Newsletter Archives

2023-02-lowdown-featured

The Lowdown is on the move

Word of the Day: Change. Whether used as a verb or a noun, it’s one of the most powerful and…
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2023-01_democrats-donkey-baseball

Dear Democratic Party: Can’t anybody here play this game?

Casey Stengel spent over 50 years in baseball as a player, manager, and colorful raconteur, capping his Hall of Fame…
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shimmerx-lyan-GCgwS5qGZGQ-unsplash

The ‘free’ market: hogtied, shot, & drowned

I’ve never been a farmer, but I’ve learned quite a bit about being one from the many I’ve known. Start…
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2022-11-west-virginia

The People vs. Robber Baron Manchin

Who were the robber barons? The originals, I mean. They were a class of minor lords in feudal Germany who’d…
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2022-09_featured-screaming-skeleton

When local papers die, the ghouls rush in

My newspaper died. Well, technically it still appears, but even when it is delivered, it has no life, no news,…
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2022-08_featured-fair-ride

Not dizzy enough from politics today? Take a spin on our summer county fair Tilt-a-Whirl!

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…
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2022-07-featured-dead-armadillios

A few choice words for the Democrats

A general rule of politics warns against trying to win today’s election by re-running yesterday’s campaign. Yet while the political…
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2022-06-featured-authoritarian

Abbott, DeSantis & the Extremely Extreme GOP

In the 1990s, the sharp-witted Texan and renowned progressive writer Molly Ivins regaled (and appalled) readers with her reports on…
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2022-05-who-is-leonard-leo

Meet Leonard Leo: The capo behind the Supreme Court coup

Part 2 of a 2 part series. Read part 1 here. It’s generally assumed that autocrats are brutes who operate…
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2022-03-moeneyed-supreme-court

How the right wing captured the Supreme Court

Part 1 of a 2 part series. Read part 2 here. The public’s opinion of the Supreme Court’s job performance…
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2022-02-featured-olieman-eth-o-MyHqEEHoM-unsplash

Corporate profiteers’ pandemic strategy: gouge consumers and blame Joe Biden

It seems like the price of everything from used cars to hamburger is up-up-up these days, and right-wing politicos and…
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2022-01-featured-ponca-demo

Give nature a seat at the governing table

As an old axiom notes, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” From coast to coast, millions of these long-lived jewels…
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2021-12-featured-cartoon-strip

It’s an endangered species: Save Kar-toon-us A-mer-i-kan-us!

As a tyke, I never dreamed of growing up to be a political activist/ commentator, but here I am, and…
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2021-11-featured-dinner

It’s time for dinner democracy!

In 1971, Susan DeMarco, Susan Sechler, and I teamed up to launch a muckraking foray into the little-examined, multibillion-dollar labyrinth…
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monopoly-board-game-board-games-games-jail-tabletop-game-1452217-pxhere.com-crop

Let’s tackle monopoly power

From our school years forward, the Holy Keepers of the Corporate Order drum it into our little heads that–ALLELUIA! –we…
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2021-09-feature-enough-protest

We’re humans, not corporate cogs

👉 Don’t miss part one of this blockbuster issue: Exxon tries to BUST a union The corporate hierarchy has long…
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2021-08-featured-exxon-lockout

Exxon tries to BUST a union

👉 Don’t miss part two of this blockbuster issue:  We’re humans, not corporate cogs In the 1954 race for Texas…
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2021-07_featured-happy-child-flag-sunglasses

Will Congress finally fund quality, affordable child care?

Here are two terms that you don’t expect to see together: “the state of Alabama,” and “progressive leader.” (Okay, I’m…
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2021-06_featured-phoenix

How we can save local news

If Hollywood wanted to make a gritty movie about the work of dig-it-out newspaper reporters who uncover big local stories…
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2021-05_glen-carrie-3KqGEedAagE-unsplash

Incompetents, idealogues, and Wall Street: Hogs are fouling our water

A mechanical marvel of human ingenuity was plopped down on Mars by NASA last February. Its name, Perseverance, fits the…
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nikldn-c_5yGLxoj3g-unsplash

State of the Plate 2021: High tech–or the human spirit?

Like practically everything else in 2020, practically everything in the wide domain of Food & Farm has been twisted, transformed,…
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Photo: Dave Hay

We have a moment for historic progress… if we PUSH it

As Texas Agriculture Commissioner in the 1980s, I took an active role in a rising grassroots rebellion by hardscrabble farm…
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power-wash-america

Let’s push for a political deep cleaning

One of my favorite cartoons strips is Pearls Before Swine, created by Stephan Pastis. In a December drawing, his cantankerous…
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Free image/jpeg Resolution: 3000x1500, File size: 581Kb, Unicorn stars blue light drawing

4 hoary myths block change

Usually, the Powers That Be swat away the kind of big-ticket reforms our country needs by haughtily asserting a few…
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2020-12_featured_lampasas_plaque

Push hard and fast. Don’t settle. Demand big change.

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…
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2020-11_featured-love-hands

Timeless truths for trying times

In a spoof of country music’s sad songs of heartache and woe, the old Hee Haw TV show periodically featured…
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2020-10-featured

‘Good trouble’ candidates are winning– and rebuilding politics from the ground up

Back around 1900, the popular American humorist Kin Hubbard joked that, “Now and then, an innocent man is sent to…
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Photo: Michael Fleshman / Flickr

Six ways the Right is shredding the vote

Is it really so hard, so hard that America just can’t handle it? Voting, I mean–smooth democratic elections with all…
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2020-09_fraudsters

Trump is right!

Yes, it’s true: Scoundrels have been tampering with the ballot! Unfortunately for Trump, the scoundrels are in his own party….
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2020-09_protect-my-vote

Do something! Vote — our democracy depends on it

Suggestions* from Democracy Docket to counter Trump’s pre-election sabotage of the USPS during Covid: ✅ Vote early in person. Allowed in…
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scabby-the-rat-feat

Tilting at the rat

How extreme are the anti-worker Trumpeteers? So far gone that they’ve lost not only their sense of humor but their…
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2020-08_featured-trump-trample

Behind his daily spectacle, Trump is pounding workers and their rights

Donald Trump ought to be required to wear a mask for all of his public outings. Not the COVID-19 safety…
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2020-07_piggiebutts

This little piggie went to China

In April, the titans of Meat Inc. started squealing like stuck pigs, claiming that the forced shutdowns of dozens of…
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2020-07_featured-pigs

Something Is Rotten at Big Meat, Inc.

Upton Sinclair’s landmark 1905 book, The Jungle, exposed the food contamination and worker exploitation hidden in the fetid stockyards and…
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2020-07_profits-first

‘Accidents’ happen

When a corporation sets up a workplace that routinely results in maiming, mangling, sickening, disabling, and even killing workers, those…
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2020-06_featured-diane-wilson-hightower

Meet ‘the crazy lady’ who battled a marauding corporate polluter–and won

If you drive southeast from my home in Austin, Texas, you first glide through rolling hills and farmlands, but the…
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2020-05_featured-love-and-protect-opt

An action agenda for the Time of COVID

Laissez-faire ideologue Ronald Reagan delighted in mocking the very idea that government should provide health protection, food aid, income support,…
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Photo: Rudi Riet / Flickr

Military excess

Breaking news: “Trump says Pentagon Budget Too Big.” Follow-up report: “Pentagon Agrees.” This unexpected budgetary breakthrough comes because Donald The…
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military-652355_1280

US global sprawl: 177 nations wide

“Far-flung” doesn’t describe America’s war reach. Our military personnel, technology, and taxpayers’ money are in so many places that the…
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US_10th_Mountain_Division_soldiers_in_Afghanistan

Trump’s plan to flee Afghanistan

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…
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Space war

Trump blasts into a new frontier … for war

ue Also Sprach Zarathustra, the otherworldly theme music for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bring on Capt. Kirk, Spock, and the…
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Cockfight

It’s time to vote! How to choose between the progressives and the centrists?

