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Tag: Jim Hightower

  • When Private Enterprise Fails – Jim Hightower, Humor Times

    When Private Enterprise Fails – Jim Hightower, Humor Times

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    In cities all across America, private enterprise is driving poor and middle-class families out of their own towns.

    In cities all across America, an infiltration of private enterprise wealthy investors, developers and bankers is driving poor and middle-class families out of their own towns.

    What’s at work here is the relentless financial shove of high-dollar gentrification. House by house, block by block, moneyed interests suddenly (and often secretly) buy up properties, bulldozing modest family homes to erect sprawling edifices for the rich. It’s a profiteering money grab that intentionally prices out regular homebuyers. Worse, it also artificially skyrockets property taxes for the area’s longtime homeowners, forcing them to sell out and leave town.

    This financial whirligig is enormously destructive to a community’s crucial sense of fairness and… well, community. For one glaring example, look at who likely does NOT live in your city: schoolteachers, fire fighters, police, nurses, utility crews and others who’re essential to making any city work.

    If the so-called “free market” can’t (or won’t) provide affordable spaces so these families can “come home,” where they belong, then the community itself must step up to meet the need with creative public initiatives.

    The good news is that many cities are doing just that, including where I live. Fed up with losing teachers who endure spirit-sucking, hourlong commutes from distant suburbs, Austin’s school board recently created its own affordable housing arm. It’s starting to build hundreds of rental homes affordable to teachers, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other school employees. In addition, the district has formed a “public facility corporation” that partners with local developers and groups like Habitat for Humanity to build and sell family homes at prices within reach of the city’s school employees.

    Housing is not only a basic human need but also a community essential that can’t be left to the whims and greed of developers.

    Martin Luther King Jr. Didn’t Just Dream, He Organized!

    It’s time once again for America’s annual sing-along of “We Shall Overcome,” in celebration of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. As even schoolchildren know, he famously had a dream. His dream was that over the long arc of history, America will someday achieve racial harmony — if Black people will stop being pushy about racial injustice.

    Oh, wait — that’s the right wing’s current whitewashed version of King’s dream, scrubbing out his condemnation of brutally racist white leaders and institutions (which still repress Black progress and foment racial hatred). And far from meekly waiting on “the arc of history,” King rallied people to take immediate action, calling it “the fierce urgency of now.”

    He sought “a grand alliance of Negro and White (to) eradicate social evils (that) oppress both White and Negro.” At the time of his assassination, he was actively forging that populist coalition to battle plutocratic wealth.

    Indeed, King knew the history he sought to revive. The post-Civil War Populist Movement, he said, “began awakening the poor White masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that (both) were being fleeced by (Southern aristocrat interests).” That movement, he noted, intended to write a black-white voting bloc “to build a great society of justice where none would prey upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away.”

    But the unifying, democratic promise of Populism, King rightly explained, so terrified the aristocracy of wealth that its leaders made it “a crime for Negroes and Whites to come together as equals at any level.” Thus moneyed elites effectively killed the people’s Populist party in the 1890s — but not the people’s Populist spirit.

    So rather than merely celebrating a birthday, let’s recommit to King’s real dream of a multiracial, democratic Populism.

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  • Let's Send All Billionaires to Mars! – Jim Hightower, Humor Times

    Let's Send All Billionaires to Mars! – Jim Hightower, Humor Times

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    Why not just send our “genius” billionaires to Mars, and let them report back?

    Unfortunately, in the short time we homo sapiens have existed on this 4.5-billion-year-old Planet Earth, we have trashed the place. Climate change, deforestation, desertification, plastics in everything, etc.

    Fortunately, though, we large-brained hominids have evolved an almost-magical resource that promises to be our salvation: Billionaires!

    One of the priceless benefits of amassing a multibillion-dollar, self-regenerating pile of wealth is that it automatically establishes you as “a Genius.” Never mind that you’ve most likely acquired your stash through some combination of inheritance, grift, rank exploitation, tax dodging and such; you’re suddenly treated as a savant whose most fanciful nonsense is now taken seriously by the establishment.

    Thus, we presently have two overstuffed money hogs, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, preaching that Earth is a lost cause. But, no problem, for they are designing space technologies that will let a cadre of select humans escape doom by colonizing the Moon and Mars. Using untold billions of our tax dollars, the two are in a PR race to land their spaceships first. But — hey, bozos! — what then? You think our blue-green planet is hell, try living with no air, water, soil, little gravity and zero protection from the incessant bombardment of cosmic radiation.

