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…
Usually, the Powers That Be swat away the kind of big-ticket reforms our country needs by haughtily asserting a few…
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…
Yes, it’s true: Scoundrels have been tampering with the ballot! Unfortunately for Trump, the scoundrels are in his own party….
Suggestions* from Democracy Docket to counter Trump’s pre-election sabotage of the USPS during Covid: ✅ Vote early in person. Allowed in…
How extreme are the anti-worker Trumpeteers? So far gone that they’ve lost not only their sense of humor but their…
Donald Trump ought to be required to wear a mask for all of his public outings. Not the COVID-19 safety…
In April, the titans of Meat Inc. started squealing like stuck pigs, claiming that the forced shutdowns of dozens of…
Upton Sinclair’s landmark 1905 book, The Jungle, exposed the food contamination and worker exploitation hidden in the fetid stockyards and…
When a corporation sets up a workplace that routinely results in maiming, mangling, sickening, disabling, and even killing workers, those…
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,…
Breaking news: “Trump says Pentagon Budget Too Big.” Follow-up report: “Pentagon Agrees.” This unexpected budgetary breakthrough comes because Donald The…
“Far-flung” doesn’t describe America’s war reach. Our military personnel, technology, and taxpayers’ money are in so many places that the…
It’s over. Dealmaker Donald says he’s ended America’s long nightmare in Afghanistan, finally halting 18-plus years of grinding war–the longest…
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…
For a lesson on how to tap dance around one’s tax obligation, follow the lead of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s…
Question: How have autocratic REC boards gotten away with openly stiffing their owner-members and flaunting the fundamental democratic principles of…
For a gross example of corruption, deceit, and rigged elections by a co-op board and its manager, Oklahoma’s Choctaw Electric…
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….
As that silver-tongued orator George W. Bush once said: “Fool me once, shame on— shame on you. Fool me—you can’t…
There’s a hierarchy of larceny in our world, from pickpockets to the Wall Street syndicates running sophisticated mass swindles. But…
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…
IT’S NOT WHAT TOURISTS WOULD EXPECT to see as they come over the dunes for a day of beachcombing in…
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…
IN LAST NOVEMBER’S ELECTIONS, native Hawaiian Alika Atay won a seat on the Maui County Council, channeling three powerful spirits…
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…
ENERGY TRANSFER PARTNERS is the lead actor in the pipeline assault on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, but it’s not…
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…
In March 1965, at the end of the historic Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights, Martin Luther King spoke…
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…
IF YOU WORK–OR WORKED–IN MANUFACTURING in the USA, you may already be living the message of the chart above. According…
IN A SONG ABOUT OUTLAWS, Woody Guthrie noted: “Some’ll rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.” But…
MARC RICH, WHO DIED IN 2013, was a high-flying commodities trader. He not only founded and built the company that…
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…
Bernie Sanders has stunned the political establishment by running an extremely well-financed populist campaign–funded by more than three million donations…
Attention class! Here’s our word of the day: “Hegemony.” Can you say heh-jeh-meh-nee, boys and girls? The word describes a…
Headlines periodically blare that this regulator or that has imposed a jaw-dropping assessment on some corporate criminal. “Justice Department Slaps…
When I crossed paths with a Democratic Party campaign consultant in Austin last March, I suggested he come out to…
The Official Tinfoil-Hat Climate Change Scoffers Club bases its widely publicized position on the repeated contention that there is no…
World weather officials have announced that (1) the global warming gasses that enshroud Earth as a result of our ever-increasing…
Dear people of 2115, Hello, future humans! Anyone there? I’m one of your forebears from the generation of your great,…
