Years ago, Ray Charles sang: "Them that's got is them that gets, and I ain't got nothin' yet."

Millions of workaday Americans today are wailing that blues refrain, thanks to price increases caused by President Donald Trump's slap-happy tariff policy. He gloated that by imposing import levies of $166 billion on foreign companies, they would be forced to lower the prices they charge us. But, Professor Trump, nearly all tariffs are passed along to us consumers, so you're raising our prices! Indeed, on average, his tariffs have jacked up costs for every American household by about $1,500 a year!

But the Supreme Court has now decreed Trump's tariffs illegal, so those who paid them are entitled to refunds. Great! Walmart rushed to the front of the line, demanding a $10 billion refund, while other giants are demanding paybacks of more than a billion each.

But wait. What about you? Those corporations had paid Trump's tariffs with money they got by raising prices on you and me. In short, WE THE CONSUMERS paid about 90% of that $166 billion out of our pockets. So where's our refund?

So far, only Costco has publicly pledged to pass the refund back to its customers, while other corporate giants just wink and pocket the cash. For example, a Walmart executive simply announced that "(We will) certainly avail ourselves" of any refund process.

Economists have a technical word for that process: "Stealing." The Walmarts jack up their prices to pay for Trump's tariff scam, then grab the refunds that workaday consumers are owed. As Ray Charles sang in another blues number: "Why you treat me so mean?"

CAN'T OIL BARONS EVER BE HONEST? (HINT: NO)

Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King once opposed a bill because, he said, he feared it would "open a whole box of Pandoras."

An odd rhetorical twist, but it would be helpful if today's ego-bloated, high-tech billionaires and corporate profiteers had a bit of self-restraint, rather than thinking their money equals genius. For example, such doofuses are presently pushing convoluted schemes to "solve" our globe's technology-caused climate crisis with — what else? — technology.

Their latest box of Pandoras includes a grandiose plan to "geoengineer" carbon dioxide, the destructive gas spewed into our air by the production and use of fossil fuels. The geniuses say they have the techno-knowhow to suck-up that bad gas and pump it a mile deep into the Earth. See, problem gone! All they need, they say, is for taxpayers to put up trillions of dollars.

Who's behind this hustle? Oil giants. Yes, the same prevaricating snake oil salesmen who cause most of the suffocating CO2 pollution that's rapidly cooking our planet! Such petro-peddlers as Occidental Petroleum are now trying to rebrand themselves as "carbon management" experts, asking us to trust them to reengineer our atmosphere. But they're frauds; their magical "Vacuum Cleaner in the Sky" won't remove even 1% of the new carbon emissions released every year.

Worse, Occidental says it intends to keep much of the CO2 it vacuums up, using the gas to force more oil out of the ground — thus creating more global warming! As Occidental's CEO gleefully puts it, geoengineering "gives our industry a license to continue to operate for ... 60, 70, 80 years."

Razzle-dazzle technology is not a climate solution. It's a business-as-usual lie told by profiteers desperate to keep burning fossil fuels — and our globe.

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.

Photo credit: Giorgio Trovato at Unsplash