Jim Hightower from Creators Syndicate

It's Official: Money Now Governs America for 02/15/2012

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The rich are different from you and me, but the really, really, really rich are also different from the merely rich.

For example, the rich can buy caviar and Champagne, but the Triple-R Rich can buy entire presidential campaigns.

Take Sheldon Adelson, the moneybags who's pumped $11 million so far into Newt Gingrich's right-wing run. He has single-handedly kept Gingrich's White Hou ...

Updated: Wed Feb 15, 2012

What's in Your iPhone? for 02/08/2012

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Early last year, during an intimate chat and chew dinner with some Silicon Valley high-tech barons, President Barack Obama posed a question to Steve Jobs, baron of the Apple empire: "What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?"

Good question! To rebuild our middle class, we need to put more people to work building more stuff in America, rather than shipping all tha ...

Updated: Wed Feb 08, 2012

Newt Gingrich: The Spawn of Citizens United for 02/01/2012

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Wow, January's gone already — time really flies when you're having Republican presidential primaries! And what better time than Groundhog Day to poke into that warren of feral Republican ideologues and see what the heck is going on.

Already, four of the GOP contenders have had to drop out — Michele Bachmann because she was just too wacky, Jon Huntsman because he was too sane, ...

Updated: Wed Feb 01, 2012

By Axing Parks, Politicos Are Stealing the People's Property for 01/25/2012

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

"Sorry, we're closed." In one of the saddest signs of the times, this message is popping up all across the country, as governors and legislators are cutting off funds (and shutting off access) to one of the finest, most popular assets owned by the people of our country: state parks.

More than 6,600 of these jewels draw some 700 million visitors a year to their grand vistas, his ...

Updated: Wed Jan 25, 2012

Americas Class Divide for 01/18/2012

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

What planet does presidential wannabe Rick Santorum live on? When it comes to grasping the situation of America's hard-hit workaday majority, this sweater-vested ultra-right-winger is further out than Pluto.

In a recent debate, Santorum assailed a tax plan proposed by front-runner Mitt Romney. It wasn't the plan's details that caused Rick to stamp his tiny feet, but Romney's expressed in ...

Updated: Wed Jan 18, 2012

Afghanistan forever. And ever. And ever. for 01/11/2012

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Oh, to be in Afghanistan again, when the poppies are in bloom!

If you need a symbol of how America's decade-long war is going in this faraway land, look no farther than the beautiful fields of red poppies flowering so bountifully there. Unfortunately, that bounty symbolizes a failure of an ambitious Western initiative against the Taliban forces.

Innocent little poppies are the raw ...

Updated: Wed Jan 11, 2012

Mediocre Candidates and Corporate Cash Storm Iowa for 01/04/2012

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

And away we go!

Not just into a new year, but —zap! — suddenly we find ourselves catapulted en masse into the turbulent Twilight Zone of the 2012 presidential election. On day three of the year, while most of us were still woozy from our New Year's Eve celebration, Iowa voted. Well ... sort of.

The media's breathless coverage of Tuesday night's 1,774 local Republican c ...

Updated: Wed Jan 04, 2012

Give a Gift That Matters for 12/28/2011

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

It wasn't that long ago that the act of "gift giving" didn't require a maddening trip to Walmart or a desperate online search for this season's must-have toy. Rather, a gift implied something from within, a little piece of yourself, no matter how small, showing you care.

Could that old-fashioned concept possibly become new-fashioned? Yes. With today's working-class depression s ...

Updated: Wed Dec 28, 2011

The Poor Rich and the Scrooginess of Congress for 12/21/2011

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

It's at this time of the year that generous, big-hearted Americans reach out to aid the less fortunate among us — like those who've recently been knocked down by the recession and seen their incomes plummet. I speak, of course, about our nation's severely squeezed millionaires.

Yes, many in the infamous 1 percent class are no longer feeling like a million bucks. According to a new ...

Updated: Wed Dec 21, 2011

America's Leaders Are Small, but Americans Are Not for 12/14/2011

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

"We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

What a paragraph! Whatever happened to that BIG id ...

Updated: Wed Dec 14, 2011

The Deep Shallowness of Professor Gingrich for 12/07/2011

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Mea culpa, I misspoke, my bad — I stand corrected.

