Today's Stories

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

July 9, 2009

Ronnie Cummings
How Industry Giants are Undermining the Organic Foods Movement

Jonathan Cook
Two-State Solution, Israeli-Style

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Destablization, Inc.: Otto Reich and the International Republican Institute

James Bovard
McNamara's Other Body Count

Norman Solomon Afghanistan: the Escalation Scam

Allan Nairn
Indonesia Gets to Pick Its Killer

Andy Worthington
Revamping the Military Commissions

Tomas Borge
The Sadsack Soldiers of Honduras

Nadia Hijab
Palestinian Titanic

Paul Krassner
How Jeff Goldblum Didn't Die

Website of the Day
Dave Lindorff Wants Your Money--Will Give Good Reports

July 8, 2009

Saul Landau
In Amazonia

Dean Baker
The Green Shoots are Dead: Why the Economy Needs a Third Stimulus

Winslow T. Wheeler
Gates, Congress and the F-22

Eric Walberg
Obama in Russia

Ray McGovern
Is Texas Harboring a Torture Decider?

David Rosen
When Sadism Goes Systematic: Prison Rape as Policy

Dr. Mona El Farra
Gaza From a Distance

Ron Jacobs
McNamara and the Post: When Idiocy and Hubris Merge

Benjamin Dangl
High Stakes in Honduras

Alan Farago
How I Almost Pitched McNamara Into the Sea

Website of the Day
Ayatollah So

July 7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank

Uri Avnery
Israeli Court Rebukes Military

Brian M. Downing
Crossing the Helmand

Gary Leupp
Biden, Israel and Iran

Gregory A. Burris
My Brush With Homeland Security

David Macaray
When in Doubt, Blame a Labor Union

Laura Flanders
Obama Hushes Health Care Advocates

Alan Farago
Princple Over Principal

Greg Moses
Texas Patels Take Over Dallas Bank

Dan Bacher
Three Big Lies About the Peripheral Canal

Website of the Day
Tragedy at Toncontin

July 6, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Hussein's FBI Interviews

Diana Johnstone
Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Coup to Venezuelan Coup: Same Old Globalizers and Torture School Grads

Gary Leupp
Operation Khanjar Begins

Jonathan Cook
Israel Calls on Ultra-Orthodox Jews to Stop "Arab Takeover"

Tim Wise
Of Fireworks and False Memories

Franklin Lamb
Cynthia McKinney and the Kidnapping of the Spirit of Humanity

Charles R. Larson
Sarah Palin, Plain and Tall

Carlos Benemann
California's Bingo Bondage: Getting Paid in IOUs

Shepherd Bliss
The Soulless Machine: Caught in the Cellphone Snare

Jerry Kroth
Stuart Levey and World War III

Karyn Strickler
A Fell-Swoop Moment Missed

Website of the Day
The Rise in Military-Backed Public Schools

July 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Gob Smacked

Eamonn Fingleton
Detroit's Collapse: the Untold Story

Jeffrey St. Clair
Is the Bald Eagle Really Back?

Mike Whitney
Running on Empty

Pam Martens
The Parable of Michael Jackson's Debts

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Counter-Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

Paul Craig Roberts
The Big Whorehouse on the Potomac

Patrick Cockburn
The Haggling Over Iraqi Oil

Anthony DiMaggio
A Perilous Path: Iraq and the Language of De-Escalation

Roger Burbach
Honduran Coup: Target Left?

John Ross
Left's Grip on Mexico City Slips

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet Jim Demint: Coup Apologist

Gareth Porter
The Iran Canard

Andy Worthington
Finally, a Trial Date in the African Embassy Bombings Case

Saul Landau
Bad Times, Worse Habits

David Macaray
How We Spend Our Money

Adam Federman
The Recovery That Wasn't

Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care

Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney

Robert Jensen
Beyond Independence

Robert Bryce
Hey, Paul Krugman, Here are 2.4 Billion More Climate Traitors

Belén Fernandez
The Situation in Honduras

Missy Comley Beattie
Would Jesus Pack Heat?

C. G. Estabrook
La Cina e Vicina

Stephen Martin
The Fog of Economic War

Charles R. Larson
Adichie on Her Own

Lorenzo Wolff
A Voice Like a Newsreel: the Soul of James Carr and the Civil Rights Movement

Kim Nicolini
The System That Hijacked New York

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Kazak and Stadler

Website of the Weekend
Paul Krassner v. Larry King

July 2, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Wall Street White House

Nikolas Kozloff
Spinning the Honduran Coup

Wendell Potter
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California's Empty Wallet

Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent?

