A review of THE TRUCKERS by Kenneth C. Crowe

The following review of THE TRUCKERS appeared in the Association for Union Democracy’s Jan. 4, 2011 edition of $100 Plus News. It is reprinted with AUD’s permission:

THE TRUCKERS by Kenneth C. Crowe
(CreateSpace, Charleston, SC: 2010) 300pgs.
Available in paperback on Amazon.com for $9.99 and
as an e-book on Kindle and Smashwords.com

AUD REVIEW:

This is an entertaining and fictional account of
the administration of a reformist IBT international
President called Tommy Kerrigan. The
novel is very loosely based on the Carey presidency
of the 1990s. But it is clearly fiction, and
Mr. Kerrigan’s fate turns out to be very different
than Mr. Carey’s. Mr. Crowe dedicates the
novel to Ken Paff, then, and still, director of the
Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) --
who in the novel is the fictional character
“Helmut Knall.”
A very palpable tension between Kerrigan and
Helmut Knall’s “TFOCC” (“Truckers Fighting
Organized Crime and Corruption”) is present
throughout the story. The reader is introduced
to it on page 11, when Kerrigan is planning his
post-election victory party and is consulting
with his top aide “Cobb Wowka” on who
should be on the invitation list. Wowka advises
Kerrigan not to invite Knall, but Kerrigan
reminds Wowka that “TFOCC did a lot for us.”
Wowka replies “Not for us. For their agenda.
Never forget that... Now that you’ve won,
Helmut and crew might get a little hungry for a
piece of action, which is okay, but we want to
keep them at a certain distance. Don’t let them
get the notion they’re gonna run this union
instead of you.” Kerrigan responds accordingly:
“I’ll give ‘em a couple of jobs. I’m sure we
can find an opening for Helmut in Alaska or
Hawaii.” “Right on buddy,” replies Wowka.
Helmut Knall is a smart, no-nonsense, pain-inthe-
neck whose advice to Kerrigan seems
always to be ahead of the game and works each
time Kerrigan does follow it. But Knall’s first
piece of advice, Kerrigan does not follow. The
uninvited Knall interrupts the victory party and
demands to speak to Kerrigan -- Kerrigan
reluctantly gives him a few minutes -- and
Knall points out that though Kerrigan has won
a great victory he needs to remember that most
of the locals are still being run by the “old
guard” -- the officials who owe their allegiance
to “Steamer Staski” and his successors. The
Steamer Staski character is loosely based on
the administration of Jimmy Hoffa, Sr. On his
victory party night, Knall implores Kerrigan to
help Trucker reformers get elected in the locals:
“The union is the locals, the locals are the
union. You should know.” But Kerrigan is
never willing to do this, as he tells Knall time
and time again throughout the book that an
“International President should not get
involved in the politics of the local.”
Meanwhile, the “old guard” infiltrate the
Kerrigan administration, and become his most
trusted aides, only to betray him, and eventually
succeed in their goal to get rid of him.
Sabotage by the old guard starts with its defiance
of Kerrigan’s call to go on a strike, then
moves on to a series of “dirty tricks” and smear
campaigns having to do with Kerrigan’s personal
relationships and alleged ties to organized
crime. Using its influence with an all too
compliant press, and even the FBI and Justice
Department, the old guard overwhelms
Kerrigan with government investigations into
alleged links to organized crime, or “communists.”
Knall advises Kerrigan on union strategy -- it
was the TFOCC’s plan to strike a major carrier,
a strike which turned out to be a a smashing success,
and makes Kerrigan a hero within the union. Later,
Knall and the TFOCC bail out Kerrigan
in another strike when the old guard begins to sabotage
it. But as the dirty tricks by the old guard become more
and more outrageous, and the investigations proceed,
mob characters appear – and are ready to go after
Kerrigan, reacting to schemes orchestrated by
Kerrigan’s union foes.
In the end, Kerrigan makes great gains for the Trucker
rank and file in its battles with employers, but, sadly,
is unable to withstand the relentless assault by his
internal union enemies.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

CRYSTALENS AFTERMATH

My wife, Rae, had Crystalens installed in both eyes after cataract surgery in November and December. Afterwards her left eye began bothering her variously with the sensation of something in the eye, itching, pain, and dry eye. Sometimes these are very intense afflictions.
In January, our ophthalmologist found nothing wrong and suggested an over-the-counter eye drops. Sometimes the eye drops help, sometimes, the drops seem to increase the uncomfortable sensations.
Searching the web for Crystalens aftermath and problems, one mostly gets ads on how wonderful Crystalens are and from surgeons who want to install them. There are scattered accounts by individuals looking for help about having dry eyes or the sensation of something in the eye—and their doctors have suggested eye drops, which don’t cure the problems. As one interlocutor wrote of his problems: “Obviously, nothing helps.”
Hopefully something does help. If you have had problems such as Rae’s in the aftermath of Crystalens implants, please let us know via comments or my e-mail, kencrowe@optonline.net. We are interested in both the extent of the population of these problems and well as a cure.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

