Jim Hightower's Lowdown

Here are two terms you don’t expect to see together: “The state of Alabama” and “progressive leader.” (Ok, I’m a Texan, so I have no standing to point at the rank regressiveness of any other state government … but still, Alabama?) And yet, the Camellia State has flowered as a model of strong progressive action in one area of critical public importance: Quality child care. It’s a cliche to say “our children are our future,” but it’s also true. Why, then, do we invest so little in our littlest ones, our future? America’s childcare system is a national disgrace, failing to provide safe places for children of working parents, and failure to boost the education of pre-kindergarten tykes. Moreover, the abject failure of state and national officials to meet this basic social need is spreading inequality, rolling back opportunities for women, and severely restricting economic progress. Yet, Alabama officials have recently been setting the national standard for effective pre-K programs by making a major investment in its 4 &5-year-olds, operating a statewide child care network in about 1,300 neighborhood and rural areas. A major factor in its success is a two-generation approach, not only educating the kiddos, but also providing support materials and coaching so that parents engage as their children’s “first teachers.” Producing demonstrable results year after year, the state’s public network gets bipartisan support and funding from the Alabama Legislature. The program is free and available to all, with special attention devoted to enlisting often overlooked families in rural, poor, and people-of-color communities. Rather than treating teachers as low-pay babysitters, Alabama is paying (and respecting) them as the professionals they are and investing in their career development. If one of our poorest states can rise to meet this basic human need, what’s wrong with the richest country in the history of the world?

Nearly every nation with an advanced economy (and some not so advanced) treats child care as a fundamental public good essential to nurturing children, families, and the whole society. But not our US of A. Indeed, our so-called leaders relegate millions of working parents and 21 million kids under 5 to the tender mercies of a for-profit market, with child care facilities ranging from impossibly expensive to helter-skelter, unlicensed Kiddie Korrals. Embarrassingly, while right-wingers mindlessly salute the US as “exceptional,” they fail to note that what’s exceptional about our “child care system” is that it’s such a shambles it can’t even be called a system, much less caring. For the past decade, independent journalist and economic analyst Bryce Covert has documented the worsening social crisis caused by this abject failure of leadership. Her recent report paints a dire picture of huge and obvious need: Two thirds of our pre-K kids have both parents in the workforce, meaning care outside the home is essential. 85% of the parents say that finding quality, affordable child care in their area is a problem somewhere between serious and impossible. Nationwide, the annual cost for a 4-year old’s day care averages about $13,000. Despite millions of working families finding this essential service unaffordable or even unavailable, political leaders have ignored their plight. Child care aid reaches only 15% of qualified kids (some callous governors even divert chunks of federal child care subsidies to their own political priorities, such as corporate welfare.) In 2017, even before Covid-19 abruptly shut down thousands of care centers, 40% of America’s children lived in “child care deserts”–zip codes with zero programs or so few that two-thirds or more of the area’s children are unable to get in. Is this the best we can do for “the future” of our nation?

Most people believe the American economy is being rigged by and for bankers, CEOs, and other superrich elites, because… well, because it is! With their hired armies of lawmakers, lobbyists, lawyers, and the like, they fix the economic rules so even-more of society’s money and power flows uphill to them. Take corporate CEOs. While 2020 was somewhere between a downer and devastating for most people, the CEO class made out like bandits, with each of the three top paid corporate honchos pocketing as much as a billion dollars in personal pay! Are they geniuses, or what? What. All three of their corporations ended 2020 with big financial losses and declining value. So how can such mediocrity produce such lavish rewards? Simple – rig the pay machine. Today’s corporate system of setting compensation for top executives is a flimflam disguised as a model of management rectitude. On its face, it sounds good – “Pay for performance,” it’s called, meaning the CEO does well if the company does well. But who defines “doing well?” The scam at most major corporations is that the standard of corporate performance that the chief must meet to quality for a huge payday is set by each corporation’s board of directors. Guess who they are? Commonly, board members are the CEO’s handpicked brothers-in-law, golfing buddies, and corporate cronies. So, they set the bar for winning multimillion-dollar executive paychecks so low that a sack of concrete could jump over it. Well, insist these flimflammers, corporate shareholders are the ultimate stopgap against CEO greed. These “owners” can just vote “no” on any executive pay they consider excessive. However, even “shareholder democracy” is rigged – corporate rules decree that votes by shareholders are merely “advisory,” meaning top executives can simply ignore them, grab the money, and run. This system is fixed... and we need to break it!

