Of Course the System Is Rigged – Look at Elon Musk!

Of Course the System Is Rigged – Look at Elon Musk!

From Q-Anon nuttiness to JD Vance’s “Deep State” quackery, wacko right-wing conspiracies have oozed into the center Republican politics. But don’t let their goofiness obscure the fact that there is indeed a very real plot to rig America’s economic and political system, causing wealth and power to flow uphill – from the workaday majority to moneyed elites. This rigging is not done by some cartoonish cabal of ogres in a secret lair, but by prominent AI tech barons and other Poo-Bahs of America’s corporate royalty. They are soft-handed thieves, discreetly robbing us from the cozy confines of corporate boardrooms, ornate courtrooms, and legislative backrooms. Why should they dirty their hands in public scuffles with workers, consumers, local communities, and others “pests” when they can deploy public officials to do their grub work. Consider the gabillionaire huckster, Elon Musk. He barged into Mississippi to build a massive AI data center that would have 57 gas turbines spewing toxic pollution over several Black neighborhoods – without even bothering to get required environmental permits. It was a gross violation of the Clean Air Act – so the endangered families sued in April to stop the imperious profiteer. [https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/6/9/mississippi-residents-sue-musks-xai-and-spacex-over-data-centre-nuisance] But instead of facing the perp himself – Surprise! – the locals were confronted by federal lawyers deployed by Trump to kill the people’s lawsuit and protect Musk’s toxic project. Going further, Trump’s “Justice” department asserted that we citizens have no legal right to pursue Clean Air enforcement if the federal government objects. Did I mention that Musk gave $157 million to Trump’s last election campaign? And that’s how the system gets rigged against us. Do something! Support the people fighting Musk in this lawsuit: * NAACP [https://naacp.org/articles/trump-administration-attempts-massive-power-grab-defense-musks-xai] * Southern Environmental Law Center [https://www.selc.org/how-to-help/action-center/] * Earthjustice [https://earthjustice.org/press/2026/trump-administration-attempts-massive-power-grab-in-defense-of-musks-xai] Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

How Inequality Happens

High-dollar corporate executives and Wall Street bankers keep telling us that it’s lonely at the top. Well, they should try toiling at the bottom of America’s pay scale. The radical rise of inequality in our society is a function of the vast political inequality separating the working class from the power structure. The elite rich have many friends in high places paying close attention to their needs, but the further one tumbles down the economic ladder the lonelier you are when your interests conflict with the bosses and big shots. As Ray Charles sang, “Them that’s got is them that gets.” Consider waiters, bartenders, and other restaurant workers. Generally these jobs are poorly paid and routinely abusive, yet lawmakers mostly ignore all that, cozying up to the abusers, because… well, they’re rich and politically connected. As a result, most of today’s restaurant workers are paid a sub-minimum wage that was set 32 years ago at $2.13 an hour! That’s not a wage, it’s an insult. Yet most lawmakers refuse to raise it, bowing to the piles of campaign cash they get through a lobbying front called the National Restaurant Association, dominated by multibillion-dollar food chains. Worse, in the past decade, this consortium of greedy wage suppressors even devised a diabolical scheme to make restaurant workers pay for the industry’s lobbying campaigns to hold down wages! The Association bought an outfit that provides hokey food safety training to workers, then it lobbied to get California, Florida, Illinois, Texas, and other states to require that all employees not only undergo the silly on-line training course, but also making them [https://onlabor.org/the-national-restaurant-associations-training-scheme-is-unconstitutional/]pay $15 [https://onlabor.org/the-national-restaurant-associations-training-scheme-is-unconstitutional/]each for the training [https://onlabor.org/the-national-restaurant-associations-training-scheme-is-unconstitutional/]. Guess what? NRA then uses those worker training fees to fund its lobbying efforts that let restaurants pay poverty wages. And that, kids, is how inequality happens. Do something! One Fair Wage [https://www.onefairwage.org/] is on the front lines of organizing service industry workers, minimum wage workers, and other working class people to get the pay these workers deserve. Extra credit: the history of tipping in the US is entirely rooted in racist antebellum culture [https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-tipping/] as a way to exploit the labor of formerly enslaved people. Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What’s “Supreme” About Our Extremist Supreme Court?

