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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Topics > News > Hightower |
Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of "Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time to Take It Back," on sale now from Viking Press. For more information, visit www.jimhightower.com.  |
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A BOMB OF A GAY POLICY
Wednesday 27 June @ 14:54:59 (Read: 19055) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Rest easy, people. Even though we live in dangerous times, remember that Pentagon officials are spending every waking moment of every day thinking up new ways to keep our nation safe. For cutting-edge thinking, look at the Air Force’s innovative proposal to create a “gay bomb.”
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WASHINGTON IS KILLING AMERICA'S TROOPS
Thursday 21 June @ 15:07:18 (Read: 2198) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Let’s be blunt. It’s no longer the Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, or al Queda bombers killing our troops in Iraq. Washington is killing them.
George W--still clinging to his disgraced neo-con fantasies--and the congressional leaders of both parties--unwilling to use their budgetary and oversight authority--are the ones who have 150,000 American men and women trapped in Iraq’s civil war. The troops are doing all they can, yet they have been betrayed by a White House and Congress that has no strategy to make “victory” possible and is unwilling either to provide the massive troop strength it would take to secure that country--or to bring our troops home.
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OUTSOURCING AMERICA
Friday 15 June @ 16:00:27 (Read: 2466) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Maybe you’ve noticed that America’s call center jobs are largely being outsourced to India. Well, you say, I’m more skilled than that, so I can’t worry about it. Then you note that our accounting jobs, legal research and architectural drafting work is being taken to India, too—but, hey, you do sophisticated stuff, so you can’t sweat those losses. Lately though, you’ve also seen that our country’s high-tech computer jobs are being shipped to India—and uh-oh, that’s getting close to what you do. Still, you say, I’m a professional, by gollies, so I’m okay.
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THE FRAUD OF THE VOTER FRAUD SCARE
Wednesday 06 June @ 12:12:09 (Read: 2123) |
JIM HIGHTOWER
A massive crime wave is sweeping America, and Republicans are in the lead to crack down on the perpetrators. Is it armed robbers they’re after? Murderers? Corporate crooks? No—it’s voter fraud.
In a country where we can barely get 40 percent of the electorate to go to the polls, GOP operatives are bellowing that voting officials must throw up every roadblock possible to discourage people from casting ballots—in particular, Democrat-type people. From browbeating U.S. attorneys to stampeding legislators, Republican leaders are on a rampage to halt the stealing of elections all across our land.
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The Seventeen Traditions
Wednesday 23 May @ 14:52:35 (Read: 1837) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
My father taught me about progressive values. Not by sitting me down to explain them, but by living them. He never called himself progressive, and actually thought of himself as conservative, but he had a strong faith in common folks, a populist distrust of big business and autocratic government, a deep belief in economic fairness, and a commitment to the notion of the common good. He summed up his political philosophy one day when he said to me: “Everybody does better when everybody does better.”
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CEOs fight corporate democracy
Wednesday 16 May @ 13:39:43 (Read: 1942) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Time for another Goober-head Award—presented periodically to those in the news who have their tongues running 100 miles an hour ... but forgot to put their brains in gear.
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Stamping out the free press
Wednesday 09 May @ 14:02:46 (Read: 2100) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
At last, Washington officials are doing something about the problem of corporate control of America’s media sources. Unfortunately, what they’re doing will make the problem worse.
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Vintage Hightower--Bush’s lack of respect for vets
Wednesday 02 May @ 14:01:23 (Read: 1940) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Dateline: June 23, 2004
Does George W get up every morning and gargle with a big glass of political cynicism, or is he genetically cynical, and just can’t help himself?
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Stealing America's Middle Class
Friday 27 April @ 13:27:19 (Read: 2751) |
It’s only 3,400 workers that Circuit City booted out the door, so what’s the big deal?
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Romney goes hunting...for votes
Wednesday 18 April @ 16:11:47 (Read: 3017) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
When George Romney ran for president in 1968, he opposed the war in Vietnam. When it came out that he’d earlier supported the war, he blamed that on having been “brainwashed.” At the time, Senator Gene McCarthy, noting that Romney wasn’t known for being too bright, commented that brainwashing him wouldn’t have been necessary, since “I would have thought a light rinse would be sufficient.”
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Why big media gets no respect
Wednesday 11 April @ 15:01:48 (Read: 1816) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Call me quaint and old-fashioned, but aren’t reporters supposed to be watchdogs for the public interest—rather than lapdogs for the power establishment?
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A wasteful, silly, dangerous police action
Wednesday 04 April @ 13:43:11 (Read: 1993) |
If you happen to be a New York City taxpayer, you might want to ask for a rebate, because city police officials are frittering away your tax dollars on total nonsense.
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Stealing Iraq's oil...and sovereignty
Wednesday 28 March @ 15:08:36 (Read: 1978) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
A bumpersticker about the Iraq war asks: “What’s our oil doing under their sand?”
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USDA: a brothel for agribusiness
Thursday 22 March @ 12:17:56 (Read: 1922) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Our federal regulatory agencies—designed to protect consumers, workers, and the environment from corporate profiteers—have instead become brothels on wheels, going to any length to accommodate profiteers.
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Politicizing the U.S. Attorneys
Wednesday 14 March @ 14:49:02 (Read: 1985) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
That Little House of Horrors called the Patriot Act keeps coughing up all sorts of nasty surprises.
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Bush's sneak attack on America
Wednesday 07 March @ 15:48:02 (Read: 2052) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
In 1994, George W spoke an unintentional truth: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
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Child labor isn't glamorous
Wednesday 28 February @ 13:19:01 (Read: 2590) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Darlings! You’ll be ever so pleased to learn that a new, high-fashion super store has opened in America. It’s called Wal-Mart. Yes, the stodgy old downscale store has gone upscale, offering hip new clothing lines like Metro 7!
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Bush seizes more power
Thursday 15 February @ 15:32:19 (Read: 1833) |
Oh, swell. George W is assigning a political nanny to every agency in the federal government.
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Bush's health-care tax
Wednesday 07 February @ 15:13:55 (Read: 1936) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Look out, everyone—George W has had another idea!
The guy who told us that occupying Iraq would be a really smart thing to do, now has focused both of his brain cells on health care in America. And, as we’ve seen, when George gets an idea in his head, it’s a doozy!
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Big Oil speaks for Bush
Wednesday 31 January @ 14:16:47 (Read: 1917) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Anyone who thinks that money doesn’t talk in our nation’s Capitol might be right. Cash doesn’t really talk—it screams!
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CEO con jobs
Wednesday 24 January @ 15:27:14 (Read: 2122) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
If you worked for five years, did a lousy job and got fired, what sort of going-away present do you think you’d get? A swift kick in the butt ... or $180 million?
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Immigration Surrealism
Wednesday 17 January @ 15:12:22 (Read: 2106) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Apparently, George W thinks that “surreal” is a small nation in South America.
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Wall Street greedheads
Wednesday 10 January @ 16:27:26 (Read: 1974) |
In December, when children all across the country were having dreams of sugarplums dancing in their heads, the barons of Wall Street were having much richer dreams and all of theirs came true.
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Our “made in China” Christmas
Wednesday 03 January @ 17:27:57 (Read: 1914) |
From Wal-Mart on up, America's big retail chains are once again tallying up disappointing Christmas profits, for the season's buying spree was not nearly as gleeful as they had hoped. If they wonder why, one clue can be found in the millions of Christmas lights, sparkling ornaments, artificial trees and other glittering decorations that adorned their stores and our homes.
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Making an honest dip
Thursday 28 December @ 15:23:33 (Read: 2022) |
Whether eating alone or having a party, one simple dish that can bring a zestful joy to your table and palate is guacamole. Just as the Aztecs did 700 years ago, all you do is mush up a couple of avocados, squeeze in some lime juice, toss in some chopped peppers, tomatoes, and onions if you want, grab some chips ... and go at it.
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Bush does foreign policy?
Wednesday 20 December @ 19:31:13 (Read: 2010) |
After badly botching Afghanistan and making a bloody mess of Iraq—is George W getting the hang of foreign policy? By gollies, it looks like he’s trying his hand in North Korea.
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A Christmas gift for W
Wednesday 13 December @ 21:32:16 (Read: 1992) |
For weeks, I’ve been grappling with the question of what gift I should send to George W for Christmas.Then, it hit me —what he really could use is a nice, big bottle of Truth Cologne!
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Rebels in the newsroom
Wednesday 06 December @ 12:30:04 (Read: 2013) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Voltaire said, “It’s dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
Dean Baquet and Jeffrey Johnson could tell you all about that. Until recently, Baquet was the editor and Johnson the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, America’s fourth largest newspaper. In a rare and gutsy move in today’s world of conglomerate-owned journalism, these two dared to defy the owners by taking a principled stand for the paper’s workers.
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Meet-and-greet the great unwashed
Wednesday 29 November @ 13:45:01 (Read: 2105) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
We know what average Americans think of politicians—but what do politicians think of us, the hoi poloi?
One clue is that numerous politicos are a little touchy about being touched by the masses. It turns out that many who make a living glad-handing really aren’t even pleased about shaking our hands. Germs, you know.
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Let them eat nanoparticles
Wednesday 22 November @ 14:46:31 (Read: 2603) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Thanksgiving Day is here—a day to gather with our families, rejoice in the bounty of God’s green earth, and sit down for a generous serving of home-cooked, old-fashioned, mouth-watering ... nanoparticles?
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Softening the words of war
Wednesday 15 November @ 13:37:40 (Read: 2124) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Putting a fabric softener in your wash is one thing, but America’s media establishment appears to be running some of their biggest stories through a word softener.
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Iraqi-style democracy
Wednesday 08 November @ 14:25:24 (Read: 2016) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
In George W’s Glorious New People’s Democracy of Iraq, journalists don’t strive to win a Pulitzer Prize—they strive to stay out of jail ... and stay alive.
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State secrets
Thursday 02 November @ 11:54:26 (Read: 2024) |
JIM HIGHTOWER
In repressive regimes, it’s common for the authorities to run closed governments—and its also common for them to crack down hard on people who dare to try shining a little light on the government’s actions.
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It’s 2006, George, not 1706
Friday 27 October @ 11:47:54 (Read: 2025) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Here’s today’s phrase: habeas corpus.
This phrase embodies the democratic principle— enshrined in our Constitution—that government officials cannot arbitrarily arrest you, lock you up, and throw away the key. Habeas corpus—which literally means “produce the body”—is an essential safeguard against a police state, for it allows anyone to go to a court of law to challenge their imprisonment.
The founders insisted that there be legal checks on our officials (even the president) to prevent them from the exercise of naked governmental power. Habeas corpus is the legal procedure requiring government officials to present evidence that there is a reason to imprison someone. They can’t just do it on executive whim.
