Last week, I wrote about workers who were fighting back against Wells Fargo after the bank cut off credit to Quad City Die Casting factory on Moline, Ill., causing the factory to close. This week Wells Fargo has cut off health care benefits to the workers, which the workers say violates federal labor laws.

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1174, which represents the workers, has responded by filing charges today with the National Labor Relations Board. The company also informed employees that Wells Fargo would not approve the expenditure of owed vacation pay, and the company has refused to pay a 2 percent wage increase due the employees under their legally binding collective bargaining agreement.

As Wells Fargo cuts off credit to Quad City and forces it to break its collective bargaining agreement with its workers, the bank has $25 billion in federal bailout funds that were intended in part to make credit more available to businesses.

“Wells Fargo first ends financing, forcing our company to close, and now they won’t pay us what we are owed by law. To us, our vacation, insurance and wages mean everything to our families. But to Wells Fargo it’s pennies, not even a blip in their billions. Yet they choose to cheat us out of what we have earned.” said Deb Johann, a union member employed at the factory.

According to management officials, Wells Fargo approves all expenditures by the company on a weekly basis. Workers are calling upon federal officials to investigate the practices of Wells Fargo.

The UE that represents workers at the plant is the same union that occupied Republic Windows and Doors last summer. Its members are engaging in direct action against Wells Fargo, calling on the bank to keep the plant open. Workers continue to demand that Wells Fargo do what is necessary to keep the company in business until a sale of the company is finalized. According to parties familiar with the discussions, there are currently several interested parties looking to make a bid to purchase Quad City Die Casting.

The union says that after having received $25 billion in bailout money, Wells Fargo has an obligation to promote economic recovery by keeping the plant open. UE Director of Organization Bob Kingsley said, “We can’t let this giant bank default on its obligation to the American people and the people of the Quad Cities. Wells Fargo is a roadblock to economic recovery.”

Growing up the son of a union organizer in Pittsburgh, PA, Mike Elk has been a part of the labor movement for nearly his entire life. Currently, he works on the health care reform team at Campaign for America’s Future. He has worked as a union organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) and the Obama-Biden Campaign. Mike served as a research fellow at the Instituto Marques de Salamanca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil helping to set up worker run cooperatives. When Mike is not scanning a twenty blogs at a time, he enjoys jazz, golden retrievers, and making friends of stranger. He blogs at Yinzer Solidarity.

The recent presidential election turmoil in Iran, regardless of the ‘truth’ behind the events, will undoubtedly have serious ramifications for the Islamic Republic on several fronts.

Chief among these is an inevitable blow to the Islamic Regime’s legitimacy, and its regional and global standing in the eyes of Iranians, the region’s population, and the world at large.

Within Iran, it is clear that a major rift among the population has manifested itself both on the streets and within the political and religious elite. On the one hand, millions of Iranian women and men have confirmed their frustration with the Regime and Mr. Ahmadinejad’s presidency through street demonstrations and direct action.

On the other, the handpicked candidates who were actually allowed the privilege of participating in the presidential elections by the ‘Supreme Leader’ together with their more powerful backers behind the scenes have turned on each other in a surprisingly public and vitriolic manner.

What began as a positive and welcome show of openness in televised live debates among the candidates quickly turned into allegations of election fraud by the losing side almost as soon as the polls closed. This was swiftly followed by a fierce crackdown against public dissent – ironically, just over a week after the 20th anniversary of Tienanmen Square.

This week, workers at Hartmarx Factory won a major victory against Wells Fargo, as Wells Fargo agreed to keep their factory open. The story of the Hartmarx workers had drawn national attention as they threatened to occupy their factory if Wells Fargo closed it. Their victory yesterday represents a major triumph in the growing trend of factory sit ins that started last December when workers, members of United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago

Last January, Hartmarx, the maker of men’s apparel and an employer of nearly 4,000 people, filed for bankruptcy after Wells Fargo refused to extend them a line of credit. Wells Fargo then pushed for the company to be liquidated in order to increase their short term profits. They favored liquidating the factory and laying off the 4,000 workers despite the fact that there were proposals by several groups to purchase the company and keep it running.

