America has endured a long panorama of corporate greed – from the East India Trading Company to the Robber Barons, Gordon Gecko Wall Streeters to Elon Musk. But down at the bottom of raw greediness today, you’ll find the insatiable profiteers of the private nursing home industry.

Of course, many providers deliver honest, truly-caring service (especially non-profit and publicly-owned community centers). But as a whole, this essential service has fallen into the clutches of money-hustling corporate chains and Wall Street speculators. Their goal is not to maximize grandma’s care, but to minimalize her cost to faraway rich shareholders.

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Their most common profiteering ploy is to understaff their facilities, leaving vulnerable residents unattended… and often, dead. Federal law, though, lets corporate owners define “sufficient” staff levels, which is why so many are grossly-insufficient. One profit-padding tactic is called “tunneling” – the chain sets up a dummy staffing agency to provide employees for the chain’s nursing homes. That agency then charges greatly inflated to provide employees. But the chain doesn’t complain, since it owns the agency… and since unknowing customers end up paying the jacked-up tab.

President Biden has proposed new rules to stop the gouging and improve care, including a requirement that each “nursing” home actually keep at least one nurse on staff. One! But, oh the squeals by billionaire owners! “Cost prohibitive” they howl! So, instead of hiring nurses, they’re hiring high-dollar lobbyists and lawyers to kill this little bit of health care fairness for people who’re near the end of life.

These multimillionaire executives and billionaire investors are not only gouging families, but profiteering on the health of people’s loved ones. In case they care, that is why the public despises them.

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How are monopolistic corporations able to gain their economic dominance? By getting politicians to give it to them.

Consider the old robber barons. They weren’t brilliant investors or managers, but ruthless exploiters of government giveaways and bribers of officials who permitted 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 campaign donations they lavish on compliant lawmakers.

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Investigative digger Stacy Mitchell recently documented 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” – 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, giving them a dramatic monopoly pricing advantage over independent rivals. So, hometown grocers began hemorrhaging customers... and going broke.

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. What they bought was bipartisan agreement to simply stop enforcing the “fusty” 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 Institute for Local Self Reliance: ilsr.org.

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This piece originally appeared in The Nation on Dec 11, 2024. Details below on the December 14 memorial and donation considerations.

In Washington and most state capitals, “political principle” has become an oxymoron, with plain political honesty largely trumped by crude partisanship, self-promotion, and conspiratorial nincompoopism.

Does it have to be this way?

No. I knew and worked with a US senator who routinely used his political prominence to achieve a little more economic fairness and social justice in our country: Fred Harris, who died last month at 94.

The beauty of Fred was that he was real—a down-to-earth fellow who rose from red-dirt rural Oklahoma to the national political heights without being consumed by his own ego. Born into an impoverished family of tenant farmers and day laborers, he remained fully immersed in the anti-establishment attitudes, egalitarian values, and underdog spirit of hardscrabble prairie populism.

Harris lost as many fights as he won, but throughout his long life, he didn’t hesitate to take on the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought to Be, embracing the wisdom of an old cowboy maxim: “Speak the truth, but ride a fast horse.”

Fred was a model and mentor for my own populist pursuits, and we teamed up as coconspirators on a broad range of efforts—from nearly defeating Earl Butz’s appointment as Nixon’s secretary of “agribusiness” to creating the American Folklife Foundation. Especially wild was his 1976 presidential campaign, with me as national coordinator.

Fred threw down the populist gauntlet at the start of his maverick challenge to the moneyed elites controlling both parties. “The issue is privilege,” he declared. “Too few people have all the money and power.” Adding pointedly, “The widespread diffusion of economic and political power ought to be the express goal—the stated goal—of government.”

He carried that blunt message directly to the people all across America in our low-dollar, grassroots run. I recall an Omaha gathering, for example, where an attendee grumped that government spending was so out of control the city was paying garbage men $5 an hour. Fred interrupted him right there, curtly asking, “Is that too much?” The attendee was shocked to be confronted. “How much would it take you to do that job?” Fred asked, flashing a bit of genuine anger. He lost that guy’s vote but won big points for no-bullshit honesty.

One more point. When most national political sparklies lose a race, they never leave Washington. Instead, they become high-paid lobbyists or find themselves ensconced in corporate-funded think tanks. But Fred simply packed up and left town, decamping for New Mexico—not to retire, but to work. For the next 50 years, he toiled as a “citizen politician.”

