One group of oppressed Americans has become especially outspoken this election year, contending that top government officials (Democrats in particular) are ignoring their community’s basic needs and stifling their pursuit of economic advancement.
I speak, of course, about the tragic plight of our nation’s downtrodden multibillionaire class. While it’s true that Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and these other Silicon Valley sad sackers and weepy Wall Streeters have vastly increased their wealth under Joe Biden’s presidency, they wail that he has not properly courted and coddled them. Indeed, Biden set their hair on fire this March by calling out their outrageous tax-dodging ploys, demanding they start providing their fair share of support for America by paying a “billionaire tax.”
Thus, these poor, put-upon moneyed elites have been jetting around to Hollywood, Palm Beach and other posh enclaves, holding secret strategy sessions and rallying the uber-rich class to defeat Biden this fall. Of course, since self-centered, plutocratic billionaires are less popular than bed bugs, they can’t win with their ideas and votes but only by buying elections — and these gilded conspirators intend to do just that, amassing billions to bury Biden.
But, oops, one money confab in April exploded into public view when some 20 poobahs of such oil giants as Chevron, Exxon and Occidental conferred with Trump himself. In a straight-out bribery offer, he pledged to repeal environmental protections the industry dislikes — if they pony up $1 billion for his presidential campaign.
This sordid palace intrigue is the product of the right-wing Supreme Court’s 2010 edict letting selfish wealthy interests secretly dump unlimited sums of corporate money into our elections. They’re turning our democratic ideals into a kleptocracy.
Remember Donald Trump, the “swamp drainer”? nnIn 2016, candidate Trump promised to end the grubby money corruption of American politics. “The special interests, lobbyists, donors,” he rightly and righteously noted, “make large contributions to politicians, and they have total control over those politicians.” Asserting that he knows the political rot better than anyone, he said he’d “fix that system, because that system is wrong.”
Eight years later, here comes the Donald again — but the swamp is bigger and suckier than ever. And instead of bold talk about draining it, Trump is auctioning off the swamp, flagrantly offering direct presidential benefits to Big Oil, Wall Street hucksters, high-tech tycoons and all other moneyed interests that “make large contributions” to him.
How large? The Washington Post reports that one businessman asked to have lunch with Trump, promising a million-dollar check. “I’m not having lunch,” Trump retorted. “You’ve got to make it $25 million.” He has also demanded a cool billion bucks from a covey of Big Oil executives. Promising to cut their corporate taxes and deliver an array of other special benefits, the presidential wannabe punctuated his itemization of political goodies with an unsubtle monetary nudge, saying, “be generous, please.”
Since a Supreme Court majority of extreme partisans opened the floodgates 14 years ago, corrupt corporate cash has gone from merely polluting American democracy to now swamping it. Trump is not the only bribe huckster, but he is the most blatant, shamelessly nuclearizing the going rate for buying public policy, mocking the ideal of a citizens’ government. Trump himself is fond of telling fat-cat donors that he doesn’t spend 10 minutes with anyone who can’t give $10 million. Hello — where does that leave you and me? And our country?
A Republican senator once tried excusing the egomaniacal right-wing nastiness of his colleague, Ted Cruz, declaring, “Sometimes Ted is his own worst enemy.” I said to myself: “Not while I’m alive he’s not.”
But now, I’m reassessing, because Cruz keeps descending deeper into self-pity and self-destruction. For example, he’s recently been trying to gut a consumer-friendly rule requiring airlines to make automatic, hassle-free refunds to passengers when their flights are unduly delayed or cancelled. However, kissing up to his airline political donors, Ted’s amendment would put the hassle back in refunds, requiring abused passengers to file written requests to the various impenetrable corporate bureaucracies of airlines to get their money back — maybe ... someday.
In fairness, though, Cruz has been working hard to make air travel much easier for one class of travelers: U.S. senators and House members, plus their staffs and families! He wants to make us common taxpayers fund “airport security escorts” for him and other privileged ones, moving them ahead of everyone and zipping them through the screening and boarding process. This, Ted explained, will help in “keeping the flying public safe.”
He really means keeping the public from seeing or interacting at airports with public officials like him. You might recall that, while hundreds of Texans were literally dying during the state’s power grid’s failure in 2021’s calamitous deep freeze, Ted was photographed in tropical attire at Houston’s airport, waiting to board a flight to Cancun, fleeing the cold and his constituents. By getting special airport escorts, though, so-called public servants like Cruz won’t be exposed to public view.
Hello — of all the public needs crying out today for taxpayer funding — where would you rank providing an airport escort for Ted Cruz?
If you’re wondering whatever happened to Ron DeSantis, he’s now re-ensconced in Florida ... goofier than ever.
