THE LASTING SPIRIT OF HOWARD ZINN

Jim Hightower — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

One of the best tombstones ever is said to include the last words of a young, out-gunned gunslinger in Arizona: "I was expecting this, but not so soon."

Now I learn that our friend Howard Zinn has died, something I was not expecting at all, even though he was 87. Way too soon. When I say "our friend," I mean everyone who believes in percolate-up, grassroots democracy; every working stiff who ever even thought about rebelling against the system; every soul who realizes that their worth is not measured in accumulated wealth, but in the fieriness of their democratic spirit.

Zinn was a human volcano of fieriness. He inspired countless thousands of us to battle the bastards and implement our country's historic commitment to the common good. A son of poor immigrants, he worked as a ditch digger, brewery worker, pipe fitter – and he was a decorated World War II bombardier. Howard then earned a PhD in history on the GI bill. He didn't believe that America's history is the benevolent work of "Great Men," but the ongoing story of rebels, mavericks, and mutts who dare to force change on the Great Men.

Zinn compiled these stories into one of America's most important books – "A People's History of the United States" – and Zinn himself lived its message, joining picket lines, civil rights protests, anti-war marches, and other actions. "I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed," he said, "but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, and to act against injustice. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

Without troublemakers, Americans would still be singing "God Save the Queen." Zinn has died, but his example has not. Spread copies of his "People's History" – and make trouble for the power elites. That's a fitting epitaph for our friend, Howard Zinn.

FLYING CASH REGISTERS

Jim Hightower — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Get ready for yet another assault of crass commercialism – this one way up at 35,000 feet in the friendly skies of airline travel.

Having jammed us into our seats and buckled us up, the airlines have noticed that we're not just passengers – we're "marketing units," sitting ducks for sales pitches on whatever products the air barons want to hustle. So now, every major airline is scheming with brand-name marketers to turn their planes into flying shopping malls, using everything from seatback videos to pitches by flight attendants to sell stuff to us.

Of course, marketers are drooling at the happy prospect of getting onboard with us, because we would literally be captive customers for two or three hours on each flight. One of the companies trying to set up this high-flying concept points out that this offers unique retailing opportunity, because, unlike stores, these sellers "are able to lock their doors with their customers inside."

There are, however, a couple of flies in this commercial soup. One, who decides what can be sold? Could Amtrack do a promotion called, "Next time take the train," and sell tickets for future trips? What about a company that makes fine quality caskets, or lawyers who represent injured or mistreated passengers? How free will this market be?

Second, the job of selling is to fall to flight attendants. Don't they have more important things to do? Are their salaries to be replaced by sales commissions – and do they really want to be perceived by passengers, not as our helpers, but as merchandise hawkers? Rather than offering coffee, they'd be trying to sell an espresso machine to you.

Still, airline honchos see the chance to squeeze a few more dollars out of us, so the commercial hustle is already being tested. Instead of viewing the airplane as a means of transporting people, they're now looking at it as "a cash register in the air."

HOOTING AT FOOD STAMP RECIPIENTS

Jim Hightower — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

American politics is a hoot! Where else can raw ignorance rise to such high places – and then flaunt itself publicly and shamelessly for all to see?

For example, who needs Jay Leno or Conan O'Brian for comic relief, when we've got Andre Bauer? He's the Lieutenant governor of South Carolina (a state, by the way, that really is a comer on the political comedy circuit).

Bauer, presently a Republican contender for governor, had 'em rolling in the aisles recently when he did a wild, slapstick routine on food stamps at a town hall meeting. Andre proclaimed that much of his thinking was shaped by his grandmother, and that he had learned this valuable lesson from her: "She told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why?" he asked, pausing for comedic effect. "Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce."

I tell you, Andre Bauer is an absolute scream!

But I think he could improve his act, so I'm offering a few facts to help him.

The last 10 years were a lost decade for America's middle class. Since December 1999, our economy has lost more jobs than it created – zero job growth. Not surprisingly then, middle-income families today are making less, in real dollars, than they did in 1999. Add in skyrocketing health care costs, plus the plummeting value of people's homes, and you find that millions of Americans have been shoved out of the middle class into poverty.

Here's the punch line: The need for food stamps has been soaring as more and more middle classers are falling. In fact, check this out Andre, and laugh if you feel like it: About six million Americans are now living solely on food stamps – they've lost their jobs and have no other income. That's one in every 50 of us, and their numbers are growing rapidly. Now, isn't that a hoot?

AGRIBUSINESS PROFITS, MUTANT GERMS... AND US

Jim Hightower — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

America is under assault. From coast to coast, we are being invaded by horrific, body-consuming mutants that are already destroying 65,000 American lives a year. As a Duke University scientist puts it, "This is a living, breathing problem. It's here. It's arrived."

These are not invaders from mars, but from within our own countryside. Ironically, these are mutants of our own creation, leaving America face to face with a spreading plague of drug-resistant germs.

