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

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]

Is Your Lush, Green Lawn Killing Mother Nature?

Sometimes, little things can be a big deal. For example, in considering ways to help protect Mother Earth from global environmental rampages by us humans, look out your window. In many cities and most suburbs, chances are you’re looking at a lawn – a grass-carpeted yard that looks almost the same as the one next door, the one next to it, etc. Some see a lush expanse of green grass as the ultimate in landscaping beauty, and some even consider a well-manicured lawn to be a measure of one’s moral character. Beauty and piety aside, though, the spread and intensification of “lawn culture” has become an environmental extravagance that is already unsustainable in whole sections of our country, and it adds up to a steadily-increasing burden on Earth’s essential resources. Grass itself is natural, but keeping it alive across thousands of square miles is not, for it requires a deluge of chemicals and endless rivers of water applied again and again, yard after yard, trying to keep these plots green. And – O, the irony! – their “green” includes eliminating bees, butterflies… and, well, nature. One statistic tells the tale: Americans use more than 10 times more poison per acre than all of America’s farmers use on their crops. Just glance around you, and you’ll see the grass lawn imperative at work throughout your community – it surrounds local schools, “greens-up” corporate complexes, spreads across college campuses, forms miles of golf courses, etc. This is not a diatribe against grassy plots, which can be natural joys. But let’s get real, get creative, and get in touch with the full balance and beauty of nature. You can promote ground cover sanity right where you live with native plants, xeriscaping, organic methods, rain gardens, and “re-wilding” your yard with things like prairie grass. For help, go to Rewild.org/Rewild-Your-Life [http://Rewild.org/Rewild-Your-Life]. 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]

Good News: Wind Energy Now Surpasses Blowhards of Dirty Energy

Once upon a time, conservative ideologues opposed government interference in the holy magic of the marketplace. Take energy policy, for example. Right-wing cheerleaders of fossil fuels demanded that government must keep its fat thumb off the scale of free market competition between Big Oil and those frilly new “alternative” sources of energy. Where did those market “purists” go? Into the White House, the Cabinet, and Congress – where they’ve mutated into big government bullies, attacking renewable energy enterprises while hyping and subsidizing the corporate profiteers of dirty energy. Trump himself hasn’t merely put his thumb on the scale, he’s hauled his entire hulk onto it! For example, this month he lavished a $700-million gimme of our tax dollars to prop up coal production [https://apnews.com/article/trump-coal-mining-power-plant-climate-electricity-0a7126d66de97b10f32eaa39b1af669f], a dirty fuel the market is abandoning. Wait, there’s more: he paid another 700+ million of our dollars to Invenergy [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/climate/trump-wind-farms-cancel-millions.html], an offshore wind energy firm – not so it could produce electricity, but to cancel four wind farms it had planned to build. Yes, he paid the company to not produce wind energy! Trump declared that even though wind power is less costly than coal, he found windmills “ugly.” So, here’s my advice to the wind industry: Gold-plate your turbines and label them “Trump Towers.” And maybe stage a series of cage fights on some of them. Trump is all about hype and spectacle – so there you go. Meanwhile, the actual marketplace is loudly saying “no” to fossil fuels and YES! to renewables. Get this: Wind now routinely surpasses coal as a supplier of electricity to America. And, last month, solar power also surpassed coal. Political bullying aside, renewables are the future. Do something! At a time when the federal government is actively dismantling progress on climate change, the NDRC is calling for states to lead the way—and tracking the work that’s being done. Start with this news update [https://www.nrdc.org/bio/dawone-robinson/we-cant-afford-slow-down-climate-action] from them, and then take action [https://www.nrdc.org/take-action/toolkits]. 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]

"My Lead-Off Witness Was Willie Nelson": Inside One of Hightower's Biggest Fight as Ag Commissioner

Greetings, Lowdowners—Deanna here! This summer, we're doing something a little different. Over the next few weeks, we're opening the gates a bit — giving free subscribers a taste of some of the exclusive stories, video, and behind-the-scenes Hightower that paid subscribers get regularly. If you've been on the fence about upgrading [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe], consider this your invitation to see what you've been missing. To kick things off, I spent a day with Hightower in Austin last month, beer in hand at ABGB [https://theabgb.com/], talking with him about fifty-plus years of fighting the b******s. We’ve got a summer’s worth of material to share with you, and I wanted to kick things off with the one that shows what organizing really looks like. Here’s the setup: Hightower’s Agriculture Commissioner, and he’s just put forward the most progressive pesticide regulation in the country. The pesticide lobby is furious. So they get the governor to introduce legislation to gut his authority and make his office appointed instead of elected. Standard playbook—except for what happened next. The hearing room they’d booked was tiny. They had to move it to the House Chamber because Hightower’s first witness was Willie Nelson. His second was Barbara Jordan. His third was the chairwoman of the Dallas Republican Women’s Organization, who didn’t love the idea of pesticides in her kids’ food either. Not one committee member would make the motion to pass the bills. They lost without a vote. Here’s the part I actually wanted to talk to him about, though: the celebrities weren’t the strategy. They were the payoff. Hightower’s team spent six months before that hearing building an actual coalition—farmers, farmworkers, consumers, local press. Willie and Barbara Jordan showed up because there was already a movement there to show up for. “They are the punctuation point of a movement that has already been built and is moving,” he told me. “Their presence encourages the movement,” but it doesn’t replace it. It’s a lesson that’s aged exactly zero days in forty years: you don’t win by getting a famous person to show up at your rally. You win by doing the unglamorous work first, and then the famous person shows up because there’s something worth showing up for. It’s your support [https://jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe] that enables us to keep bringing the outside in, to keep sharing the ways we can fight together and have fun together. We know times are tighter than ever, and it makes your support mean even more to us. Thank you! 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]

Business That Delivers for the Common Good

I’ve always supported small business, including having my own little media operation that has long allowed me to run my mouth for a living. One of the greatest aspects of being small – as opposed to corporation, conglomerate, or chain – is that you’re the boss. I don’t mean bossy, autocratic, “The Big Jerk.” I mean you have the flexibility to shape the enterprise according to deeper values than selfish profit and business “efficiency.” Concepts like fairness, integrity, community, diversity – even fun – come to the fore. Despite today’s corporatized, politically-rigid economic order, such value-driven small business mavericks flourish all across America. For example, P. Terry’s Burger Stand [https://pterrys.com/] here in Austin. Started 20 years ago by Patrick and Kathy Terry, it’s a small local chain of 38 restaurants embracing the down-home ideals of quality, affordability, and community support. But they also nurtured a core element of good business that is too often disregarded: Employees. As Kathy put it: “We believed that taking care of people – and building a great business – were not competing ideas.” Fair wages, basic needs, respect, belonging, advancement, happiness – these are the “inputs” that actually matter to the people who do the work and, through them, generate business success. Now the Terry’s are taking two big steps to expand their ideals. One, they’ve set up a company-wide profit-sharing system so their 1,800 employees get a share of business income in addition to their paycheck. And two, they’ve created a special trust to provide employee ownership that can carry the values into the future. To learn more about businesses that live up to such progressive ideals, go to the National Center for Employee Ownership: nceo.org [http://nceo.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]