Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
From the Lowdown’s “Early Political Warning System” comes this Code Red alert (BRRAAAPP) ... a fast-moving front of corporate corruption is sweeping westward from the White House ... (BRRAAAPP) ... Residents are urged to seek higher ethical ground immediately ... (BRRRAAAPP).
This is not a test, but a warning of an unnatural disaster: A plutocratic cabal of corporate elites is aiming to gut and eventually eliminate America’s National Weather Service! Yes, that’s the extensive network of scientific analysts, monitoring systems, researchers, emergency responders, and others trying to anticipate, prepare for, and protect us from the worst of storms, floods, wildfires and other calamities.
In the name of “efficiency,” Republican politicos are now defunding and cancelling essential storm warning centers, hurricane monitoring staffs and flood rescue teams. They’re even closing some forecast offices at night (as though bad weather checks out at sunset). Why?
Greed. Wall Street profiteers — including President Donald Trump appointees and political funders — have long lusted to privatize the weather service. While no one can control the weather, it is possible to control, commodify, and monopolize the collection, interpretation, and distribution of forecasting data. So, Trump Inc. intends to stop providing these functions as a public service for the benefit of all. Instead, weather data would become a corporate profit center, packaged and sold at premium prices to media conglomerates, insurance giants, private resorts, and others who can afford it.
These privatizing profiteers are shameful. They’re deliberately demonizing, destaffing and dismantling a public service that is essential to America’s common good — just so they can steal it for their own profit. To rebel against their destructive greed, check out Union of Concerned Scientists: UCS.org
If you want to learn how to play the game, boys and girls, forget all that old-fashioned stuff like “do your best,” “be a good sport” and “respect the game.”
No, no, that’s loser talk. Today, the name of the game is winning. You’re Number One, or you’re nothing, so forget fair play and do whatever it takes to WIN! Of course, the gold medal champion of gaming the system is President Donald Trump, and to see the master in action, look at his current electoral manipulation in Texas.
With only a slim majority in the U.S. House, and with his job-approval rating plummeting, Trump recently realized he’s in danger of losing his iron grip on Congress in next year’s mid-term elections. Gosh, what to do? Simple — rig the election! And no place is better at that than Texas.
So, Lord Donald ordered Greg Abbott, the right-wing partisan hack who is governor of this once-proud Lone Star State, to convene a special legislative session to redraw our congressional districts. Never mind that the districts had already been gerrymandered by Abbott only four years ago, Trump is demanding that voters be herded like cattle into even more convoluted districts. The goal is to oust five Texas Democrats from the House, thus stacking the Congressional deck with more Republicans so he can keep ruling the place. It’s political game-playing at its worst, disrespecting voters and the very idea of a House of Representatives.
Of course, there is an honorable way for the GOP to elect more of its own without engaging in political perversion: Stop trying to push far-right-wing nonsense that the great majority of voters don’t want. Instead, put up decent candidates who don’t need a Trump script to know what they stand for ... and don’t need a Trump map to find the district that they supposedly “represent.”
In 2018 my newspaper died. Well, actually, the emaciated carcass of the Austin American Statesman still had a feeble pulse. But its journalistic voice and soul were gone, stripped out by the notorious financial predators of Gannett, the huge media conglomerate that had recently bought the paper.
Happily, though, the Statesman has made a near-miraculous recovery, thanks to a small-but-feisty band of actual journalists who believe in local newspapers. They fought Gannett bosses tenaciously, gaining a voice by forming a union, striking and finally compelling the giant to sign a union contract. Victory!
Uh ... not yet. Just months later, Gannett sold the newspaper to Hearst, another massive media conglomerate. This new relationship started well, but soon turned sour when Hearst honchos abruptly refused to honor the paper’s contract with the union. Then they began firing employees and jacking around with the newsroom’s healthcare and retirement benefits. Adding pettiness to greed, Hearst honchos even refused to let Statesman journalists take a holiday that corporate managers get. What the hell?
Bear in mind that Hearst is a phenomenally profitable, $13-billion-a-year, multi-media behemoth. It’s CEO, Steven Swartz, pockets millions of dollars a year and lives in luxury. Also, Austin is a booming media market worth gazillions to Hearst! No need to be so pathetically mingy.
So, the hardy members of the Austin News Guild are back doing what working people do — organizing and mobilizing for a little more justice. “We’re no strangers to the petty tactics of corporate elites,” they say, so the guild is relaunching its grassroots campaign to battle the bastards, fight for fairness, and protect local news. To track progress, go to: AustinNewsGuild.org.
Has your family visited any of America’s phenomenal national parks or historical sites this summer? What treasures they are!
Also, visits to these jewels are enriched by the deeply knowledgeable Park Service staff. And, of course, there’s the extra-special bonus that the President Donald Trump regime has added to our public parks this year: Political censorship.
With Trump issuing his dizzying blizzard of right-wing executive orders, you might’ve missed the one in March commanding the Park Service to scrutinize all of its public exhibits, signs, websites, videos and other materials. Why? To flag and delete any scrap of information that Trump’s right-wing cultural cops consider to be “negative” historical content about America or its “heroic” leaders.
Sure enough, the Interior Department’s political overseers promptly compelled staff at the Park Service’s 433 locations to go on a witch hunt for ideological impurity. In particular, any suggestion that racism, oppression, autocracy and violence have been common features of the American experience has been decreed verboten. And, to assure a thorough cleansing of history, MAGA groups have been invited to go to historic sites and tag items they don’t like. Trump operatives say that by mid-September, they will have removed, deleted, or — get this — physically covered up the inconvenient truths of our people’s history.
They’re like one-year-olds who think if they cover their eyes, we can’t see them. Well, peek-a-boo! A rebellious coalition called “Save Our Signs” is asking grassroots people to take photos and videos of Park Service exhibits before they’re hidden away. Then, SOS will display samples of the banned material online so We the People can see the inanity of Trump’s 1984ish Newspeak censorship. Link to SOS at jimhightower.com/SaveOurSigns.
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.
