Jim Hightower’s Radio Lowdown
Do You Suspect the System Is Rigged? Here’s Proof
Years ago, a Texas lawmaker got caught using his official position to enrich himself by taking money from special interests, in exchange for voting their way. The culprit did not deem this as corrupt, but just the normal ethic of an enterprising business transaction: “I seen my chances,” he explained, “and I took ‘em.”
This is the Clarence Thomas code-of-ethics. As has been widely reported, this Supreme Court judge (who reliably rules for corporate supremacy over the people’s interests) has secretly been on the take for years from a billionaire corporate right-winger. Real estate tycoon Harlan Crow, an extremist activist for plutocratic government, has been lavishing millions of dollars’ worth of luxury vacations, private jet travel, family housing and educational payments, and other gratuities on Thomas.
Yet, this supposedly-supreme lawyer says he detected no whiff of bribery, nor did he see any need to inform us commoners of it. He simply seen his chances and took ’em.
But Thomas knew damn well that it was improper, corrupting, and disgusting. After all, during the last three decades, he has consistently voted for court rulings to make such obvious graft legal. For example, he has voted again and again to drain common sense from our anti-corruption laws, declaring that it is legal for a corporation to keep a public official on private retainer, that it’s okay for political officials to sell access to their offices, that the “appearance of corruption” is not corrupt – and, directly relevant to Harlan Crow, Thomas voted that it is technically not bribery to try influencing public officials by bestowing a series of gifts to them over time.
If it seems to you like the system is rigged to favor the powerful, there you have it. Thomas is both the rigger and the beneficiary of the system.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
The Academy Award for Self-Serving Corporate Propaganda
When corporations try to bamboozle us commoners, they fire three levels of deceit at us. First comes their basic lies… then they escalate to a barrage of damn lies… and finally they resort to their nuclear option: A PR campaign.
The high-tech profiteers of artificial intelligence and political enablers are now going nuclear. Grassroots Americans didn’t swallow Silicon Valley’s opening deceit that AI data centers would be a bonanza for local communities. And when the billionaires escalated their land-water-and-power grab by assailing opponents as luddites and political extremists, people of all political stripes erupted in open rebellion against the self-serving arrogance of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and other tone-deaf AI autocrats.
So now comes their PR onslaught. AI’s moneyed powers—desperate to control government policy, the media message and then public debate—are now dumping untold billions into mass market propaganda, portraying AI as somewhere between benignly beneficial and endearingly human.
Multitrillion-dollar tech goliath Google, for example, is producing movies and streaming a series of microdramas depicting AI generally (and Google specifically) as a source of loving comfort and human connection in an alien future. And, gosh, not only do their novellas tell sweet tales of artificial love as though it’s real, but Google’s technology allows viewers to “interact” with the AI movie characters.
Google’s maestros of deceit assure us that the intent of their recent rush of movies about AI is merely to tell the story about this dazzling technology “authentically.” Authentic? I was born at night, but not last night! A trillion-dollar profiteering behemoth peddling the razzle-dazzle robotic future is hardly to be trusted as an unbiased source. Google’s movies are pure PR propaganda trying to authenticate its own profiteering scheme.
Do something!
Hate how artificial intelligence is being wielded in the creative arts? Check out the Human Artistry Campaign, a coalition of ~200 unions and artist organizations who are working to make sure technology never replaces human expression and creativity.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
Two-Legged Hogs Trying to Rule Ag Policy
Warning: This is a sob story that might bring you to tears. Or make you upchuck in disgust.
It’s about hogs – both the four-legged species and the more piggish, two-legged breed of agribusiness executives. The latter have long profited from cruel abuse of millions of hogs caged in their monopolistic system, and now the agbiz giants have launched a lobbying campaign called SOB – “Save Our Bacon.” It’s not a plea to save the abused animals, but to save the abusers’ profits!
It turns out that most consumers don’t like animal abuse, so states are passing laws to prevent such corporate practices. This has led to a vibrant new market for humanely-raised pork, already gaining more than a fourth of national pork sales.
“Ouch,” squealed the factory farm giants, feeling the pinch of real competition. Rather than clean up their methods, though, the monopolists have raced to Washington, demanding that Congress “save their bacon” by artificially and autocratically rigging the market. Their Save-Our-Bacon act would usurp states’ rights to set their own standards for animal welfare.
This is not an “academic free market issue.” In recent state ballot initiatives, voters have overwhelmingly endorsed ethical standards for animal agriculture. Moreover, responsible family farm producers have quickly responded to this growing new market, upgrading their facilities to meet the new state standards of humane production.