With dozens of Democratic candidates having entered the presidential race (some dropping out before you were aware they’d dropped in),…
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Newspapers burning

Wall Street is savaging local journalism

You know it’s not good news for journalism in your city when local newspaper execs take out a full-page ad…
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fruit-2119569_1280

State of the Plate 2019: The scrappy champions of healthy food take on the predators of industrial ag

As we hurtle into the 2020s, the future of our food economy (and food itself) remains a fiercely contested competition…
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Greenpeace activists hang from a bridge in Houston

New corporate-protection laws are stomping on our most basic rights

As British playwright and political agitator George Bernard Shaw noted, “You don’t make progress by standing on guard, but by…
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kushner-young-frankenstein

Doing the tax-dodge tap dance

For a lesson on how to tap dance around one’s tax obligation, follow the lead of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s…
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Rural electric power to the people!

Monitoring Co-Op Democracy

Question: How have autocratic REC boards gotten away with openly stiffing their owner-members and flaunting the fundamental democratic principles of…
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Choctaw Electric’s annual meeting in 2015. Photo courtesy of Stan Hammons

The Battle of Choctaw Electric Co-Op

For a gross example of corruption, deceit, and rigged elections by a co-op board and its manager, Oklahoma’s Choctaw Electric…
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A power line tower viewed against a purple-sky sunset

What if you owned your own power company? (Many Americans already do!)

About 40 years ago, a right-wing codger named Eddie Chiles became a momentary political celebrity in my state by buying…
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monopoly-america

It’s time for a (teeny) tax on wealth

Sen. Russell Long, the powerful finance committee chair between 1966 and 1981, liked to recite a little jingle highlighting the…
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2019-08_featured

Welcome to our late-summer picnic!

As humans, you and I are allocated only a limited number of breaths in our lifetimes. Yet–day by day, hour…
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A circle of open hands in sunshine

Here’s the straight skinny on Medicare for All

The British people have been widely admired for their steady demeanor in times of adversity–stiff upper lip and all that….
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Photo by Rob Stanley on Flickr

Why are corporate bosses smiling?

As that silver-tongued orator George W. Bush once said: “Fool me once, shame on— shame on you. Fool me—you can’t…
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Pirate flag

Punishing trade pirates? It’s complicated.

There’s a hierarchy of larceny in our world, from pickpockets to the Wall Street syndicates running sophisticated mass swindles. But…
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A silhouette of Trump against green streams of code

Let’s decode Trump’s Afta-Nafta trade deal

In a very weird twist in his chaotic 2016 presidential campaign, Candidate Trump started sounding like a genuine, workaday populist,…
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Farmer walking away from harvested, dried out crops

The devastation of farm country is biting us all on the butt

In Democratic Promise, Larry Goodwyn’s definitive history of America’s 19th century Populist Movement, he describes the migration of hundreds of…
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20YearsOfTheLowdown

The People are revolting! (in the best sense of the word): A 20th Birthday Retrospective

Time flies when you’re having fun, so those of us who merrily pull together this little newsletter each month were…
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2019-02_featured

As we gape at Trump’s sideshow, corporations are picking our pockets

As America rapidly urbanized in the 1920s and ’30s, nearly every burgeoning city gave rise to a jumbled, boisterous side…
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2019-01_featured

Bold, plain-talk, progressive populism excites voters across many lines of difference

What lessons can we progressives take from our ballot box wins last year (and, for that matter, from our losses)?…
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2018-12_featured

How workaday folks are curbing the power of plutocratic elites

What does the workaday majority of Americans want their lawmakers working on? Check any legitimate poll–or just listen in to…
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Angry white men

The bitter Battle of Kavanaugh will burn through our culture for decades

Leave it to Donald Trump to totally pervert the profound significance of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s exposé of Supreme Court…
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2018-10_featured

It should be easy for every citizen to vote. Republicans have made it way, way harder.

Like a mad Roman emperor, the man in the White House paces the dark hallways in the wee hours, cursing…
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2018-09_featured

Trump’s privatizers are running amuck

Donald Trump hates you. But don’t take it personally, he hates me, too–and all of us who constitute The Public….
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2018-08_featured August 2018

Take heart from these tales of regular folks battling the bastards–and beating them back

Several months ago, a subscriber to our populist digger of a newsletter expressed vexation that we’ve been wasting his time…
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2018-07_Familias

Trump’s border cruelty is a test of our national character

In early June, I traveled to “The Valley,” as the McAllen-Brownsville area of Texas is called, down where the Rio…
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2018-06_gentrificationzone

Gentrification shreds the fabric of our cities while making rich developers even richer

hen I moved to Austin in 1976, I lucked into finding a small, dog-run style house that must have had…
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2018-05_EconAgenda_collage

What are progressives fighting *for*?

“Progress is a nice word we like to use,” Bobby Kennedy once said.”But change is its motivator. And change has…
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2018-0304_KochtopusFeature

Patience and secrecy cloak the Koch’s complex conspiracy

The Lowdown’s report last month on the Koch Klan’s plutocratic coup against your and my democratic rights prompted a few…
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Koch Brothers

The Koch Klan is funding a stealthy war against the principle of the Common Good

What’s happening to America? I mean the big America we thought we were building. Since 1776, We the People of…
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Black voters celebrating

Fed up with corporate-rigged politics, ordinary people are working together to win elections

Last June, after Democratic candidates had lost four straight special Congressional elections (Rob Quist in Montana, James Thompson in Kansas,…
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2017-12_bezos-chess

It’s time to play Amazon’s new hit game, “Milk the Taxpayer!”

As the winter solstice nears, people around the world are celebrating end-of-the-year holidays that, while widely diverse, share the ideal…
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2017-11_farmer

Coalitions of agriCULTURE outsiders tackle powerful agriBIZ insiders

In the 1980s, when I was Texas Ag commissioner, my staff and I proposed a comprehensive set of state rules…
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2017-10_liberation

If we spread the profits around, smart robots can work for ALL of us

During his twelve years as New Mexico’s governor, Bruce King was known as a decent fellow and a pretty good…
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/55267995@N04/19092225108

“Thinking” robots will soon shake our definition of worth

Let us pause in this month of Labor Day to reflect on the state of working families, ponder the future…
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cemex plant

The little guys can win!

