Jim Hightower

 

CLINTON FLIES

HIGH WITH HEMP

Bill Clinton did not

inhale. We’re clear on that, right?

But, recently, he did

swallow. It was on

a return trip to

Washington from Mexico City, where the President had

traveled to proclaim that his international drug war

is a tremendous

success. Bill has a

tough time with Mexico on this issue, PR-wise, since

every time he goes to praise the progress being

made there, one or more of

their top

anti-drug officials turn out to be involved in the drug trade

themselves.

So who can blame Clinton for kicking back with a

beer on

the trip home from his latest

song and dance in Mexico? It’s a

nerve-soothing

beverage-and hey, alcohol is a legal drug.

But hold

your Clydesdales right there. The stewards on Air

Force One didn’t give the President a

tall Bud . . . but a Hemp Golden Beer!

This brew, made in

Kentucky, includes not only hops, barley and

water-but also hemp seed. The

hemp

plant is a cousin of the dreaded marijuana plant. Even though hemp

itself is not a drug and cannot make you high,

Clinton’s Drug Czar Barry

McCaffrey

has been on an absolute tear against allowing American farmers to

grow this profitable, highly useful, and

environmentally sensible crop. So

US

businesses that use hemp to make paper, fuel, medicines, clothing, food

and beer among other things, have to import the

hemp from China, Canada,

Europe or

other places that are not so paranoid.

Anita Roddick,

founder of the Body Shop, which markets several

hemp-based skin care

products, heard

about Clinton’s beer experience. She wrote to him, saying "Congratulations on breaking the hemp barrier

on Air Force One."

She also said,

"Don’t go wobbly with misinformation,"

urging him to support a legal

distinction between hemp and marijuana so farmers

can begin to produce the

hemp here.

This is Jim Hightower

saying . . . There’s no word from

Bill

on that, but don’t expect him to have another hemp beer on Air Force

One-the office of National Drug Control Policy

banned it from the plane, declaring it

an "inappropriate"

drink for the president.

           

 

MICHAEL DELL, TAX

PROTESTER

Time for another peek

[soap opera theme] into "The

Lifestyles of the Rich . . . And Cranky."

Poor

Michael and Susan Dell. They’re the richest people

in Austin, Texas, and

among the 20

richest people in America-but, gosh, they’ve got to make ends

meet just like your family and mine. And just like

families everywhere who

build a house,

this founding family of Dell Computer Inc. needs to watch

expenses. Especially when their house is three

stories and 33,000 square

feet, has

eight bedrooms and bathrooms, 13 half baths, a conference room, a

kitchen bigger than most restaurants, an exercise

room, an indoor pool, an

outdoor pool,

cabanas, and a five-level terraced lawn. Their house is

bigger than a shopping center, though not quite as

attractive-hey, money is

about size,

not taste.

The Dells didn’t skimp on

building costs,

architects,

landscaping charges, or interior decorators. Their house is

the most expensive in Texas-and I’m counting Ross

Perot’s! They only got

cost conscience

when they received their property tax bill. This is the

money used by the local government to support

public schools, roads and

other basic

services. The Dells though whined that their $600,000

assessment was way too high. OK, that’s a lot of

money for you and me, but

for these

30-somethings who have a net worth of $13 billion, it’s like you

paying $2 a year in property taxes. You should be so

lucky.

But

you’re not the Dells, who hired their own lawyers

and appraisers. They

took the county to

court-costing us taxpayers thousands of dollars in legal

fees-and, sure enough, they got their tax bill

knocked down to $250,000 a

year-a 60%

cut. This means they’re going to be paying what would amount to

about 50 cents a year.

This is Jim Hightower saying . . . The tax appraiser said, "

Just because they are

Michael and Susan Dell doesn’t mean

they

should pay more than their fair share. Everyone must be treated equally."

Sure . . . as long as we all have

lawyers and appraisers and political

clout that’s equal.

 

PAYDAY

It’s payday . . . do you

know where your next million is

coming

from? Geoffrey Bible, like all of us, is just trying to make

ends meet-though some of us have a longer stretch

than Bible does. He’s

top dog at

Philip Morris, and his board of directors not only paid him a

nice $1.6 million salary last year, but added a

sweet dollop of cream on

top: a bonus

of $3.5 million. But his payday didn’t end there–add in stock options, incentive pay, and a category

called "other compensation,"

and

Geoffrey totaled right at $24 million for 1998. This is not counting

his limousine, country club memberships, company

jet, housing allowance,

executive chef,

and a free weekly shampoo for his poodle.

