Texan’ tells it straight
Political activist, commentator, populist and Texan Jim Hightower, while wearing his signature white cowboy hat, spoke Monday evening at the Eccles Conference Center Auditorium as a kick-off and fund-raiser for the Sustainable Landscapes Conference, which ran Tuesday.
Hightower is the author of many political books including the New York Times Bestseller “Thieves in High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country and It’s Time to Take It Back,” “If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates” and his most recent “Let’s Stop Beating Around The Bush.” His commentaries are also broadcast daily on public and community radio stations across the country including Salt Lake City’s community radio station KRCL 90.9.
“It makes me absolutely happier than a flea at a dog show to be right here with all of you USU students, educators, you free range champions of sustainability, you community activist and corporate butt-kickers,” he said, beginning his lecture.
On top of his books, he publishes a monthly political newsletter with more than 160,000 subscribers. He also has been a guest on Jon Stewart’s, “The Daily Show.”
Hightower spoke about overbearing corporations, minimum wage and his disapproval with the current U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush’s administration.
“I thought I’d focus tonight on the larger issue of community,” he said. “To talk about creating a sustainable political landscape in our land of our free. I believe that something big is happening in our land today. Something fundamental. While we’re told that Washington is spending billions of our tax dollars, thousands of our loved ones to extend democracy everywhere, we’re not told about the steady deliberate thievery of our democracy here at home.”
Although, he considers himself a Democrat, he said both parties are being run by corporate agendas.
“Some people say we need a third party, I wish we had a second,” he said.
Throughout the lecture, he spoke on the powers of a few deciding the lives of the many.
“Over the past quarter century, a relative handful of corporate investor powers working through the bulk of both political parties have pushed relentlessly to push their own narrow selfish interests as paramount, supreme, over all other interests combined,” he said. “I’m talking about the downsizers, the globalizers, the enroners, the Worldcomers, the spoilers, the speculators, greenheads and boneheads that are running roughshod over working families, roughshod over our family farmers, roughshod over old-folks and children, over the middle-class as well as the poor, over our hair, our water, our food, roughshod over our open-spaces, roughshod over our liberties.”
He said the country is slipping out of democracy into “kleptocracy,” which he explained as governing by thieves.
“The radical idea of democracy is that ordinary people will be able to affect and control decisions that affect their lives. The great, great majority of Americans know that we don’t have that power any more,” he said. “Decisions are now made by unnamed executives pursuing nothing more noble than their quality of financial gain. Is that all there is? Is that all that America amounts too?”
He spoke about the philosophy of Egalitarianism, which is “the idea that we’re all in this together” and which he said the core values of America are based upon. He quoted his father, a small business owner in Texas, as saying, “Everybody does better when everybody does better.”
Hightower condemned the way Bush handled the economy after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“America was attacked,” he said. “People wanted to do something, but what were we told to do by our leader in the Whitehouse? Go shopping. Nothing more noble than go shopping.”
He then questioned what else could have been done considering the circumstances.
“What if our leaders said to us, ‘We are going to declare energy independence for America’?” he said. He talked about making a 10-year goal to get the United States away from oil, building high-speed trains, using fuel celled cars and energy efficient buildings.
He also spoke about his issues with Wal-Mart, sweatshop goods and then made a call to action.
“It’s up to us to step forward. It’s no longer enough for us to be progressive. We’ve been passively progressive for a long time. We’ve got to become aggressive,” he said.
Josh Archibald, Logan resident and Crumb Brothers co-founder, attended the event and said he listens to Hightower almost every evening on KRCL. He said he likes Hightower because he speaks about supporting local businesses and being an activist in the local community.
“It was poignant,” he said.
-joelfeathers@cc.usu.edu
Jim hightower discusses some of the corporate downfalls of government in his address opening the Sustainable Landscapes Conference Monday evening. (Photo by Michael Sharp)