Thanksgiving approaches–let’s eat! America’s most food-focused holiday traces its roots back to the abundant fall feast that Pilgrims and Indians…
The electric bullet trains that run on the Shinkansen route from Tokyo to Osaka are a beaming source of national…
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…
Harvest Time Seafood, a Louisiana processing corporation, has been a beneficiary of the H-2 visa program, putting female guest workers…
The campaign for the Trans-Pacific Partnership is being engineered by the US Business Coalition for TPP, a who’s who of…
Progressive forces battling that God-awful gob of global corporate gobbledygook, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, encountered an odd problem: Incredulity. As the…
The human race has one really effective weapon,” said America’s master of wit, Mark Twain, “and that is laughter.” So…
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…
Tuition and fees charged by corporate colleges average $35,000 for a two-year degree and $63,000 for a four-year degree–more than…
lutocracy hangs out with his good buddy, Authoritarianism. After all, when a rich few are in control of a country’s…
Money is like manure. For wealth to help nourish a healthy society, it can’t be stored in a few big…
When I was just a tyke, my momma warned me not to eat anything unless I knew where it came…
And lest we get completely distracted by Iraq War III, here’s some breaking news from the frontlines of America’s longest-running…
Call me a starry-eyed idealist, but it seems to me that if you’re going to send Americans to war, you…
Bezos constantly claims that his relentless push for an Amazonian remake of our economy and culture is all about helping…
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…
LEGEND HAS IT that Amazon is a classic story of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. In 1994, a bright,…
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…
You might expect such liberal bastions as Boston, Madison, Boulder, and San Francisco to call for an end to corporate…
In order of the date of passage, here are the 16 states that have already petitioned Congress to let their…
So many absurdities abound in our lives that there’s a whole body of philosophical thought called “absurdism,” as well as…
Oklahomans have been socked with a surprise from their supposedly conservative state officials. Thousands of Sooners have put solar panels…
If a tree falls in the woods and NBC, ABC, and CBS aren’t there to cover the crash, does it…
Imagine my surprise when Robert Marcus, COO of Time Warner Cable, reached out to me in March. I don’t get…
While taking in the splendor of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, a tourist came across a monk and asked if…
Working. Poor. In our US of A, those words ought never be juxtaposed. The very concept of paying poverty wages in…
Until her death last summer, Margaret Mary Vojtkotaught French for 25 years at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, earning high marks from…
A critic of President Obama’s policy of allowing everyone’s electronic communications to be dumped into the NSA’s computer netherworld recently…
Who knew that 1984 was a how-to manual? Of course, George Orwell did not intend for his novel about life in a…
In January, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the intelligence committee, teamed up with her House counterpart, Rep. Mike Rogers, to…
In November, I spoke to an overflow crowd gathered in Duke University’s Lilly Library for Larry Goodwyn’sunusual memorial service. Unusual? Well,…
Several pro football franchises have chosen chest-pounding team names meant to symbolize how big, powerful, ferocious, and scary they are–names…
By gollies, McDonald’s cares. Despite being a corporate behemoth (more than 14,000 stores in the US, $27 billion a year…
Rube Goldberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist of the last century, was famous for drawings of what he called “inventions” –complicated…
To see how easy it is for millions of innocent citizens to get caught up in NSA’s vast electronic web,…
If you’ve never seen a pack of pompous state legislators fall into a panic, you’ve missed a scene of…
In 2002, it was reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had told a friend an amusing tale about our man George W….
