Today's Stories

January 5, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Will There be a Recovery?

January 2 - 4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Diary of 2008: an Incredible, Hope-Filled Year

Uri Avnery
Molten Lead in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of the Gaza Assault

Paul Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Western Morality?

Brian Eno
Stealing Gaza: an Experiment in Provocation

Ralph Nader
America Must Stop Shirking Its Responsibility on Gaza

Omar Barghouti
UN Complicity in Israel's Massacre in Gaza

Graham Usher
Where Pakistan's Generals and the ISI Draw Their Lines

P. Sainath
The Economy is Worse Than It Appears

Belén Fernández
Pardon Our Dust: Israel's PR Campaign for Gaza

Deb Reich
Shiv'a in Gaza, December 2008

Gary Leupp
Defacing Mr. Jefferson's Wall: Preachers and the Inauguration

Michael Yates
Top Chef or Top Wage Thief? Tom Colicchio and the Economics of Restaurants

Joanne Mariner
How to Close Guantánamo

Seth Sandronsky
Funding the Israeli Military: the US Pipeline

Cynthia McKinney
We Lived to Tell the Story

Sonja Karkar
Israel's Dogs of War

Deepak Tripathi
Gaza in Perspective

Robert Fantina
Obama, Afghanistan and Israel

John Ross
The Year No One Can Remember

Norm Kent
The Heat on Duval Street: Why Head Shop Raids are Unfair and Unjust

Larry Portis
Syria and the Arab Barbie Doll--Before the Deluge

Richard Rhames
Is Conscience Dead?

Dee C. Lubell
We Come From the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright

David Yearsley
A Gay German at the Courts of the Medici and Hanover, and of Course the BBC

Lorenzo Wolff
Joe Ely, the Fighting Rooster of Rock

Marc Catone
Looting Lennon's Legacy

Poets' Basement
Five Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

Website of the Weekend
Earth in High Rez

January 1, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
If Hamas Did Not Exist

Oren Ben-Dor
The Self-Defense of Suicide

Wajahat Ali
The U.S. Response to the Gaza Crisis: Unfair and Unbalanced

Saul Landau
In Cuba No One Man Could Steal $50 Billion From Other People

David Michael Green
What to Expect While We're Expecting

Website of the Day
Morbid Anatomy

December 31, 2008

Pam Martens
Wall Street's Collapse and the Ownership Society

Neve Gordon /
Jeff Halper
Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

Ted Honderich
The First Casualty of Israel's War

Brian Cloughley
Five Little Girls on a Sofa: Gaza's One-Sided Images

Ron Jacobs
What is Hamas, Really?

Vijay Prashad
Hot Rod and His Sikh Warrior: Blago's Indian Connections

Franklin Lamb
Mr. Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

Mike Whitney
My Brilliant Career

David Macaray
What Really Killed the Auto Bailout

Richard Thieme
The Betrayal of the Commons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Who Wins What in Gaza?

Stephen Lendman
The Troubling Case of the Fort Dix Five

Worthy Group of the Day
Western Shoshone Defense Project

December 30, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
May We No Longer Be Silent

Tariq Ali
The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

Robert Bryce
The $775,000-a-Year GI

Jonathan Cook
Electioneering with Bombs

Gary Leupp
The Fishbarrel War

Dave Lindorff
Tough Guys Don't Walk: Will Cheney Seek a Pardon?

Brian McKenna
Ted Downing and Troublemaker Anthropology

John Walsh
The End of the Green Party

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the World

Bob Sommer
The Education of David Frost

Worthy Activist of the Day
Support Marie Mason

December 29, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

Neve Gordon
What, Exactly, is Israel's Mission?

Joshua Frank
Obama and the "Special Relationship"

George Salzman /
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The War Against Palestine: Exception From Humanity

Norman Solomon
A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

Ewa Jasiewicz
Gaza Today: "This is Just the Beginning"

Rob Larson
The Banks Laugh All the Way to the Bank

Kenneth Libby
Arne Duncan's Dark Years in Chicago

Robert Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Elsa Johnson
High Noon at Black Mesa: Bush's Farewell Gift to Peabody Coal

Nicola Nasser
Resolution 1850: Bush's Parting Gift

Belén Fernández
Hanukkah Games

Worthy Group of the Day
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

December 26-28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Medusa's Head

Dr Eyad Al Serraj
The Boming of Gaza: "An Earthquake on Top of Your Head"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous Air

