Jim Hightower's Lowdown
423 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
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
The Supreme Court’s Six Corporate Supremacists Ride Again
February 06, 2024 18:37Heeere they come again: The wrecking crew of Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts & Thomas – the six plutocratic judicial supremacists determined to force their personal political biases on all of us.
The Shameful Greed of the Solano County Gold Rush
February 01, 2024 17:00Farming can be a deeply satisfying life – you’re connecting directly to nature, you are your own boss, and you do work that’s real, benefitting humanity. But then there are the pests – such as invasive bugs, monopolistic profiteers… and a new, exceptionally destructive plague: Billionaires. Yes, flocks of predatory ultra-billionaires, wanting not just to gouge farmers, but to take away their farms.
The Right-Wing Republican War on Women, Children and Reproductive Health Marches On
January 31, 2024 20:26 image/jpegLast week, the Journal of the American Medical Association released a study on the number of rape-related, forced-pregnancies since the horrendous Supreme Court decision to roll back reproductive rights for women. Since the end of Roe, there have been
Just What We Need – Another Border Wall!
January 30, 2024 17:01In the 1980s, many Texans were alarmed that hordes of immigrants were fleeing Rust Belt states and pouring across the Red River to take our jobs. So, my friend Steve Fromholz recommended a big beautiful wall across our northern border to keep them out.
Friday Signpost: Journalists For Real Journalism
January 26, 2024 20:07 image/jpegLocal newspapers – produced by reporters who live in and know about their communities – are vital to America’s democratic health. But local papers, including dailies and rural weeklies, are being swallowed by a handful of global financial predators.
Rebranding CAFOs as PFOs Is Corporate BS
January 25, 2024 17:05A decade ago, Oklahoma’s countryside was literally infested with 626 massively-polluting CAFOs – “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.” These are nightmarish creatures of industrial agribusiness, each one caging thousands of chickens, hogs, or cattle in huge concrete and steel buildings, and producing rivers of excrement. Imagine living next to one!
Why You Were Not Invited to Davos
January 23, 2024 17:00Once again, my invitation to the big shindig in Davos never arrived. Davos is the posh resort village in the Swiss Alps where some 3,000 global power elites gather every January for a weeklong, corporate-funded Schmooze-and-Booze-Fest to solve the world’s problems.
Mini-Documentary: Black Farmers in Texas
January 19, 2024 17:11The systemic denial of support and general exploitation that Black farmers in America have endured remains a relatively unexplored topic when it comes to progressive social justice stories. The New York Times
When Private Enterprise Fails, Public Enterprise Must Step Up
January 18, 2024 16:55In cities all across America, an infiltration of wealthy investors, developers, and bankers is driving poor and middle-class families out of their own towns. What’s at work here is the relentless financial shove of high-dollar gentrification. House by house, block by block, moneyed interests suddenly (and often secretly) buy up properties, bulldozing modest family homes to erect sprawling edifices for the rich. It’s a profiteering money grab that intentionally prices out regular homebuyers. W...
Martin Luther King Didn’t Just Dream… He Organized!
January 15, 2024 17:00It’s time once again for America’s annual sing-along of “We Shall Overcome,” in celebration of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. As even school children know, he famously had a dream. His dream was that over the long arc of history, America will someday achieve racial harmony –
Want Environmental Progress? Follow The Kids.
December 26, 2023 17:00“OK, Boomer.” That’s a snarky phrase currently some use to mock 60-and-70-year-olds they consider to be cluelessly out-of-touch. Recently, however, teenagers and 20-somethings have turned that snide sentiment into a positive challenge directed at doomsayers of all ages who claim nothing can be done to stop runaway global warming: “
Daddy's Philosophy and Your Gift Suggestions
December 22, 2023 17:01 image/jpegMerry happy, everyone! We’re preparing for our holiday weekend, and we got to thinking: What organizations are our readers supporting this year? We’d like to do a roundup post next week of different causes, groups, candidates and more that you’d like our community to know about or support through donations. Each subscriber gets just
Big Oil’s Slick Attempt to Greenwash Its Massive Plastic Pollution
December 21, 2023 17:01Let’s all sing the holiday classic: “All I want for Christmas… Is Something Not Made of Plastic.” Easier sung than done. Plastic is now ubiquitous in toys, electronics, tools, air, water… and us. And don’t forget the plastic Baby Jesus in Christmas tableaus.
Blast from the past: The Christmas Tree Cure
December 20, 2023 17:00 image/jpegOur friends over at The People’s History in Texas recently shared this great bit of holiday history, when the Department of Agriculture, helmed by Hightower at the time, promoted buying local Christmas trees as a way to support Texas farmers. Enjoy!
Mike Says That God Says He’s Our New Moses
December 19, 2023 17:00Mike Johnson, bless his heart, says he doesn’t “wanna get too spooky on you,” but it was God who made him the new Speaker of the US House. He’s not asserting the fairly common belief, held by many Christians, that the Almighty plays a direct role in shaping people’s lives. No, no – Mike’s claim of divine selection is more singular, grandiose… and spooky.