Howard Lutnick wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Then, he intends to eat your cake. Lutnick is another billionaire corporate huckster who was a campaign bagman for Trump, and now he's to become the commerce secretary. But first, he's been tasked with picking hordes of corporate loyalists to be placed in Trump's government as friendly "regulators" of corporate hucksterism.

Convenient, huh? This is what Trump & Company mean by saying they'll make government "efficient." Instead of corporate powers having to lobby regulators to get special favors, corporate officials will become the regulators. That is so much smoother for Lutnick and his ilk, who look forward to four free-wheeling years of devouring our economy.

In choosing those who are to police corporate price gouging, workplace rules, bank rip-offs and such, Lutnick has been calling Wall Streeters, Silicon Valley tech bosses, corporate giants and billionaires, telling them to send their best operatives to Trump's regime. "Let's get them into government," he exults! Notice that he's not calling any union leaders, consumer protectors or other real public interest watchdogs.

By the way, Lutnick himself is in line to profit from the corporate feeding frenzy he's now staffing. He is invested in everything from health care profiteers to cryptocurrency flimflams, and while he's been doing Trump's work, he's simultaneously been pushing Congress to do favors for his personal holdings. But he insists that there is no conflict of interest in his efforts. After all, he says with a straight face, he holds his government policy meetings in separate rooms from his own business pleadings.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... And that paper-thin wall of separation is Trump's new ethical standard for protecting us from raw corporate greed.

WHEN AND WHERE WAS THE FIRST THANKSGIVING FEAST?

Let's talk Turkey!

No, not the Butterballs in Congress. I'm talking about the real thing, the big gobbler -- 46 million of which we Americans will devour this Thanksgiving.

It was the Aztecs who first domesticated the gallopavo, but the invading Spanish conquerors "fouled up" the bird's origins. They declared it to be related to the peacock -- wrong! They also thought the peacock originated in Turkey -- wrong! And they thought Turkey was located in Africa -- well, you can see the Spanish were pretty confused.

Actually, even the origin of Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. is confused. The popular assumption is that it was first celebrated by the Mayflower immigrants and the Wampanoag natives at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1621. They feasted on venison, furkees (Wampanoag for gobblers), eels, mussels, corn and beer. But wait, say Virginians, the first Thanksgiving Food-a-Palooza was not in Massachusetts -- the feast originated down here in Jamestown colony, back in 1608.

Whoa there, pilgrims! Folks in El Paso, Texas, say it all began way out there in 1598, when Spanish settlers sat down with people of the Piro and Manso tribes to give thanks, feasting on roasted duck, geese and fish.

"Ha!" says a Florida group, asserting the very, very first Thanksgiving happened in 1565 when the Spanish settlers of St. Augustine and friends from the Timucuan tribe chowed down on "cocido" -- a stew of salt pork, garbanzo beans and garlic -- washing it all down with red wine.

Wherever it began, and whatever the purists claim is "official," Thanksgiving today is as multicultural as America. So, let's enjoy! Kick back, give thanks we're in a country with such ethnic richness, and dive into your turkey rellenos, moo shu turkey, turkey falafel, barbecued turkey ... and so on.

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Wow! Who says election promises don't produce real change?

Candidate Donald Trump had loudly proclaimed that he'd force U.S. corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all the made-in-China products they sell to us.

Even he must have been surprised, though, when one major American corporation promptly shouted, "Yes, sir!" Only one day after Trump's election, the Steve Madden shoe manufacturer announced it would leave China, where nearly all of its footwear is made. Amazing -- a victory for Trump policy even before he takes office! And a morale boost for American workers.

So, where would Madden relocate? Maybe in the hard-hit industrial Midwest, or maybe such former shoe-making areas as New England and the Southeast. But no. In a less-pleasant surprise to Trump, Madden executives said they would not replant their factories in the USA -- but in Vietnam, Cambodia and Brazil.

Despite appearing to succumb to Trump's anti-China tariff, Madden is making an end run around it, "leaving China" by taking China with it. The corporate trick here is the structural reality that not only are U.S. factories located in China but so are the suppliers of the materials manufacturers must buy to make their products. So, Madden can scoot down to Vietnam, thus escaping Trump's China tariff -- but the shoe's components (from laces to soles) will still be Chinese-made. And contrary to Trump's bragging, his policy will not create a single made-in-America job.

Let's remember that corporations are the most aggressively selfish elites in our society, and we should not be duped into thinking that running job-creation policy through them will benefit anyone but them.

THE DEMOCRATS' RURAL PROBLEM IS THEY'VE FORGOTTEN HOW TO FARM

As any farmer can tell you, if you want to plant, grow and harvest a crop, you've got to get out of the office and go to work in the field.

Why can't the top political strategists, donors and consultants of the Democratic Party grasp this basic reality when it comes to producing votes? This year was going to be different. Pressed by progressive rural activists, national party leaders proudly declared that they would open a network of get-out-the-vote offices in rural, red areas of battleground states. SPOILER ALERT: In states that Joe Biden won, Kamala Harris won 104,000 fewer rural votes than Biden harvested four years earlier.

What happened? Very little, too late. Opening a campaign office is hardly the same as being there for the long haul, building trust and nurturing local support. Harris was behind from the start, though, since Biden's Democratic Party operation had not bothered to hire any rural staffers or even prepare an agenda. Apparently, their idea of a good rural program was Hee-Haw.

The Harris campaign did put out a plan -- but in September, just two months before the vote! Also, they had too many "rural strategists" and too few ground-level organizers at campaign headquarters. Those organizers did their best but were mostly disregarded by campaign consultants. For example, a good list of rural surrogates was recruited but never used. Worse, Harris herself was absent -- she was never scheduled to visit a farm, or even pay a culturally symbolic visit to a state fair.

The Democrats' real problem is not any one campaign but more than a decade of policy and political abandonment of rural communities. Do the smart leaders think people out here don't notice the party's absence and disregard for them? Again, any farmer knows you can't harvest a crop if you don't plant one and cultivate it.

NOW READ: The Democratic Party needs a backbone

Many people feel that America's political campaigns have become vapid PR hustles with little connection to the real-life concerns of workaday people. Luckily, Adam Swart says he has the fix for such voter malaise: Just add a more professional level of vapidity to the process, he says, and you can reduce the need for having actual voters involved in campaigning.

Swart is a for-hire politico who's been hailed as a "visionary" and a "business rockstar" for launching an outfit he calls Crowds on Demand. His entrepreneurial concept is as simple as it is devious. Rather than the tedium of strategizing and organizing people into grassroots campaigns, just pay his COD team to stage a "movement" -- you know, like Hollywood would do. Indeed, Swart's operation is even headquartered in the center of Hollywood make-believe, Beverly Hills.

But let him sell his own product. He says he can create and staff a turnkey political front group for clients. "We provide everything," exclaims COD's website, "including the people, the materials, and even the ideas. ... We can help you plan the strategy and execute it."

How happy -- if you're a corporate schemer needing to win or defeat a proposal, but you don't have any grassroots base of support, Crowds On Demand promises to fake it for you. "We can set up protests, rallies, demonstrations -- and even create non-profit organizations to advance your agenda." It's basically an AstroTurf campaign operation, but with even less turf and more plastic.