IT’S NOT WHAT TOURISTS WOULD EXPECT to see as they come over the dunes for a day of beachcombing in…
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2017-08_sand-construction

Our ravenous appetite turns humble sand into an endangered natural treasure

Perhaps you’ve seen the brilliant white sand dunes of New Mexico, visited the unique Sand Hills of Nebraska, or frolicked…
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togetherforcos

You’ll be gobsmacked by the populist victories won in this conservative Colorado town

BREAKING NEWS: COLORADO SPRINGS HAS GONE TO THE DOGS! Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. More about those…
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2017-06_repairers-unite_main

Corporate “repair prevention” schemes steal the right to fix our own belongings

When I was a boy, I loved spending time with my Uncle Ernest and Aunt Eula on their small northeast…
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2017-05_GOP-attacks-towns

GOP state legislatures are attacking local democracy

We the People are being burgled. Again. The most recent hit is just the latest in a long string of…
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From resistance to insistence

From Resistance to Insistence: How to be effective advocates, part 2

A majority of the public almost always blesses new presidents with a honeymoon gift. In a gesture of patriotic fairness,…
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2017-03_resist-banner

Freaked out by Trump and his menagerie of mutants? Let’s focus our anger–and have a greater impact

In high school, I had a girlfriend who was involved in student government and all sorts of good works. While…
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2017-02_CorporateNews

Fake news? Here’s some real news: Cities around the country are breaking corporate chains

A decade ago, some barons of the media establishment designated themselves America’s official arbiters of political truth (or “truthiness,” as…
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waterkeepers_NC_hogwash

Hogwash

HURRICANE MATTHEW POUNDED the Atlantic coast last October, but inland North Carolina, 100 miles from the coast, suffered the storm’s…
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Alika-Atay-2

Maui experiences a volcanic eruption against GMOs

IN LAST NOVEMBER’S ELECTIONS, native Hawaiian Alika Atay won a seat on the Maui County Council, channeling three powerful spirits…
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CSA_Week9 by Christopher Paquette on Flickr

The 2017 State of the Plate: Sustaining the Push to a healthy, humane, and human-scale food system

During the farm crisis of the 1980s, an Iowa farmer asked if I knew the difference between a family farmer…
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This is what populist justice looks like

We can beat back the Reign of Trump–if we unite in a movement for Populist Justice

Buckle up, friends. Most Americans are about to be detoured onto a rough and rocky back road called “Trump Way.”…
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hightowerlowdown_oddities

Oddities, reflections and vignettes from the cratered road to Election 2016

What an election year. I feel like I’ve been transported through a cosmic squirrel hole into a baffling political universe…
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The supporting cast

ENERGY TRANSFER PARTNERS is the lead actor in the pipeline assault on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, but it’s not…
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tomasalejo.com

Don’t miss “The Battle of Two Pipes,” an epic story from the American heartland

In years past, Hollywood produced many awful Cowboy & Indian movies depicting the Great White Father’s heroic conquest of the…
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Koch Brothers

The Koch brothers’ massive money cache is worming deep into our country’s political terrain

In a 1932 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted that one benefit of America’s federal structure is that…
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solidarity

White progressives must join with people of color to expose and confront Donald Trump’s coded racism.

Being a muckraking political writer often makes me feel like a custodian in a horse barn, constantly shoveling manure. It’s…
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the crowd March 29, 1965, at the concluding event of the Selma to Montgomery march.

MLK on how plutocrats undermine populists

In March 1965, at the end of the historic Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights, Martin Luther King spoke…
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The People's Summit

What’s next for the Bernie Sanders revolution? The populist insurgency is ratcheting up.

What an amazing Democratic primary season it’s been, including this happy result: WE WON! “We” being the millions of young…
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USW-1999-Workers-rally-in-3-16

Carrier and Nabisco close US plants, hop to Mexico–and stoke the anger of working-class America

When I was about six years of age, my Uncle Earnest showed me something that made my jaw drop, my…
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2016-04_PushedOffAFreeTradeCliff

Pushed off a “free trade” cliff

IF YOU WORK–OR WORKED–IN MANUFACTURING in the USA, you may already be living the message of the chart above. According…
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Sherwin-Lockout-Rally

Glencore: the new global business model

IN A SONG ABOUT OUTLAWS, Woody Guthrie noted: “Some’ll rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.” But…
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Marc_Rich_Cigar

Pardon my greed

MARC RICH, WHO DIED IN 2013, was a high-flying commodities trader. He not only founded and built the company that…
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glencore_edited

A story from Texas epitomizes global corporate greed. And the elites are wondering why working folks are rebelling?

Who are these people? Why are they so angry? What do they want? How can we make them go away?…
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2016-03_democracy

Mavericks and mad-as-hellers march to Washington for a pro-democracy rebellion. Because it’s time.

The jig is up, and my time has come. I’m about to be arrested. They’ll be hauling me away in…
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fat cat!

The democracy-crushing weight of 100 fat cats

Bernie Sanders has stunned the political establishment by running an extremely well-financed populist campaign–funded by more than three million donations…
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Shareholder primacy

Reinventing business “ethics”: How corporate honchos gave themselves cover to be as rapacious as they wanna be

Attention class! Here’s our word of the day: “Hegemony.” Can you say heh-jeh-meh-nee, boys and girls? The word describes a…
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2016-02_corporate-fines

Subsidizing malfeasance (with your taxes!)

Headlines periodically blare that this regulator or that has imposed a jaw-dropping assessment on some corporate criminal. “Justice Department Slaps…
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Rock Solid - Bernie Sanders by Brian Stalter

Can an unabashedly progressive presidential campaign actually win this November?

When I crossed paths with a Democratic Party campaign consultant in Austin last March, I suggested he come out to…
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Defining consensus

The Official Tinfoil-Hat Climate Change Scoffers Club bases its widely publicized position on the repeated contention that there is no…
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The Global Warming Olympics

World weather officials have announced that (1) the global warming gasses that enshroud Earth as a result of our ever-increasing…
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Drought by Patrick Emerson

Were our leaders bold enough to do enough about climate change soon enough?

Dear people of 2115, Hello, future humans! Anyone there? I’m one of your forebears from the generation of your great,…
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It’s been an eventful year in the populist fight for healthy, sustainable—and tasty—food for all

Thanksgiving approaches–let’s eat! America’s most food-focused holiday traces its roots back to the abundant fall feast that Pilgrims and Indians…
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Riding the Shinkansen

The electric bullet trains that run on the Shinkansen route from Tokyo to Osaka are a beaming source of national…
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California Zephyr West of Winnemucca NV by Loco Steve

Travel that is fast and efficient—even fun? Let’s get on board with High Speed Rail

eople like trains. Whether taking a long trip or making the daily commute, riding the rails, without the hassles of…
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The rebellious spirit of Matthew Maguire’s first Labor Day is spreading again across our country. Join the parade.

t’s a bit odd that in America’s thoroughly corporatized culture we have no national day of honor for the Captains…
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Freshly squeezed lemon by justin langston

How to squeeze low wages lower

Harvest Time Seafood, a Louisiana processing corporation, has been a beneficiary of the H-2 visa program, putting female guest workers…
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Corporate “talking points” on TPP

The campaign for the Trans-Pacific Partnership is being engineered by the US Business Coalition for TPP, a who’s who of…
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A plucky (and smart!) grassroots coalition has pushed the dastardly Trans-Pacific Partnership to the edge

A plucky (and smart!) grassroots coalition has pushed the dastardly Trans-Pacific Partnership to the edge

Progressive forces battling that God-awful gob of global corporate gobbledygook, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, encountered an odd problem: Incredulity. As the…
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The Lowdown’s 1st Annual Gooberhead Awards!

