Gather ’round, friends, and let us learn a little bit Mother’s Day, or rather Mothers’ Day (plural possessive, that is). Today’s lesson is not just a lesson in history – it’s also a lesson in feminism. Women* have often pulled together to help each other, through times of war, oppression, and frankly, basic survival. They are the glue that has held…

Let me be clear that I mean no disrespect to reptiles when I note that Jonathan Mitchell is a snake. An extremist right-wing Texas lawyer, Mitchell is actually creepier and all-together more diabolical that your average serpent could think of being. Jonathan slithers around the country as a self-appointed anti-abortion vigilante, terrorizing women’…

Remember late last year when we asked you for your favorite political and protest songs? We’ve listened to the 1960s, and the 1970s, so now it’s time for… you guessed it… the 1980s! Since GenX comprises half of the staff here at Hightower HQ, we were especially jazzed to see this decade’s list— we grew up with a mainstream culture of Reagan and “gr…

Every religion prioritizes care for the needy. Christianity’s Benedictine Rule, for example, puts care of the sick atop the moral order, “above and before every other duty.” Really – even above the holy Wall Street mandate that medical and insurance conglomerates must squeeze every last penny of profits out of America’s corporate-care system? Well,…

We Texans are long-accustomed to enduring stormy outbursts of corruption among our top state legislators. The spectacle of lawmakers taking corporate bribes to provide legislative favors, tax breaks, government contracts, and such is as common as Spring tornadoes – and even more destructive to the public good. Upgrade your subscription The state’s …

Right-wing culture warriors have been relentlessly attacking people’s personal liberties – running hellish crusades to deny our freedom to vote, to read what we want, to form labor unions, to make our own reproductive decisions… etc. Now, apparently having run out of freedoms to ban, here they come with a twisted attempt to politicize another of ou…

Hoo boy… DeJoy! Woe is us (the American people) for having our jewel of a national Postal Service saddled with a corporate-minded Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. Formerly CEO of a private shipping contractor, DeJoy’s chief qualification for running this invaluable public service is that he’s been a major donor to Republican politicians – including…

A farmer friend of mine once bemoaned the fact that the Democrat we’d both supported for president, Bill Clinton, was hugging up Wall Street and stiffing family farmers. “I don’t mind losing when we lose,” my friend said, “but I hate losing when we win.” Upgrade your subscription Agreed. Yet, losing in politics is sometimes a prelude to winning, ca…

Hightower outside the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, OK Woody Guthrie’s prescription for inequality in America was straightforward: “Rich folks got your money with politics. You can get it back with politics.” For Guthrie, “politics” meant more than voting, since both parties routinely cough-up candidates who meekly accept the business-as-usual sys…

Hightower is on the road again this weekend, this time visiting Madison, WI to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fighting Bob La Follette’s independent run for the presidency. Fighting who? What? If you’ve never heard of Robert La Follette, you’ve got a treasure trove of rabble-rousing history awaiting you in his story. And our friends at The Prog…

Years ago, Coca-Cola excitedly debuted a new formula for its soda, dubbing it “New Coke.” Consumers hated it, and sales plummeted – a marketing fiasco. But here comes Coke again, pushing an even worse product: “A Better Plastic Bottle,” trumpeting it as “100% Recycled.” Coke really needs an environmental PR goose-up, because today’s consumers know …

original car illustration by donkeyhotey on flickr While 4,300 workers in Volkswagen’s auto factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, were about to vote on whether to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), thus making their plant the first in the South to have a unionized workforce, suddenly the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Ten…

And now: A special report from the Department of Really Bad Ideas. And this one is a doozie. It comes from Hizzoner Eric Adams, the present mayor of New York City. Like mayors everywhere, Adams is routinely expected to respond to city council members, state reps, members of Congress, and other elected officials who ask for help on city issues and p…

When we hear the term “canvassing” with regard to politics, it often brings up ideas of well-meaning volunteers going door-to-door in communities outside of their own to help persuade those residents to vote one way or another. It turns out, this kind of canvassing is not that successful in moving the important needles of tight races, and can even …

If you think the GOP’s Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest, pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us – you haven’t been to Texas. It’s widely known, of course, that Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and most other top Republican officials here are obsequious Trump acolytes. Thus, Texas is infamously racing against Florida to be decl…

Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King once opposed a bill because, he said, he feared it would “open a whole box of Pandoras.” An odd rhetorical twist, but it would be helpful if today’s ego-bloated, high-tech billionaires and corporate profiteers had a bit of self-restraint, rather than thinking their money equals genius. For example, such doofuses ar…

Hello Lowdowners! DZ here. Apologies for the delay getting the recording of last week’s Happy Hour out to you all— there was a problem with the audio which took a minute to find a fix. You’ll hear that Hightower still sounds a little distorted here and there, and I apologize for that! I figured out what went wrong when we recorded, so, fingers cros…

Before there was a USA – before our Constitution was adopted, and even before our 1776 Declaration of Independence – one of America’s best democratic institutions was already delivering for the people: The Post Office. But it’s important to realize that, for 250 years, this invaluable public service has delivered more than mail. It was – and is– a …

“Somebody better investigate soon.” That’s a lyric in Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town,” a 1962 song deploring the relentless murdering of Black people and civil rights activists in the Deep South. The line mocks the refusal of racist officials to punish the White murderers, instead cynically covering up atrocities by promising do-nothing “investigations.”…