Jim Hightower’s Radio Lowdown
America’s History, Says Lord Trump, Is Exactly What I Say It Is
Our country’s magnificent National Park System has been called “America’s greatest idea.”
These 433 treasures – along with our rich diversity of national museums and historical sites – each have their own stories to tell. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, for together they express America’s egalitarian sprit and “little-d” democratic possibilities, urging us to keep pushing for economic fairness and social justice for all.
And that’s exactly why Trump and his cabal of moneyed elites and right-wing extremists are out to purge, erase and officially censor the parks’ historical presentations. After all, it’s hard to impose plutocratic autocracy if such tangible examples of historic truth and democratic rebellion are openly displayed!
Thus, as dictated by the GOP’s secretive anti-democracy clique, Project 2025, Trump’s ideological Thought Police have set themselves up as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” to sanitize and Disneyfy the telling of our people’s real history. For example, Trump complains that parks and museums hurt America’s self-image by telling “how bad slavery was.”
Hello, Donald – that’s not an image, it’s reality, as central to our national character as our historic commitment to equality. And the explosive conflict between ugly repression and flowering egalitarianism is ever present today. Consider the push by Sen. Eric Schmitt and others in the GOP’s Christian Nationalist movement to deny the unifying principle that “all men are created equal.”
There’s not enough whitewash in the world to cover up the deep ugliness of slavery, and it’s self-destructive for government to try. The fundamental purpose of recording our shared history is to learn from it.
Do something!
You might’ve heard about the Alt National Park Service, but they might not be quite who they say they are, as it turns out. To support park rangers fighting the good fight in their work and off-duty, check out Resistance Rangers.
On the museum front, AFSCME and the American Library Association are actively fighting to block the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
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While We Tout America’s Democracy, Plutocracy Is Taking Over
Washington’s MAGA government is shoveling massive giveaways of public money to corporate elites. Worse, though, are its takeaways of people’s power to battle the abuse of those same plutocratic corporations. Consider just three recent examples:
Travel. Perhaps your family plans a holiday flight to visit grandma. Flying itself has become dicey, but at least the government is requiring airlines that cause long delays or cancellations to compensate us passengers for our loss. Uh… no, no more. Trump’s transportation secretary (who was previously a LOBBYIST for the big airlines!) is “loosening” the rules so monopolistic airlines owe nothing to abused customers.
Job opportunities. One of the nastiest wage suppression tactics of corporate bosses has been their collusion to make employees sign “noncompete” contracts. These amount to indentured servitude, preventing workers from quitting to take a better job with a competing firm. This corporate lockdown costs American workers some $40 billion a year in wages they could get in an open job market. The FTC was finally moving to ban these noncompete gimmicks – but Trump installed a corporate lackey at the FTC to snuff out this spark of workplace liberty.
Pollution. Corporate lobbyists and MAGA lawmakers are rigging the rules to let industrial giants escape responsibility for their massive environmental contamination. For example, the profiteering greedheads who’ve deceptively caused tons of deadly “forever chemicals” to be spread on our land, water, communities, and families are to be let off the hook by the new, corporate-hugging EPA honcho. He says we taxpayers must pay for the toxic cleanup, not the polluters.
If you’re unclear about the meaning of “plutocracy,’ there it is: Government by and for the despotic rich.
Fighting plutocracy on multiple fronts is challenging work, and that’s why we recommend getting involved with Public Citizen—they’re strategic and have a long track record of protecting Americans on many issues. Check them out at citizen.org.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
Abbott Says His Presidential Ambition Is “God’s Design”
Sometimes, cosmic oddities come together in comic ways. For example, Google positions the biography of right-wing Texas governor Greg Abbott right under the one for yesteryear’s slapstick comedians, Abbott and Costello.
It’s almost cruel for Gov. Greg to be juxtaposed with that quick-witted duo, for he’s a dour, slow-witted, plutocratic pol, with no perceptible sense of humor. As governor, he has focused on demonizing poor people, rigging elections, and doing favors for moneyed elites. Unsurprisingly, only four out of 10 Texas voters now support him. Yet – don’t laugh – in a move of burlesque absurdity, Abbott now says he might choose to become president. Yes, of the US!
