Jim Hightower's Lowdown

Get ready, America, for here comes "the next latest and greatest thing in aviation." Wow, what could it be? Maybe the airlines are going to drop all of their ridiculous ripoff fees. That'd be great! No, no, not that kind of aviation. Also, you probably won't find this breakthrough so great. It's the arrival and proliferation of "unmanned vehicle systems," soon to be buzzing around in the airspace of your own town. Yes, drones, right here at home. Those very same, tiny, pilotless, remote-controlled, undetectable planes that the CIA has been secretly using to spy on and bomb people in Pakistan and elsewhere are headed to your and my local police departments, FBI offices, and… well, who knows who else will have these "latest and greatest" toys? All we know is that Congress – under pressure from Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and other big drone peddlers – directed the Federal Aviation Agency earlier this year to open up civilian air space to thousands of them by 2015. And, in their wisdom, our loosy-goosy lawmakers provided no regulation of who can have drones, how many, or for what purposes. So, prepare to be pestered and monitored, for police agencies and corporate interests are said to be abuzz about getting their own. The first ones are expected to be used for high-altitude surveillance, which is worrisome enough, but a Texas sheriff's office that already has bought a "ShadowHawk" drone says it might outfit the little buzzer to fire tear gas and rubber bullets. No worries, though, for the drone industry's lobbying group has drafted a two-page code of conduct urging purchasers to "respect the privacy of individuals." How nice. Only, it's a voluntary code… and totally unenforceable. For more information about this invasive swarm, contact the Electronic Privacy Information Center: www.epic.org.

How ironic: Fracking recently got fracked! This brutish technique for extracting natural gas from deep within the Earth, led by such profiteering giants as Exxon Mobil and Halliburton, has rapidly swept across America. Indeed, it has run right over local residents who've had their air and water polluted, their families sickened, and their own economic futures imperiled. As usual, the frackers pooh-poohed the concerns of these bothersome citizens, insisting that the process is perfectly safe, doing no damage to people or the environment. Their assertion of purity was bolstered several months ago by an academic research report issued by the prestigious Energy Institute at the University of Texas. In a summary of the white papers that made up the report, lead researcher, Charles Groat declared that the scientists found little or no evidence of damage to ground water. So there you have it – an academic acquittal of fracking. Well, not quite. A watchdog group called Public Accountability Initiative popped up with the revelation that professor Groat held some $1.7 million worth of stock in a gas fracking corporation, served on its board, and was paid $400,000 by it as the report was being assembled. This forced UT to announce that a three-member panel would investigate – a ploy that many critics feared would be a whitewash. No such luck for Groat, however. Using blunt terms like "distortion," "inappropriately selective," and "very poor judgment," the panel excoriated the professor and the university, concluding that the hoked up report should be withdrawn. The panel's findings were, as the watchdog put it: a "damning critique." So damning that UT has since withdrawn the report, Groat was compelled to retire, and the head of the Energy Institute has resigned. Now that's a thorough frack job!

Periodically, we're treated to the spectacle of a corporate big shot or public official having to announce their resignation due to having been caught doing something messy (usually involving sex or money). Almost invariably, they say: "I'm stepping down to spend more time with my family." Aside from generating snickers, snorts, and guffaws from the public at large, that comment probably causes many people to wince, because… well, because many of us don't spend enough time with our families. We're busy, stressed, stretched – too little time. So, here's a suggestion that would make a dandy New Year's Resolution: Do dinner with your family. Yes, that includes the kids. The gathering, preparing, and eating of food is a natural social uniter. Yet, too few of us these days make a point of gathering our households around the table for an hour or so, not merely to eat, but to talk, listen, laugh, learn – connect. In her book, The Family Dinner, Laura David notes that this shouldn't be a big production. Start with one night a week, make a simple meal (a soup, casserole, salad, or even carry-out), and then go from there. Some of her other tips are: (1) make this hour gizmo free – no TV, iPads, or other rude diversions; (2) involve everyone in some part of the food preparation, so dinner becomes "theirs;" (3) make it fun by experimenting with different foods or occasionally turning dinner into a picnic, maybe with one of the kid's friends; and, (4) start talking. Number four is the whole point, for telling stories, exploring ideas, and generating actual conversation around the table is a bonding experience that makes "spending time with one's family" a rich experience. To help prompt real discussions, Laura David posts a lively "Table Talk" idea every Friday at www.huffingtonpost.com/parents.