A TALE OF TWO TEAMSTERS PRESIDENTS

Two Teamsters presidents, the late Ron Carey and James P. Hoffa, have both been accused of using the union’s dues money to enhance their chances for reelection.
Each contended they were innocent. The difference in their cases is that after an extraordinary investigation that lasted five years, Carey was cleared by a federal jury of charges that he lied in denying he knew about the scheme to swap $885,000 of Teamsters dues money in exchange for contributions to his reelection campaign. Hoffa has yet to be exonerated.
Through the years, Carey’s cries of innocence went unheard as he was barred from running for reelection and then summarily dismissed from Teamsters membership by the union’s Independent Review Board.
Anyone who attended Carey’s trial in the fall of 2001 would say he was proven innocent rather than found not guilty. His defense team including the late Mark Hulkower, Reid Weingarten, Bruce Bishop and Bob Hauptman absolutely destroyed the government’s case in the process of proving it was based on the lies of a witness providing false testimony to avoid a prison sentence.
Now Hoffa is facing the prospect of experiencing what the late Teamsters President Jackie Presser called the hot seat of the union’s presidency.
Hoffa and members of his current slate are accused of offering lucrative jobs and at least one extra pension to three Teamsters officials, IBT Car Haul Director Fred Zuckerman and International Trustees Henry Perry and Frank Gallegos, in exchange for their support or not running in the 2011 Teamsters International Election. The payoffs, apparently to last for one year, would have cost the IBT treasury at least a quarter of a million dollars—and that doesn’t include the value of the extra pension offered to Zuckerman.
The three, who are to be commended, declined the offers—for whatever reasons: perhaps integrity or perhaps they just couldn’t endure the way Hoffa was running the union. Zuckerman and Perry currently are vice presidential candidates opposing the Hoffa slate in the upcoming IBT election.
IBT Election Supervisor Richard W. Mark uncovered the attempted misuse of Teamsters’ dues money during a six-month-long investigation ordered by Kenneth Conboy, the Teamsters Election Appeals Master. In a strange decision, Mark said there was nothing he could do about the unsuccessful scheme because Zuckerman, Gallegos and Perry refused to go along—and didn’t collect any money.
Expressing his dismay over Mark’s failure to punish Hoffa and company, Perry told the Memphis Commercial Appeal: “It was like, you go in the bank, you pull the gun, you hear the police coming, you run out. You didn't commit a crime.”
Conboy, in effect agreed with Perry’s assessment by ordering Mark to go back to the drawing board to impose a penalty but one short of disqualifying Hoffa as a candidate.
In issuing that directive to Mark, Conboy maligned the memory of Ron Carey by saying “In that case, Ron Carey, the IBT president elect in 1996 knew of a scheme to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars of union funds for the benefit of his campaign.” Conboy either is unaware of the exoneration of Carey by the Manhattan federal court—or isn’t willing to acknowledge that the subsequent evidence emerged to show that Carey should never have been disqualified.
In the same vein in light of the outcome of his trial, I have never understood why Carey was not reinstated as a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Mark now has the burden of figuring out what his solution should be for Hoffa and company’s failed attempt to use the members’ money in their reelection campaign.
Hoffa must also be wondering whether the Teamsters Independent Review Board will investigate the case and wallop him with a penalty that could end his bid for the union presidency.
Fred Gegare, who filed the original complaint that ultimately resulted in Mark’s investigation and is running against Hoffa for the presidency, contends that just like Carey, Hoffa should be disqualified from running again and expelled from Teamsters.
Sandy Pope, the New York Teamster running for the presidency, said in one on her releases, “It’s an open secret that Hoffa uses our dues money to reward his supporters—and to funnel them extra salaries in exchange for campaign contributions. But this is the first time the problem has been officially documented.”


A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

MARK HULKOWER remembered

Mark Hulkower, the brilliant litigator who played a crucial role in saving the late Teamsters president Ron Carey from prison and lasting disgrace, died of cancer last Saturday at the age of 53.
Carey had been put through five years of hell--dumped from the presidency of the Teamsters and pilloried in the press for supposedly participating in a rip off of union funds—before he finally went to trial in Manhattan federal court in the fall of 2001.
Hulkower was part of a potent defense team that included two other lawyers from the Washington, DC firm of Steptoe & Johnson: Reid Weingarten and Bruce Bishop with Bob Hauptman, Carey’s former Special Assistant for Management and Budget, serving as the researcher, analyst of the documents used in evidence, and a source of insight into the operations of the complex union.
Hulkower and Weingarten subjected the prosecution’s key witness to devastating cross-examinations which revealed the government’s case was a lie.
Among the many successful assaults on that witness was one in Hulkower asked with almost boyish innocence: “Would you steal money from the (Carey) campaign?” The witness responded, “No sir.” Then Hulkower produced piles of invoices showing that this crucial government witness was indeed a thief who stole from the campaign.
After the jury returned the verdict exonerating Carey, Hulkower made the pithy observation that the case was “a Greek tragedy with a happy ending.”

