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Don't Buy Coca-Cola's Plastic Trash Promise

Don't Buy Coca-Cola's Plastic Trash Promise

Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King was renowned for his frequent malapropisms and contorted logic.

For example, he once refused to back a bill pushed by loan-shark lobbyists — but he pledged that it if the legislature passed the thing, he would sign it. Well, the bill did pass ... but Bruce vetoed it! The lobbyists swarmed him, crying that he had given his promise. Yes, the governor conceded, but "we all know that a promise is not a commitment."

Apparently, Coca-Cola executives have been studying Gov. King's verbal backflip, for the multibillion-dollar corporate behemoth suddenly announced this month that it was adopting his "a-promise-is-not-a-commitment" ploy. The beverage barons are using King's dictum to squirm out of the widely ballyhooed promise they made just a few years ago to curtail the corporation's contamination of our planet with plastic waste.

Coke has been the world's No. 1 plastic polluter six years in a row, so its previous pledge to cut its plastic trash in half by 2030 would've had a major impact. But, oops, the honchos now say that was never a commitment — just a "voluntary environmental goal." That goal, they explain, has "evolved," so now they're focused on imposing "efficient resource allocation to deliver lasting positive impact."

You don't need a BS detector to translate that corporate gobbledygook. Coke's "resource allocation" will defund its environmental efforts to further enrich its wealthiest shareholders, delivering a "lasting positive impact" for those few. And for the many who will continue absorbing the deadly petropolymers that Coca-Cola carelessly discharges into our air, water, soil, food and bodies — well, tough luck.

Don't be fooled by voluntary anti-pollution requirements. I promise you, they are hoaxes.

Let's all sing the holiday classic: "All I want for Christmas ... Is Something Not Made of Plastic."

Easier sung than done. Plastic is now ubiquitous in toys, electronics, tools, air, water ... and us. And don't forget the plastic Baby Jesus in Christmas tableaus.

What is plastic, anyway? It's a toxic synthetic material mostly manufactured from petroleum by such giants as ExxonMobil, the globe's top purveyor. So much is produced by these profiteers that plastic trash is now a planetary disaster.

But not to worry, for Big Oil's lobbyists assure us gabillions of plastic bags, bottles and such are being recycled, keeping them out of our landfills, water, bodies, etc. Swell! Except ... they're lying.

After all, Exxon is the same for-profit contaminator that lied for years that fossil fuels were not causing climate change, even though top executives knew they were. Their ethic of deceit continues today — Big Oil knows that 94% of U.S. plastics are not recycled. Indeed, they can't be.

Faced with growing public alarm about the ever-growing glut of plastic pollution, the industry has doubled down on deceit by offering a snappy new PR slogan: "Advanced Recycling." They say it's a magical process dubbed "pyrolysis." Only ... it doesn't work, it's inordinately expensive, and it increases climate change emissions. Still, Exxon exclaims its AR will soon be processing half a million tons of plastic waste! But that's not even a drop in the plastic bucket, for more than 400 million tons of plastic waste is discarded each year — and the oil industry is planning to double plastic production by 2040.

The only real way to stop runaway plastic pollution of us and our planet is to use less plastic. To learn more and help, go to Beyond Plastics: BeyondPlastics.org.

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.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Howard Lutnick

New Commerce Secretary Embodies Same Old Corporate Greed

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.

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

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator and New York Times best-selling author who was twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Hey Republicans! Would Jesus Take Away School Lunch?

Hey Republicans! Would Jesus Take Away School Lunch?

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 Woody Guthrie Said About Inequality

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

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."

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

GOP Goobers Are About To Learn Why 'Diversity' Is A Strength

GOP Goobers Are About To Learn Why 'Diversity' Is A Strength

Suddenly, the presidential election has turned dynamic ... even fun!

The handoff from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris has not only energized Democrats, but it's also driving the Trump Party's top leaders absolutely crazy. Of course, that's a very short ride for most of them.

Take Rep. Andy Ogles, a far-right congressional goober from Tennessee who lunged for the media spotlight as soon as Biden endorsed Harris. He breathlessly called for the immediate impeachment of the vice president, squawking that (get this) she had covered up Biden's physical decline, thus making her guilty of misleading the people and the Congress about the well-being of the president. If ignorance is bliss, Ogles must be ecstatic. Hello — Biden's supposed decline has hardly been a secret, with Republicans and the media harping on it for months. But today's hyperpartisan MAGA-heads don't let reality block their stupidity.

Indeed, the entire Republican hierarchy has joined the Silly Parade, trying to slap down Harris' candidacy. GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, for example, has shriveled himself and his office by pushing the absurd "Myth of the Stolen Nomination." Incredibly (literally), Johnson pretends to be the champion of the 14 million Democrats who voted for Biden in the party's primaries, asserting that elevating Harris "steals" the votes of Biden backers.

