And lo, the Magi came from afar, guided by a heavenly star to worship the Messiah of Mar-a-Lago. Bearing precious gifts of flattery, cash, and bitcoin, the corporate Magi fell to their knees in awe when they beheld the Orange Aura in his gilded manger. These starry-eyed worshippers are not religious seekers, but überrich CEOs of Wall Street banks a…

America has endured a long panorama of corporate greed – from the East India Trading Company to the Robber Barons, Gordon Gecko Wall Streeters to Elon Musk. But down at the bottom of raw greediness today, you’ll find the insatiable profiteers of the private nursing home industry. Of course, many providers deliver honest, truly-caring service (espec…

How are monopolistic corporations able to gain their economic dominance? By getting politicians to give it to them. Consider the old robber barons. They weren’t brilliant investors or managers, but ruthless exploiters of government giveaways and bribers of officials who permitted their monopolistic thievery. Likewise, today’s monopoly players have …

This piece originally appeared in The Nation on Dec 11, 2024. Details below on the December 14 memorial and donation considerations. Los dose mustaches, joyously plotting some more good trouble, c2000. In Washington and most state capitals, “political principle” has become an oxymoron, with plain political honesty largely trumped by crude partisans…

Photo: Choo Yut Shing on Flickr Let’s all sing the holiday classic: “All I want for Christmas… Is Something Not Made of Plastic.” Easier sung than done. Plastic is now ubiquitous in toys, electronics, tools, air, water… and us. And don’t forget the plastic Baby Jesus in Christmas tableaus. What is plastic, anyway? It’s a toxic synthetic material mo…

Former New Mexico governor Bruce King was renown for his frequent malapropisms and contorted logic. For example, he once refused to back a bill pushed by loan-shark lobbyists – but, he pledged that it if the legislature passed the thing, he would sign it. Well, the bill did pass… but Bruce vetoed it! The lobbyists swarmed him, crying that he had gi…

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…

Social media has been lighting up like fireworks, with a myriad of Trump voters exclaiming: “I didn’t know he meant me!” For example, many MAGA cheerleaders are now shocked to learn that his rallying cry to eliminate “Obamacare” means killing the popular Affordable Care Act that provides their health coverage! Upgrade your subscription Perhaps the …

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! For the holiday, we’re sharing with you one of our favorite Thanksgiving origin stories from Hightower below. And as a bonus, while you’re cooking your food or relaxing after dinner, here’s our Dinner Democracy show from 2021, featuring friends Raj Patel and Tom Philpott. Let’s talk Turkey! No, not the Butterballs in Cong…

Howard Lutnick wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Then, he intends to eat your cake. Lutnick is another billionaire corporate huckster who was a campaign bagman for Trump, and now he’s to become the Commerce Secretary. But first, he’s been tasked with picking hordes of corporate loyalists to be placed in Trump’s government as friendly “regulat…

Welcome back to installment #2 of our new series on reasons to be hopeful as we approach an otherwise, ahem, challenging political future. Do you have wins and progress we should celebrate? Leave ‘em in the comments and share links! And this is also just a quick reminder that many “wins” are happening outside of traditional party politics and party…

Wow! Who says election promises don’t produce real change? Candidate Trump had loudly proclaimed that he would force US corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all of the made-in-China products they sell to us. Upgrade your subscription Even he must have been surprised, though…

As any farmer can tell you, if you want to harvest a crop, you’ve got to get out of the office and go to work in the field. Why can’t the Democratic Party grasp this basic reality when it comes to producing votes? This year was going to be different. Pressed by progressive rural activists, national party leaders agreed to open a network of get-out-…

Greetings, readers, Deanna here: Welcome to our new mini-series, “Friday Hope Fest.” Back when we were producing the print version of the Hightower Lowdown (yes, we still miss it, too!), we often used our November and December issues of major election years to share stories of electoral success that might not have hit your radars. And in years wher…

Even in a barrelful of rotten apples, you might think there’d still be a few good ones. But don’t get your hopes up looking into barrels labeled “private equity investors.” These esoteric, multibillion-dollar Wall Street schemes rig the marketplace so “high-net-worth individuals” can grab fat profits and special tax breaks to buy up doctors’ office…

The morning after the election, a social media pundit expressed amazement that Democrat Kamala Harris had lost, noting that America is enjoying “an objectively strong economy.” Indeed, the data shows impressive job growth, rising wages, slowing inflation, etc. – all indicators of a solid economy. Nearly every pundit hailed this as meaning Harris’s …

Okay, the election was a gut punch. And all of us need a moment to catch our breath. But no more than that, for this is a long-term battle, and we have enormous democratic strength to give us heart and hope for a progressive future. Yes, yesterday’s Trump surge is depressing and dangerous, but the message of that surge is not for progressives to su…

In bold type, nearly every newspaper urges readers to “VOTE! TAKE A STAND!” But in this year’s truly momentous national election, we saw such giants of corporate media as the Washington Post, LA Times, and USA Today cower from taking their own stand on the presidency. Worse, the papers shamefully insisted that ducking their duty was itself a princi…

Many people feel that America’s political campaigns have become vapid PR hustles with little connection to the real-life concerns of workaday people. Luckily, Adam Swart says he has the fix for such voter malaise: Just add a more professional level of vapidity to the process, he says, and you can reduce the need for having actual voters involved in…