Hightower’s New World

As reported in an earlier Accuracy in Academia article, the famous populist Jim Hightower is attempting to inflame college students against the evil American corporations and restrictive consumerist expectations. Promoted by the progressive Campus Progress (a program of the Center for American Progress), Hightower’s new book Swim Against the Current encourages readers to break with corporate and “right-wing politico” traditions and adopt more values-oriented positions including

• opposing the Iraq War;
• mass organization against evil corporations and the Powers That Be;
• government-subsidized elections;
• fighting climate change in the name of Christian “Creation Care.”

The book, coauthored by Hightower and former talk-show host Susan Demarco, is divided into three themes covering “Business” (corporate greed), “Politics” (progressive action), and “Life” (the Evangelical-Environmentalist Alliance).

Believing that all politics in America are corrupted by “money-soaked” elitist interests, Hightower and DeMarco have some choice words for American democracy: “It’s an inherently corrupting, self-perpetuating, virulently antidemocratic system in which private money buys multiples of public money.”

Their solution: government-subsidized “Clean Elections.” “…CE is a voluntary system that gives candidates for state and local offices a clear choice: (1) go ahead and run the old way if you want, ceaselessly hustling campaign money from private funders and hocking your independence to them; or (2) choose to forego money from private interests…in return for receiving no-string-attached public funds to finance your campaign,” they write (emphasis original).

Hightower and DeMarco add, “Also—and very important—if a CE candidate is being grossly outspent by a candidate with Big Bucks backing or one spending a personal fortune, the clean candidate gets an extra allotment of matching funds to stay competitive.”

In other words, if the local community gives higher donations to one candidate, the CE opponent can demand more money from the government to stay competitive.

The authors’ definition of “fair elections” can be equated with Democratic victories. Throughout the book they demonize Republican candidates as captive to Big Oil and Wall Street interests, or as promoting a far-right religious agenda designed to undermine science and peddling “its brand of religious dogma” to children.

The authors even cast Pat Robertson as the devil himself, writing of the Dover School intelligent design debate, “This unleashed the hellacious wrath of Pat Robertson on the poor denizens of Dover.” They describe Robertson as an “apocalyptic absurdist” with a “demonic smirk,” call conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh “Limbaugh-breath,” label James Dobson a “right-wing Republican operative,” and deride Focus on the Family as one of two “extremist Christian political fronts.”

Those groups which Hightower and DeMarco hold up as ideal representations for the new democratic, local business model include strippers, taxi drivers, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) activists, and organic cooperatives. However, the authors fail to mention that the collective bargaining they so laud is successful because it hinges on the creation of an artificial monopoly in the local community.

The Madison Union Cab Cooperative was only successful because of higher gas prices, “the other tax company closed,” and “Madison’s bus drivers went on strike.” In other words, consumers had no choice but accept UCC’s higher rates.

Organic Valley’s cooperative was able to demand higher prices because 47 organic milk farmers banded together and refused to sell their milk at a lower price. Suppliers were unlikely to be able to ship in organic product from distant communities at comparable rates. Some might call this a cartel.

As for asking for a “fair price”—Hightower and DeMarco never discuss how the change makes working families pay more for their products. Instead, they assume the price increase will come out of the corporations’ profit margin.

No clearer example of the bullying promoted by the authors’ “populist” revolution can be found than in ACORN’s touted activities. “A utility company in Gary, Indiana, had notoriously high rates and a nasty habit of pulling the plug on financially strapped folks who fell behind on their winter heating bills,” the authors write. After organizing customers to pay their bills in pennies, ACORN forced the company to “reform” their “customer practices,” including the cut-offs.

By forcing the utility company to continue to serve nonpaying customers, ACORN undermined a fundamental condition for successful commerce: the right of a supplier to be compensated for his or her product.

In another example, ACORN activists swarmed a landlord’s office wearing “rat noses”. The landlord had demanded that a tenant whose baby had been bitten by a rat pay a penalty for breaking her lease and leaving. While tragic that the child was hurt, the woman did not contact her landlord or hire an exterminator—at least, not as the authors tell it. Instead, the enforceability of American contracts—a necessary condition for rule of law—suffered another blow.

Swim Against the Current contains highly biased and unsubstantiated assertions with a barely veiled political agenda. When citing a March 2006 poll placing evangelical belief in man-made climate change at 63%, the authors fail to identify the news outlet. Again, they cite a “statewide poll” on page 97 but give no source. (Note: polls are not scientific; surveys are).

For a book touting independent, rebellious American activism, not giving the readers opposing information or the tools to evaluate the books’ argument—in effect demanding that readers swallow the information wholesale—seems highly “undemocratic.”

Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer at Accuracy in Academia