Jim Hightower's Lowdown

In Lyndon Johnson's colorful barnyard phrase, "You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh[bleep]." But Paul Ryan, the GOP's current vice-presidential nominee, has spent his lifetime career in national government trying to do exactly that. Over the years, the ambitions right-wing politico has carefully assembled a mixed salad of positive adjectives to create his public persona: an earnest, straight-shooting, big thinker with integrity and deeply-held, conservative convictions. The Washington media swallowed it whole, helping push him forth as a tea party rock star and, now, a man who could be next in line to the presidency of our nation. But once on the national stage, the real Ryan has been revealed as a slippery, dissembling, fabricating, small-minded, political hack. His big debut-speech, at the Republican National Convention was so filled with lies and chicken sh[bleep] that it even caused Fox TV's gaggle of fawning commentators to gag. Since then, he has continued to stink up the campaign trail, establishing himself, in the words of one New York Times columnist, as "a veritable poster boy for hyperbole and hypocrisy." Then, in a recent radio interview, Ryan really ripped it by making a little boast that showed the big dishonesty that resides in his innermost core. Bragging that he's a very fit fellow, the VP candidate claimed to have run a marathon in under three hours. Wow – that's championship stuff! Only, it was just more chicken stuff. Runner's World magazine checked it out, and Ryan's run turned out to take more than four hours – merely ordinary. The candidate later tried to laugh it off as an innocent exaggeration. But whether in marathons or a run for office, facts – and integrity – do matter. Ryan can run in both, but he can't hide the truth about himself.

Poor Alec just keeps bumbling, stumbling, and tumbling. You could feel sorry for such a hapless soul, except that this isn't a person, but the soulless ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council. This secretive corporate front is behind hundreds of regressive and repressive bills that're being pushed through Republican-controlled state legislatures. Its bills and tactics are so venomous that 35 of ALEC's brand-name corporate funders – from Amazon to Walmart – have withdrawn their names and money this year. But with the billionaire Koch brothers and others behind it, ALEC will continue stumbling ahead with its far-right agenda. Condemning it is one thing, but what's really needed is a non-corporate, independent, above-board, overtly-progressive alternative to ALEC's special-interest, backroom conniving – a clean source of model legislation readily-available for the consideration of local and state public officials and the public at large. Well, great news folks, ALICE will soon arrive! The American Legislative and Issues Campaign Exchange (or ALICE) is not just a clever play on ALEC's name, but an effective counter to its agenda and methods. Originated by Joel Rogers – one of progressive America's most-creative thinkers and doers – ALICE will offer a one-stop, web-based, public library of about 1,000 model laws on a wide range of policy issues, complete with in-depth background materials. It's a nationwide, cooperative effort that already has enlisted a couple of hundred professors, policy experts, students, lawyers, and others who're volunteering their brains, energy, and time to assemble a first-rate, easily-accessible library open to all lawmakers, mayors, grassroots groups, media, and… well, everyone. If you'd like to help ALICE in some way, go to www.AliceLaw.org.

Dick Cheney is known to snarl more than he smiles, but the former VP and ex-oil executive must be grinning from ear to ear now that Mitt Romney has issued his energy plan. By "his," I mean Cheney's – the one he drafted in secrecy with a cabal of industry chieftains a decade ago. They couldn't get all of their agenda enacted, however, so imagine their excitement over Romney's recent proposal, which out-Cheneys Cheney. In a breathtaking surrender of America's energy future to Big Oil profiteers, Romney revives the maniacal fervor of the "drill, baby, drill" crowd, pushes "fracking" with a vengeance, runs the filthy XL pipeline right through the heart of America, zeros-out federal tax credits for wind and solar alternatives to oil, and maintains the $4-billion-a-year subsidy for oil corporations – among other giveaways. Then he doubles down on energy stupidity by undoing Teddy Roosevelt's logical decision that our national lands should be under the control of... well, national policy makers. Instead, capitulating to industry's wildest dream, Romney would cede control over drilling and mining on nationally-owned public land to the various states, most of which are run by industry-coddling, corporate-financed politicians. It's like asking a coyote to guard your last lambchop! Who wrote this "plan?" Harold Hamm, for one. CEO of Continental Resources, an oil and gas fracking corporation, this Oklahoma billionaire chairs Romney's energy advisory committee. A campaign aide insists that Hamm and other industry executives (who showered Romney with over $10 million in campaign funds in August alone) were allowed to write the policy, not as payback, but "simply to tap their expertise." Uh-huh – expertise at serving their own interests, our national interest be damned.

