Jim Hightower's Lowdown

By Jim Hightower

What's Jim Hightower's Lowdown about?

News and shows about the progressive, democratic populist rebellion from former Texas Ag Commissioner and NYT best-selling author Jim Hightower.

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Jim Hightower's Lowdown episodes:

05.09.2024
Culture War Stupidity Plunges Into Absurdity
Right-wing culture warriors have been relentlessly attacking people’s personal liberties – running hellish crusades to deny our freedom to vote, to read what we want, to form labor unions, to make our own reproductive decisions… etc.
05.07.2024
Gutting Our Public Post Offices: Oh What Joy!
Hoo boy… DeJoy! Woe is us (the American people) for having our jewel of a national Postal Service saddled with a corporate-minded Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. Formerly CEO of a private shipping contractor, DeJoy’s chief qualification for running this invaluable...
05.02.2024
Hey Democrats: Find the Party’s Future in Its Populist Past
A farmer friend of mine once bemoaned the fact that the Democrat we’d both supported for president, Bill Clinton, was hugging up Wall Street and stiffing family farmers. “I don’t mind losing when we lose,” my friend said, “but I...
05.01.2024
Celebrating workers and labor on May Day
While we here in the US celebrate Labor Day in September, the rest of the world is celebrating its workers today, May 1st. From the Wikipedia summary, here’s a good overview: Traditionally, 1 May is the date of the European...
04.30.2024
What Should Politics Do? Ask Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie’s prescription for inequality in America was straightforward: “Rich folks got your money with politics. You can get it back with politics.” For Guthrie, “politics” meant more than voting, since both parties routinely cough-up candidates who meekly accept the...
04.26.2024
A Century of Third Party Independent Progressive Politics
Hightower is on the road again this weekend, this time visiting Madison, WI to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fighting Bob La Follette’s independent run for the presidency. Fighting who? What? If you’ve never heard of Robert La Follette, you’ve...
04.25.2024
The True Story About Coca-Cola’s Plastic Fairy Tale
Years ago, Coca-Cola excitedly debuted a new formula for its soda, dubbing it “New Coke.” Consumers hated it, and sales plummeted – a marketing fiasco. But here comes Coke again, pushing an even worse product: “A Better Plastic Bottle,” trumpeting...
04.24.2024
Special Recognition for Six GOP Gubernatorial Goobers
While 4,300 workers in Volkswagen’s auto factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, were about to vote on whether to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), thus making their plant the first in the South to have a unionized workforce, suddenly the governors...
04.23.2024
The Big Apple’s Mayor Takes a Big Bite Out of Democracy
And now: A special report from the Department of Really Bad Ideas. And this one is a doozie. It comes from Hizzoner Eric Adams, the present mayor of New York City. Like mayors everywhere, Adams is routinely expected to respond...
04.19.2024
Friday Signpost: Learn How to Listen—and Win—with People's Action
When we hear the term “canvassing” with regard to politics, it often brings up ideas of well-meaning volunteers going door-to-door in communities outside of their own to help persuade those residents to vote one way or another. It turns out,...
04.18.2024
Where’s George Orwell Today? Texas!
If you think the GOP’s Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest, pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us – you haven’t been to Texas. It’s widely known, of course, that Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and most other...
04.16.2024
Can’t Oil Barons Ever Be Honest? (Hint: No)
Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King once opposed a bill because, he said, he feared it would “open a whole box of Pandoras.” An odd rhetorical twist, but it would be helpful if today’s ego-bloated, high-tech billionaires and corporate profiteers...
04.16.2024
Happy Hour with Hightower: April Ask Me Anything Video
Breaking the two-party duopoly, poor people’s food, Netanyahu versus Gaza, how Texas turned red, who’s doing good grassroots organizing, Thomas Paine, and much more
04.11.2024
Why Are We Letting Greedheads and Ideologues Kill Our Post Office?
Before there was a USA – before our Constitution was adopted, and even before our 1776 Declaration of Independence – one of America’s best democratic institutions was already delivering for the people: The Post Office.
04.09.2024
What Nation Besides Israel Is Killing Gaza’s Innocent Palestinians?
“Somebody better investigate soon.” That’s a lyric in Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town,” a 1962 song deploring the relentless murdering of Black people and civil rights activists in the Deep South. The line mocks the refusal of racist officials to punish...
04.08.2024
Reminder: LIVE: Happy Hour with Hightower and... you!
Join us on Tuesday, April 9th at 7pm ET / 6pm CT
