The Hightower Lowdown Archives
February 2023
Word of the Day: Change. Whether used as a verb or a noun, it’s one of the most powerful and…
January 2023
Casey Stengel spent over 50 years in baseball as a player, manager, and colorful raconteur, capping his Hall of Fame…
December 2022
I’ve never been a farmer, but I’ve learned quite a bit about being one from the many I’ve known. Start…
October 2022
Who were the robber barons? The originals, I mean. They were a class of minor lords in feudal Germany who’d…
September 2022
My newspaper died. Well, technically it still appears, but even when it is delivered, it has no life, no news,…
August 2022
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…
July 2022
A general rule of politics warns against trying to win today’s election by re-running yesterday’s campaign. Yet while the political…
June 2022
In the 1990s, the sharp-witted Texan and renowned progressive writer Molly Ivins regaled (and appalled) readers with her reports on…
May 2022
Part 2 of a 2 part series. Read part 1 here. It’s generally assumed that autocrats are brutes who operate…
March 2022
Part 1 of a 2 part series. Read part 2 here. The public’s opinion of the Supreme Court’s job performance…
February 2022
It seems like the price of everything from used cars to hamburger is up-up-up these days, and right-wing politicos and…
January 2022
As an old axiom notes, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” From coast to coast, millions of these long-lived jewels…
December 2021
As a tyke, I never dreamed of growing up to be a political activist/ commentator, but here I am, and…
November 2021
In 1971, Susan DeMarco, Susan Sechler, and I teamed up to launch a muckraking foray into the little-examined, multibillion-dollar labyrinth…
October 2021
From our school years forward, the Holy Keepers of the Corporate Order drum it into our little heads that–ALLELUIA! –we…
September 2021
👉 Don’t miss part one of this blockbuster issue: Exxon tries to BUST a union The corporate hierarchy has long…
August 2021
👉 Don’t miss part two of this blockbuster issue: We’re humans, not corporate cogs In the 1954 race for Texas…
July 2021
Here are two terms that you don’t expect to see together: “the state of Alabama,” and “progressive leader.” (Okay, I’m…
June 2021
If Hollywood wanted to make a gritty movie about the work of dig-it-out newspaper reporters who uncover big local stories…
May 2021
A mechanical marvel of human ingenuity was plopped down on Mars by NASA last February. Its name, Perseverance, fits the…
April 2021
Like practically everything else in 2020, practically everything in the wide domain of Food & Farm has been twisted, transformed,…
February 2021
As Texas Agriculture Commissioner in the 1980s, I took an active role in a rising grassroots rebellion by hardscrabble farm…
January 2021
One of my favorite cartoons strips is Pearls Before Swine, created by Stephan Pastis. In a December drawing, his cantankerous…
December 2020
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…
November 2020
In a spoof of country music’s sad songs of heartache and woe, the old Hee Haw TV show periodically featured…
October 2020
Back around 1900, the popular American humorist Kin Hubbard joked that, “Now and then, an innocent man is sent to…
September 2020
Is it really so hard, so hard that America just can’t handle it? Voting, I mean–smooth democratic elections with all…
August 2020
Donald Trump ought to be required to wear a mask for all of his public outings. Not the COVID-19 safety…
July 2020
Upton Sinclair’s landmark 1905 book, The Jungle, exposed the food contamination and worker exploitation hidden in the fetid stockyards and…
June 2020
If you drive southeast from my home in Austin, Texas, you first glide through rolling hills and farmlands, but the…
May 2020
Laissez-faire ideologue Ronald Reagan delighted in mocking the very idea that government should provide health protection, food aid, income support,…
April 2020
ue Also Sprach Zarathustra, the otherworldly theme music for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bring on Capt. Kirk, Spock, and the…
February 2020
With dozens of Democratic candidates having entered the presidential race (some dropping out before you were aware they’d dropped in),…
January 2020
You know it’s not good news for journalism in your city when local newspaper execs take out a full-page ad…
December 2019
As we hurtle into the 2020s, the future of our food economy (and food itself) remains a fiercely contested competition…
November 2019
As British playwright and political agitator George Bernard Shaw noted, “You don’t make progress by standing on guard, but by…
October 2019
About 40 years ago, a right-wing codger named Eddie Chiles became a momentary political celebrity in my state by buying…
September 2019
Sen. Russell Long, the powerful finance committee chair between 1966 and 1981, liked to recite a little jingle highlighting the…
August 2019
As humans, you and I are allocated only a limited number of breaths in our lifetimes. Yet–day by day, hour…
July 2019
The British people have been widely admired for their steady demeanor in times of adversity–stiff upper lip and all that….
