Jim Hightower's Lowdown

If for no other reason, President Obama's re-election was a victory in the sense that America averted a hard Romney-Ryan lurch rightward, downward, and backward – all at once. Ouch! That would've hurt. By campaign's end, it was painfully clear that Romney, a lifelong son of privilege, had no understanding of, empathy with, or appreciation for ordinary workaday Americans. He really is a born CEO who accepts in his heart, mind, and soul the Ayn-Randian fiction that America really is made up of a small class of noble producers… and a mass of moochers. The man from Bain Capital, who'd made a fortune by taking over corporations and coldly axing longtime loyal employees, quietly brought that corporate side of his character back into play on election night. Even as he was on national television delivering his brief concession speech, his campaign apparatus was being swiftly dismantled. Left in the lurch were Romney's many staffers who'd toiled so faithfully for so long. Late that night, many of these disappointed and weary ones grabbed cabs home from the campaign's headquarters – only to find upon arrival that the Romney-for-President credit cards they'd been using were suddenly no good. Without even telling these aides, the boss who wanted to be our nation's leader had abruptly yanked this modest benefit from the people who'd tried to help him get there. They'd just lost their jobs, but multimillionaire Mitt stuck them with paying out-of-pocket for cab fare. Come on, with untold millions stashed in offshore bank accounts, couldn't Romney have ponied up a few small bills to cover this last ride home? Of course he could – but he wouldn't. Of all things to think of doing on election night, cutting off his employees' credit cards was a priority. We're lucky this sorry character lost.

Two heroes emerged at the polls this year, and neither was named Barack or Mitt. Their names are Galicia and Ken – ordinary Americans with extraordinary civic spirit. While about 40 percent of eligible voters didn't bother to cast their ballots this year, these two demonstrated that our right to vote is not something to take lightly – especially at a time when Republican officials in several states are going to extremes to deny millions of citizens that right. Galicia Malone, 21 years old, was making an urgent trip to the hospital Tuesday morning, because she was about to give birth to her first child. Her water had broken and her contractions were five minutes apart, so there was no time to waste. But Galicia points out that the opportunity to vote also ought not be wasted – so, contractions be damned, she stopped at her polling place in a Chicago suburb and patiently went down the entire ballot, determined to be counted in her first election. Ignoring her pains, Galicia says, "I was just trying to read and breath. This is my first baby, a girl, and I wanted to make a good impression. I want to have a story to tell her." Having proudly delivered her vote, she then drove herself to the hospital and delivered her baby. Now that's a story! Ken Knight of Buda, Texas, is another die-hard voter. Literally. Sadly, Ken died from cancer the morning of Election Day. But, the previous Friday, the last day of early voting, his wife and several friends lifted him, his wheelchair, and two tanks of oxygen into a van and drove him to city hall. He was "hell-bent on voting," Amy Knight says of her husband. "It was a driving force for him." Her only regret was that she forgot to get an "I voted" sticker for Ken's ride home. So spare me any whines about voting being a pain or too much of a bother for you.

Executives in private equity firms – such as Mitt Romney of Bain Capital and Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts – tend to be peacocks who think quite highly of themselves. Fanning their splendid tail feathers, they unabashedly claim to be the ultimate free-enterprise risk takers – worth every dime of the multimillion-dollar paychecks they award themselves each year. Excuse me, but the risks taken by these self-anointed "heroes of the market" are done with other people's money, not their own. But here's a revelation that really ruffles their feathers: They appear to have been gathering their riches not with bold competition, but with old-fashioned collusion. An antitrust civil lawsuit filed in federal court against 11 of the biggest equity firms includes emails in which they agree not to compete. In 2006, for example. The head of Blackstone sent an email to the co-founder of KKR: "We would much rather work with you guys than against you. Together we can be unstoppable but in opposition we can cost each other a lot of money." The KKR honcho happily emailed back a one-word response: "Agreed." Collusion, of course, perverts the marketplace they pretend to worship, artificially lowering the market price they'd otherwise pay. In the 2008 take-over of the giant HCA hospital chain, for example, KKR expressly asked its market rivals "to step down on HCA" and not bid. Agreeing to this blatantly illegal collusion, one rival wrote in an email: "All we can do is do unto others as we want them to do unto us." Of course, by cozying up with each other, they're really doing it unto you and me. The equity outfits even have an insider term for their mutual back scratching: "Club deals" they call them. Forget about the vaunted free market – when the big boys want to profiteer, they keep it inside the billionaires club.

