Today's Stories

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

March 12 , 2009

A Senoirs Soirée at the Fountainebleu

Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

By STEVE EARLY

“Also being debated [at the AFL-CIO executive council meeting] is whether to create a mechanism to nudge past-their-prime union presidents to retire so unions are not stuck with tired, uninspired leaders. One negotiator [of AFL-CIO/ Change-to-Win/NEA unity] talked of creating an advisory “Labor House of Lords” to encourage older union presidents to step aside.”

--The New York Times, March 9, 2009

In a story datelined “Miami Beach,” which appeared the day before the one quoted above, The Times reported that some members of the AFL-CIO executive council, not to mention its once reform-minded president, John Sweeney, were experiencing “embarrassment” about holding their high-profile mid-winter meeting amidst the ostentatious luxury of the “Fontainebleau hotel resort.” 

After all, blue-collar unemployment is “soaring and the stock market tanking,” Not exactly the best time to look like you’re back down the road at Bal Harbour, where Sweeney’s predecessor, George Meany, preferred to sun himself, uncaringly, in the days before the AFL-CIO was transformed.

As Fox News gloated, the Fountainebleau has “10 pools and a 40,000-square-foot-spa,” plus rooms that “often run $400 or more a night.” To be fair and balanced one should note, as The Times did, that “the Fountainebleau cut room rates to $199 a night” for the AFL-CIO meeting. According to federation PR director Denise Mitchell, “that’s less than it would cost for a hotel room in Washington.” What Mitchell failed to mention, of course, is that if she, Sweeney, and everyone else in Florida had simply stayed home in D.C.--commuting to an executive council session held in the federation’s roomy headquarters on 16th St. instead--the savings to our financially troubled U.S. labor movement would have been in the $400,000 range (according to one AFL insider).

But, just for a moment, let’s forget the bad press and wasted dues money that always results from allowing labor’s leadership to convene poolside in Miami in March, in such awkward last century fashion. Clearly, no one involved in planning this year’s council meeting anticipated the danger of sunstroke--and how it might publicly spawn an idea as barmy (and British) as creating a “Labor House of Lords.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of encouraging early, rather than later, retirement by the many “tired, uninspired leaders” who linger long past “their prime” in the labor movement. One who comes to mind immediately is Sweeney himself, now nearly 75 (and hanging on until September), a good five years beyond the age he once promised to step down as a “New Voice” in Washington

Although recently “redeployed” myself (I hate that other “R” word) from the Communications Workers of America, I remain part of the generation of Sixties’ radicals who went into labor to overthrow union establishments that were too “pale, male, and stale.” While some progress has been made, diversity-wise, on the first two fronts, I’m sad to report that organized labor today is still an appallingly geriatric institution. Four decades after 1968, “We have met the enemy…and it is us,” (as Pogo once said, in a different context).

Not only is ¾ of the union membership over the age of 35, but what passes for “new blood” at the top includes balding, gray-haired, and/or pot-bellied ‘68ers like the three “young turks” who turned on Sweeney four years ago—Andy Stern, Bruce Raynor, and John Wilhelm, the creators of “Change To Win.” These founding fathers have now fallen out among themselves so angling to succeed Sweeney today is another guy pushing sixty, my one-time colleague at the United Mine Workers back in the 1970s, Rich Trumka.

Does America’s already senescent “House of Labor” need an additional “House of Lords” where it can put people like this out to pasture in an “advisory” capacity, rather than keep them on “active duty” in top positions for the next ten to fifteen years, by which time, they—like Sweeney today—will be long past normal retirement age (and possibly in need of a cane?) I think not. There has to be a better way to deal with this problem (and one big union, the National Education Association, has already come up with it: term limits). Anyone who puts their glasses on and looks at the AFL-CIO Executive Council closely, knows that we already have a “Labor House of Lords.”  Many of our existing “labor peers” hold cushy high-paid, sometimes chauffer-driven jobs at national union affiliates of the AFL-CIO or CTW, which they are understandably reluctant to relinquish to their juniors (even when the “junior” in question is a blood relative!).

