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Jim Hightower is an American populist, spreading his message of democratic hope via national radio commentaries, columns, books, his award-winning monthly newsletter (The Hightower Lowdown) and barnstorming tours all across America.
(11 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 14, 2013 The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It's a corporate coup d'etat -- against us!
The nullification of our right to direct expenditures of our own tax dollars is but one of the horror stories being quietly packed into a political-and-economic bombshell benignly labeled TPP--the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The corporate gang that stuck us with NAFTA is back, hoping to fool us with an even more destructive multinational deal. This time we really must pay attention, because TPP is not just another trade deal.
SHARE Thursday, November 8, 2018 Trump Hates the American Public -- Here's How He Reveals His Disdain
Donald Trump hates us...all of us who constitute The Public. The billionaire's antipathy is not directed at us as individuals, but as users of publicly provided services -- such as schools, parks, health care, buses, collective bargaining, libraries and environmental protections.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, March 12, 2012 The Post Office is not broke -- and it hasn't taken any of our tax money since 1971
While it's certainly true that emails and tweets are faster than mail, there remains a vast demand for postal services, especially where broadband internet does not reach (50 percent of rural residents, 35 percent of all Americans), as well as when hard copy and physical delivery are essential.
(10 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 7, 2012 The plutocrats who bankrolled the GOP primaries -- and what they want in return
These justices knew what they were doing: enthroning the wealthiest Americans, not merely to reign supreme over the political process, but also to control government. In a nation of 313 million people and an electorate of 217 million, fewer than a hundred uber-wealthy individuals and corporations (a tiny fraction of a fraction of even the 1 percent) shaped the GOP presidential debate and nomination to their personal benefit.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 23, 2011 Citizens United Against Citizens United: A Grassroots Campaign to Restore Democracy
The rising supremacy of America's corporate plutocracy is based on courts and politicians having blind faith in the legitimacy of the corporations-are-people idolatry. It is not, however, something that its disciples wish to take to the people as an election issue, because... well, because it's poppycock, and it would be resoundingly rejected if it were ever put to a direct vote.
SHARE Thursday, February 18, 2010 The Audacity of Greed
Profits have never been better for the health insurance industry. Last year, they booted 2.7 million people off their rolls because they were taking up too much care and eating into profits. Less money for health care means more money for overhead, executive bonuses and, of course, LOBBYING CONGRESS to keep the game going.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, December 25, 2015 The Trans-Pacific Trade Scam
More and more Americans are learning that the TPP would undermine America's very sovereignty, giving multinational corporations direct access to secretive tribunals that could roll back any consumer, labor, or environmental laws that global corporate giants don't like. Yet an irked Obama denies that this is true: "They're making this stuff up," he cried. "No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws."
(9 comments) SHARE Monday, September 5, 2011 Why are we letting corporate Supremists steal our democracy from us?
The Roberts Five are not objective and reasoned judges. They are crass political operatives disguised in robes of authority, deliberately contorting the law to transfer huge chunks of the people's power to corporate suites. Roberts. Alito. Kennedy. Scalia. Thomas. Memorize these names, for they are thieves.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 7, 2012 Newt's denouement
Like a dust devil popping up out of nowhere, twirling furiously for no apparent reason, sucking air into its funnel and stirring up rubbish as it hopscotches here and there for a couple of minutes, before -- fffffttt -- suddenly disappearing, the Newt came, spun, and now he's gone.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 5, 2014 The Senate will soon vote on an amendment to overturn Citizens United. History is calling!
From climate change to all the issues of economic inequality, people's lives and our nation's historic potential are being sacrificed on the altar of mammon. The Powers That Be won't fix this, for they are mammon. It's up to us. If you're not already doing it, do all you can--join in, stand up, speak out, stand strong. History is calling us.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 21, 2018 The Koch Klan is funding a stealthy war against the principle of the Common Good
The great majority of Americans are still unaware of the enormity and villainy of what's been done to them by the property supremacists and their political enablers. It's important to note that the Koch coup has been pieced together with the full complicity of practically all GOP officials, and it's also been condoned or actively abetted by corporate Democrats.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 9, 2018 Trump's tax-cut scam worked perfectly
Once again, our corrupt political officials duped taxpayers into giving away public funds in the name of workers, but they actually stiffed workers, enriched CEOs, increased inequality, diverted tax dollars from urgent national needs -- and enabled corporate powers to donate even more corrupting campaign cash to the politicians and party doing this to us.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 29, 2012 Guided by the Koch brothers, Republicans have installed czars to run Michigan's cities
What they didn't know -- because the campaign never hinted at it, much less spoke of it out loud -- was that a cabal of corporate-funded, far-right extremists behind Snyder would soon spring a secret plan on them. It was to be a horrific "Spring Surprise" that literally would reinvent Michigan -- along with negating the very idea that the American people have a democratic right to be self-governing.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 22, 2011 From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Nation in Just Two Months
The occupiers are saying what's demonstrably true: America's bankers, bosses, big shots, and BSers don't give a damn about working people, fairness, and justice, or America itself. The moneyed and political elites are out for themselves, everyone else be damned.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, August 6, 2012 The GOP is Galloping Away From Conservative ... To Crazy
Ted Cruz is America's latest tea party darling. He just pulled off a contortion in Texas that few would've thought humanly possible: he got to the right of Gov. Rick Perry -- himself a former tea party darling who's such a far-out know-nothing that he's best known for putting the goober in gubernatorial.
SHARE Friday, August 18, 2017 What Happened to All Those Foreclosed Houses?
We know that millions of American families lost their homes after Wall Street's 2007 financial crash. But where did all those houses go? The banksters crash the economy, you lose income and your home, they buy your house at auction, then they rent it to you at an ever-increasing price. The "new way" is the same old story: The rich robbing the rest of us.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Why The GOP's Fence Fantasy Is A Farce
Before you buy a 2,000-mile wall from Trump, Cruz, Rubio and the other "just build a wall" simpletons, take a peek at the small part already built -- because of the poor terrain and legal prohibitions, it's not one long fence, but a fragment here, and another there, with miles of gaps in between. Anyone wanting to cross into the U.S. can just go to one of the gaps and walk around the silly fence.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 15, 2011 Corporate Elites and Their Small-Minded Political Servants are Creating the Incredibly Shrinking America
There's hope in the Occupy protest that is so big and so deeply felt by so many angry/hopeful people that even such forces of autocracy as Mayor Mike Bloomberg cannot make it go away. You've probably seen this bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." I find that the thing we Americans have the most of is the very thing our failed leaders have the least of: bigness of spirit.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 19, 2010 Hightower: Two Right-Wing Billionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit
Despite a constant racket from the forces of the far-out right (Fox television's yackety-yackers, just-say-no GOP know-nothings, tea-bag howlers, Sarah Palinistas, et al.), the great majority of Americans support a bold progressive agenda for our country, ranging from Medicare for all to the decentralization and re-regulation of Wall Street.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 9, 2009 Memo to Media: Populism Is a Rebellion Against Corporate Power -- It's Not Just Stupid, Raw Anger
The very essence of populism is its unrelenting focus on breaking the iron grip that big corporations have on our country--including on our economy, government, media, and environment. It is unabashedly a class movement. Try to squeeze Lord Limbaugh into that philosophical suit of clothes! He's just another right-wing, corporate-hugging, silk-tie elitist--an apologist for plutocracy, not a populist.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 12, 2010 What a Holy Mess Our Oil Addiction Is Causing
So, God is the one who exploded BP's rig, killed 11 workers, shut down the livelihoods of countless Gulf fishing families and spread a deadly, still-gushing slick of oil across four states. Wow, that's one mean God!
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, April 27, 2012 The great American medicine show, a spectacle of deceit, manipulation, and flimflammery
In the past three decades, America's health-care system has radically metamorphosed from a public service network (largely run by independent physicians and nonprofit hospitals) into a corporate profit machine. Drugmakers have been among the most ambitious, in-your-face pushers of this transmutation of medicine into just another commodity to be sold by hook or crook.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 19, 2009 Obscenely Rich Bankers Claim to Do God's Work -- They Can Go to Hell
While top executives of Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and other big investment houses were initially puzzled and hurt by the public's moral outrage, their audacious sense of personal worth and entitlement quickly kicked back in. So Europeans are now witnessing the spectacle of bankers draping themselves in radiant robes of ethical purity.
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, February 2, 2018 Why the Majority of Americans Despise Trump's Washington
Words only matter if the speaker actually means them, backing their rhetorical promise with action. As we've seen though, far from draining the swamp, this president proceeded immediately to convert the White House itself into a fetid cesspool of self-serving corporate executives, lobbyists, and banksters.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 14, 2014 Like Walmart, only with supercomputers and drones: At Amazon.com "cheap" comes at a very hefty price
The temp agencies that are, in essence, the hiring offshoots of Amazon, have long lines of hard-up applicants waiting for every job in its warehouses, so oppressive conditions and ruthless work requirements that constantly cause workers to quit, be fired, or pass out are no problem for Bezos. Amazon smells today's mass desperation, preys on it, and thrives on it.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 4, 2019 Trump Is Destroying the Farmers Who Voted for Him
On March 11 Trump whacked $3.6 billion from the safety-net programs that offer a measure of relief to hard-hit producers when crop prices crash. Revealing his plutocratic core, his cuts specifically targeted programs that benefit small farmers - a deliberate manipulation meant to drive more families off the land and increase corporate monopolization of agriculture.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 13, 2018 The Dow Jones Average Is Meaningless for Just About Everybody
Our corrupt political officials duped taxpayers into giving away billions in the name of workers to further enrich the super-rich, do nothing for workers, increase inequality in America, divert tax dollars from urgent national needs and enable corporate powers to donate more corrupting campaign cash to the politicians. The Trump tax scam worked just as the GOP intended.
SHARE Saturday, December 24, 2011 The Poor Rich and the Scrooginess of Congress
Congressional Republicans continue to protect nonsensical tax breaks for Wall Street billionaires and Big Oil, while demanding that programs to aid America's growing number of poor people either be slashed or eliminated. The Obama White House is fighting most of this absurdity, but it keeps trying to appease the GOP by offering to sacrifice programs that ordinary people really need.
SHARE Thursday, November 26, 2009 Giving Thanks for America's Good Food Movement
What better day than Thanksgiving to celebrate our country's food rebels!
The growing movement of small farmers, food artisans, local retailers, co-ops, community organizers, restaurateurs, environmentalists, consumers and others. This movement has spread the rich ideas of sustainability, organic, local control and the Common Good from the fringes of our food economy into the mainstream.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 30, 2010 The GOP's Genetic Link to Big Oil
For Republicans to continue marching in lockstep with Big Oil, despite public outrage at BP's greed, makes no sense at all. But they can't help it -- their knee-jerk response is genetically programmed. They might even have oil in their DNA.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 7, 2012 AgriBUSINESS is at war with agriCULTURE
What you and I choose to eat, where we choose to get it, what policies and politicians we choose to support or oppose, what groups we choose to help, and whether we even choose to think about the food we eat -- all are choices directly affecting the nature of food production and of food itself.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, January 12, 2015 It's time to knock the Trans-Pacific Partnership off the "Fast Track"
With many House Democrats already committed to "no" on TPP's corporate usurpation of our people's sovereign rights, and with a chunk of GOP members already loath to give Obama any unilateral executive power, it's quite possible for our voices to make a difference on the Fast Track vote.
(16 comments) SHARE Friday, July 22, 2016 What's Next for the Bernie Sanders Revolution?
Bernie has urged his supporters to keep pushing for their democratic ideals. "Real change never takes place from the top down. It always occurs from the bottom on up -- when tens of millions of people say 'enough is enough' and become engaged in the fight for justice. That's what the political revolution we helped start is all about. That's why the political revolution must continue."
(13 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 22, 2015 Where Are the Populist Democrats?
Clinton and other top Democrats are weaker than Canadian hot sauce when it comes to embracing the real populism that voters want. Here's a possible explanation for that mystery: Only 13 percent of the super-rich think government should take action to redress inequality.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 11, 2018 The Rise and Fall of America's Middle Class
The devastation of the Great Depression created a grassroots rebellion of labor, farmers, and others against the careless moneyed class that caused the 1929 crash. These forces produced FDR and his New Deal of union rights, Social Security, and other tools that empowered ordinary Americans to begin rising up from poverty.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 6, 2017 The Next Subprime Loan Crisis
Wasting America's much-needed investment capital on a scheme that intentionally puts people in cars they can't afford with loans they can't repay isn't only stupid, but immoral -- and it's killing our real economy. Why are we letting elite Wall Street loan sharks do this to us?
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 9, 2018 If You Inject a Stream of Raw Ignorance Into a Vat of Gaseous Arrogance, What Does It Produce?