The human race has one really effective weapon,” said America’s master of wit, Mark Twain, “and that is laughter.” So…
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Oglala Lakota children standing at the Red Shirt Table overlook surveying Badlands National Park

Let’s defend our public treasures: ‘America’s best idea’ is under attack

n his 2012 presidential escapade, Mitt Romney cast himself as just a regular fella, but his inner son-of-privilege kept coming…
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2015-05_wins

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…
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You Are Not a Loan

For-profit colleges get rich by sinking students into debt–and their scam is financed by our tax dollars

Butch Hancock, one of Austin’s finest singer-songwriters, grew up in the Texas Panhandle, out among dryland farmers and strict fundamentalist…
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Valentine, TX by Cory Kennedy

Cupid and his friends at the post office are fighting back against flimflamming privatizers

e all know the word “valentine” from the February day when sweethearts exchange red-frilly cards. But it’s also the name…
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By the numbers: For-profit college math

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…
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What Occupy, the Climate March and #BlackLivesMatter have in common--and why that should inspire us all

What Occupy, the Climate March and #BlackLivesMatter have in common—and why that should inspire us all

lutocracy hangs out with his good buddy, Authoritarianism. After all, when a rich few are in control of a country’s…
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A snapshot of inequality

A snapshot of inequality

Money is like manure. For wealth to help nourish a healthy society, it can’t be stored in a few big…
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Banner made by the Maine Artists Rapid Response Team (ARRT)

New trade pacts create secret, pro-corporate tribunals that use their powers to eviscerate our democratic laws

When I was just a tyke, my momma warned me not to eat anything unless I knew where it came…
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And how’s that war on poppies going?

And lest we get completely distracted by Iraq War III, here’s some breaking news from the frontlines of America’s longest-running…
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Political cartoon criticizing politicians for sending soldiers into Iraq

Egged on by the Hawks of Doom, Obama sinks America into a misguided war with the Islamic State

Call me a starry-eyed idealist, but it seems to me that if you’re going to send Americans to war, you…
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No, JEFF, not in my name!

Bezos constantly claims that his relentless push for an Amazonian remake of our economy and culture is all about helping…
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Cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos + Amazon.com as one large snake constricting competitors

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…
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Taylorism

BEZOS’ COLD, MICROMANAGED, time-motion approach to the workplace is a direct descendant (and extreme extension) of a theory of “scientific management”…
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The birth of Amazon

LEGEND HAS IT that Amazon is a classic story of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. In 1994, a bright,…
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Cartoon of a domineering amazon.com drone frantically overworking an order picking employee

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…
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A blue/red movement

You might expect such liberal bastions as Boston, Madison, Boulder, and San Francisco to call for an end to corporate…
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The protest spreads

In order of the date of passage, here are the 16 states that have already petitioned Congress to let their…
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The Senate will soon vote on an amendment to overturn Citizens United. History is calling!

So many absurdities abound in our lives that there’s a whole body of philosophical thought called “absurdism,” as well as…
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Confusing “conservative” and “corporate”

Oklahomans have been socked with a surprise from their supposedly conservative state officials. Thousands of Sooners have put solar panels…
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When no news is bad news

If a tree falls in the woods and NBC, ABC, and CBS aren’t there to cover the crash, does it…
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Warning: The virtues of the egalitarian internet are standing in the way of higher corporate profits!

Imagine my surprise when Robert Marcus, COO of Time Warner Cable, reached out to me in March. I don’t get…
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Do elites really think they can knock us down without provoking us to stand up and push back?

While taking in the splendor of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, a tourist came across a monk and asked if…
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Lessons from corporatized college: Even PhDs are being squeezed out of the middle class

Working. Poor. In our US of A, those words ought never be juxtaposed. The very concept of paying poverty wages in…
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The sad death–and “second life”– of an adjunct professor

Until her death last summer, Margaret Mary Vojtkotaught French for 25 years at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, earning high marks from…
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Why keep an expensive, illegal, invasive spy program that doesn’t even work?

A critic of President Obama’s policy of allowing everyone’s electronic communications to be dumped into the NSA’s computer netherworld recently…
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Citizen Snowden: Why he matters

Who knew that 1984 was a how-to manual? Of course, George Orwell did not intend for his novel about life in a…
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Senate and House “intelligence”?

In January, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the intelligence committee, teamed up with her House counterpart, Rep. Mike Rogers, to…
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Seeds of a movement: A 21st century Populist renewal is flourishing at America’s grassroots

In November, I spoke to an overflow crowd gathered in Duke University’s Lilly Library for Larry Goodwyn’sunusual memorial service. Unusual? Well,…
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America isn’t broke. There’s plenty of money to build an economy worthy of our ideals and can-do spirit

Several pro football franchises have chosen chest-pounding team names meant to symbolize how big, powerful, ferocious, and scary they are–names…
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A rebellion of restaurant workers is challenging the deplorable low-wage ethic of the fast-food behemoths

By gollies, McDonald’s cares. Despite being a corporate behemoth (more than 14,000 stores in the US, $27 billion a year…
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In the name of making us “safe,” the NSA has shredded privacy rights and now treats all citizens as suspects

Rube Goldberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist of the last century, was famous for drawings of what he called “inventions” –complicated…
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Do the three hop

To see how easy it is for millions of innocent citizens to get caught up in NSA’s vast electronic web,…
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The support of anti-choice candidates by brand-name corporations fuels the national war on women

  If you’ve never seen a pack of pompous state legislators fall into a panic, you’ve missed a scene of…
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It’s a corporate coup d’etat–against us!

In 2002, it was reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had told a friend an amusing tale about our man George W….
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America’s true history is not about “Great Men,” but about grassroots rebels and movements

Beginning in elementary school, we’re taught a fictionalized “Great Man” version of our history. Generals, presidents, industrialists! All are romanticized, sanctified,…
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One in three Americans are now poor, sapping our nation’s social, economic, and moral strength

Poverty in America: Bigger than ever and rapidly spreading. The flood of poor people in this Land of Plenty is being…
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The money swamp created by Citizens United: Dark Money, corporate shell games, and SuperPAC plutocrats

Some of you might remember “CREEP” from 1972’s Nixon-McGovern matchup. It could’ve been an apt code name for Tricky Dick himself,…
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Here’s who is buying America’s democracy

The spark that ignited tea party wrath in 2008 was not such right-wing bugaboos as “Obamacare,” the federal deficit, or states’…
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Brand name riggers of the justice system

Practically every national brand name you’ve ever heard of now slips predatory arbitration provisions into their customer terms-of-service agreements and/or…
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A third way

You don’t hear much about it, but there is another path to justice for some consumers who’ve been wronged by…
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Corporate kangaroo courts have quietly usurped our constitutional right to trial by judge and jury

Being wronged by a corporation is painful enough, but getting your day in court is no picnic either. Aside from…
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Are drones watching you?

Find out here. Are your local or state police using drones? Which ones? How many? At what cost? For what purpose?…
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The drone-industrial complex wants 30,000 eyes in the sky spying on us Americans by 2020

If you drive west from Marfa, Texas toward El Paso, you’ll cross some 200 miles of uniquely beautiful desert valleys…
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Five ways we can make government work for We the People in 2013

for nearly 13 years now, and while we offer a lot of information in our four pages, we often hear…
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America’s new political landscape

FOX TV YAKKER Bill O’Reilly was a sad old man on election night. “The white establishment is now the minority,” he…
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The boss man gets bossier

CITIZENS UNITED not only unleashed the Big Dogs of corporate money in this election, but it also unleashed mad-dog corporate bosses…
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Wall Street, the Kochs, and Rove lost to the people– so let’s make Washington govern for the people

As I learned from experience in my “vote-for-me” period, the nature of the political scramble is this: You win some,…
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In this season of feasting, let’s celebrate real food and reject gene-tinkered tomatoes and cloned cows EMAIL TO A FRIEND PRINT THIS! DISCUSS THIS

In 1972, I was part of a nationwide campaignthat came tantalizingly close to getting the US Senate to reject Earl…
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Mitt’s Millionaire Club

During his infamous, surreptitiously videotaped, $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Florida, Romney was full of disdain for poor people “who pay no…
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The Big Three Myths fabricated by right wing fabulists to frame America’s elections

During the past several years, a mess of plutocratic myths has been growing like kudzu across our political landscape. This aggressive…
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The Rachel alternative

“Michiganistan” is a huge national story with profound consequences for America’s historic ideal of being a self-governing people, the very…
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Guided by the Koch brothers, Republicans have installed czars to run Michigan’s cities

Here’s a political storyline that might seem familiar to you: With economic pain and political discord ripping across the land, he appeared…
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Why Congress is so popular

Demonstrating the depth of his insight into the problems of low-wage workers, GOP Rep. Bill Young of Florida recently “discussed” the…
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The minimum wage is a disgrace, and raising it would be a boon to the whole economy

Sometimes, it’s useful to state the obvious. Here’s a fact, for example, that we all know to be true: America’s economy…
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“Fracking” by any other name…

You’ll be pleased to know that academics at such public-spirited institutions as Louisiana State University are dealing with the problem…
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A fracking Obamination

doing awfully well these days with their supposed “enemy” Barack Obama. The industry appeared to lose a round to opponents…
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Oil and gas marauders are destroying our land, water, and communities all over America

Whether you’re religious or not, seeing flames coming out of your kitchen faucet would be enough to make you fall to…
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Et tu, Obama?

On Feb. 7, Barack Obama jettisoned his principled opposition to the Court’s elevation of Big Money over people by okaying…
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The plutocrats who bankrolled the GOP primaries–and what they want in return

Leave it to Bill Moyers, one of America’s most useful citizens, to sum up our country’s present political plight in a succinct…
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A real reform

What if drug marketers had to tell us the details of every under-the-table payment (aka bribes) that they make to…
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The great American medicine show, a spectacle of deceit, manipulation, and flimflammery

Butterflies waft across a beautiful field of spring flowers. A delightful young family bicycles joyously down a country lane. A couple…
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The Stratfor File

What: Strategic Forecasting, Inc. is a for-profit, mini-CIA. It uses a web of paid informers around the world to gain…
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Our taxes pay spies to work for rich shareholders– and pay for the corporatization of war itself

On the last day of last year, Austin’s daily newspaper led with a story that it tagged as an “Internet Privacy”…
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The Post Office is not broke–and it hasn’t taken any of our tax money since 1971

Consider $.50. What does that buy these days? Not a cuppa joe–that’ll cost you two bucks at Starbucks, and even McDonald’s…
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In the Constitution, “security” means protection from our law enforcers, not by them

The earth’s core, consisting largely of iron, helps balance our spinning planet. On the other hand, the core of too many…
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My Town

Even small cities like Austin, Texas, where I live, usually have a thriving co-op business community. To show the breadth…
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Yes we can manage this country without the corporate priesthood–the cooperative movement shows us how

We’re being told by today’s High Priests of Conventional Wisdom that everyone and everything in our economic cosmos necessarily revolves around…
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Corporate elites and their small-minded political servants are creating the Incredibly Shrinking America

“We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide…
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From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Nation in just two months

Americans who flew bombing missions in World War II had a saying: “You know you’re on target when you start getting…
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Citizens united against Citizens United: A grassroots campaign to restore democracy

Thank you Mitt Romney! Thank you for standing tall, speaking so forthrightly, and rallying so many democracy-loving Americans to join together…
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Who is the Tea Party Congress?

Seems like this would be an easy question to answer, but it turns out that we could find no group,…
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It’s time to name the tea party politicians (and their sponsors)–and call them out

As he keeps demonstrating, President Obama is not exactly Mount Rushmore material. But — good God! — the petulant pettiness and…
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Why are we letting corporate Supremists steal our democracy from us?

Bill Watterson is Mark Twain–with a drawing pen. He is a master cartoonist, but also a sharp-witted observer of the…
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Summertime Lowdown: A picnic basket of absurdities, oddities, and some sweet positives

It’s frightening to watch the Texas legislature in action, but it can also be entertaining–in the same way a freak show…
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Billionaires’ front groups attack workers, public schools, and young voters

In January, a small group of Indiana schoolteachers encountered their governor, Mitch Daniels, in a hallway of the state capitol. They…
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A battery of elected ideologues opens fire on those who serve the public

You’re not likely to have known Robert Clark, Ruth West, Chet Newall, Webb Kamp, or Darrell Odom, but I wouldn’t be…
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The Big Three secret funders of the $75 million campaign to trash Democratic candidates

It’s unlikely that you have heard of a novel entitled Alpaca, but it was a remarkably portentous piece of political writing by…
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Here’s who is buying America’s democracy

In 1986, Richard Kimball, a Democratic state legislator in Arizona, was running for a US Senate seat. In a televised…
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The entire court system is infested

Unfortunately, the corporatization of America’s judiciary is not just a problem at the top. For more than 30 years, there has…
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The top four victories handed to corporate America by today’s Supreme Court–so far

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…
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At last, a principled stand in Congress

Is there no balm in Gilead… or in Washington? Will no Democrat soothe the people’s anger at the constant giveaways to…
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A new Wall Street sin tax could raise $100B a year to reinvest in Main Street America

Lonnie Johnson was the early blues and jazz great who turned the guitar into a solo instrument. In the 1920s, he…
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Postcards from the frontroads and backroads of the 2010 election campaigns

The day before the election, I sensed a strange karma, as though some diabolical political force was settling across the…
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Grassroots progressives give us real reasons to be grateful this Thanksgiving

Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock form the Flatlanders, a powerhouse trio of Texas singer/ songwriters now based in…
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Surging in Afghanistan

Surging in Afghanistan The surge is on in Afghanistan! Unfortunately, what appears to be most effective is not the 30,000…
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In Iraq, Obama says it’s over but it’s not; In Afghanistan, who wants to die for Karzai?

At long last, it’s over. In the pre-dawn hours of August 18–seven years, two months, and 18 days after George W…
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The corporate squeeze

Profits up!” gloat today’s headlines in the business media. The New York Times reports that the profits of 175 of…
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Corporate kings grab our tax subsidies but create no new jobs. Obama fiddles.