Exciting news from Wall Street: Our wealth markets are booming! Everything from the Dow Jones Average to gold prices are rocketing to new records, showering us with wealth from above. Oh… wait. Maybe you’re one of the big majority of workaday Americans who don’t own stocks or gold, so maybe you’re not celebrating Wall Street’s big boom. But just chill, because conventional corporate wisdom assures us that the wealthy will invest their good fortunes in enterprises that eventually will produce trickle-down gains for everyone. Excuse my rudeness, but let’s take a peek at how those who’re reaping today’s big-buck bonanza are actually investing that wealth. Look at Wall Streeters themselves. The big banks have been making money like… well, like bankers, with their stock prices zooming up by 28 percent just since January. So, how are these moneyed elites spending this windfall? Not by making job-creating investments, but by simply giving the money to their big shareholders, including their own top executives – nearly all of whom are already among the richest people on Earth. The main way they do this is through a slight-of-hand called a “stock buyback.” The honchos simply cash out the bulk of that 28 percent increase in the value of the banks’ stock price, using that money to repurchase more of their banks’ own stock from lesser shareholders. Hocus-pocus, this manipulation artificially pumps-up the value of the stock these insider shareholders already own – making each of them even richer than rich, although they’ve done absolutely nothing to earn this increased wealth. It’s not a small scam. JPMorgan Chase is now sinking $30 billion into buying its own stock. Wells Fargo is shifting $18 billion into the scheme, and Bank of America is throwing $25 billion into its buyback. Hello – Wall Street bankers are the biggest robbers in America.

Corporate ideologues never cease blathering that government programs should be run like a business. Really – what businesses would they choose? Pharmaceutical profiteers? Big Oil? Wall Street money manipulators? High tech billionaires? Airline price gougers? The good news is that the great majority of people aren’t buying this corporatist blather, instead valuing institutions that prioritize the Common Good. Thus, by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans have stunned smug right-wing privatizers by specifically declaring in a recent poll that our US Postal Service should not be “run like a business.” Indeed, an overwhelming majority, including half of Republicans, say mail delivery should be run as a “public service,” even if that costs more. In fact, having proven that this 246-year-old federal agency can consistently and efficiently deliver to 161 million homes and businesses day after day, it’s time to let the agency’s trusted, decentralized, well-trained workforce provide even more services for our communities. How about “postal banking?” Yes, the existing network of some 31,000 post offices in metro neighborhoods and small towns across America are perfectly situated and able to provide basic banking services to the one-out-of-four of us who don’t have or can’t afford bank accounts. The giant banking chains ignore these millions, leaving them at the mercy of check-cashing exploiters and payday loan sharks. The Post Office can offer simple, honest banking, including small-dollar checking and savings accounts, very-low-interest consumer loans, low-fee debit cards, etc. The goal of postal banking is not to maximize corporate profits, but public service. Moreover, there’s nothing new about this – our post offices served as banks for millions of us until 1967, when Wall Street profiteers got their enablers in Congress to kill the competition. We The People own this phenomenal public asset. To enable it to work even better for us, go to AGrandAlliance.org.

When Donald Trump declared he would fix the US Postal Service, he was using the word “fix” the same way veterinarians do when you bring in your dog. Trump wasted an inordinate amount of his presidential power and prestige in a failed attempt to neuter an agency that literally delivers for the people. Extraordinary postal workers move our letters and packages by truck, car, airplane, boat, motorbike, mule – and, of course, by foot – to any address across town or across the country. Both essential and effective, it’s the most popular federal agency, with 91 percent of the public approving its work. Thus, an uproar of protests killed Trump’s attempt to gut it. When it comes to bad public policy, however, failure is just a way of saying, Let’s try the back door. Trump was defeated, but he left behind an undistinguished Postmaster General named Louis DeJoy, who had only two qualifications for the job: He was a Trump mega-donor, and he was a peer of corporate powers that’ve long wanted to privatize the Postal Service. In March, before the new Biden presidency had taken charge of the postal system, DeJoy popped through the back door with his own “10-year-plan” to fix the agency. Rhetorically, his plan promised to “achieve service excellence” by making mail delivery more “consistent” and “reliable.” How? By consistently cutting service and reliably gouging customers. Specifically, DeJoy proposed to close numerous mail processing facilities, eliminate jobs, reduce Post Office hours of service, and cut the standard of delivering our first-class mail from three days to five. Oh, also: Raise stamp prices. Delivering lousy service at higher prices is intended to destroy public support for the agency, opening up the mail service to takeover by private profiteers. That’s the real DeJoy plan. And who gets joy from that?

