The Chief Twinkie at Hostess goes Ding Dong

Jim Hightower — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Here's a case of good news oozing out of bad news, and vice versa.

The bad news is that Hostess Brands has sunk into bankruptcy. It couldn't stay afloat with the $860 million debt piled onto it when a group of Wall Street speculators took over the 82 year old company.

The good news, though, is that devoted customers can still get their daily fix of five kinds of sugar, partially-hydrogenated oil, polysorbate 60, artificial flavors, and yellow dye number 5. Those are a few of the ingredients in Hostess Twinkies. When top executives filed for Chapter 11 in January, they assured an anxious nation that the corporation would keep chugging out Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and its other caloric delights while they deal with a few legal details to restructure Hostess.

Oh, goodie! But wait – those "details" constitute the bad news flowing out of the good news. The CEO says that to become "a highly competitive company that provides secure employment for our employees," Hostess must make those employees less secure by busting their pensions, cutting their medical benefits, and abrogating their labor contracts. Does this Twinkie-in-Chief even understand how twisted his logic is? Apparently not, for he also asserts that one of the "tremendous inherent strengths" that Hostess can build on to become a viable company is "a talented and experienced workforce."

Thanks for the complement, chief, but I'm guessing the workforce would prefer a decent pension. Without that, your words are as empty as the calories in a Ding Dong. Meanwhile, the union workers who literally deliver the goods for the company point out that they've already made concessions – and it's time for the richly-paid corporate executives and profiteering speculators who loaded Hostess with all that debt to stop sucking all the cream out of the Twinkies.

Newt Gingrich: the spawn of Citizens United

Jim Hightower — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

In its Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court upended our democratic elections by decreeing that corporations and über-wealthy individuals can dump unlimited sums of cash into campaigns to elect their favored candidates. Astonishingly, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared in his majority opinion that such a gusher of special-interest money would not “give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Who knew so much political naiveté could be cloaked in a single judicial robe?

Justice Kennedy, meet Sheldon Adelson – a product of your cluelessness about how real politics work. For years, this casino baron has spent lavishly on right-wing front groups to advance his personal agenda, including pouring money into Newt Gingrich.

The billionaire and The Newt became symbiotic buddies in the mid-nineties, bonding over their shared fondness for crushing labor unions. Adelson was bitterly fighting Nevada unions, pushing a state law to crimp worker rights. Gingrich, then the House Speaker, endorsed Adelson’s Nevada legislation and also backed a tax break in Congress for casinos. In turn, Gingrich got campaign cash, funding to support him after being drummed out of office in disgrace in 1998, free rides on Adelson’s corporate jet, and backing for his present run for the presidency. In the past, the biggest personal check he could’ve taken from his casino sugar daddy was $5,000. After the Supreme’s Citizens United edict, however, Adelson can go all in to push his willing servant into the White House.

So Newt got $5 million from Adelson to buy his recent South Carolina victory and another $5 million from Sheldon's wife, Miriam, to advance Gingrich in Florida. And next… well, there’s no telling, is there Justice Kennedy, since you've legalized unlimited funds for the blatant corruption of America’s elections?

The Supreme Court, What a joke!

Jim Hightower — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Supreme Court justices don't strike me as a fun-loving bunch. I mean, would you really want to waste your down-time with the perpetually petulant Clarence Thomas, or kick back with the supercilious Antonin Scalia?

Yet, they and three other up-tight and far-right Supremes snuck a whoopee cushion into our elections when they rendered their Citizens United decision two years ago. With a straight face, the five jokesters decreed that corporations and the super-rich can dump unlimited money into political action committees, as long as – get this – these so-called SuperPACs do not explicitly coordinate with the candidates they're backing.

