Jim Hightower's News and Commentaries

Global beer giant dances the can-can

Jim Hightower — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Anyone who says that America has lost its innovative edge in technology and manufacturing has not chugged a can of Bud recently. The buzz is back, baby!

Well, actually, Budwiser is no longer American. It's now a Belgian outfit, owned by InBev, the world's largest maker of suds. But picky-picky. The brew crew overseeing the "King of Beers" know what we American quaffers want in a can of beer – a new and improved can.

Huh?

Yes, says the "vice president of innovation" at Budwiser, "We're consciously working to bring innovation to the packaging side" of the beer market. He explains that you "trend seekers" are on the make for "new things," so the corporation's container-shapers have devised a "bowtie" can that kinks inward in the middle. How exciting is that!?! Plus – get ready to bust your beer gut – there are 8.5 fewer calories in the new can. How did they manage that? By magic – which is to say "trickery."

The bowtie design allows the multibillion-dollar brew kings to short you by putting almost an ounce less of beer per can than you got in the old standard 12-ouncer. But, come on, we experienced hoisters of the brewer's art will definitely feel that loss of product, so they can't fool us into paying more for less.

Well, that's where their innovative genius trumps our consumer instincts. To keep us off balance, Anheuser-Busch InBev's bowtie can has nearly double the amount of aluminum of its regular can, making the new feel just as heavy as the old. Less beer, more metal – that's heavy innovation, my friends.

Oh, one more innovative twist. In case some of you trend seekers try to compare ounces in the new six-packs, you'll find that the bowtie cans only come in eight-packs. Gotcha again!

If you want honest beer, try the craft brews at your local pub or store.

Let's join the Army!

Jim Hightower — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:00:00 -0700

Imagine "net zero." That's the wonky phrase attached to an elegant idea – namely, converting communities to total renewable energy, complete recycling, and a culture of conservation to bring humankind's carbon footprint into a sustainable balance with a healthy earth.

Now, imagine the least likely place you'd expect this ideal to take root… and even flourish. How about an Army base? In Texas, no less! Astonishingly, America's net zero future is being pioneered at Fort Bliss, a sprawling military base of 35,000 soldiers in El Paso.

The post already has a 1.4-megawatt solar array and has placed rooftop solar panels on all base housing (generating 13.4-megawatts of energy), and it's in partnership with El Paso Electric to add a 200-acre, 20-megawatt solar farm by 2015. It also has a plan to convert post waste into energy; is engaged in wind power; geothermal and conservation projects; is promoting energy-efficient vehicles; and is building bicycle lanes.

The Army! Who knew they cared?

Bliss's rank and file soldiers, as well as the brass, are committed to achieving the goal of net zero by 2018, meaning the base will generate all of the energy it uses – and do it with renewables. Adding to the effort, the troops have planted nearly 15,000 trees and have become converts to recycling. To encourage the latter, the base commander, Gen. Dana Pittard has put the million-dollar-a-year revenue from recycling into skating parks, exercise facilities, and other morale-boosting recreation projects.

"Everybody is getting involved," he says, noting that the effort is changing behavior and fostering a conservation culture, which he hopes "our soldiers will then take with them when they go on."

There's hope for the Earth when even the Army begins to care, take action, and change attitudes.

Homeless and hungry in Houston

Jim Hightower — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Whenever one of our cities gets a star turn as host of some super-sparklie event such as a national political gathering or a Super Bowl, its first move is to tidy up – by having the police sweep homeless people into jail, out of town, or under some rug.

But the tidy-uppers of Houston, Texas, aren't waiting for a world-class event to rationalize going after homeless down-and-outers. They've preemptively outlawed the "crime" of dumpster diving. In March, James Kelly, a 44-year-old Navy veteran, was passing through Houston on his way to connect with family in California. Homeless, destitute, and hungry, he chose to check out the dining delicacies in a trash bin near City Hall. Spotted by police, Kelly was promptly charged with "disturbing the contents of a garbage can in the [central] business district." Seriously.

"I was just basically looking for something to eat," he told the Houston Chronicle. But, unbeknownst to both this indigent tourist and the great majority of Houston's generally generous citizens, an ordinance dating way back to 1942 says that "molesting garbage containers" is illegal. Also, in 2012, city officials made it a crime for any group to hand out food to the needy in the downtown area without first getting a permit. It's a cold use of legal authority to chase the homeless away to... well, anywhere else.

Such laws are part of an effort throughout the country to criminalize what some call "homeless behavior." And, sure enough, when hungry, the behavioral tendency of a homeless human is to seek a bite of nourishment, often in such dining spots as dumpsters. The homeless behavior that Houston has outlawed, then, is eating.

The good news is that when Houstonians learned of Kelly's rude experience, many reached out to help him get through his hard times. Now they need to reach out to local politicos and get the city's hard treatment of homeless people changed.

The chilling reality of America's jobs crisis

Jim Hightower — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

"Stock Market Soars," exulted a typical headline in early May, when the Dow Jones Average topped 15,000.

But this index of Wall Street wealth gives a false picture of our nation's true economic health. Yes, the privileged few are doing extremely well. But the workaday many are struggling – and falling further and further behind as the jobs market sinks steadily from mere recession down into depression.

The monthly unemployment reports don't tell the depths of misery out here in the real world, beyond the view of Wall Street and Washington elites. For example, President Obama hailed the news that unemployment dipped to 7.5 percent in April. Unstated, though, was the stark reality that this good-news dip was not due to a jump in job offerings, but to a bad-news labor market so weak and discouraging that Americans are dropping out of it or never entering it.

More than a third of our working-age population is no longer even in the job market, and only 58.6 percent of us are employed. Put the opposite way, 41 percent of the potential workforce is not working – about 102 million people. One more statistic, and it's a chiller: More than one out of five American families report that, last year, not a single family member had a job.

Our people are trapped in a jobs crisis that is sucking the economic vitality out of our nation, but our leaders even refuse to acknowledge it. In fact, corporate chieftains deliberately exacerbate the crisis by hoarding trillions of dollars that ought to be rushed into job-creating expansions, and politicians add to the casualties by gleefully firing hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters, police, and other valuable public employees.

America's middle class is burning to the ground, while Washington fiddles with nonsense and Wall Street feathers its own nest. It's disgraceful.

Cantor's con would steal workers' overtime pay

Jim Hightower — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Little Eric Cantor, the prancing political prissy who serves as the GOP's House majority leader, apparently thinks he's too slick to get caught in an outright legislative lie – or maybe he thinks we rubes are too dumb to figure out that he's trying to slick us.

Either way, a crude deceit is at the very heart of his "Working Families Flexibility Act," which he recently slid through the House. It eliminates a central piece of America's middle-class framework, namely the 8-hour workday and 40-hour week. Under the 1938 Fair Labor Law, bosses can make hourly employees work extra, but only by paying an overtime wage for the added hours.

Cantor claims his bill would improve this New Deal protection by letting corporate managers require extra hours on the job without overtime pay by offering "comp time" to the employees. In other words, work more hours now in exchange for taking-off those same number of hours later on.

With a wink at corporate lobbyists, Eric slyly refers to this switch as "women-friendly," allowing working moms the flexibility to decide when to take time off. Therein lies the lie.

It's not workers who get to decide, but bosses. Note that Cantor's bill does not guarantee employees the right to use the time-off they would earn by giving up extra pay. They can use the comp time only if and when the employer says it's okay – which might be never. Also, even if employees are granted time off, bosses can require them to be on-call during their "free" time.

Cantor's bill is a con. It hands workplace flexibility to corporations, not to "moms," while also stealing the hard-won right of workers to be assured of an 8-hour day, or extra pay. For more information, contact the National Partnership for Women and Families: www.nationalpartnership.org.

World-class political nincompoopism

Jim Hightower — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

My state of Texas seems to have an inordinate share of nincompoops in public office. But it's only fair that office holders from other states be considered before deciding which one is the nincompoopiest of all.

Give credit to Pennsylvania, for example, whose GOP governor, Tom Corbett, recently scored big nincompoop points by explaining why his state ranks 49th in job creation. "Many employers," the guv grumbled, during a radio interview, "say 'we're looking for people, but we can't find anybody that has passed a drug test'." Yes, the old my-constituents-are-a-bunch-of-drug-addicts dodge! That's world-class nincompoopery. Did I mention that Tom's voter approval rating is down to 38 percent?

But compare Corbett to one of the Lone Star State's congress critters, Steve Stockman. Steve's re-election campaign has put out a bumper sticker with this uplifting thought: "If babies had guns, they wouldn't be aborted." Wow – that's two nincompoopisms in only eight words!

Still, even Steve can't hold a candle to Rep. Louie Gohmert, the mouth that never shuts. Vice-chair of a House homeland security sub-committee, Gohmert recently revealed an astonishing piece of intelligence on the terrorist threat to the US of A. Al Qaeda, he informed the whole world, has set up radical Islamist camps on the "other side" of the Texas-Mexico border. Really? No. But the Islamist alarmist proceeded to tell us that Mexican drug gangs are teaching al Qaeda infidels how to cross the border into Texas, and they're also being trained "to act like Hispanics."

Hmmm, wondered many Latinos on "this side," how does Louie think one would "act" Hispanic? Sing "La Cucaracha," drive a low-rider, dress up as landscapers?

But "think" is not part of Gohmert's shticks. Which is what puts him atop the world of political nincompoops."

Turning people who report corporate crime into criminals

Jim Hightower — Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

In most state legislatures today, bizarre is not unusual, and off-the-wall has become the political center.

Still, it seems strange that legislators in so many states – from California to Vermont – have simultaneously been pushing "ag-gag" bills that are not merely outrageous, but downright un-American. Each is intended to prevent journalists, whistleblowers, workers and other citizens from exposing illegal, abusive, or unethical corporate treatment of animals confined in factory feeding operations.

Our nation's founders mounted a revolution to establish our Constitutional right to a free press and free speech – even if the reigning government doesn't like the message. Yet here come a mess of so-called "conservatives" using state governments to outlaw messengers who shine a light on corporate wrongdoing – turning those who expose crimes into criminals. Even kookier, these repressive laws declare that truth-tellers who so much as annoy or embarrass the corporate owner of the animal factory are guilty of "an act of terrorism."