King Donald has the firepower of the federal government at his beck and call, so he is arrogantly using the government power to escalate his personal spat with Bezos. By executive order, he set up a federal task force to conduct a pernicious political inquisition into "our money losing post office," particularly looking at the "pricing of the package delivery market."
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 2, 2017 John Deere Is Against the Right to Repair Its Equipment
Deere's licensing scheme is an artificial, corporate-imposed, private "law" that will squeeze independent shops out of business and allow Deere to dominate the U.S. tractor-repair market, siphoning money and skilled jobs out of rural communities and ultimately leaving farmers at the mercy of a monopolist.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 4, 2012 The Big Three Myths Fabricated By Right-Wing Fabulists to Frame America's Elections
If we are to stand up successfully to the myriad corporate policies and laws that they want to impose on us, we must confront, expose, and reject at every turn their nefarious lies. Don't let them rewrite the basic truth that unites us as a democratic people: We need each other for all of us to succeed, both personally and as a nation.
(15 comments) SHARE Friday, August 5, 2016 The Populist Insurgency Is Ratcheting Up
The Bernie movement created a hopeful, formidable and growing populist political channel that is both insistently democratic and independent of the Democratic Party. This state-based, national network of Berniecrats will keep building its connections, pushing its agenda; and backing populist candidates in the House, Senate and other races this fall.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, March 27, 2020 The Pandemic Profiteers Swarm Washington as Trump Goes off the Deep End
Wartime profiteering is an especially vile form of corporate greed, yet it has been as common in our country as war itself. We could use a roving gang of indignant citizens today to confront the shameful greed of such corporate scammers as Boeing, American Airlines and Marriott, as well as billionaire hucksters.
(20 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 22, 2017 Why won't Trump stand up to Putin?
Trump has zero knowledge, experience, or skills in foreign policy, and he's in way over his head when dealing with someone like Putin. Why wouldn't our president at least challenge this dangerous foreign threat to our people's democracy? "Well, look," Trump meekly replied when asked this question, "I can't stand there and argue with him."
(18 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 27, 2019 We Know Exactly Where to Get the Money to Fix Inequality
Inequality will not fix itself. As the American majority has had to do periodically in our history, We The People must intervene to keep greed and wealth concentration from suffocating our society's essential democratic values of fairness, justice, and opportunity for all.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 7, 2018 Americans Hate the Tax Bill Because It Wasn't Written for Them
The GOP's trillion-dollar giveaway to multinational corporations and multimillionaires turns out to be Congress' second-most disliked domestic law in the past quarter-century. Second only to the multiple attempts by Trump, McConnell, and Ryan last year to take away the healthcare coverage of 23 million Americans -- a move so mingy that 77 percent of the public opposed it.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 27, 2016 Campaigns End on Election Day. Revolutions Don't.
You can view Hillary's adaptations as hopeful or hopelessly cynical, but the point is that Clinton recognizes that a new power is loose on the land. Understanding that the same old Bill and Barack moderate corporatism won't charge up the crowds she needs in November, she's scrambling to tap the electric populism of the Bernie Rebellion.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 25, 2015 Shilling for the Biggest Trade Flim-Flam in History
Written in gobbledygook, the Trans-Pacific Partnership was negotiated in secret by corporate lobbyists and government lawyers. Even Congress doesn't know what's in it, but the White House wants to hustle the TPP into law through a super-rushed, rubber-stamp process called "fast track."
SHARE Saturday, August 24, 2019 Just Who got Trump's Farm Bailouts?
As an "I love you" make-up gesture, Trump has been sending big bouquets of money to some of his beloved farmers. Our money. Lots of it -- $28 billion so far in what he cynically (and comically) calls a "Market Facilitation Program," otherwise known as a taxpayer bailout. But Trump Love turns out to be highly selective, with more than half of the government payments going to the biggest farm owners.
(25 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 25, 2013 Hmmm, Where the Hell Did This "Money is Evil" Pope Come From?
The plight of the poor in our Land of Plenty is so dramatic that even the Republican leaders of the U.S. House have noticed them and are reaching out with open hands. Unfortunately, they are not offering a helping hand to the needy, but a cold, hard slap in the face. On Sept. 19, in a gratuitous act of political pettiness and human callousness, the GOP slashed $4 billion-a-year out of the food stamp program.
(15 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 12, 2019 Trump to Working Class: "Adios, Chumps"
Inequality doesn't just happen; it's caused by the deliberate actions of power elites. Far from reducing inequality, Trump has intentionally escalated the corporate war on working-class Americans. Under his regime, nearly half of all new income today is going to the wealthiest 1%.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 13, 2020 Health Care for People...or for Corporate Profits?
So many families are left out and maltreated by this dysfunctional system that more than 70% of Americans (including a majority of Republicans) now support replacing it with a "Medicare for All" publicly financed system that provides full health coverage for everyone, even as it saves us money.
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 29, 2015 A plucky (and smart!) grassroots coalition has pushed the dastardly Trans-Pacific Partnership to the edge
Pulling back the curtain on TPP has let Americans take a rare, direct look at the treachery of the corporate elites colluding with leaders of both major parties to impose a selfish, plutocratic deal that threatens our democratic aspirations. It's an ugly, unsettling sight, but it has shaken people awake and revived their rebellious instincts.
SHARE Wednesday, November 27, 2019 Trump Gave Yacht Owners An Anti-Poverty Tax Break
Trump's "Opportunity Zone" tax breaks are financing such "anti-poverty" projects as a "superyacht marina" on the toney waterfront of West Palm Beach, Florida. Who would've thought?
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 14, 2017 The Next Wave of the Tech Revolution Will Wipe Out Millions of Jobs -- Maybe Even Yours
The mass-scale deployment of robots has already ushered in a whole new world of work. It's a CEO's capitalist paradise, where the workforce doesn't call in sick or take vacations, can't file lawsuits, doesn't organize unions, and is cheap. As a result, robots are rapidly climbing the pay ladder into white-collar and professional positions that millions of college-educated, middle-class employees have wrongly considered safe.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 15, 2012 In the Constitution, "Security" Means Protection From Our Law Enforcers, Not By Them
A blitz of warrantless surveillance and imprisonments without trial. The core of too many of today's prominent political leaders consists almost entirely of unintended irony, which tends to make them go all wobbly on their political stands. This might be comical were it not so destructive for our nation.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 20, 2020 Trump's Wall Is an Embarrassing Disaster -- Exposing Him as a Flimflamming Snake-oil Peddler
In January, Trump directed his Customs and Border Control officials to put up a short section of his 30-foot-tall wall on the border at Calexico, California, to show the world how effective the Trump bulwark would be. Alas, though, the thing blew over! Not from a hurricane-force storm but from moderate winds topping out at only 37 miles an hour.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 11, 2016 Hightower: Dear Media Elites, Here's How You Have Trump Completely Wrong
Populism is not a style -- and this is important to note in this moment of "The Donald" -- nor is it a synonym for "popular outrage." Populism is a historically grounded political doctrine that supports ordinary folks in their ongoing democratic struggle for power over their lives. If Trump, that bilious billionaire blowhard is a populist, then I'm a contender in his Miss Universe contest.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 18, 2017 Donald Trump's Strange Bromances with Duterte and Putin
Why wouldn't our president at least challenge this dangerous foreign threat to our people's democracy? "Well, look," Trump meekly replied when asked this question, "I can't stand there and argue with him." Really? Well, since you're not up to the job, please get out of the way so we can find a president who will stand there and argue with the Putins and Dutertes of the world.
SHARE Thursday, May 3, 2018 Banks Defend Their Right to Be Dishonest
Banks are wallowing in unconscionable levels of profits, but the only "affordable" advice they want to offer to us is bad advice, funneling our retirement stash into deals that benefit them at our expense. Bankers claiming that they have a legal right to profit by cheating their own customers is a level of gluttony so gross that it would even gag Gordon Gekko
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 7, 2009 Goofing Up Health Care Reform
Take Max Baucus. Please! He's the lightweight Montana Democrat to whom President Obama entrusted the heavy job of shepherding health care reform through the upper chamber. It was like asking Tweety Bird to lift a bowling ball.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, July 24, 2015 Monsanto Hits All the Wrong Notes
The Canadian rocker and master storyteller Neil Young has released a powerful new album called The Monsanto Years. It takes on the arrogant gene manipulator and avaricious pesticide merchant for its relentless attempts to profiteer at the expense of family farmers, consumers, people's democratic rights, and nature itself.
SHARE Wednesday, June 5, 2019 How to Arm Nature Against Corporate Profiteers
Ironically, the corporate powers -- who have perverted law, logic and nature to have their lifeless profiteering entities declared "persons" are aghast that Mother Nature not only has rights but those rights can be legally and morally superior to the claim that a corporation's right to profit is absolute.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 18, 2017 Billionaires Lay Siege to State Governments
While we're mesmerized by Trump, shady groups are pushing corporate-friendly legislation in statehouses all over the country.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 23, 2017 A Mass Murderer's Love Song to Trump
Duterte had earlier demonstrated his love for Trump when he named Jose Antonio to be his trade representative to our country. Antonio, a Philippine real estate mogul, happens to be a partner with our president in the luxurious new Trump Tower, now under construction in Manila. Cozy, huh?
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, June 27, 2016 Carrier and Nabisco close US plants, hop to Mexico -- and stoke the anger of working-class America
Corporate America is now openly flouting our laws, violating our ethics, and rampaging over our society's unifying sense of common decency ... because they can. Almost no one is telling them "no" -- not Congress, the White House, Republicans, Democrats, the courts, the clergy (with the exemplary exception of Pope Francis), the police, the educational system, or others with power (and responsibility) to stand up to thugs.
SHARE Thursday, August 15, 2019 Government for the Rich, the Poor Be Damned
TrumpLove for farmers turns out to be highly selective, with more than half of the government payments going to the biggest farm owners. The Department of Agriculture initially announced a $125,000 limit on the amount any one farm could get, but every Trump deal seems to have a gimmick in it to give a special break to the slickest operators.
(15 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 11, 2019 Who's Afraid Of Medicare For All?
Who really fears Medicare For All? Three special-interest groups: Insurance company profiteers, Big Pharma price gougers, and the political insiders hooked on funding from those corporations.
SHARE Wednesday, July 26, 2017 Billionaire Donors Plot a "Renaissance of Freedom" -- for the Privileged
This attitude of the Kochs' privileged cohorts explains why the public is shut out of these candid sessions. A staffer for the Koch confab hailed such no-tax, no-roads policies as a "renaissance of freedom." For the privileged, that is -- the freedom to prosper at the expense of everyone else.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 27, 2017 Tweeter-in-Chief versus the wisdom of Robert E. Lee
Our foam-at-the-mouth president still has one loyal friend by his side -- Ku Klux Klan poohbah David Duke. "Thank you," the Duke of Whiteness tweeted to Trump after his defense of the supremacists' murderous frenzy in Virginia. Perfect -- The Duke and The Donald deserve each other.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 29, 2015 ISDS: A Corporate Cluster Bomb To Obliterate Our People's Sovereignty
If the Trans-Pacific Partnership is approved, foreign corporations won't have to get their national governments to intervene, for they will become governments. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and the other revolutionaries of 1776 would upchuck at this desecration of our nation's democratic ideals -- and so should we.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 8, 2020 Felonious Democracy
The awful truth about the corporate and governmental power elites in our democratic society is that they really don't like democracy at all. They prefer to rule by buying lawmakers, and relying on authoritarian police power to control people.
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 27, 2016 Mavericks and mad-as-hellers march to Washington for a pro-democracy rebellion. Because it's time.
What if America had an election and governing system in which every voice is heard and every vote counts equally -- a democracy that works for all of us? We can! If we build it. That's the message and motivation behind this potentially game-changing coalition of more than 100 issue-based, progressive organizations.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 15, 2017 One Monstrosity Trump Won't Want His Name On
He might not want his name on this one. It's Trump's towering re-do of America's tax law. And it's truly golden -- for the super-rich, that is. The plan reveals in hard numbers whom this presidency really serves: Not just the 1-percent, but the one-tenth of 1-percenters who are multimillionaires. People like Trump himself.
SHARE Wednesday, November 1, 2017 Who's Really in Charge of the Afghanistan War?