What a hoot! I'll bet these smart lawyers laughed themselves slap-happy over this non-coordination rule, knowing that it had a built-in loophole bigger than Newt Gingrich's ego. Sure enough, every presidential candidate this year has one of the Court's supposedly independent SuperPACs backing them with unprecedented levels of corporate cash. And every candidate solemnly declares that in no way are they coordinating or even talking to those running these money funnels. The punch line, of course, is that the SuperPACs are – whoopee! – brother-in-law deals, set up and run by the candidates' cronies and business partners.

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert is exposing the Court's crude joke on our democracy by having his own SuperPAC (called Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow) support his satirical run for president. Noting that it "would be coordinating with yourself" for him to both be the candidate and run the PAC, Colbert turned ABTT over to his Comedy Central colleague, Jon Stewart. Both pledged not to coordinate, with Stewart saying he wouldn't even watch Colbert's TV show.

It's easy to laugh at the absurdity of the Supreme Court – but the joke's on us.

Rick Perry goes from "wow" to "oops" to "ouch"

Jim Hightower — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

To the relief of most Texans, our prodigal governor hath returned.

Most presidential pretenders envision a come-from-behind campaign ending in glory, but Rick Perry ran a vainglorious campaign that went in the other direction, ending in: "Oops." What happened to poor Perry was… well, Perry. His brain bone simply does not connect to his tongue muscle. So he fumbled, bumbled, and stumbled through the Republican debates, showing the entire nation that he was not presidential sapling, much less timber.

Rick was richly financed by corporate interests, burning through more than $21 million on his political joy ride. But he finished a sputtering fifth in Iowa and New Hampshire and was about to be lapped by "other" in South Carolina, before mercifully ending his sad run. Worse, polls showed he had fallen to third place in his home state!

So, he's back – but not to any cheers. The general feeling here is that he embarrassed himself and made Texans look like a bunch of ignorant hillbillies. In a new poll, 45 percent of Texans say he soiled the State's national image, and 56 percent don't even want him to run for governor again.

Also, Texans are a bit chapped about Perry's prodigality with our money. While he was running around denouncing government spending and berating people who live on government payrolls, Rick kept drawing his $150,000-a-year state paycheck, even though he wasn't doing state work. He was also doubling-dipping, using a special loophole to take $92,000 a year in state "retirement" pay, while also collecting his gubernatorial salary. Then there's some $2.6 million billed to us to cover the cost of the state security detail that traipsed along with him on the campaign trail.

Perry will always be branded nationally as the "oops" guy. But in Texas, he's called Rick "Ouch" Perry.

The Adelson campaign: buying our future

Jim Hightower — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Already, four of the GOP presidential contenders have had to drop out – Michele Bachmann because she was too wacky, Jon Huntsman because he was too sane, Herman Cain because he was too exposed, and Rick Perry because he was too dim-witted.

But the greatest surprise is the sudden surge of the Adelson campaign. Little-known until now, Adelson was the big winner in South Carolina, is way out front in Florida, and looks to have the political kick needed to go the distance.

Never heard of the Adelson campaign? It's the married duo of Sheldon and Miriam, neither of whom are actually on the ballot. Rather, they are running on the cash-ticket.

Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas-based, global casino baron, has long been a major funder of far-right-wing causes – and, he's Newt Gingrich’s very special political pal. When Newt’s presidential bid nearly flat-lined after his electoral collapses in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sheldon rushed in with emergency CPR – Cash-Powered Resuscitation. This one rich guy wrote a $5 million check to Gingrich’s SuperPAC, which is named “Winning Our Future.” The PAC injected Sheldon's money directly into toxic attack ads against Mitt Romney in South Carolina’s primary, jolting Newt’s campaign back to life.

However, Gingrich still lacked the financial vitality to match Romney’s media buy in Florida’s pricy primary. No worries, though – Miriam Adelson stepped in to infuse Winning Our Future with another $5 million jolt of CPR. The Gingrich campaign, you see, is a vessel for the Adelson campaign, and word is that this one power couple is prepared to spend another $10 million to make their boy the GOP nominee, with more to come if he's the one to run against President Obama.

