The Nation Feb-02-15

Mutualize Uber? I’m writing to note that, while I really appreciated Mike Konczal’s fantastic piece “Socialize Uber” [Dec. 29], which advocates the restructuring of app-based ride-sharing along worker co-op lines, the title is misleading. In common usage, “socialize Uber” suggests that the state should take ownership of and run the service. However, what Konczal advocates is not that, but instead the reorganization of Uber-esque services along cooperative lines, which is “mutualization,” not “socialization.” Unfortunately, the mistitling of this wonderful and important piece in a way that invokes the bureaucratic disasters of the Cold War era undermines the article’s ability to reach a critical mass of people in a moment when its message very much needs to be heard. Matthew Cropp Burlington, Vt. * * * I say this as a…

The editors, columnists and cartoonists of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were not the first journalists to die in 2015. The day before Chérif and Saïd Kouachi attacked the magazine’s Paris office, murdering twelve, the International Federation of Journalists condemned the killing of
 TV correspondent Khalid Mohammed al Washali in Yemen. Fourteen journalists and media workers have already been killed worldwide in 2015, and 118 were killed last year. “Today, we are all Charlie in our thought but, as journalists, we very much share the reason for which they were targeted,” declared IFJ general secretary Beth Costa. “Those bullets were also meant for all of us who stand up for press freedom.”
 Satirists and cartoonists use sharp instruments—pens—to open up contentious debates. The journalists of Charlie Hebdo were known…

Two armed men in balaclavas attacked Charlie Hebdo’s office in Paris and opened fire on the editorial staff, in the end killing five cartoonists, a columnist, a copy editor, a maintenance worker, an economist, a visitor and two police officers.
 To make sense of the senseless, we tell ourselves stories. In this case, the story is that the attack on Charlie Hebdo is the latest salvo in an ongoing clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. The story is that the satirical magazine was the last bastion of free thought in an otherwise cowed press—a press that has given in to political correctness and is now too afraid to criticize Islam. The story is that Muslim leaders remain silent about this atrocity. The story is that France has failed…

The unpunished killings of Michael Brown, Miriam Carey, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and so many others reflect a racist criminal-justice system whose roots are economic. As the #BlackLivesMatter movement grows, it’s worth understanding the major economic force that sustains the racial wealth disparity in America: housing segregation.
 Consider the history of Ferguson, Missouri, where Brown was killed. St. Louis passed one of the first redlining ballot measures in the country in 1916, designating some areas “Negro blocks.” While the Supreme Court struck this measure down a year later, real-estate-agent practices and covenants continued to bar black people from buying property outside of certain zones.
 The federal government soon got into the redlining game. The New Deal’s mortgage programs, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration, used racial…

For most of us, the mass murder at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the subsequent killings at a Paris kosher supermarket inspired shock, horror and sadness. These feelings were not, however, universal. Among politicians with a direct interest in exploiting nihilistic violence for personal gain, the tragedy was quickly assimilated into just another bullet point. “We’ve been predicting this for a long time,” explained the neofascist Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose daughter Marine could very well finish first in the initial round of France’s next presidential election. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the midst of a fierce re-election campaign, was also unsurprised by the attack, which he attributed, with impressive indiscrimination, to a combination of Israel’s enemies—the “terrorist fanatics of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda”—adding that…

On January 9, President Obama announced a plan to make two years of community college free for those maintaining a 2.5 GPA and attending at least half-time. The White House estimates that the plan will benefit 9 million students to the tune of $3,800 a year.
 Everyone—poor, working and middle class—would benefit from controlling the costs of college. State and private colleges will have to consider if they offer enough value over community colleges to make their higher tuitions reasonable. This is what economist J.W. Mason refers to as “progressive supply-side economics,” and it’s part of why public options are so valuable.
 Former poet laureate Kay Ryan once said: “Right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly—and with very little financial encouragement—saving lives and…