Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
Sometimes, cosmic oddities come together in comic ways. For example, Google positions the biography of right-wing Texas governor Greg Abbott right under the one for yesteryear’s slapstick comedians, Abbott and Costello.
It’s almost cruel for Gov. Greg to be juxtaposed with that quick-witted duo, for he’s a dour, slow-witted, plutocratic pol, with no perceptible sense of humor. As governor, he has focused on demonizing poor people, rigging elections and doing favors for moneyed elites. Unsurprisingly, only four out of 10 Texas voters now support him. Yet — don’t laugh — in a move of burlesque absurdity, Abbott now says he might choose to become president. Yes, of the United States!
Filled with pomposity, he recently proclaimed, “I will be guided by God.” Well, maybe so, since the god he faithfully follows is Mammon. Indeed, his major credential for becoming the GOP nominee for president is that he is a pro at the Pay-to-Play game of using taxpayer money to entice special interests to fund his political career. “You pay me, then I pay you” is his corrupt game plan, which he has used to amass a whopping $87 million for his next election.
For example, watchdog group Public Citizen has documented some $3 million that Abbott got from executives of eight corporations. In turn, those eight were given nearly a billion dollars in no-bid state contracts — a 33,000% profit on their donations to Abbott!
For high rollers, Abbott is better than a winning Powerball lottery ticket. Buy him, and the Pay-to-Play merry-go-round keeps spinning at taxpayer expense. To fight such big money corruption, go to Public Citizen: citizen.org.
Washington’s MAGA government is shoveling massive giveaways of public money to corporate elites. Worse, though, are its takeaways of people’s power to battle the abuse of those same plutocratic corporations. Consider just three recent examples:
Travel: Perhaps your family plans a holiday flight to visit grandma. Flying itself has become dicey, but at least the government is requiring airlines that cause long delays or cancellations to compensate us passengers for our loss. Uh ... no, no more. President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary (who was previously a LOBBYIST for the big airlines!) is “loosening” the rules so that monopolistic airlines owe nothing to abused customers.
Job opportunities: One of the nastiest wage suppression tactics of corporate bosses has been their collusion to make employees sign “noncompete” contracts. These amount to indentured servitude, preventing workers from quitting to take a better job with a competing firm. This corporate lockdown costs American workers some $40 billion a year in wages they could get in an open job market. The FTC was finally moving to ban these noncompete gimmicks — but Trump installed a corporate lackey at the FTC to snuff out this spark of workplace liberty.
Pollution: Corporate lobbyists and MAGA lawmakers are rigging the rules to let industrial giants escape responsibility for their massive environmental contamination. For example, the profiteering greed heads who’ve deceptively caused tons of deadly “forever chemicals” to be spread on our land, water, communities and families are to be let off the hook by the new, corporate-hugging EPA honcho. He says we taxpayers must pay for the toxic cleanup, not the polluters.
If you’re unclear about the meaning of “plutocracy,’ there it is: government by and for the despotic rich.
It’s been my honor to know a few real heroes — people who’ve selflessly dared to fight greed and oppression to advance the common good. Diane Wilson, for example.
For 40 years, this fiery, fourth-generation fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf Coast has battled tenaciously for the rights and very survival of the area’s hardscrabble fishing families. She and her grassroots allies have taken on Formosa Plastics, a $250 billion, global corporate beast that has routinely dumped its chemical waste around Matagorda Bay, poisoning life and livelihoods.
But in 2019, in a lawsuit based on massive evidence collected by Wilson and her armada of volunteer kayakers, she won a stunning court victory, forcing the contaminator to pay $50 million for its malfeasance.
Wilson’s fight was not just for her, and she did not get a penny from the Formosa settlement. But she won something richer than money — “It felt like justice,” she said of the court’s judgement.
Importantly, the court didn’t award the $50 million to some regulatory agency, but to a public trust administered by — guess who? — Wilson’s allies! So, she has been working tenaciously ever since to make sure the money directly benefits the poor families Formosa ran over. Especially promising is the trust’s major grant to create the people’s own Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative. It will provide dock space, supply contracts, processing ability, local jobs ... and the power for local people to forge their own future.
Why fight against overpowering odds for 40 years? Because of her strong principles ... and sheer stubbornness. “It’s my home,” Wilson says of the bay and its working-class community, “and I completely refuse to give it to that company to ruin.”
For decades, these chieftains of our economic order have been steadily implementing a very visionary process for establishing corporate wage levels. The essence of it is this: Let the workers set their own pay! Since the 1970s, when this idea began taking hold in Corporate America, pay levels have zoomed up by more than 1,000%.
Well ... not for you. This set-your-own-pay movement has only been available to top corporate executives, whose median paychecks now top $16 million a year! But since it’s been a boon for this test group, I say it’s time to expand the no-hassle compensation concept to all employees. This would greatly boost grassroots purchasing power, economic growth and fairness for all.
“Omigod no,” squawk corporate apologists, rushing to say that, technically, CEOs do not directly set their pay. Rather, the bosses have attached their earnings to their corporations’ ever-rising stock prices. Thus, astronomical rewards go to those who obsessively focus on jacking up the price of their own stock, even though that’s a selfishly narrow and false measure of a corporation’s performance.
Also, stock price is not an indicator of a CEO’s worthiness. Even bosses who’re blockheads can still get a boost simply because they’ve rigged the system to hitch a free ride on inflated stock value.
Still, if it’s good for them, why not an equal deal for working stiffs who deliver the products and services that give a corporation some true value? I say, each worker should get the same percentage increase in pay that the top honcho takes. It’s a simple process ... and it’s only fair.
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.
