Texas: What the Hell? The Lone Star State's government, a wholly owned corporate subsidiary, solidified its ranking this year as America's number one innovator of really bad public policies.

Branching out from their usual corrupt collusion with Big Oil, industrial polluters and other profiteering hucksters, the governor and top lawmakers came up with a whole new batch of legalized slick-um, specifically to protect and profit a new Texas stock market for big money dealers. Who needs it? After all, beaucoup markets already exist for speculators and such. Yes — but those markets are at least loosely regulated to protect investors — plus, some states want to tax stock-trading profits.

So here come Texas politicos, pushing a cutely named "Y'all Street" stock exchange, promising that it'll be "speculator-friendly." Friendly means limp regulation, little public disclosure of schemes and hostility to taxation.

For example, to spare rich stock profiteers from paying their share of taxes (like working stiffs do), Republican leaders have graciously acted to prevent state taxation on the massive profits speculators get from selling stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. And, to prove their undying plutocratic love for the rich, lawmakers plan to engrave this special tax break in the Texas Constitution, effectively closing off rich people's ill-gotten gains as a source of revenue for the state's future needs.

This Lone Star stock market is a cynical big-government scam to further enrich the privileged few, hoping to shift the cost of basic public services away from those most able to pay onto the backs of workaday families. If you wonder how inequality happens, study the Texas example. And hurry — the right-wing intends to bring it to your state next.

UNITING THE UNITED PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A headline on a recent news article caught my eye, for it declared, "Americans Disagree on Everything."

I said to myself, "I disagree with that!"

Indeed, the untold story of today's America is the good news that We the People fundamentally agree on more than what supposedly separates us. It is true that our daily media feed does relentlessly push political negativity and discord, and it's true that hyper-partisan politicians grab attention by hammering their narrow views into swords of hatred. But that's them, not the greater us.

Even hot-button issues that dominate the internet and talk shows are not actually all that divisive for the majority of us. For example, nearly 90% of Americans (including two-thirds of Republicans) oppose the right-wing attempt to whitewash our nation's history by restricting teachers, museums, etc., from addressing such realities as slavery.

More significantly, consider the real needs of ordinary workaday families. Basics like living wages, protecting Social Security, busting up monopolies, cleaning up pollution, providing affordable housing, funding our parks and libraries and stopping price gouging. Overwhelmingly, Americans in red, blue and purple areas agree on what government ought to be doing — and disagree with what it is doing. But the plutocratic moneyed elites that now fund and perpetuate America's corrupt and dysfunctional government profit by promoting hatreds to pit us against each other, praying that all of us don't focus on them.

Don't succumb to their self-serving lies but seek ways to unite in what we Americans do agree on — specifically our historic commitment to the democratic values of economic fairness, social justice and equal treatment for all. Anything less is BS.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Enrique Macias at Unsplash