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
My Newspaper Died
October 18, 2022 15:34 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBMy newspaper died. Well, technically it still appears, but it has no life, no news, and barely a pulse. It’s a mere semblance of a real paper, one of the hundreds of local journalism zombies staggering along in cities and towns that had long relied on them. Each one has a bare number of subscribers keeping it going, mostly longtime readers like me clinging to a memory of what used to be and a flickering hope that, surely, the thing won’t get worse. Then it does. Our papers are getting worse...
We’re Stuck on a Monopoly Merry-Go-Round
October 13, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBThe problem with our so-called “free market” is that it’s not free for you and me. It’s largely controlled by monopolies, which are free to inflate prices just because they can, letting gougers gleefully extract unwarranted monopoly profits from us. This milking of consumers by tightly consolidated industries is propelling today’s surging price hikes. Brand name corporations claim they’re being forced to mark-up price tags just to cover rising costs for raw materials, labor, transportation, ...
The Inflation Blame Game
October 11, 2022 15:29 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBToday, CEOs of big corporations are playing the tricky “Inflation Blame Game!” Publicly, they moan that the pandemic is slamming their poor corporations with factory shutdowns, supply chain delays, wage hikes, and other increased costs. But wait – inside their board rooms, executives are high fiving each other and pocketing bonuses. What’s going on? The trick is that these giants are in non-competitive markets operating as monopolies, so they can set prices, mug you and me, and scamper away...
The Virginia Model
October 06, 2022 22:00 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBLast year’s gubernatorial race in Virginia was narrowly won by Republican Glenn Youngkin. An elite Wall Street multimillionaire, he was going to lose – until he discovered a right-wing racist bugaboo called Critical Race Theory. Glenn suddenly turned into an anti-CRT attack dog, fomenting parental fear and promising to sweep all teaching of the theory out of Virginia classrooms. But, golly, CRT was not actually taught in any of the state’s public schools. To help Youngkin dodge this inconven...
Jeff Bezos Goes to Sea
September 29, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBIt’s been an all-time record year of runaway wealth for America’s billionaires, with this tiny clique vastly widening the chasm separating them from us hoi polloi. For example, Amazon jefe Jeff Bezos hauled in $190 billion for the year. That pays him more than $360,000 a minute, for every single minute of the year. So much taken by so few who do so little while harming so many. Bezos erected his corporate empire on the backs of non-union workers he routinely exploits, plus millions of taxpay...
ASSORTED NUTS
September 27, 2022 14:10 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBLet me say one word to you: Nuts. Now, let me say one name to you: Ted Cruz. They’ve become synonymous, with the Texas lawmaker perennially topping national lists of goofy, right-wing political goobers. Only, Ted can’t rightly be called a lawmaker, for he’s not a serious participant in that process, instead devoting his senatorship to political stunts and picking silly PR fights with a growing list of enemies. Running out of people to attack, Ted has found another species for his vitriol: ...
Why Would We Let Wall Street “Care For” Our Pets?
September 22, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBQuestion: What does a packet of M&M’s and your local veterinarian have in common? Answer: Both are owned by Mars Inc., the global candy monopolist. Since the 1980s, we’ve seen massive consolidations in industry after industry – from airlines to newspapers, the internet to candy. These monopolists run roughshod over consumers, workers, communities, suppliers, and our nation’s commitment to the Common Good. And now the corporate attitude seems to be, “what the Hell, why not let monopolization ...
The Corporatization of Pet Care: Animal Cruelty?
September 20, 2022 14:31 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBFor many people, the animals they adopt and love become more like family members than pets. We have deep relationships, with cats, dogs, parrots, goats, horses, and other fellow critters – who at least pretend to love us back, providing comfort and joy all around. Sadly though, life for all of us animals is a spin around the wheel of fortune, so illness and injuries happen. That’s why one of the most valued members of every community are the staffers in our local veterinarian office. Practic...
The Embarrassment of Modern Corporate Managers
September 15, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBWhat makes a newspaper great? Many say it’s having street-savvy reporters and editors with the integrity to shine the light of investigative journalism on the power structure’s abuses. But, no, says Fred Ryan, top executive of the Washington Post – the secret is attendance. Ryan, a corporate manager and former Ronald Reagan staffer, was handpicked to be CEO of the legendary paper by Jeff Bezos in 2014, when the Amazon billionaire bought the Post. But on Ryan’s watch, readership is in decline...
Welcome To Our Future of “Digital Productivity Monitoring”
September 13, 2022 15:50 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBFor generations, workers have been punished by corporate bosses for watching the clock. But now, the corporate clock is watching workers! Called “digital productivity monitoring,” this surveillance is done by an integrated computer system including a real-time clock, camera, keyboard tracker, and algorithms to provide a second-by-second record of what each employee is doing. Jeff Bezos, boss of Amazon, pioneered use of this ticking electronic eye in his monstrous warehouses, forcing hapless,...
What Do Truckers and Librarians Have In Common?
September 08, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBIn the world of work, what two occupations might seem to have the very least in common? How about long-haul truck drivers… and school librarians? Yes, an odd pairing, but solidarity forever! Start with truckers, The job is literally a grueling haul. You’re wrangling massive 18-wheelers some 500 miles a day for 2-3 weeks straight, putting up with traffic jams, storms, bad roads, lunatic drivers, helter-skelter scheduling, truck stop food, sleeping in the truck – and battling fatigue, aches, y...
Clueless CEOs Confused By Workers Quitting
September 06, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBFor more than a year, America’s corporate chieftains have been moaning about “The Great Resignation” – the recent phenomena of workers just up and quitting their jobs. And now comes “Quiet Quitting,” workers who don’t leave their jobs, but only do what they were hired to do, quietly rejecting the endless extra (unpaid) tasks and weekend assignments that bosses try to pile on. What’s at work in the heads of all these workers? Simple, barked one taskmaster way back in 1894, “nobody wants to wo...
Where’s the “Dignity of Work” When Work Kills Workers?
September 01, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBCorporate acolytes and right-wing moralists constantly preach to laboring stiffs about the uplifting dignity of work. Of course, that’s “dignity” as defined and controlled by corporate elites, not by workers, and the reward for it frequently includes on-the-job injuries… and death. Not that CEOs and well-heeled investors intend to sicken, maim, and kill thousands of laborers every year – but they certainly do put them in positions that assure such unhappy results. For example, they demand th...
Work, Sweat, Die: The Price of Really Hot Jobs
August 30, 2022 23:10 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBHere’s a hot topic for Labor Day: Heat. It’s been a hell of a hot summer, exploding the top off thermometers with triple-digit readings across the country. As we’re learning, week after week of this debilitating heat intensifies wildfires, causes electric grids to fail, kills millions of wild animals (including fish!), burns up crops, and concentrates toxic air. But there’s another impact that draws little notice: Heat kills workers. Indeed, searing days of 95-100-110 degrees are killing an...
Billionaires Playing Cowboys… At Our Expense
August 25, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBLet’s all gather ‘round the campfire, Buckaroos and let Ol’ Cactus Jim here tell you about some of today’s hardy, hard-working cowboys. Yes, those manly men who live free-spirited, yippy-ti-yi-yo, cowboy lives out in the rustic ranch country of the Rocky Mountain West. Oh, wait – that was a century ago. The “cowboys” who’re now humming “Home On The Range” across Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming are multimillionaire and billionaire corporate titan and celebrities like Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, a...
A Tear-Jerker About the Housing Saga of Some Rich Jerks
August 23, 2022 16:04 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBThe “old homeplace” is a classic theme of Americana, expressed in everything from Norman Rockwell paintings to Woody Guthrie’s powerful folk lament, “I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore.” But for a heart-rending, modern-day version of the emotional pull of home, you can’t beat the poignant wail of a new song entitled: “The Low-down Down-home Atherton Rich Man Blues.” Warning: You might need a box of tissues to get through this sad saga. Atherton, California, is a very small town of so...
Bringing Democracy to the Democratic Party
August 18, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBSen. Joe Manchin – a one-man political steamroller in Washington – is a Democrat. Except when he’s not, which is most of the time. A multimillionaire, West Virginia coal executive, he’s the darling of fossil fuel and pipeline lobbyists, as well as Republican opponents of progressive Democratic policies. Indeed, he’s funded by Republican billionaires. But Washington lobbyists and billionaires are not the only source of personal political power that allows him to hold office and block “little-...
