Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

While We Tout America’s Democracy, Plutocracy Is Taking Over


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Washington’s MAGA government is shoveling massive giveaways of public money to corporate elites. Worse, though, are its takeaways of people’s power to battle the abuse of those same plutocratic corporations. Consider just three recent examples:

Travel. Perhaps your family plans a holiday flight to visit grandma. Flying itself has become dicey, but at least the government is requiring airlines that cause long delays or cancellations to compensate us passengers for our loss. Uh… no, no more. Trump’s transportation secretary (who was previously a LOBBYIST for the big airlines!) is “loosening” the rules so monopolistic airlines owe nothing to abused customers.

Job opportunities. One of the nastiest wage suppression tactics of corporate bosses has been their collusion to make employees sign “noncompete” contracts. These amount to indentured servitude, preventing workers from quitting to take a better job with a competing firm. This corporate lockdown costs American workers some $40 billion a year in wages they could get in an open job market. The FTC was finally moving to ban these noncompete gimmicks – but Trump installed a corporate lackey at the FTC to snuff out this spark of workplace liberty.

Pollution. Corporate lobbyists and MAGA lawmakers are rigging the rules to let industrial giants escape responsibility for their massive environmental contamination. For example, the profiteering greedheads who’ve deceptively caused tons of deadly “forever chemicals” to be spread on our land, water, communities, and families are to be let off the hook by the new, corporate-hugging EPA honcho. He says we taxpayers must pay for the toxic cleanup, not the polluters.

If you’re unclear about the meaning of “plutocracy,’ there it is: Government by and for the despotic rich.

Fighting plutocracy on multiple fronts is challenging work, and that’s why we recommend getting involved with Public Citizen—they’re strategic and have a long track record of protecting Americans on many issues. Check them out at citizen.org.

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Jim Hightower's Radio LowdownBy Jim Hightower

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