Beginning in elementary school, we’re taught a fictionalized “Great Man” version of our history. Generals, presidents, industrialists! All are romanticized, sanctified,…
Poverty in America: Bigger than ever and rapidly spreading. The flood of poor people in this Land of Plenty is being…
Some of you might remember “CREEP” from 1972’s Nixon-McGovern matchup. It could’ve been an apt code name for Tricky Dick himself,…
The spark that ignited tea party wrath in 2008 was not such right-wing bugaboos as “Obamacare,” the federal deficit, or states’…
Practically every national brand name you’ve ever heard of now slips predatory arbitration provisions into their customer terms-of-service agreements and/or…
You don’t hear much about it, but there is another path to justice for some consumers who’ve been wronged by…
Being wronged by a corporation is painful enough, but getting your day in court is no picnic either. Aside from…
Find out here. Are your local or state police using drones? Which ones? How many? At what cost? For what purpose?…
If you drive west from Marfa, Texas toward El Paso, you’ll cross some 200 miles of uniquely beautiful desert valleys…
for nearly 13 years now, and while we offer a lot of information in our four pages, we often hear…
FOX TV YAKKER Bill O’Reilly was a sad old man on election night. “The white establishment is now the minority,” he…
CITIZENS UNITED not only unleashed the Big Dogs of corporate money in this election, but it also unleashed mad-dog corporate bosses…
As I learned from experience in my “vote-for-me” period, the nature of the political scramble is this: You win some,…
In 1972, I was part of a nationwide campaignthat came tantalizingly close to getting the US Senate to reject Earl…
During his infamous, surreptitiously videotaped, $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Florida, Romney was full of disdain for poor people “who pay no…
During the past several years, a mess of plutocratic myths has been growing like kudzu across our political landscape. This aggressive…
“Michiganistan” is a huge national story with profound consequences for America’s historic ideal of being a self-governing people, the very…
Here’s a political storyline that might seem familiar to you: With economic pain and political discord ripping across the land, he appeared…
Demonstrating the depth of his insight into the problems of low-wage workers, GOP Rep. Bill Young of Florida recently “discussed” the…
Sometimes, it’s useful to state the obvious. Here’s a fact, for example, that we all know to be true: America’s economy…
You’ll be pleased to know that academics at such public-spirited institutions as Louisiana State University are dealing with the problem…
doing awfully well these days with their supposed “enemy” Barack Obama. The industry appeared to lose a round to opponents…
Whether you’re religious or not, seeing flames coming out of your kitchen faucet would be enough to make you fall to…
On Feb. 7, Barack Obama jettisoned his principled opposition to the Court’s elevation of Big Money over people by okaying…
Leave it to Bill Moyers, one of America’s most useful citizens, to sum up our country’s present political plight in a succinct…
What if drug marketers had to tell us the details of every under-the-table payment (aka bribes) that they make to…
Butterflies waft across a beautiful field of spring flowers. A delightful young family bicycles joyously down a country lane. A couple…
What: Strategic Forecasting, Inc. is a for-profit, mini-CIA. It uses a web of paid informers around the world to gain…
On the last day of last year, Austin’s daily newspaper led with a story that it tagged as an “Internet Privacy”…
Consider $.50. What does that buy these days? Not a cuppa joe–that’ll cost you two bucks at Starbucks, and even McDonald’s…
The earth’s core, consisting largely of iron, helps balance our spinning planet. On the other hand, the core of too many…
We’re being told by today’s High Priests of Conventional Wisdom that everyone and everything in our economic cosmos necessarily revolves around…
“We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide…
Americans who flew bombing missions in World War II had a saying: “You know you’re on target when you start getting…
Thank you Mitt Romney! Thank you for standing tall, speaking so forthrightly, and rallying so many democracy-loving Americans to join together…
Seems like this would be an easy question to answer, but it turns out that we could find no group,…
As he keeps demonstrating, President Obama is not exactly Mount Rushmore material. But — good God! — the petulant pettiness and…
Bill Watterson is Mark Twain–with a drawing pen. He is a master cartoonist, but also a sharp-witted observer of the…
It’s frightening to watch the Texas legislature in action, but it can also be entertaining–in the same way a freak show…
In January, a small group of Indiana schoolteachers encountered their governor, Mitch Daniels, in a hallway of the state capitol. They…
You’re not likely to have known Robert Clark, Ruth West, Chet Newall, Webb Kamp, or Darrell Odom, but I wouldn’t be…
It’s unlikely that you have heard of a novel entitled Alpaca, but it was a remarkably portentous piece of political writing by…
In 1986, Richard Kimball, a Democratic state legislator in Arizona, was running for a US Senate seat. In a televised…
Unfortunately, the corporatization of America’s judiciary is not just a problem at the top. For more than 30 years, there has…
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…
Is there no balm in Gilead… or in Washington? Will no Democrat soothe the people’s anger at the constant giveaways to…
Lonnie Johnson was the early blues and jazz great who turned the guitar into a solo instrument. In the 1920s, he…
The day before the election, I sensed a strange karma, as though some diabolical political force was settling across the…
Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock form the Flatlanders, a powerhouse trio of Texas singer/ songwriters now based in…
Surging in Afghanistan The surge is on in Afghanistan! Unfortunately, what appears to be most effective is not the 30,000…
At long last, it’s over. In the pre-dawn hours of August 18–seven years, two months, and 18 days after George W…
Profits up!” gloat today’s headlines in the business media. The New York Times reports that the profits of 175 of…
By gollies, when the economic going gets toughfor America’s workaday people, you can always count on our tough-minded political leaders…
Their names probably won’t mean mean anything to you, but these people ought to have some modicum of personal recognition: Jason…
In the 1970s, Lily Tomlin developed an iconic comic character she named Ernestine–a telephone clerk who took perverse pleasure from hectoring…
If a political pollster came to my door and asked whether I consider myself a conservative or a liberal, I’d…
The Dow Jones Average is above 11,000!Corporate profits are up! Wall Street has paid back its bailout money! Executive pay…
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…
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg , Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor join, concurring in part and dissenting in part….
