Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

The 10 worst jobs

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

I've concluded that there are two kinds of people in our world: Those willing to believe there are only two kinds of people, and those who think it's a bit more complex than that.

Speaking of questionable enumerations, the list of "The 10 Worst Jobs of 2012" is out – and I seem to have two of them! Both newspaper reporter and broadcaster made the list (okay, I'm not technically a reporter, I'm a columnist, but let's not be picky). These used to be considered quasi-glamorous gigs, but CareerCast – the online compiler of the list – says that the decline in job opportunities and pay in the media world, plus the rise in on-the-job stress, have pushed these down to the fifth and tenth worst career choices out there, It's true that the pay is lower-middle class – but there's no heavy-lifting and, hey, us commentator types essentially get paid just for running our mouths. Pretty good work, if you can get it.

Top of the worst list is lumberjack. I can see that. Yes, being outdoors is a plus (if the weather's good), but screaming chain saws and huge trees crashing down would put you on edge every day – and maybe in your grave.

Dairy farmers ranked number two. It's a noble profession in my view, but most people don't realize that these hard-working and skilled yeomen literally are married to their cows. The lady bovines have to be milked twice a day, including weekends and holidays, no matter the weather, or whether you're sick or tired.

Other bottom tenners are: oil rig workers (can you say, BP?); dishwashers (they get no respect and sorry pay); butchers (missing fingers are a routine job hazard here); and waiting tables (lousy pay and constant abuse from managers and customers alike).

However, millions of Americans today can tell you that by far the worst job these days – is looking for one.

Wild about wild chickens

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Some people complain that their town has gone to the dogs, but Bastrop, Texas, has gone to the chickens – and Bastropians are proud of it.

Well, most Bastropians.

While other cities might boast of their historic sites or cultural offerings, the good folks of this easy going, free-spirited community have chosen to highlight a flock of feral chickens that has lived for years on (appropriately enough) Farm Street. No one owns these roosters, hens, and chicks – they take care of themselves, eating bugs, clucking contentedly from yard to yard, and yes, crossing the road for no apparent reason.

It's a quirky phenomenon that fits right in with this town of delightfully quirky folks. Three years ago, some of them got the city council to enshrine the quirkiness by designating their area "The Farm Street Historical Chicken Sanctuary" – a proclamation that provides protected status for the flock. Everyone smiled, the chickens clucked, and all was well.

Until this spring, when Beverly Hoskins raised a ruckus in the hen house, figuratively speaking. As owner of several rental houses along Farm Street, she wants the council to consider repealing the proclamation, complaining that "a lot of chicken waste" was being spread by the daily promenade.

The denizens of Farm Street, however, flocked to defend the fowls, asserting that wild chickens are an integral part of "Bastrop culture." One lady who rents one of Hoskins' houses said of the chickens that roost in a tree in her yard: "I welcome them." Another neighbor pointed out that "Hey, the chickens were here first… And it is "Farm Street!"

The fate of the flock is still up in the air, but the council recently hinted at its sentiments by authorizing some banners on Farm Street telling motorists to slow down, for they're driving through a chicken sancturary.

The filet mignon deception

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

If you're one who enjoys a steak dinner now and again, let me ask this question: do you prefer it with a nice sauce, a side of garlicky spinach – or maybe some transglutaminase?

Trans-what-did-he-say?

Transglutaminase is an enzyme made by the fermentation of bacteria and added to meat pieces to make them stick together. Yes, "meat glue" – it's what's for dinner!

This is yet another dandy product from industrialized food purveyors that keep inventing new ways to mess with our dinner for their own fun and profit. Right about now, you're probably asking yourself: "Why do they need to glue meat together?"

Glad you asked. It's so the industry can take cheap chunks of beef and form them into what appears to be a pricey steak. For example, that filet mignon you ordered at the Slaphappy Steakhouse chain recently – was it steak... or transglutaminase? By liberally dusting meat pieces with transglutaminase powder, squishing them into filet mignon-shaped molds, adding a bit of pressure to bond the pieces, and chilling them – voila, four-bucks-a-pound stew meat looks like a $25-a-pound filet mignon!