Fred nurtured student activists as a popular professor at the University of New Mexico, served as state Democratic chair to help reenergize the party, wrote over 20 books, held frequent fundraisers for progressive candidates, and created an internship program in Washington to help low-income Native American students find opportunities in national government. And that was just the start. He was also a renowned raconteur who loved good stories and laughter and was a devoted friend to many, including me.

One final story from Fred’s boyhood speaks to all of us fighting for fairness and justice today, often against great odds. Being raised on tenant farms, he noted, is hardly a bucolic experience. Even at 5 or 6 years old, he was expected to help lift the family’s tedious workload.

Before daylight, his father would roust him and a couple of cousins out of bed to put two draft horses in position to be hitched to plows or other farm equipment. The crew needed to be in the field at the crack of dawn—but first, Fred’s God-fearing mother insisted they all gather in the kitchen for prayer. His father impatiently tolerated this delay. The instant Momma finally said “Amen,” Dad barked, “Hitch ’em up, boys.”

Fred told me he was 13 before he realized that when he was in church and the preacher said “Amen,” he wasn’t supposed to punctuate the prayer by saying aloud, “Hitch ’em up, boys.”

But I’m sure Fred would tell us progressives that we should urgently hitch up our populist principles these days, putting them to work in America’s political fields. In my view, Harris was not some proverbial “great man,” but something less pretentious and more useful: a decent human being.

In lieu of flowers, the family ask you to consider a donation in support of the endowment: Donate Online: https://tinyurl.com/yc6s98wf Or Mail a Check to: University of New Mexico Foundation Fred Harris Congressional Internship Program Endowment Two Woodward Center, 700 Lomas Blvd, NE, Albuquerque, NM 87102-2568

Memorial services will be held on Saturday, December 14, 2024, at 2 PM at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 4th Street SW, Albuquerque, NM. The Service will also be live-streamed beginning at 1:30pm: https://www.youtube.com/@americansforindianopportunity

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Let’s all sing the holiday classic: “All I want for Christmas… Is Something Not Made of Plastic.”

Easier sung than done. Plastic is now ubiquitous in toys, electronics, tools, air, water… and us. And don’t forget the plastic Baby Jesus in Christmas tableaus.

What is plastic, anyway? It’s a toxic synthetic material mostly manufactured from petroleum by such giants as ExxonMobil, the globe’s top purveyor. So much is produced by these profiteers that plastic trash is now a planetary disaster.

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But not to worry, for Big Oil’s lobbyists assure us gabillions of plastic bags, bottles, and such are being recycled, keeping them out of our landfills, water, bodies, etc. Swell! Except… they’re lying.

After all, Exxon is the same for-profit contaminator that lied for years that fossil fuels were not causing climate change, even though top executives knew they were. Their ethic of deceit continues today – Big Oil knows that 94 percent of US plastics are not recycled. Indeed, they can’t be.

Faced with growing public alarm about the ever-growing glut of plastic pollution, the industry has doubled down on deceit by offering a snappy new PR slogan: “Advanced Recycling.” They say it’s a magical process dubbed “pyrolysis.” Only… it doesn’t work, it’s inordinately expensive, and it increases climate change emissions. Still, Exxon exclaims its AR will soon be processing half a million tons of plastic waste! But that’s not even a drop in the plastic bucket, for more than 400 million tons of plastic waste is discarded each year –and the oil industry is planning to double plastic production by 2040.

The only real way to stop runaway plastic pollution of us and our planet is to use less plastic. To learn more and help, go to Beyond Plastics: BeyondPlastics.org.

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Former New Mexico governor Bruce King was renown for his frequent malapropisms and contorted logic.

For example, he once refused to back a bill pushed by loan-shark lobbyists – but, he pledged that it if the legislature passed the thing, he would sign it. Well, the bill did pass… but Bruce vetoed it! The lobbyists swarmed him, crying that he had given his promise. Yes, the governor conceded, but “we all know that a promise is not a commitment.”

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Apparently, Coca-Cola executives have been studying Gov. King’s verbal backflip, for the multibillion-dollar corporate behemoth suddenly announced this month that it was adopting his “a-promise-is-not-a-commitment” ploy. The beverage barons are using King’s dictum to squirm out of the widely-ballyhooed promise they made just a few years ago to curtail the corporation’s contamination of our planet with plastic waste.

Coke has been the world’s #1 plastic polluter six years in a row, so its previous pledge to cut its plastic trash in half by 2030 would’ve had a major impact. But, oops, the honchos now say that was never a commitment – just a “voluntary environmental goal.” That goal, they explain, has “evolved,” so now they’re focused on imposing “efficient resource allocation to deliver lasting positive impact.”

