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jim hightower
Beware This Libertarian Oligarch's Ecological Utopia in Texas
Even as one arm of Elon Musk's empire was extolling his vision of a Garden of Eden situated along the beauty of the Colorado River, another arm was scheming to pollute it!
Mar 22, 2023
Exciting news, people: Utopia is on the rise!
Space Commander Elon Musk has announced that His Magnificence (i.e., him) intends to construct his very own private town on 3,500 acres of farmland near his new Tesla plant southeast of Austin, Texas. More than a town, Musk explains that he will create utopia in Texas, promising an "ecological paradise" where his Tesla workers can live and do fun things like swimming, pickleball... and paying rent to him.
The gabillionaire is certainly rich enough to erect his own Muskopolis. But, alas, the "utopia" name is already taken. Indeed, I've been to Utopia, Texas, a small town west of San Antonio that was founded in 1855 by (cover your ears, Elon!) Swiss Socialists. Of course, history shows that a company town is ruled by the company, not by residents (much less socialists). And Musk has made clear at Tesla, Twitter, etc. that his personal whims rule over workers, consumers, our environment... and even truth.
Which brings us to that ecological worker's paradise he's promising. Even as one arm of his empire was extolling his vision of a Garden of Eden situated along the beauty of the Colorado River, another arm was scheming to pollute it! Musk is asking Texas' corporate-controlled regulators to let him use the site to dump 140,000 gallons a day of his industrial wastewater into the Colorado.
Excuse me, but that turns Elon's ecological paradise into a fraud. Worse, it adds up to Musk pouring 50 million gallons a year of his waste into the river, fouling the main water source for dozens of towns and hundreds of farms downstream.
Musk seeks to extend the long, sordid history in our country of company-town hucksters, and his latest Texas scam is proof that we should never trust a billionaire promising us paradise.
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When the Book-Burners Come to Your Town
In the future Ron DeSantis would build, self-appointed bands of bounty hunters would be authorized to roam the countryside suing local libraries for having "banned" books on the shelves.
Mar 15, 2023
Not so long ago, book burnings were considered a festive group activity by assorted right-wing zealots. Today, though, burning seems so old-fashioned and, well... crude.
Yet, the concept is burning hotter than ever among a gaggle of testosterone-driven Republican leaders eager to show voters that they will go to extremes to incinerate progressive ideas and people's personal liberties. Rather than lighting bonfires, though, the new fad for GOP politicians is simply to use government power to ban the offending books (thus saving the expense of matches and lighter fluid).
It might not surprise you to learn that our Lone Star State's extremist political operatives are leading today's book-banning frenzy. One Jonathan Mitchell, for example, is going from town to town pushing Texas Republican officeholders to pass local ordinances he labels "Safe Library Patron Protection." Yes, patrons, censoring what you can read is necessary to "protect" you. The GOP ban prohibits libraries from having books, videos, etc. that contain "immoral content," which he defines as depictions of nudity, sexual behavior, mentions of masturbation, LGBTQ+ life, etc. It's also autocratically homophobic, making it illegal for librarians to display LGBTQ flags or even mention "LGBTQ Pride Month."
This repressive monomania stabs even deeper into our freedom of expression by concocting a "right" of right-wing vigilantes to enforce the ordinances. Yes, self-appointed bands of bounty hunters would be authorized to roam the countryside suing local libraries (and individual librarians) for having "banned" books on the shelves. To spur this political malice, Mitchell's scheme provides a $10,000 reward for every violation a vigilante finds (or fabricates).
Well, you say, thank God I don't live in Texas! But — Hello! — repression doesn't recognize state borders, so the pernicious idea of paid library marauders is spreading across the country.
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Will the United States Ever Become a Strong Nation for the Common Good?
Even more transformative than the particular components is Biden's back-to-the-future method of paying for the Rebuild America agenda: returning to highly progressive taxation.
Apr 07, 2021
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 do big public projects: Abraham Lincoln's fight for a transcontinental railroad and a land-grant college network to serve small farmers; Teddy Roosevelt's establishment of our national park system; Franklin D. Roosevelt's electrification of rural America, creation of social safety nets and conservation initiatives; Dwight Eisenhower's interstate highway system; Harry Truman's GI Bill; John F. Kennedy's moonshot; and Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty and civil rights achievements.
