Billionaire 'cowboy' scam forces real ranchers out of business

Let's all gather 'round the campfire, Buckaroos and let Ol' Cactus Jim here tell you about some of today's hardy, hard-working cowboys. Yes, those manly men who live free-spirited, yippy-ti-yi-yo, cowboy lives out in the rustic ranch country of the Rocky Mountain West.

Oh, wait -- that was a century ago. The "cowboys" who are now humming "Home On The Range" across Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are multimillionaire and billionaire corporate titans and celebrities like Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates. They don't really live there or mix with locals, nor do they actually "ranch" their spectacular 300,000-acre spreads, since they don't know how.

So they hire real ranching outfits to bring in some cattle, sheep and other ranching accoutrements, then they fly in on private jets occasionally and strut around like John Wayne. They are, in a word, pathetic.

But they surely are land barons, spending up to $200 million each for their vast spreads. Indeed, these dilettantes rule the availability of ranchland and scenic wilderness, pricing out people who really want to ranch and locking out families who want to experience some of nature's most majestic rivers and mountains. Fifteen years ago, the biggest private landowners held 27 million acres; now they've grabbed 42 million acres for themselves.

Well, say apologists for wealth concentration, they bought the land with their money, so it's fair and square. But hold on, slick. They don't come just for the views, hunting and exclusivity -- their ranches get generous land subsidies, plus states like Wyoming provide no-tax hideaways for their wealth.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... So, even though you and I are shut out of these gated land baronies, at least we can take pride in knowing that it's our tax dollars that help the rich buy them ... and lock the gates.

WHO'S BEHIND THE GOP'S ASSAULT ON HOMELESS PEOPLE?

Memo from corporate headquarters to staff:

"Notice -- the beatings will continue until employee morale improves."

That corporate joke would also fit the perverse ethic of the Republican Party's latest assault on homeless Americans. Believe it or not, the Party's new homeless policy -- officially embraced by the Trump regime and already enacted by 16 right-wing state governments -- is to blame homelessness on (guess who?) the homeless! Yes, hundreds of thousands of individuals and families living on the streets in our Land of Plenty are being ordered to go inside -- even though they have no "inside."

But pious GOP politicos are not merely chiding the poor. They're using Big Government's authoritarian might to criminalize, arrest, incarcerate and forcibly medicate some of the hardest-hit people in our country. It's a raw, disgraceful example of the aristocratic arrogance of today's billionaire brat class. Such as Silicon Valley Trumpster, Joe Lonsdale. He's been on a sadistic crusade to ban homeless indigents from making alleys, underpasses and other vacant spots into their "home." A multi-billionaire profiteer of the Palantir espionage conglomerate, Lonsdale lives in splendor in his mansions, but he doesn't want to be "bothered" by the poor who might be perturbed by the inequality he perpetuates. Indeed, Jon recently demanded that angry poor people who might pose a threat to upright, uptight royals like him should be subjected to public hangings.

In a democratic society, government's role is not to protect the privileged from the people, but to protect the people from the oppression and ever-grasping greed of royal wannabes like Lonsdale. To keep track of the Republican assault on the poor, go to the National Homelessness Law Center: homelesslaw.org.