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Cleaning up congressional corruption
Tuesday 24 October @ 15:49:04 (Read: 1976) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Is it just me, or is the rancid stench of Washington political corruption a lot more malodorous than usual?
You might remember a decade ago when Newt Gingrich put forth his “Contract with America,” pledging that if Republicans took power they’d tidy up the place spick-and-span, turning it into an ethical nunnery. Well, since then, the GOP has taken total power—the Congress, presidency, and the courts—but Washington these days is stinkier than a barroom spittoon.
Take a whiff of such characters as Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney ... and so many more mugshots in the making.
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Katherine Harris speaks
Thursday 12 October @ 12:13:01 (Read: 3549) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Let me begin by thanking God for Katherine Harris.
She is such a picture-perfect example of ultra-right-wing looniness, theocratic hubris, raw Republican partisanship and big-money political corruption that she serves as a sort of burning bush, warning us never to let such people gain high office.
Harris, of course, was the Florida secretary of state who did Bush’s bidding in 2000 to pervert the election results and hand him the presidency. Rewarded with White House backing for a congressional seat, she promptly got cozy with corrupt Pentagon contractors and is now under FBI investigation for taking illegal campaign donations. She is also this year’s GOP nominee for U.S. senator from Florida.
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Messing with meat
Wednesday 04 October @ 15:41:04 (Read: 2051) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
You probably aren’t aware of it, but the big meat conglomerates are now charging meat prices for water.
Up to 20 percent of the volume of your supermarket steak, pork chop or drumstick is most likely H2O, plus a nice dose of salt and chemicals. These are being injected into the meats by industry, which even has a tasty-sounding term for the rip off: “deep marination.”
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Incompetent losers are in charge
Thursday 28 September @ 12:00:11 (Read: 2020) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
What a scream it is to watch the Bushites frantically scrambling around the country in a political effort to trash us opponents of their disastrous war policy in Iraq.
Oh, excuse me ... George W instructed us not to call his team’s tirades “political.” When he launched his own ongoing series of speeches to lambast Democrats and other war critics as being soft on terrorism, he declared that his road show was not political. “I seriously hope people wouldn’t politicize these issues I’m going to talk about,” he whined, as he traveled to a fundraiser for a Republican senate candidate.
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Biotech mutation of bentgrass
Monday 25 September @ 14:12:17 (Read: 2112) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
You never want to hear your dentist say: “oops.” But “oops” is also something you never want to hear from biotech scientists who are genetically altering various plant species.
Messing with the very DNA of grains, veggies and other plants is dangerous stuff, for there are many consequences of such corporate-sponsored manipulations. They literally are messing with Mother Nature, creating Franken-species in their labs, with no testing of the long-term impacts on human health or our environment.
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Ralph and Mary’s Park
Friday 15 September @ 03:14:40 (Read: 2325) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Looking for a present for that special someone? Here’s a unique gift that literally keeps on giving: a national park!
That’s what Ralph Regula bought for his wife, Mary. What did it cost him? Nothing. He didn’t buy it with his money, silly—he used yours. Ralph, you see, is a Republican Congress critter and a powerful member of the House Appropriations Committee.
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Code Red on deodorant sticks
Thursday 07 September @ 16:00:23 (Read: 2291) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Osama got my deodorant. I put up quite a fight, but the “al Qaeda types,” as Dick Cheney so sweepingly calls them, prevailed in the end.
As you undoubtedly know, since the British police uncovered that terrorist scheme to blow up some trans-Atlantic flights with liquid explosives, our crack homeland security team has upped its color-coded security warning and launched a massive program of frisking every American passenger to confiscate all liquids, gels and lotions. Osama might be reclining in a hammock in some Pakistan cave, but he’s got our government authorities spending billions of tax dollars to detain millions of Americans—even if we’re only flying from Poughkeepsie to Peoria—so they can grab our shampoo, toothpaste, sunscreen and other such weapons. What do you bet those cagey al Qaeda types hold a big chunk of stock in Proctor & Gamble?
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Where’s our health care morality?
Thursday 31 August @ 00:24:37 (Read: 2116) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Contrary to the “contrived wisdom” of the Powers That Be, providing health care for everyone is not an economic or even a health issue—it’s a moral issue.
Notice that corporate chieftains and the political elites all have the Rolls Royce of health care—while most Americans are trying to make do with a sputtering Yugo, and while millions of our people are walking barefoot. This crass inequality on such a basic human need is a moral abomination.
How is it that the richest country with the most democratic ideals of any country in the history of the world has 45 million people with no health coverage and millions more with pathetic coverage? And how is it that We The People pay $1.2 trillion a year to a corporate health care complex (more than any other people pay) and rank only 37th in the world in the quality of health care we receive?
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The price of conglomerate journalism
Friday 25 August @ 11:29:32 (Read: 2315) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
The new managing editor of Time magazine has a rather grandiose sense of his publication’s place in the scheme of things. He declared that Time is for people “looking for one source to speak with authority and explain the world.” Great—maybe he could start by explaining (authoritatively, of course) why Time Inc. dumped Barlett and Steele.
Don Barlett and Jim Steele are the premier investigative team in journalism today. Their in-depth work on everything from corporate welfare to our jerryrigged tax system has earned two Pulitzer Prizes and given mass-market media some respect at a time that “journalism” has been degraded to sensationalism.
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America builds a palace in Iraq
Wednesday 16 August @ 14:05:21 (Read: 2953) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
To those critics who keep yammering that the Bushites have spent billions of our tax dollars for the reconstruction of Iraq, yet built practically nothing—I say “ha!”
If you went to Iraq today, you’d see a marvelous new complex rising right in the heart of Baghdad. This 104-acre shining oasis will include more than 600 apartments, two major office buildings, its own electricity plant and water system, air-conditioning, a swimming pool, gym, movie theater, food court, beauty salon, car repair shop, and even a night club. And, while critics harp that practically no project in Iraq gets completed on time and on budget, this one will meet both standards.
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The absurdity of Homeland Security
Sunday 13 August @ 22:59:58 (Read: 2211) |
by JIM HIGHTOWER
Code Red! Your department of homeland security is at it again. This bureaucratic behemoth, which is spending billions of our tax dollars supposedly to protect America from another 9/11 horror, is second only to the Pentagon in mismanagement, waste, fraud—and plain silliness. The latest evidence of DHS’s goofy incompetence comes from its own inspector general, who recently issued a scathing indictment of how the department divvies up the hundreds of millions of dollars it grants annually for local antiterrorism efforts.
DHS maintains a “national asset database” that lists 77,069 local sites across America that it considers possible terrorist targets. Using this computerized list of targets, DHS bizarrely cut grants going to New York City and our nation’s Capitol this year by 40 percent—while jacking up the amounts going to such places as Omaha and Louisville.
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Locking down our right to know
Thursday 03 August @ 15:20:42 (Read: 2216) |
by Jim Hightower
When W’s Pentagon issues a million-dollar grant to a university to study recent state laws that affect open government and freedom of information—you know it’s not good news.
This is, after all, an Administration that hates sunshine and has been the most aggressive in history at trying to shut out the public, Congress, the courts and the media from getting even a peek at what they’re doing behind the drawn curtains of the White House. For example, they’ve increased by 81 percent the number of government documents marked “secret”—setting a new presidential record by taking more than 15 million public papers a year out of public view. Also, two-thirds of their advisory committee meetings have been completely closed; it now takes up to five years to get a response to a freedom-of-information request, and Dick Cheney claims that he can single-handedly remove any document he chooses from public view without telling anyone—even the president.
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The brand new FEMA
Wednesday 26 July @ 18:04:30 (Read: 2221) |
by Jim Hightower
The U.S. Senate has voted to kill FEMA. FEMA is finito.
The infamous Federal Emergency Management Agency that so totally botched its handling of last year’s Hurricane Katrina emergency that it became a national embarrassment and a comic punch line for comedians everywhere succumbed in the Senate to an 87-11 vote to kill it.
Yet, FEMA still lives in spirit, for at the same time that our senators voted to kill the much-maligned agency, they also voted to create a “new” agency to perform its duties under another name. So, FEMA is now EMA—the Emergency Management Authority. Who says Congress can’t deal with America’s big needs?
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Santorum discovers mustard agents
Thursday 20 July @ 13:16:10 (Read: 2355) |
by Jim Hightower
Attention, Bush backers. I have excellent news for you concerning George W’s slippery rationale for his Iraq attack: at long last, weapons of mass destruction have been found!
Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) recently released a one-page summary of a military intelligence report declaring that about 500 weapons containing poisonous mustard gas and sarin agents have been unearthed in Iraq. Santorum triumphantly exulted: “We now have found stockpiles.” Donnie Rumsfeld, who once flatly claimed that WMDs would quickly be found, also claimed vindication by the belated discovery: “They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found,” he crowed.
But wait, Bush backers—it’s not all good news.
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Ignoring news of the people
Wednesday 12 July @ 16:18:13 (Read: 2411) |
America’s working poor recently suffered another body blow in Congress—but you probably missed the news, since it barely made a blip on the media establishment’s radar.
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Bush's Constant War Cry
Thursday 06 July @ 11:31:42 (Read: 2418) |
George W has become Chicken Little, crying “terrorist” every time an acorn hits him on the noggin. More and more Americans say he lied to us about Iraq—“You’re aiding the terrorists,” he shrieks. Conservatives condemn his illegal program of secretly spying on Americans—“You’re only helping the terrorists,” he wails. Some mosquitoes bite him at his Crawford ranch—“Your actions support the terrorists,” he screams at them.
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THE UNGODLY PENSIONS OF CEOs
Wednesday 28 June @ 14:37:34 (Read: 2552) |
by Jim Hightower
Corporate America is fast implementing a two-tiered retirement system: a platinum-level plan for the top executives – and a dirt level plan for all of you riff-raff below.
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The Nardelli model
Thursday 15 June @ 15:57:13 (Read: 2610) |
by Jim Hightower
One of George W’s most favorite corporate honchos is Bob Nardelli, CEO of the big box megachain Home Depot. George touts Nardelli as a perfect model of America’s corporate management.
Several of Home Depot’s big shareholders, however, are a lot less infatuated with Bob, citing him as a perfect model of corporate arrogance, incompetence and excess. They note that Nardelli, who has no retail experience, came from General Electric to take over a well-run and successful retailing company that treated store managers and employees with respect.
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High-flying CEOs
Friday 09 June @ 17:25:49 (Read: 2196) |
by Jim Hightower
They say it’s lonely at the top, but one thing is for sure: The seats are much cushier up there.  Not only is the executive suite padded with multimillion-dollar pay packages, but the top honchos also enjoy an extra-special perk: free use of corporate jets for personal travel. This is the apex of the soft life ... luxurious leather seats, on-board massages, gourmet meals, fine wines, and, best of all, the plane waits for you!
