Jim Hightower's Lowdown
457 episodes - English - Latest episode: 1 day 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
Should Corrupt Judges Be the Ones Redefining Official Corruption?
July 11, 2024 16:00If the six right-wing dogmatists who now literally rule the Supreme Court wonder why 70 percent of the American people consider them somewhere between politically corrupt and grotesque, they might re-read their Kafkasesque decision last month perverting the meaning of bribery.
SCOTUS Is Meant to Be a Court, Not Our Supreme Ruler
July 09, 2024 20:16(Now with post problems fixed!)
Top Corporate Executives Should Have to Feel the Summer Heat
July 05, 2024 16:00Being a lifelong Texan, I’m used to hot summers. But what the hell – 99 degrees in June! Last year, we had 80 days of 100-plus temperatures, and we’re looking at 90 days this year. I can’t moan in self-pity, though, for the globally-warming furnace is now searing the whole country, even in northern climes where people are used to having days in August when they need “summer sweaters.”
Why Louisiana’s Kids Won’t Listen to Their Pious Governor
July 03, 2024 19:54For us Texans, there’s nothing new about Bible-thumping politicians bedevilling us with the foolishness of their dogmatic Christian piety. A century ago, for example, a proposal was made to offer bilingual education to Spanish-speaking school kids. But it was quashed by the governor, who solemnly declared: “
Do It Yourself Democracy: Let’s Fight the Supreme Court
July 02, 2024 17:13 image/jpegIt’s July 4th week! Sure, do a few 12-ounce elbow bends and set off some sparklers in celebration of our people’s democratic values. But wait – why are we celebrating the Spirit of ‘76, but meekly accepting the recent tsunami of autocratic, plutocratic dictates from a sextet of extremist, right-wing, partisan lawyers?
A few quick thoughts about Biden’s performance at the debate
June 28, 2024 23:17 image/jpeg“OMG, it’s all over! We’re doomed! Biden lost the debate!” But wait, the election is not a debate contest. It’s a choice between two visions of what America is and what it can become. We’re not just electing a person, but a government… and a future.
Friday Signpost: Happy Pride, for All!
June 28, 2024 11:41 image/jpegWe see it everywhere these days, don’t we? Glorious, beautiful Pride flags all around—even in the store windows and on the websites of major mainstream corporations. Wow, we think, equality for all sexualities is really hitting its stride!
The Right-Wing Turns Anti-Corporate! Sorta… Not Really.
June 26, 2024 16:01Wow: Big political news, folks! In an astonishing twist, some far-right-wing Republican groups and politicians are demanding that their longtime corporate allies – such as Walmart, the Koch brothers, GE, and Wall Street banks – stick to their business and stop interfering in the people’s political decisions. One group, the National Center for Public Policy Research, bluntly declares that it now prefers “corporate behavior without partisan influences.” It’s even urging corporate shareholders t...
Should Congress Honor Donald Trump with a Medal, a Statue… or What?
June 25, 2024 16:00Here’s a member of Congress with too much time on his hands… and way too little of anything on his mind. Greg Steube of Florida, is a run-of-the-mill, extremist Republican specializing in such partisan slapstick as trying to nullify Joe Biden’s election and install GOP loser, Donald Trump, as president.
Friday Signpost: Turning Out the Vote This Year, and Beyond
June 21, 2024 19:36 image/jpegWhen it comes to agitating and organizing for change, there are lots of tools at our disposal: protesting, running for office, legal actions, and, of course, VOTING. And the right is making it increasingly more difficult to get to the polls, to get to the
Let’s Put Labor Day to Work for Workers… and Democracy
June 20, 2024 16:01What if Labor Day was not about giving working families one measly Monday off to sleep in, rush to the beach, do some 12-oz elbow bends – then report back first thing Tuesday to start another 364 days of pulling the corporate plow?
Hightower’s Heroes: Sharon Lavigne and an update on Rise St. James
June 19, 2024 16:01 image/jpegYou all may remember this Chat & Chew episode with Hightower and Sharon Lavigne from Rise St. James in Louisiana. Sharon is a retired special education teacher turned environmental activist. Over the course of her lifetime she saw her beautiful thriving community where families could live off the land (farm, grow fruits and vegetables, have a some livestock, fish in the Mississippi) turn into “
The GOP’s New Plan to Enrich the Super-rich… Again
June 18, 2024 16:02Excellent news, people: Republican officials are mounting an all-out political push for a massive cut in our taxes next year! Well… by “our taxes,” they don’t mean yours. Rather, here they come with another absurd sob story about giant corporations and the super-wealthy suffering unbearably from excessive taxation. Claiming to feel the pain of these multibillionaires, the GOP is riding to their rescue, promising to extend the trillion-dollar tax boondoggle Donald Trump handed to the rich in 2...
Friday Signpost: Sex Ed Is a Great Prophylactic Against Fascism
June 14, 2024 16:00 image/jpegAttacks on reproductive freedom! Attacks on queer & trans folk! Attacks on books! It’s enough to make you want to scream into the void. Thankfully, there’s an alternative to screaming into the void that you might not have heard of yet—and solid action you can take. Let us introduce you to
Hear Corporate America’s New Euphemisms for Gouging You
June 13, 2024 16:01We should pay attention to corporate America’s fluctuating wordplay, for their frequent contortions of language disguise ploys to dupe, confuse, and rip off us hoi polloi – i.e., their customers. For example, here’s a mouthful that’s been gaining popularity among manufacturers of food products:
There’s the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly… and Then Sam Alito
June 11, 2024 16:01Sam Alito is so ugly that he can’t even see his ugliness. I don’t mean looks, but the deep inner ugliness of character that keeps oozing from this so-called “supreme” judge. Start with the unabashed lies he told senators to win his lifetime appointment to America’s powerfully-undemocratic judicial branch. Lie Number One was his promise not to mess with women’s constitutional right to reproductive freedom. But, once he put on his authoritarian black robe, he
Big Books, Little Books, and Weeds: What We're Reading and Listening To
June 09, 2024 18:21 image/jpegTo wrap up our weekend, we thought we’d take a few minutes and share what each of us here at Hightower HQ has been reading and listening to in recent weeks. What recommendations do you have? Leave ‘em in the comments!
Return of the Swamp Drainer: Making a Mockery of Democracy
June 06, 2024 16:02Remember Donald Trump, the “swamp drainer”? In 2016, candidate Trump promised to end the grubby money corruption of American politics. “The special interests, lobbyists, donors,” he rightly and righteously noted “make large contributions to politicians and they have total control of those politicians.” Asserting that he knows the political rot better than anyone, he said he’d “fix that system, because that system is wrong.”
Going from Democracy… to Plutocracy… and Now to Kleptocracy
June 04, 2024 10:01One group of oppressed Americans has become especially outspoken this election year, contending that top government officials (Democrats in particular) are ignoring their community’s basic needs and stifling their pursuit of economic advancement.
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,”