As we head into a momentous election year, with state and national legislative seats up for grabs, even let-them-eat-cake Republicans are scrambling to sound sympathetic to today’s hard-hit working-class families.

Of course, tongue-clucking concern doesn’t mean actually doing anything to help this majority of Americans – and most legislatures are doing exactly that: Nothing.

In fact, you’d think the ones hurting in America are billionaires, for those same tongue-clucking lawmakers have been laser-focused this year on delivering monopoly protections, multibillion-dollar government subsidies, exclusive tax breaks, and even top government positions to the richest and greediest corporate profiteers. This is personally disgraceful and socially destructive… yet it has become business as usual.

Why? What’s causing America’s so-called “representatives” to disregard the needs of a majority of their own constituents? The corrupting power of corporate money, of course, but a more fundamental cause is this: The class make-up of practically every legislative body. Millionaires-and-up now dominate. But most-telling, is who you don’t’ see: Working stiffs.

While more than half of Americans are wage workers who overwhelmingly support progressive reforms to advance economic fairness and social justice, the elitist legislative structure shuts them out. Consider America’s 7,300 state legislative seats – only one percent of Republican members and two percent of Democrats are working class! Ten states have zero working class members!

As an old adage notes: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Labor laws, health care, campaign finance, AI regulation… again and again, workers are put on the corporate menu, because the lawmaking system is rigged to keep them from being at the table to represent themselves.

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

In keeping with the season, I offer a little political anecdote about Christmas.

More specifically, it’s about the moral teachings of the biblical Jesus, which formed the ethical foundation of Christmas and gives Christianity itself its true gravity.

The story is about a political clash some 60 years ago in Houston, when a boorish right-winger accosted the feisty mother of a renowned progressive populist lawmaker, US Rep. Bob Eckhardt. Bob, whom I later got to know and learn from, was a fierce battler for racial equality in a time when not all Texans were singing in Kumbaya harmony.

Sure enough, at a public forum where Bob’s mom was representing him, this bonehead loudly demanded to know why her son was trying to make “them [Black people] equal to whites.” Ms. Eckhardt cut off the fellow’s ugly diatribe by, of all things, offering an apology! Her son’s advocacy, she said, was not his fault, but hers: “You see, I raised him to be a Christian.”

Today, however, Mother Eckhardt’s put down might lack the clarity it had back then. This is a strange Christmas – concluding a year in which far right extremists have relentlessly perverted the profound and love-based Christianity of Jesus into a partisan ethic promising brutish rule. As we’ve seen, their “beatitudes” include repression of the poor, worship of Mammon, turning away strangers, hatred of thy neighbor… and so awful much more that rejects the values of Jesus – all in the name of establishing something they call “Christian Nationalism.”

This is Jim Hightower saying… God bless America. And please hurry! But remember, God helps those who help themselves. That means you and me. So, let’s work together to create a merrier, truer Christmas next year.

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 high priests of Holy High Tech are in a huff, wailing that they’re being bothered by you busybodies, Luddites, and commoners – ie, The People.

Grandiose gabillionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos assert that they’re not merely rich, but visionary pioneers! Stand back, they bark, for we’re going to re-populate the world with a new species of artificially-superintelligent humanoids. Yet, to their astonishment, rather being hailed as geniuses, the oligarchs are being widely berated by us old-fashioned humans. Indeed, the level of public outrage has goaded lawmakers in all 50 states to enact some minimal protections for workers, communities… and humanity.

Of course, Musk, Bezos, & Company have no tolerance for the democratic will, so they jetted to Congress, demanding passage of a 10-year ban on enforcing any state law regulating artificial intelligence. Shockingly, however the US Senate, normally a total corporate toady, rose up 99 to 1 to vote against the Silicon Valley potentates. Ninety-nine to one!

So, the billionaires are now playing their trusty Trump card. Having greased the corrupt pay-to-play president with about a billion-dollars in campaign cash and personal deals, the AI profiteers got their payback this month. Quicker than you can say “quid pro quo,” Trump issued an executive order that – get this – orders himself to block our state governments from enforcing their own AI laws.

This is Jim Hightower saying… And here’s an extra fun fact: Trump didn’t even have to write the special interest executive order himself. A Silicon Valley AI profiteer generously sent a draft for the president to sign, effectively awarding more power and wealth to the profiteer. And that’s how Big Money rigs the system against you and me.

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

Ho-Ho-Ho, wait till you hear about the gifts I’m giving to some of America’s power elites for Christmas.

To each of our Congress critters, I give my fondest wish that from now on they receive the exact same income, health care, and pensions that we average citizens get. If they receive only the American average, it might make them a bit more humble – and less cavalier about ignoring the needs of regular folks.

To the stockings of GOP leaders who’ve so eagerly debased themselves to serve the madness of Donald Trump, I’m adding individual spritzer bottles of fragrances like “Essence of Integrity” and “Eau de Self-respect” to help cover up their stench. And in the stockings of Democratic congressional leaders, I’m giving “Spice of Viagra” and “Bouquet du Grassroots” to stiffen their spines and remind them of who they represent.

