Hightower Lowdown

Hightower and I launched the Lowdown in March 1999 with an issue about how the World Trade Organization was forcing multinational corporations' version of globalization on, well, the world. Hightower called this "NAFTA on steroids" and blasted President Clinton for letting big business keep the environment and labor out of trade agreements.

That's why today, when people ask us what the Lowdown is going to write about now that the Bushites are gone, we say, what we've always written about --how the corporate overlords buy our government so they can keep running the country without us commoners getting in their way.

Obama's election opens doors to the possibility of real change. But remember his words: "I am not the change. You are." Indeed, more of his economic advisors are from Wall Street than from Main Street, meaning we Lowdowners will always have to toughen him up.

As Hightower put it in the Lowdown nine years ago, "Most politicians would rather try to sandpaper a bobcat's butt than crack down on corporations."

Then he reminded us that most states have the authority to revoke corporate charters and we should push them to do just that. Not that the Lowdown is antibusiness. We celebrate the millions of entrepreneurs whose visions have helped hundreds of millions of American workers to create our nation's unprecedented wealth.

Our targets are the corporate jefes who have taken over our political system, destroyed our economy, and now tell us how indispensable they are.

--Phillip Frazer, publisher and co-editor