Portside

“Teamster pensions are in trouble because of greed, incompetence and corruption,” Rita Lewis told In These Times. Excessive pay to plan administrators and outlandish fees to financial advisors have drained the fund, she says, echoing Warren’s emphasis on Wall Street malfeasance, and a first step should be to clean house at the offices of Central States Pension Fund, the organization that collects and distributes pension monies for some 400,000 union members and retirees.

The WFP just confronted the biggest test of its 18-year existence, and came through with colors flying. And that’s not all. Just as importantly, some units of our normally hidebound union movement stuck with the Party despite short-term incentives to defect. When the history of class politics in our time is written, the choices made both by the Party and by its loyal union affiliates may figure importantly.

Corporate trolls; Verizon strike; ISPs' eye on you; Bum Rush; Local media to the rescue

The new Mapplethorpe film begins with the voice of Senator Jesse Helms exhorting everyone to, "Look at the pictures!" He was protesting an exhibit of Mapplethorpe's work that he viewed as pornographic, and we see the conservative politician waving what he viewed as smut, seeking to inflame the culture wars, despite the fact that Mapplethorpe had died just a few months prior at the age of 42 of AIDS. That protest turned out to solidify the artist's legend.