June 2019
In a very weird twist in his chaotic 2016 presidential campaign, Candidate Trump started sounding like a genuine, workaday populist,…
May 2019
In Democratic Promise, Larry Goodwyn’s definitive history of America’s 19th century Populist Movement, he describes the migration of hundreds of…
April 2019
Time flies when you’re having fun, so those of us who merrily pull together this little newsletter each month were…
February 2019
As America rapidly urbanized in the 1920s and ’30s, nearly every burgeoning city gave rise to a jumbled, boisterous side…
January 2019
What lessons can we progressives take from our ballot box wins last year (and, for that matter, from our losses)?…
December 2018
What does the workaday majority of Americans want their lawmakers working on? Check any legitimate poll–or just listen in to…
November 2018
Leave it to Donald Trump to totally pervert the profound significance of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s exposé of Supreme Court…
October 2018
Like a mad Roman emperor, the man in the White House paces the dark hallways in the wee hours, cursing…
September 2018
Donald Trump hates you. But don’t take it personally, he hates me, too–and all of us who constitute The Public….
August 2018
Several months ago, a subscriber to our populist digger of a newsletter expressed vexation that we’ve been wasting his time…
July 2018
In early June, I traveled to “The Valley,” as the McAllen-Brownsville area of Texas is called, down where the Rio…
June 2018
hen I moved to Austin in 1976, I lucked into finding a small, dog-run style house that must have had…
May 2018
“Progress is a nice word we like to use,” Bobby Kennedy once said.”But change is its motivator. And change has…
April 2018
The Lowdown’s report last month on the Koch Klan’s plutocratic coup against your and my democratic rights prompted a few…
February 2018
What’s happening to America? I mean the big America we thought we were building. Since 1776, We the People of…
January 2018
Last June, after Democratic candidates had lost four straight special Congressional elections (Rob Quist in Montana, James Thompson in Kansas,…
December 2017
As the winter solstice nears, people around the world are celebrating end-of-the-year holidays that, while widely diverse, share the ideal…
November 2017
In the 1980s, when I was Texas Ag commissioner, my staff and I proposed a comprehensive set of state rules…
October 2017
During his twelve years as New Mexico’s governor, Bruce King was known as a decent fellow and a pretty good…
September 2017
Let us pause in this month of Labor Day to reflect on the state of working families, ponder the future…
August 2017
Perhaps you’ve seen the brilliant white sand dunes of New Mexico, visited the unique Sand Hills of Nebraska, or frolicked…
July 2017
BREAKING NEWS: COLORADO SPRINGS HAS GONE TO THE DOGS! Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. More about those…
June 2017
When I was a boy, I loved spending time with my Uncle Ernest and Aunt Eula on their small northeast…
May 2017
We the People are being burgled. Again. The most recent hit is just the latest in a long string of…
April 2017
A majority of the public almost always blesses new presidents with a honeymoon gift. In a gesture of patriotic fairness,…
March 2017
In high school, I had a girlfriend who was involved in student government and all sorts of good works. While…
February 2017
A decade ago, some barons of the media establishment designated themselves America’s official arbiters of political truth (or “truthiness,” as…
January 2017
During the farm crisis of the 1980s, an Iowa farmer asked if I knew the difference between a family farmer…
December 2016
Buckle up, friends. Most Americans are about to be detoured onto a rough and rocky back road called “Trump Way.”…
November 2016
What an election year. I feel like I’ve been transported through a cosmic squirrel hole into a baffling political universe…
October 2016
In years past, Hollywood produced many awful Cowboy & Indian movies depicting the Great White Father’s heroic conquest of the…
September 2016
In a 1932 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted that one benefit of America’s federal structure is that…