The workers, members of SEIU, refused to accept the bank’s ruling and decided to do something about it. The workers said they were inspired after having gone to see a speaking tour of members of who had occupied Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. They then decided that perhaps they should consider threatening to occupy their plant in order to force the bank to keep it open. The workers then voted to sit-in to occupy that plant if Wells Fargo decided to liquidate it and drew national media attention to their story.

As a result of the worker’s resolve to fight the company, they received a large degree of political and community support. Over 43 members of Congress signed a letter calling on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to investigate Wells Fargo’s use of bailout money. Congressman Phil Hare, a former worker at Harmarx, promised to be Wells Fargo’s “worst nightmare” if they closed the plant. Finally, State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias brought Wells Fargo to their knees when he threatened to cut off $8 billion dollars worth of business that the state does with Wells Fargo if they closed the plant

As a result of the union members’ activism, community pressure and politicians’ threat to take action against Wells Fargo, the union was able to force the bank to accept a bid from another company to keep the plant open. The final decision represents a major victory in the worker sit-in movement against the banks. The victory at Hartmarx confirms the growing trend that I wrote about last week that whenever these banks are challenged through direct action in a visible, public way that they always fold to demands.

Now the fight moves onto a plant across town from Hartmarx in Moline, Illinois. Wells Fargo has cut off credit to Quad City Die Casting factory. Workers at the plant, who are members of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE), the same union that occupied Republic Windows and Doors last summer, are engaging in direct action against Wells Fargo as they call for Wells Fargo to keep the plant open. So far, Wells Fargo has refused to even sit down with the union and negotiate. The union though has not been dissuaded and promises to continuing fighting the banksters of Wells Fargo.

Last week, UE held protests at over 20 cities throughout the country to protest Wells Fargo. In addition, a delegation from their union visited over 100 congressional offices last week to call for an investigation into how Wells Fargo is using its bailout money. The union charges that after having received $25 billion in bailout money that Wells Fargo has an obligation to look to promote economic recovery by keeping the plant open. Speaking at the protest in Davenport, Iowa, UE Director of Organization Bob Kingsley said, “We can’t let this giant bank default on its obligation to the American people and the people of the Quad Cities. Wells Fargo is a roadblock to economic recovery.”

Now the question is whether we as the progressive movement will join them in solidarity to support keeping factories open. Please go to UE’s website and send a letter to your congressman calling on them to investigate how Wells Fargo has refused to spend its $25 billion in bailout money to support economic recovery. Our resolve as a movement to support the struggle of workers at Quad City Die Casting will determine our ability to support this growing worker uprising to fight banks that have destroyed our economy. Keeping good American manufacturing jobs such as the union jobs at Quad City Die Casting in this country is key to creating a successful economic revival not built on the speculative bubbles of the past. Its time that banks like Wells Fargo get out of the way on the road to economic recovery.

Growing up the son of a union organizer in Pittsburgh, PA, Mike Elk has been a part of the labor movement for nearly his entire life. Currently, he works on the health care reform team at Campaign for America’s Future. He has worked as a union organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) and the Obama-Biden Campaign. Mike served as a research fellow at the Instituto Marques de Salamanca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil helping to set up worker run cooperatives. When Mike is not scanning a twenty blogs at a time, he enjoys jazz, golden retrievers, and making friends of stranger. He blogs at Yinzer Solidarity.

(originally posted at MWC News)

“You must be celebrating,” the interviewer from a popular radio station told me after Netanyahu’s speech. “After all, he is accepting the plan which you proposed 42 years ago!” (Actually it was 60 years ago, but who is counting?)

