-By Warner Todd Huston
Once again in as many weeks, the L.A. Times reports on a third Service Employee International Union (SEIU) head that has been forced to step down because of allegations of fraud and misuse of union funds. Annelle Grajeda, the SEIU’s top officer in California, has resigned.
Annelle Grajeda’s boyfriend is also under a cloud for being a recipient of misappropriated union funds.
For the full story on the particular allegations, be sure and visit the L.A. Times.
What we are seeing, however, is one SEIU head after another being found to be indulging in misuse of funds, influence peddling and fraud over and over again. There’s no telling how many more such SEIU leaders will be caught up in this new scrutiny.
But, it is revelatory of the sort of corruption that is endemic with the SEIU. This is the most powerful union in the country and it is being run by a man who has designs of becoming a leader of national policy for the whole country, not just for unions, but for all of us.
SEIU President Andy Stern imagines himself a leader of national importance, yet he cannot keep the sort of horrid corruption from toppling members of his own union, and members with whom he has been intimately connected.
Worse, it isn’t Stern who has been responsible for the rooting out of corruption of his closest associates in the California offices. He has been brought to it sullenly silent not as a crusader against corruption.
And this is the man that imagines himself one who should counsel presidents?
These scandals, however, reveal an organization empty of ethics.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston