Archive for the ‘Andy Stern’ Category

This is the obama administration; this is hate; this is what obama/soros want for our nation.
This is the evil they belong to. Stand up and be counted to fight against this evil democrap/marxist/anti-God/Amer­ican hoard. Be prepared and vote!

Is this what fundamental transformation looks like?

In an op-ed on the Huffington Post, former SEIU president Andy Stern decided to get all “Founding Fathers” with his audience. He went back, way back, to the time of male, powdered wigs and the Federalist Papers. His thesis: you know those checks and balances the old guys put in place? Yeah, they’re just kind of getting in the way of change.

“American democracy has layers of power and responsibility, which James Madison rationalized in Federalist, no. 51 as a check against possible tyrannical rule,” Stern writes. “Our Founding Fathers saw fit to divide power between two strata — state and federal. Then, within the federal structure, they codified a trifurcation of power to ensure that no single branch came to dominate government; and while power has ebbed and flowed between branches, the system of checks and balances has provided stability, and kept tyrannical rule at bay.”

But today, he goes on to say, that system is just so, well, old:

Now, however, in the midst of the transformative change of globalization and this third economic revolution, those layers have become an impediment to making the changes necessary to keep America competitive in the world economy. Today, America crawls along at a snail’s pace. [Emphasis added]

I think he just said that our system of government, as laid out in the Constitution, is hampering his vision of a global economy. That would make sense, since Stern in the past has been all about the world coming together, so to speak. Remember, he’s the one who trumpeted the old Marxist phrase, “Workers of the world, unite!”

 

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Tue, 01/11/2011 – 16:05

Organized labor, masters of aggressive politics, had its share of triumphs in 2010. With Democrats having taken control of the White House and both houses of Congress in 2009, this was to be expected. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other union officials used their window of opportunity to pressure Congress into passing a health care overhaul mandating unprecedented degrees of government intrusion, and by extension, major opportunities for unionization of the health care labor force. They also secured key presidential appointments.

That said, the year was noteworthy for legislative mandates unions didn’tachieve, especially forced private-sector employer recognition of majority union “card checks” and forced state and local government bargaining with public-safety unions. The new Congress, with a GOP House majority, is far less likely to deliver on either count. Meanwhile, Justice Department crackdowns finished off various union-Mafia scams. Embezzlers, great and small, got their comeuppance. And the unions’ favorite nonprofit, the once-thriving ACORN, is no more. In other words, liberty and public accountability had their share of triumphs, too.

Union leaders put their penchant for political backroom dealing to good use in 2010, helping to deliver for constituents health care “reform” legislation that will cost taxpayers $940 billion over the next decade (if not more), and with far less consumer choice. Richard Trumka and soon-to-depart Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern operated as virtual White House lobbyists to shape the final package, which the House of Representatives passed in March by a slim 219-212 margin. Parliamentary maneuvering led by union ally Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had short-circuited a Senate filibuster. It’s not as if union bosses in Reid’s home state forgot their benefactor come election time. Highly persuasive evidence emerged that SEIU-affiliated workers in Clark County, where three-fourth’s of Nevada’s population resides, rigged voting machines to bring about Reid’s improbable come-from-behind win against GOP challenger Sharron Angle.

Labor’s handprints were on presidential appointments. M. Patricia Smith, after several months of delay, won Senate approval in February as solicitor for the Labor Department. Having previously served as New York State Commissioner of Labor, she has put into place an aggressive litigation program to go after employers presumably in violation of wage and hour laws and a lawyer referral program for aggrieved employees. President Obama, for his part, in a March recess appointment named SEIU lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Union officials couldn’t have asked for a better choice; as a law professor in the Nineties, Becker argued the case for giving unions the right to muzzle employer free speech during an organizing drive. Two pending appointments also underscore union clout with the current administration. Paul Tiao, Obama’s nominee for Labor Department Inspector General, has expressed a belief that immigrants, even those here illegally, ought to be granted voting rights – a welcome piece of news for union leaders, who for at least a decade have been enthusiastic proponents of open borders. And Leon Rodriguez, the nominee for head of DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, though thoroughly inexperienced in labor law, has shown in his pronouncements and track record as a civil-rights prosecutor that he leans as far leftward as virtually any union official.

The year witnessed federal prosecutions ending mob-assisted union scams in the New York City area. New York District Council of Carpenters longtime boss Michael Forde and nine other defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted by a jury of participating in a scheme to siphon off more than $10 million in scheduled contributions to Carpenters benefit funds and receive bribes from contractors. One of the defendants, contractor Joseph Olivieri, had ties to the Genovese crime family. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn announced the results of a multiple racketeering indictment against eight suspected Colombo crime family members and associates; two of the defendants had ripped off benefits from Teamsters Local 282, one of the most notorious Mafia-connected unions in New York or anywhere else. And Warren Annunziata, former president of Local 91 of the United Craft and Industrial Workers, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in July to extorting at least $500,000 from local school bus companies. As the indictment had referred to “others known and unknown,” he’s likely to have had help in the shakedowns.

Embezzlement stories abounded. In the worst single-person case ever, a Manhattan federal grand jury indicted Melissa King, former benefits manager for Laborers Local 147 (“the Sandhogs”), for fleecing members out of $42 million. The indictment followed her arraignment the previous December, an event that earned her the number-three spot on the Top Ten list for 2009. John Orecchio, a Chicago-based financial manager, was sentenced for embezzling more than $24 million from various Michigan-based union pension plans. Joseph Castello, a Greenwich, Conn.-based businessman, was ordered by a federal appeals court to pay more than $12 million that he’d generated from his check-cashing scheme about a third of which represented pension funds from unnamed labor unions – they didn’t call him “Joey Checks” for nothing. Noteworthy, if less flagrant, were: Carolyn Sue Alderman-Connon, manager of a regional Boilermakers union training program in Florida, pleaded guilty in October to embezzling more than $1.2 million; Wayne Mitchell and Lawrence DeAngelis, successive bosses of a Communications Workers newspaper print shop and mail room workers local in New York City, pleaded guilty to combined theft of more than $300,000; Florida pastorGregory Sims, moonlighting as an Electrical Workers benefits manager, pleaded guilty to diverting more than $800,000 in union funds to his church; and Stephen Arena and David Caivano, respectively, president and secretary-treasurer of a Jersey City Production Workers local, were arrested for embezzling more than $375,000.

Taking into account subjective criteria used in years past, here are the ten stories that stuck out the most in 2010:

10) John Orecchio receives a lengthy sentence for union benefit scams. This story ranked number eight the last time around, and it is number-ten here for good measure. Orecchio, CEO of the Chicago-based equity fund AA Capital Partners, managed about $170 million in trust accounts on behalf for union clients, mainly in the Detroit area. During 2002-06 he converted as much as $60 million of that to his own consumption or investment and eventually was indicted for ripping off $24 million. This past June in federal court he learned the price of his ways – a nine-year, four-month prison sentence and a full restitution order.

9) M. Patricia Smith, confirmed by the Senate as Labor Solicitor, goes after private-sector employers. Solicitor is the third-highest ranking position at the U.S. Department of Labor. Trisha Smith, belatedly confirmed by the Senate to this post in February, isn’t wasting any time in going after private-sector employers – and to the applause of union leaders. Her office in September issued a draft plan to aggressively step up DOL pressure upon employers it suspects of violating federal wage and hour laws. Look for union rank and file to be deputized as investigators, as was the case in the Wage Watch program she instituted while serving as New York State Labor Commissioner.

