Attention 'jim Hightower' Editors: The Second Column Was Previously Released In 2024. Thank You. -- Creators

Jim Hightower on Feb 18, 2026

ATTENTION 'JIM HIGHTOWER' EDITORS: THE SECOND COLUMN WAS PREVIOUSLY RELEASED IN 2024. THANK YOU. -- CREATORS

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Who Were Those Masked Men? Feds Invade America!

Except for Zorro and Batman, people who put on masks to hide their identity when going to work are rarely up to any good.

And as Americans learned decades ago when Ku Klux Klanners covered themselves from head to toe, the bigger the mask, the greater the evil hiding behind it. Which brings us full circle to "Operation Metro Surge."

OMS is the muy macho PR slogan for the Republican Party's militaristic invasions of Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and other American cities they hate. Deploying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other bastions of authoritarian power, thousands of massively armed federal belligerents in full assault gear have been rampaging through peaceful neighborhoods in violent and murderous mass sweeps.

This is an un-American attack by America's own government on America's founding ideals of liberty and openness. The defining symbol of this government repression is that its forces are all hiding behind full-face masks.

Of course, if I were doing some of the stuff ICE commandos are doing, I'd want to cover my face, too. But, like the Klan, masking up the oppressors is not merely about cloaking their personal shame -- it's an added ploy by the perpetrators to terrify anyone who might dare to stand up to them.

As usual, though, the authoritarian powers misunderstood America and underestimated the deeply rebellious nature of our gutsy, grassroots people. Some 30,000 volunteers in Minneapolis, for example, have become trained "constitutional observers" to police the police and a citywide "whistle brigade" rushes like Paul Revere to alert neighbors when ICE agents invade their neighborhoods.

Their ethic of neighbors-helping-neighbors recognizes their power to "do what's right." It's the best of America standing up to confront the worst.

WHY SHOULD WE ALLOW FOOD MONOPOLIES? LET'S BUST THE SYSTEM!

How are monopolistic corporations able to gain their economic dominance? They get politicians to give it to them.

Consider the old robber barons. They weren't brilliant investors or managers; they were ruthless exploiters of government giveaways and they routinely bribed lawmakers and other officials to permit their monopolistic thievery.

Likewise, today's monopoly players have captured local, state and national markets -- not through honest competition, but by getting public officials to subsidize their expansion and to rig the rules against small competitors. Monopolizers buy this favoritism with the legalized bribes of dark-money campaign donations they lavish on compliant lawmakers.

Investigative digger Stacy Mitchell recently documented how this corrupt political favoritism has allowed massive retail chains like Walmart, Kroger and Dollar Store to crush thousands of local grocers. This has left millions of Americans living in "food deserts" -- the working class, poor and rural communities with no food store.

What happened? As grocery chains spread from local to regional to national, they demanded that food manufacturers give them big discounts -- a dramatic monopoly pricing advantage over independent rivals, so hometown grocers began hemorrhaging customers. This raw, anti-competitive, price discrimination was a flagrant violation of America's anti-monopoly law -- but here came Big Money to protect the monopolists.

In 1980, as former President Ronald Reagan was railing against "silly" consumer protection laws, supermarket lobbyists poured campaign cash into top officials of both parties. What they bought was a bipartisan agreement to simply stop enforcing that "rusty" old antitrust law that had protected a competitive grocery economy for nearly 50 years.

But good news! That useful, highly-effective law is still on the books, so let's build a long-term grassroots campaign to rejuvenate it and re-outlaw monopolization, redlining and price gouging by food giants. For more information, go to ilsr.org

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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