Stories by Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
If you're concerned about cell-phones in cars, you'll hate the Geekmobile. These totally wired autos have PCs in the trunk, keyboards on the dash and printers behind the seat.
Posted on Jun 25, 2001, Source: AlterNet
In exchange for free Internet access, 6,000 U.S. schools are selling kids' personal information to their Internet provider.
Posted on Jun 19, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Getting laid off is traumatic -- according to the New York Times -- especially for the boss who has to lay you off.
Posted on Jun 19, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Not content to fill his cabinet with corporate CEOs, directors, and lobbyists, George W. Bush is trying to corporatize all the other top policy-making positions of government, too.
Posted on Jun 12, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Nestle has fought every effort to require labeling to inform American parents their babies are drinking its genetically modified baby formula.
Posted on Jun 12, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Science is often on corporations' side because corporations buy the science.
Posted on Jun 5, 2001, Source: AlterNet
When workers pay barely keeps pace with inflation, CEOs of major US corporations keep gorging themselves with ever-fatter pay.
Posted on Jun 5, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Read those product packages carefully: The new Van de Kamps fish sticks brag that they have a half-gram less fat than before. But they fail to tell you that the size of each fish stick has been reduced by one ounce.
Posted on May 29, 2001, Source: AlterNet
GM rice will eliminate third world Vitamin A deficiency, the biotech industry claims. Sure: as long as the malnourished child eats 27 bowls of rice at one sitting.
Posted on May 29, 2001, Source: AlterNet
George W-the guy who concedes of himself that he "may or may not have committed" drug crimes of "youthful indiscretion" well into his thirties-now is pushing a drug policy of proven stupidity.
Posted on May 22, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Halliburton, the company Dick Cheney used to run, is one of the few US companies that still does business with the thuggish, totalitarian rulers of Burma.
Posted on May 22, 2001, Source: AlterNet
George W. Bush says he loves children, especially poor ones. But his budget whacks our current inadequate public investment in their futures.
Posted on May 15, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Adolph Levis, the man who invented the "Slim Jim" -- the slick little beef-stick wrapped in cellophane and sold as a snack food -- has died.
Posted on May 15, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Back-to-the future consumers and businesses are abandoning oil, gas and nuclear for cheap and abundant power sources. And you can too.
Posted on May 8, 2001, Source: Hightower Lowdown
Harvard University is use to having such accolades as "great," "prestigous," and "powerful" applied to it . . . but now there are two other terms that apply to this bastion of educational excellence: mean and stingy.
Posted on May 8, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Gillette's new CEO is being called "a role model for corporate America." Sadly, James Kilts probably is. Like many corporate execs, his success has been built on whacking workers, padlocking factories, and abandoning communities.
Posted on May 8, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The Duke Blue Devils have finally adopted a "no sweatshop" code-of-conduct for its suppliers.
Posted on May 1, 2001, Source: AlterNet
While Washington fiddles and twiddles with the explosive issue of big-money corruption in politics, hoping to pose as "reformers" without actually having to stop the corruption, a few lawmakers and political operatives are actually doing something about the corruption: They're expanding it.
Posted on May 1, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The rich have been paying big bucks to have surgeons inject cow collagen -- which enlarges lips and smoothes wrinkles --directly into their lips and faces.Now that Mad Cow Disease is a threat, panic has stricken.
Posted on Apr 24, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Monsanto doesn't want to hear it, but the marketplace is shrieking at it, saying, "We don't want your genetically-altered Frankenfoods."
Posted on Apr 24, 2001, Source: AlterNet
When you call your phone, insurance, or credit card company about a billing mistake and reach someone who says "my name is Susan Sanders, and I'm from Chicago," you could actually be talking to C.R. Suman in Bangalore, India.
Posted on Apr 17, 2001, Source: AlterNet
CEOs of downsizing companies get all jittery about how stock market analysts will take the firings, fearful that Wall Street will see mass layoffs as a sign of a sick company. So they call in the spin doctors, who, to paraphrase Shakespeare ask, "How do I fire thee? Let me count the ways."