August 2016
Being a muckraking political writer often makes me feel like a custodian in a horse barn, constantly shoveling manure. It’s…
July 2016
What an amazing Democratic primary season it’s been, including this happy result: WE WON! “We” being the millions of young…
June 2016
When I was about six years of age, my Uncle Earnest showed me something that made my jaw drop, my…
May 2016
Who are these people? Why are they so angry? What do they want? How can we make them go away?…
March 2016
The jig is up, and my time has come. I’m about to be arrested. They’ll be hauling me away in…
February 2016
Attention class! Here’s our word of the day: “Hegemony.” Can you say heh-jeh-meh-nee, boys and girls? The word describes a…
January 2016
When I crossed paths with a Democratic Party campaign consultant in Austin last March, I suggested he come out to…
December 2015
Dear people of 2115, Hello, future humans! Anyone there? I’m one of your forebears from the generation of your great,…
November 2015
Thanksgiving approaches–let’s eat! America’s most food-focused holiday traces its roots back to the abundant fall feast that Pilgrims and Indians…
October 2015
eople like trains. Whether taking a long trip or making the daily commute, riding the rails, without the hassles of…
September 2015
t’s a bit odd that in America’s thoroughly corporatized culture we have no national day of honor for the Captains…
August 2015
Progressive forces battling that God-awful gob of global corporate gobbledygook, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, encountered an odd problem: Incredulity. As the…
July 2015
The human race has one really effective weapon,” said America’s master of wit, Mark Twain, “and that is laughter.” So…
June 2015
n his 2012 presidential escapade, Mitt Romney cast himself as just a regular fella, but his inner son-of-privilege kept coming…
May 2015
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…
April 2015
Butch Hancock, one of Austin’s finest singer-songwriters, grew up in the Texas Panhandle, out among dryland farmers and strict fundamentalist…
March 2015
e all know the word “valentine” from the February day when sweethearts exchange red-frilly cards. But it’s also the name…
February 2015
lutocracy hangs out with his good buddy, Authoritarianism. After all, when a rich few are in control of a country’s…
January 2015
When I was just a tyke, my momma warned me not to eat anything unless I knew where it came…
November 2014
Call me a starry-eyed idealist, but it seems to me that if you’re going to send Americans to war, you…
September 2014
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…
August 2014
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…
July 2014
So many absurdities abound in our lives that there’s a whole body of philosophical thought called “absurdism,” as well as…
June 2014
Imagine my surprise when Robert Marcus, COO of Time Warner Cable, reached out to me in March. I don’t get…
May 2014
While taking in the splendor of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, a tourist came across a monk and asked if…
April 2014
Working. Poor. In our US of A, those words ought never be juxtaposed. The very concept of paying poverty wages in…
March 2014
Who knew that 1984 was a how-to manual? Of course, George Orwell did not intend for his novel about life in a…
January 2014
In November, I spoke to an overflow crowd gathered in Duke University’s Lilly Library for Larry Goodwyn’sunusual memorial service. Unusual? Well,…
December 2013
Several pro football franchises have chosen chest-pounding team names meant to symbolize how big, powerful, ferocious, and scary they are–names…
November 2013
By gollies, McDonald’s cares. Despite being a corporate behemoth (more than 14,000 stores in the US, $27 billion a year…
October 2013
Rube Goldberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist of the last century, was famous for drawings of what he called “inventions” –complicated…
September 2013
If you’ve never seen a pack of pompous state legislators fall into a panic, you’ve missed a scene of…
August 2013
In 2002, it was reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had told a friend an amusing tale about our man George W….