Gosh, Mikey, thanks for your deep concern for Democratic voters, but maybe you should ask them if they want you to be "their savior." Those 14 million Biden voters also chose Harris to be VP, and they are actually excited to have her now lead the ticket.

Besides, maybe you should mind your own party's business, including your Lord Trump's whiney attempts to steal the last election by trying to cancel the votes of millions of Americans.YES, KAMALA HARRIS STANDS FOR DIVERSITY AND EQUALITY — SO DOES AMERICA

Ted Cruz actually spoke the truth once. In 2016, when running for president against Trump, he said: "Donald has a problem with strong women. This is not subtle; it's not complicated."

Right! This truth is resurfacing now that Trump finds himself unexpectedly matched against a very formidable woman: Kamala Harris. Resorting to his old slap-'em-down style, Trump immediately called Harris "dumb as a rock," even as he mispronounced her name. He then had his press secretary flail at Harris as "weak" — yet adding that's she "dangerously liberal." So, she's "weak" ... yet dangerously strong.

Pathetically, MAGA-world is resorting to overtly racist, anti-female tropes to attack Harris, proclaiming her to be a "DEI vice president" — i.e., chosen solely because she's a woman of color. "When you go down that road," bellowed Rep. Tim Burchett, "you take mediocrity." Tim, a mediocre, ethically corrupt Trump-acolyte from Tennessee, has only one claim to fame: He once sponsored a bill to legalize the eating of roadkill.

Meanwhile, Trump's own VP choice, J.D. Vance, piled on the Harris DEI attack. That's awkward, since Vance, who falsely poses as a senatorial "hillbilly," is the ultimate DEI product. A Yale law school graduate, he was handpicked by Silicon Valley elites for plum jobs, then financed by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel to run a hedge-fund hustle. Then Thiel gave $10 million to put Vance in the U.S. Senate. The smug senator now trashes Harris and her women supporters as "a bunch of childless cat ladies."

This is Jim Hightower saying ... Trump & his rich bros think trashing a strong woman is a "winner" — but they're about to learn that this is an inclusive America ... and Harris' diversity is a strength.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator and New York Times best-selling author who was twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

With Trump, America Declines From Plutocracy To Kleptocracy

With Trump, America Declines From Plutocracy To Kleptocracy

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.

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.

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?

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Elon Musk

How Elon Musk Changed Clean Water Into A Dirty Whine

There is nothing quite as pitiful as whiny billionaires. 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!

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Ceators.

What's The Big New Republican Idea? Bring Back Child Labor

What's The Big New Republican Idea? Bring Back Child Labor

I have to concede one point: Today's far-right Republican party does not discriminate against women. In fact, the GOP is giving its female political buffoons a higher profile than its male bozos.

Consider Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas, who became a star in the new Republican crusade to bring back child labor abuse. Pushed by their corporate backers, GOP governors and lawmakers exclaim that the answer to America's so-called "labor shortage" is not to make jobs more attractive, but to fill them with cheap, compliant children.

Huckabee Sanders rushed to the aid of these corporate powers, eliminating a bothersome Arkansas law that required Tyson, Walmart and other big employers to get a special state permit to put any child under 16 to work. "The meddling hand of big government creeping down from Washington, D.C.," she bellowed, "will be stopped cold... We will get the overregulating, micromanaging, bureaucratic tyrants off your backs."

So, she is using the meddling hand of big state government to creep into the lives of vulnerable children. She is not alone. Ohio's Republican-controlled state government is moving to extend the number of hours bosses can make children work; Iowa wants to let 14-year-olds work in industrial freezers and laundries; and Republicans in Congress have shrunk the number of investigators and lawyers policing child labor abuse, so abusive corporate managers know there is little chance they'll be caught.

Most damning, these corporate politicians value children so little that they've set the maximum fine for violating the workplace safety of minors at $15,138 per child. For multimillion-dollar conglomerates, that devaluation makes it much cheaper to endanger children than protect them.

America should not even be talking about child safety rules in dangerous workplaces — it's shameful to have any children working there.

One Idea For Actually Stopping Child Labor Abuse

With new outrages erupting every day, I find some comfort in knowing that We the People have at least eliminated certain particularly ugly plutocratic abuses. Child labor, for example — outlawed in 1938, right?

Well, outlawed, yes; stopped, no. Recent reports reveal that thousands of children, ages 12 to 17, are toiling illegally at dangerous jobs, in manufacturing, construction, food processing, etc. To be clear, there's nothing wrong with teenagers working — they help their families, gain experience or just earn a few bucks. Indeed, I worked part-time throughout my high school and college years, and while I did gripe some, overall, it was positive.

So, this is not about children working — it's about corporate child abuse, plain and simple. For example, last year Packers Sanitation Services was caught "employing oppressive child labor" in meatpacking plants to clean saws, head splitters and other butchering machines. In a typical incident, one 13-year-old was badly burned by the caustic cleaning chemicals they used during long night shifts — which ran from 11 p.m. to at least 5 a.m.!