Is “corporate ethics” an oxymoron? Do you have to be a jerk to be a successful CEO? Is exploitation the only path to profit? The good news is that many companies, big and small, in the food economy are blazing a different path through Wall Street’s jungle of greed, demonstrating that money and morality can be compatible. Texas supermarket chain HEB, for example, has drawn an intensely loyal customer base by (1) investing in good wages and benefits for employees, (2) showing up in such emergencies as pandemics, hurricanes, freezes, etc. to give essential supplies and hands-on help, and (3) being an involved and supportive neighbor to the hundreds of unique communities it serves. Also, Maine Grains is “relocalizing” the business of milling grain by working with local farmers who’d been abandoned by global grain marketers like Ardent and Gold Medal. They’re producing nutrient-rich flours from heritage grains, boosting the local economy in the process. Then there’s Bob’s Red Mill, which also artfully mills its products from diverse, natural grains–and it’s 100% employee-owned. These are part of a rising business alternative to the selfish, profiteering ethic of Fortune 500 titans. Called certified B Corporations, they definitely exist to make a profit, but they are equally focused on having a positive social impact, prioritizing fair wages, environmental protections, and healthy communities as core elements of their missions, even making those goals legal requirements of their corporate charter. Ben & Jerry’s, Amy’s Kitchen, King Arthur Baking, and New Belgium Brewery are just a few more of some 3,800 other businesses now organized as B Corps. Though not pretending to be perfect, they’re at least striving to be more than money grubbers, instead trying to contribute to the Common Good. For more information on the products and practices of B Corps, go to BCorporation.net.

We’ve got the Academy Awards, the Emmy’s, and GRAMMYs… but what should we call the award for the most extraordinary performance by a corporate profiteer? How about the “Sleazy,” with winners getting a solid gold sculpture of a middle finger? There were so many worthy contenders, but one corporation exhibited uncommon callousness, so the 2021 Sleazy goes to … Tyson Foods! The meatpacking giant has regularly run roughshod over workers, farmers, communities, and the environment – not to mention the millions of animals it fattens and slaughters. But the coronavirus pulled out the worst in Tyson’s corporate ethic. Last April, its billionaire chair, John Tyson, ranted that health officials who were closing-down several of his slaughterhouses that had become hotbeds of contagion were creating another crisis: A national meat shortage! Responding instantly, our corporate-compassionate, burger-gobbling president decreed that meatpacking plants were crucial to America’s national security and must be kept open at all cost. Trump’s edict required workers to return to their jobs or be fired. Only there was no meat shortage. Not only did Americans have an excess of cheeseburgers, pork chops, and chicken nuggets, but Tyson and other giants actually increased their meat exports to China last year. Meanwhile, Covid rampaged through Tyson’s factories. In its Waterloo, Iowa facility alone, a third of the processing workers – low wage, mostly people of color – were infected. At least six died. Which brings us to the corporate play that cinched this year’s Sleazy for Tyson. Waterloo slaughterhouse supervisors actually knew that the back-to-work order would sicken hundreds, but not exactly how many. So, managers organized a winner-take-all betting pool on the percent of employees who would test positive. “It was simply something fun,” said one – “kind of a morale boost.” The virus infected more than a third of 2,800 workers in the plant. Some fun huh?

“Those in the know,” say that We the People should forget any progressive fantasy that – at long last – Washington might finally produce the kind of bold FDR-style agenda that America needs. They smugly lecture us that recalcitrant Republicans in Congress, not to mention a swarm of corporate lobbyists, are opposed to progressive change, so who could get it passed? Here’s an idea: Try the people themselves. Those in the know don’t seem to know it (or don’t want us to know it), but big majorities across grassroots America are strongly in favor of the fundamental changes that Washington elites are rejecting. For example: Two-thirds of America (including a majority of moderate Republicans) say “Yes!” to doubling the minimum wage. 72 percent of the people, including 46 percent of professed Republicans, shout their approval for Medicare for all. Eight out of 10 Americans, including strong majorities of Republicans, support a paid family leave program like every other developed nation provides for their people. What about increasing taxes on the rich, expanding Medicaid for poor families, raising teacher pay, spending more for early childhood education? Yes, yes, yes, yes say majorities, not just in blue states, but also in GOP strongholds like Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah. These are not just poll numbers, but solid ideas embraced last year by a broad cross-section of voters in ballot elections across the country. For example, Florida voters enacted a constitutional initiative to up the state’s minimum pay to $15, with “yeas” topping “nays” by a whopping margin of more than 20 points – making it more popular than either Trump or Biden. Instead of fearing the people, Democratic leaders need to get out of Washington and join them. Let’s rally and organize the power of outsiders to produce transformative policies of, by, and for the people.