At long last, our dream has come true, freeing us from a drudgery that has oppressed so many people over the past 500 years or so – namely, having to use our hands to open a bottle of wine. Yes, the electric corkscrew is here, and just in the nick of time for that fabulous New Years Eve party you're throwing! Not just one high-tech cork-puller is offered, but an entire bazaar of wine-opening gizmos is available from such enterprising purveyors of completely-unnecessary convenience as Epicureanist, Metrokane, Oster, Ozeri, Waring, and Wine Enthusiast. New York Times writer William Grimes describes the devices as "sublime pointlessness." He has a point there, since popping a cork is not one of life's great burdens, since beaucoup, super-cheap, super-simple extractors have long existed. These manual tools are not merely low-tech, they're no-tech. Even drunk people can use them. But where's the pizazz in those? As Grimes describes the zippy, battery-powered cork gadgets, one places the cylindrical device atop a wine bottle's cork, presses a button and," with a hum or a whir, the corkscrew spiral, known as a worm, insinuates itself into the cork, easing it upward and out of the bottle." This is showbiz, baby – and one-upsmanship, too, for you're quietly saying to bedazzled guests: "Hey, I've got one of these and you don't!" However, if you want to counter such smugness, here's a free tip: many good wines now come with twist-off screw caps, so bring one of those, and you'll be sipping your fruit-of-the-vine while electronic-man is still trying to position his worm. Does anyone really need this stuff? Of course not – zillions of them will end up in landfills in a year's time. To wean yourself and others from such excess, check out Annie Leonard's website: www.StoryOfStuff.org.

This special day got me to thinking about America's spirit of giving, and I don't mean this overdone business of Christmas gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving -- giving of ourselves. Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there's also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We're a people who believe in the notion that we're all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good. The establishment media pays little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls "philanthropists" -- big tycoons who give a little piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them. But in my mind, the real philanthropists are the millions of you ordinary folks who have precious little money to give, but consistently give of themselves, and do it without demanding that their name be engraved on a granite wall. My own Daddy, rest his soul, was a fine example of this. With half a dozen other guys in Denison, Texas, he started the Little League baseball program volunteering to build the park, sponsor and coach the teams, run the squawking P.A. system, etc. etc. Even after I graduated from Little League, Daddy stayed working at it, because his involvement was not merely for his kids . . . but for all. He felt the same way about being taxed to build a public library in town. I don't recall him ever going in that building, much less checking-out a book, but he wanted it to be there for the community and he was happy to pay his part. Not that he was a do-good liberal, for God's sake -- indeed, he called himself a conservative. My Daddy didn't even know he had a political philosophy, but he did, and it's the best I've ever heard. He would often say to me, "Everybody does better when everybody does better." If only our leaders in Washington and on Wall Street would begin practicing this true American Philosophy.

Wall Street financial hucksters can be downright satanic in their pursuit of killer profits, but here's one that puts its hellishness right in its name: Cerberus Capital Management. In Greek mythology, "Cerberus" is the name of a 3-headed dog that guards the gates of hell. This $20 billion dollar private equity outfit found itself in a hell of a fix after the grotesque massacre of 20 school children in Newtown, Connecticut. Cerberus, it turns out, owns controlling interest in Freedom Group, America's largest firearms maker, which produces the .223 Bushmaster semi-automatic assault rifle used by the murderer at Sandy Hook elementary school. The top dog of Cerberus is Stephen Feinberg, a devoted hunter who favors the Remington 700 sniper-style rifle, also made by Freedom Group. Indeed, the NRA has even hailed Feinberg & Co. for supporting gun rights and being "avid hunters and shooters." Perhaps it's this personal passion that has kept Feinberg's moneyfund invested in the gun maker, since Freedom Group keeps losing money – which is not the kind of financial performance that equity investors usually tolerate. Four days after the horror of Sandy Hook, however, Cerberus punted, announcing that it would sell Freedom Group. Three factors prompted the sale: one, public exposure of its ownership; two, a heighted possibility that Congress will pass an assault weapons ban, thus further-lowering the gun maker's profits; and, three, pressure from such big clients as the California Teachers Retirement System, which has $750 million invested in Cerberus, including owning a stake in Freedom Group. What? You can expect equity profiteers to have zero ethical qualms about investing in assault weapons, but why the hell have teachers been letting their pension money finance such a murderous trade?