They came, they spent... then they limped home, tails between their legs. Okay, they didn't limp – they were flown home on their private Gulfstream jets, but still their tails were tucked down in the defeat mode. "They" are the billionaire, far-right, corporate extremists who tried to be presidential kingmakers. Unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United edict to spend unlimited sums of cash in this year's elections, they spewed money into efforts to enthrone Mitt Romney in the White House and turn the Senate into a GOP rubber stamp for totally corporatizing government. As they gathered at exclusive Romney victory parties on election night, however, the mood quickly soured, for key states were choosing Democrats. The people (damn them) seemed to be deliberately voting against the barons. Casino baron Sheldon Adelson, for example, put down an obscene $60 million on eight candidates – and crapped out on all of them. Also, the über-billionaire Koch boys reportedly amassed an arsenal of $400 million from their corporate vault and from other billionaires to knock-off Obama. But, at evening's end, there the president stood, re-elected with more than 56 percent of the electoral votes. And Bob Perry, another self-serving, ultra-rightist billionaire dumped $21 million into GOP SuperPACs trying to win senate races in Florida and Virginia, as well as the presidency. All for naught. Democrats not only gained two seats in the Senate, but such new senators as Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Heidi Heitkamp, Mazie Hirono, Joe Donnelly, Chris Murphy, and Martin Heinrich are expected to stand against the corporate kletrocracy that the barons were trying to buy. Of course, the billionaires reckon that they just didn't spend enough this year, so look for even more obscenity in 2014 and 2016.

Not bothering to vote is deplorable – but preventing others from voting is disgraceful and disgusting. Yet, voter suppression has become an acceptable, routine, and widespread political tactic of Republican officials, operatives, and funders. This year, the Vile Nasties of Suppression were in full howl in such key states as Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin, telling lies and twisting the rules to deter minorities and other likely Democratic voters from casting ballots. “Voter Fraud Is A Felony!” screeched 140 billboards strategically placed in inner-city neighborhoods of Ohio and Wisconsin. They pictured a judge’s gavel slamming down, along with this bogarting message: “3½ years and $10,000 Fine.” Subtle, huh? The ads had no disclosure of who paid for them. When told they’d have to own up to their sponsorship, the cowardly suppressors chose instead to have the billboards taken down. Well, they can run, but they can’t hide – the Einhorn Family Foundation of Milwaukee was behind this nastiness. It's the right-wing plaything of the billionaire Einhorn family, venture capital hucksters who use their fortune to back right-wing politicians and – get this – to "promote liberty." Then there are sorry public officials like Florida governor Rick Scott who rig election rules to make voting hard-to-impossible for many Democrats. This year, he slashed the days for early voting almost in half, had thousands of unsuspecting voters purged from the rolls, and refused to alleviate nightmarish wait-times of three to nine hours at some Democratic polling places. “But,” declared this cynical scoundrel, “I want everybody to get out to vote.” And I want political thugs like him to get out of the way of our democracy. To help shove them aside, connect with The Brennan Center for Justice at www.brennancenter.org.

You know it's a good election night when you see Karl Rove have a hissy fit on national television. It came just after 11 pm, when he heard a TV network declare Obama the winner in Ohio. This was not just any network, but Fox TV, the Republican Party's official propaganda machine! Rove, who is a rabidly-partisan GOP hit man, also doubles as a Fox commentator. (That network has simply amputated the word "conflict" from the ethical concept of conflict-of-interest. But I digress.) Rove was just off-camera on the Fox set as the on-air anchor team made the call on Ohio. In fact, he was on the phone at the time with a top Romney staffer who was wailing that Fox was wrong, that Romney was winning Ohio. With his right knee jerking furiously, Karl immediately demanded to be put on the air to rebut the network's own professional vote counters. He got what he wanted, publicly chiding his Fox colleagues for being "premature" This prompted an unusual moment of dead air, after which anchor Megan Kelly said, "Well, that's awkward." Since every news outlet and even Republican officials were by then conceding Ohio to Obama, Kelly asked whether Rove was using his own math just to "make himself feel better." Bingo! Karl the Kingmaker was having a really bad night. He had talked assorted corporations and fat cats into putting some $300 million into his attack ads against Democrats – and he had some big explaining to do. American Crossroads, one of Rove's two political funds, spent $103 million to defeat Democratic Senate candidates, but the return on that investment was a pathetic 1 percent. Billionaires expect better. By the way, in response to this bruhaha, Jon Stewart said that "Math You Do As a Republican to Make Yourself Feel Better" is a better slogan than the one Fox has now.