Once caught, top executives of Packers Sanitation tried to sanitize their reputation by proclaiming they have "zero tolerance for any violation" of child labor laws. Oh? Ask that 13-year-old. These executives would be comical, except they're completely disgusting and morally repugnant. Yet our worker protection laws are so weak that Packers' multiple violations, involving 102 children in this one case, resulted in a fine of... $1.5 million.

That's not even peanuts for this nationwide giant, which is owned by Blackstone, the trillion-dollar Wall Street hucksters run by well-manicured executives who pretend they know nothing about the children they endanger for profit.

How about we make a few of the teenage children and grandchildren of the Blackstone profiteers work some midnight shifts cleaning meat-cutting machinery? I'm guessing they would stop the abuse overnight.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Spreading From Texas, A Plague Of Would-Be Book Burners

Spreading From Texas, A Plague Of Would-Be Book Burners

Not so long ago, book burnings were considered a festive group activity by assorted right-wing zealots. Today, though, burning seems so old-fashioned and, well... crude.

Yet, the concept is burning hotter than ever among a gaggle of testosterone-driven Republican leaders eager to show voters that they will go to extremes to incinerate progressive ideas and people's personal liberties. Rather than lighting bonfires, though, the new fad for GOP politicians is simply to use government power to ban the offending books (thus saving the expense of matches and lighter fluid).

It might not surprise you to learn that our Lone Star State's extremist political operatives are leading today's book-banning frenzy. One Jonathan Mitchell, for example, is going from town to town pushing Texas Republican officeholders to pass local ordinances he labels "Safe Library Patron Protection." Yes, patrons, censoring what you can read is necessary to "protect" you. The GOP ban prohibits libraries from having books, videos, etc. that contain "immoral content," which he defines as depictions of nudity, sexual behavior, mentions of masturbation, LGBTQ+ life, etc. It's also autocratically homophobic, making it illegal for librarians to display LGBTQ flags or even mention "LGBTQ Pride Month."

This repressive monomania stabs even deeper into our freedom of expression by concocting a "right" of right-wing vigilantes to enforce the ordinances. Yes, self-appointed bands of bounty hunters would be authorized to roam the countryside suing local libraries (and individual librarians) for having "banned" books on the shelves. To spur this political malice, Mitchell's scheme provides a $10,000 reward for every violation a vigilante finds (or fabricates).

Well, you say, thank God I don't live in Texas! But — Hello! — repression doesn't recognize state borders, so the pernicious idea of paid library marauders is spreading across the country. To help defend your freedom from them, go to the American Library Association: ala.org.

How Despicable Are Big Pharma's Price Gougers?

Profiteering is always bad, but there are degrees of profiteer. Level 1 includes your everyday price gougers, like banks and airlines. At Level 2, you'll find the more demonic outfits like loan sharks and for-profit college hucksters. Then, top of the heap at Level 3, you'll find Eli Lilly.

This $288 billion drug-making colossus is America's primary peddler of insulin, the diabetes drug that some seven million Americans must constantly take literally to stay alive. By having both monopoly power over the market and such a huge base of captive customers, Lilly has gleefully jacked up its prices again and again over three decades, with insulin now costing each sufferer as much as $1,000 a month! Finally, under intense political pressure to stop its extreme, life-threatening gouging, the giant recently announced it would soon cut its insulin price by a whopping 70 percent! In full-page ads, Lilly hailed its corporate generosity, magnanimously declaring that "everyone deserves affordable options."

But — Hello! — it has intentionally charged unaffordable rip-off prices for 30 years, wallowing in monopoly profits. And — Hello! again — if Lilly says it can keep profiting on its insulin product despite slashing the price by 70%, that means it has been overcharging patients by 70 percent all this time! Yet, its rich executives want us to thank them? No thank you.

Even with the price cut, they're still charging $66 for a single vial of insulin. Guess what? It costs Lilly less than $7 to produce that vial, and it could be sold profitably for under $9.

Meanwhile, note that the ballyhooed price cut is voluntary, meaning Lilly can raise the price again at any time. Indeed, David Ricks (who personally pockets $19 million a year from the profiteering) has refused to pledge that he'll keep the medicine affordable.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Corporate Executives And Crooked Politicians Show How To Guarantee A Train Wreck

How To Guarantee More Disastrous Train Wrecks

Stuff happens, right?

I mean, who could've thought that in these modern times of digital monitoring of everything, something as massive as a freight train could become a toxic fireball rolling undetected and unslowed into an Ohio town? But a Norfolk Southern train did just that, derailing in East Palestine and contaminating the air, water, land and families with tons of cancer-causing chemicals. "Gosh," exclaimed Norfolk Southern's CEO; "Gosh," exclaimed the Ohio governor; "Gosh," exclaimed the U.S. transportation chief; gosh exclaimed the GOP chair of the rail transportation committee — this is a terrible, unexpected accident and we're all appalled by it!