Patrick Irelan
Lost in Patagonia

Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq

Nicola Nasser
Ethnic Cleansing as State Policy

Brian Tokar
Climate Bill: Cap(italize) and Trade(Off)

Dan Bacher
Panama Canal North?

Website of the Day
Scheuer on Immigration: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

July 1, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Iran and Us

Alberto Vallente Thorensen
Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal

Paul Craig Roberts
Pirates of the Mediterranean

Robert Weissman
150 Years

Manuel García, Jr.
The New Crisis in Aviation

Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete
Honduras, a Coup With No Future

Norman Solomon
The NYT and Troop Deaths: Abstract Quality Journalism

Franklin Lamb
Remembering Amnon Kapeliouk

Martha Rosenberg
When Doctors Boo

Diane Rejman
Mothers and Military Lies

Website of the Day
The Color of the Race Problem is White

June 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Debt Deflation Arrives

Esam Al-Amin
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand

Benjamin Dangl
Showdown in Honduras

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Doctors Collude in Torture

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah After the Elections

George Wuerthner
Beetle Hysteria ... Again: the Truth About Bugs, Fires and Ecosystems

Todd Gordon
Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression

Ron Jacobs
Mark Sanford, Sexual Liberation and LGBT Equality

Kenneth Libby
Conditions for Citizenship

Julian Vigo
Feeling Michael Jackson

Website of the Day
Inside the Mega-Churches

June 29, 2009

Ishmael Reed
The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup in Honduras: Obama's Real Message to Latin America?

Clifton Ross
Coups and Constitutions: From Bolivia to Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq is Now the Most Corrupt Country on the Planet

Uri Avnery
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

Conn Hallinan
Dealing With North Korea: Why Threats and Sanctions Will Backfire

James G. Abourezk
Where the Money Isn't Going

Ralph Nader
The Holes in Obama's Financial Regulation Plan

Carol Miller
Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love Medicare-for-All

Greg Moses
Jobs First

Website of the Day
Key Leaders of Honduran Coup Trained in the US

June 26-28, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

Doug Peacock
Elk River: History and the Yellowstone

Daniel Wolff
The Night Before: a Glimpse of the Lenape

Mike Whitney
What the Big Banks Have Won

John Ross
The New York Times and Stolen Elections

David Rosen
Cry, Hypocrite, Cry: the Tradition of Sex Scandals and American Politicians

Emily Ratner
Thoughts on Manhood From the Rafah Tunnel

Gareth Porter
Airstrike Report Belies "Blame Taliban" Line

Farid Marjai
Green, But Not Velvet

Nadia Hijab
The Rift in Iran: Memo to the "Do Something" Brigade

Paul Craig Roberts
Gun Control: What's the Agenda?

Fred Gardner
FDR's Real Defining Moment: Ending Prohibition

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Father's Day

Paul Watson
Fear and Loathing in Madeira

David Ker Thomson
Nothing

Farzana Versey
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Tramp

Geoff Berne
Obama and Charter Schools: The Showdown at Schottenstein

Todd Alan Price
Ohio: Birthplace of Charter Education ... and Opposition to It

Ramzy Baroud
People for Sale in a Hungry World

Jeff Sher
Health Care Showdown

Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All

Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value?

Glen Johnson
The Village and the Wall

Charlotte Laws
Hold the MSG!

Charles R. Larson
Dickens in Morocco, Sort Of

Kim Nicolini
The Erasure of Art

David Yearsley
Yankee Prof Takes on Dallas

Lorenzo Wolff
When the Songs Remain the Same

Poets' Basement
Larson, Davies, McLellan and Gardner

Website of the Weekend
Kayakers vs. Shell Oil

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

July 20, 2009

Heralded by the Supreme Court as Fair, Vast Private Judicial System Exposed as Fraud

Judicial Apartheid

By PAM MARTENS

For the past 18 years, a motley mix of corporate law firms, Wall Street powerhouses and private justice providers have been serving up false testimony to the highest court of our land that mandatory arbitration is “inexpensive, fast and fair” and a proper substitute for the public court system.  And for 18 years a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has been cozying up to these brazenly preposterous statements while gutting our Constitution’s Seventh Amendment guarantee to a jury trial.  In doing so, wittingly or unwittingly, the Supreme Court had aided and abetted the key linchpin of a wealth transfer system that has brought the nation to its knees.