We’re not talking about business trips, but golf outings, vacations, and such. Take Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner. He hops the corporate jet twice a year to visit his vineyard and villa in Tuscany, costing up to $170,000 for each round trip. Even though Parsons is paid more than $16 million a year, he passes this flight tab to the shareholders and consumers of Time Warner. Indeed, I think of Parsons’ flights every time his company jacks up my monthly cable bill!
How do corporations rationalize this gross pampering of the boss? 9/11, of course! Just as the Bushites cite terrorism as their excuse for everything, CEOs say they have no choice but to fly everywhere on private jets for “security reasons.” For example, Rollins Inc., the pest control outfit, cites security as the reason for paying $117,000 last year for the pleasure trips of its CEO. But, as one critic noted, the only terrorist threat to this guy would be if “one day cockroaches decided to start fighting back.” ||
© 2006 by Jim Hightower & Associates
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Long-distance burger orders
Wednesday 31 May @ 23:20:54 (Read: 2449) |
by Jim Hightower
OK, corporate America is shipping our manufacturing, high-tech and professional-service jobs off to Lowwagehellistan—but at least they can’t send our fast-food jobs away, right? After all, these require face-to-face dealings with customers, so surely they’re safe.
Well ... not exactly. Pull into the drive-through lane at a McDonald’s, Hardee’s or Carl’s Jr., and there’s a chance that the friendly voice on the intercom saying, “Do you want fries with that?” is not inside the building—or anywhere near your town. Unbeknownst to customers, these fast-food chains are testing a new computerized system that centralizes order takers in faraway call centers.
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Remember Afghanistan?
Tuesday 30 May @ 20:41:35 (Read: 2732) |
by Jim Hightower
Gosh, George W has kept us all so busy trying to deal with his disastrous Iraq war and with his buildup for a whole new war in Iran—that I’d forgotten about his war in Afghanistan! How’s that going?
It’s an important question; since—unlike Iraq and Iran—the Taliban thugs who ruled this country actually had direct ties to Osama bin Laden and the crashbombers who attacked us on 9/11. Our military quickly retaliated by bombing the bejeezus out of the place, routing the Taliban, and installing our guy, Hamid Karzai, as the new president.
That was that, right? Well ... not exactly. Osama bin Forgotten is still out there somewhere in Afghanistan’s mountain caves, our man Karzai can’t venture outside the protective bubble of his capital city, the economic revitalization that Bush promised was never delivered, unemployment and poverty are rampant—and the Taliban is now resurgent.
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Save the Billionaires!
Wednesday 17 May @ 17:17:42 (Read: 2323) |
by Jim Hightower
If you were in charge and you wanted to give a helping hand to some deserving people in our society, you might single out school teachers ... or poverty workers ... or columnists like me!
Okay, not me—but even I would be more deserving than the people being singled out by the Bushites and Congress to receive a trillion dollars in new tax relief over a ten year span. Who? The very richest people in America.
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Axing our National Parks
Thursday 11 May @ 12:46:17 (Read: 2455) |
by Jim Hightower
America’s network of national parks is a natural resource so beloved by the public that even George W has posed in parks for photo ops in his two presidential campaigns, promising to bolster funding for these treasures.
Once the campaigning is done, however, our park-lover-in-chief goes after them with a double-bladed budget ax. This hypocrisy is so blatant that, in the 2004 election year, Bush’s spin meisters instructed park guides not to use the phrase “budget cutbacks,” instead substituting the euphemism, “service level adjustments.”
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Lee Raymond’s golden years
Wednesday 03 May @ 15:40:01 (Read: 2752) |
by Jim Hightower
Last year, with a veritable gusher of oil profits flooding into the coffers of Exxon Mobil, CEO Lee Raymond moaned that he really didn’t know what to do with so much money. But now we learn that he quickly figured out what to do with a big pool of it: He gave it to himself!
Lee retired at the end of last year, and he cashed out bigger than any bank robber in history. He walked away with a package of cash and stock payments worth about $42 million. Then, he took a lump-sum pension benefit worth another $98 million (not bad for a guy who pushed to reduce pension benefits for Exxon Mobil’s blue collar workers).
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Sports brandalism
Friday 28 April @ 14:24:52 (Read: 2483) |
by Jim Hightower
Time for another report [sports theme] from the Wide, Wide, Wide, WILD world of sports! Exciting news, sports fans: Marketers have made a trendsetting breakthrough for the corporate branding of sports! For some time, corporations have been plastering our stadiums with such lovable names as Office Depot Center, Bank Of America Stadium, and Enron Field (until that corporation plunged into infamy and bankruptcy.)
Well, if you loved having a cold corporate ID slapped on your local stadium, get ready to be deliriously happy, for corporations have now begun to put their brands on the teams themselves! One of our listeners has labeled this development as an act of “brandalism.”
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A telling picture
Thursday 20 April @ 17:40:33 (Read: 2568) |
by Jim Hightower
Memo to Karl Rove: Never again let George W be posed with the real George W: George Washington.
An AP photograph recently ran in several newspapers—a head shot of W giving a talk in the White House. He was in the forefront of the picture, looking his goofy self, while our stately first president appeared to be just behind him, peering sternly at George. It was only an oil painting of Washington that loomed from the wall to the right of Bush’s head, but the contrast between No. 1 and No. 43 was as unflattering for Bush as if the real man had stepped forward from history and stood beside him.
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Thieves of democracy
Thursday 13 April @ 13:32:22 (Read: 3117) |
by Jim Hightower
Have you been preempted yet?
You probably don’t know it, but chances are that your state legislature either already has passed or is considering laws to steal an important level of local authority from you and the other folks in your city, town or county. The present focus of this preemption power- grab is on local governments around the country that have been responding (as they should) to the corporate effort to contaminate our food supply with genetically modified organisms.
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For the love of Nature
Thursday 06 April @ 11:26:26 (Read: 2312) |
by Jim Hightower
When George W announced that he was naming Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho to be his new secretary of the interior, he assured us that “Dirk has a long and abiding love for nature.”
Wow. If Dirk is Bush’s idea of someone who loves nature, what would be his idea of someone who hates nature? Apparently, Bush made his judgment based on the fact that he and Kempthorne bonded when they went mountain biking in Idaho last summer. If George had actually looked at Dirk’s record ... well, it’s hard to find much love there.
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One Senator takes a stand
Wednesday 29 March @ 17:24:21 (Read: 3194) |
by Jim Hightower
Out in the desert, even in the starkest environment, you sometimes come across a flower—and what a joy it is to behold, all the more appreciated because it stands alone!
That’s how I felt when I saw Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin proudly standing against George W. Bush’s secret, illegal and unconstitutional program of spying on the American people. In the politically desolate environment of the U.S. Senate—where the members blend together in shades of lifeless brown and bend so easily to the autocratic winds of the Bush/Cheney imperial presidency—it is a delight to see a flower of integrity and senatorial strength.
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Doing something about global warming
Monday 27 March @ 12:44:25 (Read: 2549) |
by Jim Hightower
Instead of recognizing the obvious—that global warming is fast reaching the tipping point where it becomes irreversible (and disastrous)—the Bushites continue to keep their heads up the tailpipes and smokestacks of the industries pumping out the greenhouse gases that cause the unnatural warming.
So, we’re doomed, right?
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Animal Farm meets the Marx Brothers
Thursday 16 March @ 17:22:41 (Read: 4170) |
by Jim Hightower
You’ll be excited to learn that your government is protecting you with a new surveillance program!
It’s the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), authorized by the Patriot Act, but being implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This thing will compel every owner of even one cow, horse, pig, goat, sheep, llama, chicken, turkey, duck, goose or any other form of livestock to be registered in a federal database and to have each and every one of their animals tracked 24/7, from birth to death.
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Reckless War spending
Thursday 09 March @ 15:34:53 (Read: 2627) |
by Jim Hightower
How much is enough?
How about $439 billion. That’s how much the Pentagon wants to take out of our pockets for next year’s budget. Well, you say, they’re fighting a war. Yes, but the $439 billion doesn’t count fighting wars—those cost extra. How much extra? Well, they say they don’t know. To continue what Donnie Rumsfeld now is calling “The long war,” the Bushites just keep coming back to Congress and saying: “More.”
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Conservatives chastise Bush
Friday 03 March @ 17:35:20 (Read: 2847) |
by Jim Hightower
George W insists that he has supreme power as commander-in-chief to spy on American citizens, without following any stinking due process of law. Dick Cheney snarls that anyone who disagrees is a terrorist-coddler. Karl Rove snaps that Democrats who oppose Bush’s spy operation are Osama lovers. Alberto “See No Evil” Gonzales told congress that the president can by-damn make his own rules in wartime.
Wow—these guys are like hormone-addled fourteen-year-olds! They’re doing a high strut in hopes of intimidating their political enemies. But wait—while the puffed-up Bushites are looking to their left, look who’s coming at them from the right. Bush’s unilateral assertion of autocratic executive power is hardly a conservative principle, and a growing number of prominent right-wingers are howling that Bush & Gang are desecrating their movement.
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Old friends
Thursday 23 February @ 15:38:35 (Read: 2728) |
by Jim Hightower
They say that nobody loves you when you are down and out—but this is ridiculous.
Poor Jack Abramoff. Only months ago, this supersleaze lobbyist was the darling of top Republican politicos, delivering bundles of campaign cash to them, including some $200,000 to George W’s ’04 election run. Abramoff took lawmakers on all-expenses paid jaunts to exotic locales, including squiring Tom DeLay and his entourage to golf outings in Scotland and the Northern Mariana Islands. Jack even had his own posh restaurant on Capitol Hill, where he routinely picked up tabs and held fundraisers for the GOP’s power elite.
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Spyin’ and lyin’
Wednesday 15 February @ 14:09:05 (Read: 2672) |
by Jim Hightower
As we’ve seen in his botched handling of everything from the Iraqi occupation to the Katrina disaster, George W is not much of a president. But, let’s give credit where it’s due—Bush has been a heck of a performer in two areas: spying and lying.
Both of these have come to the fore with the recent revelation that he has secretly and unilaterally been using the national security agency to spy on U.S. citizens. He has done so frequently and illegally, not bothering to get a judicial warrant for his eavesdropping on untold numbers of our phone calls and e-mails, as required by the Constitution and the law.
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President Pinocchio speaks
Wednesday 08 February @ 14:42:25 (Read: 2843) |
by Jim Hightower
Gosh, so much muck to rake, so little time. I speak, of course, about George W’s recent “State of the Union” pontifications. What a mess of lies!
His headline-grabber was that America is “addicted to oil” and that he’ll cut U.S. reliance on Middle-East oil by 75 percent over the next 20 years.
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Bush tries to squelch democracy
Wednesday 01 February @ 13:10:34 (Read: 2611) |
by Jim Hightower
George W just can’t seem to get the hang of this democracy thing. He keeps saying democracy is good—but when it’s directed at him, he says it’s bad, and he suddenly calls for a dollop of autocracy or even monarchy.
