Jim Hightower—well-known author, public speaker, and radio commentator—holds a Tenth Dems University class Sunday, Oct. 9, starting at 2 p.m. at Pinstripes, 1150 Willow Rd., Northbrook 60062. Tenth Dems, MoveOn.Org Councils of Greater Chicago and Chicago Progressive Radio WCPT AM and FM are co-sponsoring this event.

Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top.

Reservations may be made online, or contact Tenth Dems at 847-266-VOTE (8683) or send an email. If you write or call, please give your name, address and a phone number.

He broadcasts daily radio commentaries that are carried in more than 150 commercial and public stations, on the web, and on Radio for Peace International. Each month, he publishes a populist political newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown, which now has more than 135,000 subscribers and is the fastest growing political publication in America. The hard-hitting Lowdown has received both the Alternative Press Award and the Independent Press Association Award for best national newsletter.

Below is a recent piece that Hightower wrote about Gov. Goodhair. Expect more of the same during his class.

Perry Tale: Ignore His Hypocritical Hype And Look At How Much Government Assistance He’s Gotten

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/669877/perry tale; ignore_his_hypocritical_hype_and_look_at_how_much_government_assistance he’s_gotten/

More Perry Tales

Wednesday 21 September 2011

by: Jim Hightower, Truthout | Op-Ed

It’s bedtime, children, so put on your jammies, scootch under the covers, and I’ll tell you another “Perry Tale.”

Once again, the Texas-governor-who-wants-to-be-your-president is flitting hither, thither and yon — spreading little “Perry Tales” about his record. The bonny prince is trying to make it to the big White House in Washington. It’s a bit of a strange quest, because he calls the Capital City “a seedy place,” and he tells the commoners in the land that he hates — nay, deeply loathes! — the very government that he wants to head.

With his tea party hat carefully positioned atop his bounteous crop of perfectly coifed hair, Prince Rick warns the commoners that big government is bad, bad, bad — because it intrudes into their lives, forcing things like Social Security and Medicare on them.

Strangest of all, though, this prancing prince of privilege would not be where he is without the steady “intrusion” of big government into his life. From first grade through college, his education was paid for by local, state and federal taxpayers. He was even a cheerleader for the government-run college he attended. Also, as cotton farmers, he and his family were supported with tens of thousands of dollars in crop subsidies from the pockets of national taxpayers — a big government “intrusion” into his pocketbook that he wisely avoided condemning at the time.

Then, after a brief stint in the federal government’s Air Force, the perfidious prince hit the mother load of government largesse: political office. He’s been hunkered down there for 27 years and counting. In addition to drawing more than a quarter-century’s worth of monthly paychecks from Texas taxpayers, including $150,000 a year as governor, Prince Rick also receives full health coverage and a generous pension from the state.

Wait, there’s more — he gets $10,000 a month to cover the rent on a luxury suburban home, a flock of personal aides and even a state-paid subscription to Food & Wine magazine.

So, children, the moral of this Perry Tale is to ignore the prince’s hypocritical hype — and look at what he actually does. When he says he intends to make government “as inconsequential as possible,” he means in your life, not his.

And now, Rick the Right-wing Sprite is sprinkling fresh fairy dust across the land in an effort to soften his earlier screed against America’s Social Security program. During the past couple of years, in the heat of his lusty romance of the rowdy tea party crowd, Perry has wooed and wowed those who hate government by offering passionate denunciations of Social Security as “a Ponzi scheme,” “a monstrous lie” and a “failure.” The national retirement program, he thunders, violates the Constitution’s “principles of federalism and limited government.” His unequivocal message was: Kill it!

But — oops — now in hot pursuit of the GOP presidential nomination, he’s learned that even most Republicans wince at his macho wackiness on a social program they support and millions of them use. A CNN poll in August finds that 57 percent of Republicans want no major changes in Social Security. Why? Because, despite the Ponzi-scheme Perry Tale, it works.

So, the red-meat tea partier who had savaged the program has suddenly turned into a senior-hugger, offering a revised, gentler Perry Tale. In this one, he never, ever meant to abolish Social Security. Nay, Perry now says with a pixie twinkle, he only wants to stimulate “a legitimate conversation in this country about how to fix that program.”

If you’re not sure what “fix” means, ask your dog.

Perry might heed the blunt words of another Republican, who was twice-elected to the White House, Dwight Eisenhower: “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security … you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can (abolish it). … Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.”

Until our next Perry Tale, goodnight children, and sweet dreams.

Copyright 2011 Creators.com