Social media has been lighting up like fireworks, with myriad 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!
Perhaps the most stunned, though, are many Trumpers who had cheered his anti-immigrant, send-’em-back-where-they-came-from tirades. They assumed he only meant the murderers, rapists and cat-eaters he frantically warned about — not their own son’s wonderful Honduran wife; not the beloved family running the popular Mexican cafe in town; and surely not their hardworking landscaping crew! Just the “bad” migrants, right?
Wrong. President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll declare a national emergency, ordering America’s military to conduct a mass roundup and deportation operation, including police agencies making workplace raids and neighborhood sweeps. They even expect they’ll make “collateral arrests” of U.S. citizens. Surely, you might think, such indiscriminate, un-American, mass incarceration can’t really happen here! But Trump is already putting thuggish right-wing enforcers in place to make it happen.
Moreover, a network of Trump’s big corporate funders is gleefully rushing to cash in on this new capture-and-jail industry. Meet GEO Group, for example, a multibillion-dollar private penitentiary conglomerate that has been a profiteering house of horrors for inmates and workers across the country. But its top executives were huge donors to Trump’s ascension, and they now tell Wall Street investors they expect to gain $400 million a year in new business incarcerating Trump’s immigration suspects.
There’s a name for a government based on xenophobia, demagoguery and greed: “kakistocracy” — government by the worst people in society.
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 H-E-B, for example, has drawn an intensely loyal customer base by 1) investing in good wages and benefits for employees, 2) showing up in such emergencies as pandemics, hurricanes, freezes, etc. to give essential supplies and hands-on help, and 3) being an involved and supportive neighbor to the hundreds of unique communities it serves.
Also, Maine Grains is “relocalizing” the business of milling grain by working with local farmers who’d been abandoned by global grain marketers like Ardent and Gold Medal. They’re producing nutrient-rich flours from heritage grains, boosting the local economy in the process. Then there’s Bob’s Red Mill, which also artfully mills its products from diverse, natural grains — and it’s 100% employee-owned.
These are part of a rising business alternative to the selfish, profiteering ethic of Fortune 500 titans. Called certified B Corporations, they definitely exist to make a profit, but they are equally focused on having a positive social impact, prioritizing fair wages, environmental protections and healthy communities as core elements of their missions, even making those goals legal requirements of their corporate charter.
Ben & Jerry’s, Amy’s Kitchen, King Arthur Baking and New Belgium Brewery are just a few more of some 3,800 other businesses now organized as B Corps. Though not pretending to be perfect, they’re at least striving to be more than money-grubbers, instead trying to contribute to the common good. For more information on the products and practices of B Corps, go to BCorporation.net.
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 “regulators” of corporate hucksterism.
Convenient, huh? This is what Trump & Company mean by saying they’ll make government “efficient.” Instead of corporate powers having to lobby regulators to get special favors, corporate officials will become the regulators. That is so much smoother for Lutnick and his ilk, who look forward to four free-wheeling years of devouring our economy.
In choosing those who are to police corporate price gouging, workplace rules, bank rip-offs and such, Lutnick has been calling Wall Streeters, Silicon Valley tech bosses, corporate giants and billionaires, telling them to send their best operatives to Trump’s regime. “Let’s get them into government,” he exults! Notice that he’s not calling any union leaders, consumer protectors or other real public interest watchdogs.
By the way, Lutnick himself is in line to profit from the corporate feeding frenzy he’s now staffing. He is invested in everything from health care profiteers to cryptocurrency flimflams, and while he’s been doing Trump’s work, he’s simultaneously been pushing Congress to do favors for his personal holdings. But he insists that there is no conflict of interest in his efforts. After all, he says with a straight face, he holds his government policy meetings in separate rooms from his own business pleadings.
This is Jim Hightower saying ... And that paper-thin wall of separation is Trump’s new ethical standard for protecting us from raw corporate greed.
Let’s talk Turkey! nnNo, not the Butterballs in Congress. I’m talking about the real thing, the big gobbler — 46 million of which we Americans devoured this past Thanksgiving.
It was the Aztecs who first domesticated the gallopavo, but the invading Spanish conquerors “fouled up” the bird’s origins. They declared it to be related to the peacock — wrong! They also thought the peacock originated in Turkey — wrong! And they thought Turkey was located in Africa —well, you can see the Spanish were pretty confused.
Actually, even the origin of Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. is confused. The popular assumption is that it was first celebrated by the Mayflower immigrants and the Wampanoag natives at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1621. They feasted on venison, furkees (Wampanoag for gobblers), eels, mussels, corn and beer. But wait, say Virginians, the first Thanksgiving Food-a-Palooza was not in Massachusetts — the feast originated down here in Jamestown colony, back in 1608.
Whoa there, pilgrims! Folks in El Paso, Texas, say it all began way out there in 1598, when Spanish settlers sat down with people of the Piro and Manso tribes to give thanks, feasting on roasted duck, geese and fish.
“Ha!” says a Florida group, asserting the very, very first Thanksgiving happened in 1565 when the Spanish settlers of St. Augustine and friends from the Timucuan tribe chowed down on “cocido” — a stew of salt pork, garbanzo beans and garlic — washing it all down with red wine.
Wherever it began, and whatever the purists claim is “official,” Thanksgiving today is as multicultural as America. So, let’s enjoy! Kick back, give thanks we’re in a country with such ethnic richness, and dive into your turkey rellenos, moo shu turkey, turkey falafel, barbecued turkey ... and so on.
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. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2025
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