All this

was a year in which Philip Morris didn’t do well.

Who knows, in a good

year he might’ve

gotten that poodle shampooed twice a week.

Are there no limits on the excesses of these guys?

Well, yes, say the

companies, we have "executive

compensation committees"

that carefully scrutinize CEO

performance and allocate pay accordingly. Sure, and

the monkeys are

guarding the zoo.

Guess who heads the compensation committee

at

Philip Morris? John Reed. When he’s

not keeping his hawk-eye on Geoffrey

Bible,

he’s Chief Executive of Citigroup, the financial services

conglomerate. One reason that John Reed might have a

slightly skewed sense

of how much

Bible should be paid is that he himself hauled off $1.7 million

in salary last year, plus a $7.8 million bonus and

stock options worth

$16.9 million. So,

hey, he says, if I made $26 million, how far off is it

to pay Bible $24 million?

And so what that Bible’s company had a

rough year?–Citigroup, under John Reed, saw its

profits fall by a

billion-and-a-half

bucks, and thousands of workers were fired, so you can’t

hold tough times against the guy at the top.

This is Jim Hightower saying . . . For CEOs, it’s a

scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours-world.

 

THE DOW BUSTS THE

MIDDLE CLASS

Wow, the Dow above

10,000!

Is this great news, or

what? USA Today gushed that "

10,000 is more than a

number . . . It’s like Mark McGwire beating the home

run record. It’s like the calendar

turning to the year 2000 . . . It’s a cultural milestone."

It’s being hailed not

only as a milestone for the rich, but also for the middle class, with the media reporting deadpan that

"everybody"

is in the

stock

market today.

Time for a Reality Check

[echo] . . . check . . .

check.

Everybody?! Six out of ten Americans own no stock at

all-not

through a broker, a mutual

fund, a pension . . . nothing. And of those who

do own stock, the vast majority have a tidbit that

gives them no sense of

ownership in the

Dow, much less giving them a thrill that the thing is

above 10,000. Millions of Americans are in the

stock market only because

their pension

plans got canceled, and now they’ve been thrust into a

401(K), which is nowhere near as desirable, and

they’re not at all happy to

be there.

Consider this reality that the establishment

media never

mentions: 90 percent of

the value of all stocks is held by the richest 10

percent of American families. They’re the privileged

10 percent who are

giddy about the Dow

busting 10,000. The rest of us are more concerned

about finding good jobs at good wages, not to

mention jobs with decent

benefits and a

real pension.

Here’s another statistic

that the media,

the politicians, and

the Wall Street analysts don’t broadcast: Weekly

wages for average workers today are 12 percent below

the wages of workers

in 1973. And guess

what? When a corporation cuts jobs and cuts wages, the

stock price of that corporation goes up . . .

which raises the Dow Jones

Average. So

the misfortune of the workaday majority, which is seeing its

income go down, is a boost to the fortunes of those

at the top.

This

is Jim Hightower saying . . . What’s more important

for America–a rise in the Dow . . . or

a rise in the middle class?

 

PBS PROMOTES THE

"STOCK MARKET GAME"

Out in Nebraska, when

they say something is "janked"

-they

mean it’s all messed up. Well, PBS the

Public

Broadcasting Service-seems to be janked.

The original idea of establishing a "public"

network was that

it would present a non-corporate

view

of the world. But in recent years, PBS has been taking more and more corporate "underwriting,"

which is

another way of saying advertising, and

more and more of its programming now mouths the

corporate line.

For example, a recent feature on public radio’s

"All Things Considered"

news show

told about a new game called the "Stock Market Game."

This is a

blatant piece of Wall Street propaganda being

directed at 11 and 12 year

olds-just

the kind of thing that PBS was created to expose and lampoon.

But, no, the new, corporate-friendly public radio

network broadcast the

feature without

an iota of journalistic skepticism, much less criticism or

outrage. In playing this "game,"

teams of

elementary school kids are

given

$100,000 each in pretend money to invest in the stock market. Stop

right there. Who in the real world has $100,000 to

invest? Maybe five

percent of

Americans-but the public radio reporter asked no embarrassing questions. Instead, a "game coordinator"

in one of the schools was

interviewed

to tell us that sometimes the kids make a lot of money with

their virtual investments, and sometimes they don’t

make so much. Not a

whisper that

sometimes, you lose everything! Another perky proponent of

the Stock Market Game was interviewed and gushed

that it was a great way "to teach

students about the American economy."

This is Jim Hightower saying . . . Yeah, if you want to teach them

fantasy.