July 2013
Beginning in elementary school, we’re taught a fictionalized “Great Man” version of our history. Generals, presidents, industrialists! All are romanticized, sanctified,…
June 2013
Poverty in America: Bigger than ever and rapidly spreading. The flood of poor people in this Land of Plenty is being…
May 2013
Some of you might remember “CREEP” from 1972’s Nixon-McGovern matchup. It could’ve been an apt code name for Tricky Dick himself,…
April 2013
The spark that ignited tea party wrath in 2008 was not such right-wing bugaboos as “Obamacare,” the federal deficit, or states’…
March 2013
Being wronged by a corporation is painful enough, but getting your day in court is no picnic either. Aside from…
February 2013
If you drive west from Marfa, Texas toward El Paso, you’ll cross some 200 miles of uniquely beautiful desert valleys…
January 2013
for nearly 13 years now, and while we offer a lot of information in our four pages, we often hear…
December 2012
As I learned from experience in my “vote-for-me” period, the nature of the political scramble is this: You win some,…
November 2012
In 1972, I was part of a nationwide campaignthat came tantalizingly close to getting the US Senate to reject Earl…
October 2012
During the past several years, a mess of plutocratic myths has been growing like kudzu across our political landscape. This aggressive…
September 2012
Here’s a political storyline that might seem familiar to you: With economic pain and political discord ripping across the land, he appeared…
August 2012
Sometimes, it’s useful to state the obvious. Here’s a fact, for example, that we all know to be true: America’s economy…
July 2012
Whether you’re religious or not, seeing flames coming out of your kitchen faucet would be enough to make you fall to…
June 2012
Leave it to Bill Moyers, one of America’s most useful citizens, to sum up our country’s present political plight in a succinct…
May 2012
Butterflies waft across a beautiful field of spring flowers. A delightful young family bicycles joyously down a country lane. A couple…
April 2012
On the last day of last year, Austin’s daily newspaper led with a story that it tagged as an “Internet Privacy”…
March 2012
Consider $.50. What does that buy these days? Not a cuppa joe–that’ll cost you two bucks at Starbucks, and even McDonald’s…
February 2012
The earth’s core, consisting largely of iron, helps balance our spinning planet. On the other hand, the core of too many…
January 2012
We’re being told by today’s High Priests of Conventional Wisdom that everyone and everything in our economic cosmos necessarily revolves around…
December 2011
“We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide…
November 2011
Americans who flew bombing missions in World War II had a saying: “You know you’re on target when you start getting…
October 2011
Thank you Mitt Romney! Thank you for standing tall, speaking so forthrightly, and rallying so many democracy-loving Americans to join together…
September 2011
As he keeps demonstrating, President Obama is not exactly Mount Rushmore material. But — good God! — the petulant pettiness and…
August 2011
Bill Watterson is Mark Twain–with a drawing pen. He is a master cartoonist, but also a sharp-witted observer of the…
July 2011
It’s frightening to watch the Texas legislature in action, but it can also be entertaining–in the same way a freak show…
June 2011
In January, a small group of Indiana schoolteachers encountered their governor, Mitch Daniels, in a hallway of the state capitol. They…
May 2011
You’re not likely to have known Robert Clark, Ruth West, Chet Newall, Webb Kamp, or Darrell Odom, but I wouldn’t be…
April 2011
It’s unlikely that you have heard of a novel entitled Alpaca, but it was a remarkably portentous piece of political writing by…
March 2011
In 1986, Richard Kimball, a Democratic state legislator in Arizona, was running for a US Senate seat. In a televised…
February 2011
One of the great works of American political literature is Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, first published in 1906. From A-Z, Bierce…
January 2011
Lonnie Johnson was the early blues and jazz great who turned the guitar into a solo instrument. In the 1920s, he…
December 2010
The day before the election, I sensed a strange karma, as though some diabolical political force was settling across the…
November 2010
Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock form the Flatlanders, a powerhouse trio of Texas singer/ songwriters now based in…
October 2010
At long last, it’s over. In the pre-dawn hours of August 18–seven years, two months, and 18 days after George W…
September 2010
By gollies, when the economic going gets toughfor America’s workaday people, you can always count on our tough-minded political leaders…
August 2010
Their names probably won’t mean mean anything to you, but these people ought to have some modicum of personal recognition: Jason…
