Hightower Lowdown

At his 2005 hearing to be confirmed as chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts had to convince some skeptical senators that he would not be merely a judicial shill for the corporate powers he had long served in both private practice and government work. To get over this hump, the dapper and affable Roberts charmed senators (as well as the media) with a comforting, homespun baseball analogy:"Judges are like umpires," he softly assured the committee. "Umpires don't make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and judge is critical. They make sure everyone plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire."

Boffo performance! This son of a corporate executive, this disciple of (and former clerk for) right-wing Justice William Rehnquist, this faithful Republican who served on George W's legal team that wrested Florida and the presidency away from Al Gore in 2000, this Washington lawyer who made more than $1 million a year representing corporations--Roberts won confirmation by convincing 22 uneasy Democratic senators that he would be an unbiased umpire, not a judicial activist for his former clients. His tenure on the court, he said plainly, would be marked by "modesty and humility."

He lied. In his four years as chief, Roberts has consistently, unabashedly, and rather ruthlessly championed the corporate position over aggrieved workers, the environment, taxpayers, and others. Along the way, he has not been hesitant to make law from the bench. For example, he sided with Goodyear Tire in the infamous 2007 ruling against Lilly Ledbetter. From 1979 to 1998, she was the only woman serving as a plant supervisor at a Goodyear factory in Alabama. Only at the end of her career did Ms. Ledbetter learn that she had routinely been paid as much as 40% less than her male counterparts. So, in 1998, she filed an anti-discrimination lawsuit, which finally made its way to the Supremes. There, in an absurd rewriting of the law and a blatant rejection of legal precedent, Roberts joined four other justices to rule that she had no valid claim because she had not filed suit within 180 days of first suffering the discrimination--even though she didn't know about the pay disparity for 20 years!

In a time when the public has been making clear its disdain for corporate avarice, arrogance, and abuse--and its desire to rein in the ferocious power of these behemoths--Roberts has crafted a slim majority of the nine justices (usually this is himself, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito) to go 180 degrees in the other direction. These five men have quietly turned our judicial branch of government into an activist, antidemocratic force for expanding the reach of corporate elites over the rest of us. [Interesting non sequitur about Scalia and Alito: Irreverent songwriter Randy Newman asked an intriguing question: How is it that the only two tight-assed Italians in America both ended up on the Supreme Court?] [ read more ]

When I lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked for the Congressional Research Service--a legislative agency that digs up facts, prepares briefing papers, and otherwise does research on any topic requested by members of Congress.

My friend could barely speak, because he was hooting, howling, and guffawing over a research question he'd just received. It was from the office of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the aloof and patrician Texas Democrat who was known on Capitol Hill primarily as a faithful emissary for Wall Street interests. At the time, Bentsen was contemplating a run for the presidency, and apparently he was searching for a suitable political identity. "What is a populist?" read the research query. "The senator thinks he might be one."

Uh...no sir, you are not.

Bentsen was closer to being "The Man in the Moon" than he was to being a populist. Yet, he was hardly alone in trying to cloak himself as "The People's Champion" while remaining faithful to the plutocratic powers. These days, there's a whole flock of politicos and pundits doing this--from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich to Glenn Beck.

They are abetted by a media establishment that carelessly (and lazily) misapplies the populist label to anyone who claims to be a maverick and tends to bark a lot. Although the targets they're usually barking at are poor people, teachers, minorities, unions, liberals, protestors, environmentalists, gays, immigrants, or other demonized groups that generally reside far outside the center of the power structure--the barkers are indiscriminately tagged as populist voices.

First of all, populism is not a style, nor is it a synonym for "popular outrage." It is a historically grounded political doctrine (and movement) that supports ordinary folks in their ongoing democratic fight against the moneyed elites. [ read more ]

After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.

Me, too. As you Lowdowners know, I'm wary about how progressive (much less how populist) Obama's presidency will be, but--come on, let's wallow in the moment, let's greet the historic symbolism of his election with all the glee that it deserves, and let's take energy from the hope that he presents to us.

I had my own moment of reflection shortly after Election Day. I was rummaging through some old personal papers and came across a small document from 1964. I was a junior in college that year and had just turned 21, making me eligible to vote for the first time. This little slip of paper, issued to me by the county election office, was my Certificate of Exemption From Poll Tax.

Yes, as late as '64, Texas still made people pay to vote. First-time voters were given an exemption from the tax, which I recall being about $5. That was real money in those days. The levy was intended to deter poor people, especially blacks and Mexican-Americans, from joining the democratic process. It was successful.

The poll tax, which ended in 1966, was a mirror of the time. Growing up in Denison, Texas, my school years were totally segregated--from kindergarten through my high-school graduation in 1961. The southern youth of my day were raised on the Big Lie that somehow or other racial separation was "normal." The first time I sat next to a black kid in a classroom was when I went off to college at North Texas State in '61 --and he was from my home town of Denison! I was face to face with the Lie, and that jolting reality drew me into civil-rights activism, which later moved me into antiwar activism, which later moved me... well, here I am.

And here we all are, standing in a better place than we came from. The thing we can celebrate is not solely that Obama's going into the Oval Office, but that so many people over so many years worked so hard, enduring so many ups and downs, to get to this day. [ read more ]

At a time when We The People have been vociferously and unequivocally demanding that our political aspirants offer Big Ideas on America's Big Issues (good jobs, health care for all, the wars, Wall Street greed, our collapsing infrastructure, big-money corruption of government, etcetera), the presidential campaign has taken a dive into the politics of lipstick and other smears.

Barack Obama's campaign has been oddly tepid, as if on cruise control. It has not been hammering its best ideas, such as his call for a massive, long-term, multibillion-dollar program to restore America's economy and world leadership through a Green Deal that would create millions of middle-class jobs and achieve true energy independence from Big Oil. Far worse, the once-proud "straight-talk express" of John McCain has dissolved into a pool of Karl Rovian sleaze.

The McCainites shrieked in September that Obama had called the sainted Sarah Palin a lipstick-wearing pig. Which, of course, he had not. Wait, they shrieked even more shrilly in a campaign ad, Obama supported a bill to require "comprehensive sex ed" for kindergarteners, forcing children to learn about sex "before learning to read." Which, of course, he had not. Then came last month's Wall Street banking collapse, and McCain immediately popped out an ad huffing that Obama was getting his advice on financial policy from a former CEO of one of the failed banks. Which, of course, he was not. McCain's henchmen have also spread rumors that Obama is a Muslim, that he is not even an American citizen, and that he won't put his hand over his heart to pledge allegiance to our flag. Which, of course, he is not, he is, and he does. And have you heard? Obama has fathered black children!

Such stuff would be a knee-slapping hoot if it was a skit on "Saturday Night Live," but this is a campaign to choose the president of the United States. Every day that McCain and crew can set the media yackety-yackers buzzing over nonsense and force Obama to respond to lipstick is a day that there is no national discussion of what matters. [ read more ]