Let us address the declining fortunes of today's mainstream mass media. (Yes, I can hear your pained screams of "Nooooo… we don't want to!" However, we really must, because it's not about them, but us – about our ability to be at least quasi-informed about who's-doing-what-to-whom-and-why, in order for us to be a self-governing people. So buckle-up, here we go.) The honchos of America's newspaper establishment are quick to blame the internet for their loss of readers, not noticing that their own product has fallen victim to conventional wisdomitis. This affliction leaves them printing little more than the contrived "wisdom" of the corporate powers – not a big selling point with readers. Ironically, this narrow perspective not only saps their sense of what's "news," but also their business sense. For example, with readership declining, the accepted industry response by owners and publishers is to fire beat reporters, shrink the news hole, reduce reporting to rewrites of wire service articles, and run hokey PR campaigns hyping the shriveled product as "Real News." But here's some real news they might want to consider: the new owners of the Orange County Register are blazing a contrarian path toward reviving their paper's prosperity. Editor Ken Brusic notes that offering less to subscribers and charging more not only is a ripoff and an insult to readers, but a sure path to failure. "So," he says, "we're now offering more," expanding the Register's newsroom, its coverage, and the paper's size. Gosh – hire real watchdog reporters, dig out real news, and make the paper relevant to local readers – what a novel notion for a news business! Of course, the conventional wisdomites are sneering: "It's not what most people are doing," said one. Exactly – and that's why it's so promising.

He did it. Unfortunately. Sadly. Disappointingly. President Obama, reversing his own honorable precedent for his first inaugural, has chosen this time to have corporations pay for his big hoo-rah. This multimillion-dollar infusion of corporate cash is a crass intrusion by favor-seeking private interests into what ought to be a purely-public occasion. Why can't we have even one corporate-free day in Washington every four years? Is that asking too much? Obama essentially admitted that allowing corporations to purchase the inaugural is wrong when he tried to sugarcoat his decision by assuring us that every corporate donor will be vetted by White House lawyers to make sure they have no conflicts of interest. Does he think we have sucker wrappers around our heads? As pointed out by the vigilant watchdog group, Public Citizen: "There's no corporation which has no conflict of interest." Even as presidential staffers were publicly pledging there would be no favoritism for the corporate powers that write big checks, they were privately promising potential donors that the three days of inaugural festivities would include exclusive "benefactor brunches," allowing the elite to hobnob with top administration officials. Getting your ticket punched for a presidential brunch, you see, buys you a rich serving of political access. Incredibly, Obama is trying to cover over this special-access ugliness by declaring that the day before his official swearing-in will be a "national day of service." How noble! As a symbol of America's commitment to the common good, he's calling on all of us to spend time serving meals to the homeless or picking up litter – except for check-writing corporate chieftains, who'll be busy munching on Eggs Florentine, sipping from champagne flutes, and helping themselves to plates of power.

It's not easy to get in the face of power and defy the conventional wisdom – you can quickly get to feeling like B.B. King when he sings: "Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jiving too." Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein know that lonely feeling. This pair of think-tank political pundits has long been popular on Washington's insider talk-show circuit as cautious, middle-of-the-road voices of conventional thinking. But, then, they went rogue. Recently, Mann and Ornstein charged that the elite media deliberately failed to cover the biggest 2012 election story of all – namely that the Republican Party and its nominees were flagrantly running a campaign of lies. The duo was surprisingly blunt, noting that the GOP was not just practicing politics as usual (with a fib here and a prevarication there), but an orchestrated strategy of dumping bald-faced fabrications wholesale on the voting public. "It's the great unreported big story of American politics," said Ornstein. While the Democrats, too, tossed out some falsehoods, there was no comparison between them and the Republicans' ideologically-extreme perversion "of facts, evidence, and science." Yet, reporters and their bosses, fearful of being accused of taking sides, failed to make a distinction – which, after all, is their job. "They're so timid," Mann said. And a timid press is a weak one. "You're failing in your fundamental responsibility," Ornstein said of them, asking the obvious question: "What are you there for? Your job is to report the truth." As their reward for daring to tell the truth about the media's abject failure, Mann and Ornstein have been blackballed. They're no longer invited to talk on the insider shows, nor have those shows even mentioned the media's pusillanimous role in abetting the Big Lies of 2012.

