Jim Hightower talks the talk

Since 1990, when he lost his bid for re-election as Texas Agriculture Commissioner to Rick Perry (yeah, that one), Jim Hightower has become a household brand in progressive circles.

For nearly 20 years he’s been producing daily two-minute radio commentaries heard in over 130 markets (including WMNF in Tampa). He also writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column, as well as “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter.

And he’s coming to Tampa for a fundraiser for WMNF 88.5 FM on Saturday night, August 18 at the Straz Center. CL caught up with him the day after 41-year-old Cuban-American and new Tea Party star Ted Cruz won the GOP Senate primary, pushing the U.S. Senate a little more to the right a few months before the general election.

Jim Hightower: There’s a national fight among Florida, Michigan, Colorado, Texas, Ohio and Wisconsin among the governors in those states and the Republican Tea Party types to determine which one can be the nuttiest of them all, and last night Texas won. Among other serious topics, Ted is very concerned that George Soros is leading a U.N. conspiracy to eliminate golf courses in America. That’s big on a lot of people’s minds, as you might imagine. On a more serious level, he wants to gut Social Security. He’s called it a Ponzi scheme, making the usual far right-wing wacko attacks on this extremely valuable retirement program that so many millions of Americans count on.

CL: Let me ask you about Texas, as Red a state as there is. There are some who say that because of the growing legal Latino population, within the next decade Texas could become a Blue state. Do you think that’s possible, and if so, how long might that take?

Not only possible, but we’re working very actively in that direction. And yes, the Latino vote is key to that, but just generally increasing the voter turnout of people who are naturally Democrats would make a huge difference. What’s happened here is not that people turn right wing. Rather, they quit voting. That’s because of my party. I’ve seen my national leaders taking money from those same corporations that the Republicans do. Same thing is going on here in [Texas].

About 20 years ago the Democratic Party — led by a strain of geniuses — decided the key to winning elections was to raise money from those corporate interests and put that money into TV ads. That hasn’t worked out, and the reason for that is when you take that corporate check, written on the back of it is the corporate agenda, and so our party quit talking about good jobs at good wages, quit talking about health care for everybody, quit talking having the nation’s top-rated public education programs, the things that ordinary people care about, we quit talking about.

So what we’ve got to do is have the candidates who are willing to talk the talk of grassroots populism that brings people out, because they hear themselves in the message, and we have not been doing that.

We’ve got the RNC coming up. What do you think about the fact that $50 million in taxpayer funding goes to provide security for them?

They’re just showboating events… I think conventions should be a day and a night, or a day and two nights and let’s move on with it. But what it’s become even more significantly is an opportunity for local authorities — along with national authorities — to shut down the very idea of American democracy, which is the First Amendment, the right of people to assemble and speak out against policies with which they don’t agree. You’ve got some 4,000 riot-geared police in Tampa, and they’re coming in there to crack down on the hallowed freedoms of public assembly and free speech, really establishing an un-American police state for a week, right there in your city, at the behest of RNC officials.

But this really isn’t a partisan issue because Democrats are going to do essentially the same thing. Maybe a little less so, at least they’ll pay more lip service to those in protest; what they do is they restrict the parade routes to prevent the protesters getting anywhere near the convention doors or the media. They create these little protest pens, they just allow a few people at a time to even be in them, and again located far away from the convention center, so you have the right to protest but you don’t have the right for that protest to be heard by anyone of significance, and that is not the American way. That is not what Madison and Jefferson meant when they wrote that First Amendment.

Lots of folks seem to be not that turned on by the presidential choices this year. Do you believe that at some point, third party candidates will become more viable?

I am for third, fourth and fifth parties. I am for a very open political system. Right now we don’t have anywhere near that, as Ralph Nader will tell you.

It’s ridiculous that we essentially limit the political debate in this country to two parties, both of which are actually two corporate parties. So we’re not looking again at the big issues that people care about. You look at what the Congress is doing, voting 31 times to repeal Obama’s healthcare plan — always losing, but that’s just a game for them. That’s not what Americans want, they certainly want Congress working on not just jobs but wages. The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, that’s roughly $1,250 a month. Imagine trying to stretch that over rent, utilities, food and transportation. $1250 a month. It’s a moral abomination, really, that our work ethic has no ethics in it, that you can work fulltime, and still be in poverty. That needs to be raised to $10 an hour, that would stimulate our economy because low-income [people] spend the additional money that they get, they don’t have bank accounts in Switzerland and tax dodges in the Cayman Islands. That would be money that would stimulate our economy because low-income [people] put their money into hamburgers and a new pair of shoes for the kids, that sort of thing. It would be a great economic stimulus, and by the way, the vast majority of people support that. A recent poll shows enormous majority support across the board, including 52 percent of Republicans, in raising it to $10. The only two groups against it are Tea Party folks and the people who get most of their news from Fox.

Where’s the political courage? We don’t have Obama say it. He did say in 2008 that by 2011 he would get that minimum wage up there to $10 an hour. I don’t know where that guy went. He hasn’t gone to the Congress with that proposal, nor is he campaigning on it. To me that’s ludicrous. He would inspire, he would motivate, he would rally the American people to do something that needs to be done.

Democrats seem to have trouble getting behind the healthcare law. Don’t you think they oughta be proud of it and run behind it, instead of running away from it?

You don’t have to know who’s who to know what’s what, and this bill labeled “Obamacare” by the right wing is in fact a very good bill. It doesn’t go as far as I’d like it to go; I believe in Medicare for all, that’s what we should have fought for, but this is what we got and with that we have some very strong provisions in it that are going to help millions of people, who need that help. And it does take on the insurance giants whose sole purpose is to deny coverage to anybody who submits a claim, and it does allow poor folks who have not had any health insurance to get it, and it allows regular people to take charge of the system again through these state exchanges that can be created. However, your state and my state are blessed with governors who see no need for people to have the alternative of a state exchange, so they’re rejecting it.

So I’m totally with you on the failure of the Democrats, including Obama, to really stand up and campaign on it. If I were him, I’d say you’re damned right it’s Obamacare! I want that put on my tombstone because that is one of the crowning achievements of my administration! We’re going to the people and talk to them about what’s in this bill and how this is going to be a great benefit for them; if they did that, not only would they force back the Republican attack on it, but they would increase turnout, increase the number of people who might vote for them.

Are you looking forward to coming down here to Tampa?

I am so looking forward to it, and we’re going to hoot and holler and probably do a few elbow bends, and who knows what may be turned loose there because we’re preceding the RNC and the arrival of His Mittness, the very next week.

We’ll have some talk about that, but less partisan talk and more about the class war that’s being waged against the American people and failure of our political system to address that in any significant way; that’s why Lily Tomlin said that no matter how cynical you get, it’s hard to catch up. And that is the truth. We’re looking for the good news, and I’ll be bringing some of that, too. There are great things happening at the grassroots level, economically, politically, in healthcare and business and in so many other different areas.

There are things that we can do, without waiting on the politicians, or certainly waiting on the corporations. They’re the ones doing it to us, so we’ve got to do the heavy lifting ourselves.

This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2012.