    Well, postulate the billionaire space cadets, “we” (actually meaning us taxpayers) will just geoengineer Mars and the Moon, terraforming them into an Earthlike oasis. But, wait — as astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson pointed out a decade ago — “If you had the power to terraform Mars into Earth, then you have the power to turn Earth back to Earth.”

    Tyson later said he’d only go to Mars if the designer of the colony “had sent their mother first.” Nice… but I have no doubt Musk and Bezos would gladly sacrifice their moms to advance their egos.

    Forget Millionaires. A Few Billionaires Are Now Stealing Our Country

    In the serious business of politics, a little humor can be your best friend.

    I saw its impact 30 years ago in Austin when a group of young, irreverent democracy activists decided to try limiting corporations that were drowning our local elections in their special-interest campaign cash. The upstart group named their grassroots effort a name that was a bit whimsical, yet pointed: “Austinites for a Little Less Corruption.”

    It caught on. Even though the entire corporate, political and media establishment united in furious opposition to the reform, 70% of voters rather joyously shouted, “YES!”

    Now more than ever, we need to rally grassroots Americans in a high-spirited, openly rebellious campaign to save our people’s historic democratic values. An autocratic coterie of plutocratic supremists with unlimited corporate funding already dominates our elections, public policy, agenda and our highest courts. It’s not a secret conspiracy; they’re quite open about it!

    But forget the days of million-dollar donors; the arsenal of the systemic corruptors has now been nuclearized. For example, Charles Koch has just injected $5 billion in his 2024 political operation. Tim Dunn, an ultra-right-wing Texas oil baron and extremist GOP sugar daddy, has just sold his fracking empire for $12 billion, gaining a new gusher of cash to weaponize his intention to impose laissez-faire rule over America.

    It’s hard to visualize how much more anti-democratic firepower one gets by spending billions instead of mere millions. Think of the difference not in terms of dollars, but time. If you have a million seconds, that’s 11 days. But a billion seconds — that’s more than 31 years!

    We can have no progress — no democracy — without getting corporate money out of America’s political system. For info and action, go to citizen.org.

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  • Environmental Progress: Kids Lead – Jim Hightower, Humor Times

    Environmental Progress: Kids Lead – Jim Hightower, Humor Times

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    One breakthrough for environmental progress was made recently by young climate activists in deep-red, rural Montana.

    “OK, boomer.” That’s a snarky phrase currently some use to mock 60- and-70-year-olds they consider to be cluelessly out of touch.

    Recently, however, teenagers and 20-somethings have turned that snide sentiment into a positive challenge directed at doomsayers of all ages who claim nothing can be done to stop runaway global warming: “OK, doomer,” these young climate activists respond. It’s their shorthand way of saying to do-nothing fatalists: Give up if you want, but please step aside while we organize and mobilize for climate sanity and environmental progress.

    Our globe’s fast-warming, catastrophe-creating climate is more than just another issue: It has become a generational cause for young people. Indeed, 62% of young voters support totally phasing out fossil fuels, and they’re channeling their anger about official inaction toward both political parties. Such feisty grassroots groups as Gen-Z for Change, Zero Hour, Black Girl Environmentalist and Our Children’s Trust are on the front lines — in the face of power, and on the move.

    As in all progressive struggles — from civil rights to labor to environmental justice — progress comes from sticking with principle, building incrementally on local victories and persevering against moneyed reactionaries.

    Already, one breakthrough by these young climate activists was made this year in deep-red, rural Montana. In a case filed by Our Children’s Trust, 16 children, ages 2-18, charged that a state law took away their right to challenge energy projects that increase global warming. Noting that Montana’s constitution establishes a right to “a clean and healthful environment,” state Judge Kathy Seeley ruled for the children… and for a clean, healthy climate future.

    Progress is not made by spectators and cynics, but by activists. And those who say that activism can’t produce change should not interrupt those who’re doing it.

    The Rattiest Right-Wing Congress Critter

    Vangunu, one of the Solomon Islands, is home to a giant species of rodent called the vika. Astonishingly, this rare and very large rat has jaws so powerful it can bite through a coconut shell!

    That made me think of Rep. Jim Jordan, the GOP’s rattiest far-right-wing Congress critter. There is no documented proof that this extremist partisan was raised on Vangunu, but he sure keeps gnawing on Joe and Hunter Biden, desperately trying to crack open a scandal that simply doesn’t exit. Vikas are powerful, but they’ve not been accused of being smart.

