You’re not fooling me, Jimmy Carter. You did that on purpose! Dying when you did, I mean.
You chose December to grab the global political spotlight once more to make a statement with the only Earthly move you had left: checking out. What better way to make people ponder the state of political integrity in America than to reflect on how the Trump Kakistocracy is moving its arrogant billionaires, corporate grifters and ideological tyrants into our White House.
Sure enough, media coverage of Carter’s death highlighted his modest life in Plains, Georgia, plus the personal values of fairness and honesty that led him to a lifetime of roll-up-your-sleeves humanitarian efforts. What a damning contrast to the tawdry greedfest on display at Mar-a-Lago, with supposedly respectable corporate executives flocking to “get theirs” in Donald Trump’s sell-off of government favors and public offices.
And how amazed Carter must have been to see the gilded Trumpers flagrantly rejecting any pretense that theirs is to be a government of and for The People. He even saw Elon Musk — the prancing prince of plutocratic pomposity — practically move into Trump’s Florida mansion to shape the new government. To put a gloss of legitimacy on Musk’s self-serving role, Trump grandly named him head of an imaginary federal office he calls the “Department of Government Efficiency.” This DOGE should be pronounced “dodgy,” for it doesn’t actually exist and has no authority. But Musk is nonetheless flitting about officiously announcing that he will eliminate major programs that benefit people, while increasing government funding for — surprise! — corporations like his.
Even in death, the light of Jimmy Carter’s public integrity exposes the public corruption coming from Trump’s darkness.
This holiday season got me to thinking about America’s spirit of giving, and I don’t mean this overdone business of Christmas, Hanukkah and other holiday gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving — giving of ourselves.
Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there’s also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We’re a people who believe in the notion that we’re all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good.
The establishment media pay little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls “philanthropists” — big tycoons who give a little piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them. But in my mind, the real philanthropists are the millions of you ordinary folks who have precious little money to give, but consistently give of themselves, and do it without demanding that their name be engraved on a granite wall.
My own Daddy, rest his soul, was a fine example of this. With half a dozen other guys in Denison, Texas, he started the Little League baseball program, volunteering to build the park, sponsor and coach the teams, run the squawking PA system, etc. Even after I graduated from Little League, Daddy stayed working at it, because his involvement was not merely for his kids ... but for all. He felt the same way about being taxed to build a public library in town. I don’t recall him ever going in that building, much less checking out a book, but he wanted it to be there for the community and he was happy to pay his part. Not that he was a do-good liberal, for God’s sake — indeed, he called himself a conservative.
My Daddy didn’t even know he had a political philosophy, but he did, and it’s the best I’ve ever heard. He would often say to me, “Everybody does better when everybody does better.” If only our leaders in Washington and on Wall Street would begin practicing this true American philosophy.
And lo, the Magi came from afar, guided by a heavenly star to worship the Messiah of Mar-a-Lago. Bearing precious gifts of flattery, cash and bitcoin, the corporate Magi fell to their knees in awe when they beheld the Orange Aura in his gilded manger.
These starry-eyed worshippers are not religious seekers but uberrich CEOs of Wall Street banks and corporate giants. Abandoning any shred of principle and self-respect, they rushed to Florida this month on their private jets to suck up to The Donald, crassly trying to cash in on the plutocratic rule of his incoming Trump Taliban.
Especially embarrassing is the sight of avaricious high-tech titans seeking favors. These self-proclaimed paragons of “laissez-faire” economics are largely funded by us taxpayers, and they’re now trying to get more government giveaways the old-fashioned way: bribery. Such billionaire tech elites as Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook have greased their appeals by paying a million dollars each to Trump’s coronation committee — just to get a meeting with him!
Interestingly, both Bezos and Zuckerberg had previously condemned Trump’s flagrant xenophobia, racism and misogyny. But now, their repulsion has turned to adulation. After all, billionaires don’t let ethical principle get in the way of their (SET ITAL) financial principal. (END ITAL)
Do you have a million dollars to buy a meeting with His Lordship? What are today’s young people to make of greedheaded creeps like Bezos and Zuckerberg, who insist that not only can they openly buy government favors but mock our people’s democratic ideals? Young people are right: The system is corrupt. Trump aside, our No. 1 political goal must be to ban corporate money from politics.
As a writer, I get stuck every so often straining for the right words to tell my story. Over the years, though, I’ve learned when to quit tying myself into mental knots over sentence construction, instead stepping back and rethinking where my story is going.