Today, I am notifying the honchos of Bain Capital, Blackstone Group, and other big-time private equity funds that my little company, Saddle Burr Productions, can be had. For a price. I publish this notice in response to a recent news item revealing that these funds have a perplexing problem: they have too much money on hand. In all, they're holding a trillion dollars that superrich speculators have entrusted to them. Private equity funds are corporate predators that borrow from the rich, then buy-out targeted corporations, dismantle them, and sell off the parts for a fat profit. However, in these iffy economic times, these flush funds have hesitated to do big takeovers, so they're sitting on all that cash (which they refer to as "dry powder"). Under the rules of this high stakes casino game, however, firms have to spend their borrowed money by a set time – or give it back. And the clock is ticking. So, using Wall Street's macho lingo, the big players have announced that they're ready to go "elephant hunting" and are prepared to fire big bucks to bag some companies. To which I say: fire away at Saddle Burr Productions! Okay, my company is hardly an elephant. But maybe it could be what the equity hucksters refer to as a "hot potato." That's when one firm grabs a company just to sell it to another firm, which might pass it off to yet another. They are expected to spend more than $22 billion this year selling hot potatoes to each other – in part, just to move cash out the door so they don't have to give it back. Believe it or not, this is what passes for good business sense in the truly screwy world of private equity. It's just churning money, producing absolutely nothing – except, of course, huge fees for the churners. Think what good that $22 billion could do if it were put into the real economy. But if churning is their game – hey, put me in the mix. A billion dollars sounds about right.

Thanks to the industrializers of American agriculture, we finally know why the chicken crossed the road: To run away from the factory farm! These meat and egg factories are encased in thousands of sprawling, low-slung, metal buildings that now litter much of our nation's rural landscapes. Rarely seen by consumers, much less entered by them, the prison-like factories are called "confined animal feeding operations" – and they are as far from pastoral as that name suggests. Typically, a factory operation has many thousands of chickens, cows, hogs, turkeys, or other animals jammed together in tiny cages and crates that permit little movement beyond eating and defecating. An Ohio egg factory, for example, was found to have four million birds "living" six to a cage. The cages were no bigger than an open newspaper, giving each one a space of roughly eight inches by eight inches. For life. This isn't a farm, it's an animal concentration camp! And unbeknownst to the vast majority of consumers, 97 percent of the eggs we buy come from such factories. Even less known is the nasty fact that those cages are not only crammed with hens, but also with salmonella and other pathogens. Indeed, while corporate agribusiness rationalizes its assembly-line treatment of animals on the grounds that it produces cheap eggs and meat, that "low-price" is only achieved by passing on to the public the high health costs of food poisonings, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, cancers, and contaminated water created by this factory model. Factory food production is so gross that, (1) the president's cancer panel urges consumers to avoid it altogether by buying organic food, and (2) the industry itself is trying to make it a crime to take pictures or make videos of their confined feeding operations. Out of sight, out of mind – right?

I know that this story might make you tear up, so now would be a good time to reach for a tissue. It's about Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of the Wall Street giant, Goldman Sachs. Ready? He only took home $12 million in pay last year. To grasp the terrible sadness of this, you should know that Lord Lloyd hauled in more than $68 million in 2007, the year prior to Wall Street's crash. So, see, you'd be down, too, if your pay had been cut by 80 percent. But don't feel too badly for Blankfein and his Brothers of the Street, for – look! – a rainbow is beaming across their dark financial sky! And we know what's at the end of that radiant arc, right? Yes, a pot of gold, and the happy news is that the annual pay of Wall Street bankers this year is back up to near-record levels. The base salary of all the minions of high-finance now averages nearly $400,000 – up 16 percent over the last two years. Hey, who says these are hard times? Of course, up in the suites where bankers-in-chief like Blankfein reign, the base pay is much sweeter than average. Plus, base pay is the least of it, for at year's end, it's bonus time! This is when multiple millions of dollars are stuffed into the pockets of the Street's elites, and this year is expected to produce a bonus-palooza. At last, then, it looks as though Blankfein will overcome the sadness and embarrassment of last year's $12-million check. And who could be more deserving of such a felicitous ending? After all, did he not labor diligently this year to eliminate 3,200 of Goldman's lower-level employees as a way to save money in order to pay top dollar to Goldman's top bankers (such as himself)? Yes, he did. Plus, he lobbied ferociously to kill reforms to reign-in banker greed. So he'll now cash in. Now, that's really something to cry about.

