How are monopolistic corporations able to gain their economic dominance? They get politicians to give it to them.

Consider the old robber barons. They weren’t brilliant investors or managers, they were ruthless exploiters of government giveaways, and they routinely bribed lawmakers and other officials to permit their monopolistic thievery.

Likewise, today’s monopoly players have captured local, state, and national markets – not through honest competition, but by getting public officials to subsidize their expansion and to rig the rules against small competitors. Monopolizers buy this favoritism with the legalized bribes of dark-money campaign donations they lavish on compliant lawmakers.

Investigative digger Stacy Mitchell recently documented how this corrupt political favoritism has allowed massive retail chains like Walmart, Kroger, and Dollar Store to crush thousands of local grocers. This has left millions of Americans living in “food deserts” – worker class, poor, and rural communities with no food store.

What happened? As grocery chains spread from local to regional to national, they demanded that food manufacturers give them big discounts – a dramatic monopoly pricing advantage over independent rivals, so hometown grocers began hemorrhaging customers. This raw, anti-competitive, price discrimination was a flagrant violation of America’s anti-monopoly law – but here came Big Money to protect the monopolists.

In 1980, as Ronald Reagan was railing against “silly” consumer protection laws, supermarket lobbyists poured campaign cash into top officials of both parties. What they bought was bipartisan agreement to simply stop enforcing that “rusty” old antitrust law that had protected a competitive grocery economy for nearly 50 years.

But good news! That useful, highly-effective law is still on the books, so let’s build a long-term grassroots campaign to rejuvenate it and re-outlaw monopolization, redlining, and price gouging by food giants. For more information, go to ilsr.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.

Except for Zorro and Batman, people who put on masks to hide their identity when going to work are rarely up to any good.

And as Americans learned decades ago when Ku Klux Klanners covered themselves from head to toe, the bigger the mask, the greater the evil hiding behind it. Which brings us full circle to “Operation Metro Surge.”

OMS is the muy macho PR slogan for the Republican Party’s militaristic invasions of Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and other American cities they hate. Deploying ICE and other bastions of authoritarian power, thousands of massively armed federal belligerents in full assault gear have been rampaging through peaceful neighborhoods in violent and murderous mass sweeps.

This is an un-American attack by America’s own government on America’s founding ideals of liberty and openness. The defining symbol of this government repression is that its forces are all hiding behind full-face masks.

Of course, if I was doing some of the stuff ICE commandos are doing, I’d want to cover my face, too. But, like the Klan, masking up the oppressors is not merely about cloaking their personal shame — it’s an added ploy by the perpetrators to terrify anyone who might dare to stand up to them.

As usual, though, the authoritarian powers misunderstood America and underestimated the deeply rebellious nature of our gutsy, grassroots people. Some 30,000 volunteers in Minneapolis, for example, have become trained “constitutional observers” to police the police, and a citywide “whistle brigade” rushes like Paul Revere to alert neighbors when ICE agents invade their neighborhoods.

Their ethic of neighbors-helping-neighbors recognizes their power to “do what’s right.” It’s the best of America standing up to confront the worst.

Do something!

Our friends at the Working Families Party are leading the charge to pressure Democrats to vote NO on any DHS bill that does not work to stop ICE’s reckless attacks. You can text “ICE OUT” to 30403 or dial 833-636-3260 to call your Senators. Need a sample script? Here you go:

When you connect, say your name and where you live to show that you’re a constituent. Then, you could say something like:

“ICE’s reckless and illegal attacks on our communities must be stopped. But instead of ending and investigating ICE’s abuses, the DHS spending bill would empower this rogue agency to terrorize and kill even more of our neighbors. As your constituent, I urge you to vote against the DHS funding bill and stand up to ICE.”

Here’s a whole set of actions they’ve compiled to help direct your energy.

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

George Orwell spoke bluntly about the nefarious nature of advertising, calling it “the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”

Even Orwell, though, would’ve been astonished by the cacophony of swill bucket advertising currently being blasted at us by Amazon, Google, Meta, and other profiteering tech giants. What are they trying to sell?