The latest Bush twist came in a speech to the VFW. He started off talking about how good it is for Americans to have a spirited debate this election year about the war in Iraq. There’s no need to “fear the debate,” he said. Well, yes, freedom of speech, open debate, dissent—these are the essence of democracy, so bring ‘em on! But then he regressed: “There is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate,” George warned with an autocratic air, adding that Americans should only tolerate “honest critics.”
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Learning from runaway cows
Thursday 26 January @ 13:17:44 (Read: 2661) |
by Jim Hightower
Do you fear that the American people have become as fat, lazy and submissive as a bunch of cud-chewing cows, that we can be led anywhere the Powers That Be choose to take us? Well, if you think that We the People have totally lost our rebellious spark, let me tell you a heartening cow story.
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The GOP’s irony deficiency
Thursday 19 January @ 20:17:13 (Read: 3045) |
by Jim Hightower
It’s come to my attention that today’s Republican political officials suffer from a debilitating and tragic genetic flaw: They were born without the irony gene.
A couple of recent examples will show how truly sad this condition can be, and I know that, after you learn about them, all compassionate Americans will want to join my charitable campaign to find a cure for the GOP’s Irony Deficiency Syndrome (or, GOP-IDS, as it’s known).
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All hail King George
Wednesday 11 January @ 17:33:18 (Read: 2981) |
by Jim Hightower
Well, gosh, says George W, I can declare parts of the Bill of Rights null void if I want to, because I’m the commander-in-chief, don’t you know, and that gives me all the authority I need.
Well, gosh-right-back-at-you, George—you’re merely a president, not a monarch, and even presidents are not above the law, much less above the Constitution.
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George W wants corporate governance
Wednesday 04 January @ 17:23:11 (Read: 3220) |
by Jim Hightower
George W is fond of philosophizing about his vision of an “ownership society,” organized not on a governmental model, but on the corporate structure. I wonder: Is George even aware that the “owners” of corporate America have no real power over the autocratic elites who run corporations?
The owners of corporations are the shareholders—those people who have bought the company’s stock. But ownership in the corporate model buys you no democratic control. Take the board of directors, which is the official governing body of the corporation you “own.” As a shareholder, you get to vote for the board members—but the ballot gives you no choices!
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It’s about ministering, not preaching
Wednesday 28 December @ 11:18:06 (Read: 5507) |
by Jim Hightower
All of the pundits and consultants are unanimous these days about what Democratic Party candidates must do to gain political favor: emulate Republicans by wearing religion (specifically Christianity) on their sleeves, making alliances with evangelical churches and openly engaging in “faith politics!” The pundits and consultants are, of course, wrong.
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Gutting the methyl bromide ban
Wednesday 21 December @ 18:34:50 (Read: 3051) |
by Jim Hightower
It’s time for today’s riddle!
This one involves a particularly nasty pesticide called methyl bromide. How nasty is it? So nasty that, as of January 2005, its use was banned by an international treaty. And—get this—it’s so nasty that even the Bushites back the ban! Yet—here comes the riddle—U.S. agribusiness giants are still pumping more than 10,000 tons of this nasty into our croplands and air each year. Can you figure it out?
Bingo, if you said “politics.”
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Come clean, Tom
Wednesday 14 December @ 20:07:56 (Read: 7306) |
by Jim Hightower
Remember how Republicans howled in derision at Bill Clinton’s ridiculous claim that he “did not have sex with that woman?” When confronted with the legality of his actions, Clinton dodged with his now famous line, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
What a hoot, then, to hear Republican leader Tom DeLay now using similar linguistic perversions to try to dodge accountability for his illegal actions. Of course, as is typical with Republican officials, DeLay’s transgression does not involve sex, but money. It’s all a matter of what turns you on, I guess.
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The Absurdity of Pat
Wednesday 07 December @ 21:20:49 (Read: 2850) |
by Jim Hightower
Satire is dead. When a society’s reality becomes so inherently absurd that it cannot be satirized, satire is dead.
In our society, Pat Robertson’s maniacally-bloated ego has become the dark hole of absurdity ... and the death of satire. This Republican televangelist sucks in all surrounding reality, contorting and condensing it to an impenetrable mass of his own pseudo-religious pomposity, which he occasionally spews forth to the faithful as the veritable word of God. Recent spewings have included his call for the assassination of Venezuela’s president, his assertion that the state department would be improved if a nuclear bomb were to explode within it, and his prediction that Orlando would be hit with a meteor because it allowed a gay pride event to take place.
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Corporate Free Speech
Thursday 01 December @ 21:27:30 (Read: 3181) |
by Jim Hightower
One of the silliest claims made by those who run Corporate America is that the paper entity called “a corporation” must be treated as human beings, entitled to the same constitutional rights that we living, breathing U.S. citizens have—including the human right to freedom of speech.
Of course, a corporation is a thing, not a person, and to see how absurd it is for corporate executives to claim that their entities should have democratic rights, just sneak a peek at how they treat the free-speech rights of shareholders, the actual people who own the corporations. In theory, shareholders are the ultimate boss of any corporation, supreme over the executives who’re the hired hands doing day-to-day management. In practice, however, the relationship is turned on its head, with the executives bossing the owners.
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A Thanksgiving Connection
Wednesday 23 November @ 18:53:29 (Read: 2859) |
by Jim Hightower
It’s Thanksgiving Day—have you hugged a farmer yet?
Actually, we need to do a lot more than hug those family farmers who bring us such a bounty of good food, for they’ve become an endangered species in the Brave New AgWorld of industrialized, conglomeratized and globalized food production that our policy makers are pushing. Thanks to such policies, those who till the soil are productive, efficient ... and broke!
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Fight for your right
Wednesday 16 November @ 16:53:42 (Read: 2939) |
by Jim Hightower
Let’s talk about that “inalienable right” that the Powers That Be don't want us talking about: The pursuit of happiness.
This basic human right, proclaimed by the founders on July 4, 1776, gets short shrift today. It’s not taught in schools as a worthy goal in life, it’s not mentioned by the mass media, it’s not posed as a national objective by vote-seeking politicians, and it is deliberately discouraged by corporate bosses who constantly demand more hours from us with less pay (as one T-shirt puts it: “Medieval Peasants Worked Less Than You Do”).
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Boo Yahoo
Thursday 10 November @ 21:47:45 (Read: 2628) |
Yoo-hoo, Yahoo ... we see you.
Yahoo, the internet giant, is among such others as Microsoft, Google, and Cisco that are gleaning profits in China at the expense of human rights. The repressive, antidemocratic rulers there use technologies willingly supplied by these corporations to censor the information that the Chinese people get and to monitor the people’s communications.
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Martial law for bird flu?
Wednesday 02 November @ 01:53:45 (Read: 2889) |
by Jim Hightower
William O. Douglas wrote: “Just as nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air—however slight—lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness.”
He could have been describing the oppressive tendencies of the Bushites. They never miss a chance to try slipping America’s thin rug of democracy out from under us by enhancing executive power at the expense of our nation’s historic democratic principles. Their latest tug at the rug comes in the guise of responding to—of all things—the possibility of an outbreak of bird flu.
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Bush Opposes Torture Ban
Thursday 27 October @ 19:05:23 (Read: 2831) |
The only thing more disgusting than torturing prisoners of war is the astonishing effort being made by George W to kill legislation that would ban such torture by our military.
The ban was introduced by Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war who was tortured at length years ago by his Vietnamese jailers. McCain’s amendment was passed in the Senate by a rock-solid vote of 90 to 0— including 46 Republicans and even the GOP majority leader. McCain, speaking of his fellow prisoners of war, said during the debate: “Every one of us—every single one of us—knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies.”
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A Better Business Model
Thursday 20 October @ 23:55:28 (Read: 2843) |
by Jim Hightower
What if business people started saying “No?” No to mega-growth, no to the frenetic pace of trying to get superrich, no to dog-eat-dog economics ... no to the prevailing corporate ethic that your business must always be getting bigger to be a “winner.”
Well, it’s happening. It gets little coverage by a media constantly fawning over the barons who run the slam-bam expansionist operations like Amazon or Starbucks, but there is a quiet rebellion spreading among entrepreneurs who’re choosing a heretical business path. These are folks who want to make a profit—but not a killing. They don’t want to run over their competitor or become a farflung chain. They want more control over their own lives, and they want their businesses to be based on genuinely satisfying customers and treating workers as valued partners.
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Meet the Gas-Price Gougers
Thursday 13 October @ 02:28:05 (Read: 2756) |
by Jim Hightower
Do the honchos of Big Oil think we have sucker wrappers around our heads?
ExxonMobil is the latest of the giants to take out full-page ads telling us that they feel our pain at the gas pump and are doing all they can to hold down prices. Then they snicker at us and run to the bank with the ripoff profits they're taking right out of our wallets.
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Finding Bush’s Swagger
Thursday 06 October @ 02:35:42 (Read: 3100) |
by Jim Hightower
Stand back, folks—the White House is on a mission!
Is it an exit plan for Iraq, or maybe an FDR-style investment so the ordinary people of New Orleans can rebuild their own city? No, no, silly—the Bushites don't do substance. They do image and ideology. Their neo-con, laissez-faire, right-wing ideology continues to drive their failed agenda, both domestically and internationally. But their image has taken several shocking jolts lately, and the “cowboy president” is looking as confused as a goat on astroturf.
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The Taliban also rises
Thursday 29 September @ 14:40:45 (Read: 3104) |
Meanwhile, what about Bush's other war?
Remember the Taliban? Well, they're back ... and gaining power in Afghanistan. These are the religious zealots and ruthless soldiers who are part of the real terrorist threat in our world. Before 9/11, they ruled Afghanistan. Actually, we considered them allies and armed them. But then we learned that they had nurtured Osama bin Laden and made their country the world's number one training ground for terrorists. So, after 9/11, U.S. firepower was unleashed to depose the Taliban's rule, and our military began the tough job of rooting out Osama and his al Qaeda network.
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Finding the Democratic Party
Thursday 22 September @ 01:59:06 (Read: 2931) |
by Jim Hightower
Excuse me, but has anyone seen the Democratic party?
An outrageous war of lies rages in Iraq, nearly 2,000 American troops have died there, Iraq itself is spiraling down into civil war and theocracy, a growing majority of Americans now see Bush’s policy for the disastrous deceit that it is, and grassroots America is alive with a burgeoning peace movement. But where are the congressional Democrats?
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The babblings of Pat Robertson
Friday 16 September @ 06:21:11 (Read: 4053) |
by Jim Hightower
Well now we know why those puff-headed preachers of the ultra-right are so eager to have the 10 Commandments plastered everywhere— apparently they can’t remember them. Take that ever-babbling tower of Biblical love, Pat Robertson. His grip on Commandment number six—Thou shalt not kill—keeps going all slippery on him.
