Each month we receive a mailing that we can't wait to read. It's titled The Hightower Lowdown and is edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer. Jim Hightower has been a favorite of mine for nearly two and a half decades. He was friends with my idol, Mollie Ivins, and they were crazy, down-to-earth progressives from Texas. Andy and I had the great honor of seeing Jim not long ago in Madison after the day of one of the largest rallies at the Capitol. Jim Hightower talked that night about the corporations and the money that is hijacking our democracy and that's what he writes about each month. I want to share some of his particular brand of political commentary with you so you, too, can hear politics from another Common Person who has been watching the wealthy and the powerful for a very long time.
In the April issue, Jim speaks to the secret funders that have backed governors like Scott Walker in Wisconsin. And he goes on to tell us that 2012 will be even worse in terms of corporate money spent on campaigns to elect tea party/ultra-conservative candidates. Think the unthinkable: Michelle Bachmann!
Jim begins with some history. Have you ever heard of a novel titled Alpaca? I hadn't either. One of America's first billionaires, Dallas oilman H.L. Hunt self-published it in 1960. It was, as Hightower says, a 191-page manifesto on a libertarian, plutocratic utopia. It was Hunt's vision that America reward the wealthiest with the lion's share of say in our government. He thought those folks should get three votes for every one you and I would get. Why? Because Hunt believed they, the rich and powerful, could better be trusted to protect the "volatile masses from the rise of populists." Pretty astounding, huh? By populist, Hunt of course feared the unwashed among us becoming too frisky for our own good. We might vote the monied interests out and some Common Person in. That would never do. Hightower writes that Hunt's book was booed off the shelves and the author was branded a self-indulgent billionaire. And so he was. But Hightower also alerts us to the fact that, though we would never have thought Hunt's wealthy wanderings would amount to anything, indeed his crazy ideas have crept from the fringes to the center of our politics. That is scary!
Jim was among The People who joined Common Cause last year at Rancho Mirage (no one could have made this up - mirage for the name of a secret gathering of money men to decide how to win elections?!) This retreat in the desert was organized by the Koch Boys, Charles & David, who invited people like Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan(of Let's Kill Medicare fame), GOP majority leader and current and former execs from Amway, Bank of America, Blackstone Group, Godfather's Pizza, Home Depot, and Sysco, to name a few. What were they doing there, these moguls, GOP & tea party hopefuls? Well, as Jim says, they weren't there just getting a winter tan. This was most likely one of the meetings that set the agenda for the gubernatorial sweep in the last election. Also the items that would come first in the unprincipled attack on worker rights in so many states.
Who are the political cash machines that have so much power in our government? The elite who have become such a force since the Citizens United decision? Hightower gives us three to contemplate.
1. US Chamber of Commerce - they gave $32,851,997
2. American Action Network - $26,088,031 (this is the group formed right after the Citizen's United decision that was responsible for defeating Russ Feingold.)
3. Crossroads GPS - $17,122,446. A shadowy monster out of Karl Rove's uber right wing brain. It's reported that the biggest part of their money comes from "a small circle of extremely wealthy Wall Street hedge funds and private equity."
At the end of the Lowdown, Hightower lists what he refers to as the "only way for progressives to compete" and a call to begin right now to rally grassroots support for the following 6 action-based moves:
1. overturn Citizen's United
2. provide public financing of all elections
3. reveal & shame CEO's who are perverting our democracy
4. require free air time for candidates
5. impeach a Supreme or two!
6. generally work to bring back elections to The People
Let's go to work!
Power To All The People!
p.s. You probably heard about the 7500 votes that David Prosser's campaign suddenly discovered the day after the election. Really? Smells a lot like the votes that appeared and disappeared in Florida during both of George W's campaigns. What's the rally cry in Madison? SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!
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