For decades, we have benefited enormously from the healing wonders of antibiotics. These drugs save millions of lives that would otherwise be lost to microbial infections. But more and more of the antibiotics in America's medical kit are proving to be ineffective against the plethora of germs that endanger us. Why? Too much of a good thing.

America has overdosed on antibiotics, using about 35 million pounds a year – so much that germs, which are savvy survivors, have rapidly been mutating to develop resistance to the drugs. Thus, drug-resistant microbes now kill more Americans than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined.

Why have we overdosed so badly? Because the bulk of the drugs used in our country do not go to protect humans, but to protect the profits of agribusiness corporations! Seventy percent of antibiotics go to chickens, cows, and pigs – either as stimulants to force the animals to grow faster or to fight rampant infections largely caused by unsanitary, factory-farm practices.

This senseless profiteering at the expense of our health is insane, and there's a push in Congress to stop it. But lobbyists for Dow, Eli Lilly, Monsanto, Pfizer, and others are out to kill any reform... and to let the germs keep killing us. To support common sense, visit www.saveantibiotics.org.

A GOP LEADER'S ECONOMIC PLAN

Jim Hightower — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Those who say that Republican congress critters are just a gaggle of naysaying boneheads with no economic plan of their own – have not been listening to John Linder.

This Georgia right-winger is irked that America's food stamp program will grow to more than $60 billion this year. "This is craziness," Linder barked to a New York Times reporter. "We're at risk of creating an entire class, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government."

Comfortable? When was the last time this pampered lawmaker experienced the "comforts" of the food stamp life? Linder's been "living off the government" for 18 years, but at the high end – drawing $174,000 a year in pay, plus subsidized health care and a fat pension.

So what's his economic plan: "You improve the economy by lowering taxes," he explains. That's his whole plan!

Perhaps this multi-millionaire has forgotten that Washington tried that plan throughout the last decade – a decade in which there was no net-job creation, wages plummeted, middle-class incomes went down, health care costs soared, housing prices tumbled, and millions of families fell into poverty.

So that "subset of people" on food stamps whom Linder denigrates are actually his own spawn! The food stamp program has had to grow because the tinkle-down economy that he pushed wrecked America's middle class.

Indeed, talk about a subset, there are now some six million Americans who are living entirely on food stamps – they've lost their jobs and have no other income. That's one in every 50 of us, and their number continues to grow rapidly.

Linder and his ilk have not hesitated to throw hundreds of billions of our tax dollars at failed Wall Street bankers. But he would literally take the food out of the mouths of people in real need. That's not a plan, it's a scandal.

PRICING "FREE SPEECH" OUT OF OUR REACH

Jim Hightower — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Let us now praise the Supreme Five!

I refer to the five Supreme Court justices who looked all around our land to find the one issue of injustice that cried out most for their judicial compassion. And, lo, it was this: Corporations do not have enough power over our government.

Thus, the five ruled that not only can corporate executives dump millions of their own corrupting dollars into our elections, but, henceforth, the trillions of dollars held by the corporate entities themselves can also be poured into political campaigns. Every corporate power – from Wall Street to Wal-Mart – now has permission to open the spigots of their vast corporate treasuries and unleash unlimited sums of corporate money on our elections. It's their wildest wet dream come true.

Never mind that this is a black-robed coup against our democracy – the five usurpers assert that they've merely extended "free speech rights" to corporations. This is perverse in two ways. First, the judges have equated the freedom to spend money on elections with the freedom of speech – which means that those with the most money get the most speech. That's plutocracy, not democracy, and it enthrones corporations over The People.

Second, corporations cannot speak. They have no lips, tongues, breath, or brains. A corporation is nothing but a piece of paper, a legal construct created by the state. The actual people who give life to a corporation (such as shareholders, executives, workers, and retirees) already speak politically, voicing the many divergent viewpoints within these structures. The inanimate corporate entity itself is no more deserving of human rights than a trash can would be.

The free speech ruling of the Supreme Five is oxymoronic, for they have declared that speech is not free – it's very pricey indeed.

TAX WALL STREET BONUSES

Jim Hightower — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Are you feeling sorry for Wall Street bankers yet?

Poor babies, everyone is down on them. First, We the People are steamed that these bailed-out barons of finance are again putting billions of dollars of bonus pay into their pockets; second, a special national commission is publicly grilling top bankers about the damage their greed has done to our real economy; and, third, President Obama is proposing to slap a greed tax on the biggest of the giants.

Wow. Three strikes and you're out, right? In baseball, yes; in bankerball, never.

Such human traits as modesty, shame, and personal responsibility are not in the genetic make-up of Wall Streeters, so they have an answer for everything that's being thrown at them.

Start with those bonuses. Yes, say the bankers, we're stuffing ourselves with money that we should be loaning out to help Main Street recover from the crash we caused, but – hey – we've also started a few charities to help, you know, the little people. So buzz off, killjoy.

