Jim Hightower's Lowdown

Can GOP Autocracy Outlaw American Democracy?

Are You a “Low-Quality” Voter?

Here’s a thought-provoking bumper sticker: “The system is fixed. We must break it.” This thought came into vivid focus recently when a news report by ProPublica revealed that a nest of preening multibillionaires – led by the likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Michael Bloomberg – have been playing America’s rigged tax system to dodge paying their share of upkeep for the society that so-lavishly enriches them. In a leak of actual IRS data, the 25 richest Americans were exposed for using tricks and loopholes to pay barely 3 percent of their enormous riches to our public treasury – while ordinary working people shell out about 24% of their meager income. Check out the manipulations by Amazon jefe Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man. Even as his riches skyrocketed by $120 billion from 2006 to 2018, he paid just one percent in taxes on that huge gain. One year, in which his wealth swelled by $18 billion, he even took a $4,000 tax credit from us for the care of his children. The chief fix for these super-dodgers is that they can take out loans on the escalating value of their stock, mansions, yachts, etc. – without paying taxes on the cash they get. Then they spend the cash value of those assets without having to sell them. Financial voodoo for the privileged few! In response to the revelations in ProPublica’s jaw-dropping report, congressional Republicans, Biden Administration officials, and the IRS are all promising a through investigation and crack-down. Not on the sleazy billionaires, of course, but on ProPublica! Yes, some top public officials exclaim that they are outraged, not by the tax rigging, but by the fact that you and I have been told about it in specific, undeniable detail. It’s not cynical to call the system corrupt when the corruption is put right under our noses.

While Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, “I have a dream,” it was full of lofty ethical stuff like “justice for all” and… well, it was so 1963. But in today’s Facebook-Instagram-Google world of billionaire ethics and expectations, dreams need to glitter with a 2021-ish grandiosity to go viral. So, who better to take us there than that visionary of instant gratification, Jeff Bezos? “Ever since I was five years old,” says the mega-billionaire boss man of Amazon, “I’ve dreamed of traveling to space.” Now that’s intriguing, because Jeff regularly acts like he is from outer space – so, is this homeward bound? Bezos can certainly afford the ticket, for today’s global pandemic has delivered a financial windfall to him, increasing his personal wealth by $75 billion last year alone. Bear in mind that he didn’t have to work harder or smarter to “earn” this bonanza. Indeed, he’s retiring as Amazon CEO, but his haul keeps growing as the corporate stock price keeps bloating. Meanwhile, he bought himself a rocket ship company, and in July he intends to be Customer No. 1 on a tourist fling to the lower edge of space. He and five other high-flyers will take a short suborbital joy ride about 50 miles up in a fully pressurized cabin, then unbuckle and experience weightlessness for about three minutes before scooting back to terra firma. Imagine how impressed MLK Jr. would’ve been by Jeff’s commitment of his enormous wealth and potential to such a… well, such a flighty dream. For his part, the gabillionaire predicts that his space-capade will make him a new man: “It changes your relationship… with humanity,” he says of space travel. Good, for his relationship heretofore has been one of worker exploitation, tax cheating, and monopoly profiteering. So go forth, Bezos-man – and come back a better human.

Hidey-ho, folks! Thanks for tuning in to and sharing my weekly commentaries. Also, I hope you’ll join me for a live webshow I host every other Tuesday. It’s the Hightower Lowdown Happy Hour at the Chat & Chew Cafe. You can join the action live online as I chat with grassroots leaders and progressive sparklies from around the country. Go to hightowerlowdown.org/chatnchew to find out about upcoming guests and watch past episodes.

At a recent congressional hearing on America’s so-called “labor shortage,” megabanker Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, offered this insight: “People actually have a lot of money, and they don’t particularly feel like going back to work.” Uh… Jamie… most people are living paycheck to paycheck, and since COVID-19 hit, millions have lost their jobs, savings, and even homes. So, they’re not exactly lollygagging around the house, counting their cash. Instead of listening to the uber-rich class ignorance of Dimon (who pocketed $35 million in pay last year) Congress ought to be listening to actual workers explain why they’re not rushing back to the jobs being offered by restaurant chains and such. They would point out that there is no labor shortage – there’s a wage shortage. More fundamentally, there’s a fairness shortage. It was not lost on restaurant workers, for example, that while millions of them were jobless last year, their corporate CEOs were grabbing millions, buying yachts, and living large. Yet, more than half of laid-off restaurant workers couldn’t even get unemployment benefits, because their wages had been too low to qualify. Then there’s the high risk of COVID exposure for restaurant employees, an appalling level of sexual harassment in their workplace, and demeaning treatment from abusive bosses and customers. No surprise, then, that more than half of employees said in a recent survey that they’re not going back to those jobs. After all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked! So rather than demanding that government officials force workers to return to the old exploitative system, corporate giants should try the free-enterprise solution right at their fingertips: Raise pay, improve conditions, and show respect – create a place where people want to work! For a straightforward view from workers themselves, go to the advocacy group, OneFairWage.site.