It's only during the last 40 years, since Ronald Reagan's "government is evil" demagoguery, that our presidents and lawmakers -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- shriveled to no-can-do mediocrities, unwilling to even try tackling America's big needs or invest in our people's unlimited possibilities. This meek failure of leadership is why our nation's infrastructure -- once world-class -- has deteriorated to an embarrassing 16th in the world, as ranked by the Global Competitiveness Report, putting us beneath such smaller and poorer nations as Iceland and Portugal. It's hard to muster any national pride in chanting, "We're No. 16!"
But -- surprise! -- here comes Joe, a lifelong go-slow Democrat, unexpectedly rising to the challenge by proposing a get-serious, roll-up-our-sleeves $2 trillion package of investments to modernize and extend Americas collapsing infrastructure. While President Biden's plan is not as big as it needs to be, neither is it merely more tinkering around the edges, meekly trying once again to "incentivize" the corporate plutocracy to put another coat of pain on our country's structural inadequacies.
Biden's proposal would not only repair roads, bridges and dams but also give a long-overdue boost to such needs as rural high-speed broadband, replacing the country's deadly networks of lead water pipes, building clean energy systems, constructing affordable housing, upgrading public transit systems, increasing home health care for the elderly and providing affordable child care facilities -- all geared toward creating good union jobs and lifting local economies.
Even more transformative than the particular components is Biden's back-to-the-future method of paying for the Rebuild America agenda: returning to highly progressive taxation. Instead of the same old no-tax, laissez-fairyland extremism that Washington has practiced for 40 years (leading to the deep infrastructure hole we're now in), Biden will at long last demand that multinational corporate behemoths and their greed-fueled, uberrich chieftains stop dodging their tax obligations to America. It's the same fair-taxation policy that funded our interstate highway system and the Space Race -- a period of unmatched USA productivity and rising living standards for millions of working families.
An old political truism expresses that often-frustrating challenge of making big change: "Where there's a will, there are 1,000 won'ts."
And, oh, what a hurricane of won'ts swirled out of Washington's power centers in March to pummel Joe Biden! Corporate lobbyists and their congressional hirelings howled and blustered at him for declaring that he would seek a tax increase on corporations to pay for the essential, overdue job of repairing and expanding our nation's antiquated, dilapidated and wholly inadequate infrastructure. Biden wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from its present 21%. Blowhard Mitch McConnell, the GOP's Senate leader, practically blew a gasket, wailing that poor corporate America should not be singled out to bear this "burden."
But wait -- didn't Mitch single out the corporate giants in 2017 to receive a windfall in their tax rate, lowering it from 35%? Yes, and they pocketed hundreds of billions of dollars from that giveaway. So, nudging them up to 28% is hardly punishment, for they still come out way ahead of the rates that regular people pay.
And the corporate tax rate is a sham, for the giants have wormed loopholes in the law to give them exemptions so they can avoid paying what they owe. A new study reports that at least 55 of the biggest corporations paid a goose egg in U.S. income taxes last year -- zero, nada -- despite hauling in billions in profits. As Sen. Bernie Sanders points out: "If you paid $120 for a pair of Nike Air Force 1 shoes, you paid more to Nike than it paid in federal income taxes over the past 3 years, while it made $4.1 billion in profits." In those three years, Nike honcho Phil Knight worked the system to increase his personal wealth by $23 billion.
That's the corrupt wealth system that McConnell, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the corporate plutocracy are defending. Oh, they exclaim, we think it's essential to repair and update America's crucial public systems -- BUT, as McConnell so gingerly put it, "As much as we would like to address infrastructure," asking our corporate political funders to pay more "is not going to get support from our side."
So, who do they want to pay for it? You. Working people and the poor. Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican and GOP leader, points to putting more user fees on drivers and adding taxes on consumers as the way to go.
To see a list of other major corporate scofflaws who've been pocketing billions in profits yet paying zilch to the upkeep of America, visit the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy website at ITEP.org.
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