Today, everything from Wall Street brokerage accounts, employment contracts, credit cards, mortgages, even cell phone contracts have routinely removed the individual’s constitutional right to file a claim in court to seek redress of a grievance or fraudulent action.  Instead, the individual’s claim is forced into one of the privately run arbitration organizations where conflicts are rampant, discovery is limited, and the right to appeal is typically impossible because the arbitrators are not required to explain the rationale for their decisions in writing.

In a saner era, these mandatory arbitration contracts would be thrown out by courts as contracts of adhesion because they were offered on a take it or leave it basis.  Under any rational interpretation of contract law, contracts must be a meeting of the minds, freely entered into, between parties of equal bargaining power. 

But just as profits have been privatized on Wall Street and losses socialized, the right to a jury trial in a court system paid for by individual taxpayers is now increasingly reserved for corporations, not people.  It’s a form of judicial apartheid not dissimilar to the way the Supreme Court rationalized the segregation of blacks in its Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, promising “equal” facilities, just separate. 

Last week, a lone female state attorney general put the lie to mandatory arbitration.  And when she pulled back its dark curtain, what we saw was a grand theft of both justice and wealth perpetuated by the U.S. Supreme Court against the American people.

Lori Swanson, Attorney General of Minnesota, charged the National Arbitration Forum with consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices and false advertising.  The National Arbitration Forum is a private justice provider that adjudicates upwards of  200,000 consumer claims a year and acknowledges that it has been appointed as the arbitrator in “hundreds of millions of contracts.”

Swanson’s lawsuit charges that the National Arbitration Forum, which masquerades as  functioning like an independent judge and jury, is in fact financially shackled to debt collection law firms representing major credit card companies.  The lawsuit states that:

“Beginning in 2006 and through 2007, Accretive LLC…engineered two transactions.  In the first transaction, Accretive formed several private equity funds under the name ‘Agora’ (meaning ‘Forum’ in Greek), which in turn invested $42 million in the National Arbitration Forum and obtained governance rights in it.  In the second transaction, three of the country’s largest debt collection law firms (Mann Bracken of Georgia, Wolpoff & Abramson of the District of Columbia, and Eskanos & Adler of California) merged into one large national law firm called Mann Bracken, LLP.  Accretive then formed and funded (partly using federal money from the U.S. Small Business Administration) a debt collection agency called Axiant, LLC, which acquired the assets and collections operations of Mann Bracken.  Through these transactions, the Accretive hedge fund group simultaneously took control of one of the country’s largest debt collectors and became affiliated with the Forum, the country’s largest debt collection arbitration company.”

In announcing the suit, Swanson was joined at the press conference by Richard Neely, retired Chief Justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.  One suspects that Mr. Neely, who worked for a brief stint as an arbitrator for the National Arbitration Forum, may have assisted in providing research for the lawsuit.  Here are the choice words Mr. Neely had to say about the organization in the September/October 2006 issue of The West Virginia Lawyer:

 “A few years ago I answered a request from the National Arbitration Forum to join their panel of arbitrators.  I thought I was invited because I was a former state supreme court judge.  Stupid me!  I was just another piece of raw meat…Thus I learned how Godless bloodsucking banks have converted apparently neutral arbitration forums into collection agencies to exact the last drop of blood from desperate debtors…Banks and other bloodsuckers make campaign contributions and single moms don’t.  That accounts for the current Federal system…”

Another insider glimpse at the National Arbitration Forum came on April 2, 2009 when Deanna Richert, a former employee, filed a lawsuit for employment discrimination, deceptive trade practices and consumer fraud in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.  Ms. Richert’s lawsuit alleges:

“During the course of plaintiff’s employment at defendants, she witnessed fraudulent and corrupt practices in the administration of arbitration cases by defendants which draw into question the neutrality of any arbitrator associated in any way with defendants and which practices make any alleged requirement of arbitration fraudulent and unconscionable, and thereby null, void and unenforceable.  The NAF and Forthright had regular business users of their arbitration system who were referred to in-house as the ‘Famous Parties.’  These ‘Famous Parties’ were repeat filers for arbitration who did not pay for defendants’ services as they filed like sporadic filers, but used the arbitration service so commonly that they paid on account to defendants.  Among the fraudulent and corrupt practices witnessed by plaintiff with respect to these ‘Famous Parties,’ were the following:

Management meetings in which personnel were instructed to call arbitrators and tell them, prior to the release of the decision to the parties to the arbitration, to change decisions they had issued that found against the Famous Parties;

Management meetings in which personnel were instructed to make sure that certain arbitrators who had decided cases against a Famous Party did not get any more cases;

Defendants drafting the claim forms and fictitious affidavits of service for the Famous Parties, including the placement of stored electronic signatures for the Famous Parties on these documents…

Arbitrators calling defendants to ask its attorneys how they should rule on a particular matter…

The disallowance by defendants of responses by consumers to claims filed against them simply because the consumer did not carbon copy the filer of the claim on their correspondence, thereby putting the consumer into default on an arbitration claim they had attempted to answer.”