“For too long,” wailed the senator in a heart-tugging cry for justice, “some in this country have been deprived of full…
Right-wing groups receiving major grants from the Koch Family Foundations (Charles Koch, David Koch, and Claude Lambe Foundations) Amounts granted…
To put an intellectual gloss on their hard-core antigovernment beliefs, the Kochs founded and funded their own think tank: the…
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,…
The name Felix Walker is not one you would recognize, but this 19th-century congressman inadvertently contributed a word to America’s political…
Having just graduated from the University of North Texas in June 1965, I headed east to Washington, D.C., for a few…
You might remember Robert McNamara’s stunning mea culpa, delivered a quarter century after his Vietnam War policies sent some 50,000…
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is America’s “Man in the Stans”–Afghanistan and Pakistan, that is. Handpicked by President Obama to be special representative…
The fanciful notion that a corporation is a “person” and is thus imbued with fundamental constitutional rights stems from–get this–a mistake….
At his 2005 hearing to be confirmed as chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts had to convince some skeptical…
The Bible tells us that on the sixth day, God created man, allowing him to live in the lush Garden…
Out in West Texas, an oxymoronic weather phenomenon known as a “dry rainstorm” often occurs. It’s particularly tough on farmers….
In a show of their selfless commitment to reform, a gaggle of health-industry lobbyists trotted out with President Obama last…
Now is the time for boldness! Instead, we’re getting Baucusness. Sen. Max Baucus, that is–Montana Democrat, chair of the Senate Finance Committee,…
When I lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked…
Last month, I asked my radio listeners to come up with new words to describe the abominable sense of self-entitlement…
Did you have a piggy bank when you were a child? Mine was a cheery, round pig–made of brown pottery, as…
Last October, Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus blew a gasket, spewing outrage in all directions. “This is the demise of civilization,”…
Hightower and I launched the Lowdown in March 1999 with an issue about how the World Trade Organization was forcing multinational corporations’ version of…
You’ve gotta love the CIA for trying. It’ll give anything a shot–including a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding…
Sorry to interrupt the Obama celebration even before the man gets settled into the Oval Office, but–what the hell is he…
IRONICALLY, AT THE VERY TIME that boneheaded senators in Washington were working furiously to impose their anti-union extremism on our country, most…
A DECADE AGO, CITIGROUP led a full-court lobbying press on Washington, ultimately winning what big bankers, insurance giants, and high-rolling investment…
THE 8,000-MEMBER GREATER GRACE TEMPLE in Detroit is the home church of many autoworkers, and its Sunday service on December 7…
After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, “I feel good about voting for him.” Ms. Jones,…
Derivatives amount to a casino game. They are pieces of paper whose only real value is derived from the anticipated…
What the hell’s happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money?…
The Bushites’ trillion-dollar giveaway started out as a bailout for banks with big holdings of investment schemes based on home mortgages….