While meat glue is widely used, corporations peddling molded meat are not eager to let us consumers in on their little secret. Well, sniffs the meat industry's lobbying group, they have to list transglutaminase on the ingredient label and stamp the package as "formed" or "reformed" meat. How honest! Except that most of these glued steaks are peddled as filet mignon through high-volume restaurants, hotels, cafeterias and banquet halls – where unwitting customers never see the package or ingredient label.

This is why we should support truth-in-menu laws. Make them say "reformed and glued" filet mignon right on the menu. That simple step lets us decide if we really want to eat that. Consumers should have the right to know... and choose.

Making Dow happy at our expense

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Thanks to the blessings of nature and good farmers, you and I are able to enjoy such scrumptious delights as fresh corn-on-the-cob, popcorn, or other variations of this truly-great grain. And now, thanks to Dow Chemical and federal regulators, we can look forward to "Agent Orange Corn."

The chemical giant is in line to gain approval for putting a genetically-altered corn seed on the market that will produce corn plants that won't die when doused with high levels of 2,4-D. This potent pesticide was an ingredient in Dow's notorious Agent Orange defoliant, which did horrific damage to soldiers and civilians in the Vietnam War. However, the corporation and the feds claim that 2,4-D was not the deadliest ingredient of the killer defoliant and has not yet been proven to cause cancer in humans, so they're pressing ahead to let this corporate-constructed seed be planted across America.

Dow now sells 2,4-D to help kill various weeds, but the herbicide is so strong that it also kills normal corn. Thus, Dow's genetic engineers made a new corn that's immune to the weedkiller. This would let the corporation profit from selling the patented seed, plus enjoying a huge increase in sales of its 2,4-D herbicide. How happy for Dow!

Not so happy, though, for consumers worried about the untested longterm health consequences of the altered corn and the carcinogenic possibilities of ingesting more 2,4-D. Also, when sprayed, this herbicide can vaporize and spread for miles, killing crops that are not immune, poisoning the surrounding environment, and endangering the health of farmers and townspeople throughout the area.

All this unhappiness for so many just to make one corporation happy by getting much richer at our expense. For information and action go to www.SaveOurCrops.org.

Snarling Banker

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Woody Guthrie wrote a song titled "Jolly Banker," a perfect-pitch parody of the propensity of Depression-era bankers to feel good about gouging their small borrowers.

Woody's song could also apply to the gouging we're getting from today's national chain banks, except the song's title should be "Snarling Banker." Only a couple of years ago, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and others were quite jolly, because they were piling up mountains of profits through such sneaky schemes as secretly enrolling customers in checking accounts that charged $35-a-pop for every overdrawn check, then rigging the flow of checks so unwitting customers would be overdrawn.

Public outrage exploded, especially because only a year earlier, We the People had bailed out these same banks. Thus, Congress shut down some of the worst gouges. This pinched bankers' exorbitant profits a bit, and they've been snarling ever since. "Banks aren't charities," they barked – apparently thinking that somone might've mistaken them as such.

One thing you can count on is that banker greed is bottomless, and it's now coming back with a vengeance. Of course, they could make money honestly (as community banks and credit unions do) by making good loans and delivering good service, but instead they're returning to what they call "creative banking." You would call it "fee gouging."

Wells Fargo now hits you for $15 a month just to have a checking account, unless you keep at least $7,500 in your account. Citibank charges $20 a month, unless you keep $15,000 on deposit – more than double last year's level. Bank fees for money orders have doubled, and fees for cashiers checks have quadrupled.

There is a way out of this endless abuse-the-customer game: move your money out of their vaults! For help, go to www.MoveYourMoneyProject.org.

The next really big thing in food: you!

