Rating: 
Summary: A Plain Spoken Populist
Review: James Hightower, former Commissioner of Agriculture of Texas, is a man who favors the people over the special interests. An outspoken populist, Hightower in "Thieves in High Places" pursues the same agenda those of us who have become familiar with his speeches and lectures have heard and admired. He rightfully selects the Bush Family as the First Family of the Special Interests and catalogues the areas in which America is being taken away from the people and placed in the special repository of the privileged.In the manner of BBC and Guardian reporter Greg Palast, Hightower goes beyond excoriating George W. Bush for his empire plans and vigorous pursuit of a special interest agenda and assiduously pursues the corporate establishment as well. He points out that what is good for Wal-Mart is not necessarily ideal for the American people. Like Palast, Hightower sees a disturbing relationship in which wealth becomes excessively entrenched in significantly fewer hands. Traditionally in world history, if such disparities are uncorrected, famine and ultimate revolution from desperation occurs. With the media soft pedaling populist messages to serve the commercial interests paying for air time, Hightower assumes an important position of being a spokesman for the people. He rails against the Kleptocrats who both twist and violate laws to achieve gluttonous results while more people drop below the poverty line. The safety net Clinton sought to establish has been dangerously destroyed. Hightower provides the kind of wakeup call America needs during this apprehensive period of history that is so shrouded in uncertainty. All the while the citizenry feels increasingly alienated, as evidenced by decreasing voter participation. Hightower supplies a pep talk, telling people that to quit is destructive and that power resides in numbers, stimulated by motivation to evoke progressive change.
Rating:
Summary: All Americans take note..
Review: After reading prior reviews, I purchased this eye-opener book.It isn't just for democrats and while hitting the current administration as it deserves, it more importantly takes on and makes us aware of the "Kenny-Boy" corporations. Hooray for the towns that defied Wallyworld and refused to let them desecrate their environment and destroy the local businesses. I wish all Americans would read this and wake up!
Rating: 
Summary: Shrill left-wing edu-tainers trying to be funny
Review: The proliferation of shrill, left-wing books, trying to be funny while telling us the nation has been hijacked by rich white frat boys is getting tiresome. What's getting more tiresome is how few Americans are getting the point.
This book has some good information mixed in with a lot of cliched and not-particularly-funny jokes. He lost a lot of points from me for not providing footnotes. Much of his information is verifiable elsewhere, but I have no way to check his credibility when he doesn't cite his sources. I'm also getting tired of the "patriotic liberal". Not that I assume these guys don't have some affinity for their home country, but Hightower (like Michael Moore) seems to feel they can only sell their idea if they convince the reader they are MORE patriotic than their opponents. When I see the stuff they're talking about, I don't feel love for my country, I feel shame. They also seem intent on convincing me that the vast majority of Americans are certifiable geniuses. Whereas, when I watch the suburbanites flock in droves to Walmart, driving their SUV's while stopping off afterwards at McDonalds, I have to wonder how the average American is still walking upright.
I give Hightower credit for making the corporte scandals less confusing and more accessible, but I just found the book neither intellectual nor entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: A call to arms
Review: Jim Hightower is a well known populist writer, speaker and commentator. He has a distinctive style and sense of humor. His book Thieves in High Places continues on themes he has covered in the past. It also remains true to his style and sense of humor. While his style works well in short articles and speeches I found it overbearing in a book.
Thieves in Hight Places was originally published in 2003 and seems quit dated now in January 2005. Hightower and a bevy of left wing commentators have throughly covered the topics he deals with in this book. The recent election may have helped these issues become well known. While "Thieves" adds new details and more examples, there is little new in the litany of complaints about the Bush administration and powerful corporations.
What Hightower does add is a call to arms. He gives several examples of small groups of people or community organizations that have successfully fought large corporations. There are website addresses for many of the organizations he discusses.