If there is one thing the American majority would agree on today, it is that the last thing our political system needs is more PR trickery, issue fakery and political hustlers. How about we give a little more honesty a try?

BEZOS BOMBS IN HIS ROLE AS NEWSPAPER OWNER

In bold type, nearly every newspaper urges readers to "VOTE! TAKE A STAND!"

But in this year's truly momentous national election, we saw such giants of corporate media as The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today cower from taking their own stand on the presidency. Worse, the papers shamefully insisted that ducking their duty was itself a principled stand. Readers are smart enough to make their own decisions, they barked piously. Well, yes, but are you?

And who, exactly, are "you"? Take The Washington Post, a paper with a rich history of courageous journalism. But it wasn't the paper's knowledgeable reporters or editorial staffers who elected to be silent this year. Rather, one guy -- Jeff Bezos -- unilaterally chose to mute the paper's voice.

Bezos, the gabillionaire founder of Amazon, bought the Post a decade ago, promising not to impose his financial self-interest over the staff's journalistic integrity.

But that was then. Today, the notoriously weaselly Bezos is drawing some $13 billion from federal taxpayers, and he's eager to get more. So, realizing that the next president can determine who gets those piles of money, Bezos abruptly stopped his paper from endorsing Harris, putting his financial principle above journalistic principles. The Post would've exploded, however, if he had dictated a Trump endorsement, so Boss Bezos tried the backdoor maneuver of no endorsement.

The Post exploded anyway. Star reporters either resigned or howled at the crass sellout, while more than 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions. As one reader posted about the billionaire's self-serving manipulation: "If you don't have the guts to run a newspaper, don't buy one."

Look to Maine for Some Good News!

Even in a barrelful of rotten apples, you might think there'd still be a few good ones.

But don't get your hopes up looking into barrels labeled "private equity investors." These esoteric, multibillion-dollar Wall Street schemes rig the marketplace so "high-net-worth individuals" can grab fat profits and special tax breaks to buy up doctors' offices, hometown newspapers, child care centers, etc.

Consider America's humble but beneficial mobile home parks. Homeownership has become so pricey that these affordable manufactured units now make up 10% of all single-family home sales. But while the buyers own the houses, they must rent lots from mobile park owners. This has generally been a square deal, when park owners live among the renters, providing decent services at reasonable rates. One such is Linnhaven Mobile Home Center, with some 300 mobile home residents in Brunswick, Maine.

But what is home to millions of people has become a quick-buck target for Wall Street's equity profiteers. Waving cash at longtime trailer park owners, they've been snatching up thousands of these lots. Without warning, people's home places are literally being bought out from under them. The absentee predators then raise rents to drive out residents, clearing the spaces for high-dollar renters or buyers.

But wait, good news for a change! A new law in Maine gives mobile home residents a chance to buy their park, and community cooperatives exist to help arrange financing. That's what the modest-income people of Linnhaven have now done. Such a big leap is not easy, but give people a fair chance and they can make it work. As one Linnhaven woman put it, the community effort was much more than a property deal: "[It felt like] a chance to control your own destiny."

THE MODERATE, MILQUETOAST DEMOCRATIC PARTY LOSES ANOTHER BIG ONE

The morning after the election, a social media pundit expressed amazement that Democrat Kamala Harris had lost, noting that America is enjoying "an objectively strong economy."

Indeed, the data shows impressive job growth, rising wages, slowing inflation, etc. -- all indicators of a solid economy. Nearly every pundit hailed this as meaning Harris' campaign could glide on rising prosperity, while focusing her main message on what a dangerous bumbling buffoon Trump is.

The problem is that "objective economic data" often deceives. For example, consider economist John Kenneth Galbraith's sad tale of the 6-foot-tall statistician who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of 2 feet.

Millions of Americans are drowning in today's economy -- even workaday people with college degrees are struggling to make ends meet and feeling pessimistic about their future. Happy talk by economists, pundits and politicians doesn't pay the rising bills for rent, child care, groceries, insurance, medicines, etc. Everything is moving out of reach ... except a protest vote. About half of Trump voters say high prices were "the largest factor" in their vote.

Democratic Party officials were dazzled by the soaring Dow Jones Industrial Average, ignoring the Doug Jones Average, which showed that Doug and Donna are struggling, anxious, angry ... and even open to a bull goose demagogue blustering that he'll "fix" the rigged system on Day One.

Few of these hard-hit men and women actually believe in, agree with, trust or like Trump -- nor are they stuck on supporting him. But they will be, unless and until some progressive party decides to side with grassroots people in an unabashed fight for economic fairness and social justice. To help push in that direction, go to WorkingFamilies.org.

NOW READ: Former intel officials brace for unprecedented retaliation from the Trump administration

An iconic Texas band, the Austin Lounge Lizards, has a song that nails the absurd self-righteousness of Christian supremacists: "Jesus Loves Me (But He Can't Stand You)."

I think of this refrain when I behold today's right-wing proselytizers wailing that the blessed rich should not be taxed to assure that everyone has the most basic human needs. Seems very un-Jesusy to me.

One bizarre focus of their religious wrath is a wholly sensible and biblically sound national policy: subsidizing school districts to assure that every child has healthy meals to fuel their daily learning. Yes, in the Christian nationalists' book of public abominations, government feeding of children is a holy no-no. Project 2025, the Republican blueprint to impose theocratic rule over America, proclaims school meals a socialist/Marxist evil to be eradicated.

The extremists cry that if there is any free lunch "giveaway," it must be narrowly restricted to truly destitute students. But wait -- publicly singling out those children would stigmatize them. Plus, how odd to hear Republicans demanding an intrusive, absurdly expensive bureaucratic process empowering government to decide who's eligible to eat!

In fact, the student lunch subsidy runs as low as 42 cents a meal, so it's far cheaper, fairer and (dare I say it?) more Christian simply to offer it to all. Indeed, the program is akin to the biblical story of Jesus providing fishes and loaves to the multitude. He imposed no income test --everyone got a fish.

Interestingly, the same lawmakers opposing 42-cent meals for kiddos today routinely and enthusiastically feed billions of our tax dollars to corporate, ethically challenged profiteers who love money above all. As I recall, Jesus couldn't stand people like that.

WHAT SHOULD POLITICS DO? ASK WOODY GUTHRIE.

Woody Guthrie's prescription for inequality in America was straightforward: "Rich folks got your money with politics. You can get it back with politics."

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For Guthrie, "politics" meant more than voting, since both parties routinely cough up candidates who meekly accept the business-as-usual system of letting bosses and bankers control America's wealth and power. It's useless, he said, to expect change to come from a "choice" between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. Instead, common folks must organize into a progressive movement with their own bold change agenda, become their own candidates and create a politics worth voting for.

Pie in the sky? No! Periodic eruptions of progressive grassroots insurgencies have literally defined America, beginning with that big one in 1776. Indeed, we could take a lesson today from another transformative moment of democratic populism that surged over a century ago, culminating in the Omaha Platform of 1892. This was in the depths of the Gilded Age, a sordid period much like ours, characterized by both ostentatious greed and widespread poverty, domination by monopolies, rising xenophobia, institutional racism -- and government that ranged from aloof to insane.

But lo -- from that darkness, a new People's Party arose, created by the populist movement of farm and factory mad-as-hellers. They streamed into Omaha to hammer out the most progressive platform in U.S. history, specifically rejecting corporate supremacy and demanding direct democracy.

