Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

How Immoral Have Corporate Bosses Become?

“Mingy” is a useful word. It merges stingy with mean, pretty well summing up the prevailing ethic of today’s corporate bosses. Take mingy CEOs of multibillion-dollar powerhouses like Amazon and 7-Eleven. They’ve been refusing to accommodate even the simplest needs of – get this – their pregnant employees. As the New York Times reports, women who’re heavy with child can suffer acute health crises if they’re on their feet too long. For example, a pregnant Amazon warehouse worker in upstate New York became breathless and lightheaded, so her doctor told her to work sitting down periodically. She got a chair and felt better. But uh-uh, an Amazon manager took her chair away and insisted she stand [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/well/live/pregnant-workers-amazon-speedway.html]! This caused her to be hospitalized several times. Then, Amazon fired her for having too many medical absences. Or take the 27-year-old pregnant check-out clerk at Speedway, the gas station chain owned by 7-Eleven. To ease the strain of standing for hours, she was allowed to sit on some milk crates as she worked the counter. No, barked higher-ups, who took her crates away. She soon had a pregnancy emergency, and her doctor told her not to work for several days. So, Speedway put her on “involuntary unpaid leave.” [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/well/live/pregnant-workers-amazon-speedway.html] But, technically she wasn’t fired, so the corporate giant prevented her from getting unemployment pay. This is corporate assault, targeting women in low-wage jobs. It’s so common that Congress had to pass a law, the “Pregnant Workers Fairness Act,” to say: Stop it! But it hasn’t stopped, for Trump officials are not eager to punish multimillion-dollar corporate bosses. But that raises the fundamental ethical question: Why don’t bosses stop themselves? Have I mentioned that “boss,” spelled backwards, is double-S-O-B? 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]

Forget Being "Moderate"—Democrats Should Be the Mad-As-Hell Party

There are towns in Texas named New Deal, Fair Play, Progresso, Utopia—and even Buck Naked! But what you won’t find is any town called “Moderate, Texas.” I offer this curiosity to the monied powers and milquetoast party leaders who keep insisting that Democrats must moderate their progressive policies, abandon their egalitarian commitments, and become more… well, more corporate. Hello – today’s majority hates the everyday arrogance, avarice, and abuse that corporate supremacy has unleashed on workers, consumers, local businesses, family farmers, the poor, the sick, the “different,” our environment… and democracy itself. The time when “captains of industry” were admired is long-gone. Today’s billionaire prigs – such as Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg – are clownishly greedy and foolish, becoming so reviled that they can’t go out in public. As journalist Perry Bacon points out in [https://newrepublic.com/article/207435/moderate-democratic-voters-economic-populism]New Republic [https://newrepublic.com/article/207435/moderate-democratic-voters-economic-populism], even moderate Democrats aren’t moderate anymore: “Around 70 percent” of them, he reports, bemoan the fact that Party leaders are “too timid in taxing the rich, taxing corporations, and cracking down on companies that break the law.” Polls aside, you can find out how moderates (and even conservatives) feel about moving the Party of the People to the middle of the road by visiting rural areas in Virginia, Illinois, Texas, or other states being invaded by autocratic corporate billionaires trying to usurp vast amounts of land water and energy for their AI data centers. Locals are furious at this plutocratic power grab and wondering if anyone will stand with them in full-force populist rebellion against the profiteers. We’re in a 1932 moment. Far from becoming a corporate kiss-up party, people want and need Democrats to be the kick-ass party! 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]

A Government Of, By, and For Billionaires?