Last year, backed by a covey of billionaires, Gov. Ron was all set to be our next president until national voters discovered he has the personality of a dirt clod and the political sensibility of a tin-pot totalitarian.
Even in the GOP primaries, most voters gagged at his ruthless anti-abortion absolutism, his “Fahrenheit 451” book bans, his vigilante rampages against local librarians, his dictate that textbooks whitewash American history, his cruel toying with desperate asylum seekers and so awful much more.
Thus, the Potentate of Tallahassee limped back home. But far from chastened, Ron has doubled down on political goofiness, frittering away his remaining prestige and gubernatorial credibility on right-wing hokum. For example, he has banned the sale of alternative meat products in Florida. Also, in a bizarre commandment he calls “Freedom Summer,” he has decreed that Florida’s bridges can only be lit up in hues of red, white and blue — no “liberal” colors like green or purple.
His latest tilt-at-windmills stunt is to repeal state efforts to fight climate change! He’s reversing state policies encouraging agencies to switch to electric vehicles, prohibiting several wind and solar-powered projects, and eliminating state incentives for energy-efficient homes. As sea levels rise all around Florida — flooding its coastal cities — DeSantis rants against “the agenda of radical green zealots,” maniacally declaring: “We’re restoring sanity” to energy policy.
If Republican Party strategists wonder why voters think the GOP has gone nuts, look no further than Florida’s authoritarian governor, who’s busy dictating people’s meat choices — and the color of bridges — while his state sinks into the sea.
Let me be clear that I mean no disrespect to reptiles when I note that Jonathan Mitchell is a snake.
An extremist right-wing Texas lawyer, Mitchell is actually creepier and altogether more diabolical that your average serpent could think of being. Mitchell slithers around the country as a self-appointed anti-abortion vigilante, terrorizing women’s advocates, health clinics and doctors. And now (turning truly creepy), he’s singling-out individual women with his bullying legalistic theatrics.
By perverting an obscure judicial procedure, called Rule 202, Mitchell threatens to publicly expose and sue women who make an entirely legal, out-of-state trip to terminate a pregnancy. Moreover, he threatens to sue any of her family, friends and others who aid or encourage her pursuit of reproductive freedom. Moreover, even without actually suing them, Mitchell proclaims that he can use the coercive power of government to compel each of them to be interrogated.
This gross assertion of theocratic power, wielded by a religious partisan with zero public authority, goes beyond mere tyranny. He is resurrecting the hysterical demagoguery and satanic extremism of Cotton Mather and the Puritan fanatics who fomented the Salem Witch Trials and executions of the 1690s. Mitchell and his theocratic clique are trying to weaponize Rule 202 so false accusations and even gossip can be enough to subject any woman to a hostile court-ordered grilling. Mitchell’s witchcrafters don’t need to win or even actually file such frivolous and venomous legal actions, for their goal is raw intimidation. Simply accusing vulnerable women of being abortion witches would force them to hire lawyers and endure public inquisition — or surrender their liberty without due process.
Vipers are not this vicious! To help reject Mitchell’s misogynistic scheme, go to Abortion Access Front: AAFront.org.
Whatzamatta with Congress? And most of our state legislatures, too? nnWhy do these so-called representative bodies keep stiffing middle-class and poor families, refusing to respond to the most urgent needs and goals of this vast majority of Americans?
Take lawmakers’ indifference to the child care crisis crushing the finances, health and spirit of millions of working families. Plus, intentionally denying basic health care for low-income children in this spectacularly rich nation.
These common incidents of child neglect are products of the creeping plutocratic ideology now dominating capitols across America. Most legislatures today push corporate profiteering, including re-legalizing robber baron exploitation of children. Bills to reinstate child labor are being advanced in 28 states, and 12 have already passed!
Why is the workaday majority being ignored and corporate supremacy being imposed over the common good? In a word: class.
Think about it: Who holds nearly all of the seats in Congress and in state legislatures? Bankers, lawyers, corporate executives, lobbyists, millionaires and ideological goofballs. Wait — no plumbers, mechanics, taxi drivers, trash haulers, hotel housekeepers, computer programmers, farm workers — or, golly, no child care providers?
No. Even though half of America’s jobs are working-class, roughly 1% of our nation’s 7,300 state legislative seats are held by the working-class people who actually make America work. As the old saying goes: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. And our political system has been rigged by corporate lobbyists, lawmakers and judges to hold public office hostage to Big Money — intentionally excluding the working-class majority from its rightful place at America’s policy table.
To start freeing democracy from corrupt corporate money, go to Public Citizen at citizen.org.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Email him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2024
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