these dilettantes rule the availability of ranchland and scenic wilderness, pricing out people who really want to ranch and locking out families who want to experience some of nature’s most majestic rivers and mountains. Fifteen years ago, the biggest private landowners held 27 million acres; now they’ve grabbed 42 million acres for themselves.

Well, say apologists for wealth concentration, they bought the land with their money, so it’s fair and square. But hold on slick. They don’t come just for the views, hunting, and exclusivity – their ranches get generous land subsidies, plus, states like Wyoming provide no-tax hideaways for their wealth.

This is Jim Hightower saying… So, even though you and I are shut out of these gated land baronies, at least we can take pride in knowing that it’s our tax dollars that help the rich buy them… and lock the gates.

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Memo from corporate headquarters to staff:

“Notice – the beatings will continue until employee morale improves.”

That corporate joke would also fit the perverse ethic of the Republican Party’s latest assault on homeless Americans. Believe it or not, the Party’s new homeless policy – officially embraced by the Trump regime and already enacted by 16 right-wing state governments – is to blame homelessness on (guess who?) the homeless! Yes, hundreds of thousands of individuals and families living on the streets in our Land of Plenty are being ordered to go inside – even though they have no “inside.”

But pious GOP politicos are not merely chiding the poor. They’re using Big Government’s authoritarian might to criminalize, arrest, incarcerate, and forcibly medicate some of the hardest-hit people in our country. It’s a raw, disgraceful example of the aristocratic arrogance of today’s billionaire brat class.

Such as Silicon Valley Trumpster, Joe Lonsdale. He’s been on a sadistic crusade to ban homeless indigents from making alleys, underpasses, and other vacant spots into their “home.” A multi-billionaire profiteer of the Palantir espionage conglomerate, Lonsdale lives in splendor in his mansions, but he doesn’t want to be “bothered” by the poor who might be perturbed by the inequality he perpetuates. Indeed, Jon recently demanded that angry poor people who might pose a threat to upright, uptight royals like him should be subjected to public hangings.

In a democratic society, government’s role is not to protect the privileged from the people, but to protect the people from the oppression and ever-grasping greed of royal wannabes like Lonsdale. To keep track of the Republican assault on the poor, go to the National Homelessness Law Center: homelesslaw.org.

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Here’s a reality that the Powers That Be keep trying to put out of sight and out of mind: Poverty.

Yes, right here in our own fabulously-rich USA. Don’t tell anybody, but millions of American children, workers, and elderly people are enduring the personal horror of dispiriting, debilitating, deadening poverty every day.

It’s our national horror, too, for the greatest cause of their penury is not lack of ambition, drug addiction, stupidity, or other canards hurled at the impoverished. Rather it’s the moral poverty of the rich and powerful who routinely rig the system to cut off food access, hold down wages, eliminate health care and child care, jack up rents, privatize everything… and turn government into an exclusive club for corporations and the rich.

Such deliberate moves by moneyed and political elites to close off America’s pathways of upward mobility is both stupid and suicidal. Not only does it foment deep social anger, but it denies our country the creativity, enterprise, and – yes, the genius! – inherent in even the poorest communities.

Most pathetically, the callous moves to abandon the poor is driven by the worst traits in our society: One, a condescending right-wing meanness that openly regards the poor as failed humans who’re unworthy of public support; and two, upper class fear that the poor are hard-wired moochers who pollute the gene pool, so they must not be coddled.

Our people’s fundamental values are better than this, and America obviously has the wherewithal to DO better. There’s no excuse for letting poverty bigots and billionaires set America’s ethical standards. To assert “little-d” democratic values and take action go to BreachRepairers.org.

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Public leadership doesn’t mean that the “leader” has to have all the solutions, but instead must be open to others with problem-solving ideas.

That was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s great strengths when he came into the White House. Facing the full-blown crisis of a national Depression, he brought his top advisors together with an open mandate for creativity: “Do Something,” he told them. “If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t work, do something else.”

In some surprisingly good news, this spirit of innovative public leadership is flourishing today! Not at the national level, of course, where top federal officials are right-wing ideologues who obsequiously bow to “WDW” (Whatever Donald Wants). But hundreds of local and state officials across America are using their heads, hands, and imaginations to “do something” about the real problems our people face.

School districts, for example. Many are facing a double whammy: First, developers and their politicians have gentrified many cities so severely that teachers and staff can’t afford to live there; second a right-wing push for school consolidations and closures has left many campuses vacant. But could one problem plus the other one add up to zero?

Yes, say education innovators in such districts as San Diego, Austin, and South Miami. Leaders there and elsewhere are converting vacated classrooms, offices, and school yards into high-quality family apartment complexes. They’ll house several thousand teachers, janitors, and others, cutting rents by 50 percent or better!

Encouraging this kind of free-wheeling problem-solving is not just thinking outside the box, it’s eliminating the box. For more creative ideas to make public policy work for the public, go to StateInnovation.org.

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Wow, here’s some blockbuster economic news from Team Trump: The income gap between the rich and the rest of us is over!

How do we know this? Because Scott Bessent says so. Who’s he? Secretary of the Treasury – Trump’s top economic official. A son of inherited wealth, he’s a Yale graduate, a Wall Street whiz, a billion-dollar hedge fund speculator, and… well, Scott says he knows financial stuff.

So he officially proclaimed this month that the “K-shaped economy… is a thing of the past.” He’s referring to the letter K, which economists use as a graphic shorthand to show the wealth of moneyed elites is zooming up, while the well-being of the middle-class and poor plummets. “I got sick of hearing about this K-shaped economy,” snarled this potentate of high-finance. So he did what Trump would do – he simply decreed that the rich-poor economic divide is “over.” As evidence, he pointed to Trump’s elimination of the federal tax on workers’ tips.

