Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Until recently, corporate executives were eager to demonstrate how “green” they were. But then came Trump, trashing the very idea of a green economy.

So, to appease the vengeful Republican, obsequious CEOs rushed to dump their green principles. Except for one especially verdant area of the corporate culture: CEO compensation. As widely reported, top executive pay has surged during the Trump regime.

But wait, they want more, so other tendrils of executive pay have sprouted and grown like Jack’s beanstalk, further separating those at the top from the rest of us. Wall Street Journal reporters have uncovered some $600 million in executive perks that big corporations shelled out to their honchos last year.

For example, investors in Apollo, the avaricious Wall Street huckster, laid out nearly a million for luxury limo and chauffeur services so their billionaire CEO wouldn’t have to open the car door by himself. For tax purposes, Apollo called this a “security measure,” rather than the pompous plutocratic perk it is.

Already overpaid, these royals have come to expect all of life’s needs and whims to be covered, including:

* $121,000 in free tickets to ballgames to please the multimillionaire chief of Roto-Rooter, who is said to be “a huge sports fan.”

* $20,000 in booze for the head of a liquor conglomerate, which insists the freebie is awarded to enhance the boss’ “knowledge of the product.”

* And a $492 payout to cover the maintenance cost on a home generator for the chief of Hewlett Packard – who is paid $23 million a year.

An old adage claims that it’s the little things that matter… and these CEO entitlements show just how little corporate “leaders” have become.

Do something!

To stay on top of all-things-CEO-pay, check out Inequality.org’s work on the topic and take action with the organizations they recommend 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.

Not that it matters, but sometimes I wonder if the billionaire potentates of artificial intelligence ever wonder why they’ve become so despised.

I doubt it, since introspection doesn’t seem to be in the DNA of hubristic AI demigods like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg. Nor are they programming such qualities into their “superintelligent bots.”

So, let me help them see themselves. First, today’s eruptions of public hatred toward them are not, as they want us to believe, just petty jealousy by people who want to be like them. Really… be like Musk? His ugliness is not just skin-deep – it emanates from his inner core.

Such aloof AI profiteers have sparked a nationwide prairie fire of anger by plundering local water supplies, farmland, electric power, and tax subsidies. They’re callously treating our communities as nothing more than a series of financial transactions for them to be consummate. But people’s rebellion is not merely about monetary prices and property. Fundamentally, it’s fueled by corporate elites’ total disregard for the basic human value of Fairness.

Even pre-school children comprehend the moral implication of “That’s not fair!” The corporate gold rush to an AI future is not about the mystical possibilities of technology, but old-fashioned greed – moneyed elites grabbing more profits and control. And there’s nothing fair about either.

The spreading rebellion against AI arrogance is raising a politically explosive moral question: “Who the Hell elected you selfish screw-ups to dictate our future?” Musk & Co. say they don’t even believe in democracy, so why would We the People let them remake society in their totalitarian image? To join your local rebellion, go to jimhightower.com/datacenters.

Do something!

There are more and more groups forming around the country to fight this exploitation— so many that we’re having a hard time keeping track of them all! Here are a few hubs 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.

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