Pure hogwash. Having spent billions to develop artificial intelligence so humanoid robots can displace workers, the tech geniuses are now rushing to build thousands of vast computer data centers necessary to power their Brave New AI World. Each center wills suck up local water supplies, drastically raise people’s utility bills, create monstrous industrial blight and pollution, and enthrone such autocratic thugs as Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg as absentee bosses with domineering power over each locality.

But the billionaires forgot something: You and me. “We the People” are in open rebellion against this Orwellian future, with officials in multiple states and localities “Just Saying Hell No” to the profiteers’ invasive scams.

Thus, the billionaire hucksters are frantically rattling their swill sticks. For example, Mark Zuckerberg – whose Meta goliath already operates 26 massive data centers and is now spending $600 billion to plop more of them in our communities – has launched a multimillion-dollar offensive to beat back local opponents. It’s running BS television ads in state capitol cities, financing political candidates to hype the data centers, deploying untold numbers of lobbyists to rig the rules against opponents, and hiring an army of “community affairs” agents to spread AI propaganda.

The swill bucket brigade has the fat cats, but a groundswell of us alley cats that has them on the run. To get involved, go to mediajustice.org/tools.

Do something!

The Center for Media Justice has been leading the way in fighting data centers in lots of communities around the country— here’s how they beat back one in Amarillo, TX, for example. Get involved at mediajustice.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.

Years ago, when I announced that I was leaving my job as editor of The Texas Observer to run for political office, I had to admit that into politics is the only downward career move one can make from journalism!

But being a both a journalist and a politician does hone in one’s ability to detect the smell of BS – and we Americans are presently getting a noxious blast of that stench from our warmongering Department of Defense.

The vast, trillion-dollar Pentagon is the ultimate Big Brother bureaucracy, literally empowered to compel thousands of Americans to die in foolish military misadventures cooked up by political partisans and profiteering corporate contractors. That’s why it’s so alarming that Trump’s “Project 2025” autocrats are now rushing to slam an iron door of censorship on reporters trying to inform us commoners about the militaristic schemes and corporate fraud that come from inside this government fortress.

In the name of defending freedom, Trump’s palace guards are banning media outlets that displease his royal highness. Also, “Pretty Boy Pete Hegseth,” Trump’s made-for-TV Pentagon honcho, has even decreed that reporters must be tightly monitored by military escorts while doing interviews, reviewing documents, and otherwise exorcising the essential Constitutional rights of our nation’s free press.

The good news is that rather than kowtowing to the autocrats, dozens of media organizations have told Pete to stuff it, choosing to do old-school outsider digging into this insider war machine.

Meanwhile, the “Project 2025” authoritarians hail their clamp down on free press rights by touting their “fresh relationship” with what they call their “new Pentagon press corps.” Right – it’s their partisan press corps, not ours.

Do something!

Our friends over at Free Press have launched a newsletter, “Pressing Issues,” to cover the future of media—and advocate for the freedoms we need in journalism. Check it out at pressingissues.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.

While the production of my Lowdown commentaries is high-tech, I confess that I’m antiquated.

I still write each piece in longhand, applying my ballpoint to paper. This has caused bewildered glances from some who see me scribbling away in local coffeeshops and bars. Recently, one fellow sidled up and whispered: “Watch out! If they see you doin’ this, they’ll haul you off to the Smithsonian.”

But we handwriters might not be as obsolete as the key-tappers assume. A fast-spreading grassroots movement is calling for schools to reemphasize the value of writing and printing by hand, instead of being wholly-dependent on machines. Already, 24 states – as varied as Mississippi and California– now require public schools to teach cursive handwriting in third-through fifth grades.

