Rag Radio: Populist Pundit Jim Hightower with the Real Lowdown on Labor Day

Renowned progressive populist writer and radio commentator — and Rag Radio regular — Jim Hightower is Thorne Dreyer’s guest, and it’s a lively discussion!

We talk about the rebellious spirit of Matthew Maguire’s first Labor Day, the important new energy in the labor movement, how to lift up the middle class and address income inequality, just how bad the Trans-Pacific Partnership is for workers and how important the grassroots movement against it is, how certain bigwigs are scared that income inequality will bring about social unrest or, even worse, “oppressive taxes” on the super-rich, the importance of the Bernie Sanders campaign, and why Donald Trump is no populist.

Jim Hightower, who was twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, has for years been a major force on the populist left. A former editor of the Texas Observer, Jim broadcasts daily radio commentaries, publishes the Hightower Lowdown, and is the author of Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow and Thieves in High Places. Find more Rag Radio interviews with Jim Hightower here.

Rag Radio Host and Producer Thorne Dreyer was a pioneer of the ’60s underground press movement and a leader in SDS and the New Left and managed Pacifica Radio’s KPFT-FM in Houston. Dreyer edits The Rag Blog, an Internet news magazine with an international following, and is a director of the New Journalism Project. Rag Radio engineer and associate producer is Tracey Schulz.

Rag Radio is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer, cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The syndicated show is broadcast (and streamed) live Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, and is later rebroadcast and streamed on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., on Houston Pacifica’s KPFT HD-3 90.1, and by KKRN, 88.5-FM in Round Mountain, CA — and as a featured podcast at VT.

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