The agriculture commissioner of Texas, Sid Miller, is the one top official in our state willing to take a bold stand against racial discrimination. Miller proudly went to court in April, challenging a new government program that he considered discriminatory against a particular group of disadvantaged agriculture producers. Namely, his group – White farmers and ranchers! Yes, Sid asserts that the program – which directs some long-overdue loan relief to Black, Latino, Native American, and other food producers who’ve been grossly discriminated against for generations by agricultural lenders – amounts to reverse-discrimination against privileged Whites like him. So Sid, a rancher and former rodeo performer, is braying and snorting through his big white cowboy hat that the way to stop racial discrimination is to let White discriminators also get anti-discrimination money from the Feds. That’s what passes for logic when you’re wearing a $1,000 hat like Sid struts around in. But, as a real cowboy once told me, “It ain’t the hat, it’s the head.” And right there is Miller’s problem – he’s got a thousand-dollar hat on a 10-cent head. However, he’s not the actual “thinker” behind this screwball legal claim. That distinction goes to another Miller, one named Stephen. He’s a Trump political operative, anti-immigrant extremist, and a fanatical promoter of White nationalism – one who specializes in frivolous lawsuits. Indeed, Stephen wrote Sid’s plaintive legal plea to provide “racial justice” for rich and powerful White ranchers like him, and just days before filing the suit, Stephen set up a political front group called America First Legal Foundation to push the case. You’d think this ridiculous racial bigotry would be laughed out of court, but the case has gone to a hyper-partisan, right-wing judge who has backed such Republican legal ploys in the past. So, yippy-ti-yi-yo, off to another right-wing rodeo we go!

“Outrageous,” screeched the US Chamber of Commerce. “It doesn’t feel fair,” whimpered a top corporate executive. The wailing by those who run corporate America is not for the plight of the workaday families who’ve seen their incomes stagnate and even plummet to zero during the past months of the coronavirus pandemic. Rather, this chorus of woe comes from powerful plutocratic interests that have been enjoying windfall profits. Why? Because, they cry, that meanie in the White House, Joe Biden, intends to jack up their corporate tax rate. But wait didn’t Trump and the GOP Congress slash the corporate share of our nation’s upkeep nearly in half just four years ago, shifting the burden to the middle class and poor? Yes. And didn’t they promise that those cuts would create millions of new jobs? Yes, again – yet corporations got richer and working stiffs got shafted. Still, here they come again, howling that raising corporate taxes would crash the stock market. Well, the day Biden announced his plan, stock prices did fall… by less than 1 percent. The next day, they bounced right back, and they’re still booming. Moreover, those are crocodile tears the rich are shedding, for they know that – as Biden himself makes clear – his proposed uptick in their tax share “is not going to affect their standard of living at all. Not a little tiny bit.” They’ll still have their two or three big houses, private jets, and yachts. But, with them paying just a bit more toward the Common Good, our country will be able to reinvest in society’s physical and human infrastructure, making America stronger and fairer for all. That’s why there is broad and deep public majorities – even among Republicans – for Biden’s infrastructure plan and the taxes to pay for it. For more information go to AmericansForTaxFairness.org.

Not only are the rich different from you and me – they’re getting more different than ever. I’m not referring to mere millionaires, but to the billionaire bunch. In the past year, while ordinary Americans have lost jobs, businesses, and homes due to the pandemic economic crash, America’s 664 billionaires have found themselves nearly 40 percent richer than before COVID! These fortunate few collectively added more than a trillion dollars in 2020 to their personal stashes of wealth. And practically all of them got so much richer by doing nothing – their money made the extra money for them, because corporate stock prices zoomed even as regular people lost income. Take a peek at THE richest of these different ones: Jeff Bezos, the Alpha-geek of Amazon. He hauled in an additional $75 billion last year (roughly $37 million an hour). You could do a lot of good with such riches… or you could splurge on yourself. Jeff splurged. He bought one of the largest sailing vessels ever built. More than one-and-a-third football fields long, the superyacht cost the diminutive mega-billionaire some half-billion bucks. Plus, he’ll pay some $60 million each year for operating expenses. Also, he had to buy a “support yacht” to sail along with his main boat. Why? Because the three sails on his 400-footer are so huge that a helicopter can’t land on the deck, requiring an auxiliary yacht to provide a helipad. See, the rich really are different – where to park our helicopter while at sea is a problem you and I don’t have to face. According to mega-yacht sellers, the main draw of these ostentatious purchases is that they reinforce inequality, literally letting the rich float in leisure and luxury, oceans apart from even having to see hoi Polloi like us.