According to Ms. Richert’s attorney, Daniel E. Warner, a motion to compel the lawsuit “into arbitration is pending in the federal district court, which we are actively resisting.” 

Who are these so-called “Famous Parties?”  According to Attorney General Swanson’s lawsuit, the National Arbitration Forum has among its clients, MBNA/Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup; those same “infamous” parties deemed too big to fail by the Federal government, thus entitling them to the public purse as a lifeline.

Nine years ago, on March 1, 2000, Caroline E. Mayer, writing in the Washington Post, put the deception of this so-called neutral forum right under the nose of the Supreme Court justices, Congress and the Department of Justice.  Ms. Mayer had obtained documents filed in a class action lawsuit against First USA.  The documents showed that the bank prevailed in “99.6 percent of the cases that went all the way to an arbitrator” at the National Arbitration Forum.  “Since First USA implemented its arbitration clause in early 1998, it has filed 51,622 claims against consumers with the forum. The forum has made 19,705 awards: First USA prevailed in 19,618, card members in 87.”

That did not stop the U.S. Supreme Court from continuing to embrace the virtues of mandatory arbitration.  Justice Ruth Ginsburg even gave the National Arbitration Forum a plug in a partial dissenting opinion when she said:  “Other national arbitration organizations have developed similar models for fair cost and fee allocation.” Adding in a footnote: “They include National Arbitration Forum provisions that limit small-claim consumer costs to between $49 and $175 and a National Consumer Disputes Advisory Committee protocol recommending that consumer costs be limited to a reasonable amount. National Arbitration Forum, Code of Procedure, App. C, Fee Schedule (July 1, 2000).” 

Ginsburg made her remarks in a case called Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Larketta Randolph where the mandatory arbitration clause left open ended the amount of fees the consumer might have to pay for the arbitration.

Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote the opinion for the court, stating:

“…we have recognized that federal statutory claims can be appropriately resolved through arbitration, and we have enforced agreements to arbitrate that involve such claims…We have likewise rejected generalized attacks on arbitration that rest on ‘suspicion of arbitration as a method of weakening the protections afforded in the substantive law to would-be complainants...’ These cases demonstrate that even claims arising under a statute designed to further important social policies may be arbitrated because  `so long as the prospective litigant effectively may vindicate [his or her] statutory cause of action in the arbitral forum,'  the statute serves its functions.”

The above twisted logic together with the phrase "liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements" has become the mindless mantra of a high court that has evinced willful blindness toward their role of enablers to a creeping corporate fascism.

Particularly egregious in Green Tree was the mountain of evidence the Supreme Court majority ignored.  Amici for the respondent, Larketta Randolph, submitted the following facts supporting the charge that

“many individuals asserting statutory claims against corporations have confronted arbitration fees that amounted to thousands of dollars in settings where these fees would discourage the individuals from pursuing those claims: In Brower v. Gateway 2000…an arbitration clause required individuals to pay an advance fee of $4000 (which the court noted exceeded the cost of most of the defendant’s products)…In Patterson v. ITT Consumer Financial Corp….the court found that a borrower would have to pay at least $850 to get a participatory hearing over debts as small as $2,000 and that these fees (along with other procedures) ‘become oppressive when applied to unsophisticated borrowers of limited means…In Cole v. Burns Int’l Sec. Servs…the court noted that arbitrators’ fees range from $500 to $1,000 per day.  In Jones v. Fujitsu Network Communications…the Arbitration Policy require[d] Plaintiff to pay one-half of the arbitrator’s fee, the court reporter’s fee, the fee for the arbitrator’s copy of the transcript, and facility costs….In the Matter of Arbitration Between Teleserve Sys., Inc. and MCI Telecomm. Corp…the court noted that the arbitration filing fee alone for the claimant in an antitrust dispute would amount to more than $200,000.”

