IT'S TOP VS. BOTTOM, NOT RIGHT VS. LEFT...

... er'huh, maybe make that us SMALL people vs. the biggies like former Bp CEO who finally got his life back and went to a yacht race this past weekend -- or the Louisiana judge who wants to take the feds to court to prevent safety moratorium on Gulf deep drilling -- he owns a ton of stock in oil companies and Halliburton who (didn't) cement the offending, leaking well.

I LIKE jim hightower, former texas land commissioner -- and caught him on jim moyer's swansong, last show he did on PBS -- 'bout time ole jimbo was surfacing again ~! he's almost as good as swami beyondanda -- but a decade older and not 'out there' as much -- sorta like a good ole boy w/ a Harvard education -- a modern day cross between Will Rogers, Mark Twain and Ben Franklin


Time to Take on Sarah Palin, the Tea Party Screamers, and Their Corporate Masters With Real Populism


We must reclaim populism from dissemblers and hijackers because populism is a legitimate, positive, uniting political expression with a rich history. June 21, 2010 By Jim Hightower


http://www.alternet.org/story/147277/time_to_take_on_sarah_palin%2C_the_tea_party_screamers%2C_and_their_corporate_masters_with_real_populism/?page=entire


If a political pollster came to my door and asked whether I consider myself a conservative or a liberal, I'd answer, "No." Not to be cute--I have a bit of both in me--but because, like most Americans, my beliefs can't be squeezed into either of the tidy little boxes that the establishment provides.

Also, most of the big issues that our country faces defy right-left categorization. Take conservatism. It's a doctrine that classically embodies caution and...well, conservation. Yet the gushing and spreading Gulf Coast oil disaster was caused by people who proudly identify themselves as conservatives--including top executives of BP, Halliburton, and Transocean, as well as the top regulatory officials involved.

However, they're not conservatives, they're anything-goes corporatists. Likewise, the five Supreme Court justices who recently enthroned corporate money over democracy (Lowdown, March 2010) are routinely labeled by the media as "conservative"--but their reckless rulings destroy our democratic values, rather than conserve them. Again, corporatists all.

As I've rambled through life, I've observed that the true political spectrum in our society does not range from right to left, but from top to bottom. This is how America's economic and political systems really shake out, with each of us located somewhere up or down that spectrum, mostly
down. Right to left is political theory; top to bottom is the reality we actually experience in our lives every day--and the vast majority of Americans know that they're not even within shouting distance of the moneyed powers that rule from the top of both systems, whether those elites
call themselves conservatives or liberals.