Friday Signpost: Hightower's Radical "Socialism" in 1980s Texas

Friday Signpost: Hightower's Radical "Socialism" in 1980s Texas

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit jimhightower.substack.com [https://jimhightower.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] In 1982, the Dallas Morning News editorial page had a name for a guy who wanted to bring back farmers markets in Texas: socialist. Not Medicare for All. Not a wealth tax. Farmers markets. The kind with watermelons and a guy selling tomatoes off a folding table. Hightower ran for Texas Agriculture Commissioner with the idea as a key part of his platform anyway. He won. And in his first year in office, he and a staff of six built a hundred of them across the state. Forty-some years later, Democratic strategists are still having the same panic attack about socialism. Turns out the “radical” thing was never the label itself; it was whether the guy delivered on campaign promises. Here, Hightower tells the story himself: the watermelon stand outside Weatherford that started it all, how Hightower’s staff created the market access for the farmers, and the line he used to shut the haters up for good — “the word ‘free’ in ‘free enterprise’ is not an adjective. It is a verb.”

Why Trust High-Tech Billionaires to Save Humanity?

Here’s an interesting fact: Dinosaurs dominated Earth for 165 million years – and they assumed they always would. Which brings us to… well, us. We bipedal, far-ranging, Homo sapien primates have certainly established our dominance over modern-day Mother Earth. And even though our reign has only lasted about 200,000 years, we 21st Century humans grandly assume that we’re ordained by the gods to rule ad infinitum over our planet (and beyond). But – oops! – unfortunately we’ve based our preeminence on the unsustainable consumption of our domain, rather than on stewardship for the ages. Under the global misguidance of corporate, political, religious, academic, and other Powers That Be, our large-brained species has ended up making an awful mess of the nest we inherited. Elite plunderers and profiteers have imposed an ethic of greed, inequality, and even inhumanity that is devouring everything from Earth’s climate to our basic human values of fairness and justice. Leading this careless assault is a clique of arrogant and abusive high-tech gabillionaires who consider themselves geniuses because, well… they’re rich! Consider Elon Musk, presently the richest of the world’s richest, who postures as an uber-brained deep thinker, social engineer, and whirling corporate dervish. He presently runs not one, but three mega-corps (Tesla, X, and SpaceX) while also rewriting the rules of free speech, telling American’s how to vote, and claiming he’ll save humanity by colonizing Mars. But wait – strip away the hype, and Musk is just another self-serving plutocratic ravager, a cartoonish robber baron whose “genius” lies in (1) taking credit (and profit) from other people, (2) demanding subsidies and special breaks from government, (3) cheating workers and customers, and (4) suing everyone for his failures. If billionaire humanoids like Elon really wanted to save us from extinction, they should do the honorable thing… by going first. 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]

AI Billionaires Say: Get Out of Our Way, Fools!

Does becoming a billionaire turn one into an insufferable jerk, or is that an innate quality they bring to the position? Big-name billionaires – like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg – literally flaunt their irrepressible jerkism, but the disease seems to inflict their entire class of über-rich corporate royals. Its telltale symptoms are not their grandiose mansions and yachts, but their sudden impulse to instruct us regular people on how to think. In particular, they’re now demanding that we get out of their way so they can remake society in their image. Jensen Huang, for example, a Silicon Valley techno-whiz who heads Nvidia, now the world’s richest corporation. He’s demanding that we transform our economy and social structure into a new order of AI dominance, piously chiding those of us who’re angry about AI’s destruction of our jobs, communities, water, farmland, and democracy itself. Tut-tut, the gabillionaire scolds, you petty people must “create new social norms [https://apnews.com/article/nvidea-huang-artificial-intelligence-8334abcbc6ed8d3d7889b640ec6fa05b]” to advance AI. Then there’s the little-known honcho of SoftBank, a multi-trillion-dollar Japanese tech powerhouse trying to impose AI supremacy worldwide. He’s now asserting a corporate “morality” of wealth, calling people who question AI “foolish.” He philosophizes that TechWorld “will transform our lives completely [https://fortune.com/2026/07/14/softbank-ceo-5-trillion-ai-demand-critics-bubble/]and do so in a way that generates profits [https://fortune.com/2026/07/14/softbank-ceo-5-trillion-ai-demand-critics-bubble/].” [https://fortune.com/2026/07/14/softbank-ceo-5-trillion-ai-demand-critics-bubble/] For whom? For billionaires, of course. So there you have a clear statement of the values and goals of AI profiteers: More for them, no matter the cost to everyone else. SoftBank’s imperious boss laughs at those of us who dare question his vision of an AI plutocracy, calling us fools who are “spitting upward.” No sir, look again. We are spitting straight at you. Do something! Want to join the rebellion against AI billionaires? Check out Public Citizen’s work on Big Tech and other corporate monsters: https://www.citizen.org/topic/consumer-worker-safeguards/big-tech/ [https://www.citizen.org/topic/consumer-worker-safeguards/big-tech/] 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]