Oddly, each of these state proposals is practically identical, even including much of the same wording. That's because, unbeknownst to the public and other legislators, the bills don't originate from the state lawmakers who introduce them, instead coming from a corporate front group named ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council. Lobbyists for corporate funders of ALEC convene periodically to write model bills that serve their corporations' special interests, then the bills are farmed out to the group's trusted lawmakers across the country. The secretive ALEC network produced the ag-gag model in 2002, titling it the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act."

The only terrorists in this fight are the soulless profiteers in the corporate suites and the cynical lawmakers who serve them.

On-call shifts: The latest corporate shame

Jim Hightower — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Step right up, folks, and take your chances in the Amazing New American Workplace. Constantly high unemployment! Low wages always! No employee bargaining power! A corporate paradise!

This paradise has enriched the already-rich investor elite and rewarded top executives with multimillion-dollar pay packages. It also lets corporations treat the masses of people in today's workforce like Kleenexes: Just use 'em and toss 'em – after all, they're cheap, plentiful... and disposable.

Indeed, taskmasters-in-suits have now redefined the term "hired" to mean that you're tethered to a corporation full-time, but you actually work and get paid for only the few hours a week when the boss calls. This nefarious practice, known as "on-call shifts," is all the rage among national retail chains. Such giants as Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, and Urban Outfitters require employees to work without set schedules and to be available to have their strings yanked at any time, day or night, even on weekends, with as little as two hours' notice. Likewise, if customer traffic in a store is slow, retail workers who got dressed up, battled the morning commute, and reported on time, can simply be sent away after an hour or so – with no pay for their lost hours.

A recent survey of some 400 retail employees in New York City found that only 17 percent have a set schedule. Those with no set hours, also have no set income – and no life. If you're at the beck and call of the boss, what do you do with your children, how do you make a doctor's appointment, what if you're taking a class or trying to work a second job?

This shameful "on-call" practice says that the corporation owns you and that abuse of workers is a legitimate business practice in America. To help stop it, contact the Retail Action Project: www.RetailActionProject.org.

Putting happy-face stickers on America's middle-class pain

Jim Hightower — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:00:00 -0700

At last, some excellent economic news for folks long-mired in the stagnant labor market!

"Jobs Spring Back," exclaimed a typical headline on recent reports that 165,000 private-sector jobs were added in April. Wow – the thunderous, three-year boom of prosperity that has rained riches on Wall Street is finally beginning to shower on our streets, right?

Well, as dry-land farmers can tell you: Thunder ain't rain. Read beneath the joyful headlines and you'll see the parched truth. For example, more than a third of working age Americans are either out of work or have given up on finding a job. Also, last month's hiring increase was almost entirely for receptionists, waiters, temp workers, car-rental agents, and other low-wage positions. On the other hand, manufacturing, generally the source of good, middle-class jobs, did not add workers in April and has cut some 10,000 jobs in the last year.

Especially problematic was the continued rise in underemployment – people wanting full-time work, but having to take part-time and temporary jobs. Underemployment is also pounding college graduates. While they've been more successful than non-grads at landing jobs, they're not getting jobs that fit their career goals or even require the degrees they spent money and time to obtain. Indeed, many of those rental agents and restaurant employees you encounter hold four-year degrees, forcing everyone else to scramble for the few, even lower-paid jobs further down the skill ladder.

Meanwhile, the next graduating class is about to flood into the labor market with nowhere to go. America's middle class is in a crisis, while our pathetic political leaders pretend Wall Street's prosperity covers us all – and the corporate media puts little happy-face stickers over the dark reality faced by the workaday majority.

Diverting shareholder funds into "dark money" politics

Jim Hightower — Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court pretends, they certainly are loudmouths, constantly telling us how great they are and broadcasting their brand names everywhere.

Amazingly, though, these corporate creatures have suddenly turned demure, insisting they don't want to draw any attention to themselves. That's because, in this case, corporations are not selling, but buying – specifically, trying to buy public office for their pet political candidates by funneling millions of corporate dollars through such front groups as the US Chamber of Commerce. In turn, the corporate fronts use the money to air nasty attack ads that smear the opponents of the pro-corporate candidates.

Why do corporations need a middleman? Because the ads are so partisan and vicious that they would appall and anger millions of customers, employees, and shareholders of the corporation. So, rather than besmirch their own names, the corporate powers have meekly retreated behind the skirt of Republican political outfits like the Chamber.

But don't front groups at least have to tell election authorities who's really behind their ads? No. Thanks to the Supreme Court's infamous Citizen United edict in 2010, such groups can now pour unlimited sums of corporate cash into elections without ever disclosing the names of their funders. This "dark money" channel has essentially established secret political campaigning in America.

That's why shareholders and other democracy advocates are asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to rule that the corporate giants it regulates must reveal to shareholders all political donations their executives make with corporate funds. After all, that's shareholder money the executives are using to play political games. It belongs to all shareholders, not just a few CEOs. For more information and action, go to www.CommonCause.org.