James Hoffa, Jr. is trying to make it look like he is reforming the Teamsters by forcing out Robert Hogan, former President of Teamsters Local 714, a member of a long time, corruption prone union family.
The IRB alleged that Hogan had acted against the best interests of union members by hiring Robert Riley as a business agent and organizing director, even though Riley had been barred from the union. The IRB also charged that the local union was failing to represent its membership, had corrupt relationships with companies where members worked, and was using favoritism and nepotism to secure jobs for associates of the Hogan family.
Hogan’s family have been union thugs since the Depression era, but he has at last signed an agreement with the Independent Review Board (IRB) of Teamsters National that he will leave all union activities behind and never again attempt to become involved with the Teamsters.
Naturally, Hogan claims he is a victim of Hoffa’s political triangulation and that he is totally innocent.
Local 714 has been under the control of the national union since June of this year, with Hoffa claiming he is making inroads into eliminating the corruption of this long-time, troubled local.
Time will tell, but it would be shocking if it turned out to be true instead of just a turn over from one group of corrupt officials for the newest set of corrupt union officials. Here’s the new boss, same as the old boss.
Members of the carpenters union in New York City have ruined any chance that authorities there will take their union out of government oversight by beating unconscious William Davenport, a union dissident running for office in the union.
After an August 5 candidates forum, the candidate was beaten by members of the union audience outside a church. Outside a CHURCH!
This thuggery along with continued Mob involvement, indictments and convictions on corruption of union members convinced Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. not to release the union from government oversight.
The assault last week on the dissident union candidate, William Davenport, undermined the union’s assertions of a change in its internal culture. Mr. Davenport, according to several accounts, was heckled when he spoke at the union meeting, which was attended by about 500 members. Despite the presence of two retired police detectives hired to maintain order, a group of men stood up in the front rows and screamed, according to one longtime union dissident who was there.
One union member said that “It was disgraceful — thugs took over the meeting.” I’d say that thugs are more common in unions than not.
In any case, the carpenters are outta luck to get control of their union back. The judge did mention that the union had done better since it originally went into government oversite, but that it is way too early to claim that the Mob influence and corruption is excised from the union. We may all have a long, long wait for that to happen.
In the meantime, the corrupot, mob infested, thug populated New York City carpenters union will stay under the control of government watchdogs. Good thing, too.
You may recall the news that the brother of the chief of the group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) stole $1 million dollars from the organization? Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade, embezzled the money in 2000.
Well, now it has been determined who tried to secretly pay off the theft so that no one would get in trouble. It appears that Drummond Pike of the Tides Foundation a purveyor of leftist tropes, slipped ACORN the cool mil so that Wade Rathke could keep his little bro out of jail.
As the New York Times reports, the Tides Foundation has since 2000 provided over $400 million dollars to various far left organizations and causes. The Tides Foundation has said that none of their money went to ACORN and that Pike was on a “leave of absence” from their board.
ACORN did its level best to keep everything secret and off the books, too. They way they tried to paper over the theft and pay back is worthy of the best cloak-and-dagger book plot.
That agreement was carried on the books of an affiliate, Citizens Consulting Inc., as a loan to an officer. Sometime in June, Mr. Pike bought the loan from the affiliate, according to e-mail messages between senior executives at Acorn that were provided to a reporter by Acorn employees, who requested anonymity because they feared losing their jobs.
But e-mail messages among Acorn’s senior executives discuss how to keep Mr. Pike’s identity secret, even as they acknowledge that some of the foundations and philanthropic advisers that have supported Acorn and its affiliates know that he bought the note.
All this secrecy is alarming. It should be stressed that this was done to hide the theft from authorities to shield the criminal brother of founder Rathke as well as to hide a potentially embarrassing situation from becoming public knowledge.
And these are the sorts of crooks and cover-up artists that imagine they should be the ones running the economy as well as the rest of the country! They are also the ones closest to Barack Obama and the people he WILL be bringing into government should he win the White House.
Denver right-to-work balloters won a small victory last week when a judge accepted the legitimacy of the gathered signatures on their ballot effort by tossing out a nuisance lawsuit brought against them by unions.
The union representatives sought to have more than the legally required amount of petition signatures verified hoping to have Amendment 47 thrown out. But Judge Christina Habas said she had no authority to do so.
