Jim Hightower's Lowdown
438 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★★ - 303 ratingsNews and shows about the progressive, democratic populist rebellion from former Texas Ag Commissioner and NYT best-selling author Jim Hightower.
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Episodes
Friday Signpost: Your Music for the Movement Playlist, 1990s Edition
May 31, 2024 16:02 image/jpegHot on the heels of our 1980s playlist… we’ve got … drumroll… the 1990s in political movement music ready for you! We love seeing how the music really spreads through genres in this decade, continuing the roots of branches sprung prior ones. Let ‘er rip!
How Silly Can Right-Wing Culture Warriors Get?
May 30, 2024 16:02If you’re wondering whatever happened to Ron DeSantis, he’s now re-ensconced in Florida… goofier than ever. Last year, backed by a covey of billionaires, Governor Ron was all set to be our next president until national voters discovered he has the personality of a dirt clod and the political sensibility of a tin-pot totalitarian.
Cruising Along with Ted Cruz
May 28, 2024 16:02A Republican senator once tried excusing the egomaniacal right-wing nastiness of his colleague, Ted Cruz declaring, “sometimes Ted is his own worst enemy.” I said to myself: “Not while I’m alive he’s not.”
Holiday weekend chill with political comics and memes
May 26, 2024 17:57 image/jpegThere have been so many incisive cartoons and memes coming out in the last few weeks that we decided we’d share some of our favorites with you. There’s something about sharp and fierce critique of the world we live in combined with wit that opens things right up that helps a lot of us feel a tiny bit of relief and a little less alone in this world gone mad. With that, enjoy these finds from our field of view, and leave some of your own recent favorites in the comments!
What If Our Lawmakers Were Working Class People?
May 23, 2024 16:01 image/jpegWhatzamatta with Congress? And most of our state legislatures, too? Why do these so-called representative bodies keep stiffing middle-class and poor families, refusing to respond to the most urgent ne…
An Anti-Abortion Creep: Worse than a Snake in the Grass
May 21, 2024 16:01Let me be clear that I mean no disrespect to reptiles when I note that Jonathan Mitchell is a snake. An extremist right-wing Texas lawyer, Mitchell is actually creepier and all-together more diabolical that your average serpent could think of being. Jonathan slithers around the country as a self-appointed anti-abortion vigilante, terrorizing women’s advocates, health clinics, and doctors. And now (turning truly creepy), he’s singling-out
Friday Signpost: Your Music for the Movement Playlist, 1980s Edition
May 17, 2024 16:20 image/jpegRemember late last year when we asked you for your favorite political and protest songs? We’ve listened to the 1960s, and the 1970s, so now it’s time for… you guessed it… the 1980s! Since GenX comprises half of the staff here at Hightower HQ, we were especially jazzed to see this decade’s list— we grew up with a mainstream culture of Reagan and “greed is good” BS, but music always gave us both a lot of hope in our working class lives that things could be different. From rap to folk to punk to...
God Bless Nurses. And Please Hurry!
May 16, 2024 16:01Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity’s Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order, “above and before every other duty.” Really – even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America’s corporate-care system? Well, gosh, they say, let’s not go crazy with this religious stuff! There’s morality… and then there’s business.
That Stench of Corruption You Smell is Coming from the Supreme Court
May 14, 2024 16:01We Texans are long-accustomed to enduring stormy outbursts of corruption among our top state legislators. The spectacle of lawmakers taking corporate bribes to provide legislative favors, tax breaks, government contracts, and such is as common as Spring tornadoes – and even more destructive to the public good.
Hightower’s Heroes in History: The She-roes of Mothers’ Day
May 10, 2024 16:29 image/jpegGather ’round, friends, and let us learn a little bit Mother’s Day, or rather Mothers’ Day (plural possessive, that is). Today’s lesson is not just a lesson in history – it’s also a lesson in feminism. Women* have often pulled together to help each other, through times of war, oppression, and frankly, basic survival. They are the glue that has held many important social movements together.
Culture War Stupidity Plunges Into Absurdity
May 09, 2024 16:01Right-wing culture warriors have been relentlessly attacking people’s personal liberties – running hellish crusades to deny our freedom to vote, to read what we want, to form labor unions, to make our own reproductive decisions… etc.
Gutting Our Public Post Offices: Oh What Joy!
May 07, 2024 16:01Hoo boy… DeJoy! Woe is us (the American people) for having our jewel of a national Postal Service saddled with a corporate-minded Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. Formerly CEO of a private shipping contractor, DeJoy’s chief qualification for running this invaluable public service is that he’s been a major donor to Republican politicians – including Donald Trump, who appointed him to the post.
