Romney advisor sells out for $1.2K an hour to fraudulent bank

You will breathe a huge sigh of relief that Mitt Romney lost the election for president when you read this story by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi.

Romney's lackey economic advisor Glenn Hubbard was rumored to be the next Treasury secretary if Romney won the election. Hubbard is dean of Columbia University's business school and, it turns out, a high-paid hustler for a fraudulent bank.

Hubbard testified on behalf of Countrywide Financial, blamed for a big part of the financial crisis. Countrywide is a major mortgage lender that systematically made crappy loans and then offloaded them. The  housing market ultimately collapsed, foreclosures skyrocketed and taxpayers bailed out banks. The Huffington Post summarizes the fallout:

...the company has agreed to a litany of settlements since 2008, including a $600 million class-action settlement, an $108 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and the ousting of former CEO Angelo Mozilo, who paid $67.5 million in penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Hubbard was paid $1200 an hour (no, that's not a typo) to testify before a court that Countrywide's loans didn't fail because of fraud. Writes Taibbi:

He conducted an "analysis" that essentially concluded that Countrywide's loans weren't any worse than the loans produced by other mortgage originators, and that therefore the monstrous losses that investors in those loans suffered were due to other factors related to the economic crisis – and not caused by the serial misrepresentations and fraud in Countrywide's underwriting. 

In other words, the Dean of the Columbia University business school testified that the fact that Countrywide claimed to have conducted thorough due diligence when in fact it was pressuring underwriters to approve 60 to 70 mortgage applications a day and failing to verify any income levels or other key information (to say nothing of the outright falsification of such data, which also went on on a mass scale) – he testified that these issues were irrelevant.

Taibbi concludes:

...he's just yet another grasping jobholder who's been exposed as a paid mouthpiece in a court proceeding.

Note on the video above: It was credit derivatives that caused the financial crash in 2008 -- the crash for which working people are still paying.

Today's Teamster News 12.21.12

The Fall of Plan B: Self-Destruction in the Cause of the 0.3 Percent  New Yorker   ...On Thursday evening, John Boehner unexpectedly called off the vote on Plan B because he didn’t have enough votes to pass the measure...
AFL-CIO to White House: Time to rescind your offer to Boehner  Washington Post   ...The AFL-CIO wants Obama to pull back his proposal to raise the income threshold on the tax hikes to $400,000 and to rescind the offer of Chained CPI on Social Security...
Big Banks Flunk OCC Risk Tests  American Banker   ...Think corporate governance at the largest banks is weak? You're right, but you probably have no idea just how right you are...
New Year Will Bring Higher Minimum Wages in 10 States  Pew Stateline   ...Nearly 1 million U.S. workers will be getting a New Year’s Day gift: a small raise after 10 states boost their minimum wages...
Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency (opinion)  Guardian   ...Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election...
Kasich, lawmakers don’t rule out 2013 ballot push  Akron Beacon Journal   ...Kasich also declined to say whether he would work to support or oppose a right-to-work amendment limiting Ohio labor unions, if one were advanced by an outside group...
Teamsters at Upstate Niagara Cooperatives Ratify Union Contract  heraldonline.com   ... Drivers, Warehouse and Production Personnel employed by Upstate Niagara Cooperatives in Cheektowaga and Jamestown, N.Y. have overwhelmingly ratified a new collective bargaining agreement that provides annual wage increases, language improvement and benefit enhancements...
Teamsters, ABF exchange contract proposals  IBT   ...The Teamsters National FreightIndustry Negotiating Committee(TNFINC)exchanged national and supplemental contract proposals with ABF on Wednesday, December 19, and the union will fight the company’s attempts to harm ABF Teamsters’ livelihoods...

Longshoremen refuse to unload Wal-Mart cargo from Bangladesh

Well, they refused for about two hours in Charleston, S.C., today. The ship carried Wal-Mart-bound cargo from the Bangladesh factory that burned last month, killing 112 workers.

The Post and Courier reports,

Longshoremen refused to unload a ship on Thursday morning for more than an hour in a show of solidarity with workers in Bangladesh who labor in dangerous sweatshops for pennies an hour, a spokesman said. 

“It’s the cargo on the ship. We’ve got a concern about workers around the world,” said Leonard Riley of International Longshoreman’s Association 1422.

After the protest, the dock workers said they would return to their jobs and unload the Carolina Maersk...

The Examiner goes into a little more detail, reporting members of the group demonstrating against Wal-Mart included the South Carolina Workers' Rights Coalition, Petigru Free Speech Defense, Corporate Action Network and Occupy Charleston. The Examiner also reports:

The Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka, which makes many clothing items sold by the discount department store, caught fire on Nov. 24...

Upgrades in factory safety and fire prevention were requested last year, but a Wal-Mart representative blocked the proposal, say two Bangladeshi officials. 

Not only is this shipment of its products an insult to the workers who died in that fire, says the protest organizer, but it furthers damage to the American economy and employment, too. 

While Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest employer and clears over $15 billion in annual net profit, 80 percent of its workers qualify for food stamps due to low pay. 

The annual cost of government benefits to these workers, who are paid an average of only $8.81 an hour, comes to $2.66 billion, according to Good Jobs First. 

Wal-Mart’s use of foreign-made products is responsible for the loss of 196,000 American jobs, says the Economic Policy Institute, and the corporation is also responsible for 11 percent of the total trade deficit with China.

Misclassified port truck drivers are also a casualty of Wal-Mart's relentless drive to lower costs along the supply chain. The Teamsters have long sought to improve wages and working conditions for port drivers.

'Chained CPI' is a cut to Social Security benefits. 'Chained CPI' is a cut to Social Security benefits. 'Chained...

...CPI' is a cut to Social Security benefits.

There's a proposal on the table to use the 'chained CPI' to calculate Social Security benefits. It's a cut. And at least one House Democrat -- Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- isn't horrified by the idea.

David Dayen at firedoglake reports that Pelosi said she thought it would strengthen Social Security.

Let's be clear: The Teamsters strongly oppose the chained CPI and any other cut to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

According to Dayen:

Chained CPI is a benefit cut. If it were a technical adjustment that had the effect of raising net Social Security benefits, nobody would support it. In fact, an accurate technical adjustment, which accounted for the cost of living of actual seniors who spend far more a percentage of their budgets on medical treatment, WOULD raise net Social Security benefits, because their cost of living is simply higher than the average person by virtue of being sicker in old age.

Write, call, email, send a candygram to your representative in Congress and tell them to oppose the chained CPI.

Hoffa: Boehner's Plan B is mean spirited

Teamster General President Jim Hoffa sent a letter to members of Congress today urging them to vote against Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise taxes on the middle class and cut them for millionaires.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the plan tonight.

Wrote Hoffa,

Giving a $50,000 tax cut to millionaires while cutting off unemployment benefits to more than 2 million Americans still looking for work is more than a wrong-headed approach -- it's downright mean spirited.

Hoffa points out Boehner's plan actually raises taxes on the middle class by eliminating a tax incentive for college and hurts the working poor by changing the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Others note that Boehner's plan has nothing to do with shrinking the deficit as it is a $4 trillion tax cut.

Hoffa concludes that Plan B is "Backward in its thinking, Blind to the Less Fortunate and Bad for business."

Hoffa has also said the Teamsters strongly oppose proposed cuts to Social Security.

You can sign a petition here to take Social Security off the table. Addressed to the White House, it says,

This petition is meant to stop any cuts to Social Security during the fiscal cliff negotiations since it does not directly contribute to the national deficit. As such, making cuts to the program will not lower the deficit and will make life harder for the poor, who depend upon it for survival.

UPS Teamsters show solidarity with striking BlueLinx drivers

UPS Teamsters join the strike line at BlueLinx.

UPS brothers showed up at the BlueLinx Trucking terminal in Miami today to support striking Teamsters drivers. Brother Mike Scott, president of Local 769 in Miami, posted the photo to the left, along with the message:

I'm so proud of the members of 769.

They were forced into an unfair labor practices strike by BlueLinx executives.

Local 769 filed charges against the company with the National Labor Relations Board.

Land Line reported:

Josh Zivalich, spokesman for Teamsters Local 769 (said) ...“The unfair labor practice has to do with the denial of access and information of our union representative to meeting with and being on the premises with our members..." 

He said the Teamsters represent roughly15 truck drivers at the trucking company’s Miami terminal. 

“Not only did the company limit our union rep’s access, they actually removed him from the property in the midst of a dispute going on between the company and the union,” Zivalich said. “We believe our representative clearly had a right to be there to represent our members.”

Said Scott in a statement:

Our members will not tolerate having their hard-won and legally protected rights taken away by Blue Linx. We’ve represented employees of Blue Linx for years and they have worked hard to make the company a success. To treat its workers like this is insulting.

Teamster drivers at Blue Linx haul construction materials throughout the southern portion of the state.

Stay strong!

This is what we union THUGGS do on Saturday morning

We build food baskets for the families of unemployed and underemployed workers in Detroit.

Brother Shawn Ellis tells us on his Facebook page:

Volunteers are needed for this coming Saturday, December 22 to help build more than 600 food baskets for distribution and pick up to the areas unemployed and underemployed. 

If you're interested in helping this great cause, please arrive at Michigan Teamsters, located on 2741 Trumbull Blvd, beginning at 7:30 AM.  

We build the baskets for distribution, which begins at 10 AM. The entire program ends at 1 PM.  

We will even feed you a hot breakfast! 

The program is the 14th year of a joint program between Teamsters Local 299 and the Metropolitan Detroit AFLCIO.  

It's a great event that promises to bring a smile to your face and make your heart feel warm. 

Presented by 

Those Helpful Union Guys/Gals!