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 ]

The name Felix Walker is not one you would recognize, but this 19th-century congressman inadvertently contributed a word to America's political lexicon that you will recognize--a word that fairly well sums up a lot of what we're getting these days from right-wing politicos and pundits.

In the 1820s, Walker was the U.S. representative for Buncombe County, North Carolina. In an age of great political orators, Walker was not one. He was a droner, a dull fellow known for expressing his dullness at great length on every topic. No matter what issue was up for debate in the House--no matter whether he had any real knowledge, facts, or insights to add--Walker would rise to speak, insisting that his constituents back home would want his voice heard. He would then launch into a wandering, wearisome, often-nonsensical discourse that he always called "a speech for Buncombe."

Exasperated colleagues began to refer to Walker's interminable prattling as "just so much buncombe," a phrase that has been passed down to us as "bunk"--a synonym for meaningless political claptrap.

We've been getting an overload of bunk in recent weeks from a gaggle of Fox-brained Republican Congress critters. They've been flapping their gums to demonize and destroy a grassroots group that has offended them by--get ready to be outraged--organizing and helping to empower thousands of Americans who live in low-income and working-class neighborhoods all across the country.

ACORN is this grassroots group. For four decades, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has been going door to door, neighborhood to neighborhood, to extend basic democratic tools to people who've been dissed and dismissed by the political system. What ACORN's effort amounts to is civic education. Few members of the local chapters have ever been active in community decision making. After all, that process is usually held in the tight grip of moneyed interests who reside and work in distant, much tonier zip codes, and regular folks rarely are welcome. [ read more ]