While the books spends a lot of time criticizing and complaining, the tone of the book is actually up beat. Hightower is not whining. He offers concrete suggestions and encourages the reader to take action. As the subtitle "They've Stolen our Country and It's Time to Take It Back" suggests, the author thinks the problems he describes can be fixed. All we have to do is take up the mantel of the participatory democracy this country was meant to be.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Hightower talks about how corporations are trying to run our lives - from their freakish channel 1 idea to closing libraries to selling twinkies to elementary school kids. He attacks - Republicans, Democrats (wobblycrats), the media and corporations. The cool thing is that he also gives us hope - many times in history people have been told to "shut up" even when they are protesting something that is WRONG like child labor, safety hazards at work, etc. It has not been politicians who made these things better - it has been people like you and me who stood up for what was right.
Here's a statistic that really stuck with me:
- In the last 6 years, Congress has given themselves a raise of $5,000 4 times but they "haven't gotten around to" increasing the federal minimum wage - it has been stuck at $5.15 for a few years now.
Great book for learning about hidden evils in our system which effect you and me. Oh I just remembered something else he talks about - clean air on airplanes. Regulation says that 50% air on airplanes can be clean and 50% is recycled (this means nasty air which people burped and did other things in). Frequent travelers were complaining about this because not only did they get light headed, dizziness and headaches - its just plain nasty. So the government airline regulation guy listened - to corporations - he sent a recommendation that we should get 25% clean air and 75% dirty air.
So if for nothing else - get involved in grassroots so when you travel you can have some clean air!
Rating: 
Summary: The Texas Low Down
Review: This was my first book by this author and it will probably be my last. It was not that he does that bad of a job or that his ideas are all that bad, it is just that I have a certain amount of capacity for the liberal folksy Texas populists and I tend to like Molly Ivins to fill it. With that being said I did enjoy parts of the book. This author is his best when he is in full anti Bush rant. He just has some way of making, what amounts to a 50 page complaint session, into a mildly humorous and not very threatening commentary. It must be his Texan down home way of speaking because you know he is mad, it is just that it does not come across and a vain popping, red faced tirade. If you have read more then a few anti Bush books then there is not going to be anything new in this one. The authors hits at Bush on all the standbys, his military service, business life and public service in Texas. He also takes a rather dim view of the political appointments Bush has made and what this group has done during the first two years. Again its the basic Bush detractor play book.
What the author adds in addition to this is attacks on big business, Wal Mart, environment items and overall Liberal agenda items. Where this author lost me was on many of his attacks on business. I agreed with him when he was giving big CEO's grief about looting their companies and the massive excesses that seem to hit the news. I even gave half an ear to the arguments about outsourcing jobs and the effect that has on the middle class. But the author spent a good deal of time complaining about Wal Mart and its negative effect on communities and their employees. All the author does is complain and I guess try to make some point that the world would be much better if all the chain stores were gone and it was all mom and pop shopping. It sure seamed like the author was flying in the face of reality to think that because Wal Mart might not be a great place to work that they should not be allowed to operate. The author talks about the harsh conditions at Wal Mart and the high turn over, maybe the high turn over is because it is not that great of a place to work and the employees find different and possibly better jobs? Anyway, these type of protectionist retail trade talks do more to drive people away from the Democratic party then anything, how many people want to pay more for basic items just to keep an inefficient store open?
I guess the last area that I want to comment on is the rather dull and sappy section of the book that I can only relate to as the love everybody and everything section. The author dug into the 1960's feel good liberalism that died a long time ago and does not seem to get much traction now. No matter how much he is going to hope that we all take into consideration the environment and everybody else's feelings with each of our actions, it is not going to happen. What I guess I would have liked a little more of is some insight to W from a fellow Texan and maybe more background when Bush was the Governor of Texas. Overall the book was average. The humor is ok but a little of it goes a long way. There is only so many west Texas analogies involving farm animals that one can take. The political commentary is not overly original and in the very crowded field of anti Bush books you need to shine to really standout. If you are a big fan of the author then you will probably not care what I have to say.
Rating:
Summary: Hightower Gives the Lowdown on Bush Kleptocrats
Review:
This is a compendious examination of the corporate highjacking of our country, filled with earthy wisdom and inimitable wit. Jim Hightower is the very definition of populist. Instead of engendering the hopeless despair and resignation his treatise of "kleptocrat nation" ought, he offers up rather an infectious optimism, hope, and practical suggestions for a more humane, egalitarian community.