Former Sandhogs union benefits manager Melissa King indicted for $42 million theft. Though the indictment amounted to a formality, this story still qualifies as a shocker. King, accused late last year of fleecing Laborers International Union of North America Local 147 out of $42 million during 2002-08, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in February. A half-year later she complained about her high legal bills. She’s not getting any sympathy from the union, whose rank and file dig subway and water tunnels underneath New York City and surrounding areas. Were the sybaritic Ms. King’s thefts “only” $4.2 million, this still would be a major story. But $42 million is almost inconceivable.

7) Union official Warren Annunziata pleads guilty to extortion of school bus companies. United Craft and Industrial Workers Local 91, which represents about 2,000 drivers and auxiliary employees of New York City-area school bus companies, has about $85 million in pension and other assets. Now we know where at least some of that money comes from. Annunziata, the union’s former president and current pension fund administrator, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in July to extorting more than $500,000 in payoffs from unionized bus company officials.

6) Andrew Stern yields SEIU presidency to Mary Kay Henry.The Service Employees International Union has well over 2 million members and associates, a more than doubling from 1996, when Andrew Stern took over. In his 14-year reign, Stern boosted membership with his take-no-prisoners style of organizing, though (as critics frequently maintained) at the cost of winning quality contracts, especially in the health care sector. Flush with victory from the Obama health care bill signing, he resigned this spring with two years remaining in his current term. SEIU Vice President Mary Kay Henry defeated Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger in the succession battle. Several months after Stern’s departure, media reports circulated that the FBI and the DOL wereprobing Stern for potential ethical violations.

5) President Obama appoints Craig Becker to National Labor Relations Board. By law, the NLRB must have three members from one major party and two from the other. Union leaders couldn’t have been more delighted with President Obama’s nomination of SEIU Associate General Counsel Craig Becker as one of the Democrats – or with Obama’s late March recess appointment of Becker, sidestepping a Senate filibuster. As a law professor in the Nineties, Becker argued that unions should have the right to veto employer free speech rights during organizing drives. If he’s backed away from this view, he hasn’t let it show. And he’s already made his presence felt; he cast the tiebreaker vote in August (despite a clear conflict of interest) in the board’s decision to revisit the Dana case, which NLRB in 2007 had decided in favor of making it easier for dissenting workers to undo a successful union card check campaign.

4) Grand jury indicts Colombo mobsters and associates; two defendants may have fleeced Teamsters benefit fund.Organized crime in New York experienced a major blow last march when a Brooklyn federal grand jury indicted eight suspected members or associates of the Colombo crime family, including son and nephew of now-imprisoned family boss Carmine Persico, on racketeering and other charges. Two of the defendants, Colombo associate Edward Garofalo Jr. and his wife, Alicia DiMichele, embezzled an unspecified sum from Teamsters Local 282, a concrete and construction materials truck drivers union long under control of the Gambino, Genevese and Lucchese crime families. There’s nothing like a piece of the action.

3) Unions negotiate key provisions in final health care bill.Organized labor obviously has a major stake in unionizing the health care labor force. So when it came time a year ago to hammer out a bill reconciling differences between House and Senate health care overhauls, union leaders played a prominent role in shaping the final measure. Led by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, union leaders engaged in a three-day marathon session with White House negotiators to break the impasse, especially on how to tax high-end insurance plans. The result: A five-year delay on applying a surtax on such plans, if union-sponsored. The decks cleared, Congress passed the conference bill in March. Obamacare will cost taxpayers an estimated $940 billion over the first ten years, and possibly a good deal more.  Thank union hardball in some measure for this.

2) SEIU likely rigged ballots to win Senate re-election for Harry Reid. The 2010 congressional elections were a disaster for Democrats. The party lost its majority in the House and came close to losing it in the Senate. Things could have been far worse had Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., not rallied from behind to defeat Republican challenger Sharron Angle. This “miracle” may have been union-initiated. Evidence indicates that in October, during early balloting, SEIU-affiliated voting machine workers in Clark County (Las Vegas) had been tampering with the devices; they rigged machines to record a check mark next to Reid’s name without the benefit a ballot being cast. Union leaders deny any wrongdoing. Yet a full investigation very easily could turn up something, especially given that one of Sen. Reid’s sons is Clark County Commission chairman.

1) Michael Forde, nine others convicted in Carpenters district council racket scheme in New York. The leadership of the New York District Council of Carpenters, representing some 25,000 workers in 11 unions, ran a lucrative racket for more than two decades, siphoning off more than $10 million from scheduled benefit contributions and accepting to $1 million in illegal contractor bribes. In 2010, the fun ended. Free-spending district boss Michael Forde pleaded guilty, as did eight other union members and associates. Additionally, Long Island-based contractor association president Joseph Olivieri, a reputed Genovese crime family associate, was found guilty by a jury. Forde had beaten the rap twice before, but this time the feds were determined to not let him walk. He wound up with an 11-year prison sentence. Perseverance does pay.

(Dis)honorable mention. Joseph “Joey Checks” Castello, a Greenwich, Conn.-based businessman, ordered by a federal appeals court to forfeit more than $12 million; manager of a Florida-based Boilermakers regional training program, rips off $1.2 million from the union; president and secretary-treasurer of Jersey City Production Workers local arrested for embezzling more than $375,000; Milwaukee AFSCME activistembezzles $180,000 from union voter registration drive fund; Operating Engineers bookkeeper in Las Vegas steals $230,000; United Auto Workersbookkeeper in Michigan embezzles $200,000; Buffalo transit union treasurer sentenced for theft of more than $250,000; Vince Anello, former mayor of Niagara Falls, N.Y. pleads guilty to Electrical Workers benefit fraud, tests U.S. Supreme Court ruling on “honest services” statute; New York-New Jersey Port Authority union boss Daniel Hughes pleads guilty to embezzling nearly $300,000; Locomotive Engineers President Edward Rodzwicz pleads guilty to bribery, related charge; NYC newspaper workers bosses sentenced for thefts; Colombo mob-connected Operating Engineers local business agent Joey Coriasco sentenced in NYC construction scam; Florida pastor moonlighting as Electrical Workers benefits manager diverts $800,000 from union to church; former Aerospace Workers boss Anthony Forte, brother sentenced in Philadelphia-area Boeing workers credit union fraud and kickback scheme.

THEIR LEADERS ARE CORRUPT AND COMMUNISTIC

By Fred Siegel

The turbulent years of the 1960s and 70s are best known by the headline-grabbing civil rights and women’s rights move­ments. But there was another “rights” movement, largely over­looked, that has also had a pro­found effect on American life. The looming public-pension crisis that threatens to bankrupt city, county and state governments had its ori­gins in those same years when pub­lic employees, already protected by civil-service rules, gained the right to bargain collectively.

The first to seize on the political potential of government workers was New York’s Mayor Robert R Wagner.The Kennedy White House took notice of his success.

Liberals were once skeptical of public-sector unionism. In the 1930s, New York Mayor Fiorello La-Guardia warned against it as an in­fringement on democratic freedoms that threatened the ability of gov­ernment to represent the broad needs of the citizenry. And in a 1937 letter to the head of an organiza­tion of federal workers, FDR noted that “a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an in­tent on their part to prevent or ob­struct the operations of Govern­ment until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking to­ward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to sup­port it, is unthinkable and intolera­ble.