Good News: Small Groups Can Defeat Corporate Giants
August 16, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBFrom corporate polluters to political bosses, power elites try to create a myth of inevitability, trying to make workaday people feel helpless, too small to change the injustices of the system. Don’t bother is their message. But the feisty residents of Boxtown, Tennessee, definitely did bother when they learned that a couple of profiteering fossil fuel giants were targeting them. Boxtown, a historic Black neighborhood of Memphis settled by former slaves 160 years ago, was considered by Valer...
Happy Hour at the Hightower Chat & Chew Cafe: Rep. Ro Khanna
August 13, 2022 17:28 - 54 minutes - 79 MBWe're trying something new here at the Lowdown! We've been having a blast with our live talk show, so we're dropping the audio from the show right into the podcast feed, so that our audiophile friends can easily join in the fun. Let us know what you think! Urgent alert to top Dem party poohbahs: Too many would-be Democratic voters are disillusioned by your tone-deaf, wishy-washy incrementalism! On our next Chat & Chew Happy Hour, progressive champion Ro Khanna joins Hightower for a lively di...
Why Should Work Be Life-Sucking?
August 11, 2022 13:44 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBAmerica’s stringent system of corporate capitalism keeps carving out new depths of worker exploitation. Take Chick-fil-A, a right-wing, Atlanta-based, fast-food operation boasting that it follows “biblically-based” principles. Like slavery? Well, Chick-fil-A hasn’t gone quite that Biblical yet, but one of its franchises recently pioneered a novel labor compensation innovation that comes close – literally paying some workers “chicken feed.” This outlet of the $11-billion-a-year chain called o...
Should Making a Living Mean Selling Your Life?
August 09, 2022 16:20 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MB“Work your fingers to the bone - whadda ya get? Boney Fingers.” This 1960s song mocking the vaunted virtue of working hard is being sung today with new meaning by all kinds of employees – from factory workers to teachers… and even a few upper-floor executives. The rebellion here is not merely over low pay, but particularly about the unrelenting nature of work itself – the all-consuming “job imperative,” as if that’s your life: Go 40 to 60 hours a week 50 to 52 weeks a year for half a centur...
Should “Sudden Death” Be A Part of Professional Golf?
August 04, 2022 16:44 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBIs it a good deal to sell out your personal integrity for cash from notorious scoundrels? Depends on your sell-out price, chortle some 48 ethically-stunted professional golfers who’ve peddled both their honor and honesty to the murderous moneyed monarchs who rule Saudi Arabia. The golfers, who are already millionaires, rushed to grab money thrown at their feet by the royal kingdom, which oddly thinks it can launder its public image by sponsoring a money-soaked global golf tour. Of course, a ...
Whip Inflation Now!
July 26, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBRepublican politicos are all over Joe Biden for failing to stop inflation. Perhaps you wonder, though, what these squawkers would do if they were in charge? No need to wonder – just look back to 1974, when Americans were being pummeled by price spikes that topped 12%, nearly double what we’re enduring today. But by Gollies, President Gerald Ford and his Republican contingent in Congress met the challenge head-on with a new magical program of economic uplift they called WIN – Whip Inflation N...
How Can Democrats Save the Party… From Their Own Leaders?
June 23, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MB“It’s over.” “Biden’s numbers are in the ditch.” “Democrats are doomed.” “Call the priest.” These are Democrats talking! Even before November’s congressional elections are run, many conventional-thinking Democratic operatives are surrendering to a presumed Republican sweep. You don’t need a political science degree to know that if you start out announcing that you’ll lose, chances are you will – after all, who wants to vote for a party that shows no fighting spirit, no confidence in the appe...
Come On, Biden, Be A Real President!
June 22, 2022 16:29 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBPresident Biden recently flew off to Taiwan to assure allies there that he will fight for them. And next he’s headed over to Saudi Arabia to “repair ties” with those oil monarchs. This flurry of foreign travel might be strategically important for international realpolitik, but – Hello – another strategically important piece of real politics is looming right here at home: The November congressional elections! Taiwan and Saudi Arabia don’t get a vote, but Texas and South Carolina do. So how ab...