That platform reshaped America's political agenda, making the sweeping reforms of the Progressive Era and New Deal possible. As one senator said of the Omaha rebellion, it was the start of robber baron wealth flowing "to all the people, from whom it was originally taken." And that's what Guthrie meant by "politics."

NOW READ: Face it, Trump is a communist

We've recently learned about Project 2025, the GOP's scheme to let corporate agents take over our government. But what about the less visible effort to make Democrats install corporate-subservient officials who'll expand their monopoly power?

High-finance finaglers of Wall Street and Silicon Valley are quietly demanding that Kamala Harris commit to appointing their designated toadies to oversee America's so-called free-enterprise structure. Their primary target is the Federal Trade Commission, a little-known agency meant to protect and extend economic competition.

The FTC is now headed by Lina Khan, a tenacious opponent of anti-consumer, anti-worker mergers and takeovers. She rightly recognizes that the "free" in free enterprise is not an adjective but a verb requiring aggressive public action to free up the enterprise of people who are now routinely shut out of the market by monopolistic giants. So, says Khan, if we really want free markets, let's free them.

Oh, how the money vultures screeched! "She's a dope," raged takeover bully Barry Diller in a dopey fury. And, since many of the monopolistic titans who are offended by Khan's otherwise very popular progressive populism are from the Democratic Party's high-dollar donor class, they have undue clout. Thus, they are bluntly demanding her head as their price for financially backing Harris' presidential run. Commissioner Khan, they exclaim, simply does not understand "the way the Washington game is played."

Oh, yes, she does -- and she's flat out rejecting it! She's the first real anti-trust champion America has had in years -- but will the party's higher-ups have the guts and integrity to defend her? Or will the business-as-usual powers be ushered back in? The answer to that will be an early measure of Harris' commitment to economic democracy.

WANT TO COOL EARTH? JUST BLOCK THE SUN. SIMPLE!

Challenging conventional wisdom can advance society's understanding of truth. Good. Arrogantly challenging the complex balance of nature, however, can go kablooie! Very bad.

In recent times, there's been an unfortunate tendency for some scientific hotshots to send society off on techno-tangents to "remake" nature, promising miracles. About 70 years ago, for example, a so-called agricultural science genius promised that dumping synthetic pesticides on monoculture crops across the globe would end hunger. Chemical giants and governments rushed to do the dump, but the "fix" ultimately resulted in the ongoing poisoning of Earth's land, water, food and people -- while enriching agricultural monopolists and allowing hunger to rage.

Unfortunately, insistence by technologists and profiteers that they can outsmart and overwhelm nature is now being pushed with cosmic vengeance. A covey of arrogant academics and billionaire backers are saying: "Trust us, we can handle that little global warming issue."

One is named David Keith, running a $100 million "stratospheric solar geoengineering" scheme named SCoPEx. Keith proposes to solve global warming by -- get this -- dispensing volumes of sulfur dioxide into the Earth's stratosphere to "regulate" the amount and location of sunlight around the globe.

Gosh, what could go wrong with that? Never mind the unknown consequences of tampering with basic nature, argues Keith, for his bold techno-fix to global warming bypasses the political difficulty of ending our fossil fuel addiction -- so we should just do it.

Keith does admit he can be "inappropriately forceful ... I'm intense," he says. Well, then, let's all chip in a for some therapy sessions to help him overcome his megalomania before he makes an irreversible mess of the only planet we have that sustains life.

What is a SCOTUS? Sounds like a prehistoric critter scuttling along some seabed. But, no, it is the acronym for our Supreme Court of the United States.

SCOTUS is meant to be the impartial arbiter of legal disputes over what our laws mean. Yet, who are these arbiters, how are they elected, why don't we even know their names, and if they go rogue, imposing their personal autocratic beliefs on our nation's democratic ideals ... what then?

Well, structurally, SCOTUS is undemocratic, a relic of monarchial rule. Unlike the 535 members of the legislative branch, who are elected from diverse districts across America, there are only nine supremes, and none of the current bunch have ever faced the people, even in an election for dogcatcher. They are handpicked by political and moneyed elites, and most blatantly lie to win approval for their lifetime appointments. Once enthroned, they have no accountability to us commoners, who are expected to blindly obey their edicts.

Today, out of 330 million Americans, six right-wing SCOTUS members have seized control of the court ... and our government. They claim supremacy over the People, the President and the Congress -- arbitrarily dictating what is "legal" for elected officials and the public to do. Indeed, they are now making up laws on abortion, presidential power, voting rights, environmental protection and much more to suit their personal political and religious biases. Moreover, they operate behind closed doors, with no disclosure of their conflicts of interest.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... Call this what it is: a right-wing extremist power grab. And it is fast supplanting our people's historic democratic progress with a kleptocracy of autocratic, plutocratic, theocratic rule. The only remedy is a head-on people's rebellion to democratize this totally un-American court.

SHOULD CORRUPT JUDGES BE THE ONES REDEFINING OFFICIAL CORRUPTION?

If the six right-wing dogmatists who now literally rule the Supreme Court wonder why 70% of the American people consider them somewhere between politically corrupt and grotesque, they might re-read their Kafkaesque decision last month perverting the meaning of bribery.

Appropriately enough, the case involved garbage trucks. A small-town mayor had funneled a million-dollar contract for new garbage trucks to a local seller, which then made a $13,000 payoff to the mayor. Obvious graft. But no, the six supremes decreed that the payoff was not illegal because it was given to the mayor after the garbage truck contract was issued. Taking money before would be a bribe, they babbled, but money given afterwards is an innocent "gratuity" -- like tipping a waiter for good service.

The court's distortion of kindergarten-level ethics was written by Brett Kavanaugh, infamous for his own frat-boy moral contortions. In his formal opinion, Brett rhetorically asked if such after-the-fact kickbacks should be considered bribes. "The answer," he proclaimed," is no."

Of course, as any reasonable person would tell the black-robed fabricator, the obvious answer is: "Hell yes!"

Kavanaugh even tried to trivialize such official bribery, calling it no more sinister than parents sending a gift basket to thank their child's teacher for a job well done. Hello, Mr. Clueless, this was a $13,000 gift basket! The truck dealer was obviously rewarding the mayor for handing out a million taxpayer dollars to it!

This is Jim Hightower saying ... Of course, these six supremes are not merely defending small potato malfeasance by local officials. They're creating a legalistic loophole for the court's own members to keep taking millions of dollars in "gratuities" from corporate interests seeking judicial favors. It's a case of corrupt judges voting to legalize their corruption.

For us Texans, there's nothing new about Bible-thumping politicians bedeviling us with the foolishness of their dogmatic Christian piety. A century ago, for example, a proposal was made to offer bilingual education to Spanish-speaking school kids. But it was quashed by the governor, who solemnly declared: "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas."

But suddenly, Louisiana's demagogic Christian officials have surged past Texas on the far right. The Pelican State's governor, an Elmer Gantry wannabe, has decreed that every single public school classroom must henceforth prominently display the Ten Commandments to indoctrinate the tykes in his religion. That way, babbled a legislative backer of the state edict, students can "look up and see what God says is right and what he says is wrong."