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Bush stiffs New Orleans
Friday 16 September @ 00:37:24 (Read: 2629) |
by Jim Hightower
Finding Waldo is easier than Finding George.
The day that Hurricane Katrina was poised to sock New Orleans right in the teeth, our country's president blithely winged his way westward to Arizona and California. He went out there politicking while Katrina was devastating the people of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi – indeed, Bush's handlers could not get him to report for duty at the White House until two days after the catastrophe had struck.
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An economic draft
Wednesday 31 August @ 04:24:41 (Read: 2719) |
by Jim Hightower
George W’s handling of Iraq has been such a mess that his numbers are in the ditch. I’m not talking about poll numbers (which are at new lows)—but his recruitment numbers.
The Bushites don’t need polls to tell them what the public thinks about their Iraq policy —the public’s judgment is clearly reflected in the Pentagon’s continuing failure to meet its monthly quotas for getting new recruits to throw into this bloody war. As one exasperated Army recruiter put it: “The problem is that no one wants to join.”
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Really support our troops
Friday 26 August @ 04:36:09 (Read: 2697) |
by Jim Hightower
“Support Our Troops,” shout the bumper stickers and ribbon-magnets attached to vehicles all across America.
Good idea ... but do we really mean it? Oh, sure, George W and the other pols will praise the troops at the drop of a hat—but rhetorical support is not the same (or as good) as substance.
Start with the fact that this commander-in-chief and a gung-ho Congress sent troops into the hell of war ill-equipped, telling soldiers deploying to Iraq: “Oh, by the way, bring your own armor.”
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Corporate ethics
Wednesday 17 August @ 15:42:42 (Read: 2821) |
by Jim Hightower
If you’re a rank-and-file employee and you don't produce, you're handed a pink slip. But if you're a top executive who doesn't produce, you get a golden handshake.
Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley recently gave us yet another demonstration of this inequity and hypocrisy, which goes to the core of modern corporate ethics. In late July, the firm's acting president announced the firing of a thousand brokers from its retail division, sternly declaring: "We must constantly review the performance of individuals in the retail group and identify those who are not up to our standards."
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Edible education
Thursday 11 August @ 04:07:29 (Read: 2835) |
by Jim Hightower
Emma Goldman said she wanted no part of any revolution unless it included dancing. That’s good, but better yet is Alice Waters’ idea that a revolution should be “delicious.”
Waters—who is both a fabulous chef and a pioneer leader of America’s sustainable food movement—believes deeply in the transformative power of having our local communities grow, cook, and share good meals. So she has launched what literally will be a delicious revolution, focusing it squarely on those who are America's future: schoolchildren.
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Economists vs. Reality
Wednesday 03 August @ 17:16:32 (Read: 3178) |
by Jim Hightower
The problem with America’s economic policy today is that it’s written by economists. And the problem with too many economists is that they live in a world of theory ... or, worse yet, a world of ideological delusion.
For example, George W’s plan to privatize Social Security is written by a bunch of laissez-faire economic ideologues who theorized that Americans really don’t want a guaranteed security program, but would prefer a chance to invest their monthly Social Security payments in the stock market.
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Army gets personal
Thursday 28 July @ 14:17:02 (Read: 2882) |
by Jim Hightower
Hey, kids—Uncle Sam not only wants you, he’s got your number! Not yet sure what you want to do in life? Why not get paid and see an exotic part of the world while you’re getting it all together? Yes, you could summer in sunny Iraq ... and be a part of our exciting occupation forces there, where there’s never a dull moment!
If you are 16 to 25 years old, chances are you’ll soon be receiving such a sales pitch from the Army. How will recruiters find you? Easy—thanks to a new database secretly built by the Pentagon, they know where you live. They
also know your phone number. And your social security number, your e-mail address, your height and weight, your grades in school, your ethnicity ... and so much more.
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A $3,000 pay hike
Thursday 21 July @ 20:34:56 (Read: 3304) |
by Jim Hightower
Have you received a $3,100 pay raise this year? Well, maybe you need to switch jobs—I suggest becoming a member of Congress.
Just before their July 4th recess, our Congress critters voted to hike their own pay by $3,100 —the sixth year in a row that they’ve rewarded themselves. Their pay level is now a sweet $165,200 a year. But before you get angry at their breathtaking audacity, let Tom DeLay explain it to you: “It’s not a pay raise,” he barked to inquiring reporters. “It’s an adjustment.”
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A deal that stinks
Thursday 14 July @ 02:57:09 (Read: 2572) |
by Jim Hightower
“Duke” Cunningham likes to cast himself as a tough, stand-up guy. This former “Top Gun” fighter pilot, who’s now an ultra-conservative Republican congress-critter from California, is big on demanding that people take personal responsibility for their actions. But ol’ Duke is not standing so tall these days and has gone all soft on that principle of personal responsibility—because it’s his character that’s now in question.
It seems that Randy “Duke” Cunningham sold his home in San Diego’s posh Del Mar suburb in 2003 for 1.7 million smackers to his longtime friend, Mitchell Wade. The transaction enabled Duke to buy a bigger, sweller, seven-bathroom house in the even more posh Rancho Santa Fe suburb, ranked as America’s wealthiest community. Good for the Dukester, right? He’s moving up!
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An Orwellian nightmare
Wednesday 06 July @ 00:49:19 (Read: 2685) |
by Jim Hightower
Corporate and political advertisers are always trying to mess with our heads—but at least they’ve not been able to crawl right inside ... until now.
Advertisers are about to take a quantum leap beyond conventional surveys and focus groups to try to learn what marketing pitches work on us consumers. Thanks to an explosive new field of research called “neuromarketing,” marketeers can peek inside the human mind to locate our “Buy Button”—the neural combination within the brain that causes us to choose this car or candidate over another. It’s enough to give Orwell the willies ... and enough to make Karl Rove drool with anticipation.
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Bush no anti-terrorist
Thursday 30 June @ 10:03:18 (Read: 2619) |
by Jim Hightower
One thing you can say about George W is that, By Gollies, he’s tough on terrorists—right?
Well, that’s what he tells us every chance he gets. For example, he recently held a photo-op in Ohio to brag about his success in prosecuting terrorists. Standing with his chief legal beagle, Alberto Gonzales, Bush declared that “federal terrrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects and more than half of those charged have been convicted.”
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Thanks for small favors
Wednesday 22 June @ 17:08:40 (Read: 2896) |
by Jim Hightower
From our Thanks-For-Small-Favors department, comes two recent breakthroughs.
First is an advance from the world of movie theaters, home of the $8 ticket and the $5 small popcorn. As film buffs know, price-gouging has not satisfied the profit lust of theater chains, so they have been selling commercial time to corporations. This means that advertisers get a 10-or-15 minute block just before the film runs to hawk their products at us. We’re a captive audience, but we paid to see a movie, not commercials.
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Corporate shakedown
Wednesday 15 June @ 00:24:44 (Read: 3578) |
by Jim Hightower
Attention, class, we’re now going to study the new and improved concept of “free enterprise,” which has been redefined by modern corporate executives as the availability of free government money to make their enterprise profitable.
Let’s turn to the sterling example set by Cabala’s Inc. This giant retailer of hunting, fishing, and other outdoor products recently graced the state of Texas with one of its megastores, but only after demanding and receiving a rucksack filled with government subsidies, including $600,000 cash, $36 million in road and construction costs, and $20 million in highway improvements.
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Mad cows, mad people
Wednesday 01 June @ 03:07:40 (Read: 3201) |
by Jim Hightower
In case you thought that corporate globalization can’t get any globalonier, look at what happens when Mad Cow disease meets NAFTA.
You might recall the unpleasant news several months ago that bovine spongiform encephalopathy––Mad Cow disease, to you––had sprung up in Alberta, Canada, and that some of the infected cattle had been sold and shipped into the U.S. The prospect of Mad Cow burgers in our market was enough to prompt even the corporate-loving, regulation-hating Bushites to gag, so they banned the importation of Canadian beef and cattle, shutting down the border for a while to protect public health.
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Stiffing the taxpayers
Wednesday 25 May @ 18:15:51 (Read: 3222) |
by Jim Hightower
Only a few weeks ago, George W and the congress teamed up with big banking lobbyists to slam hard-hit working folks by shutting off their access to bankruptcy protection. “Take personal responsibility,” scolded politicians of both parties. “You made the debt, you have to pay it, even if it drives your family into the poor house,” they piously admonished.
So, where is the moral piety of these politicos now that United Airlines has simply walked away from its financial responsibility for the retirement of tens-of-thousands of its employees? Retirement benefits are not a “gift” to employees, but a part of their agreed-to compensation.
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Kicking small business
Wednesday 18 May @ 14:22:03 (Read: 3204) |
by Jim Hightower
Those “free market” ideologues who keep insisting that there's no such thing as a corporate class war being waged against the workaday people of our country— might want to take a look at the Bronx Terminal Market in New York City for a classic example.
This market is free enterprise in action. Some two dozen very unique, independent merchants sell their foodstuffs here, drawing customers from as far away as Ohio. If you’re looking for Ghanaian smoked shrimp, hot Jamaican peppers, or Philippine sea moss, the Bronx market is your mother lode. These merchants are hard-working folks who start their days in the wee hours, providing the largest clearinghouse of ethnic foods on the East Coast.
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Corporate speech
Wednesday 11 May @ 15:29:32 (Read: 2807) |
by Jim Hightower
One of the silliest claims made by those who run Corporate America is that the paper entity called “a corporation” must be treated as a human being, entitled to the same constitutional rights that we living, breathing U.S. citizens have—including the human right to freedom of speech.
Of course, a corporation is a thing, not a person, and to see how absurd it is for corporate executives to claim that their entities should have democratic rights, just sneak a peek at how they treat the free-speech rights of shareholders, the actual people who own the corporations.
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The pain of the rich
Thursday 05 May @ 18:26:20 (Read: 2811) |
by Jim Hightower
You think you’re the only one who's having a rough time in today’s economy, Bucko? It’s time you started thinking about someone else ... such as the rich.
Yeah, the rich. Too few Americans give any thought to the hardships of those at the top. Consider something as basic as the sheer physical burden of carrying
all that moolah around—the back-breaking weight of their wallets and purses, for example. And it probably never occurs to you that those big diamond earrings and gold necklaces can pull you down by the end of the day.
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Tax dollars flushed
Wednesday 27 April @ 21:55:29 (Read: 2807) |
by Jim Hightower
Washington has a message for you: “No!”