04.04.2024
How Many Dead Firefighters Does It Take to Ban Asbestos?
If your home or business is suddenly being engulfed in flames, you count on a quick response from the fire department. But who rushes to aid firefighters when so many of the burning buildings they enter are contaminated with chrysotile...
04.03.2024
LIVE: Happy Hour with Hightower and... you!
Join us here on Tuesday, April 9th at 7pm ET for an open thread live Q&A
04.02.2024
Why Big Corporations Get Special Tax Breaks and You Don’t
Free Market ideologues fabricate some of the most preposterous yarns trying to justify their assertion of corporate greed over public need. Consider their far-fetched of Laissez-fairyland tale that by allowing corporate giants to dodge the billions of tax dollars they...
03.28.2024
How Oily Is Big Oil’s Latest PR Campaign?
If you’re concerned about fossil fuels and climate change, consider an energy source that, according to its backers, will make everyday living “comfortable and healthier.” What is this miraculous substance?
03.26.2024
Should We Be Polite as the GOP Stomps on Our Democratic Rights?
When a fox attacks a hen house, is it uncivil for the hens to raise a ruckus? Two Supreme Court justices say it is. Elevating collegiality above social justice, right-wing extremist Amy Coney Barrett and progressive jurist Sonia Sotomayor have...
03.21.2024
Why Are We Letting Financial Hucksters Dictate Our Local News?
Too many American newspapers have shut down or shriveled to irrelevance, but, luckily, we still have such bastions of local journalism as the Chicago Chronicle and New York News Daily. But wait… those aren’t real newspapers, aren’t local, and aren’t...
03.20.2024
Happy National Agriculture Day!
Did you know that that yesterday was National Agriculture Day? We didn’t! In fact, some of us didn’t even know such a designated day existed until we saw Farm Aid’s post about it on Facebook. While the holiday itself is...
03.19.2024
Sen. Katie Britt Plays a Cruel Political Game to Exploit a Mexican Rape Victim
Poor Katie Britt, the Republican senator from Alabama. She was set up by her party’s operatives to do the GOP’s televised response to Joe Biden’s State-of-the-Union speech. Sadly, her moment in the national limelight was widely panned, even by Republicans,...
03.15.2024
Friday Signpost: A Lotta Luck Happening in Texas
Yesterday, Hightower had the great pleasure to head over to the Luck Reunion, an annual festival of music, food and more held on Willie Nelson’s infamous Luck Ranch. It’d be enough to just attend and experience such a wonderful cross-cultural...
03.14.2024
Tom Paine: What a Guy!
In my view, the greatest of America’s “Founding Fathers” was not Washington or Jefferson – nor, technically, he wasn’t even an American. Rather, he was a British immigrant and itinerate agitator for real democracy, enlightenment, and universal human rights.
03.12.2024
Guess What? Americans Want to Be WOKE!
Well, well, well – look who’s waking up and raring to go: Mr. and Ms. WOKE! We so-called “woke” people have been the target of far-right politicos and front groups that are frantically trying to ban us and our ideas...
03.08.2024
"Served Up on the Table:" Happy International Women's Day
Deanna here, wishing you a happy International Women’s Day! This photo has always cracked me up, ever since I started working with Hightower almost 20 years ago. It’s obviously him in the middle, but who are these women sitting around...
03.07.2024
Is “Icarus” the Solution to Climate Change?
Although the sun is an essential life force, we need to protect ourselves from its relentless glare. Sunglasses? Check. Beach umbrella? Check. Tinted car windows? Check. A huge, multi-trillion-dollar parasol floating in outer space to reduce global warming
03.05.2024
What If There Was a Natural Substitute for Plastic? There Is!
In 1863, humorist Artemus Ward wrote a satire on hucksterism, making up a tale of Abe Lincoln being asked to endorse a piece of quackery about spiritualism. Not wanting to offend, the Lincoln character slyly offers non-committal praise: “Well for...
02.29.2024
How Corporate Lobbyists Can Engineer a Train Wreck
“Corporate crises consultants” (yes, there are such creatures) have patented a formula allowing their wrongdoing clients to champion reform while simultaneously killing it. A classic case is now unfolding around last year’s derailment of a 2-mile-long Norfolk Southern freight train...
02.27.2024
What Happened to the “Miracle of Meatless Meat”?
“Step right up, folks, and bite into the wondrous future of meat!” Cheap meat! Ethical meat! Animal meat you love – beef, chicken, pork, fish, etc. – all produced without animals! It’s the miracle of “meatless meat” – a viscous...
02.22.2024
Abortion-Ban Extremists Are Using a Slave Law to Repress Women
Here’s our Big Word of the day: Extraterritoriality. It expresses a sketchy legal theory asserting that rulers in one state have a right to enforce their laws in another state. The most prominent use of it was in the infamous
02.20.2024
Where Did Our Local Newspapers Go?