Is “corporate ethics” an oxymoron? Do you have to be a jerk to be a successful CEO? Is exploitation the only path to profit? The good news is that many companies, big and small, in the food economy are blazing a different path through Wall Street’s jungle of greed, demonstrating that money and morality can be compatible. Texas supermarket chain HEB, for example, has drawn an intensely loyal customer base by (1) investing in good wages and benefits for employees, (2) showing up in such emergencies as pandemics, hurricanes, freezes, etc. to give essential supplies and hands-on help, and (3) being an involved and supportive neighbor to the hundreds of unique communities it serves. Also, Maine Grains is “relocalizing” the business of milling grain by working with local farmers who’d been abandoned by global grain marketers like Ardent and Gold Medal. They’re producing nutrient-rich flours from heritage grains, boosting the local economy in the process. Then there’s Bob’s Red Mill, which also artfully mills its products from diverse, natural grains–and it’s 100% employee-owned. These are part of a rising business alternative to the selfish, profiteering ethic of Fortune 500 titans. Called certified B Corporations, they definitely exist to make a profit, but they are equally focused on having a positive social impact, prioritizing fair wages, environmental protections, and healthy communities as core elements of their missions, even making those goals legal requirements of their corporate charter. Ben & Jerry’s, Amy’s Kitchen, King Arthur Baking, and New Belgium Brewery are just a few more of some 3,800 other businesses now organized as B Corps. Though not pretending to be perfect, they’re at least striving to be more than money grubbers, instead trying to contribute to the Common Good. For more information on the products and practices of B Corps, go to BCorporation.net.

We’ve got the Academy Awards, the Emmy’s, and GRAMMYs… but what should we call the award for the most extraordinary performance by a corporate profiteer? How about the “Sleazy,” with winners getting a solid gold sculpture of a middle finger? There were so many worthy contenders, but one corporation exhibited uncommon callousness, so the 2021 Sleazy goes to … Tyson Foods! The meatpacking giant has regularly run roughshod over workers, farmers, communities, and the environment – not to mention the millions of animals it fattens and slaughters. But the coronavirus pulled out the worst in Tyson’s corporate ethic. Last April, its billionaire chair, John Tyson, ranted that health officials who were closing-down several of his slaughterhouses that had become hotbeds of contagion were creating another crisis: A national meat shortage! Responding instantly, our corporate-compassionate, burger-gobbling president decreed that meatpacking plants were crucial to America’s national security and must be kept open at all cost. Trump’s edict required workers to return to their jobs or be fired. Only there was no meat shortage. Not only did Americans have an excess of cheeseburgers, pork chops, and chicken nuggets, but Tyson and other giants actually increased their meat exports to China last year. Meanwhile, Covid rampaged through Tyson’s factories. In its Waterloo, Iowa facility alone, a third of the processing workers – low wage, mostly people of color – were infected. At least six died. Which brings us to the corporate play that cinched this year’s Sleazy for Tyson. Waterloo slaughterhouse supervisors actually knew that the back-to-work order would sicken hundreds, but not exactly how many. So, managers organized a winner-take-all betting pool on the percent of employees who would test positive. “It was simply something fun,” said one – “kind of a morale boost.” The virus infected more than a third of 2,800 workers in the plant. Some fun huh?

These days, the haughty rich in our country have developed such an arrogant sense of self-entitlement that they’ve gone from being merely irritating to infuriating. Unsurprisingly, their plutocratic greed and rigging of the system has generated a political backlash, including a widely-popular push to tax the massive stashes of wealth the upper-upper class has amassed by stiffing the middle class and poor. Alarmed by this uprising, the rich have launched a major effort to defuse public anger – not by altering their own behavior, but by a semantical twist. Interestingly, since “The Rich” has become such a negative phrase, it is being dropped from the vocabularies of right-wing media, lawmakers, and other defenders of wealth concentration. Rather, they now glorify the millionaire/billionaire class as “high-earners” and “high net worth individuals.” Both are awkward phrases, yet both serve to exalt the fortunate few as superior earners and worthy individuals. Words matter because they are powerful social constructs that share our culture’s moral values. For example, even failed CEOs who preside over big losses still collect boodles of cash from the corporate hierarchy, while working stiffs who perform their jobs admirably at the same corporation get pay cuts or even get booted. Boeing, for instance, suffered $12 billion in losses last year, costing 30,000 workers their jobs, yet the top exec was rewarded with $21 million in pay. Other job crushing CEO failures include AT&T, Disney, GE, Hilton, T-Mobile, and Tenet Healthcare – yet each of those top executives were rewarded with at least $20 million in pay. In every case, the establishment media cloaked the greed of the chiefs by saying they “earned” millions and are now “worth” such-and-such. These aren’t euphemisms – they’re lies. To get the truth, the media might ask ousted workers how much they think the CEOs actually earned and are worth.

