Inequality doesn’t just come out of the blue, it’s intentionally created by decisions that elites make – usually behind closed doors, so those knocked down don’t know what (or who) hit them. Take America’s 4 million fast-food workers, whose average pay hovers around a miserly $300 a week before taxes. With the labor market tightening, […]
National – Jim Hightower
Posted inOpinion
Breakfast and beer
Let’s talk about two daily essentials: breakfast and, of course, beer. Mass marketers of breakfast cereals have been in a downward sales spiral for about a decade, so they’re getting back to their roots (sort of). Few folks know that some of the oldest and biggest brands of today’s artificially flavored, neon-colored, empty-calorie cereals started […]
Posted inOpinion
The great scamazon
In September Amazon, the $136-billion-a-year, multi-tentacled monopolist, sparked a prairie fire of excitement among state and local economic development officials when it coyly announced its intention to build a second corporate headquarters in Someplace, North America. CEO Jeff Bezos baited his location-subsidy trap with red meat, announcing that Amazon “expect[ed] to invest over $5 billion […]
Posted inOpinion
Why net neutrality is an important democratic virtue
We’re told by politicos, pundits and internet providers themselves that access to the net is crucial to our educational achievement, future prosperity and ability to be self-governing. Yet while this digital highway is deemed vital to our nation’s well-being, access to it is not offered as a public service – i.e., an investment in the […]
Posted inOpinion
Why so many Americans hate Trump’s tax reform
Sam Rayburn of Texas, who was a legendary Speaker of the U.S. House in the 1940s and ’50s, offered this piece of ethical advice for lawmakers who were conflicted over whether to vote for the people or the lobbyists: “Every now and then, a politician ought to do something just because it’s right.” Wow, ethics […]
Posted inOpinion
Why Al Franken should not resign
Jim Hightower is on vacation this week. The chorus of loud demands for Senator Al Franken’s resignation began from the moment that Leeann Tweeden accused him of sexual harassment. Those calls intensified after three more women – two of them anonymous – said the Minnesota Democrat had touched them inappropriately. They haven’t subsided yet. Although […]
Posted inOpinion
Donald Trump’s strange bromances
“We’ve had a great relationship,” exulted a giddy Donald Trump, following his two-day schmoozefest in Manila with the thuggish president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte, a self-styled “toughie” who boasts of personally killing many people and who likes to compare himself to Satan, has been on a murderous rampage since his election last year. […]
Posted inOpinion
Why reward bad corporate behavior with more tax breaks?
As anyone who has ever been to any of the many cities that are graced with a Trump hotel, casino, golf resort, etc. likely knows, Donald Trump insists that his name be gaudily displayed in giant letters across every structure he owns – preferably in gold. Now, he’s taken ownership of a massive new structure […]
Posted inOpinion
Why does Amazon get corporate welfare?
No one has imagined corporate domination more expansively nor pushed it harder or further than Jeffery Preston Bezos, and his Amazon stands today as the most advanced and the most ambitious model of a future under oligarchic control, including control of markets, work, information, consumerism, media and beyond. He doesn’t merely see himself remaking commerce […]
Posted inOpinion
Trump’s wars
So, President Trump makes what was to be a condolence phone call to the young widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the four American soldiers killed on a military patrol in Niger – and all of a sudden, the White House explodes in yet another political conflagration and a new burst of presidential […]
Posted inOpinion
We are Luddites
Today’s proliferation of industrial robots is an advanced generation of powerful, autonomous machines driven by artificial intelligence. The profiteers and techies propelling us into the deep unknown of a robot economy concede that the fast-evolving machines will be radically disruptive, not just in the workplace, but throughout society. Those who question the establishment’s mantra […]
Posted inOpinion
Think your job is safe from the robot invasion?
Industrial automatons have been on the march for years, devouring the middle-class job opportunities of factory workers. But this time is different. This mass-scale deployment of robots has already ushered in a whole new world of work. As a result, robots are rapidly climbing the pay ladder into white-collar and professional positions that millions of […]