July 2010
In the 1970s, Lily Tomlin developed an iconic comic character she named Ernestine–a telephone clerk who took perverse pleasure from hectoring…
June 2010
If a political pollster came to my door and asked whether I consider myself a conservative or a liberal, I’d…
May 2010
The Dow Jones Average is above 11,000!Corporate profits are up! Wall Street has paid back its bailout money! Executive pay…
April 2010
Change. That’s what Americans want. We the People–a.k.a. the body politic, the majority, the great unwashed, the hoi polloi, “us”–have made…
March 2010
“For too long,” wailed the senator in a heart-tugging cry for justice, “some in this country have been deprived of full…
February 2010
Despite a constant racket from the forces of the far-out right (Fox television’s yackety-yackers, just-say-no GOP know-nothings, tea-bag howlers, Sarah Palinistas,…
January 2010
The name Felix Walker is not one you would recognize, but this 19th-century congressman inadvertently contributed a word to America’s political…
December 2009
Having just graduated from the University of North Texas in June 1965, I headed east to Washington, D.C., for a few…
November 2009
You might remember Robert McNamara’s stunning mea culpa, delivered a quarter century after his Vietnam War policies sent some 50,000…
October 2009
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is America’s “Man in the Stans”–Afghanistan and Pakistan, that is. Handpicked by President Obama to be special representative…
September 2009
At his 2005 hearing to be confirmed as chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts had to convince some skeptical…
August 2009
The Bible tells us that on the sixth day, God created man, allowing him to live in the lush Garden…
July 2009
Out in West Texas, an oxymoronic weather phenomenon known as a “dry rainstorm” often occurs. It’s particularly tough on farmers….
June 2009
Now is the time for boldness! Instead, we’re getting Baucusness. Sen. Max Baucus, that is–Montana Democrat, chair of the Senate Finance Committee,…
May 2009
When I lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked…
April 2009
Did you have a piggy bank when you were a child? Mine was a cheery, round pig–made of brown pottery, as…
March 2009
Last October, Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus blew a gasket, spewing outrage in all directions. “This is the demise of civilization,”…
February 2009
Sorry to interrupt the Obama celebration even before the man gets settled into the Oval Office, but–what the hell is he…
January 2009
THE 8,000-MEMBER GREATER GRACE TEMPLE in Detroit is the home church of many autoworkers, and its Sunday service on December 7…
December 2008
After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, “I feel good about voting for him.” Ms. Jones,…
November 2008
What the hell’s happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money?…
October 2008
At a time when We The People have been vociferously and unequivocally demanding that our political aspirants offer Big Ideas…
September 2008
Here they come–America’s Drill Team! Out front are the two high-strutting leaders, John McCain and George W, thrusting their drum-major batons…
August 2008
The political media establishment is enrapturedby John McCain. Mainline media sparklies, as well as the blatherers on the Fox channel, routinely buff…
July 2008
There’ll be a crush of cameras at the front door of the White House on January 20 as scores of…
June 2008
Dallas Oilman H.L. Hunt was a billionaire in a time when such massive wealth was unusual, back in the 1950s and…
May 2008
Wow, has it really been five years since “Mission Accomplished?” It seems like only yesterday that our Glorious Leader was strutting…
April 2008
Harry Truman said, “No man should be allowed to be president who doesn’t understand hogs.” That’s never been more true…
March 2008
WASHINGTON WAS EXCITED. The media establishment applauded. Wall Street smiled. Somewhere, a bluebird of happiness chirped. In a celebrated display…
February 2008
SUSAN DEMARCO AND I WANT TO GIVE YOU LOWDOWNERS A SPECIAL PREVIEW of our new book, for it personalizes the positive grassroots…
January 2008
THE WAILING IN OUR COUNTRY ABOUT the “invasion of immigrants” has been long and loud. As one complainant put it, “Few…
December 2007
IN A SEASON THAT SHOULD BE CONVIVIAL AND COMFORTING — filled with family, friends, fun, spiritualism, good food, song, and high…
November 2007
LOOK OUT–HERE THEY COME AGAIN! Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, waving the bloody flag of 9/11, demonizing…
October 2007
WHERE IS CONGRESS? It’s way past time for members to stand up. Historic matters are at stake. The Constitution is being…
September 2007
A FRIEND OF MINE TELLS A STORY about the political demise in the 1950s of an entrenched Oklahoma state representative,…
August 2007