Bradley Simpson
Obama's New Intel Chief, Dennis Blair, Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers

Ralph Nader
Government Without Laws

Gary Leupp
Obama and the Graveyard of Empires

Ellen Cantarow
Richard Falk, Israel and the NYT

Matt Landon
The Great Coal Ash Flood: a Report From Swan Pond Road

David Macaray
SAG's Terrible Dilemma

Patrick Bond
End of Neoliberalism? Sorry, Not Yet

Norm Kent
Invoking Bigotry: Obama and Rick Warren

Brian T. Ketcham
Fuel Efficiency is Easy--Just Don't Let Detroit Tell You How to Do It

Rannie Amiri
War Clouds Over Gaza

Larry Portis
Changing the Ethnic Vocabulary

Richard Rhames
Welcome to Soup Kitchen America

Stephen Lendman
29 Red Flags: Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff

James L. Secor
Unheralded Coup

Ramzy Baroud
Iraq, the Plot Thickens

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Cpt. Paul Watson
Tracking the Cetacean Death Star

Howard Lisnoff
Nixon's Cambodian Shock Treatment

Michael Dee
The Bill of Rights, Killed in Action by the War on Drugs

Steve Conn
Eight Predictions for 2009

Poets' Basement
Valentine, Kaung, Moser and Graham

Worthy Group of the Weekend
United Mountain Defense

December 25, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Sole of Christmas

Hannah Mermelstein
Caution: Settlers Ahead

Worthy Group of the Day
Citizens' Coal Council

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

Saul Landau
Then and Now: Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

Sam Smith
Evangelism and Politics

Brian Cloughley
Torture, Slaughter and Lies

John Ross
Where's al-Zaidi's Pulitzer?

Eric Walberg
Cold War Shivers

Norm Kent
What Will Obama Do About Marijuana?

Stephen Martin
Reasons for Cheerfulness

Worthy Group of the Day
Collateral Repair Project

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

January 5, 2009

And Who Decides the Fate of UHW?

Who Rules SEIU?

By STEVE EARLY

 “SEIU has evolved into a dictatorship in which Andy Stern
and others have consolidated power, decision-making
authority, and resources among a few.”

--Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU’s
United Healthcare Workers-West, in
The San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 3, 2008

On Thursday, January 8, a group of 70 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officials will join a conference call, set up in Washington, D.C., to decide the fate of 150,000 members of United Healthcare Workers-West, SEIU’s third-largest affiliate.

Among the actions the SEIU International Executive Board (IEB) may take is transferring 65,000 long-term care workers in California, against their will, from UHW into a new statewide entity with officers appointed by SEIU President Andy Stern. Either on this call or during a meeting Jan. 20., Stern’s board may also approve a headquarters take-over of UHW’s remaining 85,000 members. This would be accomplished via a Stern-imposed trusteeship that would replace all UHW elected leaders and further obliterate their local, one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic in SEIU.

SEIU spokesmen are downplaying the impact of either course of action.

They say it’s just an “internal matter,” a question of changing “local union jurisdiction,” after a long deliberative process, resulting in “democratic” decisions. Stern points to a recent “advisory vote” with an 86.2 percent showing in favor of his California re-organization plan. What he neglects to mention is that only 24,000 members cast valid ballots, out of 309,000 who received them—a 7 percent participation rate. More than 120,000 workers—in UHW and two other locals—actively boycotted the election, signing cards or petitions protesting it. Members pointed out that SEIU’s ballot only gave them two options, both leading to UHW dismemberment. As rank-and-filer Lola Young explained to The Sacramento Bee, “It was like asking me if I wanted to be shot in the left knee or the right knee. It’s not much of a choice.”

As widely reported in the California press, tens of thousands of hospital, nursing home, and home care workers like Young spent much of last year mobilizing to keep UHW intact and their own popular president, Sal Rosselli, in office. They made it clear, on numerous occasions, that they favored Rosselli’s approach to health care organizing and bargaining over Stern’s. In late 2008, they picked up support from prominent friends of labor and revered union figures like United Farm Workers founding mother, Dolores Huerta. In two recent public letters, nearly 300 elected officials, community activists, clergy members, academics, and trade unionists noted that Rosselli’s local had “consistently acted with the highest integrity, placing the best interests of caregivers, consumers, and communities at the center of its work.” The concerned politicians--including leading California liberals like Sheila Kuehl, Mervin Dymally, Fiona Ma, Tom Ammiano, and Dean Florez--urged Stern to “seek a peaceful resolution of your dispute with UHW rather than precipitate a crippling civil war inside SEIU.”