Congress' boneheaded right-wing leaders keep insisting that our growing national needs must be sacrificed to their god of budgetary-whacking wackiness. For a slap-your-forehead example of what their dogmatic purity is doing to America, consider this: The roof of our nation's Capitol is leaking. A lot. Yes, the majestic dome – one of the most recognizable symbols of our people's democratic aspirations – has succumbed to the mingy, fiscal shortsightedness of Congress critters so obsessed with the price of public programs that they've lost all sight of value. Owners of even the most modest houses know that you must tend to roof leaks, lest the whole structure deteriorate, yet these stewards of the nation's house have failed Caretaking 101. The Capitol dome has some 1,300 cracks and breaks, causing chunks of the exterior to break off and water seepage to endanger the treasured artworks on the interior of the rotunda. The architect of the Capitol warns bluntly: "The dome needs comprehensive rehabilitation," ominously adding that, "It's a public safety issue." The cost? About $61 million to repair and restore the exterior. That's all? Come on – the right-wing's tax giveaways to the superrich cost us more than that every single day! Yet, while U.S. Senate appropriators okayed the dome repairs in August, the ideological wingnuts in the House said "uh-uh." No money is available, they claimed, America has to cut back, we can't afford to fix our nation's roof. What a metaphor for their overall gross mismanagement and pusillanimous failure to meet America's most basic needs! No wonder that our roads, schools, water systems, parks, and other components of our essential public infrastructure are in dangerous decay – the nutballs in Congress won't even fix the roof over their own heads.

What a great media picture it made! Mitt Romney was at an Ohio rally, standing at a lectern with his white shirtsleeves rolled up in that common-guy style he often adopts. The best visual, though, was a great-looking group of coal miners in overalls, work shirts, and hardhats gathered behind him. A sign on the lectern declared: "Coal Country Stands With Mitt." Well, actually, it's coal executives who really stand with Mitt – rich guys in suits. In fact, the miners in the photo seemed downright sour, frowning at the Republican, as if they didn't really want to be there. It turns out they didn't. The sorry truth is that they were compelled by the corporate honchos of Murray Energy to be props at Romney's staged PR event. Yet, in twisted language that would make Orwell cringe, a Murray official later told WWVA radio that while "attendance at the Romney event was mandatory… no one was forced to attend." Huh? Okay, Murray didn't use cattle prods to herd them to the rally, but it did make workers "pre-register" to attend – and it was clear that anyone who didn't sign up risked getting fired. That explains their glumness, but here's why so many miners practically glowered at the multimillionaire candidate: They were being docked a day's pay for the event! Yes, not only were workers compelled to be backdrops for a politician most don't support, but they were also forced to contribute their paychecks – money that Murray simply pocketed, presumably using some of it to finance Romney's hokey "rally." Well, sniffed a top Murray boss condescendingly, the event "was in the best interest of anyone that's related to the coal industry," so workers should've been happy to donate a day's pay. That's a cold corporate attitude that would cause Romney, the Pain from Bain, to smile warmly.

Not only does corporate political money shout, scream, bellow, and bay in our elections, but afterwards it quietly slips into the back rooms of power to talk softly about payback. Meet Exelon Corporation, America's largest electric utility, owner of our country's largest array of nuclear power plants, and among the largest donors to Barack Obama's political career. One Exelon board member alone has raised more than $500,000 for Obama and is tight enough with him to get into the occasional presidential basketball game. Also, Obama's top political operative, David Axelrod, has been an Exelon consultant. Overall, Chicago-based Exelon is so connected that it boasts of being "the president's utility." This is a story of how corporate cash buys longterm relationships that then produce quiet access to the inner chambers of government, resulting in corporate favors. Last year, for example, the EPA was developing a new rule affecting how nuclear plants use water. Exelon executives and lobbyists got extraordinary access to top White House officials – far more meetings and at a higher level than other utilities got, and certainly more attention that environmental groups received. Then in March 2011, just days after Exelon lobbyists met with their Oval Office buddies, the EPA official in charge of drafting the rule was called to the White House and instructed to rewrite major sections to fit Exelon's needs. Since then, Obama's regulatory review office has held eight meetings on the proposal, and Exelon was at four of them – again more than any other interest. This is not the slam-bam, Jack Abramoff-style of crass money corruption, but a sort of soft political pornography – a subtler, even genteel ethical degeneration. But soft is not better – whether corporate political money shouts or whispers, it still corrupts.