DURING HIS GUBERNATORIAL DAYS IN TEXAS, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into…
August 2007
ONE OF THE MOST DRAMATIC STORIES from the New Testament is of the time that Jesus encountered money changers in the…
July 2007
WILL ROGERS SOMETIMES TUCKED little moral messages into his one-liners. For example: “I’d rather be the man who bought the…
June 2007
THE SPRAWLING $43 BILLION HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT (HSD) is known chiefly for being the agency in charge of America’s color-coded terrorist-threat…
May 2007
■ 3,300 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead ■ Rumsfeld said the Iraq attack would cost…
April 2007
FROM THE “LAND OF THE CLUELESS AND CONNIVING,” meet a couple of gentlemen who insist that America’s political funding system is…
March 2007
THE 2006 ELECTION RESULTS HAVE JUST COME IN! Not the polling results for Congress, of course—we got those last November. I’m…
February 2007
“We have to leech this excess, this wretched excess, of money out of the system which is distorting democracy.” —Former…
January 2007
“You can’t create a team spirit when the situation is so one-sided, when management gets so much and workers get…
December 2006
AT AN OCTOBER FUNDRAISER IN TOPEKA,the Republican faithful lined up to shake hands with the headliner, Dick Cheney. But before…
November 2006
CODE RED, AMERICANS! Screaming, flashing, neon-bright, God Almighty RED!!! Not just a single disaster, but multiple, biblical-level catastrophes are being…
October 2006
AS YOU READ THIS ISSUE OF THE LOWDOWN, I’m out on the political trail, rambling back and forth across America in…
September 2006
IT SEEMS TO ME THAT GEORGE W missed his true calling. I think he has long harbored a secret desire…
July 2006
George W keeps buzzing around like a maniacal mosquito on a hot summer night, pestering us with speeches and photo…
June 2006
How messed up is America’s health-care system? Consider the case of the Leavitts. Anne and her husband Dixie, both in…
May 2006
In 1928, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that the real threat to American freedom was not from an outside assault, but…
April 2006
A fellow from a town just outside of Austin wrote a four-sentence letter to the editor of our local…
March 2006
Even though winter still has its frigid grip on most of the land, I’m already thinking out-of-season, looking ahead…
February 2006
What an embarrassment our national government is. Mired in the sickening muck of corrupt corporate money and right-wing ideology,…
January 2006
People like Robert Paulk and Jerry Roy are the heart of corporations like General Motors. Paulk, 58, and Roy, 49,…
December 2005
Dear Santa:There are so many toys I’d love to find under my tree this year! All kinds of new kitchen…
November 2005
Many of you Lowdowners have told me that you often share the newsletter with your teenagers—and even younger children. Therefore,…
October 2005
By the fifth day — with New Orleans under 20 feet of toxic water, with federal help still nowhere to…
September 2005
George W was hardly the first draft-age man of means who used family connections to duck going to war (even…
August 2005
In 1981, when blowhard televangelist Jerry Falwell exclaimed that Sandra Day O’Connor was not right wing enough for him, and…
July 2005
What do you think of bums who come into our towns asking for handouts as though they have some right…
June 2005
Breaking news: The Lowdown has learned from inside sources that the president will soon deliver a major address to We…
May 2005
No president has really been serious about conservation and renewable energy, but Jimmy Carter at least made a symbolic statement…
April 2005
When George W says he’s going to “fix” our Social Security system, I feel like a dog that’s just been…
March 2005
He predicted Social Security would go broke in 10 years and said the system should give people ‘the chance to…
February 2005
Did you catch George W’s pep rally just before Christmas? The White House solemnly billed it as a two-day “summit”…
January 2005
The Capitol City is swarming this month with party-hopping Republicans celebrating the inauguration of their boy Bush—but the most joyous…
December 2004
‘Tis the jolly season of Santa Claus, with fantasies of sugar plums dancing all about, so it seems appropriate that…
November 2004
Okay, my election projections were slightly off. I said that there would be the biggest turnout in many years, which…
October 2004
Hey, come on, progressives— buck up! There’s been too much doom and gloom—especially among inside-the-beltway progressives—about John Kerry’s chances…
September 2004
Forget worrying about an “October Surprise”—it’s the “November Surprise” that could squirrel this election! All across the country, there’s a…
August 2004
Listening to all this talk of “swing voters” and “battleground states,” I often think about my dear ol’ daddy, W.F….