Just as he evaded military service during the Vietnam War, "Commander Trump" is shirking these basic presidential duties today. He's letting non-elected generals decide to hurl another 4,000 of our men and women into the Afghanistan War, with no explanation of how adding these troops to a losing war effort will make any difference.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 11, 2020 Trump's Afghanistan "Peace Deal" Is Anything But
Poor Donald Trump is simply in over his head in dealing with the complex and perplexing collection of regional warlords who make up the Taliban's fierce and treacherous fighting force.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 26, 2018 Corporations Use This Cheap Trick to Avoid Paying Employees a Living Wage
Workplace exploitation is at least as old as the industrial revolution. But rather than using whips and chains to make the assembly lines move ever-faster, today's corporate exploiters use technology, devious work schedules, and lobbyists to extract more work from employees -- for less pay.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 1, 2015 A Thumping Cruz-a-palooza
Senator Ted Cruz's recent announcement of his presidential candidacy was a real Cruz-a-palooza. This is a guy who fabricates facts to foment fear among the fringiest right-wingers. The good news is that the more he campaigns, the more obvious it will become that he can't even imagine the truth.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 26, 2020 Rich And Clueless? Buy A $500,000 Armored Car
Being rich is a comfortable feeling -- no money worries, you're set for life! But is it possible that being too rich can be too much, even discombobulating?
(15 comments) SHARE Friday, March 10, 2017 What Should We Do About A Mentally Ill President?
It's obvious that the guy is not well and is unable to handle the stressful demands of being president of our democratic republic. Indeed, his flaky behavior suggests he's on the brink of a personal breakdown, and his ever-more-frequent retreats to his posh Florida golf resort tells us he doesn't even want to do the job.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 15, 2020 How Do Billionaires Make Money? By Having Money Already
The filthy rich are different from the merely rich. It can take hard work, creativity, perseverance, and luck to become a millionaire, but in today's skewed wealth system, multi-billionaires don't need any of that -- their money does all the work to lift them above everyone else.
SHARE Thursday, June 1, 2017 Making NAFTA Worse
Trump promised to negotiate the widely loathed trade deal, which would be great -- except he's giving corporations even more power to offshore jobs.
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, October 27, 2017 Leading Democrats Are Way Behind the Public on Health Care
When it comes to the fiery leadership that America's grassroots people want and need, the Democratic Party establishment is weaker than Canadian hot sauce. When you've got 60 percent of rank-and-file congressional members ready to go, and 60 percent of the public is also ready to go -- it's time to go!
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 25, 2013 Would the Right-Wing Say Jesus Was a Commie?
Rationality doesn't seem to be included in the liturgy of their political church. Indeed, some of its acolytes have added a twist on Christmas that would make Jesus weep. Indeed, they have launched a war against Jesus! How twisted is that? They say no one should mess with the word "Christmas," yet they're messing with the guy Christmas is supposed to be about.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 21, 2018 Guess Who's Making Sure Many Huge Corporations Stay Profitable?
There's an ugly blotch on Amazon's ballyhooed job-creation numbers: Working conditions in those sprawling, windowless warehouses are grim, and 40 percent of the employees are low-wage, temporary hires with no benefits and no job security. While warehouse wages everywhere are low, an ILSR survey documented that Amazon's average 15 percent lower than what other corporations pay.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 7, 2019 Predator Of Our Public Lands
For generations, our country has been Mother Nature's steward, setting aside and protecting important expanses of public lands for posterity. But what if these lands and natural resources suddenly got a "steward" who was a predator, rather than a protector?
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 24, 2017 Trump's Running Out of Friends, and It's His Own Fault
called for Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell to commit political hara-kiri for failing to pass his abominable Trumpcare bill, which was meaner than mean. And he publicly shoots down his own top appointees, from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to his short-lived mouthpiece Anthony Scaramucci. Even White House chief Strategist Stephen Bannon has taken a hit and been sent packing.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, May 25, 2018 The Retired General Who Stopped a Wall Street Coup
Smedley Butler was repulsed by the hubris and treachery of Wall Street aristocrats. By exposing the traitors, this courageous patriot nipped their coup in the bud. But their sense of entitlement reveals that we must be aware of the concentrated wealth of the imperious rich, for it poses an ever-present danger to majority rule.
SHARE Saturday, December 21, 2019 A Holiday Gift To The People, From The People
It "feels like justice," said fourth-generation Texas shrimper Diane Wilson in early December, when a federal district judge okayed a $50 million settlement against Formosa Plastics Corporation.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 23, 2020 The Lie of Health Care "Choice"
As most Americans have learned the hard way, profiteering insurance giants, Big Pharma, and hospital chains grossly overcharge us while constantly trying to shortchange -- or outright deny -- care to millions of our families.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 27, 2013 In Battling Monsanto's Greed, Tenacity Matters
Having patented the GMO technology, the corporation asserts that when the plants grow in a farmer's field and subsequently produce their own seeds, those second-generation seeds do not belong to the farmer, but are Monsanto's private property. Farmers are prohibited by Monsanto contracts from gathering and later planting the seeds produced by their own land.
SHARE Tuesday, October 8, 2013 In The Name Of Making Us "Safe," The NSA Has Shredded Privacy Rights And Now Treats All Citizens As Suspects
Doing the serious police work to sort out the tiny number of people in our country who are connected in any substantive way to real terrorist threats is too much bother for NSA's techno-warriors, so they've taken the shortcut of dumping all 330 million of us into a digitalized, guilty-until-found-innocent box, keeping an unblinking computer eye on us, and hoping the few bad guys stand out.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 7, 2019 Congress Loves Socialized Health Care -- For Itself
For $3.5 trillion a year, shouldn't we Americans have a world-class health care system? Yet while we spend the most of any advanced nation in the world to get care more than $10,000 a year per person we get the worst results.
(23 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 13, 2014 A Ticket to Sarah Palin's Funhouse
The deep rabbit hole that is Sarah's Wonderland is where she expertly weighs in on everything from "the war on Christmas" to the moral imperative of our country waterboarding our enemies, saying that water torture is "how we baptize terrorists." Of course, a recurring theme is her hilarious demand that Congress impeach President Barack Obama.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 19, 2020 What does "Small Government" buy us?
Nothing like a spreading coronavirus pandemic to bring home the need that all of us have both as individuals and as a society for an adequately-funded, fully-functioning, competent government capable of serving all.
SHARE Friday, March 30, 2012 Jim Hightower: The Truth About the U.S. Postal Service
From the gated enclaves and penthouses of the uber-wealthy to the inner-city ghettos and rural colonias of America's poorest families, the U.S. Postal Service literally delivers. All for 45 cents. The USPS is an unmatched bargain, a civic treasure, a genuine public good that links all people and communities into one nation. So, naturally, it must be destroyed.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 9, 2014 Seeds of a movement: A 21st century Populist renewal is flourishing at America's grassroots
The establishment certainly doesn't celebrate the populist spirit, and our educational system dutifully avoids bothering students with our vibrant, human story of constant battles, big and small, mounted by feisty "little people" against... well, against the establishment. Our nation's true political spectrum is not right to left, but top to bottom.
SHARE Friday, May 15, 2020 CEOs Aren't Pigs.That's Unfair -- To Pigs.
Pigs are remarkably intelligent animals with a sense of social responsibility to the common good of the group. Compare that to the pompous and petulant corporate executives like hotel magnate Monty Bennett, who recently grabbed millions of dollars in economic relief meant for small businesses.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 5, 2017 Would you trust John Yoo?
When it comes to war, can we learn to make moral choices? Remember that President George W. Bush chose to torture al Qaeda suspects (including innocent civilians) by waterboarding them. Where was the morality in that? It was, of course, immoral.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 15, 2017 The GOP Will Free You From Having Health Care
When you've got 60 percent of your party's rank-and-file congressional members ready to go on such a basic issue, and 60 percent of the public is also ready to go -- it's time to go! The national party's "leadership" must get going on health care for all, or the leadership itself must go.
SHARE Saturday, August 3, 2019 What Trump Really Wants At The Border
The most ridiculous thing about Donald Trump's xenophobic, demagogic assault on Central American amnesty seekers is that his frantic demand to build a $5-billion-dollar border wall isn't his most ridiculous ploy. Even more ridiculous is his panicky political assertion that the caravans coming north through Mexico are gangs of rapists, murderers, and terrorists out to slaughter and conquer us.
SHARE Thursday, August 8, 2019 The Other Mexican Migration
There's another mass migration coming across the U.S.-Mexico border. These aren't Central American families fleeing horrific conditions back home only to be separated, incarcerated, traumatized, and demonized by Trump for seeking humanitarian asylum in our country. Rather, these migrants are going the other way from the United States into Mexican border towns, where they're welcomed with open arms instead of armed guards.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, March 17, 2014 Citizen Snowden: Why he matters
the USA is nowhere near the soul-crushing, mind-controlling, authoritarian regime of Orwell's imagination. But what We The People need to confront is the fact that NSA's technologies of algorithmic, full-spectrum surveillance have been turned on us, creating a continuous watch that inevitably will be abusive and is inherently un-American.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 30, 2020 America's Rich Refugee Crisis
A few thousand super rich Americans are trembling in their U.S. mansions, contemplating expatriation -- do they stay in the USA, or abandon the homeland for some friendlier haven for the super rich?
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 14, 2017 1984 at the Grocery Store
mall organic farmers and food artisans are destined to be squeezed out of Whole Foods, displaced by deep-pocket, global food makers who are willing to cut corners on quality and the environment in order to get on Amazon's new grocery shelves. Next on the chopping block is Whole Foods' helpful and friendly work force.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 15, 2014 Hightower: It's the Immigration Fearmongers We Should Be Worried About, Not Their Ebola Hype
The surge of young migrants was coming to an end ... and so was Perry's dumb rationale for slamming and locking our nation's southwest door. No problem for Rick, though -- he simply reached for dumber. Instead of children, his latest bugaboo is -- believe it or not -- Islamic terrorists.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 2, 2019 It's time for a (teeny) tax on wealth
The proposal for a bold, unabashedly progressive wealth tax is a rallying cry for grassroots rebels to join forces and work together to reassert America's historic democratic promise.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 28, 2018 Fed Up With Democrats, Progressives Forge Own Path
The most common characteristic of last year's progressive, populist candidates is that they were genuinely of the people, not career pols who were next in line. And they were not simply running for office, but running for specific economic, social and political changes to make America better for families and neighborhoods like theirs.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 6, 2016 Banks Don't Commit Crimes, Bankers Do
these negotiated settlements between the feds and the big banks will effectively deter repeats of the 2008 Wall Street debacle, right? Actually, no.
Notice that the $5 billion punishment is applied to Goldman Sachs, not to the "Goldman Sackers." The bank's shareholders have to cough up the penalty, rather than the executives who did the bad deeds.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 11, 2012 What the Frack!?!
Natural gas is being touted by the industry and its tail-wagging politicos as clean and cheap -- the "magic bullet" for our energy problems. Before we swallow such hype, however, let's just note that the process is named "fracturing" for a reason -- it's inherently destructive, dirty -- and way more costly than the market price of the fuel admits.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 27, 2017 America's Farmworkers Face Poverty, Neglect, and Now Deportation
While they backed Trump for president, many are now expressing shock that he may actually try to fulfill his campaign promise to cut off the flow of undocumented immigrants to their fields. They now admit that these immigrants make up as much as 70 percent of the industry's workforce, so they've rushed to Washington, demanding a special exemption from their president's planned lockout of Mexican laborers
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 8, 2014 The Dangerous Militarization of Our Local Police Forces
What we have here is the absurdly dangerous militarization of America's police departments. Our sprawling Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon (which gave the MRAP to Bastrop) are haphazardly spreading war equipment, war techniques and a war mentality to what are supposed to be our communities' peacekeepers and crime solvers.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 7, 2018 We're Told the Dow Jones Average...
The media, politicians and corporations use to tell us whether our economy is zooming or sputtering is Wall Street's index of stock prices. The media literally spews out some number every hour indicating that the Dow Jones Average of stock prices is up, down or sluggish -- as though everyone is waiting breathlessly for that news.
SHARE Thursday, October 17, 2019 Mega Merger, Mega Mess
This old model of self-enrichment through corporate takeover, consolidation, and contraction, turns out to be not just bad morals, but bad business. It's time for us, the media, and public officials to start saying no to merger mania.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 11, 2015 Health Care Under Fire
The Supreme clan is firing potshots at the Affordable Care Act. Caught in the crossfire is the court's own integrity, along with the health of millions of innocent bystanders. In an attempt to override the law, these so-called "justices" have jumped on a wagonload of legalistic bovine excrement called King v. Burwell.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 5, 2011 It's time to name the tea party politicians (and their sponsors)--and call them out
America has BIG needs right now -- a jobs crisis, housing crisis, infrastructure crisis, energy crisis, climate crisis, middle-class crisis, democracy crisis. But they can't even be addressed because tea party ravers in the House, joined there by a gaggle of old school right-wingers, keep throwing hissy fits over far-out ideological gimcrackery.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, September 15, 2017 How to get a health care system for people, not just for corporate profit
Believe it or not, we can get Congress to enact a new program providing good quality, lower-cost health care for your family and (what the hell, let's think big here) for every man, woman and (especially) every child in our society.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 21, 2013 Wall Street's Fix for Homelessness
Having seen his 16-year-old son volunteer at a homeless center, Andy Kessler, this champion of the rich was motivated to develop a plan to solve homelessness. Here it is: Stop dishing out soup to those people and shut down all the shelters.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 1, 2014 5 Signs that America Has Gone Bonkers -- and a Glimmer of Hope
Ordinary folks are awakening to the realization that the fools have seized power, and the folks are now making moves (and movements) to seize the fools by their short hairs and reclaim our dreams. The USA hasn't gone crazy -- its leaders have, and they can be changed.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 20, 2017 Robots Aren't Taking Our Jobs. Corporations Are.
