https://znetwork.org/author/bennbburgis/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Sat, 14 Feb 2026 17:10:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/author/bennbburgis/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ending-the-surge-in-minnesota-isnt-enough/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ending-the-surge-in-minnesota-isnt-enough/#respond Sat, 14 Feb 2026 17:10:25 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294731 On Thursday, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was ending the monthslong occupation of Minneapolis and St Paul by thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol officers. Donald Trump’s scandal-ridden “border czar,” Tom Homan, said that “a significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue to the next week.” Some Minnesotans are understandably cautious. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ending-the-surge-in-minnesota-isnt-enough/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-and-ice-are-driving-the-country-off-a-cliff/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-and-ice-are-driving-the-country-off-a-cliff/#respond Sun, 25 Jan 2026 16:24:46 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293969 Alex Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse at a Veterans’ Affairs hospital in Minneapolis. One of his colleagues there told the New York Times that the “default look on his face was a smile.” Now he’s dead at the age of thirty-seven — the same age as Renee Good, who was murdered a little over two weeks earlier in the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-and-ice-are-driving-the-country-off-a-cliff/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdani-is-right-to-stand-by-cea-weaver/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdani-is-right-to-stand-by-cea-weaver/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293445 Last June, a tenant organizer named Cea Weaver wrote an article for Jacobin that bluntly opened with the line, “Real estate runs New York.” She noted that “poll after poll” showed that New Yorkers’ top concern is rent, but “disgraced mayor Eric Adams” openly declared, “I am real estate.” Former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was running to replace Adams, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdani-is-right-to-stand-by-cea-weaver/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-60-minutes-scandal-is-what-creeping-authoritarianism-looks-like/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-60-minutes-scandal-is-what-creeping-authoritarianism-looks-like/#respond Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:53:49 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292881 In September, Bari Weiss had a modest position in the media landscape as the proprietor of the Free Press. It’s a relatively minor news outlet combining center-right commentary on America’s culture wars with a fanatical devotion to defending the State of Israel. In October, David Ellison, the owner of media behemoth Paramount Skydance, bought the Free Press for an [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-60-minutes-scandal-is-what-creeping-authoritarianism-looks-like/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-should-give-us-hope-for-tomorrow/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-should-give-us-hope-for-tomorrow/#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2025 15:33:47 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292861 According to recent data from the Pew Research Center, 45 percent of American adults say that if they could choose when to live, they would live sometime in the past. Another 40 percent have the good luck to be born exactly when they want to live. And only 14 percent would choose to live in the future. These [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-should-give-us-hope-for-tomorrow/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/to-reach-the-white-house-aoc-needs-a-focused-class-message/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/to-reach-the-white-house-aoc-needs-a-focused-class-message/#respond Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:05:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292548 In an interview with the New York Times after the 2020 election, democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) said she was surprised by the “share of white support for Trump.” Going forward, she said, Democrats would have to learn to “actively disarm the potent influence of racism at the polls.” There’s a clear sense in which her premise is [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/to-reach-the-white-house-aoc-needs-a-focused-class-message/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/schumer-democrats-cant-stop-trump-mamdani-democrats-might/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/schumer-democrats-cant-stop-trump-mamdani-democrats-might/#respond Sun, 16 Nov 2025 15:44:48 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291309 The second Trump administration has been doing a right-wing authoritarian speedrun. The welfare state has been slashed and the machinery of state repression massively ramped up. Republicans have attacked health care subsidies and food assistance for low-income families, while ICE now has a bigger budget than most militaries. Suspected criminals without US citizenship have been deported without a whiff of due [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/schumer-democrats-cant-stop-trump-mamdani-democrats-might/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/take-the-gops-nazi-group-chats-seriously/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/take-the-gops-nazi-group-chats-seriously/#respond Sat, 25 Oct 2025 16:18:22 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1290425 ve been in plenty of left-wing group chats over the years where people have said rude, offensive, or regrettable things. I’m sure lots of participants in these chats would be embarrassed if the crass jokes or unkind assessments of other leftists they made in those conversations were plastered all over the internet. I have to [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/take-the-gops-nazi-group-chats-seriously/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdanis-childcare-plan-is-pro-family/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdanis-childcare-plan-is-pro-family/#respond Fri, 18 Jul 2025 16:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1286364 A few weeks ago, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won a landslide victory in the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo by twelve points. Since then, his most adamant haters have responded with an avalanche of red-baiting. Many of these attacks have centered on his plan for a modest experiment with five [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdanis-childcare-plan-is-pro-family/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-should-immediately-nationalize-spacex-and-starlink/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-should-immediately-nationalize-spacex-and-starlink/#respond Sat, 07 Jun 2025 11:05:29 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1284713 Reports about the daily drama of the second Trump administration often feel less like normal political news than recaps of a reality TV show. This is an administration where the actual official name of the president’s signature legislation is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance regularly beefs with mid-tier journalists on social [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-should-immediately-nationalize-spacex-and-starlink/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/jeff-bezos-is-scared-to-have-an-open-debate-on-economics/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/jeff-bezos-is-scared-to-have-an-open-debate-on-economics/#respond Sun, 02 Mar 2025 14:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1280457 Jeff Bezos has finally dropped the pretense. The world’s third-richest man has decreed that the Washington Post, which he purchased back in 2013, will no longer publish opinions that challenge free market economics. With a casual diktat that would make William Randolph Hearst blush, Bezos has laid bare what critics have long suspected: when billionaires buy [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/jeff-bezos-is-scared-to-have-an-open-debate-on-economics/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/elon-musk-is-inaugurating-a-new-era-of-billionaire-rule/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/elon-musk-is-inaugurating-a-new-era-of-billionaire-rule/#respond Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:44:49 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1277394 During the first Republican debate in 2015, Donald Trump positioned himself as a bold truth-teller, almost a whistleblower, about the corrupt influence he’d exercised on politicians as a wealthy donor. The moderators asked why he’d given money to Democrats in the past, and he replied: I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/elon-musk-is-inaugurating-a-new-era-of-billionaire-rule/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/privatizing-the-post-office-would-be-a-disaster/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/privatizing-the-post-office-would-be-a-disaster/#respond Fri, 20 Dec 2024 16:33:15 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1277364 In 2018, right-wing commentator Dave Rubin went on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Rubin, at that point, was calling himself a libertarian. Rogan asked him about it, and he started going on about how the government doesn’t do anything right. When Rubin started listing off examples, Rogan objected: Rubin: Do they do the Post Office well? No! Like, what [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/privatizing-the-post-office-would-be-a-disaster/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/hunter-biden-was-pardoned-because-laws-are-for-little-people/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/hunter-biden-was-pardoned-because-laws-are-for-little-people/#respond Wed, 04 Dec 2024 18:42:25 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1276585 A bit less than six months ago, former CNN White House correspondent John Harwood wrote that “people who insist [Joe] Biden will pardon” his son Hunter Biden “after specifically ruling it out are telling on themselves” because “they can’t imagine someone acting on principle and keeping his word.” Earlier this week, Biden went ahead and pardoned Hunter. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/hunter-biden-was-pardoned-because-laws-are-for-little-people/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-strangely-empty-politics-of-kamala-harris/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-strangely-empty-politics-of-kamala-harris/#respond Sat, 19 Oct 2024 15:18:24 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1273951 On Monday, Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee started running a new attack ad in Pennsylvania. That’s not noteworthy in itself. Early voting has already started, and the Keystone State has emerged as the election’s most hotly contested battleground. Both sides are hurling plenty of attack ads. But surprisingly, this ad isn’t directed against Republican nominee [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-strangely-empty-politics-of-kamala-harris/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-wants-to-purge-the-deep-state-so-he-can-weaponize-it/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-wants-to-purge-the-deep-state-so-he-can-weaponize-it/#respond Sun, 22 Sep 2024 14:35:16 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1272694 During the recent presidential debate, Kamala Harris once again described the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 as Donald Trump’s plan for a second term. Trump himself has repeatedly thrown the think tank and its plan under the rhetorical bus, even though a great many of the people who worked on it had roles in his first [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-wants-to-purge-the-deep-state-so-he-can-weaponize-it/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/shawn-fain-has-been-a-light-in-the-darkness/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/shawn-fain-has-been-a-light-in-the-darkness/#comments Sat, 24 Aug 2024 15:52:00 +0000 UAW president Shawn Fain’s speech was the best part of the DNC. It featured a direct focus on workers otherwise absent from party rhetoric, and sidestepped the culture wars to identify the “one true enemy” of corporate power. The most shameful moment at this year’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) came on Tuesday night. Political commentator [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/shawn-fain-has-been-a-light-in-the-darkness/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/so-much-for-a-newly-reborn-republican-party/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/so-much-for-a-newly-reborn-republican-party/#respond Sat, 20 Jul 2024 13:42:53 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1269605 Last Saturday, Donald Trump narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet. Two days later, delegates gathered in Milwaukee to officially make him the Republican nominee for president. From what little we know about the shooter, it’s possible that his motivations had less to do with politics than a desire to shoot someone famous and go out in [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/so-much-for-a-newly-reborn-republican-party/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-pro-palestine-protests-must-continue-off-campus/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-pro-palestine-protests-must-continue-off-campus/#respond Sat, 04 May 2024 12:01:11 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1265891 In 1968, Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall was occupied by student activists protesting both Columbia’s complicity in the Vietnam War and the university’s plan for a de facto segregated building. It was occupied again in 1985, when students demanded that Columbia divest from apartheid South Africa. And it was occupied on Tuesday by students outraged about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-pro-palestine-protests-must-continue-off-campus/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/freedom-under-capitalism-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/freedom-under-capitalism-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/#respond Wed, 01 May 2024 19:53:47 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1265800 Oshawa is a small Canadian city on the shoreline of Lake Ontario. It was also the hometown of the late left-wing Canadian politician Ed Broadbent, who would go on to become the national chairman of the New Democratic Party, or NDP. In Broadbent’s youth, a major employer in Oshawa was a glass manufacturer called Duplate, Ltd. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/freedom-under-capitalism-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/democratic-voters-are-furious-about-us-support-of-israel/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/democratic-voters-are-furious-about-us-support-of-israel/#respond Fri, 05 Apr 2024 16:01:34 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1264646 In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won Wisconsin’s electoral votes by a margin barely visible to the naked eye. In the small but crucial swing state, Biden received 1,630,866 votes to the 1,610,184 cast for Donald Trump. Four years earlier, Trump won by a nearly identical margin — 1,405,284 votes to the 1,382,536 for Hillary [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/democratic-voters-are-furious-about-us-support-of-israel/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/pragerus-moral-case-for-capitalism-is-terrible/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/pragerus-moral-case-for-capitalism-is-terrible/#respond Sun, 17 Mar 2024 14:59:17 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1263756 Prager University has no classrooms. It has no dormitories or cafeterias or students running around playing frisbee on sunny days. It is not a university at all, though it does have a lot of lectures. To date, PragerU has uploaded 3,200 videos. The channel, which has been built up with lavish support from billionaire donors, has [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/pragerus-moral-case-for-capitalism-is-terrible/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-populist-rights-anti-immigrant-arguments-dont-add-up/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-populist-rights-anti-immigrant-arguments-dont-add-up/#respond Sat, 10 Feb 2024 16:36:33 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1261994 The Senate’s most recent bipartisan immigration bill, which was packaged with foreign aid proposals and stalled out earlier this week, would have made our already draconian machine for detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers even more cruel. People who say they left their home countries because they were afraid of being killed or tortured [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-populist-rights-anti-immigrant-arguments-dont-add-up/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/obsessive-culture-war-is-a-dead-end-just-ask-ron-desantis/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/obsessive-culture-war-is-a-dead-end-just-ask-ron-desantis/#respond Wed, 24 Jan 2024 17:17:17 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1261182 If there was ever any doubt that Donald Trump has this thing in the bag, it was removed by last night’s results in New Hampshire. It was the state where Nikki Haley’s chances were the best. From here, if she stays in the race at all, it’ll be on the desperate hope that something happens [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/obsessive-culture-war-is-a-dead-end-just-ask-ron-desantis/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-democrats-love-democracy-when-its-convenient/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-democrats-love-democracy-when-its-convenient/#respond Fri, 12 Jan 2024 17:35:38 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1260653 We’re only a few days away from the Iowa Caucus. There’s at least a little bit of drama on the Republican side, where Donald Trump has a commanding lead but some anti-Trump Republicans hold out hope that if Nikki Haley finishes second she might be able to create real problems for the former president in [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-democrats-love-democracy-when-its-convenient/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nationalize-greyhound/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nationalize-greyhound/#respond Wed, 27 Dec 2023 18:42:40 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1259880 When I was growing up, I could walk from my parents’ place to the Greyhound station in East Lansing, Michigan. There was another one ten minutes’ drive from there in downtown Lansing. At either station, I could buy an inexpensive ticket on the spot and wait inside until my bus came to take me to, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nationalize-greyhound/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/capitalism-isnt-just-buying-and-selling-things-its-a-system-of-domination/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/capitalism-isnt-just-buying-and-selling-things-its-a-system-of-domination/#respond Mon, 13 Nov 2023 16:16:03 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1257385 The video essay opens with battling citations of environmental activist Greta Thunberg and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. She says, “Capitalism will kill us all.” He says, “Free markets will save us all.” But, the narrator gently suggests, these are both untrustworthy sources. Fortunately, she’s here to break it all down for us. The video has almost half [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/capitalism-isnt-just-buying-and-selling-things-its-a-system-of-domination/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-the-river-to-the-sea-is-a-call-for-democracy-and-equality/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-the-river-to-the-sea-is-a-call-for-democracy-and-equality/#respond Fri, 10 Nov 2023 16:48:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1257264 The House of Representatives just passed a resolution censuring Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat. The resolution is full of outrageous lies: it accuses her of justifying Hamas’s atrocities on October 7 but, tellingly, doesn’t quote a single complete sentence from her statement on those attacks — which in fact condemned both Hamas and the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-the-river-to-the-sea-is-a-call-for-democracy-and-equality/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialists-really-do-have-to-talk-about-bananas/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialists-really-do-have-to-talk-about-bananas/#respond Tue, 25 Jul 2023 15:48:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1249948 It’s easy to mock the “banana discourse” that’s materialized on left-wing Twitter in the last week. But there are important issues here about how production and consumption would work under a feasible and desirable form of socialism. During the decades when Germany was divided between a Soviet client state in the East and a capitalist [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialists-really-do-have-to-talk-about-bananas/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/aoc-shouldnt-have-endorsed-joe-biden/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/aoc-shouldnt-have-endorsed-joe-biden/#respond Thu, 13 Jul 2023 15:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1249256 Leading left-wing politicians including Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, and, most recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have already endorsed Joe Biden — even though primary voters haven’t yet had their say and most Democrats in polls don’t even want him to run. A few days ago, democratic socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) became the latest in a string [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/aoc-shouldnt-have-endorsed-joe-biden/feed/ 0