Despite such appeals, SEIU headquarters is still poised to launch the union equivalent of George Bush’s “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”  Stern’s own misbegotten invasion of California could cost millions of dues dollars (on top of the huge amounts SEIU has already spent trying to undermine UHW). It will require the deployment of many international union staffers (who numbered more than 600 at last count and presumably have better things to do elsewhere.) None of these would-be occupiers of UHW will be greeted as “liberators” by the rank-and-file, as they attempt to displace elected UHW board members, bargaining committees, stewards, and mobilizers. UHW employers will have a field day with the resulting disruption of contract negotiations and enforcement.

At a time when unions are urging Congress to pass an Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), to aid union organizing and bargaining, there will be much damaging publicity for all of labor. It will highlight the fact that most SEIU members in California no longer have the right to choose what local they’re in or who represents them. Already anti-EFCA groups have run full-page ads in major newspapers playing up SEIU’s role in foisting Gov. Rod Blagojevich on the now unappreciative citizens of Illinois. When and if Stern pulls the trigger on UHW, UnionFacts.com and similar management front groups will have a propaganda field day displaying the corpse of workers’ rights within SEIU.

For some outside observers, one of the mysteries of this affair is why SEIU board members have, so far, gone along with what N.Y. Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez calls a “colossal scam” and “a stunning assault on union democracy.”  SEIU’s IEB is, after all, the union’s top decision-making body (except when its convention is in session once every four years). In their own communities, some IEB members are well-known progressives. Among those with a resume that includes Sixties’ activism, a few were once even communists, socialists, and/or union dissidents themselves. Today, they’re understandably proud to be part of a board, which is, by far, the most diverse in labor, in many important categories. Among SEIU’s president, secretary-treasurer, six executive vice-presidents, 23 vice-presidents, five Canadian or retiree representatives, and 37 others simply titled “IEB Member,” one finds more women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, and gays than in any other similar executive body.

Unfortunately, how this “diversity” was achieved creates a major problem in terms of IEB accountability to the membership vs. the top leadership. The SEIU board has been structured and its members recruited in such a way that it doesn’t provide a check on the power of the president or secretary-treasurer, Andy Stern and Anna Burger respectively, or any meaningful oversight of their activities. Some officials on the board do have a base in their own local unions (usually, smaller ones) that they developed themselves as locally elected leaders and four out of 73 are elected just by their fellow Canadians, as a concession to Canadian “autonomy.” But the vast majority owes their union jobs and careers, now and in the past, to the two top officers. In very corporate fashion, Stern and Burger have transformed their board into a “management team,” that has about the same degree of real “independence” as corporate directors hand-picked by a powerful CEO. If any member ever steps out of line—like Rosselli did in recent years, due to policy differences with Stern—he or she will be dropped from the team, as Rosselli was last June when the current Stern-Burger “administration slate” was elected by 2,000 delegates meeting in Puerto Rico. At SEIU conventions--since the entire board (except for Canadians) is elected “at large”--an independent candidate has about as much chance of winning as a dissident shareholder running for director of General Electric at its annual meeting.

In other labor organizations—even ones  more deserving of the moniker “business union”—national executive boards are filled with former workers who came up through the ranks. Ambitious rank-and-filers have a much better chance of making it to the top elsewhere than in SEIU. Candidates for board positions usually start out as a shop steward. Later, they become an elected local union leader, perhaps serve on the national staff for awhile, and then run for a seat on the national executive, as an independent or on someone else’s slate. In big unions like the Teamsters and Steelworkers, some candidates run for at-large positions—ie union-wide office, like the presidency—but most board hopefuls have to compete for fellow members’ votes in regional conferences or districts where they live, work, and are known.