In September 2007, Public Citizen published a comprehensive 74-page study of mandatory arbitration with a sharp focus on the National Arbitration Forum. The report is titled “The Arbitration Trap.”  Among its many startling findings related to the National Arbitration Forum, Public Citizen found that in California between January 1, 2003 and March 31, 2007 “…a small cadre of arbitrators handled most of the cases that went to a decision.  In total, 28 arbitrators handled 17,265 cases – accounting for a whopping 89.5 percent of cases in which an arbitrator was appointed – and ruled for the company nearly 95 percent of the time…Topping the list of the busiest arbitrators was Joseph Nardulli, who handled 1,332 arbitrations and ruled for the corporate claimant an overwhelming 97 percent of the time.”

This is known as the “repeat player” defect in arbitration and is one of the darkest secrets among private arbitral forums.  Corporate antagonism to a trial by a jury of our peers is the randomness of jury selection.  Juries are typically culled from massive voter or motor vehicle registrations.  They are not highly paid, repeat players hearing claims involving the same corporation.

And the National Arbitration Forum is not an aberration. On July 20, 2000 the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA) issued a press release accusing the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) of rigging its computerized system of selecting arbitrators.   The opening text reads as follows: “In direct and flagrant violation of federal law, the NASD systematically evaded the Securities and Exchange Commission approved ‘Neutral List Selection System’ arbitration rule requiring arbitrators to be selected on a rotating basis.  Instead, the NASD secretly programmed its computers to select some arbitrators on a seniority basis – just what the rule was designed to prevent.” 

The Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association discovered the manipulation when a team of its attorneys demanded a test of the selection system at an NASD/PIABA meeting in Chicago on June 27, 2000.  PIABA predicted that “this rule violation tainted hundreds or even thousands of compulsory securities arbitration – many still ongoing.  In every such instance, the substantive rights of public investors to a neutral panel have been cynically violated.  Many public investors were thus twice cheated: first, by an NASD member firm that fraudulently conned them out of their life’s savings, and second by the NASD Arbitration Department’s rigged panels.”

The industry bias of arbitrators hearing claims against Wall Street firms is legendary.  On June 9, 1994, Margaret Jacobs exposed the systemic bias in a feature article in the Wall Street Journal on the case of  Helen L. Walters:

“Helen L. Walters says her boss called her a ‘hooker,’ a ‘bitch’ and a ‘streetwalker.’ Sometimes he brandished a riding crop in front of her and once he left condoms on her desk. 

Ms. Walters, then a trading-room secretary at a California brokerage firm, filed a complaint against him alleging sexual harassment.  In a formal hearing, he readily admitted to the whip and the condoms, and to using all of those epithets.  Her case, legal scholars agree, seems a textbook example of illegal harassment as defined by the Supreme Court: a situation in which a ‘reasonable person’ would find the work environment ‘hostile or abusive.’

So why did Ms. Walters lose?

Ms. Walters slammed into a little-known, but extraordinarily daunting, roadblock facing many women in the securities industry: Bias complaints, like any other employee dispute, must go through the industry’s mandatory-arbitration system.  That means victims’ complaints can’t be heard in court by judge or jury, no matter how strong their merit.”

Ms. Walters’ case is indicative of the final dark secret that seems to have escaped the U.S. Supreme Court, whose occupants make their deliberations in a taxpayer funded building inscribed with the words “Equal Justice Under Law.”  Arbitration cannot be a fair substitute to court because arbitrators are not bound to follow the law or legal precedent.  The big lie in Plessy of separate but equal is the big lie in Supreme Court rulings on mandatory arbitration. 

In the case of Delfina Montes v. Shearson Lehman Brothers, involving a claim for overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the lawyer for this Wall Street brokerage firm argued as follows during the arbitration:

“I know, as I have served many times as an arbitrator, that you as an arbitrator are not guided strictly to follow case law precedent… I know it’s hard to have to say this and it’s probably even harder to hear it but in this case this law is not right.  Know that there is a difference between law and equity and I think, in my opinion, that difference is crystallized in this case.  The law says one thing.  What equity demands and requires and is saying is another….You know as arbitrators you have the ability, you’re not strictly bound by case law and precedent.  …as I said in my Answer, as I said before in my Opening, and I now ask you in my Closing, not to follow the FLSA if you determine she’s not an exempt employee.”

From defective consumer products, to denial of overtime pay, to gutting the civil rights laws, to unconscionable mortgages, derivatives, obscene rates and bogus fees on credit cards, the corporations have had quite a run over the past decade with their judicial apartheid and anointed blessing of a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court.  And just where did it get them?  Those with the most egregious mandatory arbitration contracts are either bankrupt or zombie firms struggling for survival on the taxpayer’s dime. 

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article.  She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire.  She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

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