You don’t need a BS detector to translate that corporate gobbledygook. Coke’s “resource allocation” will defund its environmental efforts to further enrich its wealthiest shareholders, delivering a “lasting positive impact” for those few. And for the many who will continue absorbing the deadly petro-polymers that Coca-Cola carelessly discharges into our air, water, soil, food, and bodies – well, tough luck.

Don’t be fooled by voluntary anti-pollution requirements. I promise you, they are hoaxes.

Do something!

Sick of the plastic lies and pollution? Check out Break Free from Plastic, who are working with more than 13,000 organizations and people worldwide to end the scourge once and for all.

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Is “corporate ethics” an oxymoron? Do you have to be a jerk to be a successful CEO? Is exploitation the only path to profit?

The good news is that many companies, big and small, in the food economy are blazing a different path through Wall Street’s jungle of greed, demonstrating that money and morality can be compatible. Texas supermarket chain HEB, for example, has drawn an intensely loyal customer base by (1) investing in good wages and benefits for employees, (2) showing up in such emergencies as pandemics, hurricanes, freezes, etc. to give essential supplies and hands-on help, and (3) being an involved and supportive neighbor to the hundreds of unique communities it serves.

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Also, Maine Grains is “relocalizing” the business of milling grain by working with local farmers who’d been abandoned by global grain marketers like Ardent and Gold Medal. They’re producing nutrient-rich flours from heritage grains, boosting the local economy in the process. Then there’s Bob’s Red Mill, which also artfully mills its products from diverse, natural grains–and it’s 100% employee-owned.

These are part of a rising business alternative to the selfish, profiteering ethic of Fortune 500 titans. Called certified B Corporations, they definitely exist to make a profit, but they are equally focused on having a positive social impact, prioritizing fair wages, environmental protections, and healthy communities as core elements of their missions, even making those goals legal requirements of their corporate charter.

Ben & Jerry’s, Amy’s Kitchen, King Arthur Baking, and New Belgium Brewery are just a few more of some 3,800 other businesses now organized as B Corps. Though not pretending to be perfect, they’re at least striving to be more than money grubbers, instead trying to contribute to the Common Good. For more information on the products and practices of B Corps, go to BCorporation.net.

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Social media has been lighting up like fireworks, with a myriad of Trump voters exclaiming: “I didn’t know he meant me!” For example, many MAGA cheerleaders are now shocked to learn that his rallying cry to eliminate “Obamacare” means killing the popular Affordable Care Act that provides their health coverage!

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Perhaps the most stunned, though, are many Trumpers who had cheered his anti-immigrant, send-em-back-where-they-came-from tirades. They assumed he only meant the murderers, rapists, and cat-eaters he frantically warned about – not their own son’s wonderful Honduran wife; not the beloved family running the popular Mexican café in town; and surely not their hardworking landscaping crew! Just the “bad” migrants, right?

Wrong. Trump says he’ll declare a national emergency, ordering America’s military to conduct a mass round-up and deportation operation, including police agencies making workplace raids and neighborhood sweeps. They even expect they’ll make “collateral arrests” of US citizens. Surely, you might think, such indiscriminate, unAmerican, mass incarceration can’t really happen here! But Trump is already putting thuggish right-wing enforcers in place to make it happen.

Moreover, a network of Trump’s big corporate funders is gleefully rushing to cash-in on this new capture-and-jail industry. Meet GEO Group, for example, a multibillion-dollar private penitentiary conglomerate that has been a profiteering house of horrors for inmates and workers across the country. But its top executives were huge donors to Trump’s ascension, and they now tell Wall Street investors they expect to gain $400 million a year in new business incarcerating Trump’s immigration suspects.

There’s a name for a government based on xenophobia, demagoguery, and greed: “Kakistocracy” – government by the worst persons in society.

Do something!

Looking for organizations who are already working on the coming immigration fights? We love these, for starters:

• United We Dream

• Mijente

• RAICES

Also: look for local immigration organizing groups in your area—often these are the groups on the front lines of doing ICE raid defense, legal support and more. (For example, DRUM in NYC or Voces de la Frontera in Wisconsin.)

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Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! For the holiday, we’re sharing with you one of our favorite Thanksgiving origin stories from Hightower below. And as a bonus, while you’re cooking your food or relaxing after dinner, here’s our Dinner Democracy show from 2021, featuring friends Raj Patel and Tom Philpott.

Let’s talk Turkey!

No, not the Butterballs in Congress. I’m talking about the real thing, the big gobbler – 46 million of which we Americans will devour this Thanksgiving.

