[Guest post by Adolph Reed, in response to Kristen McQueary’s column in the Chicago Tribune on how Chicago could use a Hurricane Katrina.] Kristen McQueary’s attempt to walk back from her scurrilous column of last Thursday extolling the wonderful changes that the devastation of Katrina brought to New Orleans is basically an unpology—and an even more empty, uninformed word salad than the original. The issue isn’t what she was feeling when she wrote what she wrote; it’s what she wrote. The initial column was wrong on basic, yet important particulars. New Orleanians did not “overthrow a corrupt… Read More

Paul Mason has a breathless piece in The Guardian making grand New Economy claims that sound like recycled propaganda from the late-1990s—though he gives them a left spin: postmateriality is already liberating us. I wrote a book that was in large part about all that ideological froth, published in 2003, and so far I’ve been struck by the nonrevival of that discourse despite a new tech bubble. Uber and Snapchat don’t excite the same Utopian passions that the initial massification of the web did. I’ll pass on refuting Mason’s article, because I already did that… Read More

A follow-up to my last post. I asked Yanis Varoufakis what we should make of talk about Tsipras having marginalized him. His answer: “A first class example of coordinated disinformation at a global scale!”

I emailed Yanis Varoufakis last night and asked how he was holding up. To my surprise, he answered: “[W]e certainly are facing a coup. The wall of lies is becoming absurdly tall.”

Good lord, Hillary’s announcement video is appallingly banal. As someone said on my Facebook page, it’s like an old United Colors of Benetton ad. For perspective, here’s Carl Bernstein’s description of Bill’s first inauguration: Every opportunity was exploited to contrast the egalitarian values and youth of the Clintons with the privileged era of Reagan and Bush, a plutocratic epoch that Hillary, more than Bill, believed was now in final retreat; and to proclaim a transparency in government that would extinguish all vestiges of Nixonian secrecy and paranoia in the White House. The tab for the week… Read More

The new Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has appeared on my radio show 16 times since 2008. Here are links to those appearances, in reverse chronological order: November 20, 2014 Yanis Varoufakis on the eurocrisis • Howie Hawkins, Green candidate for NYS governor, on the party’s future May 29, 2014 Yanis Varoufakis on the European elections • Mohamad Elmasry on Egypt March 21, 2013 Yanis Varoufakis on the economies of Australia, Cyprus, and Greece • Jonathan Westin of Fast Food Forward on organizing fast food workers in NYC December 27, 2012 Michael Dorsey on the Doha climate conference • Yanis Varoufakison the perpetual Eurocrisis, with an emphasis on… Read More

From the mailbag: a reader reacts to my last post on unions: I have some feedback for you on your article,”Why Bosses Hate Unions.” I found it just a really poor piece of journalism.  It was incredibly one-sided, pandering, and missed several key issues.  Yes, union workers make more money than their counterparts, but that is not the only reason bosses (or more accurately shareholders) hate unions.  Unions also: – Decrease innovation – Increase Administration cost – Force non-related political issues into the workplace – Increase costs of employment – union wages… Read More

This just in, from my old pal Russ Smith, publisher of New York Press in its splendid heyday.