July 2004
Observing from afar, it seems to me that “Being Bush” must be such a great joy. Reality never seems to…
June 2004
John Kerry wrote to me last month. “Dear James Hightower,” the letter began (OK, it wasn’t that personal of a…
May 2004
Democratic reformer Henry Adams, who decried the decline in democracy as the robber barons rose to power in the nineteenth…
April 2004
When the first undeniable American case of Mad Cow Disease broke into the news last December, a host of Bush…
March 2004
Carly Fiorina is a Bushite kind of woman–Donnie Rumsfeld with nail polish. Like George faves Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and…
February 2004
If hypocrisy were a drug, Washington would be the crack capital of the world. Congressional and White House leaders these…
January 2004
The oddest thing has happened. There has been a sudden outbreak of Democrats in the most unexpected of places: inside…
December 2003
Usually, I try to give you Lowdowners a break from bad news in December, a month in which we Americans…
November 2003
In politics, especially in the South, it’s not uncommon to be tagged with a nickname. In my first run for…
October 2003
Welcome to WallyWorld. Like some combination of Oz, Alice’s Wonderland, and the Brothers Grimm, it’s a fabulistic realm ripe with…
September 2003
It’s September 11–do you know where John Ashcroft is? It’s been two years since America was attacked by Al Qaeda…
August 2003
klepltolcrat naltion (klep´te krat´ na´shen) n. 1. A body of people ruled by thieves. 2. A government characterized by the practice of…
July 2003
Imagine, if you will, a well-scrubbed candidate for president, the Senate, or the House of Representatives holding a campaign press…
June 2003
A national magazine recently featured a story about the paychecks of corporate CEOs. The cover featured a pink-faced pig dressed…
May 2003
Where are we headed? What’s behind the bellowing bellicosity of the Bushites, so mindlessly amplified by the war-whooping media and…
April 2003
There’s a historic date that our country ought to mark every year, which has had as great an impact on…
February 2003
Some days, I listen to the bushwah coming from Congress or the White House and I find myself asking, “Who…
January 2003
Alberto Fujimori is the disgraced former president of Peru who claims that, from 1990 to 2000, he smashed two revolutionary…
December 2002
You know that we progressives had a rough election when one of our bright spots was in the Oklahoma referendum…
November 2002
Harry Truman said: “No man should be president who doesn’t understand hogs.” The problem with our recent presidents, however—including los…
October 2002
Hoo-boy. Look out, world, here comes King George the W, all saddled up on his war pony, decked out in…
September 2002
Just a month before taking over the White House, George W. said of America’s government: “If this were a dictatorship,…
August 2002
In Mexican-American communities along the Texas Gulf Coast, there’s an old adage, or dicho: “El camarón que se duerme se…
July 2002
As early-20th-century humorist Kin Hubbard noted, “The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.” Beware, then,…
June 2002
The greater villains are loose in our world today, literally thirsting to take things that are yours and mine—and this…
May 2002
Whenever you hear that George W. Bush, Tom Daschle, or any of the other top politicos in Washington has announced…
April 2002
Corporations rule. No other institution comes close to matching the power that the 500 biggest corporations have amassed over us….
