Pollution Protector — For Profiteering Polluters

Pollution Protector — For Profiteering Polluters

There’s greed ... and then there’s the nauseating greed of profiteering corporations that make a killing — literally — by knowingly contaminating people’s water, air, land and families.

Such rank moral corruption is hard to fathom, but it’s not hard to find. For one breathtaking example, consider Freeport-McMoRan.

This global mining behemoth is one of America’s most aggressive spoilers of land, air, water and health — including from its sprawling copper smelter near Phoenix, Ariz. This operation is a major spreader of lead pollution, a neurotoxin that’s particularly harmful to children, causing pain, seizures and learning disabilities.

But wait, where’s our Environmental Protection Agency? Good question. In fact, until last year, EPA was requiring Freeport to install technology to cut those poisonous emissions. The giant squealed like a stuck pig, though, crying that the $60 million cost for the lifesaving equipment was too “burdensome” — even though that wouldn’t even be a drop in Freeport’s $2-billion-a-year bucket of profits.

Sure enough, in October, President Donald Trump’s new EPA honcho rushed to provide pollution protection. Not for the children, but for the polluter! Indeed, Trump’s corporate-coddling agency “super-streamlined” the regulatory process by essentially eliminating it — no public hearing required, no presentation of facts, to chance for victims to object. All Freeport had to do was send an email requesting regulatory relief and — BAM! —Trump promptly exempted its Arizona smelter from having to clean up its act.

Not only is this “free pass to pollute” a blunt proclamation of corporate rule, but it also expresses Trump’s deep contempt for working-class people. Imagine if that smelter were in Florida, poisoning the elites in his Mar-a-Lago resort. Then, he’d jump on it like a gator on a poodle.

Billionaire Money is Corrupting Democracy

Recent polling confirms what you’d hear if you talked to people at most any Chat & Chew Cafe across America — namely, our political system is broken.

In fact, nearly all of us feel that way. While people strongly believe that representative democracy is the best system, they can plainly see that what we have today is neither democratic nor representative. Washington and most state governments routinely enact policies and budgets that benefit uber-rich political donors, while cutting programs that regular people want and need.

It’s not just that the system is failing to do what grassroots America wants done, while doing what most people oppose, but that the insiders in charge, whether Republican or Democrat, don’t’ listen — or care.

At the core of this dangerous disconnect is the fact that our highly touted democratic ambitions have devolved into a moneyed autocracy, a self-perpetuating political system operating independent of the popular will. The issue of all 2026 issues is this: Money rules. Very Big Money, mostly anti-democracy, billionaire money.

Trump, Congress, the courts, governors — and especially the billionaires — know this. They wink at it, rely on it and even cynically proclaim that giving and receiving unlimited, secret, political money is the new coin of democratic policy making — even superior to winning electoral votes.

Now, however, We the People are also clearly seeing this perversion of our fundamental democratic ideals and rights. Some 80% of Americans (including 72% of Republicans) say people who donate to campaigns have too much influence. Our job in 2026 is to confront the billionaire corrupters and political takers head-on, turning people’s rising awareness and anger into “little-d” democratic action.

Why America’s Legislatures Routinely Screw Working Families

As we head into a momentous election year, with state and national legislative seats up for grabs, even let-them-eat-cake Republicans are scrambling to sound sympathetic to today’s hard-hit working-class families.

Of course, tongue-clucking concern doesn’t mean actually doing anything to help this majority of Americans — and most legislatures are doing exactly that: nothing.

In fact, you’d think the ones hurting in America are billionaires, for those same tongue-clucking lawmakers have been laser-focused this year on delivering monopoly protections, multibillion-dollar government subsidies, exclusive tax breaks and even top government positions to the richest and greediest corporate profiteers. This is personally disgraceful and socially destructive ...  yet it has become business as usual.

Why? What’s causing America’s so-called “representatives” to disregard the needs of a majority of their own constituents? The corrupting power of corporate money, of course, but a more fundamental cause is this: The class makeup of practically every legislative body. Millionaires-and-up now dominate. But most telling is who you don’t see: working stiffs.

While more than half of Americans are wage workers who overwhelmingly support progressive reforms to advance economic fairness and social justice, the elitist legislative structure shuts them out. Consider America’s 7,300 state legislative seats — only 1% of Republican members and 2% of Democrats are working class! Ten states have zero working-class members!

As an old adage notes: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Labor laws, health care, campaign finance, AI regulation ...  again and again, workers are put on the corporate menu because the lawmaking system is rigged to keep them from being at the table to represent themselves.

Can 2026 Finally Be a Year of Progressive Political Change?

Dare we think that the New Year holds tremendous promise for progressive change?

Yes! As practically every pundit notes, President Donald Trump’s White House menagerie of billionaires, grifters, haters, prima donnas and ideological kooks has soured even many MAGA faithful. More importantly, grassroots progressives have been organizing and mobilizing across the country and — like eager ball players looking forward to a good season — they’re pumped up!

So, what could go wrong?

Don’t look now, but the National Democratic Party’s “Washington Club” of high-dollar donors, clueless consultants, corporate lobbyists and old-line politicos are still controlling much of the Party’s money, strategy and message. Possessing all the magnetism of their go-slow leader, Chuck Schumer, their game plan is the same as always: Run a Big Money, don’t-rock-the-boat, Washington-based campaign, shove-aside grassroots activists, rely on negative attack ads and tell everyone (again) that Trump will defeat himself.

As Casey Stengel wailed when he managed the comically inept 1962 New York Mets baseball team — “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

Luckily, though, those insider losers are no longer our real Democratic team. While they’ve been piddling around in Congress playing wiffle ball with the Trumpers, Bernie-style progressives have been rebuilding the Party of the People in every state with hard-hitting, slick-fielding, Big-League DEMOCRATS.

And voters are responding with an enthusiastic YES! From Coast to coast — already lifting Zohran Mamdani to victory in New York, Katie Wilson in Seattle and state legislative races in Iowa, Georgia and Mississippi.

Let’s keep pushing to make 2026 the year we quit moaning about the lackluster Democratic Party ...  and turn it into the bright new majority party.

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.