The Hightower Lowdown

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I Go Pogo

Walt Kelley's great comic-strip character, Pogo the possum, ran for president around 1960, and many of us iconoclasts were proud to wear his campaign button declaring: I GO POGO. Well, I go POGO again, but this time it's the Project On Government Oversight that I'm backing. This terrific public-interest watchdog is in the fight of its life against Big Oil and two of Big Oil's snarling guard dogs in Congress: Republicans Don Young and Barbara Cubin. Young, from Alaska, chairs the powerful House Resources Committee, while Cubin, from Wyoming, chairs its energy subcommittee. Both have pocketed more than their share of big bucks from the oil giants, and both have loyally sided with the industry to get whatever it wants.

One thing Big Oil dearly wants is for POGO to go away. Working with whistleblowers inside the industry and government, the project has unveiled a massive, deliberate scheme through which oil companies cheat taxpayers. The industry is allowed to pump publicly owned oil from beneath state and federal public lands, for which it must pay us a royalty. But for years, it has been grossly underpaying on these royalties. POGO and the states have successfully sued the likes of Shell and Exxon/Mobil to force repayment of nearly half a billion dollars owed to us, and there are more legal actions underway against these scoundrels.

You might think Congress naturally would want to go after the cheats. And indeed, Young and Cubin have been frothing at the mouth -- and going after POGO. The two Republican U.S. Reps. are engaged in a congressional witchhunt, demanding all of POGO's phone records, as well as those of its executive director, going back as far as seven years. The release of the records the two members of Congress are after would reveal to the oil companies the names of courageous whistleblowers who've been working with POGO. To find out how to help stop this abuse of congressional power, contact POGO: 202/347-1122, or check its Web site: www.pogo.org.

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Rebellion in Carmel

We need to talk. I don't mean a heart-to-heart, in which we explore our personal relationship. But I mean as citizens of this great country. We've just endured a national election in which the two big candidates were so mired in special-interest cash that both avoided the kitchen-table issues that the workaday majority cares about, an election that had no real presidential debate, and an election so disheartening that a majority of Americans either did not vote or voted third party. This is not going to get better until We the People -- you and me -- make it better by taking power back from the boneheads and greedheads who've usurped our democratic system and corrupted it.

How can we do this? Let's start by talking with each other -- connecting, learning, thinking, creating, organizing. I recently got a letter from Araby Colton in California's Carmel Valley. She wondered what would happen if concerned folks in communities across the land simply started meeting periodically to talk politics -- issues, strategies, etc. They did more than wonder about it in Carmel. They started doing it -- and you could start doing it where you live. Araby Colton and friends call their monthly confab "The Coffeehouse" -- in memory of the American rebels who met in coffeehouses some 225 years ago to discuss separating themselves from the tyranny of King George III and the British trading companies. It worked for the colonists, and it's a great starting place for us today, as we organize our own rebellion against the political and economic exclusion being forced on us by today's moneyed elites. The Carmel Coffeehouse group picks one of its number each month to dig into an issue that interests them, then that person directs the discussion at the next get-together. No need to wait on "leaders" -- just start connecting with other American rebels in your town or city, then we can begin linking cities up ... and then the country. Political movements don't trickle down. They percolate up.

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A Real Pain

Ever had back pain? How about tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, or some other chronic ailment that stabs you like an ice pick and can cripple you? It's more than a pain -- it's debilitating and can force you out of your job. A hundred million American workers perform repetitive functions that cause these injuries, and 600,000 a year have to miss work because of heavy lifting, assembly-line repetition, constant typing, and other tasks that they do. Day-by-day, year-by-year, these tasks tear at their backs, wrists, elbows, muscles, and tendons, leading to chronic, debilitating pain. Workers pay the price financially, too, in medical bills and lost income. Late last year though, the Labor Department finally took action to mitigate this physical and economic pain. After studying the matter for 10 years, OSHA issued standards to protect working families from some of these job-related injuries. The new rules range from providing information so employees can know about these injuries to requiring companies to provide better-designed tools and workstations to prevent the injuries in the first place.

But, oh, the squealing from corporate executives and their puppets in Congress! "We can't bear the cost," they wailed. Never mind that many firms here and abroad already do this -- and that industry would actually save some $9 billion a year from the reduced worker's comp costs and increased productivity that would result from the changes.

Stephen Bokat of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, went so far as to argue that the problem doesn't exist: "We don't think there is any scientific basis to say how many repetitions are too many, how much weight is too much," he sniffed. Really, Tiger? How much heavy lifting do you do each day, not counting your tongue? Workplace injuries are a real cost of doing business -- a cost that shouldn't be borne on the on the broken backs of injured workers. Instead of making them pay with pain and medical bills, let's do all we can to stop hurting people on the job.

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Jim Hightower's latest book, If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, is available in stores everywhere.