Only... all of these officials knew full well that this disaster would happen (though they didn't know exactly where). Indeed, far from unexpected, there are more than 1,000 preventable train derailments in the U.S. every year (Norfolk Southern had another only days after the one in Ohio). And these things don't just happen — they are caused by the profiteering greed of the monopolistic industry's top executives and rich investors.

While Norfolk's boardroom elites have been pocketing record profits in recent years, they've used armies of lobbyists and multimillion-dollar political donations to kill safety protections that would prevent such a disastrous record. To cut costs and jack up profits, railroad bosses have rigged the rules to run trains that are absurdly long, go too fast, carry ever-heavier loads of undisclosed toxics in weak tanker cars, have no fire detectors, use outmoded braking systems — and have as few as one crew member on board. One!

Norfolk's derailed train was made to derail. It pulled 149 cars, stretching nearly two miles down the track, and it was unequipped to detect fires and other problems. This disaster was not an "accident" — it (and those that will come next) was mandated by the corporate and government officials now professing outrage.

Tracking Norfolk Southern's Derailment

"The Wreck of the Old 97" is a classic bluegrass song recounting a spectacular train crash in 1903, caused by the company's demand that the engineer speed down a dangerous track to deliver cargo on time.

One hundred twenty years later we have the "Wreck of the Norfolk Southern" — a devastating crash caused by the corporate demand that it be allowed to run an ill-equipped, understaffed, largely unregulated, 1.7-mile train carrying flammable, cancer-causing toxics through communities, putting profit over people and public safety.

This rolling bomb of a train was hardly unique, for the handful of multibillion-dollar railroad giants that control the industry also control lawmakers and regulators who're supposed to protect the public from public-be-damned profiteers. A measure of their arrogance came just two years ago, when an Ohio legislative committee dared to consider a modest proposal for just a bit more rail safety. Norfolk Southern executives squawked like Chicken Little, asserting a plutocratic doctrine of corporate supremacy on such decisions. They even imperiously proclaimed that state lawmakers have no right to interfere in safety matters.

Ohio's Chamber of Commerce dutifully echoed Norfolk's concern for profit over people, testifying that "Ohio's business climate would be negatively impacted" by the bill. Never mind that Ohio's public safety climate can literally be "negatively impacted" by train wrecks! Plunging deeper down the autocratic rabbit hole, the Chamber insisted that corporate control over workers is sacrosanct. It postulated that a crew-safety provision in the Ohio bill is illegal because it "would interfere with the employment relationship between employers and their employees." Yes, that's a corporate claim that executives have an inalienable right to endanger workers.

Sure enough, bowing to the corporate powers, Ohio lawmakers rejected the 2021 safety bill. And that, boys and girls, is why train catastrophes keep happening.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Would Nursing Home Profiteers Kill Granny To Boost Earnings?

Would Nursing Home Profiteers Kill Granny To Boost Earnings?

There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries — like Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco — that persistently do rotten things.

Then there is the nursing home industry, where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life "experience" can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of natural indignities bedeviling us, and good nursing homes help gentle this time. In the past couple of decades, though, an entirely unnatural force has come to dominate the delivery of aged care: profiteering corporate chains and Wall Street speculators.

The very fact that this essential and sensitive social function, which ought to be the domain of health professionals and charitable enterprises, is now called an "industry" reflects a total perversion of its purpose. Some 70 percent of nursing homes are now corporate operations run by absentee executives who have no experience in nursing homes and who're guided by the market imperative of maximizing investor profits. They constantly demand "efficiencies" from their facilities, which invariably means reducing the number of nurses, which invariably reduces care, which means more injuries, illness... and deaths. As one nursing expert rightly says, "It's criminal."

But it's not against the law, since the industry's lobbying front — a major donor to congressional campaigns — effectively writes the laws, which allows corporate hustlers to provide only one nurse on duty, no matter how many patients are in the facility. When a humane nurse-staffing requirement was proposed last year, the lobby group furiously opposed it... and Congress dutifully bowed to industry profits over grandma's decent end-time. After all, granny doesn't make campaign donations.

So, as a health policy analyst bluntly puts it, "The only kind of groups that seem to be interested in investing in nursing homes are bad actors." To help push for better, contact TheConsumerVoice.org.


To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Sadly, The Supreme Court Is Even More Corrupt Than You Know

Sadly, The Supreme Court Is Even More Corrupt Than You Know

Question: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg? Answer: Four — calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Likewise, calling a small group of partisan lawyers a "supreme" court doesn't make it one. There's nothing supreme about the six-pack of far-right-wing political activists who are presently soiling our people's ideals of justice by proclaiming their own antidemocratic biases to be the law of the land. On issues of economic fairness, women's rights, racial justice, corporate supremacy, environmental protection, theocratic rule and other fundamentals, these unelected, black-robed extremists are imposing an illegitimate elitist agenda on America that the people do not want and ultimately will not tolerate.