It's not robots that are taking our jobs, but corporate profiteers. They're creating a robot economy in order to displace you and me with inexpensive machines that don't demand higher wages or health care, don't take sick days or vacations, and don't organize unions, file lawsuits, or vote for pro-worker politicians.
SHARE Thursday, August 9, 2018 Here's How Corporate Interests Control What You Hear -- and Work to Undermine Democracy
Generation after generation of moneyed elites have persisted in trying to take wealth and power from the workaday majority and concentrate both of those things in their wealthy hands to establish a de facto American aristocracy. Every time, the people have rebelled in organized mass struggles against the monopolist and financial royalists. Now, We the People are suddenly in the grip of a brutish level of monopolistic power.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 3, 2018 Inequality is Feeding America
Every decade or so, America's mass media are surprised to discover that migrant farmworkers are still being miserably paid and despicably treated by the industry that profits from their labor. Stories run, the public is outraged (again), assorted officials pledge action, then ... nothing, no change takes place.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, August 24, 2012 The Minimum Wage is a Disgrace, and Raising it Would be a Boon to the Whole Economy
In this country of unsurpassed wealth, it's an abomination that the power elites are casually tolerating poverty pay as our wage floor. How deplorable that they can actually juxtapose the words "working" and "poor" without blinking, much less blushing... or barfing! Nearly four million Americans are being paid at or below the desiccated federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 1, 2015 The real story of Ted Cruz's "heroic" daddy
Ted is campaigning as a truth-teller and an honest fighter for freedom, regularly using his father's life story as a guidepost to his own integrity. The candidate tells and retells the story that his father first told him as a boy -- about how Daddy Cruz had been a courageous rebel leader in Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution in the 1950s.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 14, 2018 NYTimes Downplays Grassroots Socialist Sentiment in USA
A recent New York Times screed prematurely pronouncing the Our Revolution political organization -- launched only two years ago by veterans of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign -- a moribund failure. Before the editors and writers do another hit piece on the people and candidates of Our Revolution, maybe they could come out of their journalistic cubicles.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 1, 2018 The Political Zeitgeist Is Changing as More Candidates Dump PACs and Call for Progressive Change
After a year of Donald Trump's appalling excesses in office, combined with last year's electoral successes by dozens of progressive female candidates, and the recent tsunami of "silence breakers" exposing men who are sexual predators, a huge positive shift can be seen at last on America's political horizon: Unprecedented numbers of women are running or considering runs for public office in 2018.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 27, 2011 Obama Inc.
America's working families -- our endangered middle class -- have a right to expect Obama to fight for rules that are fair to them and our country, not meekly accept rules that have been skewed by an elite corporate class to profit them alone. Instead, our president is waltzing with the devil.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 15, 2020 Coronavirus And Small Government Sociopathy
Nothing like a spreading coronavirus pandemic to bring home the need that all of us have -- both as individuals and as a society -- for an adequately funded, fully functioning, competent government capable of serving all.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 30, 2019 Putting Good Samaritans Behind Bars
It's the story of Teresa Todd, the city attorney in Marfa. On February 27, she was driving home on a dark road when, suddenly, three young Central American migrants desperately flagged her down.
She could've just sped on, but the bedraggled migrants -- two brothers and their sister -- looked about the same age as Todd's own teenage boys. So she instinctively turned around and went back.
SHARE Wednesday, July 17, 2019 The Mad Corruptions of Trump Inc.
Trump's brags are especially weird because they usually involve achievements he hasn't made. It's as though his saying something makes it true even though everyone except his most naive devotees can clearly see that he's either hallucinating or lying. He also declared that "nobody has done what we have done in 2 1/2 years." Sadly, that's the truest thing he's said.
SHARE Sunday, April 19, 2015 Making Science History
Leave it to the Koch brothers to invent a whole new category of greenwashing. Doling out millions of their oil-smeared greenbacks, David and Charles Koch have been buying their way onto the boards and into the exhibits of elite museums of science.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 6, 2015 The Real Scandal in Denny Hastert's Life
Hastert openly traded legislative favors for campaign cash, including profiting personally from his powerful position. And, when he was squeezed out because of the corruption, he didn't return to the home folks -- he became a K-Street lobbyist, continuing to profit to this day by doing corporate favors. That's how he got so rich he was able to shell out $1.7 million in hush money to the student he abused.
SHARE Thursday, April 5, 2012 A Corporate "Foreign Legion" Has Taken Over America's Intelligence and Military Functions
"The United States of America" no longer goes to war. Instead, our professional "volunteer" soldiers and their families go. Our corporations go -- forming what one analyst calls "the coalition of the billing." Our robots, drones, computer-targeted-and-fired missiles, and other corporate-peddled weapons go. And our embedded media cheerleaders go.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, May 26, 2017 Using Lunch to Punish the Poor
Nearly half of American school districts shame and stigmatize kids whose parents can't afford school lunches.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 1, 2016 Scott Walker's Political Magic
Despite a Wisconsin law specifically prohibiting corporations from funding political candidates, millions of those banned dollars were pumped into the Walker's campaign. Corporate checks were sent to supposedly independent political outfits that -- thanks to the Supreme Court's ridiculous Citizens United decree -- are allowed to take unlimited campaign funds from corporations without disclosing the names of the donors.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 20, 2017 Don't Trust Business with Education
As Wall Street banksters, drug company gougers, airline fee fixers, and so many others have taught us over and over, most corporate executives are paid big bucks to take every shortcut to cheat and do whatever to squeeze out another dime in profits. Why would we entrust our school children to them?
SHARE Saturday, June 24, 2017 If Trump Is So Great, Why Is His Approval Rating So Puny?
The greatest, overriding failure of Trump and Congressional leaders is that they have no vision, no big ideas, no moxie and no understanding of grassroots people's democratic idealism. Saying "Make America Great" over and over again is easy. Any gasbag can say it. But doing it takes real leadership, and the people now in charge just can't measure up. Sad.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, July 7, 2017 Free As You Can Afford to Be
Right-wing ideologues have fabricated a negative notion of "freedoms" derived from their twisted concept of individual choice. You're "free" to be poor, politically powerless, or ill and uncared for, they say -- it's all a matter of decisions you freely make, and our government has no business interfering with your free will.
SHARE Friday, February 9, 2018 Exposing Our "Populist" President As A Naked Plutocrat
It's not the volume of Trump's fabrications that is so gross, but their enormity. Most damnable of all has been his masquerading as a golden-haired billionaire "populist" who's standing up for America's hard-hit middle class against Wall Street, corporate lobbyists and moneyed elites -- a carefully crafted PR pose that has duped many working stiffs into thinking he is their champion.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 21, 2017 If You Don't Have Good Health Care, Neither Should Your Rep
Every year that the U.S. Congress fails to provide health coverage for every American family, the members should get their pay docked by a third. Pay them only when they deliver for the people. When Congress finally assures good health care for all of us, then its members would get the same coverage. But until they deliver for the whole public, the public owes them nothing.
SHARE Tuesday, February 27, 2018 What Will the Trump Mob Kill Next?
The leading Democrat opposing the Trump mob's food stamp gut job says in dismay, "My god, these people are awful... really just not nice people." Less nice is their real intention to kill the food stamp program entirely. Trump's budget calls for slashing 30 percent of the funding this year. As watchdogs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put it, "That's the real battle."
SHARE Friday, March 2, 2018 A Food Stamp Indignity Worthy of Dickens
Instead of providing a small monthly allowance for destitute families to spend on foods of their choice, the Trump provision would take away half of the allowance and substitute a monthly box of peanut butter, canned goods, and other packaged edibles chosen for them by the federal government.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, May 13, 2016 What does it Mean to "Gig" American Workers?
The gig economy means you're on your own -- you're not an employee, but an "independent contractor," with no rights and no union. You might have lots of calls to work this week, but there'll be many weeks with no calls. Don't get sick, injured or wreck your car, for no health care or workers' comp are provided. A pension? Your retirement plan is called "adios chump."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 25, 2018 A Rigged Game Only Amazon Will Win
Amazon's site-location team had decided from the start which half-dozen or so cities would be most profitable for the giant. The whole search is a "scAmazon," snookering cities into spending millions on a rigged game only Amazon will win.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 27, 2013 Tiny Tim Time at Walmart
With an annual income greater than 140 countries, Walmart wants its poorly paid employees to buy food for fellow employees whose paychecks leave them in deep poverty. More astonishing is the corporation's insipid, self-congratulatory insistence that the employee food drive demonstrates its deep ethical commitment to the welfare of all Walmart "associates" (as it grandiosely calls its beleaguered workers).
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 15, 2016 The ethical rot of Wells Fargo, from the top down
The sorry, still-evolving saga of Wells Fargo systematically stealing from its small depositors is a gag-inducing story of executive-suite greed. Start at the very top, with CEO John Stumpf, who claimed at a recent Senate hearing on the scandal to be shocked and "deeply sorry" that thousands of his employees had been opening bogus accounts in the names of non-English-speaking and elderly customers.
SHARE Wednesday, December 7, 2016 Augustus Trumpus
Trump, who campaigned as populist champion of the working-class, promising that - by golly - he was going to take on Wall Street and the corporate elites. But the bitter irony for the working class is that they now see what he meant - he's literally "taking on" the moneyed powers by taking them on-board his administration. he's brought in Wall Street billionaires to fill the three top economic policy positions in his cabinet!
SHARE Wednesday, October 22, 2014 Going from One Bad War to a Worse One
The good news is that our nation's Afghan debacle is scheduled to end this year. The bad news is that it won't -- a contingent of U.S. troops will remain, we will keep paying $5 billion a year to sustain the Afghan army and police, and we're on the hook for billions more each year to fund that country's bankrupt government.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 19, 2017 We Can Beat Back the Reign of Trump
Trump's entire career as a luxury property developer and brand-name marketer of himself has been built on broken promises to workers, routine scamming of suppliers and partners, blatant self-dealing, crony capitalism and lies. That con game alone tells us who our new president really is: an incorrigible swindler.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 14, 2018 The South is Rising Again
The real story is that a fresh, "Reclaim the South" movement of young African-American populists is emerging, kindling long-suppressed hope in the racially scarred Deep South and offering the possibility of real economic and cultural progress.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 17, 2018 Ben Carson: Fighting Trump's War on the Poor
Ben Carson proposed legislation to triple the monthly rent that the most impoverished of public housing families would pay -- including increased rents for the elderly and disabled. To add cruelty to this nastiness, Carson also called for eliminating child-care and medical deductions that public housing families can subtract from their rent payments.
SHARE Wednesday, February 10, 2016 How Corporate Bamboozlers Intend to Widen Inequality in America
We don't need any institute to tell us who would benefit from TPP. All we need to know is that it was negotiated in strict secrecy with global corporate elites while we consumers and workers were locked out. Remember, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 30, 2016 The Kochs Are Going to Have a Huge Grip on the Oval Office
Forget the Bill of Rights, Abbott is proposing a Bill of Sale, transferring the title of our national government from the People to the Plutocrats. The upshot of his "tweaks" would be outlawing government actions that restrain corporate abuse of workers and consumers, while also preventing future congresses from meeting crucial public needs such as health care, voter rights and restoration of our national infrastructure.
SHARE Friday, November 18, 2016 The Koch Connection
You might think this is madness, but madness -- spurred by plutocratic greed -- is the new American political reality. Just being progressive won't stop it. We have to get aggressively progressive to confront and defeat the Kochheads in our states.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 22, 2014 The Senator from Oz Fights Crazy with Crazy
A rabidly extremist, Koch-headed, tea party Republicanism has taken hold of the GOP's primary process and blown out the moderates. The upshot for Roberts is that Republican voters are now hard-right, howl-at-the-moon lunatics who demand ideological purity over everything else. And they've put up one of their own to run against him in the August primary.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 20, 2020 My Christmas List
The gifts I gave to some of America's power elites for Christmas should make them better people.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 25, 2016 Bing Bing, Bong Bong, Bing Bing
The worst of these gutless lawmakers are the top two GOP leaders, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Like clowns in a jack-in-the-box, they kept popping out to decry The Donald's latest attack on the people he hates. Then this pitiful duo meekly folded back into the box, reiterating that, well, they would still endorse him to be president of our U.S. of A!
SHARE Wednesday, January 24, 2018 Who really pays for corporate subsidies?
