Elites tend to be... well, elite. As in, “clueless” about what your everyday working stiff is thinking.
This is not a problem for most hoity-toities, for they don’t deal with the great unwashed. But cluelessness about the masses can become a major occupational hazard for political elites—including campaign operatives, candidates, pundits, and the big-money donor class. And while this is a problem for the establishments of both major political parties, today’s Republican establishment now finds that it is so out of touch with regular voters that it now faces a howling, Category-5 hurricane that’s threatening to implode the Grand Old Party.
None of the elites saw Hurricane Donnie coming, and with the blow-hard now raging at full force, the GOP’s upper-crusters still don’t seem to know what hit them, much less what to do about it. They are so out of it that they even tried to blunt his surge by having Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush rush out and say bad things about The Donald, imploring voters to turn their backs on him. To see these two buttoned-down pillars of the moneyed establishment huffing and puffing at the storm was hilarious—and as hopeless as them trying to blow away a real hurricane.
What the aloof, affluent leaders of the Republican Party don’t get is that the source of the storm presently wrecking them is not Trump, but infuriated, rank-and-file, working-class voters who feel betrayed by them. None other than Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, the Koch brothers, the corporate CEOs and lobbyists, Mitt & Jeb, and the other well-off swells who run the GOP are the ones who’ve stripped the party of any blue-collar appeal. They’ve single-mindedly pushed a plutocratic agenda of trade scams, tax cuts for the rich, and subsidies for runaway corporations, while constantly slashing at Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that their own non-affluent voters need.
The Party powers now wail that Trump is stealing their voters. But he’s not—he’s just picking up the people the GOP elites threw away.
All that said, the Republican Party’s establishment has come up with a secret plan to peel off its long-faithful, blue-collar supporters from the Donnie Trump spectacle. Their plan is code-named: “Operation Paul Ryan.”
Good grief—the GOP’s old line clique of congressional bulls, corporate funders, lobbyists and right-wing think tanks is as confused as goats on Astroturf when it comes to grasping a core part of Trump’s appeal. He’s reaching out to longtime Republican voters who’ve finally realized that it’s the party’s own Wall Street elites who knocked them down economically and the party’s insider cadre of K-Street influence peddlers who’ve shut them out politically.
The party powers are trying to comfort themselves by insisting that The Donald is winning only because he’s drawing voters who’re ignorant, racist, xenophobic and misogynistic. In fact, he’s drawing huge numbers of disaffected Republicans who’re mainly antiestablishment and deeply-anti the party’s own power players. These hard-hit, angry voters are not Koch-headed, laissez-faire ideologues—they like Trump’s opposition to job-busting trade scams, his mocking of big-money campaign donations, his call to hike taxes on Wall Street’s pampered hedge-funders, his support for Social Security, etc.
For these voters, “Operation Paul Ryan” is a dud, a farce ... and an insult. Rep. Ryan has long been the kept-darling of the Wall Street/K Street crowd and the Koch brothers. The obtuse establishment snootily calls him “serious” presidential material—only because he champions such plutocratic policies as privatizing Social Security, cutting taxes on the superrich, deregulating Wall Street, and turning Medicare into a voucher system. The only thing serious about Ryan’s agenda is that it’s a dead-serious loser with the great majority of Americans.
Trying to knock-off Trump for Ryan is a sign of the GOP’s irreversible decline into cluelessness and political irrelevance.