After saddling Hostess Brands with nearly a billion dollars in debt, engaging in years of gross mismanagement, plunging the sugary-snack-maker into bankruptcy, and eliminating the middle-class jobs of some 18,000 Americans, shouldn't the owners and top executives at least have to say "We're sorry" – and do some sort of penance? Of course they should! But don't hold your breath waiting for common ethics to flower in Hostess headquarters. After all, this is Corporateworld – a laissez-fairyland where failure at the top is not punished, but magically rewarded. Thus, the maker of Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and Devil Dogs has announced that 19 of the executives who made a mess of Hostess are now to be given $1.8 million in bonuses – on top of sweet pay raises they'd already grabbed. The bonuses were described as "incentive pay" to keep these geniuses on the job as they oversee the firing of all those workers. However, CEO Gregory Rayburn will not get a bonus. But shed no tears for him, since he's currently being paid $125,000 – a month! – to dismantle the corporation. Also, while Lord Gregory has imposed a company-wide paycut on management employees, he generously exempted himself from the hit. Talk about a Devil Dog! But, wait, there's more. Not satisfied with killing the jobs of 18,000 workers, Hostess honchos also looted money that, by contract, was supposed to go into the workers' pension funds! As the company was sinking toward bankruptcy, the Ding Dongs in the executive suite (who, remember, were giving themselves pay raises at the time) were secretly diverting worker pension money into corporate operations in a stop-gap ploy to keep Hostess afloat – and to disguise their incompetence. Forget doing penance – these guys ought to be doing ten-to-twenty in prison for grand larceny.

Michigan is no longer a state. It is now "Michiganistan," an autocratic czardom in the hands of Emperor Rick Snyder. Formerly the Republican governor, he's now been enthroned by the GOP's lame-duck, legislative supermajority to rule with an iron fist – democracy, rule-of-law, fairness, and The People be damned. Ironically, voters had given Snyder and his cohort of right-wing corporate ideologues a spanking for this kind of nastiness in a November referendum. The GOP cabal in Lansing had conspired last year to usurp the local authority of city governments and allow Snyder to send in unelected, unaccountable autocrats to fire elected officials and seize control, but last month, Michigan voters overthrew this absurdity. This month, however, Snyder and gang doubled down on their dumbfounding, anti-democratic zealotry. With no warning, no hearings, no public input, no floor debate, and no time for citizens even to know what was happening, the same legislative czarists rammed a union-busting bill into law. Even though he had publicly rejected such a proposal earlier this year as being "very divisive," Emperor Snyder gleefully signed this bill. Who's behind this madness? Say hello to two infamous, anti-union, billionaire plutocrats: the Koch brothers. They had funneled as much as a million dollars into Snyder's 2010 gubernatorial election, and three Michigan front groups funded by the billionaire brothers have been aggressively pushing the exact same anti-worker proposal that the Republican thugs just bullied into law. Two things not long for this world are dogs that chase cars and politicians who deceive and cheat the people. Already, Michiganders are organizing a petition drive for another referendum to overturn the law and return the Czardom of Michiganistan back to democratic rule. Stay tuned.

Big news, holiday travelers! American Airlines has a new family deal for you. If you and the kids are headed off to grandma's house or wherever, American will seat you together. Well, yes, airlines have always done this, but the "new" part in American's family deal is this: you pay a fee for it. Being seated together is no longer a gracious service, but a calculated nickel-and-dime opportunity for the corporation to squeeze you. American calls this rip-off "seat reservations" – $25, each way,. Of course, paying this corporate tax doesn't guarantee that your seats will actually stay attached to the plane. American, you might recall, had a rash of flights grounded in October, due to the rather startling in-flight experience of passenger seats suddenly coming loose. At the time, the airline's executives rushed to suggest that disgruntled unions were behind this odd malfunction. Well, no. Internal documents have now revealed that the sabotage came right out of the executive suite. Having ordered a revised seating plan, so they could charge additional fees for a bit of extra legroom, the geniuses at the top then tried to get the re-installations done on the cheap. Rather than having their own highly-skilled and experienced mechanics do the work, they outsourced it to low-wage, non-union contractors. They, in turn, "misinterpreted" American's maintenance manual, did "incorrect installations" of seats, and even had students doing some of the installations. Incredibly, American's hierarchy resorted to cold corporatethink to rationalize their shoddy management: "Our competitors [do maintenance] where it is most cost-effective," they explained, so "We must similarly adapt." Cost-effective? Fee-fie-foe-fum, I smell another fee coming on. "You want safety? Hey, there's a fee for that."