The past year proves that a lot of conventional economic wisdom is neither true nor wise. For example: “We don’t have the money.” The power elites tell us it would be nice to do the big-ticket reforms America needs, but the money just isn’t there. Then a pandemic slammed into America, and suddenly trillions of dollars gushed out of Washington for everything from subsidizing meatpackers to developing vaccines, revealing that the money is there. “We can’t increase the federal debt!” Yet, Trump and the Republican Congress didn’t hesitate to shove the national debt through the roof in 2017 to let a few corporations and billionaires pocket a trillion-dollar tax giveaway. So, if those drunken spenders can use federal borrowing to make the likes of Amazon and Zuckerberg richer, we can borrow funds for such productive national needs as infrastructure investment and quality education for all. “The rich are the ‘makers’ who contribute the most to society.” This silly myth quickly melted right in front of us as soon as Señor Coronavirus arrived, making plain that the most valuable people are nurses, grocery clerks, teachers, postal employees, and millions of other mostly-low-wage people. So, let’s capitalize on the moment to demand policies that reward these grassroots makers instead of Wall Street’s billionaire takers. “Tax cuts drive economic growth for all.” They always claim that freeing corporations from the “burden” of taxes will encourage CEOs to invest in worker productivity and – voila – wages will miraculously rise. This scam has never worked for anyone but the scammers, and it’s now obvious to the great majority of workers that the way to increase wages – Hello – is to increase wages! Enact a $15 minimum wage, restore collective bargaining, etc. and workers will pocket more, spend more, and the economy will rise. Percolate-up economics works – trickle-down does not.

Corporate acolytes and right-wing moralists constantly preach to laboring stiffs about the uplifting dignity of work. Of course, that’s “dignity” as defined and controlled by corporate elites, not by workers, and the reward for it frequently includes on-the-job injuries… and death. Not that CEOs and well-heeled investors intend to sicken, maim, and kill thousands of laborers every year – but they certainly do put them in positions that assure such unhappy results. For example, they demand that farmworkers go sunrise to sunset picking crops in California’s 105° desert heat, and that construction crews toil in the muggy, dog days of Florida summers tarring condo roofs. Low-paid, powerless workers die, but no one in the corporate hierarchy did the deed, right? Heat was the killer. But wait, not only are aloof, air-cooled bosses the ones who knowingly subject subordinates to deadly heat, but they’re also the ones who hire squads of lobbyists and lawyers to kill simple, inexpensive rules to stop these deaths – such rules as requiring  ample water at work sites; ensuring paid rest breaks in cool spaces; training on-site managers and employees to detect and react to signs of heat stress; requiring good ventilation and proper clothing; establishing emergency response procedures; fostering a safety-first culture; and imposing serious punishments for violators. Such sensible steps have repeatedly been proposed as official workplace policy for at least the last 50 years – but intense industry lobbying has killed the adoption of all attempts to prevent what amounts to workplace murder by corporate profiteers. Instead, the US government pretends to “protect” workers by printing posters admonishing employees to beware of heat, basically telling them, “Goodbye and Good Luck.” But at last, a real proposal has been put on the table by more than 110 grassroots groups. See it – and join it – by contacting Public Citizen: Citizen.org.

Here’s a hot topic for Labor Day: Heat. It’s been a hell of a hot summer, exploding the top off thermometers with triple-digit readings across the country. As we’re learning, week after week of this debilitating heat intensifies wildfires, causes electric grids to fail, kills millions of wild animals (including fish!), burns up crops, and concentrates toxic air. But there’s another impact that draws little notice: Heat kills workers. Indeed, searing days of 95-100-110 degrees are killing and injuring more US workers each year than all the floods, hurricanes, and tornados combined. Those toiling outdoors – including farmworkers, roofers and carpenters, airport ground crews, landscapers, road and street repairers, letter carriers, and trash collectors – are in the direct line of fire for this invisible, insidious killer. But working indoors is no better if there’s no AC, for metal and stone warehouses and manufacturing plants become ovens. Then, welcome to climate change – 20 of the last 21 years gave us the hottest temperatures on record. Unsurprisingly, the yearly number of worker heat deaths in that period doubled. Also, researchers have determined that extreme workplace heat is causing about 170,000 people a year to suffer injuries on the job. The impact of heat is poorly understood, even by workers. A sudden heat stroke is not the only worry, for rising body temperatures can quickly fuzz the mind, weaken muscles, numb concentration. So, workers fall, their hands get caught in machinery, they touch the wrong wire, etc. America’s power elites – sitting in climate-controlled executive suites, distant legislative chambers, and comfortable editorial offices – literally don’t feel the intensity of this heat, so the richest country in the history of the world continues to subject millions of its people to senseless suffering and death, not even talking about this embarrassment, much less stopping it.

