Jim Hightower

Robot farmers—E-I-E-I-O!

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How’re you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen…Angus? Not “Angus,” the breed of cattle, but Angus, the 1,000-pound “farmer of the future.” He is not actually a he, but an it: A robot, toiling away on an indoor hydroponic farm that is soilless, and—yes—soulless. Programmed by a multimillion-dollar Silicon Valley start-up named Iron Ox, Angus’ homestead is an 8,000-square-foot concrete warehouse in a San Francisco suburb. The farm bot is more of a heavy lifter than a heavy thinker, wheeling around the warehouse to lift, move, and hand-off large pallets of produce to another robot that, so far, hasn’t earned a …

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A wealth of riches, a poverty of morals

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Let’s say you’re a millionaire. That’s a lot of money, right? Now let’s say you’re a billionaire. That’s a lot more money! But how much more? Think of all those dollars as seconds on a clock. A million seconds would total 11 days—but a billion seconds equals nearly 32 years! Rich is nice, but billionaire-rich is over the moon—and the wealth of billionaires is now zooming out of this world. There are only 2,200 of these über rich dudes in the world, but the wealth stashed away by these elites hit a new record this summer, averaging more than $4 billion each. They’ve even pocketed …

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The exceptional greed of healthcare execs

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Sometimes I don’t know whether to weep uncontrollably, laugh hysterically, or just throw up. I recently did all three when I saw another gusher of greed pouring out of corporate America. This one is especially nauseating, given today’s raging health crisis, for the culprits are major healthcare corporations! One perpetrator is Larry Merlo, CEO of our country’s largest drugstore chain, CVS. In this time of Covid-19, customers are surging into the chains 10,000 stores for everything from medications to masks. Yet, the boss has blithely left many of the pharmacies so severely understaffed that they pose a danger to public health. CVS pharmacists tell of …

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Trump judges require that ex-felons pay to vote

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How nasty is the Republican Party’s massive campaign to thwart democracy? Ask the good people of Florida. This was one of only three states that permanently took away the voting rights of felons—who’d completed their punishment. In 2018, though, a whopping 65 percent of Floridians voted for a state Constitutional amendment that finally struck this malicious bit of legal ugliness from the books, thus restoring the political personhood of about a million people who’d served their time. But, led by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s right-wing goose of a Governor, the GOP demanded that an appeals court of hyper-partisan federal judges overrule 2018’s landmark vote by the …

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When the world’s on fire, what should we do?

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For millions of people around the globe—especially young people—the pressing issue of our time is this: The world is on fire! On fire with climate change, creating a new and intensifying norm of deadly weather extremes that make a dystopian future a distinct possibility—constant wildfires, rising seas, desertification, global crop failures, widespread hunger, water shortages, &c. Luckily, we are a sentient species with the scientific ability to know that the chief cause of this global destruction is not angry gods, but us—specifically humankind’s massive extraction and burning of oil, gas, coal, and other fossil fuels. So, there’s a rising chorus of people shouting “Fire!” And, …

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CEO tricksters cut their pay without bleeding

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Covid-19 has been a doubly-deadly disaster for millions of Americans, destroying both life and livelihoods. But one of the most heartening responses to the crisis has come from the least-expected place: Corporate executive suites. This spring, numerous CEOs made headlines by showing some class solidarity. If we’re having to wallop our workers because of a pandemic, these bosses told media interviewers, the least we can do is cut our own salaries. Yes—all in this together! Only…not really. An analytical firm looked at the books of nearly all major U.S. corporations, finding that a mere fraction had made any cuts to senior executive pay, and the …

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