Filled with pomposity, he recently proclaimed, “I will be guided by God.” Well, maybe so, since the god he faithfully follows is Mammon. Indeed, his major credential for becoming the GOP nominee for prez is that he is a pro at the Pay-to-Play game of using taxpayer money to entice special interests to fund his political career. “You pay me, then I pay you” is his corrupt game plan, which he has used to amass a whopping $87 million for his next election.
For example, watchdog group Public Citizen has documented some $3 million that Abbott got from executives of eight corporations. In turn, those eight were given nearly a billion dollars in no-bid state contracts – a 33,000% profit on their donations to Abbott!
This is Jim Hightower saying… For high rollers, Abbott is better than a winning Powerball lottery ticket. Buy him, and the Pay-to-Play merry-go-round keeps spinning at taxpayer expense. To fight such big money corruption, go to Public Citizen: citizen.org.
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Meet Jim Hightower.
Looking for photos and more of Hightower? Check out the media kit.
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and New York Times best-selling author, Jim Hightower has spent five decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top.
Hightower is a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, spreading the message of progressive populism all across the American grassroots.
Hightower’s radio commentaries are carried on stations throughout the country, with a majority being carried on community radio stations in rural areas, where a democratic populist voice is craved and needed. He also writes two rousing weekly syndicated columns and publishes much of his work on Substack, blasting through the corporate media blockade to deliver an economic populist perspective to events.
He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.
Hightower frequently appears on television and radio programs, bringing a hard-hitting populist viewpoint that rarely gets into the mass media. In addition, he works closely with the alternative media, and in all of his work he keeps his ever-ready Texas humor up front, practicing the credo of an old Yugoslavian proverb: “You can fight the gods and still have fun.”
Hightower was raised in Denison, Texas, in a family of small business people, tenant farmers, and working folks. A graduate of the University of North Texas, he worked in Washington as legislative aide to Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas; he then co-founded the Agribusiness Accountability Project, a public interest project that focused on corporate power in the food economy; and he was national coordinator of the 1976 “Fred Harris for President” campaign. Hightower then returned to his home state, where he became editor of the feisty biweekly, The Texas Observer. He served as director of the Texas Consumer Association before running for statewide office and being elected to two terms as Texas Agriculture Commissioner (1983-1991).
During the 90’s, Hightower became known as “America’s most popular populist,” developing his radio commentaries, hosting two radio talk shows, writing books, launching his newsletter, giving fiery speeches coast to coast, and otherwise speaking out for the American majority that’s being locked out economically and politically by the elites.
As political columnist Molly Ivins said, “If Will Rogers and Mother Jones had a baby, Jim Hightower would be that rambunctious child — mad as hell, with a sense of humor.”
Books
The New York Times bestselling author and America’s funniest activist gives the lowdown on how to put up-not shut up-in the fight for our future.
Hightower, the country’s #1 populist, has picked up some useful advice over the years, from “never eat at a café featuring ‘bargain kebobs'” to “never hit a man with glasses; hit him with something much heavier.” As he and his longtime co-conspirator Susan DeMarco have rambled through grassroots America, however, they’ve also come up with more serious words of wisdom to share here, namely: question authority, trust your values, seek alternatives, break away, stand up for your beliefs, and swim against the current!
Their book introduces readers to people across the country who have actually done this-people in business, politics, health care, farming, religion, and other areas who are taking charge, living their values, doing good, and doing well. Hightower and DeMarco show how they are doing precisely what the elites want us to believe can’t be done: changing their lives and making a difference. He tells the stories of these people and offers inspiration and information that will help readers tap into their own maverick potential in order to navigate a different, more satisfying course of their own.
Whether they are young and just starting out or older and searching for a different path, the commonsense folks in this book have escaped the corporate tentacles to find their own way toward a richer life and a better American future. They are creating a new, deeply democratic model for the country, edging it back onto the long road toward egalitarianism and the common good.
Hightower and DeMarco are at their contrarian, sharp-witted, and straight-shooting best as they celebrate the triumph of grassroots gumption over the tight-fisted grip of corporate control.