Private-sector union leaders were also divided. George Meany, the president of the AFL-CIO from1955-1979 who came out of the building trades, argued that it was “impossible to bargain collectively with the government.” Private unionists more generally worried that rather than winning a greater share of profits, public-sector labor would be extracting taxes from a public that included their own workers. But in the late 1950s, with the failure of the labor movement’s organizing campaign in the South, Meany’s own executive council in­sisted on the necessity of winning the right to organize public employ­ees.

The first to seize on the political potential of government workers was New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner. The mayor’s father, a prominent New Deal senator, had authored the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, which imposed on private em­ployers the legal duty to bargain collectively with the properly elected union representatives of their employees. Mayor Wagner, prodded by Jerry Wurf of the Amer­ican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme), gave city workers the right to bar­gain collectively in 1958.

Running for re-election in 1961, Mayor Wagner was opposed by the old-line party bosses of all five bor­oughs. He turned to a new force, the public-sector unions, as his po­litical machine. His re-election reso­nated at the Kennedy White House, which had won office by only the narrowest of margins in 1960.

Ten weeks after Wagner’s vic­tory, Kennedy looked to mobilize public-sector workers as a new source of Democratic Party political support. In mid-January 1962, he is­sued Executive Order 10988, which gave federal workers the right to organize in unions.

Two young and militant public-sector unionists, Al Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers and Wurf of Afscme, both strong supporters of the still nascent civil rights movement, seized the oppor­tunity. Shanker saw both teachers and African-Americans as second-class citizens fighting the old-line political bosses. He’d also called a brief teachers strike in 1960. Shanker called another strike in 1962 that shifted the balance of power from principals to teachers, where it has remained down to the present.

In 1958, there had been but 15 public-employee strikes nationwide, involving a handful of workers. By 1968, after the old guard in Afscme had been deposed by the so-called young Turks led by Wurf, more than 200,000 union members, mostly in local and state government, were involved in 254 strikes.

In 1968, amid rioting, civil rights and antiwar protests, Martin Luther 1     King Jr. backed an Afscme strike by poorly paid, mostly African-Ameri­can sanitation men in Memphis, Tenn. After King’s tragic assassina­tion, the city quickly settled with the union.

In the 1970s, government-worker unions became a political venue for New Leftist, feminist and black ac­tivists hoping to carry on in the militant spirit of the 1960s. The di-. visions within organized labor over the Vietnam War allowed Wurf and his allies to take on the declining private unions of the AFL-CIO, whose leader Meany backed the war. Wurf made himself a key player in George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, and public employees have had a lead role in Democratic Party politics ever since.

Public-employee unionism seemed to be moving from success to success—Afscme was gaining a thousand (mostly female) workers a week—until the summer of 1975. At that point there was a surge in strikes, and the government unions began to threaten Democratic of­ficeholders.

On July 1, 1975, New York sanita­tion workers walked off the job, al­lowing garbage to pile up in the streets of a Gotham already in the throes of fiscal crisis. In short or­der, cops objecting to furloughs im­posed by the city’s liberal Demo­cratic Mayor Abe Beame shut down the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, with marchers carrying signs that read “Cops Out, Crime In” and “Burn City Burn.”

On that same July 1, 76,000 Pennsylvania state workers went on strike against liberal Democratic Gov. Milton Shapp’s austerity mea­sures. Afscme’s leader in Pennsylva­nia, Gerald Maclntee, told his mem­bers “Let’s go out and close down this God-damned state.” And in Se­attle, the fireman’s union initiated a recall ballot on July 1 directed against the one-time union favorite, Mayor Wes Uhlman, who held back pay hikes in the midst of rising def­icits.

Mr. Uhlman narrowly survived and he, like Beame and Shapp, calmed the situation by largely cav­ing in to the striker’s demands. But a line had been crossed: With New York’s near-bankruptcy a visible marker, the peril posed by public-sector unionism became a problem for Democrats as well as Republi­cans.

The fiscal burden of public-em­ployee unions briefly became visible again in the early ’80s, when many warned of a looming public-pension crisis. That crisis was averted by the stock market boom that began in 1982-83 and lasted until 2007-08. It is now back with a vengeance.

Restraining the immense clout that government-employee unions have accumulated over the past half-century will be difficult, but not impossible. Civil rights for Afri­can-Americans and women was a fulfillment of the universalist Amer­ican promise as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Collec­tive bargaining by public employees was not rooted in deep-seated American tradition.

Instead, the decision to grant this privilege was a political deci­sion designed to enhance the power of a pressure group whose interests, even many liberals assumed, would be at odds with those of the general public. Political decisions can be re­versed.

Mr. Siegel is a scholar in resi­dence at St. Francis College and a senior fellow at the Manhattan In­stitute. Headlines are by the Professor1

Labor union leader and Obama administration appointee Andrew Stern’s politics are way to the left of mine, and on top of that he got a better deal than I did out of Simon & Schuster for selling fewer books than I have, so I’m probably about the last person you’d expect to come leaping to his defense. But one of the principles around here at FutureOfCapitalism.com is that the principles we espouse should apply to everyone equally, whether they are Wall Street bankers or left-wing labor leaders. So, in the spirit of our earlier post headlined “Plumbing the Leaks on Bank Prosecutions,” let me just say that the spate of articles reporting that Mr. Stern is being investigated by the FBI are troubling, and should be troubling to anyone who believes in the due process rights that are enshrined in the Constitution.

One example of the coverage is a dispatch by the Associated Press being linked by the Drudge Report. It says, “The FBI and the U.S. Labor Department are investigating prominent labor leader Andy Stern in their probe of corruption at the Service Employees International Union, according to two people who have been interviewed by federal agents….Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. The FBI and the Labor Department’s office of inspector general declined to comment for the record.”

This “declined to comment for the record” formulation is one of the oldest tricks in the book. If the FBI has simply declined to comment, the Associated Press might have just ended the sentence after the word comment. “Declined to comment for the record” is another way of saying “declined to comment for the record, but spoke to the reporter ‘on background’ to spin the story or turn up the pressure on Mr. Stern.”

Some background from the post on plumbing the leaks on bank prosecutions:

Here is some guidance on the matter from the Justice Department’s manual for U.S. attorneys:

Disclosure of Information Concerning Ongoing Investigations

A. Except as provided in subparagraph B. of this section, components and personnel of the Department of Justice shall not respond to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress, including such things as the issuance or serving of a subpoena, prior to the public filing of the document.

B. In matters that have already received substantial publicity, or about which the community needs to be reassured that the appropriate law enforcement agency is investigating the incident, or where release of information is necessary to protect the public interest, safety, or welfare, comments about or confirmation of an ongoing investigation may need to be made. In these unusual circumstances, the involved investigative agency will consult and obtain approval from the United States Attorney or Department Division handling the matter prior to disseminating any information to the media.

Here is some more guidance from the same manual:

There are exceptional circumstances when it may be appropriate to have press conferences or other media outreach about ongoing matters before indictment or other formal charge. These include cases where: 1) the heinous or extraordinary nature of the crime requires public reassurance that the matter is being promptly and properly handled by the appropriate authority; 2) the community needs to be told of an imminent threat to public safety; or 3) a request for public assistance or information is vital.

