Jim Hightower's Lowdown

I, for one, am tired of hearing complaints that our giant, bailed-out banks have simply taken the money and run, giving nothing back to society. That's why I'm so pleased that a new economic analysis from English tax experts has put the lie to this canard. Their study reveals that Barclays, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and other rescued giants have, in fact, been phenomenally helpful to many people in deep need. In particular, during 2010 alone, such bankers helped people move at least $21 trillion in wealth from the U.S. and other nations into tax havens like the Cayman Islands. Yes, these compassionate bankers created a handy financial channel so folks like us can dodge our tax bills. What? You say you don't have an offshore bank account and that this is just another scam for the superrich? Well, now, that's your problem – it's not the bankers' fault that you lack the wealth to qualify for their benevolent assistance. Good grief, the malevolence of these bankers is unfathomable. First, their greed destroyed the jobs and middle-class dreams of millions of workaday people. Then, we had to bail them out, while we were forced to take more cuts in wages, thus plunging millions into poverty. And they repay us... how? By foreclosing on our homes, secretly jacking up our interest rates, laundering money for terrorists, and helping the shameless über-wealthy hide trillions of dollars in the black holes of offshore accounts to escape paying the taxes they owe to America – money desperately needed to rebuild the middle class. These soulless scoundrels would steal the nickels off a dead man's eyes – and their avaricious abuse is pushing people to the point of parading guillotines down Wall Street. To see the full report on their tax-dodging scam, go to TaxJustice.net.

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.

It's true that America's working stiffs are mostly stuck in the muck of depression these days, spinning their economic wheels with low wages that can't even keep pace with inflation. Still, though, there are some good news stories about some who're doing well – such as David Simon. Through good' ol American ingenuity and hard work, Dave quintupled his pay last year, pocketing $68,500! An hour. In the previous year, poor Dave was only paid about $13,000 an hour, but apparently he really applied himself in 2011 and was rewarded with an annual paycheck of $137 million. See, the American dream is still alive for those who believe in it (and who happen to be CEOs of corporations with compliant boards of directors that lavish shareholder money on the chief). David is honcho of Simon Properties, a shopping mall operator, and he topped the list of last year's most-richly rewarded executives. While typical American workers saw their pay barely inch up by a meager one-percent in 2011 – a sum totally eaten up (and them some) by the price increases for gasoline, groceries, rent, and other essentials – the typical corporate chieftain socked away $9.6 million. It would take 244 years on the job for a typical employee to make what those bosses hauled off in one year. Especially galling is the sight of such CEOs as Brian Moynihan cashing in. The boss of Bank of America, Moynihan's pay jumped by 600 percent last year, even as his bank was foundering. BOA's stock value has plummeted by 81 percent on his watch, some 36,000 employees are getting pink slips, and the bailed-out behemoth has become widely despised for ruthlessly (and often illegally) foreclosing on people's homes. Such gross inequities, caused by CEO greed and narcissism, is why more and more Americans spell "boss" backwards: Double-S.O.B.

Let's take another trip deep into the "Magic Kingdom of LaissezFairyland" and prostrate ourselves before the infallible and inscrutable force known as: The Free Market. While this awesome deity cannot be seen, the high priests of TFM fundamentalism insist that we mere mortals must simply have faith that its mysterious workings are always in our best interest. Yeah, sure, your holiness – we saw how well that worked out for us wandering pilgrims after you true believers deregulated Wall Street, which then crashed on our streets. So, crashees, you might want to gird yourselves, because free market purists intend for us to have another ungodly religious encounter with their omnipotent deity. Looking at America's trillion-dollar student debt crisis, these spiritualists had a burning bush revelation: The crisis can be healed by letting the magic market (aka Wall Street) lay its hands on the funding of college education. Get the government out of the student loan business, they preach, and let global speculators invest directly in students by covering their tuitions. In other words, turn students into just another Wall Street commodity to be purchased by the wealthy. But venture capitalists expect fat returns on their investments, so what do they get back for covering some kid's tuition? A chunk of the kid's future, that's what. After graduation, students' incomes would be attached by the financiers. And, since free market doctrine dictates that investors should always seek to maximize their returns, they would have a direct interest (and maybe even a legal right) in making their investees pursue careers that make the most money for them. The first thing to know about the free market is that it's not free, and turning Wall Street loose on college students turns them into chattel, effectively indentured to investors.

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.