Actually, the Christian bible itself is a little wobbly on that, offering three different versions of holy commandments, including this: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk."

Wobbliest of all, though, is the moral authority of depraved politicians hypocritically preaching to school kids about such sins of adultery, stealing, and (hello, MAGA zealots!) worshiping false gods. Plus, their piousness doesn't work. Young people are not so dull and docile that they'll mindlessly obey what some self-serving, immoral politicos put on a poster.

Louisiana could have consulted Texas on this. For some 60 years, a 6-foot-tall granite slab engraved with the Ten Commandments has stood outside our State Capitol building. Yet, those inside the Capitol -- including our governor -- routinely violate those engraved moral sentiments.

If so-called leaders don't give a damn about honoring the values they put on classroom posters, why should students?

TOP CORPORATE EXECUTIVES SHOULD HAVE TO FEEL THE SUMMER HEAT

Being a lifelong Texan, I'm used to hot summers. But what the hell -- 99 degrees in June! Last year, we had 80 days of 100-plus temperatures, and we're looking at 90 days this year. I can't moan in self-pity, though, for the globally warming furnace is now searing the whole country, even in northern climes where people are used to having days in August when they need "summer sweaters."

As we crank up our air conditioners, however, let's pause for a moment to consider some 50 million workers in your and my communities who are exposed throughout the day to the full intensity of the sun's power. They are roofers and landscapers, warehouse workers and farm laborers, street pavers and letter carriers. These have always been hot jobs, but now they're deadly -- heat kills more Americans today than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined.

So surely there are basic workplace rules assuring that these exposed people get water, shade breaks, etc ... No. And when such humanitarian codes are proposed, industry bosses coldly reject them. For example, after several Texas cities began enacting worker protections, corporate lobbyists rushed to their hireling, Gov. Greg Abbott, who obediently snuck a state preemption into law, banning local officials from setting their own heat standards. That year, a record 450 people died of heat exposure in Texas, but Abbott just snarled that his preemption "increases economic liberty."

Mercifully, President Joe Biden is pushing national heat rules. Of course, industry lobbyists are out to kill his anti-killing reforms, calling them "unreasonably complicated." Really? Providing water and shade is too perplexing for our corporate geniuses? Why don't we put them on roofing jobs in August -- and let them think about it?

Excellent news, people: Republican officials are mounting an all-out political push for a massive cut in our taxes next year!

Well ... by "our taxes," they don't mean yours. Rather, here they come with another absurd sob story about giant corporations and the super-wealthy suffering unbearably from excessive taxation. Claiming to feel the pain of these multibillionaires, the GOP is riding to their rescue, promising to extend the trillion-dollar tax boondoggle Donald Trump handed to the rich in 2017, and vowing to add an extra trillion dollars' worth of new breaks for them.

Ludicrously, the lawmakers, lobbyists and corporate front groups pushing this garish plutocratic giveaway loudly insist that the real beneficiaries are not the privileged few but (cue the patriotic music) America! Lowering taxes on the corporate rich, they exclaim, will let those elites invest more in new jobs and enterprises, expanding the economy for all.

Of course, that's the same ball of dung they keep rolling up Capitol Hill again and again, and it gets stinkier every time, especially now that monopolies control everything from high tech and health care to oil and food prices. Why reward them? Far from creating jobs, they're frantically automating them, and rather than increasing competitiveness, monopolies buy up or squeeze out competitors. Plus, if they get another tax windfall, the oligarchs will just use it to jack up their stock prices, artificially making them richer and more dominant over us.

Another "gotcha" in the GOP's giveaway would gut the IRS' ability to investigate and prosecute these filthy-rich scofflaws who annually cheat us out of billions of dollars they owe for the upkeep of America. For information and action on this massive ripoff, go to AmericansForTaxFairness.org.

LET'S PUT LABOR DAY TO WORK FOR WORKERS ... AND DEMOCRACY

What if Labor Day was not about giving working families one measly Monday off to sleep in, rush to the beach, do some 12-ounce elbow bends and then report back first thing Tuesday to start another 364 days of pulling the corporate plow?

Instead, imagine if working stiffs themselves took hold of this day, putting it to work rallying and reinvigorating a rebellious labor movement to achieve economic fairness and social justice for all in America. This was, after all, the purpose of the original Labor Day, held in 1882. Thousands of bricklayers, machinists, piano makers, longshoremen and other unionized workers in the New York City area defied corporate bosses to declare their own day off. They were not taking a vacation but making "a public show of organized strength," energizing labor's demand for an end to the tyranny of 12-hour days, six-day weeks and $2 a day in pay.

In an audacious affront to the plutocracy, a miles-long parade of common workers marched six abreast, accompanied by union floats and boisterous bands. They pointedly traversed right in front of the gilded mansions of robber barons living along Fifth Avenue, the most ostentatious corridor of wealth and power in America. The day culminated in a sprawling picnic and festival, with 25,000 union celebrants enjoying food, beer, dancing, one another... and a shared sense that the working class was on the move.

Why not again? Autoworkers, flight attendants, fast-food workers and others are clearly on the move, so why not make a new "public show of organized strength," directly confronting the corporate greedheads and political boneheads who're stealing our democracy. Ralph Nader called for this two years ago -- to see his ideas for a "Workers' Action Day," go to Nader.org.

One group of oppressed Americans has become especially outspoken this election year, contending that top government officials (Democrats in particular) are ignoring their community's basic needs and stifling their pursuit of economic advancement.

I speak, of course, about the tragic plight of our nation's downtrodden multibillionaire class. While it's true that Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and these other Silicon Valley sad sackers and weepy Wall Streeters have vastly increased their wealth under Joe Biden's presidency, they wail that he has not properly courted and coddled them. Indeed, Biden set their hair on fire this March by calling out their outrageous tax-dodging ploys, demanding they start providing their fair share of support for America by paying a "billionaire tax."

Thus, these poor, put-upon moneyed elites have been jetting around to Hollywood, Palm Beach and other posh enclaves, holding secret strategy sessions and rallying the uber-rich class to defeat Biden this fall. Of course, since self-centered, plutocratic billionaires are less popular than bed bugs, they can't win with their ideas and votes but only by buying elections -- and these gilded conspirators intend to do just that, amassing billions to bury Biden.

But, oops, one money confab in April exploded into public view when some 20 poobahs of such oil giants as Chevron, Exxon and Occidental conferred with Trump himself. In a straight-out bribery offer, he pledged to repeal environmental protections the industry dislikes -- if they pony up $1 billion for his presidential campaign.

READ: America is under assault by a cancerous mind virus the founders warned against

This sordid palace intrigue is the product of the right-wing Supreme Court's 2010 edict letting selfish wealthy interests secretly dump unlimited sums of corporate money into our elections. They're turning our democratic ideals into a kleptocracy.

RETURN OF THE SWAMP DRAINER: MAKING A MOCKERY OF DEMOCRACY

Remember Donald Trump, the "swamp drainer"?

In 2016, candidate Trump promised to end the grubby money corruption of American politics. "The special interests, lobbyists, donors," he rightly and righteously noted, "make large contributions to politicians, and they have total control over those politicians." Asserting that he knows the political rot better than anyone, he said he'd "fix that system, because that system is wrong."