This squares with new understanding of how brains absorb information. While keyboards are faster, the slower, more tactile act of handwriting creates longer lasing comprehension of letters – and better retention of the thoughts they convey. Neuroscientists find that rote keystrokes on a computer require little mental engagement, while physically drawing out words and ideas takes coordination of multiple areas of the brain to focus memory, eyes, and fingers on creating a written product.

Just writing this piece conjured up a fond remembrance of my early childhood: Sitting on the floor of our home learning to draw the ABCs, both print and cursive, on those lined practice pads. It was both an artistic exercise and the development of a foundational tool for a life of learning.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Yes, computer literacy is an indispensable element of today’s childhood curriculum --- but so is the richer development of human thinking through putting pen to paper. So let’s teach both!

PS—Here’s a post we did a couple years ago about how Hightower’s work goes from handwritten on paper to whooshing through the ether into your inboxes:

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

There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries like Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco – that persistently do rotten things.

Then there is the nursing home industry – where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life “experience” can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of natural indignities bedeviling us, and good nursing homes help gentle this time. In the past couple of decades, though, an entirely unnatural force has come to dominate the delivery of aged care: Profiteering corporate chains and Wall Street speculators.

The very fact that this essential and sensitive social function, which ought to be the domain of health professionals and charitable enterprises, is now called an “industry” reflects a total perversion of its purpose. Some 70 percent of nursing homes are now corporate operations run by absentee executives who have no experience in nursing homes and who’re guided by the market imperative of maximizing investor profits. They constantly demand “efficiencies” from their facilities, which invariably means reducing the number of nurses, which invariably reduces care, which means more injuries, illness… and deaths. As one nursing expert rightly says, “It’s criminal.”

But it’s not against the law, since the industry’s lobbying front – a major donor to congressional campaigns – effectively writes the laws, which allows corporate hustlers to provide only one nurse on duty, no matter how many patients are in the facility. A humane nurse-staffing requirement has been proposed, but the profiteering “industry” furiously opposes it… and Congress is dutifully bowing to industry profits. After all, granny doesn’t make campaign donations.

To help push for sanity and humanity, contact TheConsumerVoice.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.

Thanks to all of you who joined us last night for our first experiment with Substack’s live video feature! After reviewing the questions that you left for us last week, we got to tackling a few of them—Hightower gave advice to Maria in Wyoming, who’s frustrated with calling her Republican representatives, and the role of grassroots organizing in red states. We also got to hear some big stories about tiny airplanes (thanks, Shira!), and Hightower’s opinion about why some elected Democrats are loud and proud, while a lot of senators have not been taking strong action against the fascist invasion and occupation of many cities in the US, which was Fred’s question. Richard asked about a left-wing “Project 2025,” and as part of that answer, Hightower gave a rough estimate of how old Ralph Nader is— not to be missed.

We ironed out a few of the initial technical glitches, by the way, and I’m also working on making sure comments from everyone are enabled for the next live event, because we really missed hearing your live feedback! Let us know what your favorite parts were in the comments. Thanks again for watching!

Reminder: Join us TONIGHT at 6pm CT for Happy Hour with Hightower!

The US military has long been an easy mark – for our own avaricious corporate contractors, that is.

During the Civil War, for example, J.P. Morgan sold rifles to the Union army that cost him only $3.50 each, but he charged the military $22 each. Worse, his rifles were defective, blowing off the thumbs of soldiers who fired them. Still, a Congressional committee ruled that Morgan had a “legal” contract and had to be paid in full.

Which brings us to the screwball contracts the Pentagon routinely signs these days with multibillion-dollar corporate con artists hawking weaponry. These gougers, though, have streamlined their taxpayer thievery by automatically inserting a corporate gotcha in nearly every Pentagon contract. It makes it illegal for the military to repair the weapons and systems they have bought!

A drone won’t fly? An AI system goes haywire? Anti-aircraft rockets fail? DON’T touch the systems! No — you must call a corporate-approved tech repair person, or take the malfunctioning gizmo to the manufacturer.