    Jordan, the former coach of a boy’s wrestling team, now has his team of House Republicans in a choke hold, draining national media attention to his goofy obsession with impeaching Joe. Impeach him for what? Well, says Jordan, we’re looking for a reason.

    He has it bass-ackwards — real impeachment proceedings start with specific charges of an official’s “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But Coach Jordan is perverting that constitutional requirement by first accusing Biden of high crimes, then holding hearings in hopes of finding one. But poor Jim — it turns out to be easier for him to bite through a coconut than to fabricate a Biden crime.

    But Jordan keeps gnawing, wasting Congress’ time, staff and credibility (plus millions of taxpayer dollars) scuttling down trails that go nowhere. Meanwhile, as he and the GOP House prioritize their clownish political agenda, they can’t perform the basics of government, which is simply to keep essential public services funded and functioning.

    Unable to govern, Republican leaders abruptly stopped working in the House in early December, saying they’ll get serious next year. But, uh-oh, the vika congressman has just announced he’ll hold more impeachment hearings next year so he can keep gnawing at the Biden coconut.

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  • Here's a Wild Idea That's Taking Root – Jim Hightower, Humor Times

    Here's a Wild Idea That's Taking Root – Jim Hightower, Humor Times

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    Students are organizing locally with a wild idea that makes a difference and makes a statement.

    Growing up, I absorbed a lot of values from my Ol’ Texas Daddy: a strong commitment to the common good, a healthy work ethic and a lively sense of humor. But one thing about him I’ve rejected: his determination to have a perfect yard of thick, verdant St. Augustine grass. Lord, how he worked at it — laying sod, (watering), fertilizing, (watering), weeding, (watering), spreading pesticides, (watering), mowing… (more watering). But it was too hot, too dry, too infested with blight, bugs, slugs and such. He was up against Texas nature, and he just couldn’t win.

    So, I’ve gone in the opposite direction — slowly nurturing a natural yard of native trees, drought-tolerant plants and a general live-with-nature ethos in my little landscape. I’m hardly alone in this rejection of the uniform “green grass imperative.” A spontaneous yard rebellion is taking hold across our country as more and more households, neighborhoods, businesses, etc. shift to a nature-friendly approach. A particularly encouraging push for change is coming from schoolkids — elementary through college — who are appalled by the poisoning of our globe and organizing locally to do something that both makes a difference and makes a statement. One exemplary channel for their activism is a student movement called Re:wild Your Campus.

    Of course, some people consider this a wild idea, after all, wild yards tend to be scruffy, ugly… unruly. That’s their choice, but some also insist that tidy grass lawns must be everyone’s choice. So, they proclaim themselves to be the yard police, demanding that cities and homeowners associations make green-grass uniformity the law, filing busybody lawsuits and running right-wing social media campaigns targeting people and groups that disobey.

    These attacks are silly because… well, they are silly, and also because they’re attacking the future, which is nearly always a loser strategy. To work for yard sanity and choice, go to Rewild.org.

    Voters Reject the Illiberal Bigotry of Moms 4 Liberty

    In one of their satirical songs, the Austin Lounge Lizards lampooned the ridiculous bigotry of some Christian factions, singing: “Jesus loves me. But he can’t stand you.”

    That could be the bellicose anthem of a quasi-religious Republican front group with a very sweet-sounding name: “Moms for Liberty.” Far from sweet, however, these moms are funded by rich Republicans to be ground troops in the party’s culture wars — essentially an anti-liberty campaign against people, books, teachers and ideas they don’t like. In the last few years, squads of these moms have turned into political hate groups, persecuting small town school board members by baselessly accusing them of conspiring to indoctrinate children with pornography, hatred of white people and “liberal” thinking.

    Having stirred up dust devils of division and fear, the momsters ran candidates in local board elections this fall, hoping to take over public schools. But they miscalculated on an essential political reality: Most Americans are not right-wingers, bigots or Christian nationalists. The group had counted on surprising voters in what are usually low visibility/low-turnout races, but the extremists were the ones surprised by an aggressive voter pushback against their scheme.

    Indeed, various surveys show that the GOP’s mom-wing lost about 80% of its races across the country, even in major swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. For example, in the very conservative school district of Pennridge, Pennsylvania, where a far-right majority of the board was attempting to impose a national model of a politically driven educational system, five Republican incumbents were up for reelection. All five were swept out, turning the Pennridge school board blue for the first time in years!

    To help push back against right-wing politicizers of your school district, contact Campaign for Our Shared Future.

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