"Our democracy is being dismantled right in front of our eyes," says Hightower, "not by crazed foreign terrorists, but by our own ruling elites. This is a crucial moment when America desperately needs you and me to stand as full citizens, asserting the bold and practical radicalism of America's democratic ideals." (His italics)
Hightower's outraged and incredulous humor is served in heaping portions making bearable, even riotous, his extensive canvassing of the current epidemic of corporate and governmental corruption. Much of it is technically legal even if ethically challenged. For example, if huge US corporations want to avoid taxes, Tyco and Enron to name two of the most notorious, they set up paper partnerships and blind subsidiaries, open a post office box and incorporate in say, Bermuda or the Cayman Islands and, presto change-o, still based predominately in the US, pay no taxes. Perfectly legal.
President Bush recently appointed former CEO of CSX Railroad John Snow as Treasury Secretary. Under Snow, CSX paid no taxes in three of the previous four years. In what Hightower refers to as Enron-accounting, the company actually received $164 million in tax rebates in that time, despite posting a billion dollar profit. All perfectly legitimate. This is the guy in charge of this nation's tax policy, says Hightower, and he wonders aloud rhetorically whether he'll look out for the interests of big business or ordinary taxpayers.
Global Crossing is also incorporated in Bermuda. Soon after leaving office, the elder Bush received an evening's speaking fee from the company of $80,000. Hightower reports that company officials surreptitiously encouraged Bush to invest the fee in company stock. In only weeks he cashed out for $14 million. A bipartisan, if legal, briber, Terry McAuliffe, now chair of the Democratic Party put $100,000 into company stock. In only one year he pocketed $18 million. As the company's stock crashed toward bankruptcy, says Hightower, CEO Gary Winnick redeemed $734 million worth of stock, while mom and pop investors were left with worthless paper. Subsequently, in testimony before Congress, Winnick magnanimously announced that he would personally write a $25 million check to the depleted pension funds of fourteen thousand workers - $1,800 each.
Dennis Kozlowski paid himself $300 million in the last three years of his stewardship of Tyco International. It was also incorporated in Bermuda to "avoid pesky US taxes," reports Hightower. Its stock lost $80 billion in the last year alone under Kozlowski. At the same time, he was enjoying perks such as a $6,000 shower curtain (Hightower wonders whether you are allowed to let one of these get wet), a $17,000 antique traveling toilet box, a $2,200 wastebasket, a $445 pincushion, a $30 million waterfront estate in Boca Raton, a $25,000 a month apartment in New York City, a $30 million second apartment in Manhattan and "$1 million in Tyco funds allocated for the fortieth-birthday bash he threw in Italy for his wife, complete with a life-sized sculpture of Michelangelo's David, which gaily sluiced vodka through the statue's penis into the glasses of astonished guests." Taxpayers got to play their part in the fun, according to Hightower, subsidizing these expenses when Tyco wrote them off as a cost of doing business.
Hightower diligently uncovers rampant cupidity, often wrapped in the flag, head reverently bowed beneath all that's good and decent. Were it not for his ever-present optimism and indefatigable humor, it would be too much to endure. Says Hightower, much more that business as usual, "BushCheneyRumsfeld and the rest are not simply dutiful servants trying to please corporate interests, as previous administrations have been, THEY ARE THE CORPORATE INTERESTS (...) from the start and by design, this was Bush Incorporated. Of course Bush's handlers ran it through their spin cycle so it wouldn't seem like what it was (...) practically every cabinet member has spent a lifetime advancing the interests of corporations over those of working families, consumers, small farmers, the poor, the environment, and ordinary taxpayers - the people's interests." (His italics and emphasis) And then, says an astonished Hightower, accusing those who call attention to these issues of engaging in class warfare.
Hightower also takes a detailed look at the imperial and adventurist militarism of "BushCo." It's blueprint was drawn up by the Project for a New American Century, a right-wing think tank, composed of many of the top neocons in the administration, and set forth in classified policy papers such as "DEFENSE PLANNING GUIDANCE." In addition to a reckless design of dominating the entire globe militarily and economically, including close allies, this doctrine, "more like the Bush dictate" as Hightower calls it, is a rapacious attack on the Treasury to the detriment of critical social needs, and a symbiotic system of legalized bribery on a massive scale between the huge manufacturers of monstrous weaponry and the administration.