No on health care, college education, job training, food stamps, veterans benefits, etc. All of these programs—and many more that meet basic needs of the American people—are being sacrificed on the holy altar of budget cuts. America has many crying needs, our congressional leaders acknowledge, but the money has run out, so forget it, go away, no. Besides, say our congress critters, we’re giving you the C-130J, so stop whining and be grateful for what you’re getting.
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Coalition of Patriots
Wednesday 20 April @ 02:17:00 (Read: 2993) |
by Jim Hightower
Well, well. George W is getting a poltical comeuppance—and it’s coming from a place he least expected: conservatives.
At issue is his enthusiam for the liberty-busting USA Patriot Act, a little shop of autocratic horrors that the Bushites rammed through congress under cover of the 9-11 terrorist attack. Several of its most intrusive, anti-democratic provisions expire this year, and Bush has made their renewal a top priority. These provisions include “sneak-and-peek” secret searches by the FBI of people's homes and computers, the secret raiding of libraries and medical offices to grab people's records, and a definition of “terrorist” that is so broad that it includes citizens who simply protest government policy.
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Lying CEOs walk free
Tuesday 12 April @ 23:54:27 (Read: 2766) |
by Jim Hightower
There’s a word for people who take money from others under false pretenses. The word is: Criminal.
But this word does not apply to corporate CEOs, even if they are guilty of the kind of flimflam that would send common hucksters to prison. Instead of bilking people in Ponzi schemes, some CEOs fleece investors by claiming to have achieved enormous profits in the previous year, when the company actually made much less or even suffered a loss. These executives cook the books to make the corporation's performance (and theirs) look far better than it is, thus artificially jacking up the company’s stock price and duping investors into putting more money into the scam. The executives, who get rewarded based on meeting profit goals, walk away with millions.
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Who owns America?
Wednesday 06 April @ 23:50:22 (Read: 2908) |
by Jim Hightower
If you’re confused at all on the question of who Washington serves, look no further for clarity than the recent enactment of a “bankruptcy reform” law.
Ask yourself this: Were you the one clamoring for bankruptcy reform? No. The vast majority of us had no idea this was even in the works, much less that we were about to get schnookered by our president and congress. This bill was the wet dream of Visa, MasterCard, MBNA, Citigroup, and other giant hawkers of credit cards. Having filled the mail boxes of every American with false offers of “free credit,” these bankers are now alarmed that so many folks have fallen behind on payments and are having to declare bankruptcy to get a fresh start.
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How Bush supports troops
Wednesday 30 March @ 17:30:38 (Read: 2987) |
by Jim Hightower
Excuse me while I throw up.
I’m nauseated by the disgusting treatment that the Bushites keep giving to the troops they publicly profess to love—troops they are all too willing to use for their own political purposes. We’ve learned about the Pentagon’s deadly failure to provide body and vehicle armor for the troops in Iraq, about the Bushites shameful efforts to keep America’s wounded soldiers out of the public eye and even to deny them health care, about the sickening stonewalling by the White House and Pentagon brass so the entire blame for prisoner torture falls on a few lowly grunts—but the scandals just keep coming.
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Towns vs. telecoms
Wednesday 23 March @ 01:08:34 (Read: 3063) |
by Jim Hightower
In case you have any doubt that corporations will always protect their private profit interests at the expenses of the public interest—take note of a stealth lobbying campaign that giant phone companies and cable providers are waging in state legislatures.
At issue is the obvious public interest in seeing that high-speed Internet connections are available to all citizens.
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The Bush Bubble
Wednesday 16 March @ 17:42:39 (Read: 3460) |
by Jim Hightower
Do you think George W has ever even visited the real world—or has he spent his entire life in the bubble of special privilege to which he was born and in the political bubble maintained so carefully by his White House handlers?
Take the economy, which he keeps telling us is fantastic. Even in the rare case when economic reality confronts him, George doesn't get it. He recently flew to Omaha for one of his made-for-TV “conversations” with the people—although “the people” allowed in are always a hand-picked rent-a-choir for his political message-of-the-day.
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Is your boss a king?
Wednesday 09 March @ 16:57:11 (Read: 3492) |
by Jim Hightower
How far would you let a boss push you? Maybe your boss keeps refusing to raise your pay and also cuts back on your health care. Still, jobs are short these days, and wages everywhere are low—so you stick it out. But what if the boss then has surveillance cameras put in to keep an eye on you at work, and also requires drug testing on the job? This invasion of your privacy angers you, but you still need the job, so you shrug it off.
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Your loss is their gain
Wednesday 02 March @ 19:42:36 (Read: 3114) |
by Jim Hightower
The headline said it all: “Weak U.S. job growth boosts market.”
You see, when there’s bad news on your street (the lack of new jobs), there’s joy on Wall Street. As one market analyst explained it: since the economy is not spinning out enough new jobs even to keep up with the increase in the number of new workers entering the job market, “there’s not a lot of labor-cost pressure in the system.”
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Drive your car on grease
Wednesday 23 February @ 00:25:02 (Read: 3433) |
by Jim Hightower
Have you got “BioWillie” in your tank?
I’m talking about a clean-burning alternative fuel that Willie Nelson is helping to market through a new company called Willie Nelson Biodiesel. What is it? It’s essentially vegetable oil, mainly soybean oil, though the used frying oil from Dunkin Donuts or Sid’s Greasy Spoon also works.
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Fake ‘Job Creation’
Friday 18 February @ 22:10:27 (Read: 2810) |
by Jim Hightower
Just when you think you’ve bottomed out on the level of cynicism it's possible to have toward Washington’s constant kowtowing to the monied interests—along comes the “American Jobs Creation Act.”
These days, whenever the White House and Congress put a positive-sounding title on a piece of legislation, you can bet that the law itself does the exact opposite of what the title so gloriously proclaims.
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The party never dies
Wednesday 09 February @ 18:01:54 (Read: 3328) |
by Jim Hightower
Ah, what memories we have of George W's lavish inaugural gala!
Other presidents have been party poopers and tightwads compared to Bush. Jimmy Carter, for example, provided only peanuts, crackers, cheese, and cash bars for his celebrants. And FDR’s inaugural, also held in a time of war, cost only $2,000—guests enjoyed chicken salad. How tacky!
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The whining wealthy
Wednesday 02 February @ 17:19:14 (Read: 2987) |
by Jim Hightower
Oh, cruel fate! Have pity on the poor CEOs of CorporateWorld. One day they’re strutting peacocks ... the next day, they’re feather dusters.
Several CEOs who’ve recently had their plumage plucked are in the news again––this time facing trial for various levels of fraud. Kenneth Lay of Enron, Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth and Walter Forbes of CUC International are among the former CEOs who once were heralded in business magazines, management books and the popular media as giants, geniuses, and gurus––the gods of corporate success.
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The lie of 'tort reform'
Thursday 27 January @ 14:39:56 (Read: 3302) |
by Jim Hightower
At George W’s recent “National Economic Conference,” an entire session was devoted to bashing trial lawyers—and what a rollicking good time it was!
A panel of corporate interests wowed the hand-picked audience of Bush partisans with jabs at the lawyers who try to hold wrongdoing corporations accountable to those of us who are harmed. George himself nodded and chuckled as panelists cried about people who sue these business empires.
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Ripping off veterans
Thursday 20 January @ 11:49:44 (Read: 2935) |
by Jim Hightower
In the wild and woolly world of unbridled commerce, you’ll often encounter disgusting life forms than can only be described as sleaze or slime. For example, take the roving band of companies that profit by essentially bilking vulnerable military veterans of their pensions.
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Your right to go to court
Wednesday 12 January @ 19:28:03 (Read: 3287) |
by Jim Hightower
Look for a big push by Bush this year to restrict your right to sue corporations that harm or cheat you. George claims that you unruly citizens are treating big corporations unfairly, constantly filing “frivolous lawsuits” against them. So, to protect the poor corporations, Bush says he must limit your access to America’s courts.
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Store wins, kids lose
Wednesday 05 January @ 16:47:54 (Read: 3433) |
by Jim Hightower
Home Depot is coming to my town, riding in on tracks of gold––courtesy of us taxpayers.
This is not merely another of Home Depot’s big-box stores, mind you, but, By Gollies, a high-tech data center! To get the giant corporation to choose Austin, state and local officials approached it in the professional manner that corporations now expect: By frantically hurling huge sackfulls of taxpayers’ money at them, desperately hoping that our sacks are fuller than those being hurled by other cities. In this case, our sacks contained more than $30 million, and––luckyus!––Home Depot grabbed them.
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The Costco model
Tuesday 28 December @ 20:21:31 (Read: 3399) |
by Jim Hightower
Costco is different... and that really POs Wall Street.
The nationwide retailer treats its 100,000 clerks, forklift operators, and other workers as valued assets to be invested in and nurtured—unlike the Wal-Mart model of paying the least you can to rank & file employees, squeezing the last ounce of toil out of each of them, busting any whisper of unionization, and causing a workforce turnover like employees are nothing but disposable coffee cups.
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Color-coded morality
Thursday 23 December @ 11:37:44 (Read: 3744) |
by Jim Hightower
One thing we learned from the recent unpleasantness — otherwise known as the presidential election—is that folks in the Red States live lives centered around family values that are stronger and fundamentally more moral than the liberal lifestyles of those Blue State people in, say, Massachusetts. Right?
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Count all the votes
Wednesday 15 December @ 20:40:27 (Read: 3648) |
by Jim Hightower
When is an election over? When the votes are counted, right?
Thus, Republican Dino Rossi says he’s the new governor of Washington State. Not only were the votes counted, but also recounted by electronic machines, and Dino promptly declared himself the victor by a whopping margin of 42 votes. Yes, 42 votes out of 2.8 million votes cast on November 2nd, and the tiniest margin of any gubernatorial election in U.S. history. Still, Rossi proclaimed himself governor-elect, had a victory party with supporters and departed for a seven-day Caribbean cruise.
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Welfare for billionaires
Sunday 12 December @ 19:06:23 (Read: 3520) |
by Jim Hightower
Who was one of the biggest winners on November 2nd? Some bloke named Jerry Jones. He ran a $5-million ad blitz in Arlington, Texas, to win a vote that will put $325 million of government money into his own pocket. Jerry’s the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and the vote was to get taxpayers to build a luxury sports palace for his private business.
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Support the troops
Wednesday 01 December @ 20:09:18 (Read: 4497) |
by Jim Hightower
Talk about bitter irony. George W wrapped himself in the flag and campaigned under a political theme of “support our troops” —yet, even as he campaigned, troops in Iraq continued to die precisely because he has not supported them.
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Supressing the vote
Tuesday 30 November @ 20:12:32 (Read: 3946) |
by Jim Hightower
One of the most despicable aspects of this year’s presidential campaign was the deliberate, determined effort by the Republican party to keep people from voting.
I don’t just mean the notorious efforts in Florida by First Brother Jeb Bush to purge the voter rolls of thousands of eligible African Americans, but of tactics all across the country to suppress the votes of people who tend to vote Democratic.
