Portside

The so-called Uber or “on-demand” economy is a rerun of the oldest sort of business: middlemen insinuating themselves between buyers and sellers. The vital ingredient, without which this new economy would fall apart, is inequality. All that modern technology has done is make it easier, through omnipresent smartphones, to amass a fleet of increasingly desperate jobseekers eager to take whatever work they can get.

Given the pressing worldwide realities of disinvestment, land grabbing, rent increases, evictions and displacement; a class analysis applied to housing and urban issues is more urgent than ever. Gentrification is the neighborhood expression of class inequality. Its positives are only felt by those who profit from the loss of housing opportunities of others. And there is nothing remotely natural about it.

Hundreds of Public Defenders from Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Solano counties held unprecedented Black Lives Matter protests at their county courthouses December 18th. They demanded body cameras for officers; the investigation of police-involved shootings by outside agencies, not District Attorneys; and no grand juries for police-involved shootings. “We need those three things,”Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods said.

Successful political movements, whether on the left or the right, require long-term investments in organizations that can develop and promote policy ideas over many decades. Such movements must continue to operate in between election cycles, and change the structure of government policy in durable ways that benefit a movement’s allies and disadvantage its opponents. One group that exemplifies such strategies is the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

Colbert once described his character as a "well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot." Colbert has resonated because Fox News is currently filled with closed-minded millionaire hosts who perfectly mirror the buffoonery Colbert projects every week.

A coordinated campaign by the Motion Picture Association of America follows a trend of lobbyists funneling money and gifts to state attorneys general, who are subject to fewer restrictions and disclosure requirements than elected officials at the national level. Google is the target today, but the real target is the open Internet, which depends on free and uncensored platforms to survive.

Exercise, a new study finds, changes the shape and functioning of our genes, an important stop on the way to improved health and fitness. More than 5,000 sites on the genome of muscle cells are altered by exercise.

Is this the beginning of the end of the road for the sometimes semi-official US belief that Cuba is really Washington’s?