Judge Christina Habas ruled Wednesday that she doesn’t have the authority to review every signature submitted by the right-to-work group. State law limits the court’s jurisdiction to the random sample reviewed by the Colorado secretary of state’s office, she said.
The Judge determined that the Colorado Secretary of State followed the proper procedures to verify the signatures on the ballots and therefore Amendment 47, a move to ban forced paying of union dues, is legal and correct.
Amendment 47 spokesman Kelley Harp said Thursday the ruling shows that the allegations are “frivolous.”
It goes to show that unions will go to any lengths from intimidation, to threats, to any manner of nuisance lawsuits to thwart the ability of people to democratically vote and have their voices heard.
This expose is cross posted from NoQuarter. Here is the link: http://noquarterusa.net/blog/.
Irrefutable evidence indicates that Obama’s campaign has been doing business with CSI, which appears to have been operating fraudulently in the State of Maryland and Ohio, and ACORN, which has been associated with a laundry list of fraudulent business practices. The full nature of the relationship between ACORN and Citizens Services Inc is not known but this much is clear: both share the same address in
New Orleans and officials with CSI refer folks to ACORN for questions about “political consulting” and “Get-Out-The-Vote” activities. These are questions that mainstream media should examine.
According to Wikipedia, ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, was founded in 1970 as “a community organization of low- and moderate-income families that addresses housing, schools, neighborhood safety, health care, job conditions, and other social issues that affect its members.” Voter registration has been a major activity for the organization and ACORN has been working actively to register voters on behalf of the Obama campaign. According to the Milwaukee Journal Online,
The ACORN effort is part of a massive voter registration drive aimed at the fall presidential election, which is expected to pit Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
Although voter registration and Get Out the Vote drives seem like noble activities, in fact, not all of ACORNs dealings have been legal, and once again ACORN is facing investigation for illegal voter registration:
Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them.
This is not the first time that ACORN has been under criminal investigation. I have already looked at Obama’s connections to ACORN and put into context ACORN’s fraudulent activities during the primary election season here, and here. In fact, the same Wiki entry list five earlier indictments:
One of the most annoying sayings in American politics is “what happens in California will next happen in the rest of the country” as if California is always at the cusp of all the good ideas in politics. Well, apparently the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) is finding that old bromide not very helpful because its latest political coup failed to pass in California. So, in true never-say-die union thug fashion, the SEIU is reversing the truism. It didn’t work in California, so they are trying to force it on the rest of the nation anyway.
The Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal has an interesting little story on how the SEIU is taking their legislative fight against Private Equity firms to Congress since they lost their battle in the California State House to force the PEs into stricter regulation.
It seems that the SEIU thinks that the PEs should have greater transparency in their investing practices. The SEIU imagines that it should be allowed to create rules for the PEs to reveal all sorts of information on their investments they currently don’t have to disclose.
Of course, what the SEIU is trying to do here is use that info to root out what investments that the PEs have with non union companies and then use that info to try to pressure the PEs into closer involvement with unions.
In any case, the transparency law failed in Sacramento so the SEIU is now shifting focus to Congress to try and force the bill that failed in California on all of us.
It is interesting how the unions are trying to force other people to comply with more transparency laws when unions have always fought tooth-and-nail to defeat transparency laws when it comes to their own business!
Donald Lambro had a great piece warning about the promises that Barack Obama has quietly made to the nation’s unions on August 8. Of course, we have talked about it many times here on the blog, but the union’s “card check” plan in their so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” is a bad, bad bit of policy that would deprive union members of one of the oldest benefits of a democracy: the secret ballot.
Lambro does remind us of Obama’s union promises, but he makes two great points that I have not really seen discussed.
Firstly, Lambro mentions that Obama’s union support has been quiet.
Obama doesn’t talk about this issue much before general audiences, but it his No. 1 promise when he speaks to unions — pledging that the so-called Employee Free Choice Act will become law in 2009 if he wins the presidency in November.
Unlike past candidates, Barack Obama has not used his union support very obviously in stump speeches. Its as if he is trying to hide from the general voting public his union support. This is an interesting observation.
Secondly, Lambro brings out a singular fact that should be talked about more often.