Yet, rather than embracing this success for animals, farmers, and consumers – here come tiny cliques of corporate profiteers like the National Pork Producers Council. They’re wielding their Big Money lobbying muscle, trying to overrule the public interest… and the political will of America’s majority.
Which side is your member of Congress on? For information, go to Compassion In World Farming: ciwf.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.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
Looking for older commentaries?
You’ll find them over on the Hightower Lowdown now, in the radio archives. Note: we post new episodes there on Tuesdays and Thursdays; however, some radio stations around the country air Hightower’s commentaries on their own schedule.
Stay in the loop with Hightower
Join Hightower’s email list:
Media Distribution Center
Hightower Affiliates, click here!
Not an Affiliate? Want to broadcast or print our commentaries? Apply here for your station or publication to become one today!
Meet Jim Hightower.
Looking for photos and more of Hightower? Check out the media kit.
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and New York Times best-selling author, Jim Hightower has spent five decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top.
Hightower is a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, spreading the message of progressive populism all across the American grassroots.
Hightower’s radio commentaries are carried on stations throughout the country, with a majority being carried on community radio stations in rural areas, where a democratic populist voice is craved and needed. He also writes two rousing weekly syndicated columns and publishes much of his work on Substack, blasting through the corporate media blockade to deliver an economic populist perspective to events.
He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.
Hightower frequently appears on television and radio programs, bringing a hard-hitting populist viewpoint that rarely gets into the mass media. In addition, he works closely with the alternative media, and in all of his work he keeps his ever-ready Texas humor up front, practicing the credo of an old Yugoslavian proverb: “You can fight the gods and still have fun.”
Hightower was raised in Denison, Texas, in a family of small business people, tenant farmers, and working folks. A graduate of the University of North Texas, he worked in Washington as legislative aide to Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas; he then co-founded the Agribusiness Accountability Project, a public interest project that focused on corporate power in the food economy; and he was national coordinator of the 1976 “Fred Harris for President” campaign. Hightower then returned to his home state, where he became editor of the feisty biweekly, The Texas Observer. He served as director of the Texas Consumer Association before running for statewide office and being elected to two terms as Texas Agriculture Commissioner (1983-1991).
During the 90’s, Hightower became known as “America’s most popular populist,” developing his radio commentaries, hosting two radio talk shows, writing books, launching his newsletter, giving fiery speeches coast to coast, and otherwise speaking out for the American majority that’s being locked out economically and politically by the elites.
As political columnist Molly Ivins said, “If Will Rogers and Mother Jones had a baby, Jim Hightower would be that rambunctious child — mad as hell, with a sense of humor.”
Books
The New York Times bestselling author and America’s funniest activist gives the lowdown on how to put up-not shut up-in the fight for our future.
Hightower, the country’s #1 populist, has picked up some useful advice over the years, from “never eat at a café featuring ‘bargain kebobs'” to “never hit a man with glasses; hit him with something much heavier.” As he and his longtime co-conspirator Susan DeMarco have rambled through grassroots America, however, they’ve also come up with more serious words of wisdom to share here, namely: question authority, trust your values, seek alternatives, break away, stand up for your beliefs, and swim against the current!
Their book introduces readers to people across the country who have actually done this-people in business, politics, health care, farming, religion, and other areas who are taking charge, living their values, doing good, and doing well. Hightower and DeMarco show how they are doing precisely what the elites want us to believe can’t be done: changing their lives and making a difference. He tells the stories of these people and offers inspiration and information that will help readers tap into their own maverick potential in order to navigate a different, more satisfying course of their own.
Whether they are young and just starting out or older and searching for a different path, the commonsense folks in this book have escaped the corporate tentacles to find their own way toward a richer life and a better American future. They are creating a new, deeply democratic model for the country, edging it back onto the long road toward egalitarianism and the common good.
Hightower and DeMarco are at their contrarian, sharp-witted, and straight-shooting best as they celebrate the triumph of grassroots gumption over the tight-fisted grip of corporate control.
- Buy from Indiebound — support independent booksellers
- Buy from Powells.com — independent, too!