Hey Democrats: Find the Party’s Future in Its Populist Past
May 02, 2024 16:01A farmer friend of mine once bemoaned the fact that the Democrat we’d both supported for president, Bill Clinton, was hugging up Wall Street and stiffing family farmers. “I don’t mind losing when we lose,” my friend said, “but I hate losing when we win.”
Celebrating workers and labor on May Day
May 01, 2024 22:48 image/jpegWhile we here in the US celebrate Labor Day in September, the rest of the world is celebrating its workers today, May 1st. From the Wikipedia summary, here’s a good overview: Traditionally, 1 May is the date of the European spring festival of May Day. In 1889, the Marxist International Socialist Congress met in Paris and established the Second International as a successor to the earlier International Workingmen's Association. They adopted a resolution for a "great international demonstration"...
What Should Politics Do? Ask Woody Guthrie
April 30, 2024 20:53Woody Guthrie’s prescription for inequality in America was straightforward: “Rich folks got your money with politics. You can get it back with politics.” For Guthrie, “politics” meant more than voting, since both parties routinely cough-up candidates who meekly accept the business-as-usual system of letting bosses and bankers control America’s wealth and power. It’s useless, he said, to expect change to come from a “choice” between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. Instead, common folks must org...
A Century of Third Party Independent Progressive Politics
April 26, 2024 15:52 image/jpegHightower is on the road again this weekend, this time visiting Madison, WI to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fighting Bob La Follette’s independent run for the presidency. Fighting who? What? If you’ve never heard of Robert La Follette, you’ve got a treasure trove of rabble-rousing history awaiting you in his
The True Story About Coca-Cola’s Plastic Fairy Tale
April 25, 2024 16:01Years ago, Coca-Cola excitedly debuted a new formula for its soda, dubbing it “New Coke.” Consumers hated it, and sales plummeted – a marketing fiasco. But here comes Coke again, pushing an even worse product: “A Better Plastic Bottle,” trumpeting it as “100% Recycled.” Coke really needs an environmental PR goose-up, because today’s consumers know and care a lot about the massive plastic contamination of our planet – and Coke has been ranked as the globe’s
Special Recognition for Six GOP Gubernatorial Goobers
April 24, 2024 16:01 image/jpegWhile 4,300 workers in Volkswagen’s auto factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, were about to vote on whether to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), thus making their plant the first in the South to have a unionized workforce, suddenly the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas burst on the scene.
The Big Apple’s Mayor Takes a Big Bite Out of Democracy
April 23, 2024 18:03And now: A special report from the Department of Really Bad Ideas. And this one is a doozie. It comes from Hizzoner Eric Adams, the present mayor of New York City. Like mayors everywhere, Adams is routinely expected to respond to city council members, state reps, members of Congress, and other elected officials who ask for help on city issues and problems affecting the people they represent. After all, that’s how it’s supposed to work – local folks have an issue needing city attention, so the...
Friday Signpost: Learn How to Listen—and Win—with People's Action
April 19, 2024 18:27 image/jpegWhen we hear the term “canvassing” with regard to politics, it often brings up ideas of well-meaning volunteers going door-to-door in communities outside of their own to help persuade those residents to vote one way or another. It turns out, this kind of canvassing is not that successful in moving the important needles of tight races, and can even create resentment in areas that are otherwise abandoned by national and regional political machinery.
Where’s George Orwell Today? Texas!
April 18, 2024 16:00If you think the GOP’s Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest, pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us – you haven’t been to Texas. It’s widely known, of course, that Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and most other top Republican officials here are obsequious Trump acolytes. Thus, Texas is infamously racing against Florida to be declared the stupidest, meanest, most-repressive state government in America, constantly making demonic attacks on women’s freedom, immigrants, voting ...
Can’t Oil Barons Ever Be Honest? (Hint: No)
April 16, 2024 16:00Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King once opposed a bill because, he said, he feared it would “open a whole box of Pandoras.” An odd rhetorical twist, but it would be helpful if today’s ego-bloated, high-tech billionaires and corporate profiteers had a bit of self-restraint, rather than thinking their money equals genius. For example, such doofuses are presently pushing convoluted schemes to “solve” our globe’s technology-caused climate crisis with – what else? – technology.
Happy Hour with Hightower: April Ask Me Anything Video
April 16, 2024 02:02Breaking the two-party duopoly, poor people’s food, Netanyahu versus Gaza, how Texas turned red, who’s doing good grassroots organizing, Thomas Paine, and much more
Why Are We Letting Greedheads and Ideologues Kill Our Post Office?
April 11, 2024 17:21Before there was a USA – before our Constitution was adopted, and even before our 1776 Declaration of Independence – one of America’s best democratic institutions was already delivering for the people: The Post Office.
