The Hightower Lowdown Archives
Word of the Day: Change. Whether used as a verb or a noun, it’s one of the most powerful and…
Casey Stengel spent over 50 years in baseball as a player, manager, and colorful raconteur, capping his Hall of Fame…
I’ve never been a farmer, but I’ve learned quite a bit about being one from the many I’ve known. Start…
Who were the robber barons? The originals, I mean. They were a class of minor lords in feudal Germany who’d…
My newspaper died. Well, technically it still appears, but even when it is delivered, it has no life, no news,…
C’mon down! It’s our late-summer County Fair issue of the Lowdown—a mix of Blue Ribbon political/economic/social progress, some hog stuff…
A general rule of politics warns against trying to win today’s election by re-running yesterday’s campaign. Yet while the political…
In the 1990s, the sharp-witted Texan and renowned progressive writer Molly Ivins regaled (and appalled) readers with her reports on…
Part 2 of a 2 part series. Read part 1 here. It’s generally assumed that autocrats are brutes who operate…
Part 1 of a 2 part series. Read part 2 here. The public’s opinion of the Supreme Court’s job performance…
It seems like the price of everything from used cars to hamburger is up-up-up these days, and right-wing politicos and…
As an old axiom notes, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” From coast to coast, millions of these long-lived jewels…
As a tyke, I never dreamed of growing up to be a political activist/ commentator, but here I am, and…
In 1971, Susan DeMarco, Susan Sechler, and I teamed up to launch a muckraking foray into the little-examined, multibillion-dollar labyrinth…
From our school years forward, the Holy Keepers of the Corporate Order drum it into our little heads that–ALLELUIA! –we…
👉 Don’t miss part one of this blockbuster issue: Exxon tries to BUST a union The corporate hierarchy has long…
👉 Don’t miss part two of this blockbuster issue: We’re humans, not corporate cogs In the 1954 race for Texas…
Here are two terms that you don’t expect to see together: “the state of Alabama,” and “progressive leader.” (Okay, I’m…
If Hollywood wanted to make a gritty movie about the work of dig-it-out newspaper reporters who uncover big local stories…
A mechanical marvel of human ingenuity was plopped down on Mars by NASA last February. Its name, Perseverance, fits the…
Like practically everything else in 2020, practically everything in the wide domain of Food & Farm has been twisted, transformed,…
As Texas Agriculture Commissioner in the 1980s, I took an active role in a rising grassroots rebellion by hardscrabble farm…
One of my favorite cartoons strips is Pearls Before Swine, created by Stephan Pastis. In a December drawing, his cantankerous…
Here they come again. The Democratic Party establishment of high-dollar donors, don’t-rock-the-corporate-boat congressional leaders, and their hired political operatives are…
In a spoof of country music’s sad songs of heartache and woe, the old Hee Haw TV show periodically featured…
Back around 1900, the popular American humorist Kin Hubbard joked that, “Now and then, an innocent man is sent to…
Is it really so hard, so hard that America just can’t handle it? Voting, I mean–smooth democratic elections with all…
Donald Trump ought to be required to wear a mask for all of his public outings. Not the COVID-19 safety…
Upton Sinclair’s landmark 1905 book, The Jungle, exposed the food contamination and worker exploitation hidden in the fetid stockyards and…
If you drive southeast from my home in Austin, Texas, you first glide through rolling hills and farmlands, but the…
Laissez-faire ideologue Ronald Reagan delighted in mocking the very idea that government should provide health protection, food aid, income support,…
ue Also Sprach Zarathustra, the otherworldly theme music for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bring on Capt. Kirk, Spock, and the…
With dozens of Democratic candidates having entered the presidential race (some dropping out before you were aware they’d dropped in),…
You know it’s not good news for journalism in your city when local newspaper execs take out a full-page ad…
As we hurtle into the 2020s, the future of our food economy (and food itself) remains a fiercely contested competition…
As British playwright and political agitator George Bernard Shaw noted, “You don’t make progress by standing on guard, but by…
About 40 years ago, a right-wing codger named Eddie Chiles became a momentary political celebrity in my state by buying…
Sen. Russell Long, the powerful finance committee chair between 1966 and 1981, liked to recite a little jingle highlighting the…
As humans, you and I are allocated only a limited number of breaths in our lifetimes. Yet–day by day, hour…
The British people have been widely admired for their steady demeanor in times of adversity–stiff upper lip and all that….
In a very weird twist in his chaotic 2016 presidential campaign, Candidate Trump started sounding like a genuine, workaday populist,…
In Democratic Promise, Larry Goodwyn’s definitive history of America’s 19th century Populist Movement, he describes the migration of hundreds of…
Time flies when you’re having fun, so those of us who merrily pull together this little newsletter each month were…
As America rapidly urbanized in the 1920s and ’30s, nearly every burgeoning city gave rise to a jumbled, boisterous side…
What lessons can we progressives take from our ballot box wins last year (and, for that matter, from our losses)?…
What does the workaday majority of Americans want their lawmakers working on? Check any legitimate poll–or just listen in to…
Leave it to Donald Trump to totally pervert the profound significance of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s exposé of Supreme Court…
Like a mad Roman emperor, the man in the White House paces the dark hallways in the wee hours, cursing…
Donald Trump hates you. But don’t take it personally, he hates me, too–and all of us who constitute The Public….