While Rep. Todd Akin's pseudo-scientific tommyrot about "legitimate rape" has surged him into the lead for the title of Dottiest and Most Dangerous Political Nut of the Year – never count out us Texans in any hard-nut contest. Our state's front-runner had been Ted Cruz, currently the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, who's deeply concerned that the United Nations is plotting to take over America's golf courses. Suddenly, however, a darkhorse from Lubbock has shot into the lead. Perhaps suffering from the heat of August, County Judge Tom Head shocked and delighted the rightwing-o-sphere by proving that it's actually humanly possible to get even nuttier about President Obama than simply ranting that he's a Kenyan Muslim Socialist. I'll let Judge Head speak for himself. "In this political climate," he asked during a TV interview, "what is the worst thing that could happen? Obama gets back in the White House," he answered to his own question. Plunging deeper into paranoid darkness, Head then announced that a re-elected Obama is "going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN." And that, warned the judge, will lead to the worst – "Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. We're talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy. Now what's going to happen if we do that?" asked Head as he built to his logical conclusion: "[Obama's] going to send in UN troops." He told Lubbockians not to worry though, for he was pushing for a local tax increase to give him more police and weaponry to combat Obama's diabolical UN takeover scheme. "I don't want 'em in Lubbock County," Head said. "So I'm going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say, 'You're not coming in here.'" Thank you Judge Head, for showing America just what you're made of: a sack of nuts and a bucket of silly putty.

Happy Labor Day! And what a good day it is, for only five years after that ugly Wall Street collapse, the Dow Jones Average has soared back above 13,000 and top executive paychecks are at Zippididoodah levels. The only little cloud over this otherwise sunshiny recovery is… well, you. You people for whom Labor Day is named, that is. Not only did Wall Street's crash knock jobs, wages, benefits, homeownership, and middle-class opportunities into the ditch, but they're still stuck there – and even sinking lower. Yet, the financial elites, political establishment, and media powers remain rapturously focused on the Dow, uncaring about the precipitous decline in the Doug Jones Average. If Doug and Donna aren't prospering, neither is America, no matter how much wealth the privileged ones are socking away in offshore tax havens. The stark status of The Doug is revealed in a recent report on laid off workers. Of the 6.1 million Americans who lost stable jobs since 2009, when the "recovery" officially began, nearly half are still out of work. Also, more than half of those who did find jobs had their pay cut, whacking their standard of living. Typical of these is Andrew McMenemy, whose software firm pulled the plug on his $80,000-a-year high-tech job in 2010. He has finally found another job, but it pays under $20,000 a year, with no benefits. At 53 years of age, McMenemy has had to move in with his father. Knocking down the middle class is economically stupid, socially dangerous, and morally wrong. Labor Day is a good time to face up to the fact that today's corporate and political leaders are wretchedly-bad gardeners – by tending to the moneyed elites and ignoring America's workaday majority, they're watering the weeds and pulling the flowers. Where's that going to lead us?

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.