For America’s CEO’s, my gift is a beautifully boxed, brand-new set of corporate ethics. It’s called the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Going to pollute someone’s neighborhood? Then, you have to live there, too. Going to slash wages and benefits? Then, slash yours as well. Going to move your manufacturing to sweatshops in China? Then, put your office right inside the worst sweatshop. Executive life won’t be as luxurious, but CEO’s would glow with a new purity of spirit.

To the Wall Street hedge-fund hucksters who’ve conglomerated, plundered, and degraded hundreds of America’s newspapers, I’m sending copies of “Journalism for Dummies” and offered jobs for each of them in their stripped-down, Dickensian newsrooms. Good luck.

And what better gift to the Trump family – Donald, Ivanka and Jared, Eric, Donnie Jr., and the whole nest of them – than to wish that they live with each other constantly and permanently. No, really, each of you deserve it.

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

Ahh, Christmas time! The joy of children’s laughter! A time for caring, sharing, and giving!

So, why not make this Christmas a time for giving something that most American children, families, and communities are now denied – and desperately need: a good child care system.

This is a basic element of civilization, yet the leaders of our fabulously-rich nation have not only failed to provide a world-class care system, but they’ve left the pre-school children of working-class families with a failed, expensive mishmash that is no system at all. These are the same so-called “leaders” who’re frantically spending trillions of dollars to create a new humanoid species powered by artificial intelligence – but they lack the common sense to invest a fraction of that on an early care network to nurture the human potential of America’s human infants and pre-school children.

The good news, however, is that we do not have to sit helplessly, wishing that Congress, Trump, or Santa Claus would deliver universal childcare to us. Rather We the People can give this gift to ourselves… and to our children’s future. For inspiration, look to New Mexico.

Twenty years ago, this very-low-income state ranked dead-last in child well-being. Finally, though, agitated parents, teachers, and children themselves became the agitators. Forging a fast-growing coalition called Invest in Kids Now, they organized, protested, confronted and ran against the state’s moneyed establishment. With perseverance, their grassroots activism is now producing the change they want. 70 percent of voters approved the coalition’s constitutional amendment requiring state funding for early childhood education. And last month, New Mexico became the first state in America to offer free childcare to every family.

For more on the work of the coalition, go to InvestInKidsNow.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.

Having grown up in a small-business family, I’m a big proponent of free enterprise. But I detest corporatism.

The corporate powers try to co-opt the enterprise label, but in fact they are direct opposites and opponents. Indeed, the word “free” in free enterprise is not a benign adjective, but a fiery verb. It expresses the constant struggle by families like mine – Main Street businesses, farmers, artists, co-ops, and others – to free-up their enterprises from the monopoly control and raw political force of domineering financial elites.

That’s why I admire the spunk of Azalea Fresh Market in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a new supermarket offering high-quality fresh foods at affordable prices to the people in a poor, inner-city neighborhood. Until Azalea opened, a few sad convenience store bananas were the only “fresh” grocery items sold in the area. City officials kept trying to entice major corporate grocery chains to open a store to serve that community. But it was always “no.” Mayor Andre Dickens says: “That totally burned me up.” So, “Screw it,” he declared, “We’re gonna do it ourselves.”

And they have! Partnering with a small local chain of enterprising grocers, Atlanta’s public development fund financed Azalea, which is now providing good food at good prices for customers long disdained by corporatists.

Corporate ideologues mindlessly bark that the public should not be involved in business. Hogwash! When the corporate establishment fails to deliver such basic needs as healthy food, housing and health care, the public can – and must – step into the void. To learn more about the benefits and potential of public enterprises, go to Institute for Local Self-Reliance: 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.

What a mess.

I mean America’s corporatized, bureaucratic, profiteering medical system. It’s as though the Marx Brothers and Franz Kafka conspired to create it.

Yet, in the midst of that mess, there is one saving grace – namely the everyday workforce of dedicated nurses, therapists, hygienists, and other skilled, hands-on professionals who are the true heart of health care.

Astonishingly, though, when Trump & Co. bellowed this year that they intended to reform the medical system and slash costs, guess who they targeted for cuts? Certainly not the lavishly-paid CEOs and corporate price gougers who donate billions to Trump. Instead, they’re going after our frontline caregivers, the one segment of the system that prioritizes patient health over corporate profits.

Yet, channeling Kafka’s surrealism and Groucho’s slapstick, Trump and his GOP Congress are not only downgrading this vital workforce, but denigrating it. They’ve directed the US Education Department to decree that nurses are no longer “professionals.”

One immediate impact is that many young people who want to pursue careers in patient care will no longer be eligible for the government’s student loans for advanced medical courses. This means that non-rich students will effectively be blocked from earning specialized degrees … and higher salaries. In the bigger picture, Trump’s insult to these essential medical professionals amounts to government-enforced plutocracy, mandating inequality, as well as inferior health care.