There's an ugly blotch on Amazon's ballyhooed job-creation numbers: Working conditions in those sprawling, windowless warehouses are grim, and 40 percent of the employees are low-wage, temporary hires with no benefits and no job security. While warehouse wages everywhere are low, an ILSR survey documented that Amazon's average 15 percent lower than what other corporations pay.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, August 12, 2016 Rampaging Debt Collectors are Committing Highway Robbery
Why is the GOP so shamefully-soft on crime? Because it's not just small fry debt collectors involved in this outlandish shakedown of innocent borrowers, but such Wall Street powerhouses as JPMorgan Chase and Citibank -- which are also generous political donors to Republican candidates. Highway robbery is a crime... or not. Depends on who is robbing whom.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, November 10, 2017 No Corporate Welfare for Amazon
Amazon.com, the $136-billion-a-year internet colossus, has initiated a sleazy, self-serving public bidding war over where it will locate its new corporate headquarters. The city and state that offer the most bribe money to this private enterprise will be "the winner."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 16, 2011 A battery of elected ideologues opens fire on those who serve the public
The Powers That Be don't like us thinking in terms of class war, or even using the phrase. But from the ever-expanding wealth gap to the relentless downsizing and offshoring of American jobs, from the Supreme Court's enthronement of corporate political money to the state-by-state offensive on worker power--what else can it be called?
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 21, 2017 The Real Spirit of Giving
The establishment media pays little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls "philanthropists" -- big tycoons who give a little piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them.
(14 comments) SHARE Friday, June 30, 2017 trump enemy of truth and liberty
Rather than being a commander-in-chief, Trump has washed his hands of that presidential responsibility, becoming a wimpy delegator-in-chief by handing off responsibility to the military brass. They're now shipping 4,000 more troops into a hellish war the American people do not support.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, December 28, 2018 What would a real president do?
We must stop condoning the vicious forces pushing people to flee Central America, from police repression to the predatory practices of our own corporations. But that would require a competent leader in the White House not a peevish president who stamps his tiny feet and throws a Trump tantrum in a pathetic attempt to get his way.
SHARE Friday, June 9, 2017 Will You Enlist in Trump's War?
In last year's presidential campaign, Trump declared with typical modesty that, "There's nobody bigger or better at the military than I am." Well, I'm certainly no expert on war, but if a president is going to pick a mess of foreign fights, wouldn't it be better, strategically speaking, to pick on actual enemies rather than on America's allies? After all, there might come a time when we need friends to stand with us.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 13, 2017 Donald Trump Is a Dictator in Training
Far from making America feared, much less "great," Trump's foolish belligerence is making him a global laughingstock.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 12, 2019 Extraplanetary Extravagance
Spending $700 billion a year on maintaining the five branches of the U.S. war machine (not counting the costs of actually fighting all the wars they get into) isn't enough, they now tell us. So prepare to soar -- militarily and budgetarily -- into a boundless war theater where none have gone before: Yes, outer space!
SHARE Saturday, June 30, 2018 A Wall Won't Fix Immigration
The fact that we are resorting to the construction of an enormous fence between two friendly nations admits to an abject failure by policymakers, who are so bereft of ideas, honesty, courage and morality that all they can do is to try walling off the problem.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 14, 2012 Perry happens. Again.
It's a call to "save America" from Barack Obama. Evangelicals are less than enthused by a Republican nominee who's a multimillionaire Mormon from the Cayman Islands, so Perry laid it on thick. He declared that America is in the midst of "spiritual warfare" forced upon purist Christians by Obama's "effort to remove any trace of religion from American life."
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 7, 2017 The gaping hole in Trump's border wall
Donald Trump loves it when crowds at his raucous right-wing rallies stand and chant in red-faced fury: "Build that wall! Build that wall!" So, he keeps fanning their fire by repeatedly promising to wall off Mexico with a multibillion-dollar "big, beautiful" barrier on the border. "We must have THE WALL" he tweeted in late August, promising again that "Mexico will pay for it."
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 23, 2016 There's No More Denying It: Trump Is Openly Racist
The GOP's racist and nativist flag bearer insists that an American with Mexican genes should be disqualified from overseeing the fraud suits against Trump University. The judge would inherently be biased, Trump claims, against the candidate who's promised to "build a wall" between the United States and Mexico.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 31, 2018 No, Big Corporations Shouldn't Get Tax Breaks to Create Jobs
Governors and mayors insist that giving our tax dollars to corporations to lure them to move to our cities is good public policy. The corporations create jobs, those workers pay taxes, and -- voila! -- the giveaway pays for itself! Does it really work that way? Unfortunately, no.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 20, 2021 Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, And You. Which One Pays Taxes?
In leaked IRS data, the 25 richest Americans were exposed for using tricks and loopholes to pay barely 3 percent of their enormous riches to our public treasury -- while ordinary working people shell out about 24 percent of their meager income.
(19 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 25, 2016 Mitch McConnell Is a Supreme Hypocrite
In a blatantly partisan ploy to prevent President Barack Obama from nominating a successor to Scalia, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has cited a brand new historical precedent dictating that presidents in the last year of their term don't name new justices to the high court.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 4, 2017 Trump Wants $1.6 Billion for the Border Wall. That Covers Just 74 Miles.
Besides being wildly expensive, this Trumpian folly isn't needed and won't work. It stifles the border economy, tramples on property rights, destroys sensitive environments, and autocratically separates millions of families and communities. It's an insult not only to the people of Mexico, but also to our own people's democratic values.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 14, 2017 Is This the End of Free and Open Internet Access?
It doesn't matter if you're a brand-name corporation or an unknown start-up, a billionaire or a poverty-wage laborer -- you're entitled to equal treatment in sending or getting information on the worldwide web. However, corporate executives never let virtue stand in the way of profit.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 15, 2018 The White House Vs. Working Stiffs
Trump's biggest whopper is that he's an honest-to-God "populist," standing up for America's hard-hit middle class against Wall Street, corporate lobbyists, and moneyed elites. This prevarication has duped many working stiffs into thinking he's their champion.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 19, 2019 McData: At McDonald's, You're On The Menu
Far from helping customers, McDonald's snazzy new AI ordering system will be helping the corporation by silently compiling personal information on you, ranging from your "movement patterns" to your license plate number. As Easterbrook admits, McDonald's will use the technology to "make the most" of the data collected.
SHARE Wednesday, July 3, 2013 Texas GOP Unleashes Political Quackery on Women's Reproductive Rights
Perry is trying to hijack reality, huffing and puffing that he'll slap down the women's opposition to his assault on their rights, because that's "what the people of this state hired us to do." Sen Wendy Davis pointed out that far from helping the economic plight of women in the Lone Star State, Perry vetoed the equal-pay-for-equal-work bill recently passed by the legislature. How rude of her!
SHARE Wednesday, May 13, 2020 Trump Blasts Into a New Frontier ... for War
President Donald Trump is on a mission to turn science fiction into official military policy. Or is it the reverse? Either way, he's casting himself as a cosmic warrior with a heroic vision to turn the spectacular majesty of space into, as he put it, "the world's new war-fighting domain." How fantastic is that?
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, September 2, 2016 How Can a CEO Feel Good About Being Vile?
Heather Bresch is chief executive of Mylan, a pharmaceutical profiteer that markets the EpiPen medical device, which literally is a lifesaver for people who suffer deadly anaphylaxis allergy attacks. only real contribution to the EpiPen has been to raise its price by more than 600 percent--a shameful act of profiteering that rips off hundreds of thousands of users and endangers the lives of those families who can't afford it.
SHARE Thursday, June 4, 2020 The Militarization of "Officer Friendly"
From 1776 forward, Americans have opposed having soldiers do police work on our soil, but in recent years, Pentagon chiefs have teamed up with police chiefs to circumvent that prohibition. How? Simply by militarizing police departments
SHARE Friday, March 30, 2018 Betsy DeVos Winks At Big Banks Fleecing Students
Just in fiscal terms, our nation's student loan debt has ballooned to $1.4 trillion, threatening to blow another big hole in our democracy. We need an education secretary who's smart enough work with state officials, students and responsible lenders, rather than conspiring and cavorting in her departments back rooms with fast-buck educational exploiters.
SHARE Wednesday, May 6, 2020 Don't Let Trump Gut The Post Office
Trump's provisos are postal poison pills, for they would destroy the agency's morale and service, undermine popular support, and clear the political path for profiteering corporations to seize, privatize, and plunder this public treasure.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 18, 2018 Stealing the Vote
Millions of our citizens will not be allowed to vote. That's because a consortium of national, state, and local officials of Republican persuasion -- along with their corporate ringleaders -- have mounted a tawdry campaign over the past decade to slam the ballot box shut on entire segments of America's electorate.
SHARE Wednesday, September 7, 2016 Cleaning Up After Pundits
Populism is not a style, nor (and this is important to note in this moment of The Donald) is it a synonym for "popular outrage." Populism is a historically grounded political doctrine that supports ordinary folks in their ongoing democratic struggle for power over their own lives.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 5, 2018 Trump's border policies undermine our democracy
We've heard recordings of bewildered, anguished and sobbing children and absorbed weeks of 24/7 coverage and commentary about this flagrantly immoral assertion of Trumpist autocracy. And we've heard the bizarre twists, turns and tweets of Trump, Sessions, Spence, Kelly, Huckabee-Sanders, Nielson, et al., trying to rationalize their intentionally cruel policy.
SHARE Wednesday, May 23, 2018 Goons in Gucci
The richest, most powerful, most privileged people in our land -- in cahoots with a horde of the least principled, most venal political opportunists in civic life -- are intentionally savaging the well-being of America's majority and aggressively suppressing the democratic rights that make America America. And for what? Solely for themselves, for the aggrandizement of their own wealth and power.
(9 comments) SHARE Monday, January 18, 2016 Can an unabashedly progressive presidential campaign actually win this November?
The difference will be made by the people. The secret to Bernie's campaign success is not [Warning: cold truth ahead] raw charisma or mellifluous eloquence, but the very thing that "expert" political consultants tell candidates to avoid: Substance.
SHARE Monday, January 2, 2012 Declare Independence From Corporate Power!
A year from now, Americans will be caught in an unprecedented blizzard of campaign ads. Most of this ad blizzard will not come from the candidates, but from ads secretly funded by huge corporations. This is because a five-man cabal on the Supreme Court issued an edict that perverts nature itself.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 17, 2018 This CEO Wants a Key to Your House
Would you give your house key to a complete stranger, letting that person (whose name you don't even know) walk right into your home when you're not there? One stranger who's brazenly asking you and millions of other people to do just that is the head honcho of Amazon, Jeff Bezos.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, May 7, 2021 The Hamptons: Where Wealth and Poverty Clash
It's tough being rich. For one thing, you have to be on constant alert to keep commoners from encroaching on your turf and upsetting your sense of proper social order.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 20, 2013 The Drone-Industrial Complex Wants 30,000 Eyes In The Sky Spying On Us Americans By 2020
Now is the time for the public to intervene, before our basic rights are subverted in the name of technological "progress." Among the questions We The People need to answer is the big one: Should we even allow this swarm of what the New York Times calls "Orwellian gnats" to exist in our Land of the Free?
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 1, 2017 Nobody Needs a Lecture on Morality from Paul Ryan
During the recession, the typical median-income family has lost 40 percent of their wealth. Haven't they been punished enough? No, says House Speaker Paul Ryan. Along with other top Republican leaders of Congress, he intends to slash the Social Security money that middle-class and low-income workers depend on for their retirement, and he ultimately aims to kill it altogether.
SHARE Saturday, November 17, 2018 Did You Hear? Poverty Ended
Poof, declared these learned Trump advisers from on high -- the need for food stamps, Medicaid, public housing, and other assistance has virtually disappeared in our land. Jobs abound, they lectured, the economy is pumping out great gobs of new wealth, and bluebirds of happiness are spreading joy everywhere.
SHARE Wednesday, January 28, 2015 A Whining Wall Street Banker Pleads For Pity
With this long history of crime-does-pay for America's largest Wall Street empire, you have to wonder why Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO, is so P.O.'d. He's fed up to the tippy-top of his $100 haircut with all of this populist attitude that's sweeping the country, and he's not going to take it anymore!
SHARE Tuesday, August 14, 2018 The United States of Monopoly Rule
After our grassroots economy was crushed in 2007 by the greed of too-big-to-fail Wall Street banksters, officials bailed out the villainous banks at taxpayer expense -- and deliberately made them bigger, more powerful, and more dangerous than ever. Today, just five banks control nearly half of all financial assets in the United States.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 13, 2015 6 Shady Super-Rich Donors Turning Our Democracy Into Their Plutocracy
The problem with the GOP presidential debates is that the wrong people are on stage. These treacherous few donors are using their bags of cash to pervert American democracy into rank plutocracy. Why not put them on stage and make each one answer pointed questions about what special favors they're trying to buy?