Posted on Apr 17, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Senator Pete Domenici wants to give a sugar-sweet deal to the nuke boys, including some $400 million a year in direct subsidies.
Posted on Apr 5, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Jonah Goldberg of the National Review Online has recently proclaimed that the low-wage, abusive, hell holes called sweatshops "are actually a good thing."
Posted on Apr 5, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Today's feature is about a matter you probably haven't spent much time worrying about: The food difficulties of the wealthy. For example, are you aware of the disturbing trend toward dim lighting in four-star restaurants?
Posted on Apr 5, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Travel to the Holiday Inn in Fargo, North Dakota and you'll find the future of electricity -- a safe, non-polluting, refrigerator-sized generator that heats the entire hotel.
Posted on Apr 5, 2001, Source: AlterNet
To become a US ambassador usually requires an advance degree in international studies, fluency in one or more foreign languages, and expertise in the history and culture of a region. Or you can simply be a rich person who raised a bunch of dough for the Bush's election.
Posted on Mar 27, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The new, world's largest SUV which once-billed itself as the off-road vehicle of wealthy suburbanites has had to re-vamp its PR efforts. Public backlash has caused Daimler-Chrysler, who built the Unimog, to re-package the SUV as the vehicle for businesses, fire departments, and rescue services.
Posted on Mar 27, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Oops. The Unimog -- DaimlerChrysler's obscene new gas guzzler -- has fallen into a PR ditch.
Posted on Mar 20, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Today, spaceship Hightower takes you deep into the dazzling neon of CorporateWorld, where no public facility is spared being branded by some kind of corporate logo.
Posted on Mar 20, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Through Nike, you're free to choose and express who you are by having the company stitch any name, word, or phrase you want under the Nike swoosh. Unless, as Jonah Peretti learned, the word is "sweatshop."
Posted on Mar 13, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Today, Spaceship Hightower takes you into the nightmarish world of ever-bigger Sports Utility Vehicles. These road hogs have been steadily expanding in size and silliness,but now DaimlerChrysler has now come out with a gargantuan monster of a machine: The "Unimog!"
Posted on Mar 13, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Newt is back on the scene -- not as a politico, but (get this) as a "corporate strategic consultant." How appropriate. This is the guy who literally waved corporate lobbyists directly into the lawmaking process when he was Speaker of the House.
Posted on Mar 6, 2001, Source: AlterNet
"We must leave no one behind," is the compassionate-conservative mantra of George W. But in his first chance to put his compassionate-conservative rhetoric into action, through his prescription drug plan, Bush leaves more than 3 out of 4 Americans behind.
Posted on Mar 6, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The WTO claims that it really wants to be more open to the world's majority, which has been excluded from WTO decision-making process. So why is it holding its next international meeting in Qatar, the Persian Gulf nation that does not allow political demonstrations or government opposition?
Posted on Feb 27, 2001, Source: AlterNet
You can buy a dog, but you can't buy the wag of its tail. Anyone who believes that has not bought an Aibo, Sony's $1500 virtual pet. In addition to a color camera for eyes, stereo microphones for its ears, and a synthesizer for making sounds, Aibo has a small motor that wags its tail.
Posted on Feb 27, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Sincere emotion used to be the only thing left in our crass commercial world that had not been reduced to a commodity and put up for sale. But not anymore. The Chinese have figured out a way to sell apologies.
Posted on Feb 13, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Time for another "Gooberhead Award," presented periodically by Hightower Radio to someone whose mouth is running 100 miles and hour, but whose brain is not quite in gear. Today's Goober goes to Mr. Bruce Tulgan, a management consultant who wrote a happy piece in the New York Times explaining that downsizing is good for you!
Posted on Feb 13, 2001, Source: AlterNet
High levels of antibiotics are now commonly found in our water supplies, with the highest concentrations near dairy and livestock farms that use the drugs to help fatten their animals.
Posted on Feb 6, 2001, Source: AlterNet
George Bush is rubbing our noses in the fact that Big Money got him into the White House and, by golly, Big Money is going to govern.
Posted on Feb 6, 2001, Source: Hightower Lowdown
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