Indeed, the imperiousness of the six ruling judges has already caused the court's public approval rating to plummet, to a mere 38 percent, an historic low that ranks down there with former President Donald Trump, and threatens to go as low as Congress.

This has led to a flurry of officials attesting to the honesty and political impartiality of the reigning supremes. Unfortunately for the court, these ardent defenders were the six culprits themselves.

The "integrity of the judiciary is in my bones," pontificated Neil Gorsuch, who now stands accused of having lied to senators to win his lifetime appointment.

"[We are not] a bunch of partisan hacks," wailed Amy Coney Barrett, a partisan extremist jammed onto the court in a partisan ploy by Trump in the last few hours of his presidency.

"Judges are not politicians," protested John Roberts, who became chief justice because he was a rabid political lawyer who pushed the Supreme Court in 2000 to reject the rights of voters and install George W. Bush as president.

As many of its own members privately admit, Congress has become a pay-to-play lawmaking casino — closed to commoners but offering full-service access to corporate powers.

But the Supreme Court is another government entity that's even more aloof from workaday people — and it has become a handmaiden to the corporate elites trying to increase their dominance over us. The six-member right-wing majority on this secretive powerhouse now routinely vetoes efforts by workers, environmentalists, students, local officials, voters, and all others who try to rein in corporate greed and abuses.

Appointed for lifetime terms, the members of this autocratic tribune take pride in being sealed off from democracy, even bragging that they make rulings without being influenced by special interests. But wait — in makeup and ideology, today's court majority is a special interest, for it consists of corporate and right-wing lawyers who've obtained their wealth and position by loyally serving corporate power. And far from now being isolated from moneyed elites, the judges regularly socialize with them and attend their closed-door political meetings.

There's even a special little club, called the Supreme Court Historical Society, that frequently reveals the cozy, symbiotic relationship that exists between today's judicial and corporate cliques. Such giants as Chevron, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, and Home Depot pay millions of dollars to this clubby society, gaining notice by and the appreciation of the Supremes. And, yes, these special interest gifts to the court are gratefully accepted, even when the corporations have active cases before the court, seeking favorable rulings from the very judges they're glad-handing at society soirees.

Of course, the judges insist there's no conflict of interest, because this access to them is "open to all." Sure — all who can pay $25,000 and up to get inside! Yet the clueless judges wonder why their credibility is in the ditch. Remember, in America, The People are supreme! We don't have to accept rule by an illegitimate court.

For reform, go to FixTheCourt.com.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Thanksgiving's Diverse Origins Point Us Toward A Tastier Food Culture

Thanksgiving's Diverse Origins Point Us Toward A Tastier Food Culture

It's time to talk turkey!

No, not the Butterball who just announced another bid for office. I'm talking about the real thing, the big bird, 46 million of which we Americans will devour on this Thanksgiving Day.

It was the Aztecs who first domesticated the gallopavo , but leave it to the Spanish explorers to "foul 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, the origin of Thanksgiving is confused. The popular assumption is that it was first celebrated by the Mayflower immigrants and the Wampanoag natives in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. They feasted on venison, furkees (Wampanoag for gobblers) eels, mussels, corn and beer. But wait, say Virginians, the first precursor to our annual November Food-a-Palooza was not in Massachusetts; the Thanksgiving feast originated down here in the Jamestown colony back in 1608.

Whoa there. Hold your horses, 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, gave thanks and then feasted on roasted duck, geese and fish.

"Ha!" says a Florida group, asserting that 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 that we're in a country with such ethnic richness; and dive into your turkey rellenos, Moo Shu Turkey, turkey falafel, barbecued turkey ...

America certainly has an abundance of food (even though many Americans do not), yet we face a momentous choice of whether to pursue a food future rooted in the ethic of sustainable agriCULTURE — or one based on the exploitative ethic of agriINDUSTRY.

What better symbol of agri-industry's vision of "food" than that ubiquitous Thanksgiving bird, the Butterball turkey? The Butterball has been hoisted onto our tables by huge advertising budgets and regular promotion payments to supermarkets. The birds themselves have been grotesquely deformed by industrial geneticists, who created breasts so ponderous that the turkeys can't walk, stand up, or even reproduce on their own (thus earning the nickname "dead-end birds"). Adding torture to this intentional deformity, the industry sentences these once-majestic fowl to dismal lives in tiny confinement cages inside the sprawling steel-and-concrete animal factories that scar America's rural landscape — monuments to greed-based corporate "husbandry."

As the eminent farmer-poet-activist Wendell Berry tells us, eating is a profound political act. It lets you and me vote for the Butterball industrial model or choose to go back to the future of agri-culture , which is the art and science of cooperating with, rather than trying to overwhelm, nature. That cooperative ethic is the choice of the remarkable Good Food Uprising that has spread across the country in the past 30 years. Now the fastest-growing segment of the food economy, it is creating the alternative model of a local, sustainable, small-scale, community-based, organic, humane, healthy, democratic — and tasty! — food system for all.