I no longer receive my local newspaper, the Austin-American Statesman. Oh, the paper still comes, but it’s just paper, minus the news part – news that our community once counted on to keep up with local government doings, corporate shenanigans,...
02.17.2024
The Israeli-Palestinian Horror: We Can’t Just Watch
I’m unable to comprehend the continuum of raw hatred and systematic barbarism that the Israeli government and Hamas terrorists are perpetrating, so I haven’t felt I could add anything to the strong voices worldwide pleading (in plain words): STOP IT!
02.16.2024
What Is a Banker’s Promise Worth?
Bruce King, former governor of New Mexico, often baffled people with his convoluted use of words. Like the time he vetoed a loan shark bill he’d previously agreed to sign. “But, Governor,” squealed the lenders’ lobbyists, “we had your commitment!”...
02.14.2024
Love to You from Valentine, Texas
Please be my Valentine! That is not only a warm, sweet, sometimes romantic sentiment people express in mid-February on a frilly, red card. It’s also the name of a third-century saint who literally lost his head, a ninth-century pope whose...
02.13.2024
The Debacle of “God’s Army” at Eagle Pass
Perhaps you heard about the recent surge of invasive foreigners into Eagle Pass, Texas – the Rio Grande border town that finds itself at the hot center of the US-Mexico immigration crisis. Only, this “invasion” (as Donald Trump’s MAGA crowd...
02.08.2024
The Right-Wing’s Program to Solve Childhood Obesity
This plot line could have come from one of Charles Dickens’ novels about upper-class depravity: “Miserly governors refuse to provide gruel for poverty-stricken ragamuffins.” Unfortunately, this is not a novel, but modern-day reality taking place in 15 states, where
02.07.2024
From the Archives: Populism Is the Movement You're Already Part Of
With the chaos of both global and domestic events pounding us each daily, it can feel like the struggle for justice is too much to conquer. Sometimes, reminders of the work we’ve accomplished, along with a healthy dose of history...
02.06.2024
The Supreme Court’s Six Corporate Supremacists Ride Again
Heeere they come again: The wrecking crew of Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts & Thomas – the six plutocratic judicial supremacists determined to force their personal political biases on all of us.
02.01.2024
The Shameful Greed of the Solano County Gold Rush
Farming can be a deeply satisfying life – you’re connecting directly to nature, you are your own boss, and you do work that’s real, benefitting humanity. But then there are the pests – such as invasive bugs, monopolistic profiteers… and...
01.31.2024
The Right-Wing Republican War on Women, Children and Reproductive Health Marches On
Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association released a study on the number of rape-related, forced-pregnancies since the horrendous Supreme Court decision to roll back reproductive rights for women. Since the end of Roe, there have been
01.30.2024
Just What We Need – Another Border Wall!
In the 1980s, many Texans were alarmed that hordes of immigrants were fleeing Rust Belt states and pouring across the Red River to take our jobs. So, my friend Steve Fromholz recommended a big beautiful wall across our northern border...
01.26.2024
Friday Signpost: Journalists For Real Journalism
Local newspapers – produced by reporters who live in and know about their communities – are vital to America’s democratic health. But local papers, including dailies and rural weeklies, are being swallowed by a handful of global financial predators.
01.25.2024
Rebranding CAFOs as PFOs Is Corporate BS
A decade ago, Oklahoma’s countryside was literally infested with 626 massively-polluting CAFOs – “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.” These are nightmarish creatures of industrial agribusiness, each one caging thousands of chickens, hogs, or cattle in huge concrete and steel buildings, and...
01.23.2024
Why You Were Not Invited to Davos
Once again, my invitation to the big shindig in Davos never arrived. Davos is the posh resort village in the Swiss Alps where some 3,000 global power elites gather every January for a weeklong, corporate-funded Schmooze-and-Booze-Fest to solve the world’s...
01.19.2024
Mini-Documentary: Black Farmers in Texas
The systemic denial of support and general exploitation that Black farmers in America have endured remains a relatively unexplored topic when it comes to progressive social justice stories. The New York Times
01.18.2024
When Private Enterprise Fails, Public Enterprise Must Step Up
In cities all across America, an infiltration of wealthy investors, developers, and bankers is driving poor and middle-class families out of their own towns. What’s at work here is the relentless financial shove of high-dollar gentrification. House by house, block...
01.15.2024
Martin Luther King Didn’t Just Dream… He Organized!
It’s time once again for America’s annual sing-along of “We Shall Overcome,” in celebration of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. As even school children know, he famously had a dream. His dream was that over the long arc of...