Eight years later, here comes the Donald again -- but the swamp is bigger and suckier than ever. And instead of bold talk about draining it, Trump is auctioning off the swamp, flagrantly offering direct presidential benefits to Big Oil, Wall Street hucksters, high-tech tycoons and all other moneyed interests that "make large contributions" to him.

How large? The Washington Post reports that one businessman asked to have lunch with Trump, promising a million-dollar check. "I'm not having lunch," Trump retorted. "You've got to make it $25 million." He has also demanded a cool billion bucks from a covey of Big Oil executives. Promising to cut their corporate taxes and deliver an array of other special benefits, the presidential wannabe punctuated his itemization of political goodies with an unsubtle monetary nudge, saying, "be generous, please."

Since a Supreme Court majority of extreme partisans opened the floodgates 14 years ago, corrupt corporate cash has gone from merely polluting American democracy to now swamping it. Trump is not the only bribe huckster, but he is the most blatant, shamelessly nuclearizing the going rate for buying public policy, mocking the ideal of a citizens' government. Trump himself is fond of telling fat-cat donors that he doesn't spend 10 minutes with anyone who can't give $10 million. Hello -- where does that leave you and me? And our country?

NOW READ: America is under assault by a cancerous mind virus the founders warned against

If you think the GOP's Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us -- you haven't been to Texas.

It's widely known, of course, that Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Greg Abbott and most other top Republican officials here are obsequious Trump acolytes. Thus, Texas is infamously racing against Florida to be declared the stupidest, meanest, most repressive state government in America, constantly making demonic attacks on women's freedom, immigrants, voting rights, public schools, poor people and so on. But I'm confident Texas will win this race to the bottom for one big reason: GOP crazy runs extraordinarily deep here.

We have a county-level layer of ultra-MAGA cultists constantly pressing the state's far-right officials to march all the way to the furthest edge of extremism -- then leap into absurdity. Therefore, the party officially supports abolishment of labor unions, elimination of the minimum wage, privatization of Social Security, legalization of machine guns and ... well, you get the drift. Now, though, local mad-dog Trumpistas are pushing their party straight into the abyss of autocracy by declaring war on H-E-B.

What's that? H-E-B is a Texas chain of supermarkets beloved in communities throughout the state. "Beloved" because the stores fully embrace the rich diversity of all people in our state, has affordable prices, values employees and supports community needs.

READ: The Trump voter fraud paradox

Nonetheless, county Republican zealots screech that H-E-B violates their party ideology by accepting food stamps, opposing privatization of schools, and (horrors!) sponsoring some LBGTQ pride events. So, they're demanding official condemnation of the grocery chain for -- get this -- "advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform."

Yes, violating the party platform is to be criminalized. It's the reincarnation of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four": Be MAGA ... or else.

CAN'T OIL BARONS EVER BE HONEST? (HINT: NO)

Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King once opposed a bill because, he said, he feared it would "open a whole box of Pandoras."

An odd rhetorical twist, but it would be helpful if today's ego-bloated, high-tech billionaires and corporate profiteers had a bit of self-restraint, rather than thinking their money equals genius. For example, such doofuses are presently pushing convoluted schemes to "solve" our globe's technology-caused climate crisis with -- what else? -- technology.

Their latest box of Pandoras includes a grandiose plan to "geoengineer" carbon dioxide, the destructive gas spewed into our air by the production and use of fossil fuels. The geniuses say they have the techno-knowhow to suck-up that bad gas and pump it a mile deep into the Earth. See, problem gone! All they need, they say, is for taxpayers to put up trillions of dollars.

Who's behind this hustle? Oil giants. Yes, the same prevaricating snake oil salesmen who cause most of the suffocating CO2 pollution that's rapidly cooking our planet! Such petro-peddlers as Occidental Petroleum are now trying to rebrand themselves as "carbon management" experts, asking us to trust them to reengineer our atmosphere. But they're frauds; their magical "Vacuum Cleaner in the Sky" won't remove even 1% of the new carbon emissions released every year.

Worse, Occidental says it intends to keep much of the CO2 it vacuums up, using the gas to force more oil out of the ground -- thus creating more global warming! As Occidental's CEO gleefully puts it, geoengineering "gives our industry a license to continue to operate for ... 60, 70, 80 years."

Razzle-dazzle technology is not a climate solution. It's a business-as-usual lie told by profiteers desperate to keep burning fossil fuels -- and our globe.

READ: Trump will lose, some say. They said the same in 2016

Bruce King, former governor of New Mexico, often baffled people with his convoluted use of words. Like the time he vetoed a loan shark bill he'd previously agreed to sign. "But, Governor," squealed the lenders' lobbyists, "we had your commitment!" Unfazed, King said, "Now, boys, we all know that a commitment is not a promise."

In this case, King's linguistic backflip was virtuous, for it killed a bad bill. But now come banking giants themselves doing a shameful backflip on their widely publicized scout's honor promise to do the right thing for humanity on a true life-and-death issue: climate change.

It was only two years ago that Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and other Wall Street behemoths loudly proclaimed their conversion to environmental responsibility. In ads, interviews and speeches, they solemnly vowed they would no longer finance new coal, oil and other fossil fuel projects, which are the major cause of global warming. The bankers promised to protect the "fragile ecosystem and the rights of Indigenous Peoples." Hooray!

But that was so yesterday -- way back in 2022. Today, the prevailing political winds are coming from howling right-wingers denouncing environmental values and "woke capitalism." So, the pusillanimous bankers are now saying that a promise is not forever (or even two years) -- as they default on their enviro responsibility. Instead, they're refocusing on a messy mix of fossil fuels, and -- maybe -- they'll toss in a few clean energy projects. Or not.

Chase bank weaseled out of its latest climate action commitment with corporate claptrap, declaring that reducing fossil fuel investments "will not successfully achieve the necessary transition of the global energy system." Yeah, so why bother? Forget what we promised way back when.

Then Wall Streeters wonder why people distrust and despise them!

THE DEBACLE OF 'GOD'S ARMY' AT EAGLE PASS

Perhaps you heard about the recent surge of invasive foreigners into Eagle Pass, Texas -- the Rio Grande border town that finds itself at the hot center of the U.S.-Mexico immigration crisis.

Only, this "invasion" (as Donald Trump's MAGA crowd likes to call it) was not by Latin Americans, but by Anglos descending on Eagle Pass from the North! Indeed, it was an invasion by Trumpista partisans claiming to be "God's Army." Organized as a Christian Nationalist crusade, they boasted that a mighty convoy of 700,000 trucks from all across the U.S. would be streaming toward Eagle Pass to "Take Our Border Back."

What a show of strength! But just when you think the whole country has gone full-tilt bonkers, reality shows up. "God's Army" actually consisted of about 20 trucks, a babbling rant by Sarah Palin, and a forlorn crowd of ... maybe 200 people. Seriously. That was it. The greased pig contest for children at a small county fair in Texas draws more than that.

And, very significantly, many of the Trump "patriots" who came from afar were stunned to find that his frantic claims of hordes of rampaging criminals flooding into the U.S. didn't exist. "That's kind of eye-opening," said one who'd made the long trek to repel the "invaders." And a 29-year-old local resident expressed the rude truth about the loudly ballyhooed caravan: "What is all of this for? For show," he exclaimed!