At a time when We The People have been vociferously and unequivocally demanding that our political aspirants offer Big Ideas…
“I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies, not only because of the obscene profits they’ve made, but at…
In our July issue we asked Lowdowners to come up with names for an Obama administration. Here’s what you told us:…
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…
Join us in taking the second part of our Lowdown Presidential Survey–a free-wheeling, thoroughly unscientific poll, asking you Lowdowners to…
The nasty fellow whose attack-dog, smear-tactic, lie-and-distort brand of politics lifted George W into the White House twice has quietly slipped back…
The political media establishment is enrapturedby John McCain. Mainline media sparklies, as well as the blatherers on the Fox channel, routinely buff…
Mixed emotions are what you experience when you see your 16-year-old daughter come home from the prom with a Gideon Bible…
Name that VEEP! WHY SHOULD STAID OLD PUNDITS have all the fun in political guessing games? Let’s bring you into play….
Old Congress critters never die, they just go to K Street. Take Dennis Hastert. Actually, he’s already taken. The longtime Republican lawmaker…
There’ll be a crush of cameras at the front door of the White House on January 20 as scores of…
Dallas Oilman H.L. Hunt was a billionaire in a time when such massive wealth was unusual, back in the 1950s and…
Wow, has it really been five years since “Mission Accomplished?” It seems like only yesterday that our Glorious Leader was strutting…
Harry Truman said, “No man should be allowed to be president who doesn’t understand hogs.” That’s never been more true…
WASHINGTON WAS EXCITED. The media establishment applauded. Wall Street smiled. Somewhere, a bluebird of happiness chirped. In a celebrated display…
SUSAN DEMARCO AND I WANT TO GIVE YOU LOWDOWNERS A SPECIAL PREVIEW of our new book, for it personalizes the positive grassroots…
THE WAILING IN OUR COUNTRY ABOUT the “invasion of immigrants” has been long and loud. As one complainant put it, “Few…
IN A SEASON THAT SHOULD BE CONVIVIAL AND COMFORTING — filled with family, friends, fun, spiritualism, good food, song, and high…
LOOK OUT–HERE THEY COME AGAIN! Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, waving the bloody flag of 9/11, demonizing…
WHERE IS CONGRESS? It’s way past time for members to stand up. Historic matters are at stake. The Constitution is being…
A FRIEND OF MINE TELLS A STORY about the political demise in the 1950s of an entrenched Oklahoma state representative,…
DURING HIS GUBERNATORIAL DAYS IN TEXAS, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into…
ONE OF THE MOST DRAMATIC STORIES from the New Testament is of the time that Jesus encountered money changers in the…
WILL ROGERS SOMETIMES TUCKED little moral messages into his one-liners. For example: “I’d rather be the man who bought the…
THE SPRAWLING $43 BILLION HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT (HSD) is known chiefly for being the agency in charge of America’s color-coded terrorist-threat…
■ 3,300 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead ■ Rumsfeld said the Iraq attack would cost…
FROM THE “LAND OF THE CLUELESS AND CONNIVING,” meet a couple of gentlemen who insist that America’s political funding system is…
THE 2006 ELECTION RESULTS HAVE JUST COME IN! Not the polling results for Congress, of course—we got those last November. I’m…
“We have to leech this excess, this wretched excess, of money out of the system which is distorting democracy.” —Former…
“You can’t create a team spirit when the situation is so one-sided, when management gets so much and workers get…
AT AN OCTOBER FUNDRAISER IN TOPEKA,the Republican faithful lined up to shake hands with the headliner, Dick Cheney. But before…
CODE RED, AMERICANS! Screaming, flashing, neon-bright, God Almighty RED!!! Not just a single disaster, but multiple, biblical-level catastrophes are being…
AS YOU READ THIS ISSUE OF THE LOWDOWN, I’m out on the political trail, rambling back and forth across America in…
IT SEEMS TO ME THAT GEORGE W missed his true calling. I think he has long harbored a secret desire…
George W keeps buzzing around like a maniacal mosquito on a hot summer night, pestering us with speeches and photo…
How messed up is America’s health-care system? Consider the case of the Leavitts. Anne and her husband Dixie, both in…
In 1928, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that the real threat to American freedom was not from an outside assault, but…
A fellow from a town just outside of Austin wrote a four-sentence letter to the editor of our local…
Even though winter still has its frigid grip on most of the land, I’m already thinking out-of-season, looking ahead…
What an embarrassment our national government is. Mired in the sickening muck of corrupt corporate money and right-wing ideology,…
People like Robert Paulk and Jerry Roy are the heart of corporations like General Motors. Paulk, 58, and Roy, 49,…
Dear Santa:There are so many toys I’d love to find under my tree this year! All kinds of new kitchen…