This process is essentially what millions of American working families are going through this year as record numbers of them are shocking bosses, politicians and economists by stepping back and declaring, “We quit!” Most of the quits are tied to very real abuses that have become ingrained in our workplaces over the past couple of decades — poverty paychecks, no health care, unpredictable schedules, no child care, understaffing, forced overtime, unsafe jobs, sexist and racist managers, tolerance of aggressively-rude customers and so awful much more.
Specific grievances abound, but at the core of each is a deep, inherently destructive executive-suite malignancy: disrespect. The corporate system has cheapened employees from valuable human assets worthy of being nurtured and advanced to a bookkeeping expense that must be steadily eliminated. It’s not just about paychecks. It’s about feeling valued, feeling that the hierarchy gives a damn about the people doing the work.
Yet, corporate America is going out of its way to show that it doesn’t care — and, of course, workers notice. So, unionization is booming, millions who were laid off by the pandemic are refusing to rush back to the same old grind, and now millions who have jobs are quitting. This is much more than an unusual unemployment stat — it’s a sea change in people’s attitude about work itself ... and life.
People are rethinking where their story is going and how they can take it in a better direction. Yes, nearly everyone will eventually return to work, but workers themselves have begun redefining the job and rebalancing it with life.
America has endured a long panorama of corporate greed — from the East India Trading Company to the Robber Barons, Gordon Gecko Wall Streeters to Elon Musk. But down at the bottom of raw greediness today, you’ll find the insatiable profiteers of the private nursing home industry.
Of course, many providers deliver honest, truly caring service (especially nonprofit and publicly owned community centers). But as a whole, this essential service has fallen into the clutches of money-hustling corporate chains and Wall Street speculators. Their goal is not to maximize grandma’s care but to minimalize her cost to faraway rich shareholders.
Their most common profiteering ploy is to understaff their facilities, leaving vulnerable residents unattended ... and often, dead. Federal law, though, lets corporate owners define “sufficient” staff levels, which is why so many are grossly insufficient. One profit-padding tactic is called “tunneling” — the chain sets up a dummy staffing agency to provide employees for the chain’s nursing homes. That agency then charges greatly inflated to provide employees. But the chain doesn’t complain, since it owns the agency ... and since unknowing customers end up paying the jacked-up tab.
President Joe Biden has proposed new rules to stop the gouging and improve care, including a requirement that each “nursing” home actually keep at least one nurse on staff. One! But, oh, the squeals by billionaire owners! “Cost prohibitive,” they howl! So, instead of hiring nurses, they’re hiring high-dollar lobbyists and lawyers to kill this little bit of health care fairness for people who are near the end of life.
These multimillionaire executives and billionaire investors are not only gouging families but profiteering on the health of people’s loved ones. In case they care, that is why the public despises them.
How are monopolistic corporations able to gain their economic dominance? By getting politicians to give it to them.
Consider the old robber barons. They weren’t brilliant investors or managers but ruthless exploiters of government giveaways and bribers of officials who permitted their monopolistic thievery.
Likewise, today’s monopoly players have captured local, state and national markets — not through honest competition but by getting public officials to subsidize their expansion and to rig the rules against small competitors. Monopolizers buy this favoritism with the legalized bribes of campaign donations they lavish on compliant lawmakers.
Investigative digger Stacy Mitchell recently documented how this corrupt political favoritism has allowed massive retail chains like Walmart, Kroger and Dollar Tree to crush thousands of local grocers. This has left millions of Americans living in “food deserts” — poor and rural communities with no food store.
What happened? As grocery chains spread from local to regional to national, they demanded that food manufacturers give them big discounts, giving them a dramatic monopoly pricing advantage over independent rivals. So, hometown grocers began hemorrhaging customers ... and going broke.
This raw, anti-competitive price discrimination was a flagrant violation of America’s anti-monopoly law — but here came Big Money to protect the monopolists. In 1980, as President Ronald Reagan was railing against “silly” consumer protection laws, supermarket lobbyists poured campaign cash into top officials of both parties. What they bought was bipartisan agreement to simply stop enforcing the “fusty” old antitrust law that had protected a competitive grocery economy for nearly 50 years.
But good news! That useful, highly effective law is still on the books, so let’s build a long-term grassroots campaign to rejuvenate it and re-outlaw monopolization, redlining and price gouging by food giants. For more information, go to Institute for Local Self Reliance: ilsr.org.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2025
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