As we said then, if the FBI is out tarring firms, or, in this case, Mr. Stern, by making accusations of criminal behavior from behind a veil of anonymity provided by the press, you’d think it’d be the sort of abuse of power that the press would want to be investigating rather than facilitating. This is such a fundamental concept in American law and liberty that it is enshrined in not one but two amendments to the Constitution; the Fifth, which provides “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury,” and the Sixth, which says, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”

In this case, Mr. Stern hasn’t been indicted or formally charged with any crime, yet he’s having his name dragged through the mud in the press as the subject of an FBI investigation. Maybe this meets the interests of his anonymous political foes within the union or of the press in selling newspapers or getting page views with sensational if unproven allegations against well-known individuals. But the whole concept of floating someone’s name as “being investigated” by the authorities on the basis of a report from anonymous sources is reminiscent of Soviet Communism. It’s ugly stuff, whether it is the name of Goldman Sachs that is being smeared or the name of Andrew Stern.

And it seems unlikely that Mr. Stern’s case is one that meets the standards of the Justice Department for public disclosure of an investigation. The “imminent threat to public safety” exception would seem particularly far-fetched to apply here. “Stop Stern before he victimizes CBS shareholders by taking Simon & Schuster for another excessively generous book contract!” It’s not exactly the proverbial serial killer on the loose. If some prosecutor really thinks the book industry is vulnerable to being preyed on by Mr. Stern, the least the prosecutor can do is come out publicly and put his or her name behind the claim rather than authorizing the FBI to whisper to reporters about it, or allowing the FBI to whisper unauthorized, which amounts to the same thing.

by Ira Stoll

WASHINGTON (AP) – The FBI and the U.S. Labor Department are investigating prominent labor leader Andy Stern in their probe of corruption at the Service Employees International Union, according to two people who have been interviewed by federal agents.

The two organized labor officials met with federal agents this summer to answer questions about a six-figure book contract that Stern landed in 2006 and his role in approving money to pay the salary of an SEIU leader in California who allegedly performed no work.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. The FBI and the Labor Department’s office of inspector general declined to comment for the record.

The disclosure about the federal inquiry of Stern – who abruptly resigned as president of the 2.2-million member SEIU in April – comes just weeks ahead of contentious congressional elections in which the union is spending an estimated $44 million to support its favored Democratic candidates.

The SEIU has been plagued with several financial scandals since 2008, when the Los Angeles Times reported that Tyrone Freeman, head of the union’s largest California local, misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars from the union. The union ousted Freeman and demanded that he return the money. No federal charges have been filed against him, but SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette said the union has been cooperating with the FBI.

Stern left his post two years before the end of his term, saying he wanted to focus more on his personal life. He remains a member of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission and a highly influential figure in the White House, where he was one of the most frequent visitors last year. He is also a research fellow at Georgetown University and a paid consultant for the SEIU.

Ringuette said she is unaware of any federal scrutiny of Stern. Ringuette rejected the notion that there was anything improper about the book deal or how the union paid its officials. She said similar unsubstantiated accusations have been floated for years by disgruntled former SEIU leaders and conservative bloggers.

One person who spoke to federal agents twice, in May and June, said they asked about a 2006 contract in which Stern received a $175,000 advance from Simon & Schuster to write the book “A Country That Works.” The SEIU and its locals bought thousands of copies of the book after it was published. The union also paid thousands to fact-check and promote the book, but Stern pocketed the advance.

Ringuette said the SEIU’s executive board fully vetted and approved the project. The board told local unions that purchasing Stern’s book “is a truly voluntary decision on the part of those who make it, and no adverse impact will result for anyone or any entity who refrains from purchasing or promoting the book,” according to documents obtained by the AP. The board also instructed locals to make sure any book purchases were authorized by the local’s constitution and bylaws.

Ringuette said the Simon & Schuster contract “did not require the purchase of a single book by SEIU.” Stern also received no royalties from book sales to the union.

Federal officials are also asking questions about how Stern and union officials approved payments to Alejandro Stephens, former president of the SEIU local that represents Los Angeles County government workers, according to the people who were interviewed.

The FBI has been investigating Stephens for more than a year. Earlier this month, he was sentenced in federal court this month to four months in jail and three months’ home confinement after pleading guilty to stealing $52,000 from a voter outreach program.

Stern has not been linked to any of the charges resulting in Stephens’ guilty plea. But federal agents are seeking details about the time in 2007 when Stephens’ local was merged into a larger SEIU local and he lost his post as president. The SEIU offered Stephens a generous severance package and a new job as a $75,000-a-year consultant to the SEIU California State Council.

Ringuette said the union arranged for Stephens to perform consulting work for the council and agreed to reimburse the council for his annual salary. But she said the union later discovered Stephens wasn’t actually doing any work.

Federal law prohibits labor unions from creating what amounts to “no-show” jobs that pay someone for work they do not perform.

Stephens’ attorney, Roger Rosen, said his client has not cooperated with federal officials and has no plans to in the future.

By SAM HANANEL

George Soros, Obama, and all their Socialist and Communistic friends Believe this

Manifest Destiny as is practiced today is a term used by the Progressives, Socialists, Elites and Communists that there is a widely held underlying belief among them , that they are the “chosen people,” had a divinely inspired mission to spread the fruits of their beliefs to the less fortunate and unwashed masses.
The idea of an almost religious Manifest Destiny is a common staple in the speeches and newspaper articles of the Progressives. Most of the exponents of Socialism were Democrats.

Critics see the Manifest Destiny rationale as a thinly veiled attempt to put an acceptable face on taking freedom from other peoples. Motives are often described as well-intentioned efforts to improve the lot of backward masses, but in truth the motivators were greed, power and control. The Manifest Destiny crowd are thinly disguised in wonderful names – such as Center for American Freedom.
The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality and freedom, that we have, in reality, but little connection with anyone trying to take our freedom away. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity with individual freedom.

Learn about this oppressive method and the people in history behind it. Be ready to reject and refute it when Comrade George Soros, Comrade Barak Obama, Comrade Valerie Jarrett and Comrade John Podesta use the Coming Debt Crises to force this system upon you.

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party. His politics differed sharply from Stalinism, most prominently in opposing Socialism in One Country, which he argued was a break with proletarian internationalism, and in his belief in an authentic dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles, rather than an unaccountable bureaucracy.

Together with Lenin, Trotsky was co-leader of the Russian Revolution and the international Communist movement in 1917 and the following years. Today, numerous groups around the world continue to describe themselves as Trotskyist, although they have developed Trotsky’s ideas in different ways. In the English language, an advocate of Trotsky’s ideas is usually called a “Trotskyist” or, pejoratively, a “Trotskyite” or “Trot”.

Definition

American communist organizer James P. Cannon in his 1942 book History of American Trotskyism wrote that “Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International.” However, Trotskyism can be distinguished from other Marxist theories by four key elements.

• Support for the strategy of permanent revolution, in opposition to the Two Stage Theory of his opponent.
• Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Soviet Union, analysis of its feature and after 1933, support for political revolution in the Soviet Union and in what Trotskyists term the deformed workers’ states;
• Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working class mass action;
• Support for proletarian internationalism. On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR^, opposed political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East.

Theory of Permanent Revolution

In 1905, Trotsky formulated a theory that became known as the Trotskyist theory of Permanent Revolution. It may be considered one of the defining characteristics of Trotskyism. Until 1905, Marxism only claimed that a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one. According to the original theory it was impossible for such to occur in more backward countries such as early 20th century Russia. Russia in 1905 was widely considered to have not yet established a capitalist society, but was instead largely feudal with a small, weak and almost powerless capitalist class.

The theory of Permanent Revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown, and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that in Russia only the working class could overthrow feudalism and win the support of the peasantry. Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there. They would win its own revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers’ state in Russia, and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries around the world. As a result, the global working class would to come to Russia’s aid, and socialism could develop worldwide.

The capitalist or bourgeois-democratic revolution

Revolutions in Britain in the 17th Century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism and established the basic requisites for the development of capitalism. Trotsky argued that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia.

In Results and Prospects, written in 1906, Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, arguing: “History does not repeat itself. However much one may compare the Russian Revolution with the Great French Revolution, the former can never be transformed into a repetition of the latter.” In the French Revolution of 1789, France experienced what Marxists called a “bourgeois-democratic revolution” – a regime was established wherein the bourgeoisie, overthrew the existing French Feudalistic system. The bourgeoisie then moved towards establishing a regime of democratic parliamentary institutions. However, while democratic rights were extended to the bourgeoisie, they were not generally extended to a universal franchise. The freedom for workers to organize unions or to strike was not achieved without considerable struggle.

Trotsky argues, countries like Russia had no “enlightened, active” revolutionary bourgeoisie which could play the same role, and the working class constituted a very small minority. By the time of the European revolutions of 1848, “the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system that stood in its path to power.”

Weakness of the capitalists

The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that in many countries, which are thought to have not yet completed their bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class oppose the creation of any revolutionary situation. They fear stirring the working class into fighting for its own revolutionary aspirations against their exploitation by capitalism. In Russia, the working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant based society, were organised in vast factories owned by the capitalist class, and into large working class districts. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the capitalist class found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements such as the essentially feudal landlords and ultimately the existing Czarist Russian state forces. This was to protect their ownership of their property—factories, banks, etc.– from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.

Therefore, according to the theory of Permanent Revolution, the capitalist classes of economically-backward countries are weak and incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. As a result, they are linked to and rely on the feudal landowners in many ways. Thus, Trotsky argues, because a majority of the branches of industry in Russia were originated under the direct influence of government measures—sometimes with the help of Government subsidies—the capitalist class was again tied to the ruling elite. The capitalist class were subservient to European capital.
Instead, Trotsky argued, only the ‘proletariat’ or working class were capable of achieving the tasks of that ‘bourgeois’ revolution. In 1905, the working class in Russia, a generation brought together in vast factories from the relative isolation of peasant life, saw the result of its labour as a vast collective effort, and the only means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective effort also, forming workers councils (soviets), in the course of the revolution of that year. In 1906, Trotsky argued:

The factory system brings the proletariat to the foreground… The proletariat immediately found itself concentrated in tremendous masses, while between these masses and the autocracy there stood a capitalist bourgeoisie, very small in numbers, isolated from the ‘people’, half-foreign, without historical traditions, and inspired only by the greed for gain. – Trotsky, Results and Prospects^[11]

The Putilov Factory, for instance, numbered 12,000 workers in 1900, and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in July 1917.The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that the peasantry as a whole cannot take on this task, because it is dispersed in small holdings throughout the country, and forms a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ rural workers and aspire to landlordism as well as the poor peasants who aspire to own more land. Trotsky argues: “All historical experience… shows that the peasantry are absolutely incapable of taking up an independent political role.”

Trotskyists differ on the extent to which this is true today, but even the most orthodox tend to recognise in the late twentieth century a new development in the revolts of the rural poor, the self-organising struggles of the landless, and many other struggles which in some ways reflect the militant united organised struggles of the working class, and which to various degrees do not bear the marks of class divisions typical of the heroic peasant struggles of previous epochs. However, orthodox Trotskyists today still argue that the town and city based working class struggle is central to the task of a successful socialist revolution, linked to these struggles of the rural poor. They argue that the working class learns of necessity to conduct a collective struggle, for instance in trade unions, arising from its social conditions in the factories and workplaces, and that the collective consciousness it achieves as a result is an essential ingredient of the socialist reconstruction of society.

Although only a small minority in Russian society, the proletariat would lead a revolution to emancipate the peasantry and thus “secure the support of the peasantry” as part of that revolution, on whose support it will rely. But the working class, in order to improve their own conditions, will find it necessary to create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish both the bourgeois revolution and then establish a workers’ state.

International revolution

Yet, according to classical Marxism, revolution in peasant based countries, such as Russia, prepares the ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism since the liberated peasants become small owners, producers and traders which leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist class emerges. Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism.

Trotsky agreed that a new socialist state and economy in a country like Russia would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world, as well as the internal pressures of its backward economy. The revolution, Trotsky argued, must quickly spread to capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution which must spread worldwide. This was the position, contrary to that of “Classical Marxism” which by that time had been further illuminated by active life, shared by Trotsky and Lenin and the Bolsheviks until 1924 when Stalin, who along with Kamenev in February 1917 had taken the Menshevik position of first the bourgeois revolution, only to be confronted by Lenin and his famous April Thesis on Lenin’s return to Russia, after the death of Lenin and seeking to consolidate his growing bureaucratic control of the Bolshevik Party began to put forward the slogan of “Socialism in one country”.

In this way the revolution is “permanent”, moving out of necessity first, from the bourgeois revolution to the workers’ revolution, and from there uninterruptedly to European and worldwide revolutions.

Origins of the term

An internationalist outlook of permanent revolution is found in the works of Karl Marx. The term “permanent revolution” is taken from a remark of Marx from his March 1850 Address: “it is our task”, Marx said,

to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. – Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League^[16]

Trotskyism and the 1917 Russian Revolution

During his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905, Trotsky argued that once it became clear that the Tsar’s army would not come out in support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat before the armed might of the state in as good an order as possible. In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet, but this time soon came to lead the Military Revolutionary Committee which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison, and carried through the October 1917 insurrection. Stalin wrote:

All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized. – Stalin, Pravda, November 6, 1918

As a result of his role in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the theory of Permanent Revolution was embraced by the young Soviet state until 1924.

The Russian revolution of 1917 was marked by two revolutions: the relatively spontaneous February 1917 revolution, and the 25 October 1917 seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, who had gained the leadership of the Petrograd soviet.

Before the February 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin had formulated a slogan calling for the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’, but after the February revolution, through his April theses, Lenin instead called for “all power to the Soviets”. Lenin nevertheless continued to emphasize however (as did Trotsky also) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.

But also before February 1917, Trotsky had not accepted the importance of a Bolshevik style organisation. Once the February 1917 Russian revolution had broken out Trotsky admitted the importance of a Bolshevik organisation, and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Despite the fact that many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky’s role in the October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky says that without Lenin and the Bolshevik party the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.

As a result, since 1917, Trotskyism as a political theory is fully committed to a Leninist style of democratic centralist party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must not be confused with the party organisation as it later developed under Stalin. Trotsky had previously suggested that Lenin’s method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917 orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the Soviet Union was caused by the failure of the revolution to successfully spread internationally and the consequent wars, isolation and imperialist intervention, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.

Lenin’s outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in western Europe in order that this European socialist society would then come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. Lenin stated:

We have stressed in a good many written works, in all our public utterances, and in all our statements in the press that… the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries. – Lenin, Speech at Tenth Congress of the RCP(B)

This outlook matched precisely Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution. Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution had foreseen that the working class would not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution, but proceed towards a workers’ state, as happened in 1917. The Trotskyist Isaac Deutscher maintains that in 1917, Lenin changed his attitude to Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution and after the October revolution it was adopted by the Bolsheviks.