Lightning's flashing, winds are howling – and there's a tempest in the tea party! Why it's Dick Armey, the blowhard, former-Republican majority leader, corporate lobbyist, Koch brothers' retainer, and commanding general of the tea party army. Dick's always been stormy. In 2002, he had an unpleasant split with his fellow legislative hucksters, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, so he spun through Congress' revolving door right into the K-Street lobbying hustle. In 2004, he became honcho of a Koch-funded corporate front group with the spiffy name of FreedomWorks, an outfit that works by hook and crook to "free" corporations from pollution rules, unions, taxes and other bothers. Then, in 2009, when angry tea partiers exploded onto the scene, Armey immediately rushed out to co-opt them, diverting their leaders away from the group's initial fury at Wall Street into a mob frenzy over Obamacare and "big government." This corporate front man and lifelong Washington insider essentially conscripted the helter-skelter bunch of outsiders into the Republican Party by providing Koch money, FreedomWorks political operatives – and even writing their "Tea Party Manifesto." Slick! But, now, Dick's dander is up again, and he's splitting from FreedomWorks. He resigned with a testy email prohibiting the organization "from using my name, image, or signature in any way." Like other ugly divorces, this one had its petty oddities. For example, Armey's email insisted that FreedomWorks must "deliver the copy of my official congressional portrait to my home." In case you're worried about what'll happen to poor Dick – don't. To move Armey out as the general of today's badly depleted tea party army, FreedomWorks will pay him $400,000 a year... for the next 20 years! Like I said, "slick."

One pretty good rule in making public policy proposals is this: If you're going to cite a source in support of your plan, first confirm that your source actually does support your plan. Republican budgeteer, John Boehner, recently put a new deficit reduction proposal on the table, asserting that it incorporated the numbers of a plan put forth earlier by budget expert Erskine Bowles, a Democrat. Aha, gloated the GOP leader to Barack Obama as he plopped down this bit of budgetary bipartisanship – Gotcha! Uh... not quite. Bowles promptly retorted that his numbers were not really a plan, but were simply "back-of-the-envelope" ideas, adding that the numbers are no longer correct. And that pretty well sums up the slapdash package that Boehner called "credible." For example, he says it "saves" $600 billion by raising the eligibility age for Medicare to 67. That'd be no problem for congress critters, who do no heavy lifting and already get full medical benefits from taxpayers. But it's not a credible idea for millions of working class folks who actually do heavy lifting and are not able to work an extra two years. Another incredible piece of Boehner's handiwork is the claim it'll save $800 billion by eliminating unspecified tax deductions. However, the only way to reach that number is by severely whacking the deductions that people get for donations to churches, hospitals, universities, and other charities. Do Republicans really intend to do that -- or did they just not have a calculator on hand when they put this mishmash together. Boehner keeps failing the "bogusity test," because his numbers are... well, bogus. And he's using bad numbers just to prevent pampered rich people from paying a little bit more into our nation's public treasury. That's not only deceitful – it's seriously shameful.

In the present scramble to "fix" the federal deficit, one of Washington's worst ideas is widely considered by political elites – including some Democrats – to be a good idea, even a painless fix. The idea is to raise the age of eligibility for both Social Security and Medicare, shoving it from 65 to 67, or beyond. After all, goes Washington's conventional wisdom, people live so much longer now, so it won't hurt to postpone eligibility and "save" a couple of years of taxpayer outlays to people. But, as economist and columnist Paul Krugman has pointed out, this bit of conventional wisdom is merely conventional – in the sense of trite. While life expectancy has gone up on average, it has not increased much for working stiffs – especially for tens-of-millions of lower-wage and poor workers. Unlike being a member of Congress, the work that these people do tends to require heavy lifting, which can make you old fast. Requiring them to do it even deeper into old age – and to wait longer for medical assistance – is, as Krugman bluntly calls it, cruel. Bear in mind, too, that working class families are precisely the people who count on Social Security and Medicare. They don't have the socialized medical benefits and golden pensions that those pampered conventional wisdom spouters in Congress get. Oh, one more thing: the purported savings from this "fix" are so minimal as to be illusory. In fact, shoving ill or crippled elderly workers out of the cost-effective Medicare system will jack up America's health care costs. Raising the retirement age is gratuitous as well as cruel – but mostly it's severely ignorant. What's at work here is a policy-making elite that includes no working class people, nor is it in touch with any, so it can cluelessly believe that making the hard lives of these Americans worse is "painless."