The front page of Haaretz carried an article by Gideon Levy, in which he wrote that “the courageous call of Uri Avnery and his friends four decades ago is now being echoed, though feebly, from end to end (of the Israeli political spectrum).”

I would be lying if I denied feeling a brief glow of satisfaction, but it faded quickly. This was no “historic” speech, not even a “great” speech. It was a clever speech.

It contained some sanctimonious verbiage to appease Barack Obama, followed right away by the opposite, to pacify the Israeli extreme right. Not much more.

NETANYAHU DECLARED that “our hand is extended for peace.”

In my ears, that rang a bell: in the 1956 Sinai war, a member of my editorial staff was attached to the brigade that conquered Sharm-al-Sheikh. Since he had grown up in Egypt, he interviewed the senior captured Egyptian officer, a colonel. “Every time David Ben-Gurion announced that his hand was stretched out for peace,” the Egyptian told him, “we were put on high alert.”

And indeed, that was Ben-Gurion’s method. Before every provocation he would declare that “our hands are extended for peace”, adding conditions that he knew were totally unacceptable to the other side. Thus an ideal situation (for him) was created: The world saw Israel as a peace-loving country, while the Arabs looked like serial peace-killers. Our secret weapon is the Arab refusal, it used to be joked in Jerusalem at the time.

This week, Netanyahu wheeled out the same old trick.

I do not underrate, of course, the significance of the chief of the Likud uttering the two words: “Palestinian state”.

Words carry political weight. Once released into the world, they have a life of their own. Unlike dogs, they cannot be called back.

In a popular Israeli love song, the boy asks the girl: “When you say no, what do you mean?” One could well ask: When Netanyahu says yes, what does he mean?

But even if the words “Palestinian state” passed his lips only under duress, and when Netanyahu has no intention at all of turning them into reality, it is still important that the head of the government and the chief of the Likud was compelled to utter them. The idea of the Palestinian state has now become a part of the national consensus, and only a handful of ultra-rightists reject it directly. But this is only the beginning. The main struggle will be about turning the idea into reality.

The entire speech was addressed to one single person: Barack Obama. It was not designed to appeal to the Palestinians. It was quite clear that the Palestinians are only the passive object of a discussion between the President of the USA and the Prime Minister of Israel. Except in some tired old clichés, Netanyahu spoke about them, not to them.

He is ready, so he says, to conduct negotiations with the “Palestinian community”, and that, of course, “without preconditions”. Meaning: without Palestinian preconditions. On Netanyahu’s part, there are plenty of preconditions, every one of which is designed to make certain that no Palestinian, no Arab and indeed no Muslim will agree to enter negotiations.

The fact that regular citizens have been largely excluded from the debate over financial regulation on Capitol Hill was underscored most vividly when Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, said last month that “frankly the banks own the place.”

But this week a coalition of citizens groups have taken the offensive, organizing to demand a seat at the table in making a bank system that works for all of us, not just corporate profiteers. As part of that effort, a group of organizations including Campaign for America’s Future, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and A New Way Forward met on Capitol Hill today to discuss a growing citizen’s movement to bring the voice of working families to the debate over banking system reform.

Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, argued at the event, at the Rayburn House Office Building, that financial reform is important not just to rebuilding our economy, but to fixing our democracy. As banks grow bigger through deals and mergers, they increase their ability to corrupt the political process through campaign contributions and lobbyists. The more banks grow, the more money they have available to use this influence lawmakers to write rules in their favor and prey on ordinary Americans through predatory lending and other practices. Most recently, we have seen a particularly gross example of this: grossest major banks using our taxpayer money via the bailout to lobby against very popular legislation that would allow judges in bankruptcy cases to readjust homeowner mortgages at current market rates.

Johnson argued that the sense of crisis that has driven a populist push to break up so -called “too-big-to-fail” banks this spring In the wake of the bailout and outrage over AIG bonuses scandals has diminished as the media drums up the myth that the economy is recovering. However, the financial crisis remains very real for ordinary Americans: Unemployment is on the verge of reaching nearly 10 percent and foreclosures are increasing as laid-off workers are unable to pay their mortgages.