Lenin was met with initial disbelief in April 1917. Trotsky argues that:

up to the outbreak of the February revolution and for a time after Trotskyism did not mean the idea that it was impossible to build a socialist society within the national boundaries of Russia (which “possibility” was never expressed by anybody up to 1924 and hardly came into anybody’s head). Trotskyism meant the idea that the Russian proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not confine itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the initial socialist measures. It is not surprising, then, that the April theses of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist. – Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution

The ‘legend of Trotskyism’

In The Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky argues that what he calls the “legend of Trotskyism” was formulated by Zinoviev and Kamenev in collaboration with Stalin in 1924, in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy. Orlando Figes argues that “The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin’s rise to power.”

During 1922–24, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in 1924, Lenin, while describing Trotsky as “distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities – personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee”, and also maintaining that “his non-Bolshevik past should not be held against him”, criticized him for “showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work”, and also requested that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956. Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the United Opposition.

In 1926, Stalin allied with Bukharin who then led the campaign against “Trotskyism”. In The Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky quotes Bukharin’s 1918 pamphlet, From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the Bourgeoisie, which was re-printed by the party publishing house, Proletari, in 1923. In this pamphlet, Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, writing: “The Russian proletariat is confronted more sharply than ever before with the problem of the international revolution … The grand total of relationships which have arisen in Europe leads to this inevitable conclusion. Thus, the permanent revolution in Russia is passing into the European proletarian revolution.” Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years later, in 1926, “Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole theoretician of the entire campaign against ‘Trotskyism’, summed up in the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution.”

Trotsky wrote that the Left Opposition grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party. But in 1927 Stalin declared “civil war” against them:

During the first ten years of its struggle, the Left Opposition did not abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for that of conquest of power against the party. Its slogan was: reform, not revolution. The bureaucracy, however, even in those times, was ready for any revolution in order to defend itself against a democratic reform.

In 1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, Stalin declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to the Opposition: “Those cadres can be removed only by civil war!” What was a threat in Stalin’s words became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a historic fact. The road of reform was turned into a road of revolution. – Trotsky, Leon, Revolution Betrayed, p279, Pathfinder (1972)

Defeat of the European working class led to further isolation in Russia, and further suppression of the Opposition. Trotsky argued that the “so-called struggle against ‘Trotskyism’ grew out of the bureaucratic reaction against the October Revolution [of 1917]“. He responded to the one sided civil war with his Letter to the Bureau of Party History, (1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the falsification of history with the official history of just a few years before. He further accused Stalin of derailing the Chinese revolution, and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers:

In the year 1918, Stalin, at the very outset of his campaign against me, found it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:

“All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the direct leadership of the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, comrade Trotsky…” (Stalin, Pravda, Nov. 6, 1918)

With full responsibility for my words, I am now compelled to say that the cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese Revolution at its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the position of the trade union agents of British imperialism after the General Strike of 1926, and, finally, the general weakening of the position of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, the party owes principally and above all to Stalin. – Trotsky, Leon, The Stalin School of Falsification, p87, Pathfinder (1971)

Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were jailed. Victor Serge, for instance, first “spent six weeks in a cell” after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner GPU cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition. The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union. Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey. He moved from there to France, Norway, and finally to Mexico.

After 1928, the various Communist Parties throughout the world expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the “misleadership” of the soviet bureaucracy, and what they claim to be the loss of democracy. Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy, and indeed soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,^[33] had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and even a fascist.

In 1937, Stalin again unleashed what Trotskyists say was a political terror against their Left Opposition and many of the remaining ‘Old Bolsheviks‘ (those who had played key roles in the October Revolution in 1917), in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.

Degenerated workers’ state

Trotsky developed the theory that the Russian workers’ state had become a “degenerated workers’ state“. Capitalist rule had not been restored, and nationalised industry and economic planning, instituted under Lenin, were still in effect. However, Trotskyists claim that the state was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile to those of the working class. Stalinism was a counter-revolutionary force.

Trotsky defended the Soviet Union against attack from foreign powers and against internal counter-revolution, but called for a political revolution within the USSR to bring about his version of socialist democracy: “The bureaucracy can be removed only by a revolutionary force”. He argued that if the working class did not take power away from the “Stalinist” bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to enrich itself. In the view of many Trotskyists, this is exactly what has happened since the beginning of Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR. Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People’s Republic of China has also led to capitalist counter-revolution. Many of Trotsky’s criticisms of Stalinism were described in his book, The Revolution Betrayed.

“Trotskyist” has been used by “Stalinists” to mean a traitor; in the Spanish Civil War, being called a “Trot,” “Trotskyist” or “Trotskyite” by the USSR-supported elements implied that the person was some sort of fascist spy or agent provocateur. For instance, George Orwell, a prominent Anti-Stalinist writer, wrote about this practice in his book Homage to Catalonia and in his essay Spilling the Spanish Beans. In his book Animal Farm, an allegory for the Russian Revolution, he represented Trotsky with the character “Snowball” and Stalin with the character “Napoleon“. Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has also been linked to Trotsky.

In 1937 Trotsky wrote:

To maintain itself, Stalinism is now forced to conduct a direct civil war against Bolshevism, under the name of “Trotskyism,” not only in the USSR but also in Spain. The old Bolshevik Party is dead, but Bolshevism is raising its head everywhere. To deduce Stalinism from Bolshevism or from Marxism is the same as to deduce, in a larger sense, counterrevolution from revolution. – Trotsky, Leon, Stalinism and Bolshevism 1937, in Living Marxism, No. 18, April 1990.

Stalin put out a general call for the assassination of Trotsky and he was finally killed with an ice axe in Mexico in 1940, by Ramon Mercader, a Spanish supporter of Stalin, under direct orders from the GPU.

Founding of the Fourth International

Trotsky founded the International Left Opposition in 1930. It was meant to be an opposition group within the Comintern, but anyone who joined, or was suspected of joining, the ILO, was immediately expelled from the Comintern. The ILO therefore concluded that opposing Stalinism from within the Communist organizations controlled by Stalin’s supporters had become impossible, so new organizations had to be formed. In 1933, the ILO was renamed the International Communist League (ICL), which formed the basis of the Fourth International, founded in Paris in 1938.

Trotsky said that only the Fourth International, basing itself on Lenin’s theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution, and that it would need to be built in opposition to both the capitalists and the Stalinists.

Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of the Third Period policy of the Communist International and that the subsequent failure of the Communist Parties to draw the correct lessons from those defeats showed that they were no longer capable of reform, and a new international organisation of the working class must be organised. The Transitional demand tactic had to be a key element.

At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and slightly later Bolivia. There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the founding father of the Chinese Communist movement, Chen Duxiu, amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists gained power, they made it a priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of enemies.

The Fourth International suffered repression and disruption through the Second World War. Isolated from each other, and faced with political developments quite unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some Trotskyist organizations decided that the Soviet Union no longer could be called a degenerated workers state and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945 Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in a number of other countries.