Enthroning Corporate Power Over America
June 09, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MB“Equal Justice Under Law.” That’s the noble principle carved into the marble façade of the temple-like Supreme Court building. Today, though, six right-wing, corporate-dominated activist judges control the present Court, and they’re implementing an elitist creed mocking that ideal. By putting the interests and power of the wealthy over the rest of us. They’re turning “justice” into an antidemocratic concept of “just us.” In ruling after ruling, today’s supremes are political operatives takin...
The Corporate Conspiracy on The Court
June 07, 2022 16:07 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBUsurping the fundamental rights of women to control their own bodies. Authorizing corporate giants to buy our elections. Nullifying the right of organizers to talk to workers about unionizing. Who is rigging America’s legal system against workaday people? The Supreme Court’s right-wing extremists, that’s who. Just a handful of aloof, unelected judges have been turning what’s supposed to be a citadel of justice into an unrestrained political instrument for instituting autocratic, plutocrati...
Supreme Court Secrecy: Who Needs it?
May 19, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 4.95 MBWhen Supreme Court member Sam Alito’s secret plan for canceling the constitutional right of women to end their pregnancies leaked out to the public – Republican politicos went ballistic! Over the leak, that is. The Court’s Republican Chief Justice, John Roberts, called the unauthorized disclosure an “affront” to the majesty of the Supremes. Likewise, Republican congressional leaders have furiously demanded to know who dunnit and why! Way beyond their political screeching and posturing, howev...
Why Should We the People Respect a Court That Disrespects the People?
May 17, 2022 19:37 - 2 minutes - 4.94 MBMitch McConnell, the perpetually sour old goose who heads the Senate Republican Caucus, had a hissy fit when the news leaked out that American women are about to have their most fundamental constitutional right taken from them by a cabal of Supreme Court judges. What made Mitch twitch, of course, was not the bad news for women… but the leak. He huffed that revealing the right-wing Court’s scheme to the public was a “stunning breach,” spewing that it’s “an attack on the independence of the Su...
Can the Rest of the Nation Follow Alabama?
May 12, 2022 04:01 - 2 minutes - 2.97 MBHere are two terms you don’t expect to see together: “The state of Alabama” and “progressive leader.” (Ok, I’m a Texan, so I have no standing to point at the rank regressiveness of any other state government … but still, Alabama?) And yet, the Camellia State has flowered as a model of strong progressive action in one area of critical public importance: Quality child care. It’s a cliche to say “our children are our future,” but it’s also true. Why, then, do we invest so little in our littlest...
The Republican Supremes Are Defrocking Themselves
April 21, 2022 04:01 - 2.97 MBWhat is so supreme about the Supreme Court? I mean besides being housed in an imposing marble building, being the final stop on America’s judicial train, and having its nine members look photogenically authoritarian in those full-body black robes. And, yes, its existence is written into the Constitution – but so is Congress, and no one thinks of it as anything supreme. We 330 million Americans are told we must obey “the law,” as defined by a half dozen unelected lawyers on this court. Why s...
The Sad Whine of Supreme Court Right Wingers
April 19, 2022 13:40 - 2.96 MBRalph Waldo Emerson told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.” Today, America has not one, but six guests in our national home babbling about their integrity. They are the six extremist Republican judges who now control our Supreme Court, and it’s a bit unsettling to hear them go on and on, almost frantically pleading with us to believe in their j...
Truck Drivers Hijacked by Immoral Corporate Bosses
March 31, 2022 04:01 - 4.95 MBKeep On Trucking’ was an iconic underground cartoon created in 1968 by comic master Robert Crumb. Featuring various big-footed men strutting jauntily through life, the caricature became widely popular as an expression of young people’s collective optimism. “You’re movin’ on down the line,” Crumb later explained, “It’s proletarian. It’s populist.” But today the phrase has become ironic, for America’s truck drivers themselves are no longer moving on down the line of fairness, justice, and oppo...
What’s Up with This Crazy Trucker Protest?
