Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

We should pay attention to corporate America’s fluctuating wordplay, for their frequent contortions of language disguise ploys to dupe, confuse, and rip off us hoi polloi – i.e., their customers. For example, here’s a mouthful that’s been gaining popularity among manufacturers of food products:

Sam Alito is so ugly that he can’t even see his ugliness. I don’t mean looks, but the deep inner ugliness of character that keeps oozing from this so-called “supreme” judge. Start with the unabashed lies he told senators to win his lifetime appointment to America’s powerfully-undemocratic judicial branch. Lie Number One was his promise not to mess with women’s constitutional right to reproductive freedom. But, once he put on his authoritarian black robe, he

Remember Donald Trump, the “swamp drainer”? In 2016, candidate Trump promised to end the grubby money corruption of American politics. “The special interests, lobbyists, donors,” he rightly and righteously noted “make large contributions to politicians and they have total control of those politicians.” Asserting that he knows the political rot better than anyone, he said he’d “fix that system, because that system is wrong.”

One group of oppressed Americans has become especially outspoken this election year, contending that top government officials (Democrats in particular) are ignoring their community’s basic needs and stifling their pursuit of economic advancement.

If you’re wondering whatever happened to Ron DeSantis, he’s now re-ensconced in Florida… goofier than ever. Last year, backed by a covey of billionaires, Governor Ron was all set to be our next president until national voters discovered he has the personality of a dirt clod and the political sensibility of a tin-pot totalitarian.

A Republican senator once tried excusing the egomaniacal right-wing nastiness of his colleague, Ted Cruz declaring, “sometimes Ted is his own worst enemy.” I said to myself: “Not while I’m alive he’s not.”

Let me be clear that I mean no disrespect to reptiles when I note that Jonathan Mitchell is a snake. An extremist right-wing Texas lawyer, Mitchell is actually creepier and all-together more diabolical that your average serpent could think of being. Jonathan slithers around the country as a self-appointed anti-abortion vigilante, terrorizing women’s advocates, health clinics, and doctors. And now (turning truly creepy), he’s singling-out

Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity’s Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order, “above and before every other duty.” Really – even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America’s corporate-care system? Well, gosh, they say, let’s not go crazy with this religious stuff! There’s morality… and then there’s business.

We Texans are long-accustomed to enduring stormy outbursts of corruption among our top state legislators. The spectacle of lawmakers taking corporate bribes to provide legislative favors, tax breaks, government contracts, and such is as common as Spring tornadoes – and even more destructive to the public good.

Right-wing culture warriors have been relentlessly attacking people’s personal liberties – running hellish crusades to deny our freedom to vote, to read what we want, to form labor unions, to make our own reproductive decisions… etc.

Hoo boy… DeJoy! Woe is us (the American people) for having our jewel of a national Postal Service saddled with a corporate-minded Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. Formerly CEO of a private shipping contractor, DeJoy’s chief qualification for running this invaluable public service is that he’s been a major donor to Republican politicians – including Donald Trump, who appointed him to the post.

A farmer friend of mine once bemoaned the fact that the Democrat we’d both supported for president, Bill Clinton, was hugging up Wall Street and stiffing family farmers. “I don’t mind losing when we lose,” my friend said, “but I hate losing when we win.”