SHARE Monday, September 23, 2013 The support of anti-choice candidates by brand-name corporations fuels the national war on women
Anti-abortion absolutists like Americans United for Life (AUL), along with yahooing legislators who serve them, are exultant: "We're winning everything!" they exclaim. A two-legged ego like Rick Perry has even calculated that he can ride the women-bashing wave all the way to the White House in 2016.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 15, 2016 How to Make a Political Platform Progressive
Of course, party platforms are not actual laws and programs, but statements of principles and intent. They are important as blueprints for organizing grassroots support and as specific makers for holding elected officials accountable. Making it all happen is up to us, for progressive change always has to be pushed from the bottom up -- so let's get moving.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 21, 2018 While Corporate Media Remains Fixated on Trump, the Kochtopus is Extending Its Tentacles
With the fervor of religious cultists, the Koch brothers devoted themselves to the cause of "liberty" -- by which they mean the government's only proper role is keeping the avaricious pursuits of the wealthy owner class free from any interference by you, me and the democratic "us."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 23, 2017 Wall Street Sodbusters
Farms are part of a massive Wall Street investment scheme called Farmland Partners Inc. It's run by a couple of slicks trained in mergers and acquisitions as executives at the investment powerhouse Merrill Lynch. the partners have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars from investors to buy up farms and ranches. They now own 295 farm properties covering 144,000 acres in 16 states.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 22, 2013 The New Crime of Eating While Homeless
Whenever one of our cities gets a star turn as host of some event such as a national political gathering or the Super Bowl, its first move is to tidy up--by having the police sweep homeless people into jail, out of town, or under some rug. But Houston's tidy-uppers aren't waiting for a world-class event to rationalize going after homeless down-and-outers. They've preemptively outlawed the "crime" of dumpster diving.
(11 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 26, 2016 Pent Up Fury Beneath The Bernie And Donnie Phenomena
has recklessly continued to fan the embers of hate, belittling Muslims, the disabled, Latino immigrants, women, Spanish-language reporters, and his catchall category of "losers" -- all the while reveling in the role of outlandish, boorish autocrat. Therefore, pundits and the GOP's big shots conclude, his appeal and his supporters are racism personified.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 24, 2017 Funny, There Are No Workers on the White House Jobs Panel
Trump-the-candidate fulminated against such moneyed elites, calling them "responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class." But now, in a spectacular flip-flop, he's brought these robbers directly inside his presidency, asking them to be architects of his economic strategy. Worse, he's doing this in the name of helping workers.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 12, 2016 Campaigns End On Election Day -- Revolutions Don't
Not only will the revolution continue, but it's going to spread throughout the country, grow, and gain strength by bringing the populist issues, grassroots methods, and small-dollar funding of Sanders' presidential run to local and state politics. It will be an independent political network of 50 interconnected state networks. Each state group will recruit, train, and support candidates, and run state and local campaigns.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 21, 2016 Donnie is a Trumpist, not a Populist
Donnie has enhanced his fortune by emulating his father's business ethics, including engaging in wage theft, outsourcing his clothing line and other brand-name products to such low-wage countries as China and Vietnam, and underpaying undocumented immigrants engaged in dangerous construction work on his luxury projects.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 10, 2014 Torturing Obama's Legacy
Military and spy agency lawyers are pushing the administration to embrace a loophole that Bush created after Congress passed the McCain bill. Goaded by his snarling, autocratic vice president, George W. claimed that as commander in chief, he could override the torture ban if the cruelty took place in detention camps and other "black site" facilities on foreign soil.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, July 10, 2015 Plan to visit a national park this year? Let's defend our public treasures: "America's best idea" is under attack
These treasures belong to all of us. For a self-absorbed few to think that they're entitled to take them for personal gain is a shameful affront to our shared heritage, democratic ideals, and future generations. Keeping public parks in public hands is not only logical, but necessary -- a continuum of the historic struggle of us commoners against would-be royals. It's nothing less than a battle for America's soul.
SHARE Sunday, October 23, 2016 Dakota pipeline showdown at Standing Rock
If ETP's $3.8 billion line is completed, it would carry 570,000 barrels of oil a day through most of the four states' watersheds and wildlife habitats; it would transit hundreds of farms and ranches and make 200 river crossings. All the water and land in its path would be endangered, for one unpleasant fact about pipelines is that they regularly leak, sometimes rupture and can blow up.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 8, 2010 Two Multibillionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit
Charles and David have used the wealth they draw from Koch Industries to fuel a network of three Koch Family Foundations, which have set up and financed a secretive army of political operatives dedicated to achieving the brothers' anti-government, corporate-controlled vision for America.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 11, 2018 Betsy DeVos Needs an Education on Ethics
DeVos is so bad that she's winning the contest for worst member of Trump's cabinet -- a little like winning the title of ugliest toad in the swamp. She's been a shameless shill for one of the ugliest parts of the financial services industry: the Wall Street-backed network of for-profit colleges, rip-off lenders, and ruthless collection agencies.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 21, 2018 Long Live the Jersey Tomato
The resurrected Rutgers tomato isn't hard enough to be machine-harvested and shipped across country -- which is one its major virtues. The fact that this tomato must be grown and marketed regionally is one step towards a decentralized, deindustrialized, and better food economy. This tomato represents an understanding that our food system can -- and should -- cooperate with nature and foster the growth of regional economies.
SHARE Thursday, August 31, 2017 Not Even Robert E. Lee Wanted Confederate Monuments
Ironically, Robert E. Lee himself opposed erecting Confederate statues across the south: "I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war," he said, but instead "to obliterate the marks of civil strife." We could use a leader with such wisdom today, when bigots feel newly empowered to incite civil strife across our nation.
SHARE Tuesday, March 6, 2018 There's a Blue Wave Cresting in Statewide Elections
Our Revolution provided tools and a network of savvy volunteers to help elect, against the odds, a new generation of progressive leaders across the country. Win or lose, all who participated in 2017 advanced our emerging national movement, giving us strength for an even greater impact in 2018. We're in this for the long haul.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 30, 2018 Trump's Drug Price Reforms Amount to a "Sugar-Coated Nothing Pill"
It's really no surprise that Trump is letting these corporate profiteers continue "getting away with murder." After all, political posturing aside, he's stacked his administration with drug industry executives like Alex Azar, a former Eli Lily honcho who is now Trump's secretary of health.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 25, 2010 Hightower: Just How Nutty is the Texas Board of Education?
I love nuts -- pecans, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, you-name-'em. But my favorite nuts, by far, are the homegrown natives that have taken root in one particularly fertile area of my state: the Texas Board of Education. You just can't get any nuttier than this bunch!
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 2, 2017 Scott Pruitt Will Set Back the Fight on Animal Welfare
Scott Pruitt was confirmed as head of the EPA, which oversees animal testing for pesticides and chemicals and regulating greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution from factory farms. As attorney general in Oklahoma Pruitt tried (unsuccessfully) to give special rights to corporate and foreign-owned factory farms and joined a suit aimed at killing the California law for more humane egg production.
SHARE Thursday, July 12, 2018 Getting Trapped in The Donald's Cuckoo Nest
Donald Trump partisans keep insisting that their man is not certifiably insane, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. But surely some of them finally must admit that his perverse policy of snatching immigrant children from their parents' arms at the Mexican border and incarcerating the tykes for weeks in warehouse cages far away from any contact with mom and dad -- is the epitome of Kafkaesque insanity.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 31, 2010 Walmart: The Inhuman Essence of a Corporate "Person"
I'm curious about those five Supreme Court justices who recently decreed that a corporation is a "person" with human rights: Do you think they ever met Mr. Walmart?
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 11, 2014 Time for a Populist Revival!
Populism is the un-corporate America. It is a distinctive, very progressive and very American democratic-ism that not only acts politically but also economically, socially and culturally. As old as the USA itself, populism has a rich egalitarian philosophy, a deep history, noble accomplishments, and a broad reach that cuts right through the conventional political boxes that are deliberately designed to divide us.
SHARE Wednesday, September 17, 2014 America's Political Spectrum Is Not Left to Right, It's Top to Bottom -- And It has Failed the People
Populism has had an outsized, long-term, and ongoing impact on our culture, public policies, economic structure and governing systems. Even though its name is rarely used and its history largely hidden, and neither major party will embrace it (much less become it), there are many more people today whose inherent political instincts are populist, rather than conservative or liberal.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 5, 2016 Bringing Back Bill
Wasn't it Bill who literally rammed NAFTA down our throats, creating that job-sucking sound that continues to devastate today's middle-class? Yep, he's the one. And didn't he also collude with laissez-faire ideologues and plutocratic Republicans to deregulate Wall Street so global speculators could wreck our economy by playing casino games with our bank deposits and home mortgages? Yes, him again.
SHARE Friday, November 11, 2016 Takeaways from the election
Trump was not elected on issues, but on anger -- a deep seething fury that the economic and political elite themselves have created by knocking down the working-class majority, then callously stepping over them as if they didn't exist. Also, his own voters disagree with much of his agenda (especially his grandiose wall across the Mexican border).
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 17, 2018 Toddlers On Trial
Fleeing unimaginable trauma in their home country, then suffering the pain of being torn away from their parents inside our border, the expectation that these little ones can mount a legal defense has rightly been labeled "unconscionable" and "grossly inappropriate" by experts. But also it's insane and evil.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, December 10, 2018 Free the Free Press from Wall Street Plunderers
The progressive pundit's criticism of "hedge-fund scavengers" buying struggling newspapers was blocked by his distributor.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 30, 2013 Should there be a sanity test for Congress critters?
First, they threw a group hissy fit to force a costly, embarrassing, and entirely-unwarranted shutdown of the national government of our USofA. That was strange enough, but then a gaggle of the goofballs cranked their shtick all the way up to code-red bizarre by throwing a series of staged tantrums when they learned that the government they had shut down was, in fact, shut down.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 11, 2010 Why Obama and Dems Seem Incapable of Taking a Firm Stand on Anything
The Obama-ites seem incapable of firm stands. They excite us by boldly addressing our economic woes, then they seduce us by proposing stout actions. But when it comes time to follow through -- it's droopsville.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 28, 2019 Push, Push, Push: How Movements Succeed
It can be exhausting, and it can be tempting to just give up especially where the political climate is harsh, the rules are rigged and wins are scarce. Still, push on we must, for it's the only way We the People have ever made progress toward the democratic society we seek. Indeed, experience shows that steady grassroots pushing pays off.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 18, 2016 Donnie's Little Lies are Huuuuuge
Trump's idea of "working class" turns out to be millionaires and billionaires, for that's who would get the bulk of benefits from his agenda -- rewarding the very corporate chieftains he denounces in his blustery speeches for knocking down middle-income families and grabbing all of the new wealth our economy is creating. Corporations are given a huuuuuuuge windfall with over a 50 percent cut in their rate.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 14, 2017 Freaked out by Trump and his menagerie of mutants? Let's focus our anger -- and have a greater impact
While some delightedly squeal at his wild moves, many more see Trump as not merely unpresidential, but bullgoose bonkers! And dangerous -- recklessly using the enormous power of the presidency as a personal cudgel to attack, stigmatize, and seriously harm individuals, entire religions and races, the Bill of Rights, and our nation's basic values of tolerance, fairness, and opportunity for all.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 3, 2014 This California Scheme Is Bad for Your Health
In this wicked world of woe, there are hucksters, flimflammers, plain ol' crooks...and Republican members of the California Assembly. This last bunch of scoundrels went out of their way to monkeywrench the rollout of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 3, 2018 How Low Can the Barons of High Finance Go?
Bankers claiming that they have a legal right to profit by deceiving and cheating their own customers is a level of gluttony so gross that it would even gag Gordon Gekko. To fight their absurd claim, connect with Consumer Federation of America
SHARE Sunday, November 27, 2016 Koch Kollege for right-wing social engineers
Koch Kollege for right-wing social engineers is peddling a status quo agenda of corporate elitism and trickle-down ideology, which the vast majority of Americans are now openly rebelling against. It's like trying to sell chicken salad made out of chicken manure. There's not enough sugar in the world to make people swallow that.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 31, 2018 It should be easy for every citizen to vote. Republicans have made it way, way harder
Voting ought to be made easy and open -- an inviting, uplifting, and patriotic experience for all. Voter registration should be simple, automatic, and permanent. Election day should be a national holiday, so work doesn't inhibit participation. Early voting, voting by mail, and secure in-person voting systems should be the norm in every precinct.
SHARE Thursday, October 27, 2016 The Cannon Ball Saga: An Epic Story From The American Heartland
Standing Rock tribe's chair, Dave Archambault has made clear that the Native people are committed to the higher values of "our lands, people, water, and sacred sites." As they have been for millennia, the tribe's actions today must be based on the common good of their grandchildren and their grandchildren-generations into the future.