March 30, 2022 00:58 - 4.94 MBThe recent traffic-clogging protests by truck drivers in the US and Canada is about drivers being angry over COVID-19 vaccine mandates – right? Uh… no. That’s the line being put out by right-wing extremists trying to use the legitimate gripes of truckers for their own political gain. The extremists are nuts… not the truckers. My Uncle Emmitt was a highballing trucker in the 1960s, when driving offered an honest job – decent pay, union protections, benefits, and normal hours. Then came the d...
Wimpy leaders ignore strong people
March 24, 2022 04:01 - 1.98 MBRight-wing Republicans and corporate Democrats have become a pathetic bunch of "No-can-do Nancys." Faced with an economy reeling from the plutocratic policies that these same lawmakers pushed down upon us, they are now whimpering that America is too weak to meet the obvious needs of its own people. "We must surrender to the Gods of Economic Despair," they cry. At a time when history calls for our leaders to step forth with a bit of FDR boldness and rally grassroots people to rebuild our econ...
Who’s making our medicine?
March 22, 2022 04:01 - 1.98 MBLet’s talk pills. To treat everything from allergies to heart problems, half of Americans take a prescription medicine every day, and nearly all of us reach for the pill bottle on occasion. It's perfectly safe, though, because the Food and Drug Administration regulates the ingredients that go into those medicinal compounds, right? Yes – assuming they’re produced in the USA. Uh, aren’t they? Mostly, no. Take antibiotics. The New York Times reports that ingredients for the majority of these ...
Now, Robots are Coming for White-Collar Jobs
March 17, 2022 04:01 - 2.97 MBIn CorporateSpeak, there are no “job cuts.” Instead, firings are blandly referred to as “employment adjustments.” Now, though, corporate wordsmiths will need a whole new thesaurus of euphemisms, for masses of job cuts are coming for employees in the higher echelons of the corporate structure. Don’t look now, but an unanticipated result of the ongoing pandemic is that it has given cover for CEOs to speed up the adoption of highly-advanced RPAs (Robotic Process Automation) to replace employees...
Is Your Job in the Robot Kill Path?
March 15, 2022 04:01 - 2.96 MBHunters have come up with euphemisms to make what they do sound… well, less unpleasant. For example, animals aren’t killed, they’re “harvested.” Corporate America is now adopting this verbal ploy, for CEOs urgently need to soften the image of their constant hunt for ways to kill jobs. Their urgency is that they’re now pushing a huge new surge in cuts – this time targeting college-educated, white-collar professionals. Their weapon is the same sort of neutron bomb they’ve used to dispatch mill...
A Rube Goldberg Inflationary Spiral
March 10, 2022 05:01 - 4.95 MBLast July, several GOP senators combined their 5-watt intellects to charge that inflation was rising because of the “insane tax and spending spree of President Biden and the Democrats.” Never mind that the “insane” spending is for such sensible, productive, and enormously popular national needs as childcare and jobless benefits, Mitch McConnell’s rabidly partisan flock saw the chance to politicize the public’s legitimate worries about rising prices. You poor consumers are made to pay more f...
A Phoenix is Rising
March 03, 2022 05:10 - 2.97 MBOur local newspapers are being merged, purged, shrunk, shut down, and looted by Wall Street profiteers – yet there’s good news. In the towns those media vultures are torching, a phoenix is rising! Hundreds of determined locals, often led by people of color, are finding new ways to pay for and revive top-quality, local journalism. For example, the Ferndale (CA) Enterprise moved to an old Victorian home, renting upstairs rooms to vacationers to subsidize the paper. Also, while aloof Wall Stree...
The Oracle Speaks
March 01, 2022 05:01 - 2.96 MBMega-investor Warren Buffett once held a big portfolio of daily and weekly newspapers, and he specialized in squeezing out competitors so each held a local monopoly. Then he’d chop staff and news content, letting him glean annual profit margins above 30%. But alas for poor Warren, along came the internet, allowing people to root around for free to find local information missing from his hollowed-out papers. They began losing readers, advertisers, and profits, so, in 2020, Buffett sold out hi...
