Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

To see how the game of “Rig the System” is played, consider the shameful corporate gaming of the horror of California wildfires that have been devouring lives and entire communities.

Many of the worst fires have been ignited by the faulty wires, transformers, and other poorly functioning equipment of such profiteering electric utilities as Southern California Edison. The safety failures of this multibillion-dollar giant have been so awful that state lawmakers and regulators have rushed out fire-protection laws – not for the people, but for the corporate owners! A 2019 law literally protects utilities from paying for fire damages they cause, instead passing the costs to state taxpayers.

Wait, says Edison, if our annual safety record is poor, our top executives are punished with a cut in their annual bonuses. Ouch! Well, not really – the reduction is capped at 5 percent.

Take last year’s fire that destroyed nearly every home and building in the town of Altadena, killing 19 people. “It’s just a tragedy,” lamented Edison’s CEO, though he admits it was sparked by an Edison transmission line. Sure enough, the chief “suffered” a 5-percent bonus hickey. Hold your pity, though, for that means he still collected 95 percent of his 2025 performance bonus, plus pocketing his extravagant salary, stock options, and benefits. In all, the man-in-charge of this corporate-made “tragedy” walked away with nearly $14 million in personal pay.

Meanwhile, Edison went to the Public Utility Commission, demanding that its customers be forced to pay 10 percent more on their electric bills. To keep score on utilities rigging the system, go to TURN, The Utility Reform Network: turn.org.

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America’s present president is like those egos who feel entitled to carve their name into every park bench they sit on, apparently to “make their mark” and shout to the world, “I wuz here!”

Indeed, Trump has demanded that our government patch his “Donald J. Trump” onto such public facilities as the Kennedy Center, the Institute of Peace, Dulles Airport, Penn Station, the Hudson Tunnel – and he might as well add the US Capitol since he treats Congress like his personal possession.

Insecurity is what’s driving his egomaniacal rebranding frenzy. As Trump candidly explains, “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one will remember you.”

Oh, Donald, like the demagogic Joe McCarthy and other narcissistic politicos, you’re destined to be long remembered… and mocked! Moreover, those vainglorious, gold-plated Trump nameplates you’re tacking onto every public space will soon be unceremoniously stripped off and dumped into the trash bin of history.

My friend, Fred Harris, a great populist senator from Oklahoma, told about the fickle nature of political fame. It was a true story about a governor who backed a boondoggle construction project after lobbyists promised to name the structure after him. They did, but as soon as the governor left office, his name was removed. Fred said if anyone ever dedicated a bridge or building to him, he wanted his name built into the structure itself, so if they later tried to remove his name, “the damned thing would fall down.”

So don’t despair that this president seems omnipresent. This too, will pass. Keep whacking at the autocratic, plutocratic structure of Trumpism – it’s not built to withstand the winds time, much less the winds of democratic rebellion.

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 something we don’t get to say very often: “Way to go Mississippi!”

This state has long been ranked dead last in important measurements like healthcare, workers’ wages, and rural opportunities. In recent years, though, Mississippi has steadily been advancing to the top in one vital category: Best places for a poor child to get a good education. What a miracle!

No. It’s the product of ordinary citizens who got fed up with plutocratic state rule that lavishes taxpayer funds on corporate elites, while shortchanging the basic needs of workaday people. In the past decade, savvy grassroots coalitions like Mississppi United have arisen and spread, gaining local political punch in county after county that could not be ignored by legislators.

Early on they achieved major state investments in pre-K education, producing remarkable advances, especially by low-income children in many of the state’s poverty-stricken, rural counties.

This year, building on that success, the movement scored two huge educational victories. First, they produced a unanimous senate vote to defeat a school privatization scheme pushed by the right-wing governor, the corporate establishment, out-of-state school profiteers… and Donald Trump! Then, to emphasize and expand on the state’s commitment to quality public education, the legislature passed a $5,000 teacher pay raise.

As a legislative leader from Starkville said after the senate vote: “Our public schools are the cornerstone of every community in this state, and this unanimous rejection sends a clear message: Mississippi will not abandon the students and families who depend on quality public education – no matter how much out-of-state money tries to buy our legislators.”

To learn more about the uplifting “Mississippi Miracle” go to ACLU-MS.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.

In 1988, I was one of only two white elected Democratic officials in all of America to endorse Jesse Jackson to be our party’s nominee for President. (The other was Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington Vermont).

As a Texas politico, my endorsement of the fiery Black leader was both derided as political suicide and hailed as gutsy. But it was neither – it was just the right thing to do. As I had learned from an old-time Texas Democrat, “Every now and then, a politician ought to do something just because it’s right.”

In the 1970s and 80s, I had gotten to know and work with Jackson. A renown orator, he was an even more effective thinker and uniter. For example, he was able to link white, conservative dirt farmers in common cause with impoverished farmworkers and inner-city families battling chain-store profiteers.

So, when he ran for president, I had to ask myself: If this guy (1) is standing for the progressive populist values I believe in, (2) is standing with the grassroots families I’m fighting for, and (3) has the populist grit to stand up to the moneyed elites – why am I not standing with him?

Millions of us responded to his deliberate campaign trying to forge a multi-racial populist movement, and it’s up to us to carry that historic mission forward. But Jackson’s “Rainbow” vision was not one of fluffy hope however, but one of profound “intentionality.” That means doing the grunt-level political work of strategizing, organizing, and mobilizing to make good things happen. Especially in these dark Trumpian times, emphasizing Jesse’s deliberate determination is the best way to honor this true champion of democracy.

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

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.