Congress keeps churning out laws that the great majority of us have explicitly, consistently, and loudly said we do not want! Are those lawmakers deaf?

No, their ears are stuffed with ever-increasing wads of political cash from corporations and the superrich, so our words can’t reach their eardrums. Take Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican elected two years ago to the US Senate. He quickly proved to be a tail-wagging fetcher of more plutocratic tax-giveaways and most anything else the billionaire class desires.

Why? Money. His campaign was launched and supercharged by such barons of Wall Street and Silicon Valley as Steve Schwarzman. Honcho of a private equity powerhouse, Schwarzman greased Sheehy’s political skids with an $8 million check. A New York Times analysis later found that at least 63 other billionaire families bought a piece of the fledgling Montana senator that year.

He’s not their only purchase, of course. The Times’ tally found 300 billionaire families invested more than $3 billion in federal candidates in 2024.

Meanwhile, not only does Congress do what We the People don’t want, they also refuse to do what we do want. Most emphatically, that includes a huge, bipartisan majority who want all corporate money out of political races and solid limits on donations by the rich.

Big Money is a stark threat to America, says Marc Raciot, Montana’s former Republican governor. It’s turning our democratic republic into a place where a few wealthy people can legally spend millions to direct how the government runs. “Does any reasonable person on the planet think that’s appropriate,” he asks?

To help assert a people’s democracy over corporate plutocracy, go to EndCitizensUnited.org.

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Even in this ugly era of political divisiveness under “King Donald,” some things remain bigger than partisan politics.

For example, travel deep into Southwest Texas to the Mexican border, and you’ll witness two powerful forces of political harmony in Big Bend National Park. First is the true majesty of nature – 1,200 square miles of high desert beauty, spectacular canyons, the Chisos Mounains’ “sky islands,” black bears and jaguars, ancient artifacts of native peoples, etc.

But you could also experience the marvelous rebellious spirit of today’s Big Bend people who are battling the White House’s ideological extremists. At issue is “The Wall,” the xenophobic piece of nastiness pushed by Stephen Miller, the Trump government’s tyrannical, anti-immigrant chief. Build a multi-billion-dollar, 30-foot-high steel wall atop the Rio Grande’s fragile, thousand-foot high cliffs, Miller maniacally commanded!

Hello – such a monstrous wall would destroy the cliffs, devastate the economic, cultural, and other essential cross-border relationships that Big Bend communities rely on – and do nothing to stop desperate refugees. So, in a grassroots, non-partisan rebellion against such ideological bullstuff, a majority coalition of ranchers, environmentalists, local sheriffs, native Americans, and just folks have momentarily stalled the scheme. As a longtime Republican resident puts it: “Those advocating for this insane project should… acknowledge their nonsensical, aesthetically, and environmentally quixotic conduct, so their names may be indelibly placed on that border wall and remembered forever in infamy.”

This is Jim Hightower saying… Trump is expected to push ahead, but the feisty grassroots champions are not intimidated. “We will be civil,” says one leader, “but we don’t have to be polite.” Stay connected to them at nobigbendwall.org.

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“Stand back,” shout Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires, “geniuses at work!”

They refer to themselves, of course, demanding that public officials, farmers, towns, environmentalists, and all others get out of their way as they impose their massive AI data centers over rural America. “Our Big Money and Big Brains,” they exclaim, “will remake nature and produce phenomenal wealth.”

Haven’t we heard this before? Yes… and from these same über-rich zealots. Just a decade ago, they declared they intended to replace farmland agriculture with a techno-marvel they called “vertical farms.” Yes, instead of relying on messy, natural stuff like soil, food would henceforth be produced on sanitary plastic strays stacked to the ceilings of windowless factory warehouses controlled by computer networks. Big Tech investors like Jeff Bezos, Walmart, and Japan’s SoftBank plowed hundreds of billions of dollars into their “reinvention” of agriculture.

But what the geniuses actually produced was a bumper crop of bankruptcies, for the tech bros knew nothing about farming. Sure, displacing nature meant saving money to till the soil and feed the hogs, but those costs are nothing compared to the piles of capital required to pay for the ever-rising costs of corporate infrastructure, computers, utilities, executive salaries, administrative overhead… and capital itself.

Worse, the clueless corporatizers were surprised to discover that consumers are not actually motivated to buy a head of lettuce just because it was “vertically farmed.” So, with exorbitant costs and zero market appeal, the tech geniuses’ ag revolution fizzled.

Let us all recall this as Bezos and his billionaire coterie now insist we must follow them into their Brave New World of artificial intelligence.

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.