To take part in the good-food movement and find small-scale farmers, artisans, farmers markets and other resources in your area, visit the LocalHarvest website.

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.

Pro Golfers Dirty Themselves With Saudi 'Sportswashing'

Pro Golfers Only Dirty Themselves With Saudi 'Sportswashing'

When a golfer hits an errant shot that might bonk an unsuspecting spectator on the head, the proper cry of warning is: "Fore!" But what do they shout when they hit a bad shot that boomerangs right back and bonks the golfer on the noggin?

In the polite world of golf — where there's a rule of etiquette to cover every contingency — this boomerang shot has rarely if ever occurred, so there's been no need for a clubhouse dictum to govern proper warning shout... until now. This spring, a small group of professional golfers — led by former Big Name superstars Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson — decided to turn the game that has made them fabulously rich into an unsporting game of SleazeBall.

They say they want to set up an independent series of global tournaments, called LIV Golf, to compete with the PGA, the Professional Golfers Association. Fine — at its best, pro sports should be about top-quality, honest competition. But there's the rub: The LIV series is not honest, not a sporting competition and not even about golf. It is entirely about money — more specifically about callous greed.

Indeed, LIV Golf is a scam that's entirely financed by the brutish family of petro-royals who ruthlessly rule Saudi Arabia. The family's grotesque abuse of the kingdom's own citizens has made the oil-rich regime a global pariah. Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince who is the mastermind behind this multimillion-dollar golfing scheme, is the same fellow who ordered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered in 2018. But simply killing Khashoggi wasn't enough. The prince had him cut into small pieces, packed in suitcases and tossed away. Now, his golf gambit is a blatant case of "sportswashing" — he is spending obscene sums of his family's oil loot to buy the marquee names of a few dozen recognizable golfers to concoct a sports spectacle, in hopes of distracting attention from his government's depravity. Hitler tried this by staging the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany, but it didn't wash.


Likewise, the Saudi golf association won't wash off the regime's indelible ugliness. But — Fore! — it will boomerang on the money-grubbing golfers selling their once-good names to it. If you sell out your personal integrity in a vain attempt to give a patina of integrity to some notorious scoundrels, what have you gained?

Depends on your sellout price, chortle the ethically stunted professional golfers who've peddled both their honor and honesty to the murderous, moneyed monarchs. The golfing elites madly rushed to grab money thrown at their feet by the royal kingdom in a crude PR ploy that's meant to buff up its public image by making them seem like generous benefactors bringing sports to the masses. Of course, a golf tournament needs golfers, but the Saudis had none of note, so they simply bought a batch. Right away, former stars Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman signed away their integrity to join, taking at least $200 million apiece. Then Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau took $150 million each from Team Saudi, and the likes of Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia and others quicky scrambled to get theirs.


Worse than the golfers' unsightly money grubbing, however, is their insufferable dishonesty, trying to whitewash their taking of what is literally blood money. Mickelson faked moral outrage at the Kingdom's rulers, gingerly calling them "less-than-savory individuals" and piously proclaiming that he did not condone "human rights violations." But he certainly has condoned (and cashed) the checks written to him by the violators.

But Greg Norman, the former pro who led recruitment of golfer talent for the Saudis, offered the most pathetic moral excuse for selling out to such a villainous kingdom. Asked how he could link arms with a potentate so barbarous as to have had a critic of the regime murdered and chopped into pieces, Norman said: "Look, we've all made mistakes."

There's a word that describes what these golfing multimillionaires are doing: "Disgusting." The good news is that most pros — including bigger-name stars like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas — have some values that they refuse to trade for dollars.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

The Sunshine State's Dark Bully

The Sunshine State's Dark Bully

Many members of the extremist establishment have a new darling in Ron DeSantis. For example, the editor of the far-right National Review recently gushed that, second only to Trump, the Florida governor is "the hottest thing" in GOP politics: "Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party."

Interesting, because what characterizes Ron's tenure (and prompts a collective swoon for him within the rightist hierarchy) is his strongman authoritarianism. Indeed, DeSantis puts the bull in bully, bellowing "culture war" hooey, demonizing immigrants, fabricating claims of voter fraud, promoting COVID-19 lies and so forth. Then he imperiously asserts government power to bully majority will, local communities, workers, the poor, Florida's environment, truth, fairness, honesty and democracy. Consider one of DeSantis' autocratic moves that, curiously, thrilled many who once professed to be small-government "conservatives." They are now cheering for him to go national with his reliance on Big Government Boss-ism to usurp the people's democratic authority:

Like other Republican-run states, DeSantis's Florida keeps manufacturing ways to restrict voter participation, in particular blocking African Americans from the polls. In 2018, however, Floridians themselves rebuked the suppressors by approving a ballot measure to expand the electorate. A whopping 65 percent said YES to eliminating a vindictive lifelong ban on voting by ex-felons — people who had served their time. This long-overdue measure of simple justice (approved, in fact, by a much bigger margin of voters than DeSantis got that year) re-enfranchised about 1.4 million former felons.