The International Secretariat of the Fourth International organised an international conference in 1946, and then World Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third World War, and the tasks for revolutionaries. The Eastern European Communist-led governments which came into being after World War II without a social revolution were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies. By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become “deformed workers’ states.” As the Cold War intensified, the FI’s 1951 World Congress adopted theses by Michel Pablo that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo’s followers considered that the Communist Parties, insofar as they were placed under pressure by the real workers’ movement, could escape Stalin’s manipulations and follow a revolutionary orientation.

The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to conduct systematic work inside those Communist Parties which were followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI‘s view that the Soviet leadership was counter-revolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the Soviet Union took over these countries because of the military and political results of World War II, and instituted nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating capitalism failed to protect those countries from the threat of incursion by the West.

Pablo began expelling large numbers of people who did not agree with his thesis and who did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled the majority of the French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with an open letter to Trotskyists of the world, by Socialist Workers Party leader James P. Cannon.

The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. The International Committee of the Fourth International was established by several sections of the International as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a revisionist faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power. From 1960, a number of ICFI sections started to reunify with the IS. After the 1963 reunification congress which established the reunified Fourth International, the French and British sections maintained the ICFI. Other groups took different paths and originated the present complex map of Trotskyist groupings.

Trotskyist movements

Latin America

Trotskyism has had some influence in some recent major social upheavals, particularly in Latin America.

The Bolivian Trotskyist party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario, POR) became a mass party in the period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and together with other groups played a central role during and immediately after the period termed the Bolivian National Revolution.

In Brazil, as an officially recognised platform or faction of the PT until 1992, the Trotskyist Movimento Convergência Socialista (CS), which founded the United Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU) in 1994, saw a number of its members elected to national, state and local legislative bodies during the 1980s.Today the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) is described as Trotskyist. Its presidential candidate in the 2006 general elections, Heloísa Helena is termed a Trotskyist who was a member of the Workers Party of Brazil (PT), a legislative deputy in Alagoas and in 1999 was elected to the Federal Senate. Expelled from the PT in December 2003, she helped found PSOL, in which various Trotskyist groups play a prominent role.

During the 1980s in Argentina, the Trotskyist party founded in 1982 by Nahuel Moreno, MAS, (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement Toward Socialism), claimed to be the “largest Trotskyist party” in the world, before it broke into a number of different fragments in the late 1980s, including the present-day MST, PTS, MAS, IS, PRS, FOS, etc. In 1989 in an electoral front with the Communist Party and Christian nationalists groups, called “Izquierda Unida” (united left), obtained 3,49% of the electorate, representing 580.944 voters. Today the Workers’ Party in Argentina has an electoral base in Salta Province in the far north, particularly in the city of Salta itself, and has become the third political force in the provinces of Tucuman, also in the north, and Santa Cruz, in the south.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez declared himself to be a Trotskyist during his swearing in of his cabinet two days before his own inauguration on 10 January 2007.Venezuelan Troskyist organizations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist and other considering him an honest revolutionary leader who has made major mistakes because he lacks a Marxist analysis.

Asia

In Indochina during the 1930s, Vietnamese Trotskyism led by Ta Thu Thau was a significant current, particularly in Saigon.

In Sri Lanka, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a Trotskyist-led party. It was led by South Asia‘s pioneer Trotskyist, Philip Gunawardena and his colleague NM Perera. In 1942, following the escape of the leaders of the LSSP from a British prison, a unified Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI) was established in India, bringing together the many Trotskyist groups in the subcontinent. The BLPI was active in the Quit India movement as well as the labour movement, capturing the second oldest union in India. Its high point was when it led the strikes which followed the Bombay Mutiny. After the war, the Sri Lanka section split into the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party (BSP). The Indian section of the BLPI later fused with the Congress Socialist Party. In the general election of 1947 the LSSP became the main opposition party, winning 10 seats, the BSP winning a further 5. It joined the Trotskyist Fourth International after fusion with the BSP in 1950, and led a general strike (Hartal) in 1953.

In 1964 a section of the LSSP split to form the LSSP (Revolutionary) and joined the Fourth International after the LSSP proper was expelled. The LSSP (R) later split into factions led by Bala Tampoe and Edmund Samarakkody. The LSSP joined the coalition government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, three of its members, NM Perera, Cholmondely Goonewardena and Anil Moonesinghe, becoming the first Trotskyist cabinet ministers in history.

In 1974 a secret faction of the LSSP, allied to the Militant Tendency in the UK emerged. In 1977 this faction was expelled and formed the Nava Sama Samaja Party, led by Vasudeva Nanayakkara.

Europe

In France, 10% of the electorate voted in 2002 for parties calling themselves Trotskyist.

In the UK in the 1980s, the entrist Militant tendency won three members of parliament and effective control of Liverpool City Council while in the Labour Party. Described as “Britain’s fifth most important political party” in 1986 it played a prominent role in the 1989–1991 mass anti-poll tax movement which was widely thought to have led to the downfall of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Almost all of the large far left parties in the UK are led by Trotskyists, including the Socialist Workers Party (Britain), the Socialist Party (England and Wales), Respect – The Unity Coalition and the Scottish Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party in Ireland was formed in 1990 by members who had been expelled by the Irish Labour Party’s leader Dick Spring. It has had a sizable amount of support in County Fingal and has an MEP, Joe Higgins, representing Dublin.

In Portugal‘s September 2009 parliamentary election, the Left Bloc won 558.062 votes, which translated into 9,82% of the expressed votes and the election of 16 (out of 230) deputies to the national parliament. Although founded by several leftist tendencies, it still expresses much of the Trotskyist thought upheld and developed by its current leader, Francisco Louçã.

Trotskyism today

There is a wide range of Trotskyist organisations around the world. These include but are not limited to:

The Fourth International

The Fourth International derives from the 1963 reunification of the two public factions into which Fourth International split in 1953: the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) and the ICFI. It is often referred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the name of its leading committee before 2003. It is widely described as the largest contemporary Trotskyist organisation with sections and sympathizing organizations in over 50 countries. Its best known section has been the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire of France, but today there are also sizeable and influential sections in Portugal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Pakistan and several other countries.

In many countries its sections work within working-class parties and alliances, in which Trotskyists are a minority.

Committee for a Workers’ International

The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) was founded in 1974 and now has sections in over 35 countries. Before 1997, most organisations affiliated to the CWI sought to build an entrist Marxist wing within the large social democratic parties. Since the early 1990s it has argued that most social democratic, as indeed socialist parties have moved so far to the right that there is little point trying to work within them. Instead the CWI has adopted a range of tactics, mostly seeking to build independent parties, but in some cases working within other broad working-class parties.

International Socialist Tendency

The International Socialist Tendency, led by the Socialist Workers Party, the largest Trotskyist group in Britain(SWP)

Internationalist Communist Union

In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrière. That group is the French section of the Internationalist Communist Union (UCI). UCI has small sections in a handful of other countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, within the industrial proletariat.

International Marxist Tendency

The founders of the Committee for a Marxist International (CMI) claim they were expelled from the CWI, when the CWI abandoned entryism. The CWI claims they left and no expulsions were carried out. Since 2006, it has been known as the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties.

Currently, International Marxist Tendency (IMT) is headed by Alan Woods and Lal Khan.

Learn about this oppressive method and the people in history behind it. Be ready to reject and refute it when Comrade George Soros, Comrade Barak Obama, Comrade Valerie Jarrett and Comrade John Podesta use the Coming Debt Crises to force this system upon you.