By gollies, when the economic going gets toughfor America’s workaday people, you can always count on our tough-minded political leaders…
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Corporations scoff at workers’ rights–even the right to come home from work alive

Their names probably won’t mean mean anything to you, but these people ought to have some modicum of personal recognition: Jason…
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Big biz wants to own the information superhighway while We the People bump along the backroads

In the 1970s, Lily Tomlin developed an iconic comic character she named Ernestine–a telephone clerk who took perverse pleasure from hectoring…
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To put the progress back in “progressive,” we need a real populist movement

If a political pollster came to my door and asked whether I consider myself a conservative or a liberal, I’d…
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Facts–not myths–about our economy

The Dow Jones Average is above 11,000!Corporate profits are up! Wall Street has paid back its bailout money! Executive pay…
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300 ex-Congress critters are among the hired guns who kill progressive reforms

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…
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Full text of Justice John Paul Stevens

Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg , Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor join, concurring in part and dissenting in part….
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Giving corporations more power to buy politicians of their choice

“For too long,” wailed the senator in a heart-tugging cry for justice, “some in this country have been deprived of full…
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Right-wing groups receiving major grants from the Koch Family Foundations

Right-wing groups receiving major grants from the Koch Family Foundations (Charles Koch, David Koch, and Claude Lambe Foundations) Amounts granted…
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The Thinkers

To put an intellectual gloss on their hard-core antigovernment beliefs, the Kochs founded and funded their own think tank: the…
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How corporate money took over Washington–and created the mobs who rant against reform

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,…
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ACORN’s real “crime” is that it empowers the poor

The name Felix Walker is not one you would recognize, but this 19th-century congressman inadvertently contributed a word to America’s political…
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These folks aren’t waiting for change, they’re making it happen EMAIL TO A FRIEND PRINT THIS! DISCUSS THIS

Having just graduated from the University of North Texas in June 1965, I headed east to Washington, D.C., for a few…
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The “Drug War” is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will

You might remember Robert McNamara’s stunning mea culpa, delivered a quarter century after his Vietnam War policies sent some 50,000…
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The four biggest reasons for escalating war in Afghanistan–and why they’re bogus

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is America’s “Man in the Stans”–Afghanistan and Pakistan, that is. Handpicked by President Obama to be special representative…
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Corporate personhood

The fanciful notion that a corporation is a “person” and is thus imbued with fundamental constitutional rights stems from–get this–a mistake….
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Supreme Court considers vast increase in the political power of corporations

At his 2005 hearing to be confirmed as chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts had to convince some skeptical…
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Renewable energy can green America’s environment, economy, and democracy

The Bible tells us that on the sixth day, God created man, allowing him to live in the lush Garden…
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Obama’s reform plan is to “watch” Wall Street rather than restructure it

Out in West Texas, an oxymoronic weather phenomenon known as a “dry rainstorm” often occurs. It’s particularly tough on farmers….
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We’ll reform! We promise!

In a show of their selfless commitment to reform, a gaggle of health-industry lobbyists trotted out with President Obama last…
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Everyone hates corporate healthcare– now, public demand could really change it

Now is the time for boldness! Instead, we’re getting Baucusness. Sen. Max Baucus, that is–Montana Democrat, chair of the Senate Finance Committee,…
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Populism is not a style, it’s a people’s rebellion against corporate power

When I lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked…
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Name those greedheads!

Last month, I asked my radio listeners to come up with new words to describe the abominable sense of self-entitlement…
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Q: What made Wall Street implode? A: They were making too much money to stop

Did you have a piggy bank when you were a child? Mine was a cheery, round pig–made of brown pottery, as…
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Time for real workplace democracy– not the phony company version

Last October, Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus blew a gasket, spewing outrage in all directions. “This is the demise of civilization,”…
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The Lowdown is 10!

Hightower and I launched the Lowdown in March 1999 with an issue about how the World Trade Organization was forcing multinational corporations’ version of…
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The CIA’S uprising in Afghanistan

You’ve gotta love the CIA for trying. It’ll give anything a shot–including a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding…
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Team Obama’s plan for Afghanistan is a disaster in search of a strategy

Sorry to interrupt the Obama celebration even before the man gets settled into the Oval Office, but–what the hell is he…
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Union faces down banker greed

IRONICALLY, AT THE VERY TIME that boneheaded senators in Washington were working furiously to impose their anti-union extremism on our country, most…
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Congress gives Citi all it wants

A DECADE AGO, CITIGROUP led a full-court lobbying press on Washington, ultimately winning what big bankers, insurance giants, and high-rolling investment…
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Senators bail out their banker buddies but stiff workers and their unions

THE 8,000-MEMBER GREATER GRACE TEMPLE in Detroit is the home church of many autoworkers, and its Sunday service on December 7…
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The many REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL after Election Day 2008

After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, “I feel good about voting for him.” Ms. Jones,…
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Derivatives: What are these things?

Derivatives amount to a casino game. They are pieces of paper whose only real value is derived from the anticipated…
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The five most wanted men from Wall Street and Washington

What the hell’s happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money?…
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The bailout bonanza

The Bushites’ trillion-dollar giveaway started out as a bailout for banks with big holdings of investment schemes based on home mortgages….
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Political outsiders are the only change we can count on

At a time when We The People have been vociferously and unequivocally demanding that our political aspirants offer Big Ideas…
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McCain opens the spigots

“I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies, not only because of the obscene profits they’ve made, but at…
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Name that VEEP!

In our July issue we asked Lowdowners to come up with names for an Obama administration. Here’s what you told us:…
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Why the McCain drill-more-oil campaign is pure flim flam

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…
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Picking McCain’s team

Join us in taking the second part of our Lowdown Presidential Survey–a free-wheeling, thoroughly unscientific poll, asking you Lowdowners to…
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Rise of the Rovians

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…
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Heartless Phil and “honorable lobbyists” would run McCain’s White House

The political media establishment is enrapturedby John McCain. Mainline media sparklies, as well as the blatherers on the Fox channel, routinely buff…
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Obama slip-sliding away?

Mixed emotions are what you experience when you see your 16-year-old daughter come home from the prom with a Gideon Bible…
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Name that VEEP!

Name that VEEP! WHY SHOULD STAID OLD PUNDITS have all the fun in political guessing games? Let’s bring you into play….
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What Obama calls “old politics”

Old Congress critters never die, they just go to K Street. Take Dennis Hastert. Actually, he’s already taken. The longtime Republican lawmaker…
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If Obama wins, who will be on his team–and who should be?

There’ll be a crush of cameras at the front door of the White House on January 20 as scores of…
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Who are the big-money givers behind the candidates?

Dallas Oilman H.L. Hunt was a billionaire in a time when such massive wealth was unusual, back in the 1950s and…
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What 8 years of BushCheney have done to the world

Wow, has it really been five years since “Mission Accomplished?” It seems like only yesterday that our Glorious Leader was strutting…
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What 8 years of BushCheney have done to our economy

Harry Truman said, “No man should be allowed to be president who doesn’t understand hogs.” That’s never been more true…
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Checks for $600 won’t fix our economy–let’s have a real stimulus package

  WASHINGTON WAS EXCITED. The media establishment applauded. Wall Street smiled. Somewhere, a bluebird of happiness chirped. In a celebrated display…
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Swim against the current folks! (Even a dead fish can go with the flow)

SUSAN DEMARCO AND I WANT TO GIVE YOU LOWDOWNERS A SPECIAL PREVIEW of our new book, for it personalizes the positive grassroots…
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Immigrants come here because globalization took their jobs back there

THE WAILING IN OUR COUNTRY ABOUT the “invasion of immigrants” has been long and loud. As one complainant put it, “Few…
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America to D.C. — Democrats included: We’re mad as hell and you’re not listening!

IN A SEASON THAT SHOULD BE CONVIVIAL AND COMFORTING — filled with family, friends, fun, spiritualism, good food, song, and high…
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BushCheney really is planning to attack Iran!

LOOK OUT–HERE THEY COME AGAIN! Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, waving the bloody flag of 9/11, demonizing…
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The presidency is taking over the courts and Congress

WHERE IS CONGRESS? It’s way past time for members to stand up. Historic matters are at stake. The Constitution is being…
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This is the Marx Brothers, bumbling around Animal Farm!