March 2002
Ken Lay’s ambition was to make Enron a household name, and now he’s got his wish. All the cogs and…
February 2002
Not even our sagacious friend Obey could have imagined how many big mistakes would be pushed through Congress by selfish…
January 2002
Twenty years ago, there was a lively, good-time beer joint in my town of Austin called the Raw Deal. It…
December 2001
In my constant travels and talks throughout our country, I find that something big is happening at America’s grassroots that…
November 2001
As our missiles and cluster bombs fill the air in Afghanistan, the lies of our officials fill the air here…
October 2001
I’m flying a flag these days. The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, America’s flag, OUR flag! I’ve strapped it to…
September 2001
Last April at the presidential Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, our very own George W. Bush attempted to…
August 2001
When he was a U.S. senator many years ago, Oklahoma’s Bob Kerr would occasionally express amazement at some bit of…
July 2001
“The Democratic Party of the nation ain’t dead,” said New York political operative George Washington Plunkett at the turn of…
June 2001
Bruce King, the former governor of New Mexico, once said with alarm: “We don’t want to open a box of…
May 2001
Open wide . . . here comes another great big glob of globaloney that the Powers That Be want to…
April 2001
Ronald Reagan, bless his perpetually wagging head, had a childlike devotion to the notion that “deregulation” was the castor oil…
March 2001
It is said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. But…
February 2001
Greetings can be quite unique around the world. I’m told that New Zealand’s Maori tribesmen rub noses when they meet,…
January 2001
t took more than a month, but the Powers That Be finally tallied the presidential vote: Bush 5, Gore 4….
December 2000
Not all computer errors involve the counting of votes in Florida. Writing in Funny Times, language maven Richard Lederer tells…
November 2000
Well’here we are. After two years, half a billion bucks, a forest of press releases, a tsunami of polling data,…
October 2000
It’s an article of faith among the Democrats-for-Gore set that, whatever faults Al may have (his own mother describes him…
August 2000
To get a job these days, chances are you’ll have to pee in a bottle. Your intimate medical history can…
July 2000
See if this sounds at all familiar to you: In a faraway land, a civil war has been raging for…
June 2000
As Pancho Villa lay dying, he suddenly realized his followers would expect some memorable last words from him. But he…
May 2000
As most of us know by now, the Republicrat two party duopoly is squeezing the life out of our democratic…
April 2000
Well, there we have it: Gore-Bush. Dull versus dullard. The political establishments of the two-party duopoly successfully rose up to…
March 2000
There’s a crime wave underway in America, but the Powers That Be are getting sore necks from looking the other…
February 2000
The quadrennial presidential horse race is on, and the media establishment has unleashed its army of pundits, pollsters, powdered anchors,…
January 2000
Getting the diverse parts of a people’s political movement together and moving in the same direction at the same time…
December 1999
Bo Pilgrim is a big-time chicken processor in East Texas, but he wasn’t known to the average Texan until he…
November 1999
Mark Twain once said, “Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” I’ve been…
October 1999
Imagine it. A world in which you, the average American worker, gets a princely $110,000 a year for your efforts….
September 1999
David Lubar is the author of a funny Q&A piece about HMOs that has made the rounds on the Internet….
August 1999
How many pockets does a political candidate have? As many as it takes. In recent years, the tailors have been…
July 1999
Have you heard of the ‘Butterfly Effect?’ Both a scientific concept and an ecological reality, its essence is that the…
June 1999
A truck stop in Tulsa has a sign that proclaims: “Kids with gas eat free.” Well, kids, Im getting gas…
April 1999
Let’s pull the curtain and look at a police line-up of some of the most thuggish members of organized crime…
March 1999
Last year in Paris a bunch of guys in suits met secretly to draft a document they called ‘the constitution…