The House passed the card-check bill last year, but when it went to the Senate, it fell nine votes short of the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster. With predictions of a six-seat Democratic gain in the Senate this year, Obama Democrats hope they can get just close enough to a 60-vote majority to pass this dangerous and very anti-democratic legislation.
If John McCain does not win and the GOP loses more seats n the Senate, a victory for the anti-democratic unions seems a sure thing. We anti-unionists should be discussing this thin wall blocking “card check” in the Senate far more often than we have.
The L.A.Times had a great investigative story this week about typical union corruption. Before going into the story, I’ll remind you that Barack Obama is promising the unions that he will gut the Office of Labor Management Standards responsible for rooting out and prosecuting union corruption. It seems Obama thinks unions are innocent until their corruption is ignored later.
Now, as to the Times story, what he have is typical union cronyism and corruption writ large. Paul Pringle of the Times give us “Union, charity paid thousands to firms owned by official’s relatives” in which we discover the sort of union cronyism that we find in nearly every union everywhere, especially in the Service Employee International Union (SEIU).
California’s largest union local and a related charity have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization’s president, documents and interviews show.
Bad enough that union chiefs are setting their spouses and other family members with businesses ready made to take union contracts that might be giving the union legitimate services, but it isn’t just about favored companies getting favored contracts. It’s also about waste of union members’ dues.
The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show.
In addition, the union paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee. And a now-defunct minor league basketball team coached by the president’s brother-in-law received $16,000 for what the union described as public relations, according to the union’s U.S. Labor Department filings and interviews.
Naturally, the union head is giving the wide-eyed “who me?” response saying that he did nothing wrong. But, check out the improprieties the Times notes in their story.
Payments to the company owned by Freeman’s wife were among the local’s largest single expenses last year. Payments by the charity, the Homecare Workers Training Center, to his mother-in-law’s firm represented more than 10% of the nonprofit’s total annual expenditures.
A housing corporation that Freeman helped found as a nonprofit has not been granted the IRS tax-exempt status it sought and was suspended from doing business in California. It also has claimed on its website to have a “strong relationship” with the prominent California Community Foundation, which says it has no such relationship.
The union spent at least $123,000 more on the fund-raising tournament at the Four Seasons Resort in Carlsbad than it received in reimbursements, according to Labor Department filings and interviews. Freeman said the event made money for the charity. The union’s expenditures included $100,000 in payments to entities associated with former professional football star Eric Dickerson, which have been suspended from doing business in California. The payments were listed as donations to nonprofits, not as fund-raising expenses.
The local’s nearly $10,000 tab at the Grand Havana Room, a cigar lounge known for its celebrity clientele and invitation-only memberships, was for “lodging,” according to the union’s annual financial report. A Grand Havana spokeswoman said the club does not provide accommodations. Freeman declined to characterize the expenditure, and after The Times inquired about it, he said he had refunded it.
Of COURSE its legitimate to pay your family members such tremendous sums for “poverty fighting” when the members of your union paying you the dues to make these expenditures make average $9.00 and hour!
They man in charge of this profligate spending is a union chief named Tyrone Freeman and he makes $215,000 a year as union chief. He also racked up $41,500 in restaurant expenses last year, too — far more than the largest number of his union members make in a year. And I’ll bet he says that corporate heads make too much, eh?
Anyway, there’s a lot more to this tale of waste and avarice. The Times did a great job of raising questions and reporting the lavish spending. Go on over and read this disgusting story of normal union behavior. And remember, Barack Obama wants to assist unions to do more of this sort of wasteful spending and wants to help union officials stuff their pockets with poor members’ dues money.
Interestingly, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on TV, radio and print ads helping Washington State’s Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire get reelected. This is the same Governor that the SEIU is negotiating a new contract with for state workers in that union. Naturally, Gregoire’s Republican opponents are crying conflict of interest, and its hard to deny their charge.
Republican candidate for Gov. Dino Rossi is saying that this is a definite conflict of interest. “When you have one party, whether it’s Republican or Democrat,” Rossi said, “that’s in power for so long, you end up with the appearance of institutional corruption, and that’s what this looks like.”
Rossi is also pointing to the favors Gregoire gave to Indian Casino owners for campaign support as a conflict.
The complaints don’t stop there. State Republicans suggest there is a pattern that started with a deal Gregoire made with Indian gaming tribes, which helped bankroll the second recount that put Gregoire into office.
