Jim Hightower

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion" (1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Articles by this author
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Views Wednesday, April 14, 2021 To Bust Monopoly Power, Start With the Companies Controlling Our Food No longer just a parlor game, monopoly is what's for dinner. Practically every commodity and every step in producing our families' most essential consumer purchases is in the tight grip of four or fewer global conglomerates: —Four chemical conglomerates—Bayer (German), BASF (German), ChemChina (... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, April 07, 2021 Will the United States Ever Become a Strong Nation for the Common Good? It's time for America to go back to the future — a future of true greatness created by a people united to build a strong nation for the Common Good. From the start of our United States, rather than shrinking at the right-wing bugaboo of "Big Government," Americans have backed leaders who dared to... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 31, 2021 The Pandemic Revealed That if We Have the Will, the Money Is There Usually, the Powers That Be swat away the kind of big-ticket reforms our country needs by haughtily asserting a few hoary economic fables they dress up as immutable "truths." "We don't have the money." They cluck that it would be nice if everyone could be given the right to top-quality health care... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 24, 2021 Republican Officials No Longer Support Democracy Hey, you, get away from those polling places! No trespassing! We don't want your kind here! Scram! How's that for a winning political message? It is stupid, shameful and ultimately self-defeating, yet being blatantly anti-democratic and anti-voter is the official electoral strategy being... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 17, 2021 Robots Are Coming for Millions of Blue-Collar Jobs Some people find hunting for sport to be abhorrent, so hunters have come up with euphemisms to make what they do sound gentler on the ears of the nonhunting public. For example, animals aren't killed; they're "harvested." And dead prey is not gutted but "processed." Corporate America has taken note... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 10, 2021 The Rights of Nature: We Need Nature More Than It Needs Us There was a white oak tree in Athens, Georgia, that was so treasured by the locals it was not owned by anyone, not even the city. It was an autonomous entity known as the The Tree that Owns Itself. Around the 1820s, William Jackson, owner of the property where the oak resided, wrote a formal deed... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 03, 2021 'Pathetic and Disgraceful': The GOP's Shameful War on Voters As a general rule, I don't agree with Republican lawmakers, since they're generally wrong. But after looking into one of their main issues, I have to agree with them: Our elections are being rigged. Anyone who takes an honest look can see that the electoral process all across the country is being... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, February 24, 2021 What the Texas Deep Freeze Revealed About Corporate-Run Government It's written that Nero, the debauched ancient emperor, fiddled while Rome burned. Whether or not that's true, it certainly is true that Ted Cruz, the self-indulgent Texas senator, fiddled around while his state froze. Among those who now must pay the price of the GOP's fealty to corporate interests... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, February 10, 2021 We Can Push Biden for Fundamental Change at the USDA and Beyond We've put Joe Biden in the White House ... but what do we get back for that? We get a real possibility of winning some progressive policies. Not that he will turn into a fireball of democratic populism, but unlike in 1992 and 2008, when then-President Bill Clinton and then-President Barack Obama... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 30, 2020 'Lord of the Flies,' Revisited Many of us read William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" in high school — and it's still being taught. The 1954 novel depicts the gradual descent into barbaric darkness by a group of English schoolboys shipwrecked on a small, deserted island. Its portrayal of innate human depravity was hailed at the... Read more |