Could someone please buy a clue for our eminent treasury chief?

No doubt some waiters and bartenders will get a few nickels and dimes from this token tax ploy, but it doesn’t even register on the scale of economic fairness. Plus, a partisan Wall Street millionaire like Scott has zero credibility with working class families. They’ll know when inequality is “over,” because their in-come will finally begin to cover the ever-rising out-go caused by corporate greed and plutocratic government.

America’s last great Republican President, Abraham Lincoln said: “You can’t fool all the people all the time.” But Trump and his clique of clueless henchmen like Scott Bessent keep trying to prove Lincoln wrong.

Do something!

To take on income inequality for real, check out these resources from our friends at Inequality.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.

“If you find that you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the very first thing to do is quit digging.”

That old country saying has a newly-urgent relevance to us today, for Big Tech, Big Finance, and Big Government are colluding to dig us into the unfathomable hole of artificial intelligence. All across the country, entire communities are in an uproar as they learn that thousands of massive, billionaire-financed data centers are quietly being approved by their government officials, usurping farmland, local water supplies, and each area’s electric grid. Why? So über-rich prigs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos can impose their grandiose, zillion-dollar schemes to displace us human workers with super-intelligent bots.

What’s not to like about that?

But wait… there are other major problems, including the sickening drone of gigantic cooling systems in each data center, running non-stop year-round, destroying community tranquility and people’s sanity; the sudden rise of global warming emissions caused by data center use of fossil fuels; the creation of easy targets for drone attacks on these sprawling interconnected computer networks; and the wholesale diversion of America’s research funding and talent to the private projects of billionaires.

Far worse, though, is that AI is the key for Musk, Bezos, and whoever to impose a feudal, fascist, technocratic, rule over the rest of us – all in the name of progress.

Maybe we should question this “future” before surrendering to it! To help guide us, New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom recommends such useful books as “The Nerd Reich,” “Technofeudalism,” and “End Times Fascism” – plus Pope Leo’s encyclical letter on AI. Follow Tressie’s series on battling Big Tech at JimHightower.com/TMC.

Do something!

Here are some organizations and coalitions that are fighting this technofascist/feudalist future:

* AI Now: An independent research institute providing expert analysis on AI in the public interest

* Athena Coalition: Originally focused on fighting Amazon, this huge coalition is taking on AI invasions and data center exploitation

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The great thing about “art towns” is, of course, the artists who live there and their art. So why are so many art town officials deliberately and stupidly driving artists out of town?

I live in such a place: Austin, Texas. For beaucoup years, it welcomed and nurtured a blessing of creators – from buskers to tap dancers, muralists to neon sign artists.

Neon Signs? Yes, magical artisans who can bend glass tubes into delightful expressive shapes that light-up to identify a community and culture as something more than just another concrete-and-steel erection of corporate power. One such creative is Todd Sanders, an Austin pop artist who for three decades has preserved and advanced this eclectic community’s proud claim to be “Keeping Austin Weird.”

I was personally plugged into that identity when Susan DeMarco, Floyd Domino, and I broadcast a two-hour daily radio talk-show across America from a down-home Austin restaurant named Threadgill’s. Behind us on the stage, was a Todd Sanders gem – a 3x5 foot neon sign, flashing “Hightower Radio… On the Air.”

But multimillion-dollar developers – backed by a city council now promoting Austin as a mecca for high-tech billionaires – have no room for funky grassroots “weirdness.” They’ve jacked-up city property taxes and artists rents in a corporate gentrification frenzy that has squeezed Sanders’ neon shop and others out of Austin. The good news is that art perseveres, so Sanders’ studio and art gallery found a welcoming spot 80 miles east of us in the small town of Round Top.

But Round Top artisans will be next if we keep letting profiteers, with no values beyond money, define who we are, restricting who we can become.

Do something!

When we had an office in east Austin, we shared it with Austin Creative Alliance—check them out to help keep Austin’s arts scene thriving.

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

It’s no secret that voters are increasingly disgusted by today’s extremist, right-wing Republican lawmakers. But less known is the fact that extremist GOP lawmakers are even more disgusted by you voters!

They’re so disgusted that a top legislative priority of Republican leaders in the White House, Congress, and state legislatures is to rig election rules, literally to rule-out issues and voters they don’t like. For example, Republicans in Missouri (the “Show Me” State) showed us what they’re made of by attempting to kill the people’s right to amend their state’s constitution. Missouri and 25 other states have long provided a citizen-led initiative process so the people can propose and pass their own laws, rather than always depending on politicians to “do what’s right.” Yes – it’s direct democracy!

But the people (damn them!) have been passing things like providing health care for the poor and raising the minimum wage. So, “No-no!” screeched Republican leaders and corporate lobbyists, who otherwise control the entire state government. In a perversion of people power, they wrote a ballot initiative that, effectively, would leave direct democracy “dead” in Missouri.

Clever, huh? Use the initiative process to kill the initiative process.

But the people rallied, exposed the fraud, and in a massive turnout of voters in last week’s elections 80 percent – 80 percent! – rejected the establishment’s anti-democracy ploy.

Missourians showed ‘em – but anti-democracy elites are now pushing direct-voter bans in 15 other states, including Arizona, Florida, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah. To keep track and shove back against these plutocratic power grabs, connect with the nationwide monitoring and grassroots campaigns of the Fairness Project: thefairnessproject.org.

More from Missouri

Want to keep up with Missourians who are fighting the good fight? Here are some rabble rousers whose work we love:

* Jess Piper and her newsletter, The View from Rural Missouri by Jess Piper

* Will Westmoreland - his newsletter is 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.