Many of you Lowdowners have told me that you often share the newsletter with your teenagers—and even younger children. Therefore,…
By the fifth day — with New Orleans under 20 feet of toxic water, with federal help still nowhere to…
George W was hardly the first draft-age man of means who used family connections to duck going to war (even…
In 1981, when blowhard televangelist Jerry Falwell exclaimed that Sandra Day O’Connor was not right wing enough for him, and…
What do you think of bums who come into our towns asking for handouts as though they have some right…
Breaking news: The Lowdown has learned from inside sources that the president will soon deliver a major address to We…
No president has really been serious about conservation and renewable energy, but Jimmy Carter at least made a symbolic statement…
When George W says he’s going to “fix” our Social Security system, I feel like a dog that’s just been…
He predicted Social Security would go broke in 10 years and said the system should give people ‘the chance to…
Did you catch George W’s pep rally just before Christmas? The White House solemnly billed it as a two-day “summit”…
The Capitol City is swarming this month with party-hopping Republicans celebrating the inauguration of their boy Bush—but the most joyous…
‘Tis the jolly season of Santa Claus, with fantasies of sugar plums dancing all about, so it seems appropriate that…
Okay, my election projections were slightly off. I said that there would be the biggest turnout in many years, which…
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…
Forget worrying about an “October Surprise”—it’s the “November Surprise” that could squirrel this election! All across the country, there’s a…
Listening to all this talk of “swing voters” and “battleground states,” I often think about my dear ol’ daddy, W.F….
Observing from afar, it seems to me that “Being Bush” must be such a great joy. Reality never seems to…
John Kerry wrote to me last month. “Dear James Hightower,” the letter began (OK, it wasn’t that personal of a…
Democratic reformer Henry Adams, who decried the decline in democracy as the robber barons rose to power in the nineteenth…
When the first undeniable American case of Mad Cow Disease broke into the news last December, a host of Bush…
Carly Fiorina is a Bushite kind of woman–Donnie Rumsfeld with nail polish. Like George faves Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and…
If hypocrisy were a drug, Washington would be the crack capital of the world. Congressional and White House leaders these…
The oddest thing has happened. There has been a sudden outbreak of Democrats in the most unexpected of places: inside…
Usually, I try to give you Lowdowners a break from bad news in December, a month in which we Americans…
In politics, especially in the South, it’s not uncommon to be tagged with a nickname. In my first run for…
Welcome to WallyWorld. Like some combination of Oz, Alice’s Wonderland, and the Brothers Grimm, it’s a fabulistic realm ripe with…
It’s September 11–do you know where John Ashcroft is? It’s been two years since America was attacked by Al Qaeda…
klepltolcrat naltion (klep´te krat´ na´shen) n. 1. A body of people ruled by thieves. 2. A government characterized by the practice of…
Imagine, if you will, a well-scrubbed candidate for president, the Senate, or the House of Representatives holding a campaign press…
A national magazine recently featured a story about the paychecks of corporate CEOs. The cover featured a pink-faced pig dressed…
Where are we headed? What’s behind the bellowing bellicosity of the Bushites, so mindlessly amplified by the war-whooping media and…
There’s a historic date that our country ought to mark every year, which has had as great an impact on…
hat a great country we live in—born of rebellion, and rebellious still! Yes, yes, I realize that many would think…
Some days, I listen to the bushwah coming from Congress or the White House and I find myself asking, “Who…
Alberto Fujimori is the disgraced former president of Peru who claims that, from 1990 to 2000, he smashed two revolutionary…
You know that we progressives had a rough election when one of our bright spots was in the Oklahoma referendum…
Harry Truman said: “No man should be president who doesn’t understand hogs.” The problem with our recent presidents, however—including los…
Hoo-boy. Look out, world, here comes King George the W, all saddled up on his war pony, decked out in…
Just a month before taking over the White House, George W. said of America’s government: “If this were a dictatorship,…
In Mexican-American communities along the Texas Gulf Coast, there’s an old adage, or dicho: “El camarón que se duerme se…
As early-20th-century humorist Kin Hubbard noted, “The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.” Beware, then,…
The greater villains are loose in our world today, literally thirsting to take things that are yours and mine—and this…
Whenever you hear that George W. Bush, Tom Daschle, or any of the other top politicos in Washington has announced…
Corporations rule. No other institution comes close to matching the power that the 500 biggest corporations have amassed over us….