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Attention foodies: Let's chow down! There's a new craze in CuisineWorld, and it's going 180-degrees in the opposite direction from the healthy-eating movement we hear so much about.

For example, instead of locally-sourced beets and jicama on sustainably-raised arugula dressed with small-batch artisan balsamic vinegar – we're talking a big Pizza Hut pepperoni and gooey cheese pie with (get this): a long looping hot dog stuffed right into the crust! Or, if that's not caloric enough for you, Pizza Hut is also offering a belt-buster pizza that is ringed by a dozen mini cheeseburgers baked directly onto the crust. Hey, some might see obesity as a crisis, but YUM! Brands, Inc., the conglomerate that owns Pizza Hut, sees it as a money-making opportunity. Don't fight it – feed it!

Not to be outdone, the Burger King chain is test-marketing a stunning advance in fusion cuisine at one of its Nashville outlets. It marries two essential food groups together: ice cream and pork. Yes, America, get ready for the Bacon Sundae! Topped off with caramel and chocolate syrup.

The pioneering innovator in obesity grub, however, comes from the place where anything goes, and "too much" is never enough: Las Vegas. Many top chefs have opened four-star restaurants along the Las Vegas strip, but none can outstrip a local diner when it comes to extravagant excess. The "Heart Attack Grill" takes pride in deep fried, and its menu is filled with unhealthy eats. Renown for its Quadruple Bypass Burger, Butter Fat Shakes, and Flatliner Fries cooked in pure lard, the grill brags that it serves food with "Taste Worth Dying For."

Indeed, two diners have collapsed so far this year while pounding down Bypass Burgers. To add to the charm, customers weighing over 350 pounds can eat for free.

So weigh in, and bon appetite.

Another Koch-funded stealth campaign

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Millions of children in our public schools will soon be hearing from the Heartland Institute. It might sound like a nice above board civic group promoting such salt-of-the-earth virtues as integrity and veracity, but quite the opposite.

Heartland's mission is to promote mass ignorance on behalf of its self-serving (and often heartless) corporate backers. It is yet another secretive far-right-wing front group funded by the Koch brothers' club of billionaires who're intent on establishing an unbridled corporate plutocracy in our country.

But this outfit was recently outed by someone who released a trove of its internal documents – including details of its multimillion-dollar stealth campaign to undermine the teaching of climate change science in America's schools. Heartland is creating an anti-science curriculum to pooh-pooh the facts of global weather change and planning to turn the issue into a major culture war in local school districts across the country. Falsely claiming that "Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective" and that climate change "is a major scientific controversy" the Institute and its right-wing allies are already pressuring school boards to adopt its denial curriculum, forcing teachers to water down the science.

The dishonesty of Heartland's campaign includes its shielding of the special interests behind it. When the campaign comes to your area, it won't tell local people that the Koch brothers – who own America's largest private oil corporation and are vituperative opponents of regulations to restrict their emissions of global warming pollutants – are putting up $200,000 for the effort this year.

To get to the dark heart of this insidious campaign, and to stand for science and truth in teaching, go to the National Center for Science Education at www.ncse.com.

Listen to the weeds

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:00:00 -0700

Rather than finding ways to cooperate with the natural world, America's agribusiness giants reach for the next quick fix in a futile effort to overpower nature. Their attitude is that if brute force isn't working, they're probably not using enough of it.

Monsanto, for example, has banked a fortune by selling a corn seed that it genetically manipulated to produce corn plants that won't die when sprayed with a toxic weedkiller called "Roundup." Not coincidentally, Monsanto also happens to be the maker of Roundup, so it has profited from the seed and from the huge jump in Roundup sales that the seed generated. Slick.

But Mother Nature, damn her, has rebelled. So much of Monsanto's poison was spread in the past decade that weeds naturally developed a resistance to it. As a Dow Chemical agronomist put it, "The real need here is to diversify our weed management systems."

Exactly right! We need non-chemical, non-GMO, sustainable systems that work with nature.

