Jim Hightower's Lowdown

Rex Tillerson is known by those who track Big Oil as "T-Rex." As CEO of global giant ExxonMobil, he's and dominant industry predator of scientists and policy makers who call for regulations to restrict fossil fuel emissions that are causing climate change. While T-Rex is the first of the Exxon Horribillis species to admit that global warming is a scientific reality, he insists that it's not really a worry because humankind "will adapt to this." Rapidly-melting polar ice, rising oceans, more ferocious storms, spreading drought, and other catastrophic consequences of climate change are just the price of economic progress, he says. So, government should stay out of Exxon's way and focus instead on making people adapt to the pesky changes wrought by the industry's emissions. "It's an engineering problem," he explained, "and it has engineering solutions." Ironically, on the very day that Rex proclaimed the consequences of climate change to be "manageable," Colorado was burning down. Swept by climate-induced wildfires that are the worst in the state's recorded history, people died, families were devastated, and the economic and environmental losses are incalculable. It took nearly 1,300 wildfire fighters from all across America weeks to contain Colorado's blazes – and that was only one of a half-dozen states that were aflame at the same time. We can barely manage the fires we're now getting, much less the six-fold increase expected to come with more global warming. But ExxonMobil lost nothing in the fire, so all is well. And T-Rex has also "managed" to be unscorched. His $35 million a year paycheck puts him far away from the consequences of Exxon's do-nothing approach to the causes of climate change. Tillerson is getting so rich he could afford to air-condition hell – and I think he'd better start planning that project.

Question of the day: Should the people's property – by which I mean such basic public items as police vehicles, subway stations, and fire hydrants – be rented out as commercial billboards for hyping corporate products? Answer: Of course not! But it's happening anyway. For example, after Littleton, Massachussets, made an "advertise with the good guys" pitch, a supermarket chain bought ad space on the town's police cars. Philadelphia has rebranded its Pattison subway station as the "AT&T Station," even plastering the telecom giant's logo on each turnstile. And in Syracuse, the sheriff's office plans to adorn its rescue helicopters with ads. Who benefits from this crass commercialization of public spaces? Corporate sponsors, for sure. As one ad executive bluntly noted, we're always seeking "another place for eyeballs to be looking at [ads]." And, of course, public agencies get a bit of extra cash from these sell-out deals – but at what price? A sheriff's official in Syracuse admits that "some people are a little put off by the idea that we're getting sponsorship for what used to be a government duty." Yes – count me as one of those people! AT&T, for example, didn't pay for that subway and has no right to treat it as its private billboard. Government officials rationalize this tacky "yard sale" as a way to get revenue without raising taxes, but that's just a political dodge, for providing adequate tax revenue for essential government services is their job. Gut it up – instead of privatizing a piece of the public for a pittance of AT&T's self-promotion money, tax AT&T! You'd get the same level of funding or more, while protecting the public's trust in the integrity of public service. To learn more, go to Public Citizen's Commercial Alert Project: www.CommercialAlert.org.

As a Montana newspaper editorial succinctly put it: "The greatest living issue confronting us today is whether the corporations shall control the people or the people shall control the corporations." That was written in 1906, as Montanans were rising up against out-of-state mining corporations known as the "copper kings." Those corporate powers were exploiting Montana's workforce, extracting its public resources, and routinely extending bribes to control its government. In 1912, however, the people passed the Corrupt Practices Act, a citizens initiative that outlawed direct corporate expenditures in elections for state office. The law broke the copper kings' legislative chokehold, and a century later it was still working to put people power over money politics. Even today, the average cost of state senate races in Montana stands at only $17,000 – allowing candidates to spend more time talking to everyday folks, and that produces one of America's highest rates of voter turnout. How positive – a model of democracy in action! Until an out-of-state corporate front group rode in like copper kings to sue the state. With a pack of high-dollar lawyers and a bundle of corporate funding, the group wailed that Montana's anti-corruption law discriminates against poor corporations, denying them their First Amendment "right" to have the biggest voice in government that money can buy. And now, the five corporate hacks controlling the Supreme Court have ratified the ridiculous argument of the front group, imperiously shoving Montana's law into the ditch, and re-imposing the rule of special interest money over the people's will. To stop this court's coup against our democracy, We The People must pass a Constitutional amendment overturning these decisions. To help, go to: www.United4ThePeople.org.