Question: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg? Answer: Four – calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it one. Likewise, calling a small group of partisan lawyers a “supreme” court doesn’t make it one. There’s nothing supreme about the six-pack of far-right-wing political activists who are presently soiling our people’s ideals of justice by proclaiming their own anti-democratic biases to be the law of the land. On issues of economic fairness, women’s rights, racial justice, corporate supremacy, environmental protection, theocratic rule, and other fundamentals, these unelected, black-robed extremists are imposing an illegitimate elitist agenda on America that the people do not want and ultimately will not tolerate. Indeed, the imperiousness of the six ruling judges has already caused the court’s public approval rating to plummet, to a mere 38 percent, an historic low that ranks down there with Trump, and threatens to go as low as Congress. This has led to a flurry of officials attesting to the honesty and political impartiality of the reigning supremes. Unfortunately for the court, these ardent defenders were the six culprits themselves. The “integrity of the judiciary is in my bones,” pontificated Neil Gorsuch, who now stands accused of having lied to senators to win his lifetime appointment. “[We are not] a bunch of partisan hacks,” wailed Amy Coney Barrett, a partisan extremist jammed onto the court in a partisan ploy by Trump in the last few hours of his presidency. “Judges are not politicians,” protested John Roberts, who became Chief Justice because he was a rabid political lawyer who pushed the Supreme Court in 2000 to reject the rights of voters and install George W. Bush as president. Remember, in America, The People are supreme! We don’t have to accept rule by an illegitimate court. For reform, go to FixTheCourt.com [http://FixTheCourt.com]. PS— The most recent season of Slate’s Slow Burn podcast [https://slate.com/podcasts/slow-burn/s11/becoming-justice-gorsuch] traces the rise of Neil Gorsuch. Recommended! Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Watch Hightower at the Texas Democratic Convention in Corpus Christi

Greetings, Lowdowners — Deanna here! Friday we told you [https://jimhightower.substack.com/p/friday-signpost-a-kitchen-table-in] what was coming: Hightower on the main stage at the Texas Democratic Party Convention, introducing Clayton Tucker [http://claytontuckertx.com/], the Lampasas rancher carrying the populist torch into this year’s fight for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. Well, it happened. And it’s everything we hoped it would be! Listen to that crowd roar as Hightower names the “six Bs” — bosses, bankers, billionaires, big shots, b******s, and bullshitters. That clip has been tearing up social media all weekend! Here’s the full five-minute speech: the introduction, the history, and Jim handing the mic to Clayton with the kind of send-off that doesn’t happen unless you’ve been in the fight together for a long, long time. This is the kind of thing you get every week as a Lowdown subscriber: not just the clip everyone’s sharing, but the full context behind it. Consider upgrading today if you can [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe]! PS—I think my personal favorite moment is watching the ASL interpreter figure out how to translate “greedheads and boneheads.” Chef’s kiss! Transcript Announcer: Let’s welcome our former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Jim Hightower. Hidey ho! As one former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, who came out of a progressive campaign with Ann Richards and Jim Mattox and Garry Mauro, a unity ticket. Now to the next era of victories by progressive forces, led by Clayton Tucker, James Talarico, Gina Hinojosa, right on down the line, a lineup of winners. It just makes me happier than a flea at a dog show to be standing up here, looking out at all you Democratic Party champions of economic fairness, you corporate greedwhackers, you Republican butt-kickers, as we rally to take Texas back from the GOP, from the GOP autocrats and plutocrats, so our team of grassroots Democrats can move Texas forward. We don’t want to go back. We want to go forward and forward with all the people of our state, not just the rich elites. And this November fight is a landmark populist battle, putting pitting the greedheads and boneheads who are the powers that be against the powers that ought to be, the ordinary work of day people of our state, the workers, the farmers, the teachers, the consumers. The everyday Texans who do the everyday work that makes Texas work. Now you might say, well, Hightower, what do you by the powers that be? Well here’s what I mean. I call ‘em the six Bs. They are the bosses, the bankers, the billionaires, the big shots, b******s and bullshitters. They’ve been running roughshod over us. They’re thinking they’re the top dog and we’re just a bunch of fire hydrants out here in the countryside. That’s why Clayton Tucker is so important. So important to this election, so important to the Democratic ticket, so important to Texas, a true son of Texas populism, a rancher raising goats out in Lampasas County. The very place where populism began, [https://jimhightower.substack.com/p/friday-signpost-a-kitchen-table-in] by the way, it was born in Lampasas County in the 1870s. He’s a rancher, been a kindergarten teacher. That’ll help him when he deals with the legislature. He’s a grassroots organizer, battling the data center billionaires. He even puts it right on his campaign button here. “Stop AI data centers.” Clayton Tucker. He battles the monopolists and the extremists. I’m gonna tell you that Clayton Tucker is gonna drive the Republican leaders crazy. Of course, that’s a pretty short drive for some of them. Most important, as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Clayton will make us proud again, as so few office holders these days do. He comes out of West Texas. West Texas ranchers and the old cowboys out in West Texas used to have a saying. They said, “speak the truth, but ride a fast horse.” Clayton is going to speak the truth to the powers that be. And they’re going to call him, just as they’re calling Talarico and Gina Hinojosa and our whole Democratic lineup, they’re going to call them agitators. Agitators. What the hell is wrong with being an agitator? Agitation is what built America. So I’m here to ask you to join me in welcoming the People’s Agitator, Clayton Tucker, from Lampasas, Texas. Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Friday Signpost: A Kitchen Table in Lampasas, Then and Now