Moreover, three-fourths of the health-provider jobs Trump wants to degrade are filled by women. Apparently, it’s part of his increasing attempts to belittle and bully women. As one nurse says of his attack on her profession: “It’s just a smack in the face.” For information and action, go to NationalNursesUnited.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.

Let’s all sing the holiday classic: “All I want for Christmas… Is Something Not Made of Plastic.”

Easier sung than done. Plastic is now ubiquitous in toys, electronics, tools, air, water… and us. And don’t forget the plastic Baby Jesus in Christmas tableaus.

What is plastic, anyway? It’s a toxic synthetic material mostly manufactured from petroleum by such giants as ExxonMobil, the globe’s top purveyor. So much is produced by these profiteers that plastic trash is now a planetary disaster.

But not to worry, for Big Oil’s lobbyists assure us gabillions of plastic bags, bottles, and such are being recycled, keeping them out of our landfills, water, bodies, etc. Swell! Except… they’re lying.

After all, Exxon is the same for-profit contaminator that lied for years that fossil fuels were not causing climate change, even though top executives knew they were. Their ethic of deceit continues today – Big Oil knows that 94 percent of US plastics are not recycled. Indeed, they can’t be.

Faced with growing public alarm about the ever-growing glut of plastic pollution, the industry has doubled down on deceit by offering a snappy new PR slogan: “Advanced Recycling.” They say it’s a magical process dubbed “pyrolysis.” Only… it doesn’t work, it’s inordinately expensive, and it increases climate change emissions. Still, Exxon exclaims its AR will soon be processing half a million tons of plastic waste! But that’s not even a drop in the plastic bucket, for more than 400 million tons of plastic waste is discarded each year –and the oil industry is planning to double plastic production by 2040.

The only real way to stop runaway plastic pollution of us and our planet is to use less plastic. To learn more and help, go to Beyond Plastics: BeyondPlastics.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.

Look out – the corporate cat is out of the bag!

This particular “cat” is the fast-metastasizing software technology called “artificial intelligence.” A cadre of multibillion-dollar high-tech giants have surreptitiously been advancing AI for a couple of decades, literally creating a new, autonomous species of thinking beings. These are computer-powered humanoid bots, increasingly-able to do the intellectual, creative, managerial, and other complex jobs that millions of human beings now do.

The billionaire pushers of this brave new bot economy know that this amounts to placing a neutron bomb in the American workplace, so they have intentionally lied about its job-obliterating impact. However, after years of hush-hush development, the AI technology is now so advanced and the corporate investment in it is so gargantuan that the perpetrators no longer care what the public thinks.

This year, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, and other Silicon Valley oligarchs have been feverishly dumping hundreds of billions of dollars each into a global corporate gold rush to supplant humans with AI bots in practically every economic sector. They expect to automate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. And one Silicon Valley outfit (bluntly named “Mechanize”) calculates that its plan “to fully automate work” can be acheived within 30 years. Indeed, BotWorld is now urging today’s AI technology to create super-intelligent systems that can out-think humans. Yes – bots themselves are working to produce more powerful bots to speed up AI’s bot takeover of work.

This is Jim Hightower saying… If you think that, surely, this isn’t really happening, note that Trump’s GOP Congress recently imposed a 10-year ban on any state laws attempting to regulate AI. Just unleash the bots… and see what happens.

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

These days, with so much economic greed and political meanness in the news, it’s hard to lift your head up and notice the common goodness and community spirit that’s actually flourishing all around us.

So, this Thanksgiving season, why not shake off some of that debilitating negativity by focusing on the many, seemingly-small efforts by ordinary people who’re helping to make life just a little bit better… more connected… more joyful even! Consider, for example, a very neighborly phenomenon presently spreading across our country: “Repair Cafes.”

If you’re not already a paid subscriber, please consider upgrading to continue supporting my work. Sharing my commentaries also help a bunch!

The idea is simple and practical – rather than trashing that broken lamp, torn pair of jeans, wobbly chair, or blinking electronic device – repair them! Only, we’ve become a nation that doesn’t know how, and our corporate consumer economy – based on planned obsolescence – tells us to just throw it all away.

But that ignores a marvelous community asset: Grassroots talent. Every neighborhood and small town is blessed with many locals who’re “good with their hands.” So, in some 200 American communities, volunteer crews of these skilled repairers gather weekly or monthly, inviting us “under-skilled” folks to bring in practically any of our household “junk” to be fixed – for free – rather than sending it to the landfill.

There is one requirement though – we have to watch, listen, and participate in the repair, so we learn to trust our own hands… and maybe teach someone else later on. These repair cafes don’t merely provide a community service, they create community. Stuff gets fixed, but most importantly, as a café founder in East Harlem puts it, as “mostly we just spend time together.”

Why not do that where you live? For guidance, go to RepairCafe.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.