It was the Aztecs who first domesticated the gallopavo, but the invading Spanish conquerors “fouled-up” the bird’s origins. They declared it to be related to the peacock – Wrong! They also thought the peacock originated in Turkey – Wrong! And, they thought Turkey was located in Africa – well, you can see the Spanish were pretty confused.

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Actually, even the origin of Thanksgiving Day in the US is confused. The popular assumption is that it was first celebrated by the Mayflower immigrants and the Wampanoag natives at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1621. They feasted on venison, furkees (Wampanoag for gobblers), eels, mussels, corn, and beer. But wait, say Virginians, the first Thanksgiving Food-a-Palooza was not in Massachusetts – the feast originated down here in Jamestown colony, back in 1608.

Whoa there, pilgrims! Folks in El Paso, Texas, say it all began way out there in 1598, when Spanish settlers sat down with people of the Piro and Manso tribes, to give thanks, feasting on roasted duck, geese and fish.

“Ha!” says a Florida group, asserting the very, very first Thanksgiving happened in 1565 when the Spanish settlers of St. Augustine and friends from the Timucuan tribe chowed-down on “cocido” – a stew of salt pork, garbanzo beans and garlic – washing it all down with red wine.

Wherever it began, and whatever the purists claim is “official,” Thanksgiving today is as multicultural as America. So, let’s enjoy! Kick-back, give thanks we’re in a country with such ethnic richness, and dive into your turkey rellenos, moo-shu turkey, turkey falafel, barbecued turkey… and so on.

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Most of us have noticed that the basic Thanksgiving Dinner has become a much pricier spread this year. Yet, while supermarket prices are up, few Americans realized the shockingly low prices that food monopolies are paying for each item on the table

Here’s an itemization that the National Farmers Union just released, showing typical prices paid by us consumers, contrasted to the price farmers receive:

• BUTTERBALL TURKEY: Consumers pay $2.42 per pound. Farmers get: 6 cents per pound.

• FRESH CRANBERRIES: Consumers pay $2.99 for 12 oz package. Farmers get: 86 cents.

• BONELESS HAM: Consumers pay $15.98 for 2 pounds. Farmers get: $1.28.

• SWEET CORN: Consumers pay $2.99 for 16 oz. Farmers get: 34 cents.

• DINNER ROLLS: Consumers pay $3.99 for 18 oz package. Farmers get: 10 cents.

• GREEN BEANS: Consumers pay $5 for 20 oz. Farmers get: 98 cents.

• CANNED PUMPKIN: Consumers pay $4.29 for 15 oz. Farmers get: 14 cents.

Join the NFU’s Fairness for Farmers campaign here, and check out resources and support for family farmers from Farm Aid here.

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Howard Lutnick wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Then, he intends to eat your cake. Lutnick is another billionaire corporate huckster who was a campaign bagman for Trump, and now he’s to become the Commerce Secretary. But first, he’s been tasked with picking hordes of corporate loyalists to be placed in Trump’s government as friendly “regulators” of corporate hucksterism.

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Convenient, huh? This is what Trump & Company mean by saying they’ll make government “efficient.” Instead of corporate powers having to lobby regulators to get special favors, corporate officials will become the regulators. That is so much smoother for Lutnick and his ilk, who look forward to four free-wheeling years of devouring our economy.

In choosing those who are to police corporate price gouging, workplace rules, bank rip-offs, and such, Lutnick has been calling Wall Streeters, Silicon Valley tech bosses, corporate giants, and billionaires, telling them to send their best operatives to Trump’s regime. “Let’s get them into government,” he exults! Notice that he’s not calling any union leaders, consumer protectors, or other real public interest watchdogs.

By the way, Lutnick himself is in line to profit from the corporate feeding frenzy he’s now staffing. He is invested in everything from health care profiteers to cryptocurrency flimflams, and while he’s been doing Trump’s work, he’s simultaneously been pushing Congress to do favors for his personal holdings. But he insists that there is no conflict of interest in his efforts. After all, he says with a straight-face, he holds his government policy meetings in separate rooms from his own business pleadings.

This is Jim Hightower saying… And that paper-thin wall of separation is Trump’s new ethical standard for protecting us from raw corporate greed.

PS—We know that our regular Do Something boxes, where we shout out activists and organizations that are working on the issues discussed in the post, are very popular, and will be especially critical for battling Trump. We’re working with a number of groups to get you the most effective actions out there, and we’ll be sharing as many as we find as they come in. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own to us in the comments, too!

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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 lines—grassroots organizers around the country are digging in for the long haul and making change right where they live. We love it!

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