Greetings, Lowdowners—Deanna here! Last week we gave you the pesticide hearing story [https://jimhightower.substack.com/p/my-lead-off-witness-was-willie-nelson]— Willie Nelson, Barbara Jordan, and a fight Hightower and his team won by building a movement before he ever needed the movie stars. This week, we’re going back further. All the way back to where the whole populist tradition in this country actually started. Here’s Hightower telling it: in the 1870s, four farmers in Lampasas, Texas, were getting squeezed out of existence. Railroads gouging them on getting crops to market. Bankers gouging them on their mortgages. So they did the only thing they could — they sat down around a kitchen table and started talking about it. That conversation didn’t stay in Lampasas. It spread to neighboring counties, then across Texas, then into 43 states. It elected U.S. senators and members of Congress. It built cooperative banks and grain storage so farmers didn’t have to sell at the bottom of the market just to survive. Historians call it the Populist Movement [https://jimhightower.substack.com/p/the-deep-lowdown-issue-1-what-is]. Hightower calls it people figuring out they had to organize or get run over. We’re telling you this story right now for a reason. Tonight, Hightower’s on the main stage at the Texas Democratic Convention [https://www.texasdemocraticconvention.com/], introducing a candidate he’s worked with for years: Clayton Tucker [https://www.claytontuckertx.com/], who’s running for the same office Hightower once held — Texas Agriculture Commissioner. Clayton’s from Lampasas. No one planned that. Texas just keeps producing people who grow up with that kitchen table in their blood and decide to do something about the Powers That Be. Clayton’s campaign is built around the same basic fight those four farmers were having: rural Texans getting run over by power they have no say in. Corporate data centers draining water and electricity from small towns that never got a say. Federal regulators sitting on tools Texas ranchers need right now to fight the New World Screwworm, leaving the state to fight it understaffed and underequipped while the threat spreads. Different villains, same basic math — somebody with more power than you, making decisions about your land and your livelihood from somewhere else. Almost a hundred and fifty years on, same county, new fights, same fight. This is the kind of connection-the-dots storytelling our paid subscribers get from us regularly — the history that explains the present, not just the outrage of the week. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, this is a good week for it [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe]. Thanks for being in the fight with us, as always! Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]