Ken Lay’s ambition was to make Enron a household name, and now he’s got his wish. All the cogs and…
Not even our sagacious friend Obey could have imagined how many big mistakes would be pushed through Congress by selfish…
Twenty years ago, there was a lively, good-time beer joint in my town of Austin called the Raw Deal. It…
In my constant travels and talks throughout our country, I find that something big is happening at America’s grassroots that…
As our missiles and cluster bombs fill the air in Afghanistan, the lies of our officials fill the air here…
I’m flying a flag these days. The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, America’s flag, OUR flag! I’ve strapped it to…
Last April at the presidential Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, our very own George W. Bush attempted to…
When he was a U.S. senator many years ago, Oklahoma’s Bob Kerr would occasionally express amazement at some bit of…
“The Democratic Party of the nation ain’t dead,” said New York political operative George Washington Plunkett at the turn of…
Bruce King, the former governor of New Mexico, once said with alarm: “We don’t want to open a box of…
Open wide . . . here comes another great big glob of globaloney that the Powers That Be want to…
Ronald Reagan, bless his perpetually wagging head, had a childlike devotion to the notion that “deregulation” was the castor oil…
It is said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. But…
Greetings can be quite unique around the world. I’m told that New Zealand’s Maori tribesmen rub noses when they meet,…
t took more than a month, but the Powers That Be finally tallied the presidential vote: Bush 5, Gore 4….
Not all computer errors involve the counting of votes in Florida. Writing in Funny Times, language maven Richard Lederer tells…
Well’here we are. After two years, half a billion bucks, a forest of press releases, a tsunami of polling data,…
It’s an article of faith among the Democrats-for-Gore set that, whatever faults Al may have (his own mother describes him…
To get a job these days, chances are you’ll have to pee in a bottle. Your intimate medical history can…
See if this sounds at all familiar to you: In a faraway land, a civil war has been raging for…
As Pancho Villa lay dying, he suddenly realized his followers would expect some memorable last words from him. But he…
As most of us know by now, the Republicrat two party duopoly is squeezing the life out of our democratic…
Well, there we have it: Gore-Bush. Dull versus dullard. The political establishments of the two-party duopoly successfully rose up to…
There’s a crime wave underway in America, but the Powers That Be are getting sore necks from looking the other…
The quadrennial presidential horse race is on, and the media establishment has unleashed its army of pundits, pollsters, powdered anchors,…
Getting the diverse parts of a people’s political movement together and moving in the same direction at the same time…
Bo Pilgrim is a big-time chicken processor in East Texas, but he wasn’t known to the average Texan until he…
Mark Twain once said, “Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” I’ve been…
Imagine it. A world in which you, the average American worker, gets a princely $110,000 a year for your efforts….
David Lubar is the author of a funny Q&A piece about HMOs that has made the rounds on the Internet….
How many pockets does a political candidate have? As many as it takes. In recent years, the tailors have been…
Have you heard of the ‘Butterfly Effect?’ Both a scientific concept and an ecological reality, its essence is that the…
A truck stop in Tulsa has a sign that proclaims: “Kids with gas eat free.” Well, kids, Im getting gas…
Let’s pull the curtain and look at a police line-up of some of the most thuggish members of organized crime…
Last year in Paris a bunch of guys in suits met secretly to draft a document they called ‘the constitution…