Welcome back to installment #2 of our new series on reasons to be hopeful as we approach an otherwise, ahem, challenging political future. Do you have wins and progress we should celebrate? Leave ‘em in the comments and share links! And this is also just a quick reminder that many “wins” are happening outside of traditional party politics and party…

Wow! Who says election promises don’t produce real change? Candidate Trump had loudly proclaimed that he would force US corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all of the made-in-China products they sell to us. Upgrade your subscription Even he must have been surprised, though…

As any farmer can tell you, if you want to harvest a crop, you’ve got to get out of the office and go to work in the field. Why can’t the Democratic Party grasp this basic reality when it comes to producing votes? This year was going to be different. Pressed by progressive rural activists, national party leaders agreed to open a network of get-out-…

Greetings, readers, Deanna here: Welcome to our new mini-series, “Friday Hope Fest.” Back when we were producing the print version of the Hightower Lowdown (yes, we still miss it, too!), we often used our November and December issues of major election years to share stories of electoral success that might not have hit your radars. And in years wher…

Even in a barrelful of rotten apples, you might think there’d still be a few good ones. But don’t get your hopes up looking into barrels labeled “private equity investors.” These esoteric, multibillion-dollar Wall Street schemes rig the marketplace so “high-net-worth individuals” can grab fat profits and special tax breaks to buy up doctors’ office…

The morning after the election, a social media pundit expressed amazement that Democrat Kamala Harris had lost, noting that America is enjoying “an objectively strong economy.” Indeed, the data shows impressive job growth, rising wages, slowing inflation, etc. – all indicators of a solid economy. Nearly every pundit hailed this as meaning Harris’s …

Okay, the election was a gut punch. And all of us need a moment to catch our breath. But no more than that, for this is a long-term battle, and we have enormous democratic strength to give us heart and hope for a progressive future. Yes, yesterday’s Trump surge is depressing and dangerous, but the message of that surge is not for progressives to su…

In bold type, nearly every newspaper urges readers to “VOTE! TAKE A STAND!” But in this year’s truly momentous national election, we saw such giants of corporate media as the Washington Post, LA Times, and USA Today cower from taking their own stand on the presidency. Worse, the papers shamefully insisted that ducking their duty was itself a princi…

Many people feel that America’s political campaigns have become vapid PR hustles with little connection to the real-life concerns of workaday people. Luckily, Adam Swart says he has the fix for such voter malaise: Just add a more professional level of vapidity to the process, he says, and you can reduce the need for having actual voters involved in…

Here’s a progressive idea I picked up from the unlikeliest of sources: Corporate CEOs! For decades, these chieftains of our economic order have been steadily implementing a very visionary process for establishing corporate wage levels. The essence of it is this: Let the workers set their own pay! Since the 1970s, when the idea began taking hold in …

Our pal invited Hightower to speak at this fantastic rally on Zoom tonight—do not miss the opportunity to discuss the implications of a changing (to put it lightly) care industry that likely won’t have care at its core anymore if private equity has its way. He’ll join activist Dora Gorski, Ai-Jen Poo and John Nichols at 7pm CT; register here for FR…

Woody Guthrie satirized Depression-era bankers who routinely gouged farmers and poor people. “I’m a jolly banker, jolly banker am I,” Woody sang, about the joyful lenders who profiteered on people’s misery. Woody’s song could be sung today by Bharat Masrani, CEO of the TD Bank empire. Investigative digger reports that Masrani has long profited from…

Forget the cartoonish “Great Man” version of American history, nearly all social progress in our country has been spurred by unheralded “nobodies” who felt a sting of injustice – and resolved to right the wrong. Lilly Ledbetter, who recently died at 86, was one such trailblazing rebel, and it’s worth remembering her gutsy stand for “paycheck fairne…

A lot of working stiffs today say the system is rigged to keep them from getting ahead. One thing that might make them feel like that is this: The system is rigged against them! Upgrade your subscription Consider some very hard workers busting their butts going up and down our residential streets – Amazon’s army of delivery drivers, hauling tons of…

For you Lowdowners who are looking for ways to spend your anxious energy in productive ways for the next two weeks, we wanted to put together a quick list of ways to do just that. Squeezing out every last vote that we can! It’s go time! Rahr! Swing State Rural Actions From our friends at Rural4Harris, who are emailing out new swing state actions to…

Sadism and masochism (abbreviated as S&M) are generally frowned on in polite society as perverse acts of sexual gratification. But what should we make of M&As? This is Wall Street’s abbreviation of mergers and acquisitions, which are acts of self-gratification practiced by top corporate executives. Such financial couplings can also be judged as soc…

As schoolkids learn in civics class, our government is made up of three separate branches. Your church is not one of them. Unless you live in Oklahoma. There, a fanatical Christian Nationalist named Ryan Walters is the appointed superintendent of schools. But he’s confused on the concept of “instruction,” viewing it not as teaching, but as a comman…

Photo by The Lacey Timberland Library on Flickr In high-school, my friend Charlie and I once poked into an abandoned Victorian house in our hometown. Up in the attic, we found a secret door to a space containing several boxes of books. One held 50 copies of The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine’s 1794 treatise ridiculing the myths of Christian theology a…

“Billionaire Tears” mug available in Elizabeth Warren’s campaign store. Corporate lobbyists and politicians recently jumped all over Kamala Harris for her proposal to outlaw price gouging by food giants and grocery chains. The partisans piled on Harris, sputtering like old Joe McCarthy that she was pushing “Soviet-style” government price-setting. O…