Is it really "fair and balanced"? I don't mean the ridiculous Fox TV channel, whose right-wing ranters mock their own PR slogan – but, rather, a network that actually matters in our society: America's legal system. To check the balance of the scales of justice, look at how the system treats the very rich… and the poor. As we've seen, Wall Street barons have grossly fattened themselves by running frauds and scams that wreaked trillions of dollars in damages to working families, homeowners, and taxpayers – yet not a single one of them has been indicted or even seriously pursued by the law. More recently, such corporate profiteers as GlaxoSmithKline have paid billions of dollars in fines for serious criminal acts, but the executive crimals who pulled these capers have skated free without ever being charged. Now, meet Gina Ray, who is neither a CEO nor a serious offender, but a hard-hit, low-income American. She's one of hundreds who're being jailed, not by the police, but by a growing network of corporate fee-chasers empowered by state legislatures to fine and imprison poor people who've committed minor infractions. Ms. Ray, an unemployed 31-year-old in Rural Alabama, got caught-up in this privatized probation system over a speeding ticket. Her problem mushroomed, and she was unable to pay, so the corporatized legal system locked her up and hit her with company fees for each of the 40 days she was behind bars. Her original $179 ticket has now surpassed $3,000. She was not told that she has a right to a court-appointed lawyer or offered any alternatives to more fines and jail. "We hear a lot of 'I can't pay the fee,'" says one of the private prosecutors, adding chillingly that, "It is not our job to figure that out," For more information, contact Southern Center For Human Rights: www.schr.org.

Let's talk budget! Yes, the wonky wonderland of the federal budget, with page after page of numbers – what fun, eh? No. Most people would prefer a root canal to a budget discussion (indeed, I've heard that some dentists use a recording of budget numbers to anesthetize their root-canal patients – everything from the neck up goes quickly numb). But Paul Ryan is different. The GOP's vice presidential nominee is touted as Mr. Budget, a guy who gets excited by running his fingers through fiscal things. That's why the Washington cognoscenti have declared him to be "serious," rather than just another political opportunist riding the right-wing wave of tea party ridiculousness. Being branded as "serious" means never having to admit you're a flim-flam man. Thus, the widely-ballyhooed Ryan Budget is called "honest" and "responsible" by insiders who obviously haven't run the numbers on it. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center, however, has tallied Ryan's budgetary giveaways to the rich and takebacks from the middle-class and the poor. Far from balancing the federal budget, as the self-proclaimed deficit hawk claims, the analysts found that Ryan's plan increases the federal deficit. And not by a little, but by about $2.5 trillion! So, yes, he is serious – serious as a snake bite. Then there was Ryan's explosive admission recently that the budget plan of his presidential partner, Mitt Romney, is also a con game. Despite Romney's repeated assertion that – by golly – his nifty plan will balance the federal budget in only eight years, Ryan confessed that they didn't really know that, because, "we haven't run the numbers on that specific plan." What? Hello – a budget is nothing but numbers – numbers that have, in fact, been run! Otherwise, it's not a budget, it's just a political hoax.

Can it really be a surprise that four out of five Americans have little-to-zero trust in big banks, that 62 percent of us believe corruption is widespread across Corporate America, and that three-fourths of us sense that business corruption has increased in the past three years? We have these views because we keep having their ugliness thrust in our faces. Even after the scandalous greed that crashed Wall Street five years ago, the epidemic of fraud and finagling continues, with Bank of America, Barclay, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase among the blue-chip names just recently in the news for gross violations of fundamental ethics by their top executives. Yet, not a single one of these felonious profiteers has had to do a perp walk. Add BP, ExxonMobil, the Cayman Island tax dodgers, and the wholesale corporate purchase of our government – and the only wonder is how even 20 percent of the public can retain any trust in these rapacious outfits. This ethical devolution is not about a few (or even many) rogues, but about a whole corporate culture of entitlement, thinking they're above both the law and common morality. Check out a recent survey of 500 senior financial executives. A hundred and twenty-five of them – one fourth! – said they thought that engaging in unethical or illegal behavior on the job was sometimes necessary to be successful. Twenty-six percent said they had firsthand knowledge of executive wrongdoing, and 30 percent said the way they get paid creates incentives to violate ethical standards and the law. The injustice is not just in the crimes, but also in the lack of punishment. If this corporate crime wave consisted of simple street robberies, Washington would declare martial law to deal with it! But, even if caught, these muggers get off with a corporate fine. The scandal will keep spreading – until someone has the guts to start jailing the culprits.