A wealth tax for American progress
February 24, 2022 05:01 - 2.74 MBThe rich are different from you and me. For one thing, they’re rich. Among the super-rich, though, there tends to be a peculiar sense that their net worth is a testament to their true worthiness. Thus, they seem to cling desperately to the very idea of being extremely wealthy. This leads to one specific difference between them and us: Most of us favor a wealth tax to help bridge the gaping chasm of inequality in our society; the rich do not. Indeed, we hear shrieks of abject horror and crie...
Who was Smedley Darlington Butler, and why is he important?
February 22, 2022 05:01 - 3.34 MBMany Americans can't believe that political coups are part of our country's history – but consider from the Wall Street Putsch of 1933. Never heard of it? It was a corporate conspiracy to oust Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had just been elected president. With the Great Depression raging and millions of families financially devastated, FDR had launched several economic recovery programs to help people get back on their feet. To pay for this crucial effort, he had the audacity to raise taxes on ...
Should We Trust Corporations to Save Our Democracy? Ha! Just kidding.
February 17, 2022 05:01 - 4.95 MBCorporate CEOs are mostly sedentary, well-heeled money people who would hardly be considered athletic. Yet, every now and then a few of these soft elites bust out as championship players of an old game called Duck & Dodge. It’s a sport of political finesse played when social conditions reach a boiling point, threatening problems for the corporate order. In such moments, executives sometimes leap forth as social activists, claiming to side with the aggrieved. Ducking and dodging their own res...
Corporate Sponsors Win Olympic Gold in “Downhill Ethical Backflip”
February 15, 2022 05:01 - 4.94 MBIn this year’s Beijing Olympics, the top team performance has been Corporate America’s breathtaking “Double-twist Ethical Backflip.” This group of corporate giants loudly tout their code of ethics, pledging to stand against repressive regimes that abuse human rights. But here came the Olympics, posing a direct test… and they flopped! Human rights advocates worldwide had asked that corporations withhold their sponsorship of the propagandistic use of the Olympics by China’s brutally oppressiv...
How social distancing can bring us together
February 10, 2022 05:01 - 2.97 MBSuddenly, "social distancing" is our new national etiquette, abruptly supplanting handshakes, hugs, gatherings, and other forms of ingrained communal behavior by us humans. Awkward. Disconcerting. Isolating. Yet, as we frantically scramble to deter the health and economic ravages of Covid-19, we might benefit by pondering a self-inflicted cause of the contagion's disastrous spread: Social distancing! For some 40 years, American corporations and governments have imposed economic, political, a...
The deadly economic disease behind COVID-19
February 08, 2022 05:01 - 2.98 MBIn this horrible time of economic collapse, it is truly touching to see so many corporate chieftains reaching out in solidarity with the hard-hit working class. We know they're doing this because they keep telling us they are – practically every brand – name giant has been spending millions of dollars on PR campaigns in recent weeks asserting that they're standing with us, declaring over and over: "We're all in this together." Except, of course, they're really not standing anywhere near us....
Should Democrats be the party of small change?
February 03, 2022 05:01 - 2.97 MBWe might expect that corporate billionaires and Koch-funded Republican right-wingers would be howl-at-the-moon opponents of a wealth tax, Medicare-for-All, and other big, progressive ideas to help improve the circumstances of America's workaday majority. But... Democrats? Unfortunately, yes. Not grassroots Dems, but a gaggle of don't-rock-the-corporate-boat, Fraidy-cat Democrats. These naysayers are the Party's old-line pols, lobbyists, and other insider elites who're now screeching that Dem...
How to get Congress to reform our broken healthcare system
February 01, 2022 05:01 - 2.97 MBFor $3.5 Trillion a year, shouldn't we Americans have a world-class healthcare 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. No surprise then, that the "Medicare-for-All" idea is now backed by 85 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of Independents, and (get this) 52 percent of Republicans! So... why isn't Congress responding to this overwhelming public demand for universal coverage? I suspec...
What’s the charitable thing to do about inequality?
January 27, 2022 05:01 - 2.97 MBOur society has coined expressions like "philanthropist" to encourage and hail people's charitable spirit. Look on the flip side of that shiny coin of generosity, however, and you'll find that its base substance is societal selfishness. After all, the need for charity only exists because we're tolerating intentional injustices and widespread inequality created by power elites. A society as supremely wealthy as ours ought not be relegating needy families and essential components of the commo...