Forget "Winning Our Future" – the ultra-rich Adelsons are “Buying Our Future.”

A tiny bug spreads happiness

Jim Hightower — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Great news, people: a hot spot of nine-spotted ladybugs has been spotted in Amagansett, New York!

This uplifting story is a rich organic mixture of state pride, nature's resilience, America's scientific pluck, teamwork, serendipity, and bug love. In today's hard times, we need this.

Let's start with the bug. This ladybug is the classic Coccinellidae beetle, with exactly nine black spots on its red back. A benevolent and delightful creature, it's beloved by everyone from children to farmers – so beloved that it is the Official Insect of New York State. Sadly (and somewhat embarrassingly), however, this state official had vanished entirely from the state that honored it, with the last recorded sighting in New York being 29 years ago. Apparently a victim of competition from imported Asian and European ladybug species, as well as pesticides and the loss of habitat, only 90 of the native nine-spotteds have been seen in all of North America in the past decade.

But since 2000, a team of diligent Cornell University entomologists and volunteers have kept up the search through Cornell's Lost Ladybug Project. The searchers persisted, even when New York's legislators tried in 2006 to abandon the bug that seemingly had abandoned their state. Luckily, though, legislative inertia killed that effort to replace the state insect, and the Ladybug Project kept faith and kept looking.

Then, this summer, lo and behold, a volunteer spotted one sitting pretty as you please in a patch of sunflowers on an organic farm in Amagansett. About 20 more were subsequently found on the farm amidst rows of carrots, beans, and flowers – enough for the project to establish a reproducing colony, while also building confidence that more will be discovered.

To keep up with this bit of good bug news, go to www.lostladybug.org.

GOP "mad as a hatter" about EPA mercury regs

Jim Hightower — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Why do congressional Republicans hate unborn babies?

Yeah, I know they profess to love the unborn, even considering them "persons" from the very moment of conception.

Yet, whose interest do you think these same politicos have chosen to protect when it comes to regulating an especially-nasty industrial toxin that wreaks holy hell on unborn babies? That nasty is mercury, a neurotoxin that spews into our air from old, coal-burning electric utilities. This toxic mercury falls into water, where it's turned into methylmercury that builds up in fish. Many pregnant women unwittingly eat these contaminated fish, and the methylmercury messes terribly with the emerging nervous systems of their fetuses, producing babies with impaired IQs, unable to think and learn as they should.

Now, though, after 20 years of delay forced by electric company lobbyists, the Environmental Protection Agency finally came out in December with regulations to control the mercury emissions from power plants. Hallelujah – save the babies! But wait, the lovers of the unborn are not celebrating this move to stop industry from doing gratuitous damage to children's IQs!

Far from it. Congressional Republicans are now howling to overturn the EPA's regulation of mercury, and a bunch of them say they want to kill the EPA itself to stop such "governmental interference" in the corporate pursuit of profits. Unborn babies make great politics, but they don't make big campaign donations. The GOP goes with whom it really loves.

How ironic that the defenders of mercury pollution are "mad as a hatter" about the EPA's protection of children. Maybe they don't know that the phrase comes from 19th century hat makers who used mercury compounds in their work, often causing mental damage that literally drove them mad.

Getting stuck on America's economic ladder

Jim Hightower — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

One of the hidebound myths in our culture is the Horatio Alger fantasy: you might be born poor, Bucko, but America's the land of upward mobility – anyone with grit and gumption can scramble from the very bottom of the economic ladder all the way to the top.

At last, though, this musty myth is being dispelled as everyone from academics to Wall Street protesters are proving that it simply isn’t true. Even prominent politicos are catching on – as one said last fall, “[Movement] up into the middle income is actually greater… in Europe than it is in America.” That’s no liberal talking, it’s Rick Santorum! The same guy who now says “There are no classes in America” was at least visiting reality just a few months ago.