What Nation Besides Israel Is Killing Gaza’s Innocent Palestinians?
April 09, 2024 16:30“Somebody better investigate soon.” That’s a lyric in Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town,” a 1962 song deploring the relentless murdering of Black people and civil rights activists in the Deep South. The line mocks the refusal of racist officials to punish the White murderers, instead cynically covering up atrocities by promising do-nothing “investigations.”
Reminder: LIVE: Happy Hour with Hightower and... you!
April 08, 2024 16:01 image/jpegJoin us on Tuesday, April 9th at 7pm ET / 6pm CT
How Many Dead Firefighters Does It Take to Ban Asbestos?
April 04, 2024 16:01If your home or business is suddenly being engulfed in flames, you count on a quick response from the fire department. But who rushes to aid firefighters when so many of the burning buildings they enter are contaminated with chrysotile asbestos – a cancer-causing product so deadly that it’s banned in over 50 countries? So far, no one.
LIVE: Happy Hour with Hightower and... you!
April 03, 2024 16:01 image/jpegJoin us here on Tuesday, April 9th at 7pm ET for an open thread live Q&A
Why Big Corporations Get Special Tax Breaks and You Don’t
April 02, 2024 16:00Free Market ideologues fabricate some of the most preposterous yarns trying to justify their assertion of corporate greed over public need. Consider their far-fetched of Laissez-fairyland tale that by allowing corporate giants to dodge the billions of tax dollars they owe to our country, the top executives of those corporations will plow that money into new jobs, products, and services for the Common Good. The ideologues assure us innocents that this is the “magic of the marketplace.”
How Oily Is Big Oil’s Latest PR Campaign?
March 28, 2024 16:51If you’re concerned about fossil fuels and climate change, consider an energy source that, according to its backers, will make everyday living “comfortable and healthier.” What is this miraculous substance?
Should We Be Polite as the GOP Stomps on Our Democratic Rights?
March 26, 2024 17:01When a fox attacks a hen house, is it uncivil for the hens to raise a ruckus? Two Supreme Court justices say it is. Elevating collegiality above social justice, right-wing extremist Amy Coney Barrett and progressive jurist Sonia Sotomayor have jointly been hailing America’s top Court as a model of genteel political discourse, claiming that the six Republicans and three Democrats disagree agreeably. “We do not interrupt one another, and we never raise our voices,”
Why Are We Letting Financial Hucksters Dictate Our Local News?
March 21, 2024 11:02Too many American newspapers have shut down or shriveled to irrelevance, but, luckily, we still have such bastions of local journalism as the Chicago Chronicle and New York News Daily. But wait… those aren’t real newspapers, aren’t local, and aren’t even American. T
Happy National Agriculture Day!
March 20, 2024 23:22 image/jpegDid you know that that yesterday was National Agriculture Day? We didn’t! In fact, some of us didn’t even know such a designated day existed until we saw Farm Aid’s post about it on Facebook. While the holiday itself is driven by a nonprofit with rather questionable
Sen. Katie Britt Plays a Cruel Political Game to Exploit a Mexican Rape Victim
March 19, 2024 11:01Poor Katie Britt, the Republican senator from Alabama. She was set up by her party’s operatives to do the GOP’s televised response to Joe Biden’s State-of-the-Union speech. Sadly, her moment in the national limelight was widely panned, even by Republicans, for her presentation was overwrought and – well, cringey. But the visuals pale to insignificance when you consider that her partisan presentation was based on an intentional, abject lie – exacerbated by her shameful exploitation of a woman ...
Friday Signpost: A Lotta Luck Happening in Texas
March 15, 2024 16:00 image/jpegYesterday, Hightower had the great pleasure to head over to the Luck Reunion, an annual festival of music, food and more held on Willie Nelson’s infamous Luck Ranch. It’d be enough to just attend and experience such a wonderful cross-cultural gathering, but Hightower was invited to speak on a panel discussion organized by
Tom Paine: What a Guy!
March 14, 2024 16:01In my view, the greatest of America’s “Founding Fathers” was not Washington or Jefferson – nor, technically, he wasn’t even an American. Rather, he was a British immigrant and itinerate agitator for real democracy, enlightenment, and universal human rights.
Guess What? Americans Want to Be WOKE!
March 12, 2024 16:01Well, well, well – look who’s waking up and raring to go: Mr. and Ms. WOKE! We so-called “woke” people have been the target of far-right politicos and front groups that are frantically trying to ban us and our ideas from America’s political discourse. In the past few years, such thuggish gubernatorial demagogues as Ron DeSantis have perverted the power of Big Government to attack teachers, librarians, public agencies, and even
"Served Up on the Table:" Happy International Women's Day
March 08, 2024 17:00 image/jpegDeanna here, wishing you a happy International Women’s Day! This photo has always cracked me up, ever since I started working with Hightower almost 20 years ago. It’s obviously him in the middle, but who are these women sitting around the table? Turns out, they’re the leadership of the infamous revolution that was the
Is “Icarus” the Solution to Climate Change?