But wait — DeSantis had old Jim Crow up his sleeve! In 2019, he rammed a mean technical gotcha into state law, preventing former felons from voting until they pay in full all court fines (many arbitrarily and unfairly assessed years ago for things like marijuana possession). The fines can run thousands of dollars, so the new law priced a big percentage of these newly eligible voters out of democratic participation. It's nothing but a crude partisan poll tax to keep a select group of poor people from casting ballots.

The extreme ugliness within DeSantis has yet to be fully plumbed. Indeed, it keeps surging as his ego and presidential ambition combine and combust, spewing out evermore autocratic, abusive, self-aggrandizing schemes and scams. For example, Florida's supreme leader announced that he intends to form his own military force, a state army that would report only to him (bypassing the U.S. chain of command) "to protect the state" in case of "emergencies." What's an emergency? He'll decide.

To relax, DeSantis turns to a favorite hobby: Monitoring, scolding and proscribing Floridians' free speech rights. Stifling a human reality that even young kids know, DeSantis has outlawed potentially comforting discussions in elementary schools about sexual orientation and gender identity that don't conform to Ron's uptight Republican puritanism. His excellency has mandated that social studies textbooks not include (Get this!) any component of "social justice." Nor can schools teach anything that would "denigrate the Founding Fathers" or examine institutional racism in America. Ron adamantly opposes what right-wingers call a "woke" society — he wants one that's asleep.

Sound asleep. DeSantis went wacky this year, inviting right-wing activists to review and help ban math textbooks. Yes, math! These screechers object that some real-life topics like race and wage disparities are being included in math problems — never mind that that might make math relevant to today's students. His cadre of reviewers also rejected elementary school math books, alleging that they promote "socialist" values such as encouraging kiddos to "work together" on problems and "disagree respectfully." DeSantis's political censorship binge has nixed 42 math books for daring to "incorporate prohibited topics."

All of this comes at taxpayer expense, of course, but most intolerable is the steady drip-drip-drip of power it drains from America's democratic ideals and commitment to the common good. I can't say that DeSantis is the worst that the GOP will try to put in the White House in 2024, but he is a signpost of an increasingly assertive American fascism.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Y'all Listen When I Tell You Why Greg Abbott Must Never Be President

Y'all Listen When I Tell You Why Greg Abbott Must Never Be President

In the 1990s, the sharp-witted Texan and renowned progressive writer Molly Ivins regaled (and appalled) readers with her reports on the tragicomic awfulness of George W. Bush's two terms as the Lone Star State's governor. His tenure was notable for his deep ignorance, frat-boy arrogance and flagrant servility to corporate interests. But those very qualities made America's moneyed powers decide that — Wow! — wouldn't he make a dandy president? Molly warned the general public about the folly of that choice, but in the 2000 race, W's patrons stuffed him with money, buffed him up with a glossy coat of PR Shinola, pulled off a flagrant post-election political heist in Florida ... and squeegeed him, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and that whole regime of horrors into office.

Many Americans soon began expressing astonishment at how shallow, imperious, and dangerous Bush & Co. were proving to be, leading Molly to say with a heavy sigh: "Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention."

Don't look now, but another Texas gubernatorial goober, named Greg Abbott, is coming at you, insisting that he should be your next president. Sadly, Molly is gone, but I knew her well enough that I think I can speak for her on this matter of national import: "Oh, hell no!"


Excuse the redundancy here, but right-wing extremism has become extremely extreme, and Abbott is vying to be the "extremiest" of all. A clue to his loopiness is his vituperative anti-abortion absolutism, forcing victims of rape to give birth to their rapists' spawn. Not a problem, proclaimed Abbott, for he's the Lone Star Wizard. He declared that he intends to go out and arrest all rapists — get this — before they rape anyone!

Abbott, a governor with no talent for governing, has run up a record noted for spectacular program failures, corporate bootlicking, widening inequality, corruption, political buffoonery... and so awful much more. If that's your idea of a president, there he is.

Perhaps you remember Sen. Barry Goldwater, the GOP's fringy, far-right-wing 1964 presidential nominee who famously said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Today, however, the core of the Republican Party has gone so far beyond the fringe that they would boo Goldwater's right-wingism as insufficiently rabid. Instead, their new rallying cry is: "Nuttiness in the defense of extremism is no vice."

The GOP as a whole has mutated from a conservative party with some extremist factions to effectively proclaiming itself the Party of Extremism. Its mainline officialdom (governors, congressional leaders, state reps, judges, party chairs, et al.) are no longer just winking at such antidemocratic, far-right groups as neo-Confederates, paranoid "replacement" theorists, secessionists and QAnon cultists — they are openly embracing the crazy.