Adding to the sleazy spectacle, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had convened a dozen other immigrant-bashing GOP governors in Eagle Pass to take advantage of the caravan's political glow. Imagine their chagrin that their number of high-powered governors, political staffers and media entourages outnumbered the crowd.

For an honest depiction of God's Army, go to Vote Common Good: votecommongood.com

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators

In cities all across America, an infiltration of wealthy investors, developers and bankers is driving poor and middle-class families out of their own towns.

What's at work here is the relentless financial shove of high-dollar gentrification. House by house, block by block, moneyed interests suddenly (and often secretly) buy up properties, bulldozing modest family homes to erect sprawling edifices for the rich.

It's a profiteering money grab that intentionally prices out regular homebuyers. Worse, it also artificially skyrockets property taxes for the area's longtime homeowners, forcing them to sell out and leave town.

NOW READ: Why Trump ran away with Iowa

This financial whirligig is enormously destructive to a community's crucial sense of fairness and ... well, community. For one glaring example, look at who likely does NOT live in your city: schoolteachers, fire fighters, police, nurses, utility crews and others who're essential to making any city work.

If the so-called "free market" can't (or won't) provide affordable spaces so these families can "come home," where they belong, then the community itself must step up to meet the need with creative public initiatives.

The good news is that many cities are doing just that, including where I live. Fed up with losing teachers who endure spirit-sucking, hourlong commutes from distant suburbs, Austin's school board recently created its own affordable housing arm. It's starting to build hundreds of rental homes affordable to teachers, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other school employees. In addition, the district has formed a "public facility corporation" that partners with local developers and groups like Habitat for Humanity to build and sell family homes at prices within reach of the city's school employees.

Housing is not only a basic human need but also a community essential that can't be left to the whims and greed of developers.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DIDN'T JUST DREAM; HE ORGANIZED!

It's time once again for America's annual sing-along of "We Shall Overcome," in celebration of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. As even schoolchildren know, he famously had a dream. His dream was that over the long arc of history, America will someday achieve racial harmony -- if Black people will stop being pushy about racial injustice.

Oh, wait -- that's the right wing's current whitewashed version of King's dream, scrubbing out his condemnation of brutally racist white leaders and institutions (which still repress Black progress and foment racial hatred). And far from meekly waiting on "the arc of history," King rallied people to take immediate action, calling it "the fierce urgency of now."

He sought "a grand alliance of Negro and White (to) eradicate social evils (that) oppress both White and Negro." At the time of his assassination, he was actively forging that populist coalition to battle plutocratic wealth.

Indeed, King knew the history he sought to revive. The post-Civil War Populist Movement, he said, "began awakening the poor White masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that (both) were being fleeced by (Southern aristocrat interests)." That movement, he noted, intended to write a black-white voting bloc "to build a great society of justice where none would prey upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away."

But the unifying, democratic promise of Populism, King rightly explained, so terrified the aristocracy of wealth that its leaders made it "a crime for Negroes and Whites to come together as equals at any level." Thus moneyed elites effectively killed the people's Populist party in the 1890s -- but not the people's Populist spirit.

So rather than merely celebrating a birthday, let's recommit to King's real dream of a multiracial, democratic Populism.

NOW READ: A handy guide for translating Republican-speak into plain English

According to an old saying, "You can't squeeze blood from a turnip." True. But that raises this question: Who would even try squeezing blood from a turnip?

Well, metaphorically speaking, if "blood" means profit, and "turnips" are customers, airlines are eager to apply the squeeze. As are banks, credit card outfits, cable TV and internet hucksters, car rental companies, concert promoters... and can anyone decipher their insurance policies?

I'm not talking about fair profit, but junk fees, hidden charges, undisclosed add-ons and other "gotchas" that brand-name giants sneak into the fine print of their price tags. It's pure corporate larceny, adding up to a stunning level of unearned profit for the perpetrators: Airlines picked our pockets for nearly $7 billion last year in baggage fees alone; credit card dealers plucked $14 billion from us in punitive late fees; and the overall corporate haul from this secretive squeeze on consumers now tops $64 billion a year!

Shouldn't companies have to tell you -- in plain language -- what they're actually charging you... and for what? "Yes!" says President Joe Biden, who's pressuring the gougers to come clean. "Hooray!" exult consumers, who're tired of being played for suckers.

Of course, as another saying notes, "Where there's a will, there's a thousand won'ts." So, a flock of corporate lobbyists are now swarming the Capitol, crying: "Save junk fees!" Their arguments are hilariously absurd: They assert that price disclosure will "confuse consumers"; that government should not "interfere" in the free market; that it's "technically infeasible" to tell consumers the real price -- and a group who actually quibbled, "What exactly is a fee?"

To help raise common sense and plain fairness to high places, check out the work Public Interest Research Group at www.pirg.org.

WOODY GUTHRIE'S ANTHEM MOCKING RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANISM

What it is about today's vituperative, foam-at-the-mouth Republican party?

No longer disguising their desire to repress women, workers, immigrants, the poor and all others who differ with (or are different from) their own partisan clan, the party has turned to a politics of hatred and division, openly seeking to punish opponents they now brand as "enemies" and "vermin." What's motivating this plunge into such undiluted political sourness?

My simple observation is that they've succumbed to a base impulse expressed in one straightforward word: MEANNESS. After all, their current agenda amounts to hurting people they don't like, trying to keep America's diverse majority from getting such basic human needs and rights as health care, the vote, fair wages, reproductive liberty and public education free of church dictates.

That's not "conservative," it's just mean.

This malicious strain of selfish Republicanism has flared up periodically in our history, with the few striving to repress the many. Woody Guthrie even wrote an anthem in the 1940s mocking those crusading for such a morally depraved politics:

"I'm the meanest man that ever had a brain
...
I hate everybody don't think like me...
And I'm readin' all the books I can
To learn how to hurt...
Keep you without no vote,
Keep you without no union.
...
Well, if I can get the fat to hatin' the lean,
That'd tickle me more than anything I've seen,
Then get the colors fightin' one another,
And friend against friend, and brother and sister against brother..
...
I love to hate and I hate to love!
I'm mean, I'm just mean."

This song is dedicated to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, Rep. Jim Jordan, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and... well, you know who you are.

Let me be blunt: The problem with today's Supreme Court is that it consists of too many 5-watt bulbs sitting in 100-watt sockets.
While most of the nine members are assumed to be brilliant, "smart" is as smart does, and this court's right-wing majority wallows in stupid, consistently pushing plutocracy, autocracy and theocracy over the democratic will of the people. Compounding this stupidity, many of the judges have flagrantly accepted "gifts" of cash, luxury vacations and other freebies from the corporate and right-wing interests that have benefited from the court's rulings. Yet, caught red-handed, the narcissistic jurists assert that We the People should just trust their integrity.

These nine legal power brokers, who pose as America's arbiters of justice, have even exempted themselves from having an ethics code, allowing each one to make up their own, unwritten ethical rules. Thus, corruption flourishes; so, the public, Congress and the media have finally demanded that, at the very least, the eminences be subjected to basic ethics. "OK, OK," the nine finally grumped. "We'll sign onto a code."