SHARE Saturday, January 30, 2021 Planet Plastic
We now live on Planet Plastic, where billions of tons of waste from everyday products made of these chemical contaminants are strewn literally everywhere on the highest mountaintops, in the deepest seabeds, in dense tropical jungles, and all across barren deserts.
SHARE Friday, April 13, 2018 On the passing of Susan DeMarco: A tribute
On the first of April -- after some 45 years of teaming up in progressive/ populist battles against the big shots, bastards, and bullshitters who always try to run roughshod over workaday people and our democratic values -- DeMarco slipped away from me and all who loved her.
SHARE Wednesday, September 28, 2016 Laboratories of Democracy
While state (and local) offices offer myriad opportunities to create progressive democratic change, those laboratories of democracy are equally available to Dr. Frankenstein right-wingers (funded by the Koch Brothers and their cartel) who seek to engineer regressive plutocratic changes. In recent years the forces of corporate rule have been building a national political structure that-brick by brick-locks in plutocratic power.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 25, 2016 Putting Free Speech Out to Pasture
Hard experience teaches that biotech companies, chemical corporations, and other agribusiness giants have no sense of respect for Mother Nature. Now, Rick Friday has learned they have no sense of humor either. The publication's pusillanimous sacrifice of its longtime cartoonist is a shameful betrayal of both its farmer readership and journalism ethics.
SHARE Sunday, December 18, 2016 Trump Is Taking on Wall Street, Literally
Donald Trump said -- by golly -- he was going to take on Wall Street and the corporate elites. The bitter irony for the working class is that they now see what he meant -- he's literally "taking on" the moneyed powers, by taking them on-board his administration. Already he's brought in Wall Street billionaires to fill the three top economic policy positions in his cabinet.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 20, 2016 This election wasn't about Trump
Now that the people have spoken up for Donald Trump, were they saying that they embrace his xenophobic, nativist, far-right policies? Not necessarily. Most Trump voters say they went for him because they think he'll shake up America's elite establishment, not because he's a conservative. In fact, majorities of people all over the country voted for very progressive policies and candidates this year.
SHARE Saturday, December 12, 2020 This Holiday Season, Choose A New Food Future
America certainly has an abundance of food, even though many Americans do not. We face a momentous choice of whether to pursue a food future rooted in the ethic of sustainable agri-culture or one based on the exploitative ethic of agri-industry.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, June 22, 2018 Big Oil's Man In Foreign Policy
Mike's been a loyal Koch-head, conferring with them and backing bills to advance their corporate and political fortunes. Their investment in Mike became a bonanza last year when he became Trump's yes-man as the head of the CIA. And now, they've hit the political jackpot, with Pompeo becoming head of the State Department.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 25, 2013 Blessed Are The Rich
In case you don't dwell in the plutocratic, narcissistic, Ayn Randian fantasyland where the Kochs hang out, "labor mobility" is right-wing psychobabble for social Darwinism. Remove all remnants of America's economic safety net, they coldly theorize (while wallowing in their nests of luxury), and the poor will be "freed" to become billionaires.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 24, 2010 Fighting the Subversion of Our People's Sovereignty
With a cry of "Shazam!" the court ruled that, henceforth, every corporation -- from Wal-Mart to Wall Street -- is entitled to "speak" by spending unlimited sums from their treasuries to elect or defeat candidates for any and all public offices in our land, from city council to the presidency.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, January 1, 2016 Why Isn't the Media Feeling the Bern?
The big networks' devotion of 234 minutes to all-things-Trump was "balanced" by less than 10 minutes for Sanders. Most egregious was ABC, the Disney-owned network. ABC's World News Tonight awarded 81 minutes of national showtime to Trump last year -- and for Bernie: 20 seconds. How self-serving of the media moguls.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 4, 2011 AIRPORTS: SURRENDER ALL LIBERTY, YE WHO ENTER BY ME
The chief flaw in our present technology-based security scheme is that it doesn't do any good. Hundreds of millions of passengers have been searched, and the system has yet to catch even one terrorist.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 3, 2014 Do You Want Some Hogwash with That Burger?
In U.S. tax law, something called an "inversion" is a loophole allowing an American corporation that merges with a foreign one to reincorporate in the foreign country -- and shirk its tax responsibilities to our nation. It's really a perversion of the law.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 17, 2018 Why Harassment Persists Despite #MeToo
Anti-feminist politicos and talk show yakkers try to ridicule the reality that women in our rich and advanced society might endure any "oppression." America isn't Afghanistan, they snort. Women here get to vote. Girls play all kinds of sports and can grow up to be astronauts or CEOs or anything.
SHARE Sunday, July 13, 2014 The Kochs Pay a Former Senator to Keep Money in Politics
The beauty of our country's present system of government is that anyone is perfectly free to buy a member of Congress. Isn't that what democracy is all about? Take the Koch brothers. Of course, these multibillionaire industrialists prefer to buy everything in bulk, and they've spent millions of dollars to purchase a whole flock of Republican Congress critters.
SHARE Saturday, September 4, 2010 Hightower: If You Don't Fight for the Middle Class, Kiss It Good-Bye
This essential framework for the middle class was not "given" to us by corporate executives and politicians -- indeed, they sputtered, spewed and fought every piece of it tooth and nail. Rather, it came from union-led grassroots movements, organizing for structural change.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 30, 2011 RUN, DONNIE, RUN!
While Trump is not a successful businessman by a long shot, he does play one on television. And now, he wants you to help him take his cheesy act to the White House.
SHARE Thursday, May 9, 2019 Beware AI-Loving CEOs
AI stands for artificial intelligence, the rapidly advancing digital technology of creating thinking robots that program themselves, act on their own, and even reproduce themselves. These automatons are coming soon to a workplace near you.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, April 27, 2018 A Quiet Conspiracy of Billionaires
The Koch Coup crept up on us because it abhorred publicity and couched each move as an independent effort by a separate group. Then the conspirators backed the Supreme Court's outrageous 2010 Citizens United decision, decreeing that unlimited corporate spending is allowed because it's "free speech." Only then did Americans begin waking up to the reality that the Kochs were making an assault on democracy itself.
SHARE Monday, February 15, 2016 Moral obligations lost in a fog of rhetoric
An ethos of "anything goes" now rules at nearly all major corporations, and those self-enriching princes of plutocracy are extending their unethical and hegemonic control over the rest of us. Greed has taken America's true ethics prisoner, and moneyed elites now call the devil "partner." That's the core immorality that we progressive populists must defeat.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 1, 2016 For Billionaire Donors, Academic Integrity Comes Cheap
First came withering hoots of laughter when the honchos of George Mason University named their law school the Antonin Scalia School Of Law -- or ASSOL, for short. It was an honor Scalia might've merited, but very embarrassing for the university.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 18, 2015 Goosey as Ever
ome of those "new faces" have an old and weary look, such as extremist right-wing retread Mike Huckabee. He recently informed us that being gay is a "lifestyle" choice, like choosing to drink alcohol. Really? How does he know? The goofiest thing about the 2016 race is that it's expected to come down to Bush vs. Clinton. Haven't we seen that movie before?
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 23, 2018 What's the Point of Satire Anymore?
Satire involves exaggerating the flaws, mannerisms, etc. of various characters to convey how corrupt and contemptible they are -- but it's impossible to exaggerate the awfulness of an administration that gleefully flaunts its awfulness every day.
SHARE Saturday, October 10, 2020 Florida Republicans Are Nakedly Suppressing Votes
How nasty is the Republican Party's massive campaign to thwart democracy? Ask the good people of Florida. This was one of only three states that permanently took away the voting rights of people with felonies who'd completed their punishment.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, January 15, 2021 Two Timeless Truths For Thrse Trying Times
Has the savagery, selfishness, and raw, animal hatred within the human species finally come out of the darkness to devour our society?
SHARE Sunday, December 2, 2018 Free The Free Press From Wall Street Plunder
Our right to a free press is meaningless if Wall Street thieves destroy our communities' presses. The good news is that many enterprising people are devising ways to rescue their newspapers.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 18, 2016 The Simple Secret to Making a Difference -- No Matter What Your Cause Is
The first thing you can do to bring about change is show up. Think of showing up as a sort of civic action, where you get to choose something that fits your temperament, personal level of activism, available time and energy, etc. The point here is that every one of us can do something--and every bit helps. Simply being there matters.
SHARE Thursday, January 21, 2016 How Bernie Sanders' Unexpected Coalition Keeps Growing
Grassroots people are taking charge--not leaving it to establishment office holders and party operatives to do the same old thing, From rallies of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people (as Donald Trump would say, these events are truly "Huuuuge!") to the local campaign committees that have sprung up across the country like hardy spring wildflowers, most of the faces are new, fresh, and excited.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 28, 2016 Why Bernie Will, Should and Must Stay in the Race
Sanders' supporters have found their way around the usual Wall of Big Money that the establishment always throws us to thwart populist campaigns. a counterforce of common folks has created a widely successful campaign fund of their own to support their Bernie rebellion. How successful? A whopping $182 million has been raised in millions of small donations that average $27 each. That's a revolution, right there!
SHARE Sunday, December 20, 2015 Partnering with the Devil
The wrongdoings of major corporations, and even entire industries, are now so commonplace that one hardly has to root them out at all. Their corruption is constantly oozing to the surface of today's fetid corporate swamp on its own. Not content with merely making a profit, CEOs are out to make a killing -- no matter what it costs the rest of us.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 21, 2014 Koch Brothers Rev Up High-Octane Hypocrisy
This is no hypothetical situation. It's a real one faced by the Koch brothers, the fossil-fueled duo. They feel threatened by the steady increase in the number of middle-class families installing solar panels on the roofs of their own homes. Naturally, the Kochs and the utility monopolies hate this trend.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 28, 2020 The Pandemic Has Been A Bonanza For The Rich
Rich is nice, but billionaire-rich is over the moon and the wealth of billionaires is now zooming out of this world.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, September 21, 2020 Beware Corporate COVID Propaganda
The ethical crime here is not merely in the cynical fudging of numbers, but that even in this unprecedented time of national crisis, the elites who've converted capitalism into a system of plutocratic plunder still feel entitled to cheat.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 31, 2016 Manna from Hell
War is hell. Unless, of course, you happen to be a global corporate peddler of rockets, drones, bombs, and all the other hellish weaponry of military conflict. In that case, war is manna from hell. So bring it on.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 6, 2014 Impeachment? Who Said Anything about Impeachment?
Impeachment talk, House Speaker John Boehner fumed, is "a scam started by the Democrats at the White House." No Republican lawmakers, the Ohio Republican barked to the media, are even discussing it. Put away all hope for honesty or seriousness, ye who enter the nut house presently known as Boehner's House of Representatives.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 24, 2014 The Little Train That Won't
Since the earliest days of our US of A, the most basic task of this legislative body has been to keep our national house in good repair. That requires tending to roads, bridges, rail systems, airports, school buildings, parks, internet access, etc. Yet, Republican members of Congress have recently been blocking every serious proposal to reinvest in America's collapsing infrastructure.
SHARE Thursday, June 21, 2018 What Do Those People Want?
The Dems' congressional elders, key party officials, entrenched consultants and corporate funders continue to push bland, business-as-usual candidates running on a pusillanimous policy agenda of vague "reforms" that don't actually change anything. Then the party establishment wonders why such people stray or stay home in November!
SHARE Thursday, September 3, 2020 There's nothing left of the Republican Party but Trump's Maniacal Cackle
Instead of a political party, the GOP of 2020 has become a pathetic puppet show of weakling officials and sycophantic subordinates being jerked around by the maniacal whims of a bloated ego with despotic fantasies.
SHARE Friday, April 6, 2018 A Shiny New Tool to Pad Profits: Stealing
Bowing to demands by restaurant industry lobbyists, Trump's Labor Department has proposed a new rule allowing employers to seize workers tips and use them for any purpose -- including fattening their own profits. Paying $2.13 an hour already amounts to a massive wage theft, but this elevates it to legalized highway robbery!
SHARE Thursday, December 13, 2018 This is the core cause of pervasive discrimination and sexual harassment
In corporations, universities, government offices and elsewhere, there is usually an oppressive male culture and a repressive power structure that routinely shortchange women on pay and on promotions. That's bad enough, but adding insult to injury, prevailing conventional wisdom blames women for this!
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 24, 2020 The First Thanksgiving?
Wherever it began, and whatever the purists claim is "official," Thanksgiving today is as multicultural as America. So let's enjoy even if we're in smaller groups or observing virtually this year.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 16, 2016 Hillary Wants to Bring Back Bill. She Shouldn't.