Let’s consider, for example, the problem of gerontocracy in AFSCME—the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, one of labor’s more “progressive” unions. AFSCME District Council-37 in New York City is one of it’s largest and most important local affiliates, with 125,000 members of all ages. Yet it is headed by a woman nearly 81-years old. Executive Director Lillian Roberts was in her “prime” back in the 1960s and ‘70s, when she served as Victor Gotbaum’s deputy at DC-37. When disgruntled members of her executive board tried to cut her pay from $250,000 to a mere $175,000 four years ago, she was able to respond with a lawsuit accusing 17 board members—five of them African-American--of race, sex, and age discrimination, a legal trifecta only possible in the U.S. labor movement (since, as screwed up as publicly traded companies can be, few keep 81-year olds around as the CEO).

Robert’s latest term isn’t up until next January, but, rumor has it, she’ll be announcing for another 3-year term this Fall!

Roberts has, unfortunately, raised the age bar for AFSCME’s two equally reluctant-to-retire national officers, Jerry McEntee and Bill Lucy, aged 74 and 75 respectively. Their problem is that neither will quit unless the other one does. So, as part of this open-ended “Odd Couple” stand-off at the top, both decided last year that they were still so invaluable to AFSCME  that they should run for new four-year terms. When those end in 2012, they’ll be almost as old as Roberts is now but, as just noted, she may still be holding the fort in NYC. Meanwhile, McEntee spends a good deal of time in Florida (even when the AFL-CIO executive council is not in session) and has long been propped up by his top assistant, Paul Booth. A one-time leader of Students for a Democratic Society, Booth has served AFSCME and his boss for so many years that he’s now rumored to be considering retirement himself (except that, at age 66, he’s really not old enough yet—at least by DC-37 or AFSCME headquarters’ standards).

In my own alma mater, another uncomfortably tethered duo—longtime CWA president Morty Bahr and secretary-treasurer Barbara Easterling—also clung to their jobs into their mid-to-late 70s, before finally departing for their own private versions of the proposed “Labor House of Lords.” As in AFSCME, where the problem is clearly far worse, this phenomena delayed the emergence of newer and “younger” national leadership for a good decade, while their eventual successors waited in the wings and grew old too. The problem obviously feeds on itself in the environment of the AFL-CIO executive council. For many of the years when Bahr was a member of that august body, he could look across the table at  meetings and see fellow New Yorker Moe Biller, from the American Postal Workers Union. Biller didn’t retire until he was 85, in 2001, dying just two years later. But, as long as Moe was still around, it wasn’t hard for other senior citizens in labor to feel they had lots of “good years” ahead of them too.

Whether this is good for anyone else is another question.

One academic expert consulted on the matter (who wished to remain anonymous) notes that this “geriatric culture” contributes to organizational stagnation because it “doesn’t train successors or build secondary leadership.” On the contrary, she says, it leads to “pushing people down behind you and always having a ‘Wait your turn” turn attitude,” toward ambitious underlings. She points out that mandatory retirement ages in Canadian, Australian, and Western European unions (an internal rule that would violate age discrimination statutes here) means that 60-something laborites there are forced to move on and find something else to do with their lives.

In the U.K, for example, this does sometimes mean they become “labor peers,” a form of Labor Party co-optation that’s long been controversial on the left, which favors abolition of the House of Lords.. In Canada, where labor also has more social weight and political clout than here, ex-union officials have joined NGOs, been named Canadian ambassadors, become academics, or remained public figures of other types; they don’t lose status and quickly disappear when they’re no longer on a union payroll.

Asks this observer: “For senior American trade unionists, when they step down, where can they go? What can they do?” Furthermore, it’s far too lucrative for top officials to remain on the headquarters payroll (particularly when they control it). Those in their 70s continue to collect hefty six-figure salaries, plus benefits from one or more generous private pension plans, plus their social security, all of which adds up to a big pile of cash, that would be substantially reduced, post-retirement. (With total AFL-CIO compensation of nearly $300,000, plus multiple pensions from the federation and SEIU, and that monthly social security check too, John Sweeney is one of the wealthiest grandfathers in the labor movement!)

So, if anyone in labor really wants “to encourage older union presidents to step aside,” they could start by eliminating the myriad financial incentives that keep them at their posts “long past their prime” (if they ever had one). One of the first perks to cut should be costly mid-winter, union-paid trips to the Fountainebleau in Florida. If forced to stay home for more AFL-CIO executive council meetings, maybe more council members would decide, sooner rather than later, to just stay home entirely.

Steve Early finished up his 27-year tour of active duty for CWA in 2007. He’s now the author of Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home, due out from Monthly Review Press in mid-May. He can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com) and the book ordered at www.monthlyreview.org/mrpress.htm

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