Yes, this is insane, unworkable, immoral… and the very definition of “snafu.” But corporate profiteers have made it the law. At last, though, soldiers, battleground commanders and common-sense members of both parties are rebelling, supporting Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “Warrior Right to Repair Act.” Pathetically, Congress and avaricious contractor lobbyists recently defeated this bill, wailing contractor property rights is more important than authorizing soldiers to make lifesaving repairs in the field.

The fight goes on, though, and you can help. Two lawmakers who engineered this travesty are Mike Rogers of Alabama and Adam Smith of Washington State, both of whom take hundreds of thousands of dollars from the war profiteers. To fight their insanity, go to pirg.org/repair.

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

Reminder: Join us live this Thursday at 6pm CT for Happy Hour with Hightower!

If you’re ever asked to define the word oxymoron, just say, “Congressional ethics.” People instinctively burst out guffawing at the absurdity of linking Congress to upright behavior.

But, surprisingly, Republican congressional leaders say they’re now taking a bold stand for a little less corruption among their own members, targeting lawmakers who’ve been secretly enriching themselves through “insider stock trading.” Actually, the leaders were forced to support this bit of reform because of public outrage over the dirty dealing of Rep. Rob Bresnahan. This multimillionaire Republican was caught using his insider position last year to profit from the GOP’s gutting of Medicaid benefits for poor people.

So, last month, the party’s designated ethics watchdog, Bryan Steil, rose on his hind legs to introduce the Stop Insider Trading Act. “If you want to trade stocks,” Steil howled in operatic outrage, “go to Wall Street.”

Bravissimo! Except it was a fraud. Far from stopping the self-enriching stock scams of lawmakers like Bresnahan, Steil’s bill basically legalizes their corrupt transactions. For example, members could keep trading stocks in corporations they supposedly oversee. And, in the loopiest of loopholes, sneaky lawmakers are authorized to have their spouses buy and sell stocks on the member’s behalf.

Then, showing his party’s true colors, Steil exclaimed that we outsiders should not even push Congress to pass an honest, outright ban on insider trading – because that would discourage wealthy business executives from choosing to enter “public service.”

Hello, that gives us two reason to demand a ban – (first) to impose a minimal ethical standard on lawmakers, and (second) to shoo off self-serving monopolists and plutocrats from controlling the public’s agenda.

Do something!

If you’re fed up with rigged congressional systems of corruption, check out Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who call Steil’s act a “joke,” and are working to pass the Restore Trust in Congress Act.

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

WARNING: News headlines can give you a headache.

For example, take typical headlines on today’s environmental stories:

* Earth’s climate getting catastrophically hotter, faster

* Greenhouse pollution increasing again

* President calls global warming a “hoax”

* Fracking executive now runs Energy Department

* US funding new coal plants

* White House abruptly cancels wind-power projects.

Whew! My head hurts. The negativity in such headlines tells people that grassroots activism demanding clean energy and environmental sanity is futile, for government has been shanghaied by a political cabal of corporate executives.

But wait – while it doesn’t get front page treatment, a bracing wind of change is blowing in from the countryside! It turns out that producers, funders, and consumers of alternative energy have not rejected a brighter, sustainable future just because profiteers and politicians command us to follow them off the cliff.

Indeed, here’s a surprising development that the calcified defenders of dirty monopolized fuels could not have imagined only 10 years ago: Even in the fossilized Kingdom of Texas, solar power now provides more electricity to our people than does King Coal! Despite relentless efforts by our corrupt governor and top Republican officials to rig the marketplace against renewable energy, solar arrays and wind turbines are soon to pass Big Oil’s fracked gas as the top supplier of electricity to Texas homes and businesses.

Here’s an uplifting headline for you: Last year, wind, sun, and other renewable sources surged past coal as America’s number one source of electric power. As a leading climate scientist concludes: “We are at the end of the fossil fuel economy.” So, keep pushing.

Do something!

Want to keep pushing for environmental wins in Texas? Check out the Texas Campaign for the Environment, who have scored some great wins and continue to push for more.

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