Ignorance + Arrogance + Power = Lunacy

Some presidents are known as uplifting orators; our present president is known for petulant putdowns. Periodically, Trump discovers a new pejorative that he considers clever, so he wears it out attacking his endless list of enemies. His current favorite is “lunatic,” hurling the slur at women reporters, most foreign leaders, all Democrats, protestors, and… well, everyone who offends him. But if he wants some real lunatics to belittle, why not that menagerie he’s appointed to top government positions? Such as Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC attack dog who keeps yapping that he’s gonna abolish NPR. Failing at that, Carr has now gone from silly to ridiculous, pushing a phantasmagoric scheme that truly is lunacy. It comes from some Elon Musk protégés who apparently noticed that our planet gets dark as night falls. Eureka, they exclaimed, we need to “light the night!” Why? Well, they say, to illuminate all city streets and rural roads, make crops grow faster, and stuff like that. But how to generate the light? Easy, the geniuses explain: Mirrors. They want government support to deploy a global network of orbiting space mirrors that could reflect sunlight onto Earth’s rotating dark areas. [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/fcc-space-mirror.html] Lots of mirrors – the schemers propose to put 50,000 in our skies by 2030, with each of the largest ones shining as bright as 100 full moons! Nothing could go wrong with that, right? Bedazzled, Carr didn’t ask. Instead, with no public input, he just rubber-stamped an initial launch of this “novel technology,” blandly assuring us that “harms are unlikely to occur.” To oppose this lunacy, connect with the American Astronomical Society: aas.org [http://aas.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]

Corporate Stupidity Sidetracked by Mad-as-Hell Farm Rebels

Executives climbing the corporate ladder to the top seem to lose IQ the higher up they get. That might explain why John Deere’s top corporate bosses have imposed an astonishingly stupid policy on America’s farmers. For years, they’ve decreed that while a farmer “technically owns” a tractor or other John Deere product, the owner is prohibited from making any repairs when the machinery breaks down, stalls out, etc. Instead, owners must call an authorized Deere dealer to fix what most farmers could handle by themselves. The monopolistic profiteer refuses to make its repair manuals available to customers or local repair shops, so… gotcha! But in 2020, Walter Schweitzer rallied with other mad-as-hell farmers and ranchers to rebel. The Montana rancher’s tractor had gone kaput in hay baling season – but, “no,” said a Deere dealer, a technician is not available; and “no,” you can’t have access to the diagnostic computer to do it yourself. So, he had to wait weeks before Deere finally got his tractor running – a fairly basic job worth about $600… but they billed Walter nearly $4,000. That’s what’s called “a monopoly fix.” But they messed with the wrong farmer. Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, mobilized grassroots pressure from five states, forcing federal officials to sue Deere. This month, Deere’s aloof executives settled that suit, [https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/deere-settles-lawsuit-by-us-ftc-states-over-equipment-repair-restrictions-2026-07-08/] finally letting its farm customers take charge of the equipment that – hello! – they own! Schweitzer points out that this landmark win over the arrogance of Deere executives is just one stepping stone to a right-to-repair law for all products. To help push this right forward, go to repair.org [http://repair.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]