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First, the corruption. Then, the cover-up. And now, a sham to cover-up the cover-up.

This is the ongoing saga of the sorry state of corporate morality at the highest levels of Wal-Mart. Since 2002, the global retailing goliath has brazenly violated America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by doling out some $24 million in bribes to gain control of Mexico’s retail market. For years, top executives (including the CEO and a former-CEO) conspired to cover-up Wal-Mart’s butt-ugly corruption, but a New York Times exposé has now stripped them naked.

Shamelessly displaying their usual hubris, however, the executives have launched a PR campaign to convince us that Emperor Wal-Mart remains covered in robes of exquisite ethics. Even if the corruption charge is true, says a dissembling corporate spokesman, “it is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for.”

Oh? Who does he mean by “we?” Wal-Mart is defined by the top executives and board members who make corporate policy (and who conducted and covered up the flagrantly-illegal acts). Yet they want us to believe that someone else is responsible for staining “what we stand for.” Perhaps those nice “greeters” at their megastores are the guilty ones.

For a measure of who and what Wal-Mart really is, look no further than its post-exposé scramble to set up a brand-spanking new, top-level legal compliance office. “Ethics R us,” it now claims! After the scandal broke, Wal-Mart announced that an executive officer will henceforth make sure Wal-Mart employees obey the law.

What a sham! First, Wal-Mart’s employees aren’t the problem, its so-called leaders are; second, if top executives don’t know (or care) that bribery is unethical, an ethics office will be as worthless as a jello doorstop; and third, who exactly do they think they’re fooling?

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.

Maybe you thought the lowest possible point of Republican miserliness was reached when Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Agriculture proposed that ketchup be counted as a vegetable in the school lunch program. If so, you’ve not taken a peek at the GOP’s astoundingly-penurious budget proposal recently pasted together in a fit of ideological extremism by their budget guru, Rep. Paul Ryan.

Of all things, The Repubs whacked $8 billion from next year’s food stamp funds – a well-run, widely-popular, and effective program that helps millions of hard-hit American families stave off some of the pain of poverty. Maybe so, concede Ryan & Company, but the program is out of control, having added some 13 million people in the last three years. Well, gosh, Paul, welcome to the real America – where joblessness is rampant, wages are down, and the middle class is tumbling into poverty. Food stamp use is supposed to go up in such times! It means the program is working.

Still, retorts a Ryan henchman, everyone must sacrifice to lower the deficit, so these cuts are merely “reflecting the budgetary times we’re in.” Really? Then why does your budget give an average of $265,000 a year in more tax benefits to millionaires? And why, in your demand for severe austerity in government, do you not cut a dime from the Pentagon’s bloated budget – even handing it an increase? (more…)

Just when you think the tea party Republican majority in the U.S. House couldn’t possibly get any screwier, up jumps Rep. Allen West.

Once hailed as a tea party “star,” the Florida Republican apparently has been spending way too much time down the rabbit hole with the Mad Hatter, the Door Mouse, the March Hare, and the other wacky members of the Alice In Wonderland tea party. How else to explain his latest eruption of right-wing Jabberwocky accusing a large group of his congressional colleagues of being communists? This blast from the GOP’s McCarthyite past came from West when he was asked at a town hall meetnig about the number of “card-carrying Marxists” in Congress. Joe McCarthy would’ve been proud of West, who puffed himself up and declared: “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party.”

As the audience broke out in murmurs of disbelief that such babbling nonsense was coming from their own congress critter, he doubled down on this dastardly accusation by pointing to a legitimate group that he says is a nest of commies: “They actually don’t hide it,” he blurted. “It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”

But wait – I know that group, I know nearly all of its members. They’re good, solid, red-blooded, salt-of-the-Earth, American populists – not communists! As an aide to proud progressive caucus member Chellie Pingree of Maine put it: “Chellie is a Democrat, a farmer, and a Lutheran, but no, she is not a Communist.

When Woody Guthrie was smeared with the same baloney in the real McCarthy era, he explained that he wasn’t a commie, “but I have been in the red most of my life.” Some worry that Allen West is a dangerous reincarnation of old Joe McCarthy – but he’s way too much of a screwball to be dangerous. The best thing to do would be to ridicle him – but he seems to be doing that on his own.

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.

Look out – the Kleptocrat Gang is loose on the land!

Unlike thieves of old, this gang is not out to rob bags of cash from banks and railroads. Instead, they are bankers and high-rolling railroaders who’re using their own heavy bags of cash as weapons to steal our elections and turn our government into their servant. A small group of Wall Street billionaires, for example, has stuffed some $20 million into a super-sized bag of cash that Mitt Romney has used to club his GOP opponents into submission. Their money has gone into a SuperPAC, appropriately named “Restore Our Future.” They definitely mean their future, not yours and mine.