Even a hog must sometimes gag at the stench of its own sty. Maybe that's why some corporate lobbyists have launched a campaign to spiff-up K-Street, Washington's corridor of shameless high-dollar influence peddlers. The pay-to-play profession is so soiled and stinky that even the odious Newt Gingrich couldn't stand it, claiming in his hapless presidential run this year that he's a corporate "consultant" – NOT a lobbyist. Adding to the industry's reputation for ick is the sight of Jack Abramoff, the convicted sleazeball lobbying hustler who's now on a "Remorse Tour," charging groups across the country $10,000 a pop to hear him talk about – get this – ethics reform! Sad to say, but lobbying is a huge, and hugely profitable industry. There are 535 members of Congress, one president, and 23 cabinet officers in charge of our national government, but they are constantly swarmed by 12,000 registered Washington lobbyists! These hired guns hauled in $3.3 billion last year for helping Big Oil, Big Banks, and other Biggies gouge us. Unsurprisingly, the American people are disgusted by them. So, the head of the American League of Lobbyists (yes, lobbyists have their own lobbying group) now says that a spritz of magnolia-scented Glade or maybe one of those pine-tree-shaped air fresheners is needed to improve K-Street's smell. Would he include actually staunching the stench by banning lobbyists from doling out campaign cash to lawmakers they're hustling? Oh, gosh no – that might actually work! Instead, the lobbyists' lobbyists is proposing less pungent reforms like giving "ethics training" to those in the trade. Wow – imagine how that would've changed Jack Abramoff! To make real change in this corrupt system, check with the people's watchdog group, Public Citizen. Go to www.citizen.org.

Time for another trip into the Far, Far, Far-out World of Free Enterprise. Today, Spaceship Hightower makes a journey to the dark side of "the moon of product advertising," taking a peek at what's really behind some of the come-ons in ads and on labels. Our guide is Consumer Reports magazine, which is an expert at finding goofs, glitches, and gotchas. You can always locate it at ConsumerReports.org. Let's begin with Campbell's, the food giant that pushes a line of "Select Harvest" veggie soups, claiming to have "Real Ingredients, For Real Taste." Recently, though, the package had a new banner, proclaiming: "Now Even Better!" Really? No. The new version simply has more sugar, more salt, and less protein. But here’s something from TV Brands that seems awfully useful. Called insta-slit, it’s a gadget for opening those products that come encased in practically-impenetrable, and thoroughly-annoying hard plastic. Great! Except the gadget is encased in practically-impenetrable, thoroughly-annoying hard plastic. Go figure. Now, here's one that's just strange. It's the 13-inch folding step stool by the Simplify company. Behind the simple label, however, is a list of 13 warnings (presumably one for each inch of this little stool). Most worrisome, by far, is this caution to purchasers: "Do not leave step stool unattended." But at least it works, which can't be said for this catalogue offering of a beautifully crafted rosewood and brass walking stick. "The perfect gift," the ad exults. Except that a fine print tagline warns, "This item is not capable of human support." However, even that's a better gift than this suggestion for a Mother's Day surprise: "Get mom a termite treatment this Mother's Day." Yeah, and just wait for the treatment she gives you.

JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and the other Wall Street behemoths that dominate American banking – who needs 'em? After enduring years of insatiable greed by the slick-fingered hucksters who run these gambling houses; after watching in dismay as their ineptness and avarice drained more than $19 trillion from America’s household wealth since 2007 and plunged our real economy into financial crisis; after seeing them get trillions-of-dollars in taxpayer bailouts to save their banks and their jobs; and now after learning that they've returned to paying multimillion-dollar bonuses to themselves – we have to ask: Huh!?! Oh, no-no, cry the banking titans, don’t even think of looking behind the curtain! Trust us, for we are essential to juicing the economy with our complex abracadabra investment schemes. In fact, however, those schemes just move money around, siphoning real investment capital from the grassroots up to superrich global profiteers. Shell games at carnival sideshows are more honest than big-bank trading houses, for the hustles of JPMorgan, Goldman, BOA, etc. are based on financial illusions, off-the-books accounting, illegally-leveraged borrowing, ridiculous tax subsidies, and hide-the-pea secrecy. The obvious truth is that these high-flying, high-tech, high-speed emporiums of high finance serve themselves, not us – so we have no obligation or need to keep serving them. Of course we need banks – to lend to us consumers and our productive businesses, to handle our commercial transactions, to manage our savings and provide financial advice, etc. But that’s not what the leviathans of Wall Street do. So, rather than protecting them, let’s decentralize America’s capital, reinvesting our public trust in community banks and credit unions that actually serve it... and deserve it.