In unions like my own former employer, the Communications Workers of America, the top officers and executive board are elected, as in SEIU, by convention delegates chosen by the members, not via the more democratic Teamster or Steelworker method of direct elections. But, regardless of whether voting is direct or indirect and no matter how bureaucratized a union may have become, the allocation of executive board seats to different constituencies (smaller than the entire union) tends to make  some board members more politically accountable to those at the bottom rather than just the top. In the Communications Workers of America, for example, most board members represent either multi-state districts (ranging in size from 20,000 to 175,000 members). Or they are elected from occupational groups such as manufacturing workers, flight attendants, public employees, or journalists. Competition for seats on the CWA board is quite common. Independent candidates can even oust incumbents backed by the national president and fellow board members, as a challenger did last spring in the CWA/Newspaper Guild. Even the current president, Larry Cohen, was first elected to CWA office ten years ago only after facing stiff competition from an incumbent board member vying for the same open position as EVP.
What’s striking about SEIU is not only the absence of similar opportunities for competitive elections, but also the union background and current payroll status of many board members. According to an analysis done by UHW prior to the election and expansion of the IEB last year, “the majority are Stern appointees or staff. Out of [what was then] 67 members of the IEB, well over half are either SEIU International Union staff, or local leaders who were originally appointed to leadership positions in their local by Stern, rather than being elected by their members.”  Opportunities for such career-advancing appointments abound in SEIU, to a degree unique in the labor movement. That’s because, under Stern, nearly 80 local unions have been put under headquarters trusteeships and/or re-organized with new leaders named by him, rather than elected by the members. (Due to its consolidation into huge, regional bodies, SEIU now has only 300 “locals” left.)

Union trusteeships are supposed to be a method of rooting out corruption, straightening out a troubled local’s finances or functioning, and then holding elections within eighteen months that return the local to membership control.

In SEIU, however, Stern-installed trustees or “interim presidents” are usually staffers from outside the local who are given as long as three years to entrench themselves politically, before facing any membership vote.

Running as de facto incumbents, they usually win, with the help of a large number of other paid staffers who are, by then, working for them on the union payroll as well. To get the picture, one need look no further than the six officials who serve directly under Stern and Burger—Annelle Grajeda, May Kay Henry, Gerry Hudson, Eliseo Medina, Dave Regan, and Tom Woodruff. Now earning nearly $200,000 each, four of these six executive vice-presidents have never been working members, in any SEIU jurisdiction; the other two became part of SEIU through its merger with District 1199, the New York-based health care union. The four originally hired from outside served as either trustee of a local, a local union executive director, or in some other appointed staff position. All owe their original or later, higher-ranking jobs to the sponsorship of Stern, Burger, or a fellow EVP.

Within the larger SEIU board—as talented as some members may be--this patronage system has been producing some rotten fruit lately (or, as SEIU loyalists describe it, “a few bad apples”). Just two months after her elevation to EVP on Stern and Burger’s ticket, Grajeda came under investigation for financial improprieties and was forced to take a leave from her local (where she was a Stern-appointed “interim president”), from SEIU’s California state council (where Stern helped her  replace Rosselli as chairperson), and her new International union job (another 2008 gift from the SEIU president).

Also absent from this week’s conference call to decide the fate of UHW will be Tyrone Freeman and Rickman Jackson, two more Stern protégés who became public embarrassments. They were elected to the IEB last June but removed shortly thereafter in the huge corruption scandal engulfing Local 6434 in Los Angeles, SEIU’s second largest affiliate. Freeman has since been kicked out of SEIU and ordered to pay back $1.1 million that he embezzled; he still faces likely criminal charges. Jackson was stripped of the Michigan local that Stern had awarded him, ordered to make restitution as well, and then exiled to Canada, where he is being given a “second-chance.”

Due to an unrelated scandal, former SEIU research department staffer, Tom Balanoff, now a Stern-installed national vice-president in Chicago, has been dodging reporters lately (although reportedly also cooperating with the FBI) about his wire-tapped conversations with the recently arrested Rod Blagojevich, governor of Illinois. Presumably, Balanoff will be voting this week on the future of UHW, along with a number of current SEIU headquarters staffers, who in most cases have never held any elected office in SEIU other than being on the board. One might reasonably wonder how SEIU presidential assistants or department heads like Kirk Adams, Eileen Kirlin, Stephen Lerner, or Debbie Schneider can be expected to cast an independent vote on questions related to UHW (or anything else) when Stern and Burger sign their paychecks and they serve in their regular jobs at the pleasure of the officers?