Among the members of Romney’s attack-PAC are four hedge-fund hustlers who put up a million dollars or more each. Ed Conard, another million-dollar member, literally tried to be a masked robber – this Wall Streeter tried to disguise his donation by using a fake name.

Why are these high-finance billionaires riding with Romney? Because he has sworn a blood oath to protect the very special speculator’s tax break that they get for doing practically nothing of social value. Unlike most Americans, they make their money on other people’s money, rather than work, and their lobbyists have gouged a loophole in the law allowing them to be taxed at less than half the rate assessed on the rest of us. President Obama is proposing to tax their income like everyone else’s, and the Kleptocrats see Romney – who, after all, is one of them – as their best bet to beat Obama and save their lucrative piece of tax favoritism.

These and other financial elites are now rearming their Restore Our Future PAC with many more million-dollar donations to buy attack ads that’ll pound Obama. These self-serving billionaire Kleptocrats are turning our elections into highway robbery.

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.

For example, look at what the Food and Drug Administration did to poor little Pfizer, the drug maker that markets an Alzheimer’s medicine called Aricept. This pill delivers $2 billion-a-year in sales, but, alas, its monopoly patent was set to expire in 2010, opening the door for cheaper generic versions. So, with a wink and a grin, Aricept’s maker asked FDA regulators to extend its monopoly. Why? Because it had come up with a new version. Actually, the new was the same as the old, except more than twice the dosage.

But FDA’s dastardly medical researchers said no. Why? Their pathetic excuse was that the goosed-up potency produced practically no benefits to Alzheimer’s sufferers, while causing severe side effects that could kill elderly patients. See, it’s this kind of socialistic picky-pickiness that proves how unfriendly the Obamacans are to corporate interests. After all, what are a few dead old people compared to monopoly profits in corporate coffers?

But wait – amazingly, justice prevailed! Dr. Russell Katz, a top FDA official, suddenly, stepped in and overruled the agency’s scientists. While Katz did admit that the more potent Aricept pill could cause “increased mortality,” he asserted that it most likely would improve the overall functionality of patients who survived. Never mind that actual clinical tests of the juiced-up drug showed no such improvement, the important thing is that some Obama regulators seem at last to be heeding Mitt Romney’s message that we must coddle corporations, not challenge them.

Obama – as well as you and me – have to decide which side we’re on: people… or profits? Mitt says the choice is simple.

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.

Has anyone besides me noticed that not only is Mitt Romney the GOP’s rich-man candidate for president, but his last name actually spells “money.” Just drop the “R,” move the “m” in front of the “o” – and there it is! In fact, put the “R” in parentheses, add it back, and you’ve got “(Republican) Money.”

But with Mitt, we really don’t have to spell it out, because he keeps showing and even stumbling over his richness. With his money connections, his SuperPAC quickly became the superest of them all. Not only has he spent more than every one of his rivals combined, but some of the cash has gone into ads portraying him as just a regular guy.

But, like ugly on a hog, he just can’t hide the depth of his personal wealth. Most recently came news that he’s doing a little “renovation” on his California home – a relatively modest place on the beach in La Jolla. It’s one of three homes he owns, but he’s decided that its 3,000 square feet of space is a bit cramped for him. So, he’s having it bulldozed and replaced with a more Romneyesque $12 million, 8,600-square-foot McMansion-By-The-Sea, complete with a basement larger than the existing house.

Aside from it’s size and cost, his re-do has a couple of features that “regular guys” couldn’t even dream of having. First is a split level, four-car garage with a special elevator to lift vehicles up and down, in and out. No word yet on whether the cars will have their own white-gloved elevator operator. Second, the new digs come with an unusual built-in feature: a lobbyist. Romney has paid some $21,000 so far to hire one of San Diego’s premier real estate lobbyists to wheel and deal at City Hall to get the permits and any exemptions needed to build Mr. Money’s sea castle.

It’s hard to connect with average Joes when you’ve got a house with an attached lobbyist.

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.

Hallelujah, Washington has finally heard the people’s cries for jobs! In an urgent bipartisan push, Democrats and Republicans have passed the J.O.B.S. Act. At last, jobs for all, right?

Well… not right away. Certainly not for all. Maybe none.

You see, the new law itself doesn’t create a single job for the tens-of-millions of unemployed and underemployed workers in our land of the rich. In fact, the accent on the J.O.B.S. acronym should be on “B.S.” Will it surprise you to learn that the word “jobs” isn’t even included in the title? Instead, J.O.B.S. stands for “Jump-start Our Business Start-ups.”