Hillary Clinton made a horrifying declaration that she'll bring back Bill. Specifically, she promised that her former-president husband will be put "in charge of revitalizing the economy." Good grief. Isn't he the big galoot who turned his economic policy over to Wall Street's Machiavellian, Robert Rubin?
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 13, 2018 Keep Resisting!
Trump's recurring abuses of women, Dreamers, Muslims, immigrants, poor people, science, nature, Puerto Ricans, students, union members -- and whomever or whatever irks him next -- have been met with a rising level of open rebellion, ranging from a record number of nationwide mass mobilizations to hundreds of local pop-up protests.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 9, 2016 What Are We Paying Mitch McConnell For?
Imagine if you tried drawing your paycheck after ignoring your workload. Yet we're paying this guy a salary of $174,000 a year, plus another $19,000 to serve as majority leader. It's insulting to taxpayers that he won't even go through the motions of doing his job. Shouldn't the corporations that he serves have to pay his salary, rather than sticking us with the cost?
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 6, 2019 Supervillain Economics
The president's economists admit that the only way they can get America's economic growth above a dismal 2 percent a year is for Congress to make two big changes: (1) roll back labor rules that protect America's workers from corporate exploitation, and (2) pass another round of even deeper tax cuts for corporations and billionaires, since the 2017 cuts didn't work.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 6, 2016 This Global Ruling Is Just Not Cool
They say that if you get up in the morning and swallow a live toad, nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day. Well, Americans have just been fed a live toad by the World Trade Organization. Last May, the WTO--an oligarchic, autocratic governing entity essentially run by and for multinational corporations--ruled that a U.S. consumer protection law called "COOL" violates one of WTO's obscure trade rules.
SHARE Saturday, February 4, 2012 Newt Gingrich: the spawn of Citizens United
Justice Kennedy, meet Sheldon Adelson -- a product of your cluelessness about how real politics work. For years, this casino baron has spent lavishly on right-wing front groups to advance his personal agenda, including pouring money into Newt Gingrich.
SHARE Sunday, March 7, 2021 Where Does the Buck Stop in Texas?
There is a weasel word that politicians use whenever something goes wrong on their watch: "unacceptable." We just heard it slither out of the mouth of Texas governor Greg Abbott in response to the state's failure to prepare for a killer winter storm. "What happened this week to our fellow Texans is unacceptable," he fumed.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 21, 2010 Killing the Competition
"It's a jungle out there," wail top executives of the airlines. So, to enhance their "competitiveness," they are urging a rash of mergers that would consolidate the industry into fewer and even bigger corporations. Yes, in their alternate (and perverse) universe, airline CEOs say that the only way they can compete is to ... well, have less competition!
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 27, 2014 Perry Hams It Up
The national media have mostly swallowed Perry's hokum that he's the victim, indicted for nothing more than exercising his veto power. It's crude politics, Rick howled, as he turned his courthouse mug shot moment into a raucous Republican political rally. Perry has hornswoggled the pundits, but don't let them fool you. This is serious.
SHARE Friday, December 30, 2011 The Disuniting of America
At the tippy-top of America's wealth pyramid are the multimillionaire CEOs and billionaire Wall Streeters. They are the richest one-one-hundreth of the one-percenters (a mere 14,836 households). These few now take six percent of all U.S. income -- the biggest piece ever consumed by America's mega-rich.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 31, 2010 Hightower: Why Is No One Talking About the Real Tragedy Behind the Shirley Sherrod Fiasco?
While pundits and politicos were vilifying Sherrod for an act of discrimination that did not occur, Senate Republicans cut the payments for thousands of official acts of actual discrimination. How's that for bitter irony? Yet Republican leaders wonder why they get practically no black support in elections.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 30, 2014 Perry Imperils His Own Roadshow
He doesn't mention it on his out-of-state "praise Perry" tour, but the governor's on the brink of being indicted for corruption back home. This mess involves the governor's clumsy attempt to stop an investigation by the state's ethics office into one of his pet slush funds that funneled taxpayer money to his corporate campaign donors.
SHARE Thursday, April 19, 2012 The Citizens United Gang
The mugging by the Citizens United Gang has only begun. Not only is Restore Our Future by far the biggest presidential super PAC of them all -- dwarfing Barack Obama's, which is called Priorities USA Action -- but its attacks will be supplemented by an even bigger super-super PAC, called American Crossroads. Created by campaign attack-meister Karl Rove and longtime Republican operative Ed Gillespie.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 7, 2016 Trump Has Collected the Disaffected Voters the GOP Establishment Abandoned Years Ago
None of the elites saw Hurricane Donnie coming, and with the blow-hard now raging at full force, the GOP's upper-crusters still don't seem to know what hit them, much less what to do about it. What the aloof, affluent leaders of the Republican Party don't get is that the source of the storm presently wrecking them is not Trump, but infuriated, rank-and-file, working-class voters who feel betrayed by them.
SHARE Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Wall Street's Connected Lobbyists
It turns out that old Congress critters never die, they just fade away. Into lobbying firms, that is. Hastert, Armey, Gephardt, Dole and Lott are among a cadre of 73 former members of Congress who have been working in recent months to weaken or kill new regulations to rein in the gouging and reckless gambling of the big financial firms.
SHARE Wednesday, October 16, 2013 Health Care Hypocrisy
There's the comic twist that's included in the government shutdown. While more than a million regular government workers are going without a paycheck, the Congress critters who forced the furlough continue to collect their $174,000 in annual pay. Some lawmakers are donating their checks to charity, but four out of five are happily pocketing theirs.
SHARE Thursday, December 17, 2009 Congress Ethics Rules Undermined by Weasels
Through the nonprofit loophole, Don Bonker, a powerhouse lobbyist with the firm of APCO Worldwide, and foreign corporations can do indirectly what they are prohibited from doing directly. Clever, huh? So clever that "Air Bonker" has paid for five of Sensenbrenner's trips to France, Germany, Liechtenstein and Norway.
SHARE Wednesday, October 2, 2013 Slapping the poor just for the hell of it
The plight of the poor is so dramatic that even Republican leaders in the US House have noticed them and are reaching out with open hands -- unfortunately, not to help lift up the needy, but to slap them in the face.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 28, 2012 Karl Rove says he's "offended"
Karl Rove saying he's "offended" by a TV ad is ike a skunk saying some other critter stinks! What could possibly make an ad so offensive that Karl would gag? Hope, that's what. The sweet flower of optimism nauseates Karl.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 27, 2019 Even Millionaires Are Ashamed of Their Absurdly Low Tax Bills
On tax day this year, the watchdog Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy issued a report documenting that 60 of America's biggest corporations used the GOP's tax cut and special breaks to avoid paying a dime in taxes on the $79 billion in profits they'd hauled in. Indeed, they were given millions of dollars in rebates from our public treasury.
SHARE Tuesday, December 27, 2011 Rick-the-regular-guy
Rick-the-regular-guy says that he deserves his double-dip into the public treasury, calling it "just kind of good estate planning in my opinion."
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 30, 2009 Right-Wingers in Congress Love Their Own Govt.-Run Health Care, But They Hate Sharing It
Right under the Capitol dome, conveniently situated between the Senate and House chamber, is the Office of the Attending Physician. Inside are more than a dozen navy doctors, nurses, medical technicians, pharmacists and other health professionals, all employed by the government solely to attend to a select clientele: the 535 members of Congress.
SHARE Tuesday, June 19, 2012 "Financial uncertainty" good for the poor, not for the rich
Republican lawmakers howl in outrage about the meager unemployment payments going to America's hard-hit, out-of-work families who actually need a helping hand in today's jobless economy. More than five million of our fellow citizens have been unable to find jobs for half-a-year or more.
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 11, 2009 Big Bankers Mounting Sneak Attack on Consumers
To add insult to injury, the banks blame us for their rate increases. The truth is, banks are socking it to their customers for two reasons: 1) they can, and 2) fee hikes are a shifty way to snatch enormous levels of new income for themselves without doing anything to earn it.
SHARE Friday, March 8, 2019 Never Stop Pushing Elected Officials
Election Day ends the process for choosing good officials, but the next day starts the democratic process for gaining progressive policies. To "win," we must keep doing what brought us this far: Organizing, harmonizing, and mobilizing at the grassroots level.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 2, 2012 The "ROBS Act"
The new law itself doesn't create a single job for the tens-of-millions of unemployed and underemployed workers in our land of the rich. In fact, the accent on the J.O.B.S. acronym should be on "B.S." Will it surprise you to learn that the word "jobs" isn't even included in the title? Instead, J.O.B.S. stands for "Jump-start Our Business Start-ups."
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, February 8, 2016 Political Poison
Flint reveals that there is a much deeper contamination poisoning our country's political morals: Namely, an insidious right-wing belief that poor people (particularly poor people of color) are undeserving moochers whose misfortunes can be ignored -- even when their misfortunes stem directly from the discriminatory practices of slippery elites like Snyder, who are showing that they're not fit to hold public office.
SHARE Friday, November 11, 2011 Don't Just Salute Veterans, Rally With Them
The penthouse swells can unleash their police to break up protests, but that only fuels the fury. Now they're cracking down on veterans -- people who know how to use guns. It's time to deal with the growing crisis of joblessness and inequality in America.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 23, 2012 Snarling Banks
Very few Americans on this side of the ATM machine think that the biggest problem in Washington is that the moneychangers don't have enough clout. But, incredibly, here they come with a super PAC intended to force lawmakers to bow even deeper to their needs.
SHARE Thursday, November 4, 2010 Who's That Hiding Behind the Tea Party?
Sadly, however, neither the confused Democrats nor the fused tea party-Republicans even addressed the economic source of the people's anger and anxiety. Dems mostly said, "Stick with us, for they're worse," and Repubs merely retorted, "We're not them."
SHARE Wednesday, April 7, 2010 An Inside Outsider Takes On Wall Street
Despite her success as a lawyer, she hasn't forgotten her populist roots and purpose. Elizabeth Warren is Wall Street's worst nightmare: a middle-class champion who gives a damn about workaday people, is smart and tenacious -- and can't be bought.
SHARE Wednesday, June 26, 2013 A New Housing Emergency
Many of our wealthiest citizens are hurting. Did you know, for example, that the inventory of million-dollar homes in Carmel, California, dwindled to only four properties at one point in late May?
SHARE Wednesday, October 13, 2010 Bleeding in Afghanistan
We continue to go about our daily routines -- go to work, go to the mall, go out to eat, go golfing, go to church, go on vacation, go dancing and drinking. War? Americans will pay far more attention to the World Series than they will to the ongoing carnage in Afghanistan and Iraq.
SHARE Wednesday, July 14, 2010 Jobless "Recovery" Requires Us to Rebuild America
Another implosion bomb is set to hit American workers. The public sector, which has been one bright spot for decent wages and benefits, is about to shed tens of thousands of teachers, firefighters, park employees, utility workers and others from state and local governments, sending our country in exactly the wrong direction.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 16, 2010 BP Is a Corporate Criminal
Eleven oil workers are dead, thousands of Gulf Coast people have had their livelihoods devastated and unfathomable damage is being done to the gulf ecology. Imagine how the authorities would be treating the offender if BP were a person. It would've been put behind bars long ago -- if not on death row.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 4, 2010 Who Do We Want? Elizabeth Warren! When Do We Want Her? Now!
Clearly, it's time that we found someone who won't kiss bankers' butts, but rather kick bankers' butts. We need someone who's not afraid to go up against the big banks and who won't be influenced by the money of Wall Street. Warren, who has never abandoned her populist roots, is smart, tenacious -- and can't be bought.
SHARE Monday, May 14, 2012 Coddling the 10%
To reel in these mid-level richies, bankers are offering to pamper them lavishly.
SHARE Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Wall Street Grins as Washington Fiddles
Abacus is a scam. Yet I find it an enormously useful tool, for it sheds light on a dirty little secret that the banking behemoths definitely do not want us outsiders catching onto: They have become casino dealers - only without the ethics.
SHARE Wednesday, June 23, 2010 Enter, Real Populists
Now is the time for progressives to reassert their populist beliefs and bona fides, for we're living in a teachable moment in which it's possible to reach most Americans with an aggressive and positive approach to achieving a higher level of economic and political democracy.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 3, 2009 What Is Obama Getting Us into in Afghanistan?
How many more dead and mangled American soldiers does the government's "new" Afghan policy deserve? How many more tens of billions of dollars should we let them siphon from our public treasury to fuel their war policy? How much more of our country's good name will they squander on what is essentially a civil war?
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 18, 2007 Documentary on Granny D on HBO tonight (Thursday)!
n 1999, Granny D walked across America to call attention to the amount of money used to "buy" our elected officials. Then, in 2004, at the last minute, she ran as New Hampshire's Democratic party nominee for the U.S. Senate. She ran a grassroots campaign based on politics for, of and by the people. She's a true populist, and an example the kind of scrappy fighter we all should aspire to be.