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Corporatizing our schools
Wednesday 17 November @ 00:01:45 (Read: 4238) |
by Jim Hightower
Time for another Gooberhead Award—presented periodically to those in the news who have their tongues running 100 miles an hour ... but forgot to put their brains in gear.
Today’s Goober is a group award, going to the top school officials of Brooklawn, NJ. They’ve launched a program there to teach public school kids a big lesson in life: Cash is more important than values.
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Return of H-1B monster
Friday 12 November @ 15:17:57 (Read: 4127) |
by Jim Hightower
Like an outer-space alien from a 1950’s science fiction movie, the H -1B monster is back.
H -1B is an immigration classification that has allowed high-tech corporations to import hundreds-of-thousands of low-paid computer engineers, programmers and other skilled professionals from abroad, rather than paying the middle-class salaries earned by high-tech workers in America.
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The politics of flu shots
Thursday 04 November @ 07:49:37 (Read: 3317) |
Even though Washington is spending billions of our tax dollars to defend “The Homeland” from a biological attack by foreign terrorists, our leaders were asleep at the switch on the need to defend us from a biological assault that everyone knew was coming: The Flu.
This is a deadly matter, for flu kills about 36,000 of us every year!
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Our Vanishing Jobs
Wednesday 27 October @ 22:34:15 (Read: 3775) |
by Jim Hightower
Great news, shouts George W on the campaign trail—95,000 new jobs were created in September! This is proof, he exclaims, that his trickle-down economic policies are working.
How rosy! How wrong.
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Your Taxes Go To Wal-Mart
Wednesday 20 October @ 15:17:28 (Read: 3371) |
by Jim Hightower
Wal-Mart, we're told, is the epitome of free-enterprise in America - work hard, be innovative, achieve efficiencies, and your company will be rewarded with riches! Oh, one more thing: be sure to load up on government subsidies along the way.
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The Scent of a Hummer
Friday 15 October @ 17:11:30 (Read: 3571) |
by Jim Hightower
The Hummer—it’s not just for driving anymore. Indeed, you can now splash the essence of Hummer all over your body! General Motors, the maker of this massive symbol of automotive macho, has now licensed a new Hummer cologne calling it “The Essence of Adventure,” and pricing it as high as $52 for a Hummer-shaped bottle of the stuff.
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Intimidating black voters
Wednesday 06 October @ 18:21:57 (Read: 3430) |
by Jim Hightower
Governor Jeb Bush is out to make his state of Florida the next Florida. In 2000, Jeb used such crude tactics as illegally purging voter lists to help engineer his brother's 537-vote “victory” in that election and now, here he goes again.
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Who Needs a Pay Hike?
Thursday 30 September @ 11:58:47 (Read: 4208) |
by Jim Hightower
I bring you tidings of great joy! At last, our Congress critters have done something tangible to lift people up from the economic doldrums we're in. They’ve raised wages in America!
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Take Our Country Back
Wednesday 22 September @ 13:13:06 (Read: 3503) |
by Jim Hightower
This is a Big Time for America. It’s not just another election, not merely about a list of issues—even though some of those issues are huge, including the deliberate downsizing of our middle class and the deadly war of lies in Iraq.
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Why aren't Bush twins in Army?
Thursday 16 September @ 16:57:36 (Read: 8007) |
by Jim Hightower
Did you take full and proper notice of the political coming-out of George W’s twin daughters? Jenna and Barbara, the 22-year-old twins, have long been kept away from the political glare, but they’re now adults who have just graduated from college, and both have been brought into the limelight by the Bush political campaign.
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Who's that at the door?
Wednesday 08 September @ 14:09:28 (Read: 3385) |
by Jim Hightower
In a moment of theological reflection, Woddy Allen once declared: "I believe there is somehting out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government."
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An American Tradition
Thursday 02 September @ 15:53:25 (Read: 3541) |
by Jim Hightower
Labor Day is all about our country’s long striving toward the ideal of egalitarianism, which really is the Big Idea of America itself--the idea that we might create a society based on the democratic values of economic fairness, social justice, and equal opportunity for all.
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The Stadium Name Game
Thursday 26 August @ 16:56:21 (Read: 4188) |
by Jim Hightower
Time for another report from the “Wide, Wide, Wide, WILD World of Sports!”
Today’s feature: Where are we? I don’t mean where does your team rank in the standings. In today’s corporatized sports world, the question of “where are we?” is a literal one––as in, what city are we in? Stadiums, arenas, and so forth no longer bear recognizable names, but instead are branded with corporate logos that are Anywhere and Nowhere, USA.
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Battling the Big Shots and Winning
Wednesday 18 August @ 10:59:09 (Read: 4378) |
by Jim Hightower
For those who sit around whining that the Powers That Be are just too powerful, so there’s no use even bothering with battling the bastards––take note and take heart in not one, not two, but three big court victories by grassroots battlers.
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Firing Shell’s Chairman?
Wednesday 11 August @ 18:12:34 (Read: 4159) |
by Jim Hightower
Getting fired is one of the sourest experiences you can have – unless, of course, you're the head honcho of a major corporation. Far from sour, getting booted from the top suite can be a mighty sweet experience.
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Is this our America?
Wednesday 04 August @ 16:00:00 (Read: 4118) |
by Jim Hightower
What do Kalamazoo, Evansville, Albuquerque, Stockton, Trenton, Phoenix, Columbia, St. Louis, Knoxville, and Charleston have in common?
All are among the cities where the secret service or police have jailed people for displaying anti-Bush signs during public appearances by his eminence, King George the W.
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Suspending our election?
Wednesday 28 July @ 17:09:06 (Read: 3943) |
by Jim Hightower
In 2000, we had Florida’s obscure secretary of state, Katherine Harris, working to squirrel the presidential election. And now — look out! — here comes another obscure GOP operative acting all squirrelly about the 2004 presidential election.
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Bush is Missing the Train
Wednesday 21 July @ 17:23:31 (Read: 5364) |
by Jim Hightower
Take the A Train, ride that Wabash Cannonball, hear the clickity-clack of the Orange Blossom Special. Trains are more than a part of our history — they’re a rich part of our culture. But are they a part of our future?
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Playing Politics with Jobs
Wednesday 14 July @ 14:45:29 (Read: 3824) |
by Jim Hightower
The Timken Company, based in Canton, Ohio, makes steel and other industrial products, and last year it was the proud recipient of a visit by his eminence, George W. Bush.
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Right-Wing Tries to Censor “Fahrenheit 9/11”
Wednesday 07 July @ 13:23:35 (Read: 4062) |
by Jim Hightower
It’s time for another Gooberhead award — issued periodically to people in the news who have their tongues going 100 miles per hour... but forgot to put their brains in gear.
Today’s Goober goes to an organization that marches under the majestic banner of “Move America Forward.
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A Company that Breaks the Mold
Thursday 01 July @ 13:21:08 (Read: 4227) |
by Jim Hightower
Do big time CEOs — no matter how compassionate and cuddly they might be personally — have to be SOBs on the job?
Yes, says the conventional wisdom of greater CorporateWorld. The bottom-line dictates that wages and benefits be slashed and that off-shoring be pursued with a vengeance.
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Bush’s Lack of Respect for Vets
Thursday 24 June @ 20:48:53 (Read: 3901) |
by Jim Hightower
Does George W get up every morning and gargle with a big glass of political cynicism, or is he genetically cynical, and just can't help himself?
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How do you say, 'offshoring?'
Wednesday 16 June @ 12:48:21 (Read: 4416) |
by Jim Hightower
Excellent news, Americans! U.S. Corporations say that they are no longer “offshoring” our middle-class jobs. It seems that they have grown afraid of the rising public anger at this self-serving fattening of their already ample bottom lines at the expense of working families. They fear that there will be a political backlash from workers, customers, congress – and plain ol’ American patriots.
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Fantasies of Corporate Ideologues
Wednesday 09 June @ 11:22:03 (Read: 3919) |
by Jim Hightower
It’s always enlightening to have the glories of corporate globalization explained to us by conservative pontificators who try to convince us that globalization is the height of morality, for it indirectly aids the poor - a group of people they never care to aid directly.
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Inhofe: Outraged by the Outrage
Thursday 03 June @ 13:12:40 (Read: 3919) |
by Jim Hightower
Leave it to the kooks in congress and their sidekicks––the right wing pundits and talk-show yakkers––to see a “liberal conspiracy” behind the torture photos coming out of U.S. military prisons in Iraq.
To them, the public outrage over the torture and humiliation of Iraqi detainees is a lot of fuss about very little. Media coverage of it, they say, is being prolonged by liberals in order to pound Bush.
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George W vs. the Push for Real Reform
Wednesday 26 May @ 16:21:36 (Read: 3943) |
by Jim Hightower
Perhaps you remember that only a couple of years ago, George W. was in a public tizzy over the multibillion-dollar financial scandals pouring out of the executive suites of Wall Street and America’s largest corporations. Ripped-off investors were howling for blood and the stories of corporate corruption were on the front page – so George “Reformerman” Bush leapt to the rescue. He loudly demanded tough new rules to govern greedy CEOs, and he handpicked William Donaldson to serve as the new top cop on the Wall Street beat.
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A country where riches flow uphill
Wednesday 19 May @ 14:46:02 (Read: 4083) |
by Jim Hightower
As Ray Charles sang, "Them that's got is them that gets" – and the getting was very, very good for those at the top in 2003.
Forbes’ magazine's annual survey of wealth reports that there are now 587 lucky souls living in Billionaireville, up 10 percent over the previous count. These wealthiest of the wealthy added half a trillion dollars to their personal stash of lucre last year. Among this group of swells are the Waltons — the reigning heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.
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Meet the guys who own your public officials
Wednesday 12 May @ 13:09:42 (Read: 4617) |
by Jim Hightower
Before we rush full-tilt boogie into the ‘04 election cycle, let’s hear a word from our sponsors.
Yes, the good folks who pay for the campaigns of George W and most of the democratic presidential contenders should be acknowledged before next year’s vote. I say we should highlight these corporate interests now, just to get a sense of who’s buying what in our Land of the Free.
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Pentagon declares global warming real
Wednesday 05 May @ 16:24:29 (Read: 4683) |
by Jim Hightower
If George W keeps telling us that global warming is not happening, and that, even if it is, it's nothing to worry about... why are his Pentagon planners warning that "There is substantial evidence that significant global warming will occur during the 21st century," that this could lead to "an abrupt climate change," and that this change could "destabilize the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war"?
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A Hummer of a tax loophole
Wednesday 28 April @ 13:47:46 (Read: 4334) |
by Jim Hightower
A promotional letter from a Hummer dealer excitedly made this pitch: “Allow me to introduce you to a fabulous opportunity. A tax loophole so big you could drive a Hummer H2 through it!”