Here's some useful advice from an old country saying: Never try to teach table manners to a pig – it doesn't work, it'll wear you out, and it just annoys the pig. The same advice goes for anyone who thinks they can teach even a bit of common sense to the preening political ideologues who've taken over the Republican Party and the U.S. House of Representatives. As we've seen in their incessant, pigheaded attacks on the new health care bill, their minds are not merely fogged up with extremist anti-government theories, their heads are impervious to rational thought. They failed to defeat Obamacare in 2010, despite using the despicable (and false) scare tactic of telling people the law authorized "death panels" to euthanize "grandma." Now they're trying to repeal the law by getting people to swallow their hogwash that it contains "a massive tax hike on the middle class." Really? No. One, it's not massive; two, it's a payment for a direct benefit that people will receive, namely decent health care coverage; three, very few people will have to pay the so-called "tax" at all; and four, many people and small business will get tax credits and federal assistance to offset the cost of their payments. The greatest failure of these Repubs, however, is that they offer no alternative to Obamacare. During the debate on their latest attempt to repeal the law a Democratic lawmaker asked for a copy of the GOP's health care plan so he could read it aloud to other members. Silence in the chamber. They have no plan. The Republicans' political slogan has been to "repeal and replace" Obama's reform, but they've since dropped the replace part, saying they can't offer an alternative until they complete the repeal. No surprise – I doubt this bunch can walk and chew gun at the same time.

What a blessing to have Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee for president! It's a blessing because he is a living portrait of Mr. Wall Street Man, and, as his candidacy unfolds, it's allowing us commoners to get a peek into how the privileged few rig the rules for their own gain – at our expense. Romney is, of course, a full-fledged initiate in the Uppermost One-Tenth of 1-Percenters Club, with at least a quarter-billion dollars stashed away, and apparently much more that he's trying to hide from voters. It's not his wealth, however, that's troubling – we've had many rich politicians who've become admirable servants of the common good. Rather, it's how he got his… and where he's put it. The "how" has now been well documented: Romney's corporate takeover outfit, Bain Capital, practiced the hocus-pocus of legalized Wall Street robbery known as private equity deals. Bain continues to put millions in Mitt's pocket, even as it has bankrupted companies, cut thousands of jobs, and slashed workers' pay. But where did he put his booty? We don't know about all of it, for Romney keeps playing hide-and-seek with it, refusing to release his tax returns or fully report his holdings on legally-required disclosure forms. Good investigative reporters, however, are now digging out some rich nuggets, such as his secret, $3 million Swiss bank account that has been used to bet against the U.S. dollar. That's legal, I guess, but not nice. Also uncovered is his tax shelter in the Cayman Islands, where he uses a tricky dodge called a "blocker corporation" to shield his IRA investments from business taxes… and from public scrutiny. Other assets turn out to be hidden in offshore accounts and tax havens in Australia, Bermuda, Luxembourg, and elsewhere. How sneaky! As the old saying goes, Romney can run, but he can't hide.

By gollies, you've got to hand it to those Republicans in Congress – they're a tenacious bunch! No, not tenacious. More like dogmatic. Obstinate, and obtuse, too. Pigheaded – yeah, that's it. Once again, on July 11, GOP lawmakers threw a group hissy fit on the floor of the House over the Affordable Care Act that President Obama and the Democrats passed two years ago – a law the Supreme Court has just recently ruled to be constitutional. The House Repubs hate, hate, hate that law. So, all 244 GOP members pursed their lips in a collective pout and voted in lock step to repeal the blanket-blank ACA. That'll show Obama who's boss, they crowed! Well, not really, since their "repeal" won't pass the senate, much less get past the President's veto pen. But these pouty solons are not really interested in legislating – they're into political peacocking, putting on a show for the fans in the far-right-wing bleachers. And apparently it's an interminable farce, for this was the 31st time that they've voted to repeal the law! Thirty-one replays with the same do-nothing result. Don't they have real work to do? At some point (probably back at about vote number 20 or 25) they crossed over from appearing ideologically steadfast… to just plain stupid. They snidely assailed the health care reform as "Obamacare," as though that's a pejorative. But as the law has begun taking affect, more and more Americans are liking it, because it produces real benefits for us. Thirty million people who've had no coverage now will get it. Millions of seniors will get help in affording prescription drugs, plus all of us will get some relief from insurance company. "Obamacare" is fast becoming a label of pride. If I was Obama, I'd run on it – and go after the petty politicos who're trying to take away the benefits it provides for people.