Financial reform is one that we as a progressive movement need to begin dramatically organizing around, Johnson said. He estimated will be an approximately five-year-long fight. Similar fights over breaking up trusts in the early 1900’s and regulating Wall Street during the New Deal took equally as long and required a great deal of public pressure to achieve real reform. The fight won’t be easy, it will be long, it will require serious organizing done by citizens taking to the street to be heard in order to create a Wall Street that works for Main Street.

In this vein, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and A New Way Forward are sponsoring over 100 events today throughout the country, from rallies to town hall meetings with elected officials to community organizing meetings. In Chicago, workers of United Electrical Workers from Moline, Ill. , whose factory Quad City Die Casting is being liquidated by Wells Fargo, are marching today threatening to occupy their factory, following the lead of workers who occupied and successfully reopened Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago back in December. As John Taylor, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition said, “In the era of ‘too big to fail,’ the public must be too loud to be ignored. Today’s actions, in communities across America, loudly say that enough is enough—it’s time to return integrity and trust to the financial system.”

The fight over financial reform is important not just in reforming the financial system, but showing the progressive movement’s ability to defeat special interests. At today’s event, Mike Lux, author of the Progressive Revolution and honorary co-chair of a New Way Forward, argued In order for the Obama administration to be successful, it must be able to take on these big lobbies. Every time the administration succeeds in defeating one major lobby, it will make passing subsequent reforms easier. Lux argued that when you have early success against special interests, as FDR did in his first 100 days, it weakens the choke-hold that special interests often have on lawmakers.and makes passing subsequent reforms easier.

The fight over banking reform is a crucial battle in the progressive movement’s drive to put people power back into the political process. Now is the time to get involved. Visit A New Way Forward and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition to see how you can get involved in events happening across the country.

Growing up the son of a union organizer in Pittsburgh, PA, Mike Elk has been a part of the labor movement for nearly his entire life. Currently, he works on the health care reform team at Campaign for America’s Future. He has worked as a union organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) and the Obama-Biden Campaign. Mike served as a research fellow at the Instituto Marques de Salamanca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil helping to set up worker run cooperatives. When Mike is not scanning a twenty blogs at a time, he enjoys jazz, golden retrievers, and making friends of stranger. He blogs at Yinzer Solidarity.

(Sometimes the only reasonable response to farcical world events is humor - ed.)

Various agencies and periodicals reported on June 12 that 13, or maybe 17, Uighur (pronounced wee-gurr) prisoners from the camp at Guantanamo Bay will be resettled in the Pacific island republic of Palau. The men, who are from Xinjiang province in western China, speak a Turkic language. They were “captured” by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. Probably they had come to the area to train for attacks against Chinese police and officials.

In 2008 the Bush administration decided after a mere seven years in captivity that the Uighurs were not “enemy combatants” as far as the U.S. was concerned. But if they were sent back to China, they would surely be treated even worse than they were in Gitmo. Hence a search began for some place that would take them; after 100 countries refused, the quest ended with a warm reception by a “tropical tourist getaway,” Palau. Life there, among some 20,000 mostly Christian inhabitants, will be a little different from what the Uighurs knew before 2001. Urumqi, the dusty capital of Xinjiang province, is known as “the most remote city from any sea in the world.”

Obviously this occasion calls for a song, so here it is.

Wastin’ Away not in Uighurville (lyrics by R. Thurston, with apologies to Jimmy Buffett)

Wastin’ away I’m not in Uighurville
Where are my lost camels and sand?
Some people say Mr. Obama’s to blame
But I recognize Dick Cheney’s hand

Wastin’ away and it’s not Uighurville
Can’t go home now I’m banned
In Kabul they sold me
To Cuba they told me
But Gitmo was not quite the real promised land

Wastin’ away and not in Uighurville
My AK’s not at hand
They say I’m in Palau
And where the hell’s that now?
Their pig meat is not the food I had planned

Wastin’ away I’m far from Uighurville
Wishin’ for that old Taliban
My guards are all meanies
They’re wearing bikinis
Somehow it’s just not Afghanistan.