BUT... their acquiescence included a killer gotcha: They would write their own rules of behavior! Sure enough, their 14-page code is a toothless watchdog with no bark, much less bite. It starts by snarling that the great unwashed simply fail to understand that the entire court is, as the chief justice had earlier proclaimed, made up of "jurists of exceptional integrity." So, the new "code" promises boilerplate ethical behavior, but provides no enforcement mechanism beyond claiming the judges will police each other.

WHEN AND WHERE WAS THE FIRST THANKSGIVING FEAST?

Let's talk Turkey!

No, not the Butterballs in Congress. I'm talking about the real thing, the big gobbler -- 46 million of which we Americans will devour this Thanksgiving.

It was the Aztecs who first domesticated the gallopavo, but the invading Spanish conquerors "fowled up" the bird's origins. They declared it to be related to the peacock -- Wrong! They also thought the peacock originated in Turkey -- Wrong! And they thought Turkey was located in Africa -- well, you can see the Spanish were pretty confused.

Actually, even the origin of Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. is confused. The popular assumption is that it was first celebrated by the Mayflower immigrants and the Wampanoag natives at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1621. They feasted on venison, furkees (Wampanoag for gobblers), eels, mussels, corn and beer. But wait, say Virginians, the first Thanksgiving Food-a-Palooza was not in Massachusetts -- the feast originated down here in Jamestown colony, back in 1608.

Whoa there, pilgrims! Folks in El Paso, Texas, say it all began way out there in 1598, when Spanish settlers sat down with people of the Piro and Manso tribes to give thanks, feasting on roasted duck, geese and fish.

"Ha!" says a Florida group, asserting the very, very first Thanksgiving happened in 1565 when the Spanish settlers of St. Augustine and friends from the Timucuan tribe chowed down on "cocido" -- a stew of salt pork, garbanzo beans and garlic -- washing it all down with red wine.

Wherever it began, and whatever the purists claim is "official," Thanksgiving today is as multicultural as America. So, let's enjoy! Kick back, give thanks we're in a country with such ethnic richness, and dive into your turkey rellenos, moo-shu turkey, turkey falafel, barbecued turkey... and so on.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes "The Hightower Lowdown," a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America's ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

For people who live in trailer parks, can anything be scarier than the sound of a roaring tornado? Yes: Most frightening is seeing slick real-estate gentrifiers prowling around.

For some 20 million low-income Americans, being able to park a mobile home in a trailer park is their only affordable refuge from homelessness. But while they own their mobile homes, a landlord owns the land they're parked on. So here come high-finance hucksters backed by Wall Street rapaciously buying out local landlords, then casting out the powerless trailer owners so developers can build luxury condos for the rich on that land.

It's an especially contemptible case of corporate greed stomping on human need. Indeed, these are among America's most vulnerable people, being stripped of their homes. But what can they do?

Ask the residents in Riverside Terrace trailer park located near downtown San Antonio, Texas. Many had previously been evicted from a nearby mobile home facility that was converted into a high-dollar apartment complex owned by an out-of-state hedge fund.

So, they panicked when word spread that Riverside Terrace had been put up for sale by local owner Travis Cummings.

But then came a New Hampshire-based advocacy group named ROC -- "Resident Owned Communities." It contacted Cummings and Riverside's low-income residents about forming a co-op. Then the group provided expertise and arranged financing so Riverside's tenants could create, control and collectively manage a co-op that is now the official owner of the 46-unit park. Valerie Valenzuela, who works evening shifts at a Home Depot and was elected to the new co-op's board, proudly notes that the residents -- who mostly have incomes under $30,000 a year -- are now "not just tenants," but homeowners.

Today, some 1,000 mobile home communities are resident-owned. For information, go to rocusa.org.

THE HUMANITIES HUMANIZE OUR SOCIETY. SO 'KILL 'EM,' SAY RIGHT-WINGERS

The far-out right wing's latest political ploy takes extremism to the extreme.

Escalating their divisive series of "culture wars" (banning books, suppressing women's rights, whitewashing history, demonizing teachers, etc.), their current idea is to declare war on ideas! Specifically, they're going after state university programs that teach creative arts and social studies, including history, languages, music, civics, literature, economics, theology and other courses in the humanities that explore ideas, foster free thinking and expand enlightenment.

We can't have that, can we? Thus, GOP lawmakers in North Carolina, for example, are eliminating funding for top humanities professors in their universities, shifting those funds to programs in high tech and engineering that are favored by the corporate hierarchy. Likewise, public universities in Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and elsewhere are being made to cancel their humanities programs and puff up their departments of business, finance and marketing.

The right wing's shriveled view is that a university education is not about expanding one's horizon and enriching America's democratic society but is solely about training students to fit into a corporate workforce, sacrificing the possibility of a fuller life for the possibility of a fatter paycheck. As a Mississippi Republican official explained under this minimalized and monetized concept of higher education, state spending on college degree programs will require that they match the needs of the economy.

What? Is America nothing but its economy? Is the value of students measured only by the size of their future paychecks? Is public spending only worthy if it serves corporate interests?

Ironically, the politicos trying to cancel teaching of the humanities are proving that such courses are essential -- after all, the humanities strive to humanize today's social order of corporate domination, exploitation and inequality. The value of that vastly exceeds its price. In fact, the humanities are priceless.

Wow! A couple of Supreme Court justices say they're now starting to think that maybe the court should sorta start thinking about possibly, perhaps, someday adopting some sort of anticorruption reforms.

This nine-member group of unelected, supremely powerful judges is allowed to make up its own rules of ethical behavior. So -- surprise! -- they've chosen to have no code of conduct like all other top officials are expected to obey. Unsurprisingly, then, the justices feel free to accept financial payments (excuse me: "bribes") from moneyed interests seeking favorable legal rulings from the supposedly-impartial court.

But -- oops -- the general public has begun to notice the corruption, and public belief in the court's integrity has plummeted. Thus, one of the far-right Supremes, Amy Coney Barrett, is now supporting a vague veil of an ethics code for her colleagues, even as she attests that all "are very committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct."

Seriously? Including the notorious money sleaze, Clarence Thomas?

But wait, even a progressive justice, Elena Kagan, joins in the charade that an ethical code might produce... well, ethics. Or, at least, political cover for the lack thereof. A code, she surmises, would "go far in persuading other people that we were adhering to the highest standards of conduct."

Hello -- would you be persuaded? Yet, these "Supremes" won't even take the minimal step of adopting a simple code to measure basic integrity. "It would be a good idea for us to do it," Barrett meekly says. "It would be a good thing for the court to do that," Kagan echoes.

Stop it! Stop the pitiful posturing. There's only nine of you; you're in charge! Convene a happy hour, confront reality, and do the right thing! Just do it. I'll buy the beer.

INSTEAD OF UTILITY GREED, HOW ABOUT SOME ENERGY SANITY?

What is the "greenest" state in America?

You might think California, or maybe Oregon. But go 3,000 miles east, and you'll come upon the physical beauty and ecological vitality of the Green Mountain State: Vermont. Indeed, its very name is derived from the French term for green mountains: Verts Monts.

And now, Vermont's green ethic is being advanced in a very innovative way by perhaps the least likely source: the state's biggest electric utility! These outfits are usually rank profiteers, with their only "green" concern being the extraction of more dollar bills from consumers.

But, says Mari McClure, CEO of Green Mountain Power, "call us the un-utility." She is flipping the industry model -- instead of having thousands of customers hooked on a system of massive, centralized, increasingly-expensive and unreliable power plants, GMP is decentralizing. Not just symbolically, but by literally putting its power source in customers' homes, businesses, schools, etc.
Specifically, Green Mountain will install television-size storage batteries statewide in homes and buildings, each one soaking up wind and solar energy when the weather is right and releasing stored power when needed. This turns out to be far cheaper than building central power plants, having to constantly replace miles of electric lines downed by storms, and paying for widespread power outages.

Plus, it delivers priceless customer goodwill by doing away with infuriating outages that shut down people's lights, refrigerators, medical equipment, etc. "We don't want the power to be off for our customers ever," says McClure.

Indeed, power outages cost U.S. utilities about $150 billion a year... while costing customers even more. That's a failed system! Green Mountain Power is showing that decentralization is a path away from business-as-usual greed -- literally generating energy sanity.

The question to ask is: What's your utility doing?

And the whiniest of all is the richest -- Elon Musk. This self-entitled bully runs over anyone in his way, then whines when they protest.

Elon's latest high-pitched screech was prompted by public demands that his profiteering schemes obey clean-water and safety regulations. He owns a corporation named (believe it or not) the Boring Company -- an underground tunnelling venture based in Bastrop, Texas, digging out tons of soil, chemicals and contaminated groundwater. But where to put all the waste? I'll just dump the stuff in the nearby Colorado River, said Lord Musk. Lots of stuff -- 140,000 gallons of wastewater per day!
But that river is our main water source, said local people -- you'll need to comply with water treatment and disposal rules. Outrageous, whined Elon, maniacally squealing that "Construction is becoming practically illegal" in America. So, he proceeded to dump his waste without a permit.

Then he encountered Chap Ambrose, a Boring neighbor and former Musk admirer. Chap began asking questions and getting nothing but evasions, lies and disrespect. Musk was messing with Texas, so Ambrose rallied local opposition through a website he named "Keep Bastrop Boring," promoting it on a local billboard. With a drone, he videoed Musk's expanding industrial mess, broadcasting the videos throughout the area. He filed actions with county, state and national regulatory authorities, and got his state senator to hold a hearing, attended by hundreds of residents in this rural county.

Musk can bamboozle powerful officials, but not feisty people like Chap, who recently ridiculed the pouty billionaire. "I'm sorry, neighbor," Ambrose told him. "Development remains legal in Bastrop, but what is illegal is polluting Texas water... You're making this way harder than it has to be."

The fight goes on -- and I'm betting on Chap.

THE SECRETIVE PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY THAT EXCLUDES YOU
Are you excited by -- or do you dread -- the upcoming presidential election season? Either way, buckle up, for it's only 12 weeks till the Iowa caucuses, and then (zoom!) there's nonstop voting across America for the rest of 2024. Democracy at work!
Well... unless you don't notice the Plutocratic Primary, where -- shhhh! -- presidential voting is already taking place. However, this balloting is only open to a teensy number of very exclusive voters: billionaires.

These privileged ones don't have to go to public campaign events; candidates come to them for closed-door tete-a-tetes, making undisclosed promises in exchange for millions of dollars in campaign funds. This secretive primary lets moneyed elites initiate or eliminate policies that candidates obediently support. Moreover, by granting or withholding large donations, billionaires can determine which candidates are considered "viable," letting the superrich have a heavy hand in "choosing the choices" that we commoners will have next year.

The New York Times reports that this flexing of the money muscle was recently exercised at a closed meeting of GOP sugar daddies in Utah. Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and other presidential wannabes were on display, pleading with the donors to choose them as the party's alternative to former President Donald Trump -- and to shoo the other Republican contenders out of the race.

Haley bluntly appealed to the rich clique's plutocratic ego: "I think it's up to the donors to decide which candidates should get off the stage." Christie went a step further toward plutocratic rule, asking the elite attendees to decide who would be "the best president."

No one in the room bothered asking the obvious question: Best for whom? Everyone knew he meant best for the rich. No need for messy elections; let the billionaires choose!

Over time, words with beautiful meanings occasionally get degraded into ugliness. "Gentle," for example.

Originally meaning good-natured and kindly, it was twisted into "gentry" in the Middle Ages by very un-gentle land barons seeking a patina of refinement. Then it became a pretentious verb -- to "gentrify" -- meaning to make something common appear upscale. And now the word has devolved to "gentrification," describing the greed of developers and speculators who oust middle-and-low-income families from their communities to create trendy enclaves for the rich.

The latest move by these profiteers is their meanest yet, targeting families with the most tenuous hold on affordable shelter: people living in mobile home parks. Some 20 million Americans -- especially vulnerable senior citizens, veterans, the disabled and immigrant workers -- make their homes in these inexpensive parks.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Well, "inexpensive" until the vultures sweep in, including multibillion-dollar Wall Street powerhouses like Blackstone Group, Apollo Global Management and Carlyle Group that're buying up hundreds of trailer parks across the country. These are easy for unprincipled speculators to grab, and while tenants might own their mobile home, they rent the lots, and the first sign that a huckster has taken over a neighborhood park is an unwarranted spike in everyone's rent. Residents are captive tenants, for these homes are not really mobile, and even if one can be moved, the cost can top $10,000. The New Yorker notes that today's typical mobile-home park has been called "a Waffle House where customers are chained to their booths."

Corporate predators can collect ever-rising rents and fees while cutting amenities, steadily driving out lower-income families. Then the business model can switch to gentrification, remaking the parks to attract upscale owners of million-dollar mobile homes.

And where do former tenants go? Away. Out of sight, out of mind.

LET'S SEND HEARING AIDS TO ALL RIGHT-WING OFFICIALS

Here's my suggestion for stopping the ultra-right-wing loopiness coming out of the mouths of Republican officials: hearing aids.

I'm convinced that the wacko blatherings of Rep. Matt Gaetz, the ravings of the Q-Anon cult, former President Donald Trump's tantrums and so many others are the result of a tragic neurological disconnect. This affliction lets their tongues wag impulsively, but their ears don't pick up the noise, so they're unaware that they are prattling nonsense.

The current chaos in Congress' Republican caucus is one embarrassing example of this eardrum contagion, but it has also spread throughout the country, even to local right-wing officials. In Shasta County, California, for example, the Republican-controlled board of supervisors recently lurched into full-tilt screwballism, frenetically warning that Japanese forces are weaponizing mosquitos to be "flying syringes" to mass-inject Americans. See -- no way they would've said that if they could hear themselves.

Which brings us to the fount of present-day right-wing goofiness: Texas state officials. Their latest tone-deaf ploy is by Gov. Greg Abbott, who wants to divert our people's tax dollars from public schools to exclusive private academies, subsidizing the rich class he serves. He's tried to do this before, but he fails -- since even conservative Republicans in rural counties don't want their public education turned over to profiteering corporate chains. So, this time Greg is hyping privatization as a "religious freedom" issue, piously preaching that "God created us to have family units -- not state bureaucrats -- make decisions for families."

Sheesh, does Abbott even have ears? Or maybe he's hoping that we don't have memories, for we have heard him howling constantly that the state -- not families -- must make every woman's personal reproductive decisions. Let's buy a hearing aid for him, and set it on a constant replay loop.