Deliberating with them will be board members whose own political empire building, unpopularity with dues-payers, or semi-retired status make them unlikely profiles in courage or free-thinkers either. One thinks here of Susana Segat, an ex-political operative now running a Boston local that lost several thousand members to the Mass Teachers Association because of her high-handed, Burger-backed methods. Or SEIU vice-president David Holway, a lawyer and ex-lobbyist, whose New England-based Local 5000 now has a license from Stern to gobble up smaller groups as far away as Georgia.  Or their fellow Bostonian Celia Wcislo, who was put out to pasture when her local was absorbed by 300,000-member SEIU/1199 in New York, eliminating any further need for her services as an elected president of 25-years standing.  Or former foundation official and environmentalist Jane McAlevey, whose brief reign as appointed director of SEIU Local 1107 in Nevada was so dysfunctional that she was forced out last June, while retaining her seat on the SEIU board.

And then there are all the SEIU janitor local leaders around the country who’ve never worked a day in their life as janitors but serve on the  IEB anyway because of their past role as staffers or Stern-anointed trustees. The newest of these is Javier Morillo-Alicea, a former Macalester College history instructor who is gay, Latino, and now president of Minneapolis Local 26, where he worked briefly as an organizer.  Morillo-Alicea is young, energetic, and much-admired locally. But does anyone expect him to buck his powerful SEIU patrons in Washington, D.C., when that means risking all that he’s acquired in a just few short years, including the Minnesota janitors’ franchise, an executive board position, and a Stern-created slot on SEIU’s new “ethics commission”? I wouldn’t bet money on  Morilla-Alicea speaking out, unless he wants to have his local endure the same kind of headquarters’ assault that UHW has suffered and he, personally, is ready to return to the tenure track in academia.

The great irony of the cast of characters that Stern and Burger have assembled to administer the coup de grace to UHW is that, structurally, the SEIU board now resembles the ruling body of International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), before that union was democratized and reformed over the past twenty years. During the IBT’s mob-dominated past, its members had no right to elect top officers in a nationwide vote or elect, from their own region, the Teamster vice-presidents who make up the rest of the executive board. The only successful IEB candidates were all elected at-large, by delegates at leadership-dominated conventions, as part of slates formed by Teamster presidents (four of whom were indicted and three of whom went to jail in corruption scandals). Each of these pre-1989 Teamster chiefs would add or drop people from their leadership “team,” as needed, to insure executive board conformity with their wishes (using the additional carrot of a full Teamster salary, on top of any others, just for meeting attendance).

Beginning in 1991, thanks to the presence of TDU and the settlement of a federal racketeering lawsuit, the IBT has had a series of contested elections for the top leadership, and convention delegates only get to nominate the candidates. In each race, the president, secretary-treasurer, and some V-Ps have run “at large,” with all 1.4 million Teamsters eligible to vote for them. All other board members, representing regional constituencies, have had to campaign for election among a smaller number of rank-and-file voters who live and work in the same area they do. Almost all successful IEB candidates, whether liberal or conservative, “old guard” or reformer,” have been working members of the union, not appointed staffers; with the notable exception of current president James Hoffa, all previously served in lower-level elected positions.

Reflecting the IEB’s local union roots (and legal protections in the Teamster constitution), a bigger Teamster local can’t take over a smaller one without members of the latter voting to approve the merger.  Although trusteeships were often used in the IBT’s bad old days to crush dissent, they have, since 1989, been mainly used to oust crooks. Tom Leedham, the progressive leader of a Portland, Oregon local, has run for international president three times as a TDU-backed candidate, sharply criticizing Hoffa’s leadership and always gaining 35 to 40 percent of the vote. Unlike Sal Rosselli, Stern’s leading foe in SEIU, Leedham has not faced the threat of trusteeship in retaliation for his dissent. As Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) organizer Ken Paff told The Los Angeles Times Dec. 30:  “When your union [SEIU] is less democratic than the Teamsters, you have to look in the mirror and ask, ‘What happened?’”

More friends of SEIU should be asking this question. More labor-oriented academics should be doing some Sixties’-style “power structure research”—which means taking a closer look at “who rules SEIU,” how they do it, and what price workers pay for having such an unhealthy concentration of power and privilege at the top of their national union. And, finally, concerned trade unionists around the country should be coming to the aid of UHW, in its hour of need, before Andy Stern’s pending assault on SEIU dissidents backfires on all of organized labor, making the campaign for labor law reform a dead letter on Capitol Hill.

Steve Early is former CWA organizer who has been a supporter of  Teamster reform and a commentator on Teamster politics since 1977. His recent reporting on labor has focused on SEIU, the subject of a forthcoming book. He is also the author of  Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home (Monthly Review Press, 2009). He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com

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