As a writer, I get stuck every so often straining for the right words to tell my story. Over the years, though, I’ve learned when to quit tying myself into mental knots over sentence construction, instead stepping back and rethinking where my story is going. This process is essentially what millions of American working families are going through this year as record numbers of them are shocking bosses, politicians, and economists by stepping back and declaring: “We quit!” Most of the quits are tied to very real abuses that have become ingrained in our workplaces over the past couple of decades – poverty paychecks, no health care, unpredictable schedules, no child care, understaffing, forced overtime, unsafe jobs, sexist and racist managers, tolerance of aggressively-rude customers, and so awful much more. Specific grievances abound, but at the core of each is a deep, inherently-destructive executive-suite malignancy: Disrespect. The corporate system has cheapened employees from valuable human assets worthy of being nurtured and advanced to a bookkeeping expense that must be steadily eliminated. It’s not just about paychecks, it’s about feeling valued, feeling that the hierarchy gives a damn about the people doing the work. Yet, corporate America is going out of its way to show that it doesn’t care – and, of course, workers notice. So, unionization is booming, millions who were laid off by the pandemic are refusing to rush back to the same old grind, and now millions who have jobs are quitting. This is much more than an unusual unemployment stat – it’s a sea change in people’s attitude about work itself... and life. People are rethinking where their story is going and how they can take it in a better direction. Yes, nearly everyone will eventually return to work, but workers themselves have begun redefining the job and rebalancing it with life.

Corporate bosses across America have been sputtering in outrage at you working stiffs this summer, spewing expletives about the fact that while the US economy has been coming back... you haven’t! “Labor shortage,” they squeal, lazily accusing the workforce of mass laziness. They charge insultingly that millions of workers got used to laying around during the pandemic. Noting that there is now an abundance of jobs open for everything from restaurant workers to nurses, the bosses and their political dogs bark that you people need to get back in the old harness and start pulling again. Adding a nasty bite to their bark, several GOP governors cut off unemployment benefits to people, hoping to force them to work. Other businesses have proffered signing bonuses, free dinner coupons, and other lures, while such notoriously mingy outfits as McDonald’s and Walmart have even upped their wage scale in an effort to draw workers. Yet... no go. In fact, to the astonishment of the economic elite, the employment flow this year is going the other way! Record numbers of current workers in all sorts of jobs in every section of the country are voluntarily walking away. There’s even an official economic measurement of this phenomenon called the “Quits Rate,” and it is surging beyond anything our economy has experienced in modern memory – in April, 4 million workers quit; in May, another 3.6 million left, in June, 3.9 million said adios! The “Quits” are so unexpected and so widespread that pundits have started dubbing this year “The Great Resignation.” What’s wrong with people, why are such staggering numbers of Americans failing to do their jobs? But, wait – maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the corporate system’s “jobs” are failing the people. Consider this: The most common comment by those who’re walking out is, “I hate my job.”

At least since the invention of the wheel, people have fixed, tinkered with, and improved every device they’ve possessed. It’s been a human right. But after several thousand years, suddenly legal clauses are being tucked in purchase agreements saying that today’s owners of products MUST NOT even peek, much less poke inside the inner workings of our devices. Makers of anything with a computer chip in it (everything from your car to your toothbrush) have been especially vehement about this, rewriting human nature by outlawing our right to repair. Yes, they assert, you own the thing, but we own the intangible ideas that make it work, so if the product malfunctions, you must return it to us – and pay us a premium – to repair it. Plus, they prattle, you could hurt yourself trying to do-it-yourself, so trust us. Bovine Excrement, barks Steve Wozniak: Companies inhibit your rights so they can have “power, control, over everything.” Is he, some consumer radical? No, Wozniak is the co-founder of Apple, the multibillion-dollar global goliath that is the world’s biggest producer of consumer electronics. He’s appalled that Apple has now become a fierce opponent of self-repair. He says “We wouldn’t have had an Apple” except that early innovators like him grew up “in a very open technology world.” From the start, Wozniak point out, openness helped spread innovation and consumer demand. “So, why stop... the self-repair community,” he asks? Two big reasons: Besides letting corporations lock in monopoly profits from the repair industry, it also dissuades customers from bothering with repairs – just throw the thing away and buy a new one! If you wonder where such massive, deadly levels of pollution by bead, mercury, plastic, etc. come from, look to the gross throw-away ethic of big tech profiteers like Apple.