For a rich example of unbridled boss power in today's political process, harken back to August when Mitt Romney appeared on a stage with a group of Ohio coal miners behind him. "I tell ya," the clueless candidate cheerfully exclaimed, "You've got a great boss." That would be Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, who'd previously held a $1.7 million fund-raiser for Romney. But if Mitt had just turned around and seen the scowls on the faces of the Murray miners, he would've had a clue that they didn't quite share his enthusiasm for their "great boss." One reason is that they hadn't volunteered to be there, but had been directed by Bossman Bob to attend. Also, Bob was docking them a day's pay for "taking the day off" to be stage props for Mitt's campaign. In effect, they were compelled to donate to the Republican. Such involuntary support is routine for this corporation's salaried employees, who've been hit up again and again for donations to Romney and other designated candidates. Murray himself sends dunning letters to employees' homes, specifying to each one how much to give, and instructing them to send their checks directly to corporate headquarters. Staffers there maintain a list of those who did as told – and those who didn't. "If you don’t contribute, your job's at stake," one employee bluntly explained. Indeed, Murray deploys his lieutenants to squeeze the laggards – as the boss put it in one letter to them last year: "Please see that our salaried employees 'step up,' for their own sakes." And, in another letter this March, he even named names of those he considered shirkers. "I do not recall ever seeing the attached list of employees… at one of our fund-raisers," he said pointedly. After Romney's "great boss" statement, he added that Murray "runs a great operation here." Yeah – a political shake-down operation. It's a new, 2012 version of old-time boss politics – sanctioned by the Supreme Court.

As feared, our people's democratic authority has been dogged nearly to death by the hounds of money in this year's election go 'round, thanks to the Supreme Court's reckless decree in the Citizens United case. That rank political power play by five black-robed partisans unleashed the Big Dogs of corporate money to bite democracy right in the butt, poisoning our elections with the venom of unlimited special-interest cash. But there's also been another, little-reported consequence of the malevolent Citizens United decision: It has unleashed mad-dog corporate bosses to tell employees how to vote. Prior to that 2010 Court ruling, top executives were barred by federal law from using corporate funds to instruct, induce, intimidate, or otherwise push workers to support particular candidates. No more. Having been given a legal pass, bosses are openly conscripting employees to be political troopers for corporate-backed candidates. For example, CEO David Siegel of Westgate Resorts, a major peddler of time-share schemes, warned his 7,000-strong workforce against voting for Obama. To do so, he wrote in a letter to each of them, would "threaten your job." Obama, Siegel declared, planned to raise taxes on multimillionaires like him, which would give him "no choice but to reduce the size of this company." Likewise, Dave Robertson, president of the Koch brothers industrial empire, notified 30,000 workers that they would suffer assorted "ills" if they helped re-elect Obama. Robertson even included a slate-card of Koch-approved candidates for them to take into the polling booth. How helpful! Of course, corporate chieftains say they're not making threats – just friendly suggestions on how to vote. Oh, sure. As we know, everyone is equal in the corporate hierarchy, and you're perfectly free to defy the guy who can fire you. Good luck with that.

There's a musicality to the whine of a highballing freight train on an open stretch of track, just as there is to the whine of an 18-wheeler barreling down the Interstate. Both have been a muse for many a songwriter. But you rarely hear a song rhapsodizing about the off-key whine of today's super-rich. Unfortunately, that irritating wail has become common in our country, emanating from the luxurious lairs of Wall Street, suites of corporate chiefs, and penthouses of plutocrats. Oddly, these most-privileged people in our society claim to be victims of America's economic decline, so they're caterwauling from on high and wallowing in an unseemly pity party. They're certainly not hurting financially – indeed, while nearly everyone else is down, their fortunes have soared. But there's the rub. The billionaires at the top say they're offended by the subsequent resentment directed toward them by what one Wall Streeter patronizingly referred to as "the downtrodden." Worse, whimper these sensitive ones, they feel threatened by the likes of Barack Obama who – gasp! – seems to side with the rabble. One hedge-fund plutocrat, Leon Cooperman, even compared Obama's election to Hitler's rise to power and publicly scolded the President for daring to talk about the special tax breaks the government gives to swells like him. The "divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric," he lectured with righteous indignation, "is cleaving a widening gulf" between the classes. Gosh, Leon, imagine how relieved America's downwardly-mobile majority must be to learn that the widening economic gulf in our nation is just rhetorical, not a reality created by deliberate financial and political moves by arrogant elites like you! These well-heeled whiners are as pathetic as they are offensive. Please – sip your champagne and shut up.

