Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

Public Safety Down, CEO Pay Up. Corporations Play “Rig the System”

To see how the game of “Rig the System” is played, consider the shameful corporate gaming of the horror of California wildfires that have been devouring lives and entire communities. Many of the worst fires have been ignited by the faulty wires, transformers, and other poorly functioning equipment of such profiteering electric utilities as Southern California Edison. The safety failures of this multibillion-dollar giant have been so awful that state lawmakers and regulators have rushed out fire-protection laws – not for the people, but for the corporate owners! A 2019 law literally [https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-01-16/wildfire-victims-decry-state-law-protecting-utilities-from-cost-of-disasters-they-cause#:~:text=Edison%20last%20used%20that%20transmission,responsibility%20for%20damages%20is%20capped.]protects utilities [https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-01-16/wildfire-victims-decry-state-law-protecting-utilities-from-cost-of-disasters-they-cause#:~:text=Edison%20last%20used%20that%20transmission,responsibility%20for%20damages%20is%20capped.] from paying for fire damages they cause [https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-01-16/wildfire-victims-decry-state-law-protecting-utilities-from-cost-of-disasters-they-cause#:~:text=Edison%20last%20used%20that%20transmission,responsibility%20for%20damages%20is%20capped.], instead passing the costs to state taxpayers. Wait, says Edison, if our annual safety record is poor, our top executives are punished with a cut in their annual bonuses. Ouch! Well, not really – the reduction is capped at 5 percent. Take last year’s fire that destroyed nearly every home and building in the town of Altadena, killing 19 people. “It’s just a tragedy,” lamented Edison’s CEO, though he admits it was sparked by an Edison transmission line. Sure enough, the chief “suffered” a 5-percent bonus hickey [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/business/energy-environment/edison-eaton-fire-altadena-executive-bonuses.html]. Hold your pity, though, for that means he still collected 95 percent of his 2025 performance bonus, plus pocketing his extravagant salary, stock options, and benefits. In all, the man-in-charge of this corporate-made “tragedy” walked away with nearly $14 million in personal pay. Meanwhile, Edison went to the Public Utility Commission, demanding that its customers be forced to pay 10 percent more on their electric bills. To keep score on utilities rigging the system, go to TURN, The Utility Reform Network: turn.org [http://turn.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]

Trump Brags That His Name Is “Golden.” But It’s Just Fool’s Gold

America’s present president is like those egos who feel entitled to carve their name into every park bench they sit on, apparently to “make their mark” and shout to the world, “I wuz here!” Indeed, Trump has demanded that our government patch his “Donald J. Trump” onto such public facilities as the Kennedy Center, the Institute of Peace, Dulles Airport, Penn Station, the Hudson Tunnel – and he might as well add the US Capitol since he treats Congress like his personal possession. Insecurity is what’s driving his egomaniacal rebranding frenzy. As Trump candidly explains, “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one will remember you.” Oh, Donald, like the demagogic Joe McCarthy and other narcissistic politicos, you’re destined to be long remembered… and mocked! Moreover, those vainglorious, gold-plated Trump nameplates you’re tacking onto every public space will soon be unceremoniously stripped off and dumped into the trash bin of history. My friend, Fred Harris, a great populist senator from Oklahoma, told about the fickle nature of political fame. It was a true story about a governor who backed a boondoggle construction project after lobbyists promised to name the structure after him. They did, but as soon as the governor left office, his name was removed. Fred said if anyone ever dedicated a bridge or building to him, he wanted his name built into the structure itself, so if they later tried to remove his name, “the damned thing would fall down.” So don’t despair that this president seems omnipresent. This too, will pass. Keep whacking at the autocratic, plutocratic structure of Trumpism – it’s not built to withstand the winds time, much less the winds of democratic rebellion. 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]

Grassroots Activism Produces a “Mississippi Miracle”

