Wade Rathke:

New Orleans        As the virus and its impact spreads, it is creating a new world of unexpected consequences and reckonings for outdated assumptions. Here’s one that might be uncomfortable news for the White House:  we do live in one world, and walls will not protect us. Here’s another:  the social safety net in Europe […]

New Orleans        The financial meltdown in the real estate market of 2007, marked by foreclosures triggered by speculation and broker scams and wiping out the citizen wealth of millions of families, continues to carry a legacy of community and family disasters.  Once again Wall Street and the unregulated, robber baron private equity industry is […]

New Orleans       Visiting with old friends from Montana and Texas the other night, out of the blue one of my buddies asked me what I thought about the “carbon bank?”  I’m not a big fan of corporations not actually reducing their carbon and polluting footprint, but buying credits to claim they are doing something […]

New Orleans       When you’re wrong, it’s best to spit it out and get it over, and, boy, have I been wrong about this one.  I keep saying that James O’Keefe and his so-called Project Veritas exploits are over and done.  His spy-boy antics are often ridiculous and ham-handed have been discredited from his first […]

New Orleans       I’m trying to keep an open mind, OK?  I know we’re all supposed to hate nuclear energy and be scared of total disasters, right?  There’s Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania.  I’ve read the books and seen the series on HBO about Chernobyl.  I’ve personally visited Japan to see Fukushima and the area evacuated.  […]

New Orleans         Politics is drowning in money or, more accurately, money is drowning politics.  Estimates for the campaign for President now run in the billions.  There is every indication that future campaigns will be even more expensive. In the Democratic primary we have just witnessed two billionaire candidates offer themselves, Tom Steyer and Michael […]

New Orleans        I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth Warren.  I’ve read her books.  I appreciate her candor and convictions.  We all owe her thanks for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, no matter what the Supreme Court says.  We owe her thanks for many things in the past and, hopefully, many more in the future. […]

New Orleans       Is the coronavirus a pandemic and economic catastrophe or a hiccup along the road to progress as the President promises?  Who knows?  What already seems clear is that for all of the talk about China not being ready for this, it also seems that America has our pants down around our ankles […]

New Orleans        A funny thing happened to platform capitalism and its predatory business model in Louisiana of all places making the experience there a case in point.  Being Louisiana, the fact that somehow booze triggered the revelation almost makes the story too good to be true. Once upon a time, just minutes ago it […]

New Orleans       Over the last several years, ACORN International and the Labor Neighbor Research & Training Center have been collecting and analyzing the IRS 990 forms filed by tax exempt, nonprofit hospitals in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.  This is a project driven by our “volunteer army,” so it has risen and fallen as our […]