Hoping to enlist the raw political fervor of dogmatic rightists, local, state and national Republican establishments are mainstreaming the extreme: Parroting many of those groups' wilder claims, adopting their code words and endorsing their adherents for elected and appointed offices. And, of course, all of this fanatical horsepower is quietly being hitched to the party's true purpose of entrenching the supremacy of corporate and moneyed elites.

Now, this extremism is about to erupt in the GOP's presidential primary, for a whole covey of these cooing right-wingers have fantasies of taking the groups' radical agenda to the White House. All of them are trying to out-extreme each other with raw meat bigotry and autocratic posturing, but two wannabes have emerged as both the most bullish and bullying: Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida.

For months, these big state governors have been locked in a far-right kook-off including outlawing free speech, banning books, viciously attacking immigrants, preempting local elections and governments and denying health care to poor people. Bear in mind that Abbott and DeSantis are not merely pontificating, posturing and promising what they might do in the White House; as governors they're actually practicing it right now!

I don't know if Abbott and DeSantis are the worst that the GOP will try to put in the Oval Office in 2024, but please pay attention now, for today's Republican elites intend to pull our democracy down into the plutocratic, autocratic and theocratic maelstrom they are creating.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

How The Supreme Court Became A Corporate Rubber Stamp

How The Supreme Court Became A Corporate Rubber Stamp

Today's six-member supermajority on the Supreme Court has surrendered all claim to being an impartial moral force for blind justice. Instead, the GOP's small network of corporate and right-wing operatives has painstakingly fabricated and weaponized the court as its own political oligarchy. In only a couple of decades, backed by a few billionaires, these anti-democracy zealots have incrementally been imposing on America an extremist political agenda that they could not win at the ballot box.

Their "Eureka!" moment — the startling development that opened the eyes of the moneyed elites and ideologues to the raw power they could grab by politicizing the judiciary — was the Supreme Court's illegitimate Bush v. Gore ruling. In December 2000, that five-person GOP majority abruptly crashed Florida's presidential vote count, storming over both democracy and judicial propriety to install George W. in the White House. Appalled, dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens mocked the five, pointing out that while their trumped-up ruling didn't really establish whether Bush or Gore won, it did make the loser "pellucidly clear: It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

One of those who helped run the court's blatant political power play over the Florida vote was an obscure corporate lawyer who had long been an aggressive, behind-the-scenes Republican monkey-wrencher pushing to restrict voting by people of color, poor people and other Democratic constituencies: John Roberts. Shortly thereafter — surprise! — Bush elevated Roberts to a top federal judgeship, and just two years later moved him on up to America's ultimate judicial power spot, chief justice of the Supremes.

From this lofty roost, Roberts has orchestrated an expansive political docket for the court, handpicking cases created and advanced by far-right interests. He then has manipulated precedents and procedures to produce convoluted decisions that impose plutocratic, autocratic and theocratic domination over the American people's democratic rights and aspirations.

To date, Chief Justice Roberts has cobbled together slim, all-Republican majorities to hand down more than 80 blatantly partisan rulings, fabricating law that We the People have never voted for and don't support.

It's bizarre to have the Supreme Court, the least democratic branch of government, professing to speak in the name of The People. Even as its right-wing core is grinding out an unprecedented level of partisan judgments that We the People clearly do not want — and will not support. Take that abortion right, for example, that the court — now freshly packed with former President Donald Trump's trio of Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — will likely move this year to nullify. If they do, it will be a pricey "victory" for those politicos, because they are imperiously thrusting their own agenda over the overwhelming will of the people.

Helloooo, your honors: Some six in 10 Americans have consistently and passionately affirmed that these deeply personal and emotional decisions belong to the women affected, not to unelected ideologues and political opportunists. A court so far out of touch with the people is marching forth with no cloak of legitimacy, squandering its authority to be taken seriously, much less obeyed.

Not only has this band of self-righteous judges been punching their reactionary social biases into court-made law, but they've also been rubber-stamping cases to enthrone corporate supremacy over us and our environment. Throughout Roberts' reign, the court has sided with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the chief front group for U.S. corporate giants) a staggering 70 percent of the time! Indeed, three members — Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — now rank among the five most corporate-friendly justices of the past 75 years.

This aggressive corporatization and partisanship has lifted the Supremes to a new level of public awareness — much to their chagrin. In a Quinnipiac survey last November, more than six in 10 Americans said they believe Supreme Court decisions are motivated primarily by politics, not by unbiased readings of the law. Rather than instilling a modicum of humility, however, the bad reviews have stirred embarrassing outbursts of judicial pique and vitriol. Alito, for example, whined loudly last year that critics are engaged in "unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution." Likewise, Barrett was so stung that she felt it necessary to go public with a strained denial, pleading for the public to believe that "this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks."

Note to petulant judges: If you don't want to be called a partisan hack, stop being one. And, Brother Alito, it's not critics who're damaging the third branch "as an independent institution," it's your obsequious fealty to corporate interests and your knee-jerk allegiance to extremist ideologues. You can wear the robe, but you can't hide in it.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.