Even as President Barrack Obama waxed eloquent in Cairo, Egypt, on the moral imperatives of the community of nations, public opinion polls released in the United States revealed that, by a substantial percentage, its citizens believe torture is an acceptable option for interrogation of suspects deemed terrorists by various US governmental agencies. In addition, other polls show a majority of the American public hold the opinion that the all American theme park of state torture, located at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open for business and continue to welcome guests from around the globe, taking them for the ride of their lives through the dark id of the American psyche.

These revelations should not come as a shock. Torture, official secrecy, and other sundry apparatus and accouterments of the national security state are about the only viable enterprises remaining in this declining nation. Moreover, one of the defining traits of the insecure (both among men and nations) is to stand, bristling in a paranoid posture, with feet planted in stubborn defiance of changing circumstances, snarling at invisible threats and imagined affronts, as life moves on with indifferent grace.

Recently, in the latest in a series of setbacks and self-inflicted wounds, the national identity of the United States sustained another humiliating blow when General Motors was driven into a ditch, declared totaled, and then stripped and sold for spare parts. This event throws a rod into the smoking engine block of the nation’s dream machine: The automobiles manufactured in Detroit were once symbols of American power, freedom of mobility, even sexual allure. But the world has sped ahead, leaving the US wheezing dust in its wake: The era of high horsepower and American ascendancy, with its glinting chrome conceit and reenforced steel illusions of unassailable power, now sits upon concrete blocks rusting in the automobile graveyard of history.

At present, and for many years now, the American automobile culture has meant little more than feckless commuters stalled in traffic, alternatively sullen and seething in their powerlessness. Yet, this is not the time to throw a populist pity party: The people of the nation face a future circumscribed by their own lack of self-awareness and their refusal of civic engagement. Year after year, they have displayed avidity for little more than the rigged, roadside attractions of the corporate carnival; hence, traffic is heavy on this lost highway, all lanes are jammed on the superhighway to Clowntown, U.S.A.

The editorial page of the New York Times today attacked Senator Chris Dodd for his receipt of fundraising contributions from pay day lenders and, according to them, subsequently not acting to reform pay day lending laws to cap interest rates.  They write:

Forget what it looked like, this was a private fund-raiser by Mr. Johnson for his friend Mr. Dodd, not payday lenders wooing a senator whose committee was considering a bill that could seriously cramp their business.

That bill, sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, caps interest rates on consumer loans at 36 percent. That’s the reasonable limit that Congress placed on loans to members of the armed forces.

Mr. Dodd, who was recently praised after Congress passed a bill limiting abuses by credit-card companies, should follow the same crusading impulse to go after the egregious exploitation of payday loans. He should avoid even the slightest hint that he is cozying up to it.

Unfortunately, the Times has gone off more than half-cocked.  Dodd not only supports reforming pay day lending and has voted for it repeatedly in the past, but he’s a cosponsor of the Durbin legislation in question.

On May 13th, Dodd voted was one of only 33 senators to vote in favor of Bernie Saunders amendment to provide even stricter interest rate caps than the Durbin legislation.

On May 23rd, the Hartford Courant reported:

In a conference call with reporters Friday, Dodd said there are still two major issues that remain unfinished business: a cap on interest rates and limits on fees that merchants pay when a customer uses a credit card for a purchase.

You can go back in history and see many other votes and other statements that have shown Chris Dodd’s commitment to protecting worker Americans’ interests when it comes to usurious lending. But what is most stunning is that the Times ran an editorial criticizing Dodd for being so close to pay day lenders that he wouldn’t support legislation capping their interest rates when he is a cosponsor of the legislation in question.

