Tag: Rathke
Restoring voting rights to former felons
by Wade Rathke March 17, 2021 New Orleans In these times when a number of states are trying to curtail voting rights for their citizens, the governor of Virginia made some news by speeding…
Weak cybersecurity puts all at risk
by Wade Rathke March 16, 2021 New Orleans If you are lucky, maybe you have a bit of savings for your retirement, like a 401(k) plan. Maybe if you are really lucky, you worked for…
3/11 Pandemic Anniversary
by Wade Rathke March 11, 2021 New Orleans 9/11 has been a date fixed on the mental calendar of Americans for what will be twenty years this September of 2021. It is worth wondering whether…
Grand Old Party (GOP) vs. Party of Trump (POT)
by Wade Rathke March 10, 2021 New Orleans No matter what, it seems that when we are talking about Trump, it’s all about the money. In the latest stop on his revenge tour, his lawyers…
No energy regulation equals rip-offs
by Wade Rathke March 9, 2021 New Orleans Picture this, if you will. The crippled power grid in Texas triggered by the polar vortex bringing freezing temperatures and snow, left millions without power and others…
Shifting Sands on Police Tactics
by Wade Rathke March 8, 2021 New Orleans In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, we heard from a former mayor and activist in the area. He wanted to do…
Politicians face off over ESG investing
by Wade Rathke Friday, March 5, 2021 New Orleans Free marketeers are caught in a crisis of contradictions. They want to pretend that market forces exist independent of any interference from government or other factors,…
President Biden says, “Join the union!”
by Wade Rathke March 2, 2021 New Orleans John Lewis of the United Mineworkers Union and one of the founders of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the CIO behind the hyphen in the AFL-CIO, famously…
No venues, no sales, no money
by Wade Rathke March 1, 2021 New Orleans One week, we have the southern end of the polar vortex. The next week, it’s spring, while I’m still hacking away at freeze-damaged night-blooming jasmine, bougainvillea, and the…
Republican resistance, state by state
by Wade Rathke February 26, 2021 Little Rock After four years of Twitter torture, I understand how people seem to be following every little cough and sneeze in Washington these days, crossing their fingers for…
Amazing Grace for 500,000 Covid dead
by Wade Rathke February 23, 2021 Atlanta I was driving in what I hoped was post-rush hour traffic in Atlanta after 6pm. I had the local public radio station on, which was interrupted by an…
One Hundred Years
by Wade Rathke February 22, 2021 Atlanta In my family we always knew when George Washington’s birthday hit the calendar. It would be February 22nd. Before Abraham Lincoln on February 12th and Washington on the…
Father Vincent O’ Connell deserves better than a smear
by Wade Rathke Thursday, February 18, 2021 New Orleans This was random. A friend and comrade got it in her mind to memorialize Father Vinnie O’Connell, one of the rare and now vanished labor priests,…
Climate, obits, and frozen pipes
by Wade Rathke February 17, 2021 New Orleans I called a friend in Houston to see how bad the snow and ice had hit them. He said they were among the lucky ones and didn’t…
Inciting to riot
by Wade Rathke February 15, 2021 Pearl River Predictably, former President Trump was acquitted in his latest impeachment trial. It has always been important to him to set records, and he notched a couple of…
No veritas in O’Keefe’s Project Veritas
New Orleans The scurrilous, criminal provocateur, James O’Keefe, and his have finally been reined in after a dozen years of mayhem and damage. Ironically, they are being hobbled by a new sheriff in the public…
Income Ceiling on Benefits for the Rich
by Wade Rathke February 10, 2021 New Orleans For the record, I’m clear that the government needs to give more lower income families cash, and they need to do it pretty darned quick. At the…
More cash transfers, please and pronto
by Wade Rathke February 9, 2021 New Orleans Way back when the pandemic was over there, and then over here, and the shutdown of peoples’ lives and work began, can you remember in the first…
Anne Fenney
by Wade Rathke February 8, 2021 Pearl River I didn’t know Anne Fenney, but I stayed in her house. I’m not sure how that counts in degrees of separation, but I would mark it as pretty…
Little “d” democracy in action
by Wade Rathke February 7, 2021 Pearl River There’s no question democracy is under attack all around the world, and, sadly, we are all engaged in a battle to protect the semblance of it that’s…
Organizing in the Year of the Plague
by Wade Rathke January 28, 2021 New Orleans The Year End / Year Begin meeting is a tradition and vital piece of planning, reflection, and celebration with our ACORN family of organizations. This one was…
Recruiting techniques for extremists and supremacists
by Wade Rathke January 26, 2021 New Orleans In the wake of the January 6th days of rage at the US Capitol there’s a lot of buzz about the rise of rightwing extremists. The head…
The roots of “Stop the Steal” in the attack on ACORN
by Wade Rathke Sunday, January 24, 2021 New Orleans The arc of justice is long, but when people see it coming, they don’t stay silent. First, a text from the most devoted Times’ reader and…
Replacing lead service lines – perfect infrastructure project
by Wade Rathke January 22, 2021 New Orleans Recently, Social Policy was lucky enough to have fifty contributors offer ideas suggesting priorities for the new Biden administration. There were some amazing recommendations, and we’ll dig…