Among the higher hurdles that American marketing geniuses have tried (and failed) to leap were attempts to convince car buyers to drive the ultra-ugly Edsel, and to convince consumers that what they needed was a "New Coke." But now comes the marketing leap that even Superman couldn't clear: selling Mitt Romney as a warm, loose, down-to-earth, regular guy who cares most about America's working stiffs. Oops – take that back! Henceforth, do not ever let the word "stiff" be printed, uttered, or implied in the same sentence with Mitt's name. That was the old Romney image, and it is now officially passé. The branding of the new, relaxed Romney is being unveiled throughout this week's four-day Republican National Convention in Tampa. The stage itself – a $2.5 million structure of dark wood and warm tones that's said to be the most intricate, market-tested piece of stagecraft ever designed – is meant to convey conviviality. Rather than an imposing podium, this one is only six feet high with swooping steps – carefully constructed to make the multimillionaire nominee appear close to the people and "approachable." Romney's convention planner exults that, as a viewer, you'll not have a sense that you're "looking at a stage, you're looking into someone's living room." Wow, maybe Mitt will be in his jammies – that would really say "relaxed!" The whole show is meant to be a bit of Oprah and a touch of Martha Stewart, with some MTV thrown in – which is somewhat disingenuous, for all three of those are fundamentally Democratic Party in spirit rather than Republican. As jazzy and expensive as this remake is, I don’t see it selling. After all, Mitt is Mitt – an aloof, genetically-uptight child of privilege who's been in the public eye for a decade. They can't make a sow's ear out of a silk purse.

Washington keeps handing massive bailouts to Wall Street giants and multibillion-dollar annual subsidies to the likes of Big Oil, which is a nice boost to the bottom lines of the 1-percenters. But these giveaways do nothing to perk up America's grassroots economy, which not only is where the rest of us live and work, but also is the only place that can generate real national prosperity. Congress can't seem to grasp a basic law of nature: you can't keep a mighty tree alive (much less expect it to thrive) by only spritzing the fine leaves at its tippy-top. The fate of the whole tree depends on nurturing the grassroots. Sadly, America's corporate and political powers today are content to be a bunch of leaf spritzers, blithely oblivious to the dangerous shriveling of the grassroots. To witness the damage they're doing, just look at our nation's desiccated minimum wage. Set at $7.25 an hour three years ago, its real value has since been gutted by inflation, reducing the wage's current purchasing power to a sub-poverty level of $6.75 an-hour. That's only $14,000 a year for full-time work! Not only would increasing it help these hard-working people make ends meet, but it also would provide a direct jolt of nourishment to our overall economy. It's been shown again and again that every dime of a minimum-wage hike is spent by its recipients, circulating upward in our local economies as they increase their purchases of such basics as food, kids' clothing, and health care. This kind of percolate-up economics works for the many, not just the wealthiest few – and that helps (at least minimally) to restore a bit of moral balance to an economy and society now being torn apart by gross inequality. For more information on raising today's poverty wage, go to: www.TimeForARaise.org.

ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and other giants of the hydraulic fracturing industry not only are fracking deep gas wells all over our country, they're also trying to frack our heads. "Fracking is perfectly safe," they insist, "Trust us!" Excuse me, but no. Your "trust us" ploys have exploded in our faces again and again. This is why we need independent assessments of the impacts that such profiteers have on our Earth, lives, and livelihoods. But "independent" has to mean, at minimum, not tarnished by financial or other ties to the industry. Yet, this fairly straightforward ethical concept seems beyond the grasp of some academics and administrators at the University of Texas – an appendage of which recently published a report asserting that fracking does not contaminate people's groundwater. Good news, screeched the big frackers – see, we told you to trust us. Hold it, slick. It turns out that the principal investigator and author of this assessment has a bit of an untidy conflict of interest. For years, he has sat on the board of a gas fracking corporation. Last year alone, that fracker paid him $413,900 – more than double his university paycheck! Moreover, he holds $1.6 million worth of the corporation's stock. None of this had been revealed to the university – or to the readers of his "independent" report. At first, university officials rushed to this guy's defense, declaring that a professor of his stature wouldn't be influenced by having a couple of million bucks invested in the success of fracking. That didn't wash, of course, so now UT has assembled a high-priced panel of national establishment figures to assess the credibility of his report. Credibility? You don't need a PhD to know that its credibility is zilch. Why is this ethical slacker being coddled, rather than sacked?