I don’t know if the NY Times knew that Dodd had cosponsored this legislation when they chose to run their op-ed. I hope that it’s the case that they simply failed to do their basic fact checking before running it. Because if the Times knew that Dodd had cosponsored this legislation yesterday, it would mean that they ran an op-ed attacking a senator for giving undue influence to contributors and not sticking up for working Americans when they knew that he in fact was doing the exact opposite of what his contributors want and is standing up for working Americans.

It’s quite common elected officials to receive campaign contributions from corporations and industries that they’re trying to regulate. The act of them receiving this money, while not always savory, does not in itself constitute any form of obligation for the official to act on the corporation or industry’s behalf. In fact, it can be an opportunity for a public servant to show that they are beholden to no one other than the interests of the voting public.

That’s precisely what Chris Dodd has done when it comes to any number of financial players who have contributed to his campaigns over the years. From banks to credit card companies to the insurance industry and now, especially, pay day lenders, Dodd has held true to his Democratic values of protecting the interests of working Americans and not been swayed by campaign lucre.

What’s so unfortunate is that the New York Times is unwilling or incapable of identifying the clear difference  between the people who give Dodd money and the interests on whose behalf Dodd legislates. The two aren’t even in the same ballpark.

The simple fact is that the New York Times fundamentally missed the mark in their editorial attacking Chris Dodd. At best the attack comes from a failure to do their due diligence before publishing. At worst, the Times has maliciously attacked a man for doing precisely what they say he should be doing.

Update:

Tparty at My Left Nutmeg adds more:

As both Chair of the Banking Committee and a  vulnerable incumbent up for re-election, Dodd will continue to be a huge target for those looking to influence politics and/or policy on all sides, and sorting through competing arguments and knocking down spurious claims is apparently going to be a challenge for a traditional media still largely uninterested in doing that type of real work. But at the very least, Dodd deserves accurate reporting and praise when he does the right thing, even if that means re-writing an editorial before it goes to press - or printing a correction after it does.

I’d have to imagine Senator Dodd is pushing for a correction to the editorial. Who knows if they’ll get it? But unfortunately more people will read this editorial than will read the correction, even if it is forthcoming.

(originally posted at Hold Fast Blog)

Matt Browner-Hamlin is a writer, activist, and organizer living in Washington DC. He currently works at SEIU and previously worked on Chris Dodd’s presidential campaign and Mark Begich’s Senate campaign. This post represents his views alone and does not represent his employer or former employers.

Oilman T. Boone Pickens has proposed that Congress include billions of dollars of subsidies in a future energy bill to encourage the trucking industry to convert some of its trucks to run on natural gas. Mr. Pickens says the cost is justified by the benefit of reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, especially from places like the Middle East. In an email to supporters, he recently wrote, “If we can get just 350,000 of the 6.5 million 18-wheelers running on natural gas, we can cut our foreign oil dependence by over five percent…. About a quarter of [imported oil] is used for diesel fuel to run 18-wheelers.”

Unfortunately, Pickens’ numbers don’t add up and the subsidies could slow efforts to reduce gasoline consumption and green-house gas emissions.

After the invitation to join NATO was extended to Georgia and Ukraine last year, Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev’s cries that NATO’s expansion is simply another form of Cold War isolation continue to grow louder. Their increased effort at building up the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) - the Soviet response to NATO, consisting of Armenia, Kazakhstan and other allies - underscores these objections.

Since Medvedev announced CSTO’s creation on February 4^th, Russia’s expedited its efforts to establish this pseudo-NATO. A source from the Russian Foreign Ministry may hinted at the source of their urgency, saying “the work is being conducted in all directions. It will be a purely military structure that will be set up to maintain security in Central Asia in case of attack from the outside.” Many are viewing this statement as a warning to Western nations not to meddle in Russia’s foreign affairs.