March 07, 2024 18:01Although the sun is an essential life force, we need to protect ourselves from its relentless glare. Sunglasses? Check. Beach umbrella? Check. Tinted car windows? Check. A huge, multi-trillion-dollar parasol floating in outer space to reduce global warming
What If There Was a Natural Substitute for Plastic? There Is!
March 05, 2024 18:00In 1863, humorist Artemus Ward wrote a satire on hucksterism, making up a tale of Abe Lincoln being asked to endorse a piece of quackery about spiritualism. Not wanting to offend, the Lincoln character slyly offers non-committal praise: “Well for people who like that kind of thing, I think that is just about the kind of thing they’d like.”
How Corporate Lobbyists Can Engineer a Train Wreck
February 29, 2024 18:00“Corporate crises consultants” (yes, there are such creatures) have patented a formula allowing their wrongdoing clients to champion reform while simultaneously killing it. A classic case is now unfolding around last year’s derailment of a 2-mile-long Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio. The community’s air, soil, water, and people suffered a massive spill of toxic chemicals.
What Happened to the “Miracle of Meatless Meat”?
February 27, 2024 18:00“Step right up, folks, and bite into the wondrous future of meat!” Cheap meat! Ethical meat! Animal meat you love – beef, chicken, pork, fish, etc. – all produced without animals! It’s the miracle of “meatless meat” – a viscous mass derived from “fetal bovine serum,” then grown not on ranches, but in huge vats in corporate factories. Science marches on!
Abortion-Ban Extremists Are Using a Slave Law to Repress Women
February 22, 2024 17:25Here’s our Big Word of the day: Extraterritoriality. It expresses a sketchy legal theory asserting that rulers in one state have a right to enforce their laws in another state. The most prominent use of it was in the infamous
Where Did Our Local Newspapers Go?
February 20, 2024 17:21I no longer receive my local newspaper, the Austin-American Statesman. Oh, the paper still comes, but it’s just paper, minus the news part – news that our community once counted on to keep up with local government doings, corporate shenanigans, citizen actions, and other critical features of our city’s democratic life. What happened? Wall Street profiteers swept in a few years ago to conglomeratize, homogenize, and financialize, the
The Israeli-Palestinian Horror: We Can’t Just Watch
February 17, 2024 17:00 image/jpegI’m unable to comprehend the continuum of raw hatred and systematic barbarism that the Israeli government and Hamas terrorists are perpetrating, so I haven’t felt I could add anything to the strong voices worldwide pleading (in plain words): STOP IT!
What Is a Banker’s Promise Worth?
February 16, 2024 00:12Bruce King, former governor of New Mexico, often baffled people with his convoluted use of words. Like the time he vetoed a loan shark bill he’d previously agreed to sign. “But, Governor,” squealed the lenders’ lobbyists, “we had your commitment!” Unfazed, King said, “Now boys, we all know that a commitment is not a promise.”
Love to You from Valentine, Texas
February 14, 2024 18:55Please be my Valentine! That is not only a warm, sweet, sometimes romantic sentiment people express in mid-February on a frilly, red card. It’s also the name of a third-century saint who literally lost his head, a ninth-century pope whose reign lasted only 40 days, three Roman emperors, a very good Mexican hot sauce… and a tiny town in Texas.
The Debacle of “God’s Army” at Eagle Pass
February 13, 2024 18:42Perhaps you heard about the recent surge of invasive foreigners into Eagle Pass, Texas – the Rio Grande border town that finds itself at the hot center of the US-Mexico immigration crisis. Only, this “invasion” (as Donald Trump’s MAGA crowd likes to call it) was not by Latin Americans, but by Anglos descending on Eagle Pass from the North! Indeed, it was
The Right-Wing’s Program to Solve Childhood Obesity
February 08, 2024 17:00This plot line could have come from one of Charles Dickens’ novels about upper-class depravity: “Miserly governors refuse to provide gruel for poverty-stricken ragamuffins.” Unfortunately, this is not a novel, but modern-day reality taking place in 15 states, where
From the Archives: Populism Is the Movement You're Already Part Of
February 07, 2024 17:00 image/jpegWith the chaos of both global and domestic events pounding us each daily, it can feel like the struggle for justice is too much to conquer. Sometimes, reminders of the work we’ve accomplished, along with a healthy dose of history lessons and perspective, are just what the doctor ordered. We thought this