November 8, 2023 – Hear it? What’s that sound? “Whoop-whoop-whoop.” It’s Washington’s revolving door, allowing corporate interests to come directly inside Congress to pervert public policy. That door is now spinning fast, because there’s a new boss operator in Congress. He’s Mike Johnson, who was recently unanimously chosen by Republicans to be their Speaker of […]
Jim Hightower
Posted inOp-Ed
Jim Hightower: The “No Labels” movement doesn’t stand for much, but one issue unites it: getting more money in politics, not less
July 27, 2023 – As John Mellencamp sings: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” True. And here’s an equally true twist on that aphorism: “If you stand for everything, you won’t amount to anything.” In a remarkable achievement, a newly formed political organization calling itself “No Labels” has managed to fall […]
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Jim Hightower: The most influential musician you never heard of
June 29, 2023 – When you think of Americans whose music has made a lasting difference, you might think of Scott Joplin, Woody Guthrie, Maybelle Carter, Harry Belafonte … or Roger Payne. Who? I came across Payne in a June obituary reporting that he’d died at age 88. Yes, I occasionally scan the obits, not out […]
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Jim Hightower: Why Do Supreme Court Justices Keep Saying They’re Not Hacks?
November 3, 2021 – Ralph Waldo Emerson once told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.” Today, America has not one, but six guests in our national home babbling about […]
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Jim Hightower: Is This the End of Free and Open Internet Access?
December 13, 2017 – Free and open access to the internet is a virtuous democratic principle known as “net neutrality.” It means that it doesn’t matter if you’re a brand-name corporation or an unknown start-up, a billionaire or a poverty-wage laborer — you’re entitled to equal treatment in sending or getting information on the worldwide […]
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Jim Hightower: Trump Wants $1.6 Billion for the Border Wall. That Covers Just 74 Miles
Oct. 4, 2017 – How much of your money does Donald Trump want to pour into his xenophobic fantasy of erecting an impenetrable wall on our Mexican border? The big-businessman-turned-president insists he doesn’t care about costs — just build it! That seems to be a very un-businesslike approach, but then, it’s not his money, is […]
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Jim Hightower: If You Don’t Have Good Health Care, Neither Should Your Rep
Sept. 20, 2017 – Want good quality, lower-cost health care for your family. And — what the heck, let’s think big here — for every man, woman, and child in our society? Here’s how we can finally get Congress to pass such a program. Step One: Take away every dime of the multimillion-dollar government subsidy […]
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Jim Hightower: The Wall Can’t Keep Out Hurricanes
Sept. 13, 2017 – Donald Trump loves it when crowds at his raucous right-wing rallies stand and chant in red-faced fury: “Build that wall! Build that wall!” So he keeps fanning their fire by promising to wall off Mexico with a multibillion-dollar “big, beautiful” barrier on the border. “We must have THE WALL,” he tweeted in […]
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Jim Hightower: Walling Them Out, or Walling Us In?
Nov. 2, 2016 – Evading security cameras in the remote expanse along the U.S. border, three Guatemalans waited till dusk to slip illicitly into our country. This is the stuff of Donald Trump nightmares — and if he were to witness such a scene, we can only imagine the furious rants that would follow. But […]
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Jim Hightower: Scott Walker’s Political Magic
Sept. 28, 2016 – In a mindboggling trick, some magicians levitate themselves. But remember, the key word in “magic trick” — is trick. And magicians aren’t the only ones performing. Scott Walker, for example, is quite the political trickster. This right-wing extremist became so unpopular in his first term as Wisconsin’s governor that he faced a […]
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Jim Hightower: Trump’s Tall Tax Tales
Sept. 7, 2016 – An old saying asserts that falsehoods come in three escalating levels: Lies, damn lies, and statistics. But now there’s an even higher category of lies: a Donald Trump speech. Take his recent address on specific economic policies he’d push to benefit hard-hit working families, including an almost-hilarious discourse on the rank […]
Posted inOp-Ed
Jim Hightower: The Disney-fication of Our National Parks
Aug. 3, 2016 – It’s summer vacation time and gasoline is quasi-cheap. So why not pile the family into the mini-van and pay a visit to the historic Budweiser Statue of Liberty, or motor out west in your Camry to Toyota’s Yellowstone National Park? That’s right, our thoroughly corporatized Congress mandated a new policy last […]