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The fall of Wal-Mart’s Inglewood Fiefdom
Wednesday 21 April @ 13:34:06 (Read: 4479) |
by Jim Hightower
Wal-Mart bites the dust! The largest, richest, most arrogant corporate bully on the block tried to run over the good people Inglewood, California, but the people rose up, fought back, and knocked the bully on its broad butt!
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Pounding the pulpit for offshoring
Wednesday 14 April @ 13:18:51 (Read: 4291) |
by Jim Hightower
The offshoring of U.S. jobs is good for you! We know this is so because the Powers That Be keep telling us so ... and they’ve never been wrong, have they?
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A hair net in your future
Thursday 08 April @ 15:42:52 (Read: 4180) |
by Jim Hightower
It’s always good to get reassurances from high government officials on issues of great concern to the people.
Take the nagging issue of U.S. corporations offshoring hundreds of thousands of well-paying, high-tech jobs out of our country—the very jobs we were told would be our people’s ticket into the middle class.
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Social Security Works
Wednesday 24 March @ 12:48:39 (Read: 4045) |
by Jim Hightower
Let me tell you a story of progressive progress.
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Grocery workers fight for the middle class
Wednesday 17 March @ 12:30:47 (Read: 4253) |
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by Jim Hightower
The long grocery strike in Southern California has ended, but
the energy and awareness that it unleashed will roll across our land for years
to come.
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Bush creates new manufacturing jobs
Wednesday 10 March @ 14:30:21 (Read: 4619) |
by Jim Hightower
I have excellent news, Americans! The Bushites have come up with a sure-fire plan to increase the number of manufacturing jobs in the USA!
Yes, while Democrats merely complain about the demise of such jobs, George W and his team are stepping forward with a creative, can-do solution that, I think, can only be described as astonishing.
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Paying for Bushes campaigning
Wednesday 03 March @ 13:53:06 (Read: 4570) |
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by Jim Hightower
I wonder––is there anything that White House political
operative Karl Rove won't try to turn into a political ad?
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When Bush Budgets
Friday 27 February @ 13:15:24 (Read: 4558) |
by Jim Hightower
These days, any president’s budget is an exercise in political posturing and economic gimmickry, but this year’s $2.4 trillion offering by George W is a P.T. Barnum exercise in flim-flam, economic voodoo, political whitewash, hog excrement, plutocratic pandering, and outright fraud.
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Media Democracy
Wednesday 18 February @ 14:09:08 (Read: 4661) |
by Jim Hightower
Michael Powell is the kind of guy who would’ve rooted for Goliath over David. In fact, if Powell’s performance as head of the Federal Communications Commission is any indicator, he would’ve even given the slingshot to the giant.
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Posturing at King’s grave
Wednesday 11 February @ 11:40:07 (Read: 4623) |
by Jim Hightower
Preachers talk often about the “Sunday Saints” in their congregations—those who sit conspicuously in the front pews on Sunday mornings, but spend the six other days of the week wantonly violating assorted religious commandments and ignoring the ethical teachings of the church.
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Forget health care, we’re going to Mars
Tuesday 27 January @ 20:39:08 (Read: 5139) |
by Jim Hightower
Why is it that our national policy makers are so robustly optimistic and filled with such can-do enthusiasm when it comes to shoveling billions of our tax dollars into big federal projects favored by wealthy campaign donors—but fall into dismal depths of negativity and dispirited cries of no-can-do pessimism when it comes to paying for the things the majority of us Americans want and desperately need?
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A Hospital Horror
Wednesday 21 January @ 15:21:07 (Read: 4724) |
by Jim Hightower
What is one of the most dangerous things you can do when you get seriously ill? Go to the hospital.
Talk about Catch-22! You're sick and you're told by your doctor to go to the hospital—but no one tells you the deadly little secret of today's hospitals. They kill.
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Corrupting Public Policy with Campaign Cash
Wednesday 14 January @ 13:19:08 (Read: 4851) |
by Jim Hightower
Before we rush full-tilt boogie into the '04 election cycle, let's hear a word from our sponsors.
Yes, the good folks who pay for the campaigns of George W and most of the democratic presidential contenders should be acknowledged before next year's vote. I say we should highlight these corporate interests now, just to get a sense of who's buying what in our Land of the Free.
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Banned in Cuba
Wednesday 07 January @ 12:59:20 (Read: 4941) |
by Jim Hightower
As a patriotic, taxpaying American, I for one, am proud to see that George W. Bush is defending our shores against one of the more important terrorist threats to the American people: Cuban cigars.
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The Stamp of Autocracy
Tuesday 30 December @ 18:05:46 (Read: 5013) |
by Jim Hightower
Shhhhh. I have to whisper this to you because it's a secret that the Bushites want to keep from you: They have become totally obsessed with secrecy and are spending billions of our tax dollars in an anti-democratic lockdown to keep public information from... well, us – the tax-paying public.
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Hightower’s Holiday Gifts
Tuesday 23 December @ 19:57:04 (Read: 4882) |
by Jim Hightower
Tis the season for giving, so here are gifts I’ve sent to some of the people in power!
To each of our Congress critters, I sent my fondest wish that from now on they receive the exact same income, pay increases, health care and pensions that we average citizens get.
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Your friendly cable-TV price gouger
Wednesday 17 December @ 14:26:51 (Read: 5015) |
by Jim Hightower
The Powers That Be—both political and corporate—are expert at fooling themselves... while mistakenly thinking that they're also fooling us.
The latest culprits in this fool's game are the barons of cable television.
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Where is Santa's Workshop?
Wednesday 10 December @ 12:57:18 (Read: 4752) |
by Jim Hightower
Ho-Ho-Ho, shouts Corporate America—'tis the season to Buy-Buy-Buy!
Yet, with this same Corporate America's continuous downsizing, off-shoring, and Wal-Martization of our middle-class jobs, most Americans find themselves a little short this holiday season.
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What’s your mutual fund up to?
Wednesday 03 December @ 14:03:46 (Read: 4682) |
by Jim Hightower
The corporate circus is back in town, this time with a whole new parade of bilkers, finaglers, and defrauders to entertain us with their convoluted antics.
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Safeway tries the greed way
Wednesday 26 November @ 13:33:34 (Read: 4948) |
by Jim Hightower
Corporate greed is not some amorphous concept, but a human characteristic that comes with faces and names —such as Steven Burd.
He’s CEO of Safeway, the sprawling supermarket giant. Burd is leading the charge in California to bust the wage scale and the union of his industry’s employees.
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Social Security Works
Wednesday 19 November @ 13:26:29 (Read: 5837) |
by Jim Hightower
Let me tell you a story of progressive progress.
In 1939, two-thirds of America’s senior citizens lived their “golden years” in cold, hard poverty. Just a decade later, that percentage was down to half. By 1959, it was only one-third. Today, the number is less than 10 percent.
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Wal-Mart Rides Again
Wednesday 12 November @ 23:30:18 (Read: 5118) |
by Jim Hightower
Wal-Mart, the recidivist criminal, is back in trouble with the law.
Jesse James, Bonnie & Clyde, and Al Capone had nothing on this notorious violator of our nation's laws and moral code of behavior. It routinely robs its nearly one million workers, depriving them of a fair wage and a fair chance. For example:
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Bolivia says no to globaloney
Wednesday 05 November @ 11:28:11 (Read: 5050) |
by Jim Hightower
Remember the glorious promises of globalization?
CEOs, politicians of both parties, and media pundits all joined in the hallelujah chorus to proclaim that corporate-driven, laissez-faire globalization was THE answer for all the world’s ills.
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Czar Tom
Wednesday 29 October @ 14:43:12 (Read: 5251) |
by Jim Hightower
Tom DeLay, the loopy majority leader of the U.S. House, didn’t have enough to do in Washington, so in his spare time he’s become the new Czar of Texas.
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Camp Protect your library records
Tuesday 21 October @ 17:27:36 (Read: 4866) |
by Jim Hightower
Ha! John Ashcroft sure showed his critics, didn’t he? Those carping librarians and squishy-soft civil libertarians who’ve been alarming the public about the “USA Patriot Act” got their official comeuppance from Big Bad John.
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Camp Wellstone
Wednesday 15 October @ 13:37:09 (Read: 6109) |
by Jim Hightower
The rabid partisans of the Republican far right truly loathed Senator Paul Wellstone, the spirited and popular Minnesota progressive who died in a plane crash last year. In a testament to their partisan loathing, Minnesota right wingers have put out an ugly post-mortem bumper sticker that angrily says of Wellstone: “He's dead, get over it.”
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A way to stop drug-price gouging
Wednesday 08 October @ 12:39:23 (Read: 5194) |
by Jim Hightower
Fear not, citizens, for John Ashcroft, your ever vigilant attorney general, is standing on guard — and he has just taken bold action to prevent a dastardly foreign threat from penetrating our nation’s borders!
The threat he thwarted came not from some deadly al Qaeda terrorists, but — get this — from an enterprising U.S. company that gives consumers here a way to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada.
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The Biotech invasion of Washington
Wednesday 01 October @ 14:11:51 (Read: 5070) |
by Jim Hightower
A GMO is not a hot new muscle car marketed to young drivers — it’s a Genetically Modified Organism, and these GMOs are being secretly sold to us through our supermarkets.
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A Loophole for Busting High-Tech Wages
Wednesday 24 September @ 14:55:48 (Read: 5391) |
by Jim Hightower
Once again, we’re offered a sterling example of the incredible ingenuity of big American corporations—outfits that never cease to amaze with their clever ability to stiff their own employees.
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W, The Toy Soldier
Thursday 18 September @ 13:22:29 (Read: 6447) |
by Jim Hightower
Those of you who think George W. Bush is a doll will be thrilled to know that he is ... literally!
Thanks to Blue Box Toys, Inc., George has become his own GI Joe doll. For only $39.95, you can have this one-foot tall, plastic action figure of George in your own home. It depicts him all dolled up in that Top-Gun style flight suit that he donned a few months ago for his poltical stunt landing on an aircraft carrier.
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Town takes on Tyson
Thursday 04 September @ 15:05:13 (Read: 5073) |
by Jim Hightower
They say you should never watch sausage being made, but if you want to see something really disgusting, check out the way Tyson Inc. is treating the good people of Jefferson, Wisconsin.
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Jim Hightower - What would Willie do?
Wednesday 02 July @ 13:27:03 (Read: 5054) |
Is it possible that Tom Ridge doesn't actually exist, that he's really just an actor from "Saturday Night Live" doing a parody of himself, or that maybe he's even a computerized animatron created by Disney?
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McCarthyism Redux
Thursday 02 October @ 16:59:23 (Read: 5645) |
by Jim Hightower
Pulse of the Twin Cities is now the only place in the Twin Cities where you can read Jim Hightower. Look for his column every week.
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