The governor had approved a major expansion of gambling but scrapped a provision requiring casinos to give the state a cut of the profits — a provision demanded by every other state with tribal gaming.
“When you drive up a $2.7 billion budget deficit by treating those very, very well that contribute to your campaign and your re-election, that’s where the red flags go up,” Republican state Rep. Doug Ericksen said.
Naturally, neither Gregoire, nor the Indian tribe officials, nor the SEIU’s officials wanted to comment on the story.
In any case, after the stolen 2006 election, its a sure thing that the GOP is looking for everything they can use to gain votes this time.
On August 8, George McGovern had an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal that astounds for the fact that it runs counter to union aims.
In it, McGovern warns the unions against their woefully misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act,” the legislation that has as one of its main goals the elimination of democratic styled, secret balloting for union elections. Unions actually wish to eliminate the union member’s ability to keep his vote private. This act will serve to put pressure on union voters to conform to the union’s party line because, after all, every vote they make as individuals will be open for their union bosses to see.
Saying that voting is an “immense privilege,” McGovern worries that the unions are abut to destroy that privilege.
That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans. As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.
The legislation is called the Employee Free Choice Act, and I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.
And McGovern tells his fellow Democrats that “we cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election.”
McGovern sums up with the following warning:
I worry that there has been too little discussion about EFCA’s true ramifications, and I think much of the congressional support is based on a desire to give our friends among union leaders what they want. But part of being a good steward of democracy means telling our friends “no” when they press for a course that in the long run may weaken labor and disrupt a tried and trusted method for conducting honest elections.
I have to say that, for once, George McGovern is on the right side of an issue. I welcome his support to stop the card check system being implemented. However, I doubt his voice will be heard by the radical left, sadly.
Nobody is grinning wider about Barack Obama’s lead in the polls than big union bosses. This election is their best shot in a half-century to make over Washington.
If they can capture the White House, the House of Representatives, and produce a filibuster-proof Senate, they are looking at the biggest rewrite of labor law in modern history.
If this happens, The Wall Street Journal says, it “could lead to higher payroll and health costs for companies already being hurt by rising fuel and commodities costs and the tough economic climate.” In turn, all prices go up for you, too. Read the rest of this entry »
On August 6, the Boston Herald reported the good news that Boston’s Retirement Board finally turned down the disability retirement claim of a fireman that was filmed participating in a bodybuilding contest even as he claimed that permanent back injuries suffered on the job had ended his firefighting career. The Herald hoped this decision heralded the end of the constant corruption of the Retirement Board that had become “a virtual adjunct of the firefighters union.”
Perhaps there might be hope that the corrupt Retirement Board is reforming what with the retirement of executive officer Robert E. Tierney who is leaving under a cloud of suspicion of corruption — and may be jumping ship just ahead of charges being brought against him.
Hopeful the Herald wonders if the backlog of undecided disability cases will soon be addressed as soon to be former executive officer Tierney allowed nearly 100 cases to sit unaddressed. Conveniently for the firefighters who have filed their disability requests, they continue to receive their salaries tax-free while they await the decision of their cases.
Naturally, the denied firefighter (Albert Arroyo) will appeal the decision and will continue to get his salary tax-free while he awaits that decision. Not only that, but he will not be required to pay back his previous ill gotten salary.
But let’s not get our hopes up. After all, cronyism still rules the day in the Boston Fire union. For instance, the union employs one Larry Curran as a lobbyist on Beacon Hill (the State Capitol). Curran is also currently the Chairman of the Retirement Board. As it happens Curran announced that he is not seeking re-election this year. It turns out that Boston Fire Union President Ed Kelly is running his own brother to fill Curran’s soon to be vacated seat.
Yes, cronyism is alive and well in the Boston Fire Union. So, I doubt we’ll be seeing the cozy relationship between the Fire Union and the Retirement Board clearing up anytime soon. Corruption has become a way of life, after all.
August 6, 2008 - 2:08 pm - Posted by Union Labeler
KRQE in Albuquerque exposes ACORN voter registration done by thieves, child rapists, and drug dealers. ACORN does not currently perform background checks on their workers, but don’t worry… they’re “thinking about it.”
Members of the carpenters union in New York City have 
