Not All Problems Are Global or National: Think Local

Jim Hightower on Aug 26, 2026

Public leadership doesn't mean that the "leader" has to have all the solutions, but instead must be open to others with problem-solving ideas.

That was one of Franklin Roosevelt's great strengths when he came into the White House. Facing the full-blown crisis of a national depression, he brought his top advisers together with an open mandate for creativity: "Do something," he told them. "If it works, do more of it. If it doesn't work, do something else."

In some surprisingly good news, this spirit of innovative public leadership is flourishing today! Not at the national level, of course, where top federal officials are right-wing ideologues who obsequiously bow to "WDW" (Whatever Donald Wants). But hundreds of local and state officials across America are using their heads, hands and imaginations to "do something" about the real problems our people face.

For example, many school districts are facing a double whammy: First, developers and their politicians have gentrified many cities so severely that teachers and staff can't afford to live there. Second, a right-wing push for school consolidations and closures has left many campuses vacant. But could one problem plus the other one add up to zero?

Yes, say education innovators in such districts as San Diego, Austin and South Miami. Leaders there and elsewhere are converting vacated classrooms, offices and school yards into high-quality family apartment complexes. They'll house several thousand teachers, janitors and others, cutting rents by 50% or better!

Encouraging this kind of free-wheeling problem-solving is not just thinking outside the box, it's eliminating the box. For more creative ideas to make public policy work for the public, go to StateInnovation.org.

I DON'T HATE POOR PEOPLE. DO YOU? SO WHY ARE AMERICA'S POVERTY POLICIES SO HATEFUL?

Here's a reality that the Powers That Be keep trying to put out of sight and out of mind: poverty.

Yes, right here in our own fabulously-rich USA. Don't tell anybody, but millions of American children, workers and elderly people are enduring the personal horror of dispiriting, debilitating, deadening poverty every day.

It's our nation's horror, too, for the greatest cause of their penury is not lack of ambition, drug addiction, stupidity or other canards hurled at the impoverished. Rather it's the moral poverty of the rich and powerful who routinely rig the system to cut off food access, hold down wages, eliminate healthcare and childcare, jack up rents, privatize everything ... and turn government into an exclusive club for corporations and the rich.

Such deliberate moves by moneyed and political elites to close off America's pathways of upward mobility are both stupid and suicidal. Not only do they foment deep social anger, but they deny our country the creativity, enterprise and, yes, the genius inherent in even the poorest communities.

Most pathetically, the callous moves to abandon the poor are driven by the worst traits in our society: One, a condescending right-wing meanness that openly regards the poor as failed humans who're unworthy of public support; and two, upper-class fear that the poor are hard-wired moochers who pollute the gene pool, so they must not be coddled.

Our people's fundamental values are better than this, and America obviously has the wherewithal to DO better. There's no excuse for letting poverty bigots and billionaires set America's ethical standards. To assert "little-d" democratic values and take action, go to BreachRepairers.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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