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America is at an historic divide between rulers and rulees and the rulees are restless. Hightower’s THIEVES IN HIGH PLACES is an epistle to the American people about vision and choices, and it’s a clarion call to action. The question Jim Hightower is asking is: What kind of country do you want America to be? Not only for you, but for your children and theirs? In THIEVES IN HIGH PLACES Hightower takes on the Bushites, the Wobblycrats, and the corporate Kleptocrats, digging up behind-the scenes dirt that the corporate media overlooks like BushCo’s “Friday Night Massacres”, what’s happened to our food, and the Bush plan for empire. Also drawing on Hightower’s Rolling Thunder Down-Home Democracy Tour, Hightower has tapped into the thriving activist networks that are our country’s grassroots muscle, and his book tells their uplifting stories of retaking control of their communities.
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The bestselling grassroots guru is back with his incisive take on the state of the union and life today in the good ol’ U.S.A.
America in 2004 is color coded and it’s not just a matter of red, white, and blue. The terror alert bounces from yellow to orange. The economy offers up a hundred shades of red ink. The environment is turning brown. National security is cloaked in gray shadows. And, as he did in the bestselling Thieves in High Places, Jim Hightower covers it all with uncommon insight, political fearlessness, and laugh-out-loud humor.
America’s #1 populist gives us Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush a hard-hitting, fact-filled review of the real state of the union that you won’t get from the establishment media. With his daily radio commentaries and award-winning monthly newsletter, no one has chronicled the madness of King George the W, the wimpiness of corporate Democrats, and the aggressive avarice of Wall Street with the thoroughness and tenacity of Hightower. Now he brings that investigative punch into this wild and woolly hook of fiery essays.
With his satirical “Six Perfectly Good Reasons to Re-elect George W. Bush”; his mix of damning indictments and uplifting stories; and side bars, cartoons, games, and puzzles, Hightower has clone the impossible: he has created a subversive read that makes politics fun again.
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With his aw-shucks charisma and no-nonsense attitude, he dishes out what’s wrong with the eroding integrity of our democracy: politicians for sale to the highest bidder, the economic boom of the 90s not trickling down to the regular folks and more corporate scandals than you can shake a stick at. Offers a compelling collection of Hightower talks plus the best of his daily “Common-Sense Commentaries” on radio, all with an introduction by the late Senator Paul Wellstone.
Jim Hightower, America’s favorite subversive, is still mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. But he will give you a sizeable piece of his mind on Election 2000. This plain-talking, name-naming, podium-pounding populist zeros in on everything that ails us, from the global economy and media to big business and election winners everywhere. In his hard hitting commentary and hilarious anecdotes, Hightower spares no one, including the scared cows — and especially the politicians — who helped steer us into this mess in the first place. An equal opportunity muckrucker and a conscientious agitator for “We the People”, Hightower inspires us to take charge again, build a new politics for a better tommorow — and have a lot of laughs along the way.
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Audiobook on Audible.com
Revised, and with a New Introduction by the Author
“I am an agitator, and an agitator is the center post in a washing machine that gets the dirt out.”
–Jim Hightower
Hightower is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore! He’s also funny as hell, and in this book he focuses his sharp Texas wit, populist passion, and native smarts on America’s political, economic, scientific, and media establishments. In There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos, Hightower shows not only what’s wrong, but also how to fix it, offering specific solutions and calling for a new political movement of working families and the poor to “take America back from the bankers and bosses, the big shots and bastards.”
“If you don’t read another book about what’s wrong with this country for the rest of your life, read this one. I think it’s the best and most important book about out public life I’ve read in years.”
–Molly Ivins, author of Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?“When do we get to vote for Jim Hightower for president? Will somebody please tell me? When do we get to vote for Jim Hightower for president?.”
–Michael Moore, author of Downsize This!“Listen to Jim Hightower. His is a two-fisted, rambunctious voice unafraid to speak truth to power, eloquently and clearly…He’s one of the best.”
–Studs Terkel
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- Digital versions: Android, Apple and Kindle
Audiobook on Audible.com