Several months ago, a subscriber to our populist digger of a newsletter expressed vexation that we’ve been wasting his time…
In early June, I traveled to “The Valley,” as the McAllen-Brownsville area of Texas is called, down where the Rio…
hen I moved to Austin in 1976, I lucked into finding a small, dog-run style house that must have had…
“Progress is a nice word we like to use,” Bobby Kennedy once said.”But change is its motivator. And change has…
The Lowdown’s report last month on the Koch Klan’s plutocratic coup against your and my democratic rights prompted a few…
What’s happening to America? I mean the big America we thought we were building. Since 1776, We the People of…
Last June, after Democratic candidates had lost four straight special Congressional elections (Rob Quist in Montana, James Thompson in Kansas,…
As the winter solstice nears, people around the world are celebrating end-of-the-year holidays that, while widely diverse, share the ideal…
In the 1980s, when I was Texas Ag commissioner, my staff and I proposed a comprehensive set of state rules…
During his twelve years as New Mexico’s governor, Bruce King was known as a decent fellow and a pretty good…
Let us pause in this month of Labor Day to reflect on the state of working families, ponder the future…
Perhaps you’ve seen the brilliant white sand dunes of New Mexico, visited the unique Sand Hills of Nebraska, or frolicked…
BREAKING NEWS: COLORADO SPRINGS HAS GONE TO THE DOGS! Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. More about those…
When I was a boy, I loved spending time with my Uncle Ernest and Aunt Eula on their small northeast…
We the People are being burgled. Again. The most recent hit is just the latest in a long string of…
A majority of the public almost always blesses new presidents with a honeymoon gift. In a gesture of patriotic fairness,…
In high school, I had a girlfriend who was involved in student government and all sorts of good works. While…
A decade ago, some barons of the media establishment designated themselves America’s official arbiters of political truth (or “truthiness,” as…
During the farm crisis of the 1980s, an Iowa farmer asked if I knew the difference between a family farmer…
Buckle up, friends. Most Americans are about to be detoured onto a rough and rocky back road called “Trump Way.”…
What an election year. I feel like I’ve been transported through a cosmic squirrel hole into a baffling political universe…
In years past, Hollywood produced many awful Cowboy & Indian movies depicting the Great White Father’s heroic conquest of the…
In a 1932 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted that one benefit of America’s federal structure is that…
Being a muckraking political writer often makes me feel like a custodian in a horse barn, constantly shoveling manure. It’s…
What an amazing Democratic primary season it’s been, including this happy result: WE WON! “We” being the millions of young…
When I was about six years of age, my Uncle Earnest showed me something that made my jaw drop, my…
Who are these people? Why are they so angry? What do they want? How can we make them go away?…
The jig is up, and my time has come. I’m about to be arrested. They’ll be hauling me away in…
Attention class! Here’s our word of the day: “Hegemony.” Can you say heh-jeh-meh-nee, boys and girls? The word describes a…
When I crossed paths with a Democratic Party campaign consultant in Austin last March, I suggested he come out to…
Dear people of 2115, Hello, future humans! Anyone there? I’m one of your forebears from the generation of your great,…
eople like trains. Whether taking a long trip or making the daily commute, riding the rails, without the hassles of…
t’s a bit odd that in America’s thoroughly corporatized culture we have no national day of honor for the Captains…
Progressive forces battling that God-awful gob of global corporate gobbledygook, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, encountered an odd problem: Incredulity. As the…
n his 2012 presidential escapade, Mitt Romney cast himself as just a regular fella, but his inner son-of-privilege kept coming…
Activists crumble Big Coal, shame Koch-head science, storm to a populist internet victory, and more!
n this age of instant media and round-the-clock news, many stories seize our attention for a moment and then drop…
Butch Hancock, one of Austin’s finest singer-songwriters, grew up in the Texas Panhandle, out among dryland farmers and strict fundamentalist…
e all know the word “valentine” from the February day when sweethearts exchange red-frilly cards. But it’s also the name…
lutocracy hangs out with his good buddy, Authoritarianism. After all, when a rich few are in control of a country’s…
When I was just a tyke, my momma warned me not to eat anything unless I knew where it came…
Call me a starry-eyed idealist, but it seems to me that if you’re going to send Americans to war, you…
Amazon’s ruthless practices are crushing Main Street–and threatening the vitality of our communities
Even by the anything-goes ethical code of the corporate jungle, Amazon.com’s alpha male, Jeff Bezos, is considered a ruthless predator…
Like Walmart, only with supercomputers and drones: At Amazon.com “cheap” comes at a very hefty price
IN HIS CLASSIC 1936 COMEDY, ModernTimes, silent filmmaker Charlie Chaplin depicted the trials and tribulations of a harried factory worker trying…