Some people are too smart for your own good. Food geneticists, for example. These technicians have the smarts to tinker with the inner workings of Momma Nature's own good foods – but not the smarts to leave well enough alone. During the past half century, their productive tinkering devolved into outright tampering with our food, mostly to serve big agribusiness corporations that wanted nature's design altered in ways that would fatten their bottom lines. Never mind that the alterations created by these smart people were not good for you and me. Take the tomato, truly a natural wonder. Agribusiness profiteers, however, wanted it to do unnatural things, so – voila! – the genetic tamperers dutifully produced the Amazing Industrial Tomato. It's a techno-marvel made to endure long-distance shipping, be artificially ripened to appear tomato-y red, and last an ungodly amount of time without rotting. But taste? Forget it. There's more flavor in the carton. This led to a grassroots rebellion among consumers and small farmers, resulting in the phenomenal growth in farmers markets and stores that offer nature's own locally-produced and heirloom varieties untouched by the smart ones. But, look out – the tomato tamperers are back in the lab! They've discovered that a mutated gene they had bred into the corporate tomato switches off other genes that would cause the fruit to develop flavor. The answer, they say, is not less technology, but more. By artificially re-engineering the DNA structure of the plant, they can bypass that naughty mutated gene and switch-on some of the flavor genes. But do we really want to eat genetically engineered tomatoes? I can just see the agribusiness ad: "Buy our industrial tomatoes – Now genetically flavored!" Better yet, buy the local tomatoes, which don't need a smart geneticist or an ad to deliver real flavor.

Are you a parent who's worried about the plethora of highly-questionable bio-engineered organisms that agribusiness profiteers have quietly been slipping into everything from snack foods to school lunches? Well, perhaps your own children can put your mind at ease, for they might have science teachers who assign a book called "Look Closer at Biotechnology" to the kiddos in their classes. It's filled with colorful images, friendly cartoon faces, puzzles, and more! The very first page makes clear that the scientific wonder of genetically-engineered foods pose no worries at all. "Hi kids," it begins. "This is an activity book for young people like you about… a really neat topic." Why is it so neat? Because, say the authors, "As you work through the puzzles in this book, you will learn more about biotechnology and all the wonderful ways it can help people live better lives in a healthier world. Have fun!" Fun? With genetically engineered food? Who's behind this book of fairy tales? The Council for Biotechnology Information. And exactly what and who is CBI? It's a PR and political front for the biotech industry, financed by such multibillion-dollar giants as Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont, and Dow. It's also now funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into the industry's deceitful political campaign to kill a California "Right To Know" ballot initiative that finally would require food giants to label all products containing genetically-engineered organisms. What are we to do about corporate powers that're so avaricious and arrogant that they're willing to tamper with our food supply, our kids' minds, and our basic consumer rights? Defeat them, that's what. Here are three good sources for information and action: JustLabelIt.org, NonGMOShoppingGuide.com, and OrganicConsumers.org.

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.

Let us all now bow before Lord Roberts and shout hosannas in acknowledgment of his Supreme excellency as a wise jurist and noble statesman. That would be Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court, who is presently basking in political and media adulation for his deciding vote to uphold Barack Obama's health care reforms. An act of "exquisite delicacy" gushed the New York Times, and various commentators hailed his "shocking" vote as proof that he is not simply "a conservative ideologue." Good grief, what a crock! I'm certainly pleased that this important law passed muster before Roberts and the Court's 5-4 majority, but get a grip. The rash of public puffery for this one vote misjudges both who Roberts is and what the reform does. First, he's never been a "conservative ideologue" – he's a corporate ideologue. Big difference. As a lawyer, member of a Washington lobbying firm, and a jurist, he has consistently pushed corporate interests over small business, local communities, states' rights, personal liberties, and other causes that conservatives hold dear. Second, while Obama's law is a big boost for the health care needs of ordinary Americans, it also hands a huge win to the insurance giants. Rather than restructuring the system (as should've been done), the reform keeps those profiteers right smack in the center of U.S. health care. Indeed, the core provision in the law that Roberts' ruling sustained is its requirement that everyone must now buy health insurance. Hello – this new mandate delivers 18 million more paying customers into the clutches of big insurance corporations. They love that! And they love John Roberts because he always comes through for them. This law contains much good for many, many people. But for Roberts, that's an unintended consequence of what was just another effort to enhance corporate wealth and power.