- Digital versions:
Android, Apple and Kindle - Audiobook on Audible.com
America is at an historic divide between rulers and rulees and the rulees are restless. Hightower’s THIEVES IN HIGH PLACES is an epistle to the American people about vision and choices, and it’s a clarion call to action. The question Jim Hightower is asking is: What kind of country do you want America to be? Not only for you, but for your children and theirs? In THIEVES IN HIGH PLACES Hightower takes on the Bushites, the Wobblycrats, and the corporate Kleptocrats, digging up behind-the scenes dirt that the corporate media overlooks like BushCo’s “Friday Night Massacres”, what’s happened to our food, and the Bush plan for empire. Also drawing on Hightower’s Rolling Thunder Down-Home Democracy Tour, Hightower has tapped into the thriving activist networks that are our country’s grassroots muscle, and his book tells their uplifting stories of retaking control of their communities.
- Buy from Indiebound — support independent booksellers
- Buy from Powells.com — independent, too!
- Digital versions: Android,
AppleandKindle - Audiobook on Audible.com (combined with Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush)
The bestselling grassroots guru is back with his incisive take on the state of the union and life today in the good ol’ U.S.A.
America in 2004 is color coded and it’s not just a matter of red, white, and blue. The terror alert bounces from yellow to orange. The economy offers up a hundred shades of red ink. The environment is turning brown. National security is cloaked in gray shadows. And, as he did in the bestselling Thieves in High Places, Jim Hightower covers it all with uncommon insight, political fearlessness, and laugh-out-loud humor.
America’s #1 populist gives us Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush a hard-hitting, fact-filled review of the real state of the union that you won’t get from the establishment media. With his daily radio commentaries and award-winning monthly newsletter, no one has chronicled the madness of King George the W, the wimpiness of corporate Democrats, and the aggressive avarice of Wall Street with the thoroughness and tenacity of Hightower. Now he brings that investigative punch into this wild and woolly hook of fiery essays.
With his satirical “Six Perfectly Good Reasons to Re-elect George W. Bush”; his mix of damning indictments and uplifting stories; and side bars, cartoons, games, and puzzles, Hightower has clone the impossible: he has created a subversive read that makes politics fun again.
- Buy from Indiebound — support independent booksellers
- Buy from Powells.com — independent, too!
- Digital versions: Android, Apple and Kindle
- Audiobook on Audible.com (combined with Thieves in High Places)
With his aw-shucks charisma and no-nonsense attitude, he dishes out what’s wrong with the eroding integrity of our democracy: politicians for sale to the highest bidder, the economic boom of the 90s not trickling down to the regular folks and more corporate scandals than you can shake a stick at. Offers a compelling collection of Hightower talks plus the best of his daily “Common-Sense Commentaries” on radio, all with an introduction by the late Senator Paul Wellstone.
Jim Hightower, America’s favorite subversive, is still mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. But he will give you a sizeable piece of his mind on Election 2000. This plain-talking, name-naming, podium-pounding populist zeros in on everything that ails us, from the global economy and media to big business and election winners everywhere. In his hard hitting commentary and hilarious anecdotes, Hightower spares no one, including the scared cows — and especially the politicians — who helped steer us into this mess in the first place. An equal opportunity muckrucker and a conscientious agitator for “We the People”, Hightower inspires us to take charge again, build a new politics for a better tommorow — and have a lot of laughs along the way.
- Buy from Indiebound — support independent booksellers
- Buy from Powells.com — independent, too!
- Digital versions: Android, Apple and Kindle
Audiobook on Audible.com
Revised, and with a New Introduction by the Author
“I am an agitator, and an agitator is the center post in a washing machine that gets the dirt out.”
–Jim Hightower
Hightower is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore! He’s also funny as hell, and in this book he focuses his sharp Texas wit, populist passion, and native smarts on America’s political, economic, scientific, and media establishments. In There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos, Hightower shows not only what’s wrong, but also how to fix it, offering specific solutions and calling for a new political movement of working families and the poor to “take America back from the bankers and bosses, the big shots and bastards.”
“If you don’t read another book about what’s wrong with this country for the rest of your life, read this one. I think it’s the best and most important book about out public life I’ve read in years.”
–Molly Ivins, author of Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?“When do we get to vote for Jim Hightower for president? Will somebody please tell me? When do we get to vote for Jim Hightower for president?.”
–Michael Moore, author of Downsize This!“Listen to Jim Hightower. His is a two-fisted, rambunctious voice unafraid to speak truth to power, eloquently and clearly…He’s one of the best.”
–Studs Terkel
- Buy from Indiebound — support independent booksellers
- Buy from Powells.com — independent, too!
- Digital versions: Android, Apple and Kindle
Audiobook on Audible.com