Here’s something we don’t get to say very often: “Way to go Mississippi!” This state has long been ranked dead last in important measurements like healthcare, workers’ wages, and rural opportunities. In recent years, though, Mississippi has steadily been advancing to the top in one vital category: Best places for a poor child to get a good education. What a miracle! No. It’s the product of ordinary citizens who got fed up with plutocratic state rule that lavishes taxpayer funds on corporate elites, while shortchanging the basic needs of workaday people. In the past decade, savvy grassroots coalitions like Mississppi United [https://picayuneitem.com/2026/01/mississippians-urge-state-legislature-to-oppose-school-choice/] have arisen and spread, gaining local political punch in county after county that could not be ignored by legislators. Early on they achieved major state investments in pre-K education, producing remarkable advances, especially by low-income children in many of the state’s poverty-stricken, rural counties. This year, building on that success, the movement scored two huge educational victories [https://www.mississippifreepress.org/private-school-voucher-bill-dies-amid-opposition-in-mississippi-senate-education-committee/]. First, they produced a unanimous senate vote to defeat a school privatization scheme pushed by the right-wing governor, the corporate establishment, out-of-state school profiteers… and Donald Trump! Then, to emphasize and expand on the state’s commitment to quality public education, the legislature passed a $5,000 teacher pay raise. As a legislative leader from Starkville said after the senate vote [https://www.mississippifreepress.org/private-school-voucher-bill-dies-amid-opposition-in-mississippi-senate-education-committee/]: “Our public schools are the cornerstone of every community in this state, and this unanimous rejection sends a clear message: Mississippi will not abandon the students and families who depend on quality public education – no matter how much out-of-state money tries to buy our legislators.” To learn more about the uplifting “Mississippi Miracle” go to ACLU-MS.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]

Jesse Jackson’s Most Consequential Power Was Not His Oratory, But His Vision

In 1988, I was one of only two white elected Democratic officials in all of America to endorse Jesse Jackson to be our party’s nominee for President. (The other was Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington Vermont). As a Texas politico, my endorsement of the fiery Black leader was both derided as political suicide and hailed as gutsy. But it was neither – it was just the right thing to do. As I had learned from an old-time Texas Democrat, “Every now and then, a politician ought to do something just because it’s right.” In the 1970s and 80s, I had gotten to know and work with Jackson. A renown orator, he was an even more effective thinker and uniter. For example, he was able to link white, conservative dirt farmers in common cause with impoverished farmworkers and inner-city families battling chain-store profiteers. So, when he ran for president, I had to ask myself: If this guy (1) is standing for the progressive populist values I believe in, (2) is standing with the grassroots families I’m fighting for, and (3) has the populist grit to stand up to the moneyed elites – why am I not standing with him? Millions of us responded to his deliberate campaign trying to forge a multi-racial populist movement, and it’s up to us to carry that historic mission forward. But Jackson’s “Rainbow” vision was not one of fluffy hope however, but one of profound “intentionality.” That means doing the grunt-level political work of strategizing, organizing, and mobilizing to make good things happen. Especially in these dark Trumpian times, emphasizing Jesse’s deliberate determination is the best way to honor this true champion of democracy. 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]

Why Should We Allow Food Monopolies? Let’s Bust The System!

How are monopolistic corporations able to gain their economic dominance? They get politicians to give it to them. Consider the old robber barons. They weren’t brilliant investors or managers, they were ruthless exploiters of government giveaways, and they routinely bribed lawmakers and other officials to permit their monopolistic thievery. Likewise, today’s monopoly players have captured local, state, and national markets – not through honest competition, but by getting public officials to subsidize their expansion and to rig the rules against small competitors. Monopolizers buy this favoritism with the legalized bribes of dark-money campaign donations they lavish on compliant lawmakers. Investigative digger Stacy Mitchell recently documented [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/food-deserts-robinson-patman/680765/] how this corrupt political favoritism has allowed massive retail chains like Walmart, Kroger, and Dollar Store to crush thousands of local grocers. This has left millions of Americans living in “food deserts” – worker class, poor, and rural communities with no food store. What happened? As grocery chains spread from local to regional to national, they demanded that food manufacturers give them big discounts – a dramatic monopoly pricing advantage over independent rivals, so hometown grocers began hemorrhaging customers. This raw, anti-competitive, price discrimination was a flagrant violation of America’s anti-monopoly law – but here came Big Money to protect the monopolists. In 1980, as Ronald Reagan was railing against “silly” consumer protection laws, supermarket lobbyists poured campaign cash into top officials of both parties [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/food-deserts-robinson-patman/680765/]. What they bought was bipartisan agreement to simply stop enforcing that “rusty” old antitrust law that had protected a competitive grocery economy for nearly 50 years. But good news! That useful, highly-effective law is still on the books, so let’s build a long-term grassroots campaign to rejuvenate it and re-outlaw monopolization, redlining, and price gouging by food giants. For more information, go to ilsr.org [http://ilsr.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]