According to the self-aggrandizing mythology of America's right-wing rich, Sheldon Adelson is one of society's "producers," not one of those morally-inferior "moochers" who're always looking for government handouts. For a reality check on the moral superiority of the rich, however, take a peek at who's now trying to do some of the most egregious mooching ever from the economically-devastated people of Spain. Why it's Adelson, the multibillionaire casino tycoon from Las Vegas! In addition to trying to buy favors from our own government by throwing as much as $100 million into this year's presidential and congressional elections, the far-right Republican extremist is making a huge financial play in Madrid, Spain. Posing as a magnanimous "producer," Adelson claims he'll create 250,000 jobs there by erecting a dazzling, neon-bright, $35-billion, gambling Mecca to be called: "EuroVegas." Casinos, hotels, golf courses, four-star restaurants, you-name-it – Sheldon's corporate development shimmers like a free-enterprise mirage for Spaniards suffering from a housing and banking collapse – and 30 percent unemployment. But wait – a mirage is nothing but an illusion. And so is Adelson's free-enterprise "miracle." In fact, Sheldon the Moocher is demanding that two-thirds of the funding come from the cash-strapped government, which would have to take out bank loans to finance Adleson's profiteering scheme. He's also got his hand out for special tax breaks, and – get this – he's even demanding labor law changes so he can bring in cheap foreign labor to build and staff his Spanish casino-opolis. What we have here is another example of the ultra-rich's extraordinary sense of entitlement. The dark secret of so many self-proclaimed "producers" is that, in fact, they're professional, world-class moochers.

If you really want to scare people this Halloween, go trick-or-treating dressed as an Ohio voting machine. The "black box" e-vote machines that Ohioans will use on November 6 are owned by Hart Intercivic – but that disguises the real owner. Last year, Hart was taken over by an investment fund with the cryptic name of HIG Capital. Peek into HIG, and you'll find that of its 22 American directors, 21 are donors to Mitt Romney's campaign, and a third of them had been money managers at Bain & Company, the hedge fund that gave Mitt his start in corporate plundering. But the enigma within Ohio's machines goes even deeper than these cozy partisan ties suggest, for HIG itself is largely owned by an inscrutable private equity creature called Solomere. Who dat? Solomere was formed by Romney's oldest son, Tagg, and financed by Mama Ann Romney and Uncle Scott Romney, with Papa Mitt himself chipping in $10 million and personally pitching Solomere to other rich investors. Like father, like son – Tagg cloaks the fund's operations through a dark maze of offshore tax shelters. And, now, the son has slipped out of Solomere to be a top campaign manager for his father. This slippery guy gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "playing Tagg." One wonders if Tagg's campaign duties include "monitoring" Ohio's voting machines. Can the Romneys even spell conflict-of-interest? The people's trust in the fairness of our democratic elections has already been severely eroded by the unlimited corporate cash flooding into the process, but what are we to make of a multimillionaire presidential candidate with secret financial and crony control of the machines that can decide the outcome in this key swing state? I ask you: Of all the things the Romneys could invest in – why voting machines?

America has always had political campaigns that dig into the muck of their opponents' personal lives, then fling any nasty nuggets of negativity they find right into the face of voters. But this year is different. Not, of course, because there's any less singling of slime, but because the campaigns are also digging into the private affairs of another political target: You. Just like corporate marketers, both the Romney and Obama campaigns have paid millions of dollars this year to data miners, social media snoops, and other information extractors to find personal details they can use to convince or compel their potential voters to go to the polls. Have you visited pornographic websites, or evangelical sites? Do you gamble, have gay friends, take expensive vacations, or have financial problems? This information is now on their computers. They've also scanned your online exchanges, followed your social networks, searched your shopping histories… and much, much more. They're especially interested in "low-propensity voters" who might or might not vote. They're looking for either positive or negative ways to push them to the polls. For example, they might engage in "public shaming" by putting your voting record on-line so your friends and neighbors can see it. Of course, the Romney team says "all of our voter outreach is governed by the highest ethical standards," and Team Obama says that it adheres to "industry best practices on privacy." Yet, both campaigns are buying our private information from corporate data peddlers who've been sued or are under federal investigation for privacy invasion. As a Romney aide puts it, this political rummaging and prodding has to be done "behind the scenes." Why? Because, he says, "voters get creeped out." Well, yeah – because it is creepy! Invasive, too. And wrong.