Congress keeps churning out laws that the great majority of us have explicitly, consistently, and loudly said we do not want! Are those lawmakers deaf? No, their ears are stuffed with ever-increasing wads of political cash from corporations and the superrich, so our words can’t reach their eardrums. Take Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican elected two years ago to the US Senate. He quickly proved to be a tail-wagging fetcher of more plutocratic tax-giveaways and most anything else the billionaire class desires. Why? Money. His campaign was launched and supercharged by such barons of Wall Street and Silicon Valley as [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/us/billionaires-federal-election-campaign-contributions.html]Steve Schwarzman [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/us/billionaires-federal-election-campaign-contributions.html]. Honcho of a private equity powerhouse, Schwarzman greased Sheehy’s political skids with an $8 million check. A New York Times analysis later found that at least 63 other billionaire families bought a piece of the fledgling Montana senator that year. He’s not their only purchase, of course. The Times’ tally found 300 billionaire families invested more than $3 billion in federal candidates in 2024. Meanwhile, not only does Congress do what We the People don’t want, they also refuse to do what we do want. Most emphatically, that includes a huge, bipartisan majority who want all corporate money out of political races and solid limits on donations by the rich. Big Money is a stark threat to America, says Marc Raciot, Montana’s former Republican governor. It’s turning our democratic republic into a place where a few wealthy people can legally spend millions to direct how the government runs. “Does any reasonable person on the planet think that’s appropriate,” he asks? To help assert a people’s democracy over corporate plutocracy, go to EndCitizensUnited.org [http://EndCitizensUnited.org]. 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]

The Fall of Trumpty-Dumpty’s Great Wall

Even in this ugly era of political divisiveness under “King Donald,” some things remain bigger than partisan politics. For example, travel deep into Southwest Texas to the Mexican border, and you’ll witness two powerful forces of political harmony in Big Bend National Park. First is the true majesty of nature – 1,200 square miles of high desert beauty, spectacular canyons, the Chisos Mounains’ “sky islands,” black bears and jaguars, ancient artifacts of native peoples, etc. But you could also experience the marvelous rebellious spirit of today’s Big Bend people who are battling the White House’s ideological extremists [https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/03/texas-border-wall-big-bend-national-park-ranch-state-park/]. At issue is “The Wall,” the xenophobic piece of nastiness pushed by Stephen Miller, the Trump government’s tyrannical, anti-immigrant chief. Build a multi-billion-dollar, 30-foot-high steel wall atop the Rio Grande’s fragile, thousand-foot high cliffs, Miller maniacally commanded! Hello – such a monstrous wall would destroy the cliffs, devastate the economic, cultural, and other essential cross-border relationships that Big Bend communities rely on – and do nothing to stop desperate refugees. So, in a grassroots, non-partisan rebellion against such ideological bullstuff, a majority coalition of ranchers, environmentalists, local sheriffs, native Americans, and just folks have momentarily stalled the scheme. As a longtime Republican resident puts it: “Those advocating for this insane project should… acknowledge their nonsensical, aesthetically, and environmentally quixotic conduct, so their names may be indelibly placed on that border wall and remembered forever in infamy.” This is Jim Hightower saying… Trump is expected to push ahead, but the feisty grassroots champions are not intimidated. “We will be civil,” says one leader, “but we don’t have to be polite.” Stay connected to them at nobigbendwall.org [http://nobigbendwall.org]. 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]

The Main Problem Today’s Billionaire “Geniuses” Have Is This: They’re Stupid

“Stand back,” shout Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires, “geniuses at work!” They refer to themselves, of course, demanding that public officials, farmers, towns, environmentalists, and all others get out of their way as they impose their massive AI data centers over rural America. “Our Big Money and Big Brains,” they exclaim, “will remake nature and produce phenomenal wealth.” Haven’t we heard this before? Yes… and from these same über-rich zealots. Just a decade ago, they declared they intended to replace farmland agriculture with a techno-marvel they called “vertical farms.” [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/business/vertical-farms-tried-to-compete-with-open-field-farming-it-isnt-going-well.html] Yes, instead of relying on messy, natural stuff like soil, food would henceforth be produced on sanitary plastic strays stacked to the ceilings of windowless factory warehouses controlled by computer networks. Big Tech investors like Jeff Bezos, Walmart, and Japan’s SoftBank plowed hundreds of billions of dollars into their “reinvention” of agriculture. But what the geniuses actually produced was a bumper crop of bankruptcies, for the tech bros knew nothing about farming. Sure, displacing nature meant saving money to till the soil and feed the hogs, but those costs are nothing compared to the piles of capital required to pay for the ever-rising costs of corporate infrastructure, computers, utilities, executive salaries, administrative overhead… and capital itself. Worse, the clueless corporatizers were surprised to discover that consumers are not actually motivated to buy a head of lettuce just because it was “vertically farmed.” So, with exorbitant costs and zero market appeal, the tech geniuses’ ag revolution fizzled. Let us all recall this as Bezos and his billionaire coterie now insist we must follow them into their Brave New World of artificial intelligence. 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]