Yes, while it was rushed to passage without any public hearings in the name of hard-hit American workers, all of the benefits go to corporate and financial hucksters who begged Congress to roll back financial disclosure and anti-fraud rules that were designed to protect investors, consumers, and taxpayers. It’s just another “tinkle-down” economic scam written by and for Wall Street fraudsters. The law makes it easier for them to raise cash for their new business schemes by deceiving investors about the risk of loses, the true financial condition of the enterprise, and the amount of capital being raked off by executives.

“Free us from those pesky old regulations,” say the hucksters,” and we’ll attract speculators for corporate start-ups that (if they succeed and don’t set-up operations offshore) could possibly, someday, create a few low-wage American jobs. But don’t hold us to that job thing.”

Sure enough, Washington’s Wall Street-hugging politicos did not. Instead, they merrily passed a bill upping the likelihood of more financial swindles without even getting a promise from the swindlers that America will get some good jobs in return. The JOBS act should be called the ROBS Act.

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.

Another way that the rich are different from you and me is that their bankers serve freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies to them.

The über-rich, of course, are used to such coddling, but now a class of customers that bankers have dubbed the “mass affluent” get cookies, too. Think you might qualify? You do… if you have a minimum of $500,000 to open one of these mass-affluent account. Otherwise, you fall into a category called “lower-margin” customers – so go get in the ATM line, Bucko.

This half-million-dollar-and-up bunch are not the one-percenters, but they are 10-percenters, and they’ve suddenly become hotly-coveted by JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and other big chain banks. To reel in these mid-level richies, bankers are offering to pamper them lavishly.

For example, rather than having to breathe the same air as the riff-raff, they get to bank in cushy, private lounges. The carpets are plush, the cookies fresh, and a nice touch of wine and cheese might be available. There are no lines and no tellers to deal with – instead, these affluent swells get “relationship managers” who cater to their banking needs, including being available after-hours. And here’s something completely astonishing: one bank president says of her advantaged clients, “We’ll come to you. If you want us to meet you in your home on a Sunday, we’ll do that.”

The chain bankers are opening hundreds of these posh, new banking nests for the affluent in upscale neighborhoods across the country, even as they are feverishly inventing new fees and coldly shrinking services for you and me. It’s another move by the Powers That Be to wall off the good fortunes of the privileged few from even having to be in the same room as America’s un-affluent majority. Indeed, they’re creating their own exclusive America.

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.

It’s always entertaining to see a couple of billionaire plutocrats like the Koch boys get an embarrassing case of political hiccups.

Such is their fate as a result of trying to grab total control of the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank that brother Charles set up in 1974. Both Charles and David already sit on this outfit’s five-member governing committee, but now they’re suing it, demanding a third seat. Amazingly, this power grab has turned Cato into a subject of media sympathy – a little “David” think-tank whose political purity is endangered by the rapacious Koch-headed Goliath. There’s even a “Save Cato” website.

Before shedding tears and sending donations, however, let’s refresh our memory on what they want to save. As a recent piece in the “Counter Punch” newsletter succinctly pointed out, Cato is a corporate-funded front that fabricates faux intellectual rationales for turning America into a government-free, plutocratic utopia run by the corporate elite.

“In a free society,” wrote one Catonian, “there should be no minimum wage law.” Another opined that “Collective bargaining violates workers’ civil liberties.” Also, in the brave new world of Cato-Think there would be no national efforts to assure adequate nutrition for poverty-stricken children, because such problems “are properly local and private functions.” (more…)

Attention ladies: Big news on the state legislative front. Republican lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin want to help you improve your lives. Or else.

In Wisconsin, Senator Glenn Grothman wants to give single moms an incentive to get married. Actually, it’s a rather negative incentive, for his bill declares that being an unmarried mother constitutes “child abuse and neglect.” Interestingly, Glenn has never been married, nor raised any children. But he says his bill is necessary to counter those diabolical liberals who “want children born out of wedlock because they are far more likely to be dependent on the government.” Thanks for that insight, Glenn.

Now, on to Arizona, where the GOP-controlled legislature intends to help any and all employers protect the moral purity of their female workers – married or not. How? By letting them deny insurance coverage for birth control pills if the women intend to use the pills for… well, birth control. Ladies will not get the cost of their contraceptives covered, unless they submit proof from their doctors that the pills are necessary to treat a medical condition – NOT just for having non-procreative sex. And, to add some puritanical oomph to the law, it also eases the way for the state’s employers to fire any woman who uses contraceptives to – yes – avoid conception.

If that’s not perverse enough for you, try this: Rep. Debbie Lesko – the sponsor of Arizona’s assault on a woman’s freedom, privacy, and dignity – says that the law is necessary to protect “our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion.” She means the right and freedom of a boss to violate the rights and freedom of women workers over something as purely personal as their sex lives.

Someone’s been munching too much loco weed in Arizona. To keep up with the insanity, go to www.now.org.

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.