It’s tough being rich. For one thing, you have to be on constant alert to keep commoners from encroaching on your turf and upsetting your sense of proper social order. Consider the angst of the swells who summer in the Hamptons, an ultra-toney seaside enclave of New York City’s old-wealth families and Wall Street elites on the eastern tip of Long Island. For generations they’ve used local ordinances to keep us riffraff out of their exclusive communities. But now, they find themselves besieged by – believe it or not – Indians! The small reservation of some 1,600 members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation has also been there for generations. In fact, it’s the rich White residents who are the invaders, for their Anglo predecessors first descended on Shinnecock lands in 1640. Today, the indigenous people struggle with poverty, gazing across a small bay at the huge summer mansions of their Gatsbyesque invaders. But now, to lift their own economy, the tribe intends to build a modest tribal-run casino on their reservation. Oh, the horror, shriek the Hamptonites! Yet, the reservation is the Shinnecock people’s sovereign land, free from the Hampton elite’s zoning laws, so the rich and mighty are reduced to begging the Native people to just go away. “A lot of us are bleeding heart liberals and sympathetic to the oppressed,” exclaimed one, “But it’s not the right location.” It never is, is it? This is a struggle of elitist esthetics versus human necessities – casino revenue could help tribal families with such expenses as rent, food, utilities, and car payments. “[It] could change the quality of life here overnight,” says the tribal chief. But who cares? A few of the snobbiest of Hampton blue bloods haughtily warn they will move out if the Shinnecock Casino comes in. Hmmm, sounds like a good trade to me.

Oh great – here comes a new stealth attack on the fragile, life-sustaining natural resources of Planet Earth. This assault is by Wall Street alchemists who’re out to redefine one of our most basic resources: Water. Everyone knows that water is “invaluable” – it’s literally life, requiring a constant intake by each of us… or we quickly die. But the Wizards of Wall Street want to reduce potable H2O from its environmental, humanitarian, and spiritual essence to just another perishable economic good that they can market-price and sell to the highest bidder – literally turning our water into speculators’ gold. This contrivance has opened the door for financial manipulators who’ve quietly been devising razzle-dazzle schemes to allow rich global investors to play in water. They’re now pushing water futures, automated split-second trading, “water grabbing” ventures, hedging schemes, and other financialization hustles to maneuver the monetary value of this essential resources. To see this ethically-debased future, look to an outfit with the ominous acronym of WAM (Water Asset Management). It’s buying up water rights in low-income farming communities in places like Arizona, then literally moving the “commodity” to rich suburban developments that will pay more. WAM profiteers call water peddling “the biggest emerging market on Earth… a trillion-dollar market opportunity.” They even boast that the crises of “drought, flood, and fire” caused by climate change creates a market volatility that will provide “an unprecedented period of transformation and investment opportunity for the water industry,” allowing investors to “thrive and prosper.” As we celebrate Earth Day, let’s not only raise the issues of global pollution and sustainability, but let’s also begin to force a public discussion about this crucial question of environmental and existential ethics: Is access to an affordable supply of clean water to be a human right for all – or will we let it become a wet dream for a cabal of rich speculators?

Why all this hoopla about Earth Day, grump the barons of Big Oil and other corporate plunderers of our natural resources? But the global demand to “Save The Earth” is not hoopla – it’s an imperative struggle for human survival. And it doesn’t just celebrate a planet, but the feistiness of the human spirit, the tenacity of millions of everyday people committed to the ethic of good stewardship. People like Diane Wilson of Seadrift, Texas. A fourth-generation shrimper on the Gulf Coast, she is the personification of persistence, having spent 40 years battling the raw greed of Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese chemical giant whose gross pollution has devastated the fishing ecology and economy of Gulf waters in her home area. And – Hallelujah! – last August, Wilson’s indefatigable spirit prevailed, for she won the largest private citizen’s lawsuit in US history against an industrial polluter! She’s getting no time to savor the victory, though, for another multibillion-dollar polluter, named Max Midstream, is attacking this same fragile ecosystem. Max proposes to dredge a deep channel through Matagorda and Lavaca Bays so massive oil tankers can reach a huge crude oil export terminal that Max intends to own there – a channel that would plow straight through an underwater Superfund site, unearthing deposits of deadly mercury that aluminum giant Alcoa had carelessly dumped there for years. But look out, Max – here comes Diane again! Just as she did in the Formosa fight, she’s putting her own health on the line, having launched a hunger strike to draw attention to the profiteering maneuvers of this latest corporate plunderer. She’s petitioning President Biden to cancel Max’s dredging permit. That’s why Earth Day exists and persists – to celebrate and extend the fighting spirit of grassroots champions like Diane Wilson. To sign her online petition, go to bit.ly/StopDredging.