While GOP leaders still try to dismiss the issue of income inequality, the mobility issue goes to the very core of America's identity – it’s too big to deny or ignore. John Bridgeland , a former Bush aide who now heads a policy group called Opportunity Nation, says bluntly that Republicans “will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility – a lack of access to the American Dream.”

Many recent studies confirm that our country has developed a class “stickiness” that is alarmingly dangerous to our social unity. A Pew research report finds that about 62 percent of Americans born on the top rungs of the economic ladder stay there as adults, and 65 percent born on the bottom rungs remain stuck there for life. In a ranking of nine affluent countries, Canada was tops in upward mobility and the U.S. was last.

America won’t offer a true opportunity for upward mobility unless we restore a unity of purpose among all of our people – and we can’t achieve that as long as top corporate and governmental leaders deliberately widen the chasm separating the rich from the rest of us.

An ugly surprise from big oil

Jim Hightower — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The corporatists in Congress barked at Obama that he must approve that Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Because the Exxons and Chevrons need a way to get all that Canadian tar sands oil to their Texas refineries. That'll increase the supply of gasoline and lower the price at the pump. It's Economics 101, Bucko.

Really? Well, consider this complicating fact: rather than shipping an abundance of gasoline to our gas stations, Big Oil has quietly been siphoning oceans of fuel from their U.S. refineries and shipping it to Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Last year, for the first time ever, fuel became the top export of the United States – the big refineries shipped 117 million gallons of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel per day out of our country. Suddenly, fuel exports are bigger in dollar value than the foreign sales of American aircraft, agriculture, or any other product.

Commuters, truckers, farmers, airlines, and others who're dependent on those fuels have been soaked in the past year by gasoline pump prices that have averaged $3.52 a gallon – a record high. This price shock has given Big Oil's political puppets an excuse to yap ceaselessly about the urgent need to "build that pipeline." The environment be damned, is their cry, full speed ahead to increase supply.

These ranters don't mention (shhhh) the giant refiners' control and manipulation of our gasoline supply for their own fun and profit. While the refiners refuse to reveal how much they profit from exporting fuel, the more they send overseas, the less there is at home, allowing them to jack up our prices. No surprise then that the Big Five gasoline makers enjoyed record profits in 2011.

Rather than ripping apart our environment to serve these finaglers, America urgently needs a full conversion to alternative fuels.

America's class divide

Jim Hightower — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

What planet does presidential wannabe Rick Santorum live on? When it comes to grasping the situation of America's hard-hit workaday majority, this sweater-vested, ultra-right-winger is further out than Pluto.

In a recent debate, Santorum assailed a tax plan proposed by front-runner Mitt Romney. It wasn't the plan's details that caused Rick to stamp his tiny feet, but Romney's expressed intent to help the "middle class." Tut-tut, chided the ideologically-pure Santorum, Republicans mustn't use such language, for it creates an impression of class warfare. After all, he lectured, "There are no classes in America. We don't put people in classes."

Sure, Rick – forget today's jobless economy, a national epidemic of union busting and wage knockdowns, absurd tax giveaways to the superrich, the ongoing Wall Street bailout, inexcusable corporate subsides, rising poverty, the slashing of anti-poverty programs, and a decade of falling incomes for the vast majority, while the elite one-percent makes off with triple-digit increases in their wealth – there's no class war happening. Just close your eyes, hum a happy tune... and live on Pluto.

Meanwhile, in the same week that Santorum spoke, the Pew Research Center released a new survey showing how far removed he is from regular people's experiences and concerns. Two-thirds of Americans see "strong conflicts" between the rich and poor in our country, a stark division between those few who have wealth, power, and security and the vast majority who don't. The few do not have the same objectives as the many, and the survey found that this class separation – yes, class – is the number one source of social tension in America today.

Interestingly for the far-out Santorum, not only do 73% of Democrats and 68% of independents agree, but so do 55 percent of Republicans.