A FRIEND OF MINE TELLS A STORY about the political demise in the 1950s of an entrenched Oklahoma state representative,…
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Where Bush’s arrogance has taken us

DURING HIS GUBERNATORIAL DAYS IN TEXAS, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into…
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Loan sharks wreak havoc on Main Street and Wall Street

ONE OF THE MOST DRAMATIC STORIES from the New Testament is of the time that Jesus encountered money changers in the…
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Politicians are selling our bridges rather than building them

WILL ROGERS SOMETIMES TUCKED little moral messages into his one-liners. For example: “I’d rather be the man who bought the…
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The Bushites have outsourced our government to their pals

THE SPRAWLING $43 BILLION HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT (HSD) is known chiefly for being the agency in charge of America’s color-coded terrorist-threat…
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Yet the war goes on…

■ 3,300 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead ■ Rumsfeld said the Iraq attack would cost…
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Corporations that paid-to-play in the last election

FROM THE “LAND OF THE CLUELESS AND CONNIVING,” meet a couple of gentlemen who insist that America’s political funding system is…
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Who paid for Repubs and Dems in our last election?

THE 2006 ELECTION RESULTS HAVE JUST COME IN! Not the polling results for Congress, of course—we got those last November. I’m…
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People are electing candidates who shun corporate cash

“We have to leech this excess, this wretched excess, of money out of the system which is distorting democracy.”  —Former…
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Why Wal-Mart is still one down and dirty corporation

“You can’t create a team spirit when the situation is so one-sided, when management gets so much and workers get…
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It was a “throw the bums out” AND a “change America’s direction” election

AT AN OCTOBER FUNDRAISER IN TOPEKA,the Republican faithful lined up to shake hands with the headliner, Dick Cheney. But before…
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Terrorists? Nope, it’s Bush&Co. who’ve blasted our infrastructure

CODE RED, AMERICANS! Screaming, flashing, neon-bright, God Almighty RED!!! Not just a single disaster, but multiple, biblical-level catastrophes are being…
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Repubs have a rock on their back, Dems meekly mumble

AS YOU READ THIS ISSUE OF THE LOWDOWN, I’m out on the political trail, rambling back and forth across America in…
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Our national parks are being trashed and taken over

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT GEORGE W missed his true calling. I think he has long harbored a secret desire…
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Let’s look at our economy by the numbers

George W keeps buzzing around like a maniacal mosquito on a hot summer night, pestering us with speeches and photo…
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The four Big Lies about universal health care

How messed up is America’s health-care system? Consider the case of the Leavitts. Anne and her husband Dixie, both in…
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Who’s spying on us? Rumsfeld’s Pentagon takes the lead

In 1928, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that the real threat to American freedom was not from an outside assault, but…
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Spy on ’em, torture ’em, lock ’em up. Is this what America stands for?

  A fellow from a town just outside of Austin wrote a four-sentence letter to the editor of our local…
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No-fat? Low-carbs? Baloney! Go for the no-junk diet!

  Even though winter still has its frigid grip on most of the land, I’m already thinking out-of-season, looking ahead…
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States, cities go for Living Wage, Clean Elections, and medical pot

  What an embarrassment our national government is. Mired in the sickening muck of corrupt corporate money and right-wing ideology,…
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How the social glue of America is being dissolved

People like Robert Paulk and Jerry Roy are the heart of corporations like General Motors. Paulk, 58, and Roy, 49,…
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A real Democratic Party would say “We’re on your side!”

Dear Santa:There are so many toys I’d love to find under my tree this year! All kinds of new kitchen…
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Our oldest mountains are being blown away

Many of you Lowdowners have told me that you often share the newsletter with your teenagers—and even younger children. Therefore,…
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It’s time for people’s housing, people’s transit, and PEOPLE FIRST!

By the fifth day — with New Orleans under 20 feet of toxic water, with federal help still nowhere to…
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All politicians who support a war should be drafted

George W was hardly the first draft-age man of means who used family connections to duck going to war (even…
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Will this judge rule for the powerful—and against The People?

In 1981, when blowhard televangelist Jerry Falwell exclaimed that Sandra Day O’Connor was not right wing enough for him, and…
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The great corporate jobs-for-subsidies con-job

What do you think of bums who come into our towns asking for handouts as though they have some right…
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A corporate plan to trump our laws and the Constitution

Breaking news: The Lowdown has learned from inside sources that the president will soon deliver a major address to We…
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A city in Texas starts smart-energy driving

No president has really been serious about conservation and renewable energy, but Jimmy Carter at least made a symbolic statement…
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Naming the names behind the grab for Social Security

When George W says he’s going to “fix” our Social Security system, I feel like a dog that’s just been…
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Social Security ain’t broke, so don’t fix it, tweak it

He predicted Social Security would go broke in 10 years and said the system should give people ‘the chance to…
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More brand names behind the Bush agenda

Did you catch George W’s pep rally just before Christmas? The White House solemnly billed it as a two-day “summit”…
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Bush II brought to you by…

The Capitol City is swarming this month with party-hopping Republicans celebrating the inauguration of their boy Bush—but the most joyous…
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Fables, flim-flam, and urban legends of our time

‘Tis the jolly season of Santa Claus, with fantasies of sugar plums dancing all about, so it seems appropriate that…
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Reasons to celebrate and be hopeful!

Okay, my election projections were slightly off. I said that there would be the biggest turnout in many years, which…
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Progressive groups are busting out all over

  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…
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Can we prevent another stolen election?

Forget worrying about an “October Surprise”—it’s the “November Surprise” that could squirrel this election! All across the country, there’s a…
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The numbers tell the tale of the Bush presidency

Listening to all this talk of “swing voters” and “battleground states,” I often think about my dear ol’ daddy, W.F….
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Our health and education— trashed

Observing from afar, it seems to me that “Being Bush” must be such a great joy. Reality never seems to…
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We’ll have to build the people’s John Kerry

John Kerry wrote to me last month. “Dear James Hightower,” the letter began (OK, it wasn’t that personal of a…
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The People’s media reaches more people than Fox does

Democratic reformer Henry Adams, who decried the decline in democracy as the robber barons rose to power in the nineteenth…
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Bushco’s mad, mad, mad, mad mad cow policy

When the first undeniable American case of Mad Cow Disease broke into the news last December, a host of Bush…
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It’s not just jobs we’re losing—it’s America’s middle class

Carly Fiorina is a Bushite kind of woman–Donnie Rumsfeld with nail polish. Like George faves Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and…
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The Bushites’ betrayal of our troops and vets

If hypocrisy were a drug, Washington would be the crack capital of the world. Congressional and White House leaders these…
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We the people have driven the Dems to populism

The oddest thing has happened. There has been a sudden outbreak of Democrats in the most unexpected of places: inside…
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Cops were told to savage their fellow Americans

Usually, I try to give you Lowdowners a break from bad news in December, a month in which we Americans…
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Tom DeLay thinks he’s God’s man in Congress

In politics, especially in the South, it’s not uncommon to be tagged with a nickname. In my first run for…
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Who’s counting our votes? Bushite corporate bosses

Welcome to WallyWorld. Like some combination of Oz, Alice’s Wonderland, and the Brothers Grimm, it’s a fabulistic realm ripe with…
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Bush, Ashcroft & Co. vs. Jefferson, Madison & Co.