But, no, the Dow man didn't mean that at all. He was calling for more brute force in the form of Dow's new genetically-altered corn seed that can absorb Dow's super-potent 2,4-D weedkiller. Use this, he says, and nature will be defeated.

Wrong. Nature doesn't quit. The weeds will keep evolving and will adapt to Dow's high-tech fix, too. By pushing the same old thing relentlessly, says an independent crop scientist, agribusiness interests "ratchet up [America's] dependence on the use of herbicides, which is very much a treadmill."

t's time to start listening to the weeds – and cooperating with Mother Nature. To advance this common sense approach, a national coalition is backing a California "Right To Know" initiative requiring GMO-altered foods to be labled. To help, go to Organic Consumers Association www.OrganicConsumers.org.

Anheuser-Busch, drunk on greed

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The big brewers often admonish us imbibers of their grain products to "Drink Responsibly." Well, I say back to them: Lobby Responsibly.

In particular, I point to a disgusting binge of besotted lobbying by Anheuser-Busch and other beer barons this year in the Nebraska legislature. At issue was the town of Whiteclay, smack dab on the Nebraska-South Dakota border. Only about 10 people live there – but it is home to four beer stores. Why? Because right across the state line is the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Oglala Sioux tribe, which has a devastating problem of alcohol addiction, combined with intractable poverty.

Whiteclay exists solely so booze peddlers can profit from the Oglala tribe's addiction miseries. They sell four million cans of beer a year to Pine Ridge residents, including high-alcohol malt liquor! So much for "Drink Responsibly." A fourth of the children on the reservation are born with fetal alcohol birth defects, and life expectancy of tribal members is less than 50 years.

Responding to this grotesque exploitation of an epidemic illness, LB 829 was introduced, a modest bill to designate Whiteclay as an "alcohol impact zone," which would allow authorities to limit store hours and ban high-alcohol beers. Of course, Busch and iits other beer buddies responsibly backed the bill, right?

Ha! Like gators on a poodle, their lobbyists lept on the legislature, calling in chits from key lawmakers who'd taken thousands of dollars in campaign cash from the industry. The chair of the senate committee considering the bill had pocketed $4,000 in beer money, and he dutifully refused to let LB 829 even go to a vote, declaring obtusely: "We're not here to protect people from themselves."

Surely there's an especially hot bar stool in hell reserved for these greedheads.

Et tu, England?

sitehelp AT jimhightower DOT com (Jim Hightower) — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

I guess we Americans could take some comfort from the fact that our own plutocrats on Wall Street and in Washington are not the only clueless, out-of-touch, bunch of narcissistic leaders in the world. But, I don’t – it doesn't make me feel any better to see Britain under the same yoke of elitism that's weighing down our economy, democracy, and sense of national unity.

Welcome to "Pasty-gate." A pasty is a culinary icon to the British masses – a hot, savory pastry that is rich in flavor, yet inexpensive. So, facing a sizeable budget deficit, the ruling Conservative Party of corporate-hugging Prime Minister David Cameron has offered a cold plate of right-wing austerity that would make our own Republican leaders proud: cut taxes on mega-rich elites, while imposing a new 20-percent tax on pasties, the food of the commoners.

I say – whot rot, eh?

To add insult to injury, Cameron chose his close friend and Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to push the pasty tax through Parliament. Osborne, who'll inherit both a fortune and the title of "baronet" from his father, hails from the stuffiest echelon of England's social elites.

Trying to explain the need to tax the simple grub of the working class – people who're already battered by high gasoline prices and a jobless job market – Osborne stiffly attempted a populist pose: "We are all in this together," he stammered. Unfortunately, for him, he was asked at a parliamentary hearing to say when he last sampled a pasty at a bakery chain specializing in the tasty edible. He was flummoxed, finally admitting he never goes there.

Such punishing of the majority on behalf of the precious few is why Cameron would lose by at least 10 points if the election were held today. After all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked. Ordinary Brits are getting kicked right in their pasties.