In past commentaries, I have called Newt Gingrich a lobbyist. Apparently, he hates that tag, even though he has indeed gotten very wealthy by taking big bucks from such special interest outfits as IBM, AstraZeneca, Microsoft and Siemens in exchange for helping them get favors from federal and state governments. But Gingrich, his la ...

Updated: Wed Dec 07, 2011

It Takes People Power to Make Clear That Corporations Are NOT People for 11/30/2011

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

In the Nov. 8 elections, the national media gave extensive coverage to a proposed "personhood amendment" to Mississippi's state constitution. This was an extremist anti-abortion ballot initiative to declare that a person's life begins not at birth, but at the very instant that a sperm meets the egg. However, extending full personhood to two-cell zygotes was too far out even for many o ...

Updated: Wed Nov 30, 2011

What's on Your Plate? for 11/23/2011

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Make this Thanksgiving an occasion to celebrate our country's food rebels!

Yes, rebels. People who dare to challenge the conventional wisdom and try to find a better way for doing something, even with the odds against them and the Powers That Be saying it won't work. In this case, I'm talking about the growing movement of small farmers, food artisans, local retailers, co-ops, community o ...

Updated: Wed Nov 23, 2011

Bank of America: Always Thinking of You for 11/16/2011

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

One way you can tell that a bank is in trouble is that it suddenly starts buying full-page ads in newspapers across the country that tell us what great shape it's in and what a fine job it's doing for our communities.

Such a PR push is now being made by Bank of America, which — despite its happy-face ads — is in a heap of hurt. How big of a heap? So big that it's trying to sh ...

Updated: Wed Nov 16, 2011

Don't Just Salute Veterans, Rally With Them for 11/09/2011

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Here's a surprise that the power elites really hate to see: Many members of the 1 percent are joining the "We are the 99 percent" movement in various Occupy Wall Street protests.

I don't mean that corporate CEOs and hedge fund billionaires are suddenly in the streets to show solidarity with millions of Americans who're fed up with the systemic inequality and corruption infesti ...

Updated: Wed Nov 09, 2011

The Disuniting of America for 11/02/2011

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

In the Bible, Paul doesn't say that money is the root of all evil — rather, it is the love of money that he warns against.

In recent years, the insidious love of mammon (in the form of greed and excess) has not merely been tolerated in our country, but celebrated and even exalted into official public policy, marring our economy with dangerous inequality and injustice. The ...

Updated: Wed Nov 02, 2011

"We the People," Not "We the Corporations" for 10/26/2011

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

A year from now, Americans will be caught in an unprecedented blizzard of presidential campaign ads. We'll be blinded by the whiteout and buried in the storm's negativity.

For the first time ever, most of this ad blizzard will not come from the candidates, but from ads secretly funded by huge corporations. This is because a five-man cabal on the Supreme Court issued an edict last year t ...

Updated: Wed Oct 26, 2011

Wall Street Is Dazed and Confused for 10/19/2011

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Astonishingly, some Wall Streeters continue to be clueless about what the Occupy Wall Street movement is protesting. Yoo-hoo, Streeters: Note that the movement's name has the term "Wall Street" in it.

While there is a plethora of particular issues being raised by the protesters — from the corrupting power of corporate money in our elections to the demise of middle-class ...

Updated: Wed Oct 19, 2011

Playing Washington's Inside Game for 10/12/2011

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

And then there were 12.

When the 435 House members and 100 senators failed in July to agree on a long-term deficit reduction plan, congressional leaders did what they often do when they don't know what to do: They appointed a committee. But don't sneer, for this is — cue the trumpets — a supercommittee!

Made up of only a dozen lawmakers and perfectly balanced betwee ...

Updated: Wed Oct 12, 2011

Something Big Is Happening: Occupy Together for 10/05/2011

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

To paraphrase one of Bob Dylan's songs of youthful protest, "Something's happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Ms. Bellafante?"

A New York Times writer, Ginia Bellafante, is but one of many establishment reporters and pundits who've been covering the fledgling "Occupy Wall Street " movement — but completely missing the story. Instead of really d ...

Updated: Wed Oct 05, 2011