Help us out by throwing some cash in the bucket:
Click here to read Hightower's personal message about
REAL CHANGE
(not small change)
Hightower Lowdown
"The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages." -- Jim Hightower
December's Lowdown
Corporate elites and their small-minded political servants are creating the Incredibly Shrinking America
"We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." What a paragraph! This sparse, 52-word opening of our Constitution did not merely launch a fledgling nation--but a bold experiment in democratic idealism.
[read more]
Stay in the Loop
Sign up for email alerts, from breaking news to weekly commentary:
In This Issue
One woman's brave stand against those who would steal our democracy
Go, Granny, Go!
Also in this issue:
Subscriber Features
Manage your account by logging in. Don't have an account? Get the Lowdown in the mail every month -- for the unbelievable, ridiculous, low, low price of $15 per year! Save a tree and read it online for just $10 per year!
Search
The General Store
Have a gander at the whole store here...
Home | Contact | RSS | Privacy policy | Copyright Public Intelligence, Inc., all rights reserved 1999-2011
WHY THE PENTAGON BUDGET IS BLOATED
Congress has approved yet another bloated budget for the Pentagon that includes billions more (try $17 billion) than was requested.
A billion dollars was stuffed in to this 'defense' budget to provide luxury class travel for the nine brassiest of the military's top brass. The Pentagon will lease six executive jets—at a cost to us taxpayers of $50 million a year—so the big shots can fly high. Congress also made a present of a 737 jetliner for the Marine Corps commander. The sticker price on that baby was $63 million- though flying it costs extra. These planes are not to take the generals to the front-God forbid-but to scoot them back and forth to meetings here in the States and, who knows, maybe even to policy golf outings.
Meanwhile, Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, demanded and got $375 million put into the budget for an aircraft carrier that the Navy doesn't want The ship will be built in Lott's home state at the Ingalls Shipyard, which-surprise!- is one of the senator's campaign benefactors.