Hightower Lowdown

The Dow Jones Average is above 11,000! Corporate profits are up! Wall Street has paid back its bailout money! Executive pay is soaring! Bonus money is flowing! Productivity is increasing! Job creation is on the rise! The Great Recession is over--America's economy is whizzing once again!

Yeah, whizzing on you and me. Forget the Dow Jones Average --whatabout the Doug Jones Average? How are Doug and Deb doing? They measure their economic condition not by what's in their stock portfolio, but by what's in their stockpot. It's not the fluctuation in the price of T-bills that keeps the Joneses awake at night, but the inflation in their electric bills, the stagnation in their wages, and the deflation in the value of their house.

It's a myth that practically every American is personally attached to the Dow Jones rocket. In fact, half of us own no stocks at all, even through a mutual fund. And the majority of those who do own stocks have only miniscule holdings and pay no attention at all to the variations of the daily Dow. Indeed, the richest 1% of Americans own 90% of all stocks and bonds in our country.

Broad ownership of corporations is just one of the many "facts" we're fed in our economic diet that are myths, half-truths, deceits...or outright lies. To help read between the lies of the current economic "news" you're getting, this issue of the Lowdown probes into a few of the statistics and assumptions that are being spewed out by pundits, politicos, and other Powers That Be. [ read more ]

Change. That's what Americans want. We the People--a.k.a. the body politic, the majority, the great unwashed, the hoi polloi, "us"--have made it clear that we want real, substantive change in the way Washington works, and for whom it works. We're sick of a "jobless recovery," rampant banksterism, collapsing bridges, corporate-owned elections, tinkle-down economics, oil dependency, made-in-China everything, mountaintop "removal," corporate welfare, falling wages, skyrocketing tuition, the demise of the middle class, and on and on. Enough! Ya basta! Stop it--change, dammit, CHANGE!

But where's the change? It's in subcommittees, in negotiations, in limbo, in transition, in purgatory, in trouble, in Never Never Land, in the trash can.

Why? Right-wing pundits and corporate-funded tea-party groups want you to blame Washington. Well, yes, Obama seems to lack convictions, much less courage; Senate Democrats tend to be five-watt bulbs sitting in 100-watt sockets; and congressional Republicans are...well, contemptible and pathetic. But these characters are the public face of the problem, not the source. Progressives need to focus on those shadowy players who're pulling the strings from behind the scenes to kill the will of the people and impose their special interest over America's public interest. [ read more ]