Pollution Protector -- For Profiteering Polluters

Jim Hightower on Jan 7, 2026

There's greed ... and then there's the nauseating greed of profiteering corporations that make a killing -- literally -- by knowingly contaminating people's water, air, land and families.

Such rank moral corruption is hard to fathom, but it's not hard to find. For one breathtaking example, consider Freeport-McMoRan.

This global mining behemoth is one of America's most aggressive spoilers of land, air, water and health -- including from its sprawling copper smelter near Phoenix, Ariz. This operation is a major spreader of lead pollution, a neurotoxin that's particularly harmful to children, causing pain, seizures and learning disabilities.

But wait, where's our Environmental Protection Agency? Good question. In fact, until last year, EPA was requiring Freeport to install technology to cut those poisonous emissions. The giant squealed like a stuck pig, though, crying that the $60 million cost for the lifesaving equipment was too "burdensome" -- even though that wouldn't even be a drop in Freeport's $2-billion-a-year bucket of profits.

Sure enough, in October, President Donald Trump's new EPA honcho rushed to provide pollution protection. Not for the children, but for the polluter! Indeed, Trump's corporate-coddling agency "super-streamlined" the regulatory process by essentially eliminating it -- no public hearing required, no presentation of facts, to chance for victims to object. All Freeport had to do was send an email requesting regulatory relief and -- BAM! -- Trump promptly exempted its Arizona smelter from having to clean up its act.

Not only is this "free pass to pollute" a blunt proclamation of corporate rule, but it also expresses Trump's deep contempt for working-class people. Imagine if that smelter were in Florida, poisoning the elites in his Mar-a-Lago resort. Then, he'd jump on it like a gator on a poodle.

BILLIONAIRE MONEY IS CORRUPTING OUR DEMOCRACY

Recent polling confirms what you'd hear if you talked to people at most any Chat & Chew Cafe across America -- namely, our political system is broken.

In fact, nearly all of us feel that way. While people strongly believe that representative democracy is the best system, they can plainly see that what we have today is neither democratic nor representative. Washington and most state governments routinely enact policies and budgets that benefit uber-rich political donors, while cutting programs that regular people want and need.

It's not just that the system is failing to do what grassroots America wants done, while doing what most people oppose, but that the insiders in charge, whether Republican or Democrat, don't' listen -- or care.

At the core of this dangerous disconnect is the fact that our highly touted democratic ambitions have devolved into a moneyed autocracy, a self-perpetuating political system operating independent of the popular will. The issue of all 2026 issues is this: Money rules. Very Big Money, mostly anti-democracy, billionaire money.

Trump, Congress, the courts, governors -- and especially the billionaires -- know this. They wink at it, rely on it and even cynically proclaim that giving and receiving unlimited, secret, political money is the new coin of democratic policy making -- even superior to winning electoral votes.

Now, however, We the People are also clearly seeing this perversion of our fundamental democratic ideals and rights. Some 80% of Americans (including 72% of Republicans) say people who donate to campaigns have too much influence. Our job in 2026 is to confront the billionaire corrupters and political takers head-on, turning people's rising awareness and anger into "little-d" democratic action.

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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