As for that commission digging into who caused Wall Street's financial meltdown, the bankers' answer is unanimous: no one. The jefe of JPMorgan Chase, for example, explained to the commission that a financial hickie "happens every five to seven years. We shouldn't be surprised." Uh, sir, this is the worst crash since the Depression – and, yes, we are surprised. And angry.

Then there's Obama's tax. Unfair, screech the Wall Street flock, apparently clueless that their own greed caused the crash, which led to the bailout, which let them grab bonus cash for themselves. That's the very definition of unfair.

Not only should these sorry greedheads have their banks taxed to recover all of our bailout money, but we should also tax all of the bonus pay they're ripping off.

SEEING CHINA FROM THE NEW WORLD TRADE CENTER

Jim Hightower — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

You can knock us Americans down, but you can't keep us down.

For example, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were crashed to the ground on 9/11. But now, a new tower is rising from those very ashes – a soaring steel and glass monument to the American spirit, a powerful symbol of our national resiliency!

Well – except for the glass. A company named Beijing Glass got the government contract to provide the window panes that'll cover the first 20 stories of the tower. Yes, the monument to our national spirit is being sheathed with made-in-China glass.

What? Can't American's make glass? Of course – but our biggest corporations, like Corning and Guardian, have been quietly and quickly moving their production and our jobs to China. In just the past nine years, 30 percent of these jobs have been lost. "Those who're looking through the rearview mirror waiting for the glass industry to come back," snorts the chairman of Guardian, "should know it isn't going to come back." Indeed, Guardian now employs more workers in its 36 foreign plants than it does here.

Well, chirp the usual flock of free trade economists, it's all about China providing "economies of scale" for manufacturers. Hogwash.

The glass industry's rush abroad is all about getting cheap labor and massive subsidies from the Chinese government. For example, shipping heavy glass from Beijing to Manhattan would be prohibitively expensive – except that China subsidizes the transportation.

This is not free trade, it's a raw deal. There should be a stiff tariff on all subsidized glass coming from China – and the new World Trade tower is so symbolically important that every inch of it should be American made. For more information, contact the United Steelworkers glass industry department: www.usw.org.

OBAMA'S DECLINE

Jim Hightower — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Want to know why Obama and the Democrats find themselves in a political mess, only a year after they came into power on a political high?

It has nothing to do with the nonsense that they went too far on health care reform or spent too much on their economic stimulus plan – as clueless purveyors of conventional wisdom are claiming. Rather, the Obamacan's sinking political fortunes stem directly from the fact that America's great middle class is in a heap of hurt – and this workaday majority can't seem to get Washington's attention, much less help.

In contrast, Wall Street got a massive bailout, health insurance profiteers got to write their own reform plan, and military contractors are getting more taxpayer money than ever.

Meanwhile, as recently pointed out by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, America lost more jobs in the past 10 years than were created – we had zero job growth, the first decade since the 1940s in which our country fell below a 20 percent growth in job opportunities. Thus, the real earnings of middle class families are less today than they were a decade ago.

These are not statistics, they're an economic, social, and political disaster! Our country is in deep trouble, yet people see that Obama – who offered such hope for bold change to make America a better place for all – has lacked the Rooseveltian audacity to take on the power elites, rally the people, and deliver for the middle class.

It'll take 10 million new jobs just to get back to the number we had three years ago, yet there is no plan to get us even to the 2007 level of jobs, much less to move us forward to a brighter future. Obama has talked about building a new green economy, rebuilding our neglected infrastructure, and regaining America's manufacturing oomph. Good stuff! But it's talk, not action, He's squandering his presidency.

THE NEXT BATTLEGROUND FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM

Jim Hightower — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Obamacans have spent a lot of their political capital during the past year to woo health insurance giants, drug companies, hospital chains, and other corporate chunks of what is called the health care "industry." The White House wanted the industry's support for its health care bill so badly that it compromised its own reform legislation into corporate mush, but at least the industry is now supporting Obama's bill. Or, is it?

While lobbying groups for these corporate interests do profess approval of the federal reform, these same interests have slipped into more than a dozen states to lay the political groundwork for gutting the implementation of any national law that Obama might get passed. As usual, the industry's groundwork consists of throwing basketfuls of campaign cash at state legislators. Last year, drug companies alone poured $20 million into the coffers of state politicians, and it's estimated that industry-wide donations to state lawmakers this year will be well above $100 million – more than these corporate interests will spend on congressional races.

The state-level gut job is not a scattershot effort. It is being orchestrated by a network of corporate-funded think tanks, foundations, and front groups. The main legislative tool for blocking the federal reform is a state nullification idea that came out of the Goldwater Institute, a far-right-wing think tank in Arizona. In turn, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate funded front group created specifically to influence state legislators, adopted the Goldwater idea last year and is shopping it around to various states – already the nullification scheme has been introduced in 15 states.

In battling corporate profiteers, the fight is not over even when it's "over." To keep up with what's going on in the states, including your own, contact, Health Care for America Now: www.healthcareforamericanow.org.