What's Jim Hightower's Lowdown about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Jim Hightower's Lowdown episodes:

Culture War Stupidity Plunges Into Absurdity

Gutting Our Public Post Offices: Oh What Joy!

Hey Democrats: Find the Party’s Future in Its Populist Past

Celebrating workers and labor on May Day

What Should Politics Do? Ask Woody Guthrie

A Century of Third Party Independent Progressive Politics

The True Story About Coca-Cola’s Plastic Fairy Tale

Special Recognition for Six GOP Gubernatorial Goobers

The Big Apple’s Mayor Takes a Big Bite Out of Democracy

Friday Signpost: Learn How to Listen—and Win—with People's Action

Where’s George Orwell Today? Texas!

Can’t Oil Barons Ever Be Honest? (Hint: No)

Happy Hour with Hightower: April Ask Me Anything Video

Why Are We Letting Greedheads and Ideologues Kill Our Post Office?

What Nation Besides Israel Is Killing Gaza’s Innocent Palestinians?

Reminder: LIVE: Happy Hour with Hightower and... you!

How Many Dead Firefighters Does It Take to Ban Asbestos?

LIVE: Happy Hour with Hightower and... you!

Why Big Corporations Get Special Tax Breaks and You Don’t

How Oily Is Big Oil’s Latest PR Campaign?

Should We Be Polite as the GOP Stomps on Our Democratic Rights?

Why Are We Letting Financial Hucksters Dictate Our Local News?

Happy National Agriculture Day!

Sen. Katie Britt Plays a Cruel Political Game to Exploit a Mexican Rape Victim

Friday Signpost: A Lotta Luck Happening in Texas

Tom Paine: What a Guy!

Guess What? Americans Want to Be WOKE!

"Served Up on the Table:" Happy International Women's Day

Is “Icarus” the Solution to Climate Change?

What If There Was a Natural Substitute for Plastic? There Is!

How Corporate Lobbyists Can Engineer a Train Wreck

What Happened to the “Miracle of Meatless Meat”?

Abortion-Ban Extremists Are Using a Slave Law to Repress Women

Where Did Our Local Newspapers Go?

The Israeli-Palestinian Horror: We Can’t Just Watch

What Is a Banker’s Promise Worth?

Love to You from Valentine, Texas

The Debacle of “God’s Army” at Eagle Pass

The Right-Wing’s Program to Solve Childhood Obesity

From the Archives: Populism Is the Movement You're Already Part Of

The Supreme Court’s Six Corporate Supremacists Ride Again

The Shameful Greed of the Solano County Gold Rush

The Right-Wing Republican War on Women, Children and Reproductive Health Marches On

Just What We Need – Another Border Wall!

Friday Signpost: Journalists For Real Journalism

Rebranding CAFOs as PFOs Is Corporate BS

Why You Were Not Invited to Davos

Mini-Documentary: Black Farmers in Texas

When Private Enterprise Fails, Public Enterprise Must Step Up

Martin Luther King Didn’t Just Dream… He Organized!

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