Jim Hightower for the week of January 5, 2026

Billionaire Money is Corrupting Our Democracy

by Jim Hightower
jimhightower.com

Recent polling confirms what you’d hear if you talked to people at most any Chat & Chew Café 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 democracy nor representative. Washington and most state governments routinely enact policies and budgets benefitting über-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 really 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 percent 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.  

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