Wal-Mart gets a well-deserved drubbing as a union-smashing, corporate megalopoly, whose low prices mask a predator that sucks all the economic, democratic, and spiritual vitality out of the communities upon which it descends. Its business model is becoming the standard, says Hightower, and with numerous examples and anecdotes he shows why it "is now the world's most powerful private force for lowering labor standards and stifling the middle-class aspirations of workers everywhere."
Ultimately though, this book is filled with hope and optimism. Hightower finds it in "(T)he beauty of America (...which) is Americans! We're a nation of mavericks, rebels, mutts, and agitators," he says. He draws strength in that even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building, as he puts it; from the organic and locally grown family-farm movement, which is of necessity the future; in the rebellious and egalitarian spirit in even failed causes like Shay's Rebellion; the women's suffrage movement in which none of its founders or leaders lived to vote; in the American labor movement challenging brutal corporations and winning huge, yet unfinished victories in the early Twentieth Century; in Native American's perseverance in the face of the longest and most vicious terrorist campaign ever; and in the soaring dreams of everyday people and their desire for and belief in community, to which Hightower exhorts the reader, sometimes implicitly, again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Good but has some flaws
Review: Overall I would say this book is worth reading. I thought the chapters concerning Wal-Mart, sweat shops, and the food supply were particularly compelling. At times the "down home" style of the book was funny, but other times it was tedious (i.e., I just wanted to get to the facts). I think some of the information contained in the earlier chapters about Bush is better covered by Molly Ivins' "Bushwhacked." The biggest flaw of the book is the documentation. There is an enormous amount of data and statistics, but usually there is no footnote or endnote (some of the tables do have references) - there is merely a list at the back of the book of organizations, so it is nearly impossible to do some fact checking if desired.
Rating:
Summary: Very much on target to the dismay of the Neoconservatives
Review: I can't disagree with anything that Mr. Hightower says in the book. The bottom line is that we have criminals in many corporate suites as well as high places in Washington. Other books I have read concur with most of what Mr. Hightower had to say. Bush bobbleheads need to read this book.
On the downside, his delivery is full of sarcastic humor. Unfortunately, after I was about 100 pages into it, discerning the facts through his style got to be debilitating. It became hard to read more than 10 pages at one time. Also, the bulk of the ranting should have been left to the readers.
Rating:
Summary: Not just anti-Bush, it's Pro-People and Anti-Corporation
Review: Even if you like Bush, even if you are republican, you certainly don't like the fact that the Corporations like Enron are cheating people and getting away with it. And Hightower's sharp sense of humor combined with his down-to-earth writing style make this a quick and rousing read.
No matter what your political influence is, this is a book that, IMHO, every concerned citizen should read. The issues brought up affect all of us in the long run, and the best part of "Thieves" is the list of resources at the end in case you get fired up enough to do something about it.
Just because the internet moves at the speed of light does not mean that man was created to do the same, and we need to slow down so we can smell the foul and ripened odor of the corporate greed that surrounds us. While over 80 percent of Americans are working longer hours for less money, the average CEO salary has gone from 40 percent more than the working-class (1981) to 400 percent of the working-class (2003). And they are the ones getting all the tax cuts and government assistance while screaming "Poverty".
"Thieves" is packed with many, many more shocking facts like the one above, from taxes and revised environmental standards to campaign funding to government subsidies for billionaires (page 23); Hightower has pulled all the punches and laid their grubby fingers out on the table for us to take a cold, hard, factual look at.
In the book, Hightower does make heavy use of references for his sources, but I would have liked to seen a Bibliography too, which would probably be my only complaint about the book. However, if you are concerned that corporations are gaining too much power, or can't find a manufacturing job in the USA, or recently had your high-tech job leave US soil for a third world country to do your job at one-quarter your wage and line the pocket of that CEO, pick up a copy of "Thieves" and read. Enjoy!
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