Andrew L. “Andy” Stern (born November 22, 1950), is the former president ^[of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the fastest-growing union in the Americas. SEIU is the second largest union in the United States and Canada after the National Education Association. Stern was elected in 1996 to succeed John Sweeney. Stern is intent upon influencing federal legislation that helps revitalize the labor movement through universal health care, expanding union ranks via the Employee Free Choice Act , stronger regulations on business, profit sharing for employees, and higher taxes, efforts consistent with a effort to improve the lives of workers.

For his talent at recruiting new members, Stern has been described as the "most important labor boss in America". Stern is unapologetic about targeting private equity firms, shaming business leaders, and competing to build SEIU's membership: “We like to say: We use the power of persuasion first. If it doesn't work, we try the persuasion of power”. The share of workers belonging to a union in 2008 showed the largest annual growth rate since the first report in 1983.Growth in SEIU in 2008—88,926 members--accounted for nearly 21 percent of the national union membership growth.

Former New Leftist Andrew Stern is the current President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the second largest labor union in North America. The economic model championed by Stern and SEIU includes universal health care, increased taxation, an expansion of social welfare programs, and further opportunities for workers to unionize. According to Ryan Lizza, Associate Editor of The New Republic, SEIU leaders such as Stern "tend to be radical, even socialist."

Stern was trained in the tactics of radical activism at the Midwest Academy, which was formed by former Students for a Democratic Society members Paul and Heather Booth. This Academy was created to teach leftist community organizers how to promote social change and infiltrate the labor movement.

Stern also has steered SEIU toward partisan politics. "We're going to build the strongest grassroots political voice in North America," he told more than 3,000 SEIU delegates in his June 2004 national convention address in San Francisco.

Under Stern's leadership, SEIU commonly bullies and pressures companies into signing agreements to make SEIU the representative of their employees. If a company resists joining the union, Stern and his political, media and activist allies conspire to launch "corporate campaigns" aimed at breaking down that resistance through what they term the "death of a thousand cuts." In such campaigns, the cabal of attackers harasses and disrupts company activities, sends vicious emails and letters to stockholders, intimidates customers, stalks and frightens employees, files baseless lawsuits, and plants false stories with media allies to smear the company's reputation.

These pressure tactics are often successful in bringing companies into SEIU's fold. When this occurs, all of their employees are required to join the union. SEIU prefers this arrangement (which Stern calls "Union Democracy") because, in times past, a large percentage of workers who were given a choice voted against joining the union.

n 2005 the New Unity Partnership was dissolved and re-formed as the Stern-founded Change To Win (CTW) federation, which seeks to raise the minimum wage and/or enact living wage ordinances; eliminate free trade agreements; and pass "a sensible immigration policy" recognizing that "undocumented workers contribute much to America" and "should be ... provided with a path to citizenship." CTW consists of seven unions whose combined membership exceeds 6 million. These include the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Laborers' International Union of North America, SEIU, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, the United Farm Workers of America, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, and UNITE HERE.

Stern is a leading figure in the so-called Shadow Party, a nationwide network of more than five-dozen unions, non-profit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically leftist, and who are engaged in campaigning for the Democrat Party. In July 2003, Stern -- along with fellow Shadow Party leaders Harold Ickes, Steve Rosenthal, Ellen Malcolm, and Jim Jordan -- formed America Votes, a national coalition of grassroots, get-out-the-vote organizations.

Stern also sits on the Executive Committee of yet another Shadow Party constituent group, America Coming Together.

In a 2006 interview, CBS newswoman Leslie Stahl told Stern: "You like to say, 'Workers of the world unite.' Which sounds, it is Karl Marx. But that's your, that's your kind of slogan now." Stern replied, "Well, the good news is, Communism is dead. But the truth is the phrase means a lot because all of a sudden workers in London and workers in the United States are working for the same employer and the same owners"; i.e., multinational corporations.

In 2007 Stern helped organize Working For Us (WFU), a political action committee that seeks to "elect lawmakers who support a progressive political agenda." Aiming to move the Democratic Party ever further to the political left, Stern and WFU work to prevent conservative and moderate Democrats from gaining too much influence in government. The Executive Director of WFU is Steve Rosenthal, co-founder of America Coming Together.

In September 2008 Stern was a signatory to a statement demanding that a portion of the $700 billion "bailout bill," enacted by the federal government to preserve the solvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, be used instead to fund various social and economic "justice" provisions. Said this document:

"Major public investment in new energy and conservation, rebuilding schools and infrastructure, extending unemployment and food stamps, helping states avoid crippling cuts in police and health services -- is vital to get the real economy moving and put people back to work. No bailout should proceed without being linked to support for a major public investment plan to get the economy going."

Fellow signers of the foregoing statement included Maude Hurd, Robert Borosage, John Sweeney, Nan Aron, John Podesta, Brent Blackwelder, John Cavanagh, Kevin Zeese, and Wade Henderson.

In 2008 Stern supported Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. His SEIU spent approximately $60.7 million to help elect Obama to the White House, deploying some 100,000 pro-Obama volunteers during the campaign (including 3,000 who worked on the election full time). Stern went on to become an immensely influential advisor to President Obama. As of October 30, 2009, Stern had visited the White House 22 times since Obama's inauguration -- more than any other individual.

In 2009, Stern said the following about the American economic system:

"We evolved into a more market-worshiping, privatizing, deregulating, trickle-down, union-busting, I've got mine so long sucker economy which was a perfectly acceptable theory. There was nothing wrong with that theory if that was how people thought we could maintain and expand wealth or we could retain the American dream. It had one, only one, significant problem. Actually it was a fatal flaw. It didn't work. It has not worked, it did not work, and now America is in peril because of that."

In an April 2, 2009 speech at the Kennedy School of Government, Stern said the following about his socialist vision for "the new American economy":

"We are at the historic crossroad, I think, economically, in my lifetime -- in terms of what a new president is trying to do, and the different way we are goiing to try to evaluate the economy. And so all of a sudden we are witnessing the new American economic plan, led by the government, not necessarily led by the private sector."

In the same speech, he spoke about his desire to facilitate a massive redistribution of wealth in the United States:

"We now have a new metric. You know, the president says he wants to judge the new economy [by] whether it increases the number of people in the middle class, [by] whether we have shared prosperity, not just [by] whether we have growth which is a fundamental different philosophy than we have seen in our country up to date. And clearly government has has a major opportunity to distribute wealth through the EITC [Earned Income Tax Credit], through tax policies, through minimum wages, through living wages. The government has a role in distributing wealth or social benefits like Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance.”

Stern added the following words advocating a form of global government that would transcend national boundaries:

“We created global trade. We created global finance. We created global companies. But we forgot to create a global government, or a global organizatio, or global regulators … [W]e let global capitalism run amuck, and we need global regulation.” In the same speech, he said that he and President Obama were more concerned with “whether we have shared prosperity, not just wheher we have growth — which is a fundamental[ly] different philosophy than we’ve seen in our country up (sic) to date.”

In February 2010, President Obama appointed Stern to sit on a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

At a June 7, 1010 conference of the Campaign for America’s Future in Washington, DC, Stern said: ”America needs a 21st century economic plan because we now know the market-worshipping, privatizing, de-regulating, dehumanizing American financial plan has failed and should never be revived, worshipping the market again.” He added that the progressive movement must help transform the U.S. economy “from a manufacturing base, to a service, finance, knowledge, green, Internet, and bio-science economy.”