Mayor One Percent: Why Rahm Emanuel is the worst mayor in America

Here's my latest Baffler piece. It's about the worst mayor in America, Mayor One Percent himself, Rahm Emanuel. I pivot off recent revelations that an eight-part CNN documentary series about Chicago was virtually scripted and directed by the mayor's office to focus on what has actually been happening to Chicago under Rahm's leadership. It is not a pretty picture. 

While cities from New York to San Francisco are enacting economically populist policies in a trend that's been called "The Rise of the Progressive City," Chicago is stuck in the failed neoliberal policies of the past. The results are having a devastating impact on the city -- among other things, we're struggling with double digit unemployment and an epidemic of gun violence. 

Yet Mayor One Percent keeps on partying like it's 1999. There's much more, but for a taste, here's how I end the piece:

Most tellingly of all, consider the fact that literally one of his best buddies—a man he vacations with, in fact—is Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate and centimillionaire venture capitalist Bruce Rauner, a Scott Walker type who’s running on a platform of making Illinois a right-to-work state. (Rauner charmingly refers to AFSCME, the public employee union, as “Af-scam-ee). 

They don’t call Rahm Emanuel “Mayor One Percent” for nothing.