Everyday patriots

The dictionary defines a patriot as, “One who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests.”
Supports authority? Hooey. An American patriot is one who supports the egalitarian ideals of our country, and is willing to challenge authority every time it devolves into authoritarianism. We see staggering levels of corporate authoritarianism asserting control over us in the Walmart-ification of our economy, Koch-ification of our government, Murdoch-ification of our media, Exxon-ification of our environment, Monsanto-ification of our food supply, and so on.
Just keeping up with all the assaults on our people’s democratic idealism can sometimes lead to an emotional overload that social commentator Marty Kaplan has dubbed “Informed Citizen Disorder.” Symptoms include an outbreak of hives when you see Fox News and a nagging compulsion to “Flee to the woods!” – which is exactly what plutocratic powers want all dissidents to do.
There is, however, a revitalizing antidote to the tragedy of ICD: Periodic exposure to America’s mavericks and mutts, free thinkers and greed whackers, who refuse to conform to the corporate order. They receive little media or political attention, but these are our nation’s everyday patriots – wholly imbued with a stalwart spirit of fairness and justice. They are underdogs battling big money and power, yet they commonly win.
This populist spirit is flowering today all across our country, from dozens of battles against Big Oil frackers to numerous actions against the unconscionable labor practices of Walmart. Forget the overstuffed, business-as-usual politicians who keep running games on us for the preservation of the status quo. Our true history is not about “The Great Men,” but about the grassroots people. Just as in the original revolution, the democratic future and populist potential of America is in the heads and hands of rebels.
“America’s true history is not about “Great Men,” but about grassroots rebels and movements,” www.hightowerlowdown.org, July, 2013.

How clueless can the GOP establishment get?

Exciting news, people! The Republican Party’s establishment has a secret plan to stop its blue-collar voters from supporting Donnie Trump. Their plan is code-named: “Operation Paul Ryan.”
Good grief – the GOP’s old line clique of congressional bulls, corporate funders, lobbyists, and right-wing think tanks is as confused as goats on astroturf when it comes to grasping a core part of Trump’s appeal. He’s reaching out to longtime Republican voters who’ve finally realized that it’s the party’s own Wall Street elites who knocked them down economically and the party’s insider cadre of K-Street influence peddlers who’ve shut them out politically.
The party powers are insisting that The Donald is winning only because he’s drawing voters who’re ignorant, racist, xenophobic, and misogynist. In fact, he’s drawing huge numbers of disaffected Republicans who’re mainly anti the party’s own power players. Far from being Koch-headed, laissez-faire ideologues – these voters like Trump’s opposition to job-busting trade scams, his mocking of big-money campaign donations, his call to hike taxes on Wall Street’s pampered hedge-funders, his support for Social Security, etc.
For these voters, “Operation Paul Ryan” is a dud, a farce... and an insult. Rep. Ryan has long been the kept-darling of the Wall Street/K Street crowd. The obtuse establishment snootily calls him “serious” presidential material – only because he champions such plutocratic policies as privatizing Social Security, cutting taxes on the superrich, deregulating Wall Street, and turning Medicare into a voucher system. The only thing serious about Ryan’s agenda is that it’s a dead-serious loser with the great majority of Americans.
Trying to knock-off Trump for Ryan is a sign of the GOP’s irreversible decline into cluelessness and political irrelevance.
“How G.O.P. Elites Lost The Party’s Base to Trump,” The New York Times, March 28, 2016.


What happened to America’s train system?

Why are we Americans stuck with an out-of-date railroad system, while nations with a small fraction of our resources are cruising on High Speed Rail (HSR) networks?
Because our leaders sold us out to corporate hucksters who destroyed our once-great passenger train system by telling us that we Americans deserve the “independence” that comes from a glorious new doctrine of one-person/one-car. Yeah – the independence of being stuck in traffic jams! As early as the 1930s, giant corporate consortiums formed to buy out more than 100 of America’s networks of streetcars and interurban train systems. Not to run them, but to rip out the tracks and pave over the rail right-of-ways to make roads.
The biggest of these consortiums combined the enormous political and PR power of General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone, and Mack Trucks. Likewise, corporate profiteers mounted a new offensive in the 1990s to undermine the higher-speed potential of Amtrak’s Acela trains, funding such Koch-headed front groups as Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation to push hokey “analyses” branding Amtrak as a slow train to collectivist hell.
They also bought trainloads of politicians, who’re still promoting the fabricated studies and talking points of the petro-cabal to wreck as much of Amtrak as they can and derail fast-train proposals. Railroad executives themselves, preferring the oligopolistic and very profitable freight business to passenger travel, play along.
There is no economic, technological, geographic, budgetary, or conceptual barrier to our country having the best, most effective, state-of-the-art HSR service in the world. The reality is the US is in the caboose of transportation innovation only because special-interest politics continue to thwart our national will, leaving us with a rail system that is a national embarrassment.
“Travel that is fast and efficient – even fun? Let’s get on board with High Speed Rail,” www.hightowerlowdown.org, October 2015.