It’s September 11–do you know where John Ashcroft is? It’s been two years since America was attacked by Al Qaeda…
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Citizens triumph over the kleptocrats

klepltolcrat naltion (klep´te krat´ na´shen) n. 1. A body of people ruled by thieves. 2. A government characterized by the practice of…
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The corporate push for more trade scams

Imagine, if you will, a well-scrubbed candidate for president, the Senate, or the House of Representatives holding a campaign press…
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CEOs pay themselves $7,452 an hour (on average)

A national magazine recently featured a story about the paychecks of corporate CEOs. The cover featured a pink-faced pig dressed…
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These guys have launched World War IV

Where are we headed? What’s behind the bellowing bellicosity of the Bushites, so mindlessly amplified by the war-whooping media and…
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How a clerical error made corporations “people”

There’s a historic date that our country ought to mark every year, which has had as great an impact on…
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Most of the world says no to Dubya’s war

hat a great country we live in—born of rebellion, and rebellious still! Yes, yes, I realize that many would think…
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How did we get in this handbasket?

Some days, I listen to the bushwah coming from Congress or the White House and I find myself asking, “Who…
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The homeland rebels against the security act

Alberto Fujimori is the disgraced former president of Peru who claims that, from 1990 to 2000, he smashed two revolutionary…
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If you’re not using the party, let us borrow it

You know that we progressives had a rough election when one of our bright spots was in the Oklahoma referendum…
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Local and organic farmers fight back

Harry Truman said: “No man should be president who doesn’t understand hogs.” The problem with our recent presidents, however—including los…
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The bush gang’s plan to rule the world

Hoo-boy. Look out, world, here comes King George the W, all saddled up on his war pony, decked out in…
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Locking down democracy to keep america “free”

Just a month before taking over the White House, George W. said of America’s government: “If this were a dictatorship,…
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A bunkered government behind an iron veil

In Mexican-American communities along the Texas Gulf Coast, there’s an old adage, or dicho: “El camarón que se duerme se…
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Bush’s military budget costs us our future

As early-20th-century humorist Kin Hubbard noted, “The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.” Beware, then,…
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Stop the corporate takeover of our water

The greater villains are loose in our world today, literally thirsting to take things that are yours and mine—and this…
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Let’s make higher ed. free for all americans

Whenever you hear that George W. Bush, Tom Daschle, or any of the other top politicos in Washington has announced…
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How wal-mart is remaking our world

Corporations rule. No other institution comes close to matching the power that the 500 biggest corporations have amassed over us….
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Don’t focus on enron, focus on the system

Ken Lay’s ambition was to make Enron a household name, and now he’s got his wish. All the cogs and…
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Looting the treasury

Not even our sagacious friend Obey could have imagined how many big mistakes would be pushed through Congress by selfish…
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Let’s declare energy independence — now!

Twenty years ago, there was a lively, good-time beer joint in my town of Austin called the Raw Deal. It…
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Let’s all build some downhome democracy

In my constant travels and talks throughout our country, I find that something big is happening at America’s grassroots that…
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Follow the money—– to the Saudi princes

As our missiles and cluster bombs fill the air in Afghanistan, the lies of our officials fill the air here…
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Showing patriotism in a time of terrorism

I’m flying a flag these days. The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, America’s flag, OUR flag! I’ve strapped it to…
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NAFTA gives the shafta to North America’s farmers

Last April at the presidential Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, our very own George W. Bush attempted to…
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Millions of Americans are kept from voting

When he was a U.S. senator many years ago, Oklahoma’s Bob Kerr would occasionally express amazement at some bit of…
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A modest proposal for the senate democrats

“The Democratic Party of the nation ain’t dead,” said New York political operative George Washington Plunkett at the turn of…
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Uncovering a cover-up of chemical killers

Bruce King, the former governor of New Mexico, once said with alarm: “We don’t want to open a box of…
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Wall street is out to conquer 31 countries

Open wide . . . here comes another great big glob of globaloney that the Powers That Be want to…
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We can bring power back to the people

Ronald Reagan, bless his perpetually wagging head, had a childlike devotion to the notion that “deregulation” was the castor oil…
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Bush Inc. brings back Star Wars

It is said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. But…
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Bush incorporated is open for business

Greetings can be quite unique around the world. I’m told that New Zealand’s Maori tribesmen rub noses when they meet,…
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Why not try democracy in america?

t took more than a month, but the Powers That Be finally tallied the presidential vote: Bush 5, Gore 4….
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The missing 100 million presidential ballots

Not all computer errors involve the counting of votes in Florida. Writing in Funny Times, language maven Richard Lederer tells…
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Let’s builld a politics that gives us a real chance

Well’here we are. After two years, half a billion bucks, a forest of press releases, a tsunami of polling data,…
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When polluters challenge, al gore backs down

It’s an article of faith among the Democrats-for-Gore set that, whatever faults Al may have (his own mother describes him…
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Our privacy rights are being sold, stolen and stripped

To get a job these days, chances are you’ll have to pee in a bottle. Your intimate medical history can…
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Our tax billions go to losing a war in Colombia

See if this sounds at all familiar to you: In a faraway land, a civil war has been raging for…
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The Democrats sell out the middle class over China

As Pancho Villa lay dying, he suddenly realized his followers would expect some memorable last words from him. But he…
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Nader’s slugging it out with the party duopoly

As most of us know by now, the Republicrat two party duopoly is squeezing the life out of our democratic…
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Where have all the issues gone?

Well, there we have it: Gore-Bush. Dull versus dullard. The political establishments of the two-party duopoly successfully rose up to…
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Crime in the suites

There’s a crime wave underway in America, but the Powers That Be are getting sore necks from looking the other…
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Election 2000 already decided! big money’s guy wins it!

The quadrennial presidential horse race is on, and the media establishment has unleashed its army of pundits, pollsters, powdered anchors,…
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The seattle tea party

Getting the diverse parts of a people’s political movement together and moving in the same direction at the same time…
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Go, Granny, Go!

Bo Pilgrim is a big-time chicken processor in East Texas, but he wasn’t known to the average Texan until he…
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Bill Bradley talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk

Mark Twain once said, “Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” I’ve been…
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American ceos are wallowing in wealth

Imagine it. A world in which you, the average American worker, gets a princely $110,000 a year for your efforts….
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How they took the care out of our health care system

David Lubar is the author of a funny Q&A piece about HMOs that has made the rounds on the Internet….
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How .05% of Americans buy our elections

How many pockets does a political candidate have? As many as it takes. In recent years, the tailors have been…
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What’s for dinner?

Have you heard of the ‘Butterfly Effect?’ Both a scientific concept and an ecological reality, its essence is that the…
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How we won the war

A truck stop in Tulsa has a sign that proclaims: “Kids with gas eat free.” Well, kids, Im getting gas…
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Hemp

It was Willie Nelson who first suggested to me that hemp is “not just for breakfast anymore.” And Willie is…
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The new racketeers

Let’s pull the curtain and look at a police line-up of some of the most thuggish members of organized crime…
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There’s a plan for one world government

Last year in Paris a bunch of guys in suits met secretly to draft a document they called ‘the constitution…
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I’m making moves!

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve started a Substack newsletter for all of our content. You’ll still find our older, archived materials here at hightowerlowdown.org, but the latest (and greatest?) observations from Jim Hightower are only now available at our new Substack website.

Check out jimhightower.substack.com »

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