THE JYNX review

I got a pleasant surprise today when I checked out THE JYNX on Smashwords finding this review:
Review by: Charles Aylworth on Dec. 28, 2010 :
Up to the minute gender-reversed romance novel. A good read, well worth the time. You can almost name the major players, especially if you are a fan of faux-news.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

To Ed Lowe: My regrets

To Ed Lowe, who died on Saturday, I offer my regrets for never having told him—as I intended--that I based a character on him in my novel, THE JYNX.
My character, Ted Neary, not surprisingly was a widely-read Newsday columnist who was the catalyst in transforming protagonist Billy Plunkett from an obscure wood sculptor into one with a national reputation.
Ted Neary enters the novel in Chapter Forty One:

First Billy spotted the old Plymouth Horizon parked in front of the house, then he saw the guy sitting on the front porch in the rocker with his feet propped up on the railing, slugging beer from a bottle.
He wanted to find out what the stranger was doing on the porch before he unloaded his gear. He walked up the porch steps and immediately recognized him. Ted Neary. The wire glasses, the black mustache and thick black hair on his head. Even the baggy sports jacket. He had seen Neary interviewed on TV and his picture in the paper a couple of times a week. He remembered the opening words of the column he did on Tommy Ledge a good number of years ago. “When Tommy Ledge, Huntington’s legendary clammer, isn’t scooping up those delicious bivalves somewhere on Huntington Bay, he can be found on his favorite bar stool in Sugar’s.”
“Hey,” Neary said with the grin that was part of his anatomy as Billy came onto the small porch.
Billy responded, “My name is Ted Neary and I write a newspaper column.” That was Neary’s pitch on radio and TV ads for his column. “Why are you here? You looking for another legend?”
Neary’s grin grew stretching almost to his ears. “I thought you might like a beer,” he said proffering the cardboard carrier with four Budweisers left in it.
“Looks like you had a two beer wait.”
“Nice day. I didn’t mind. How’d the clamming go today?”

I remember writing about the Ted Neary character with pleasure and with a clear vision of the beer-drinking, always smiling Ed Lowe in mind.
I worked with Ed for 30 years. Among my brightest memories was a night before Christmas Eve in the early 1970s before he became a columnist. Ed had an assignment to do a human interest story in keeping with the season. He wrote the item in verse to the beat of the Night Before Christmas. Before the story even reached the desk almost everyone in the city room had read and enjoyed it as an original, hilarious piece of writing.
The editor on the desk, who was rather a stiff, straight-laced creature, flashed through Ed’s offering and said with consternation on his face: “We can’t print this; it rhymes.” His reaction filled the city room with a mixture of contempt and laughter.
I’m not sure, but I think Ed’s version got in that Christmas Eve edition of Newsday. If it didn’t, it should have.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

THE DAME, THE NAME, THE DISENCHANTED

If I were a twitterer, this would be my offering for this year’s race for general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters:
The 2011 Teamsters election summarized: The dame (Sandy), the name (James), the disenchanted (Fred).
The dame, of course, is Sandy Pope, president of New York Teamsters Local 805. Dame can be use as a term for a woman, but I am using it in the expansive concept of a woman of accomplishment. In the United Kingdom, they bestow the title on female high achievers—and that’s what Sandy is. Sandy is a real Teamster having worked her way up from the hard jobs of selector and truck driver.
The name, obviously, James P. Hoffa, the son of Jimmy Hoffa, an earlier Teamster president of some repute. James P. rode his father’s name into the Teamsters presidency in 1999. His claim to being a Teamster comes from summer jobs in his college years and then becoming a lawyer for various IBT entities a couple of years after graduating from law school.
The disenchanted candidate is Fred Gegare, another real Teamster up from the rank and file from Green Bay Wisconsin, who was a vice president on Hoffa’s team until he stunned Teamsters through North America last summer when he announced he could no longer endure Hoffa’s pitiful performance as general president. He says on his campaign website: “"Over the last twelve years, James Phillip Hoffa has proven that running a union of 1.4 million members like a family fiefdom is disastrous. He has shown that the Teamsters Union will not be successful as long as it is run from Washington, D.C. by unelected lawyers, consultants and personal assistants. Just like Hoffa, they have never done the work of real Teamsters. Just like Hoffa, they are more concerned with taking care of themselves than about fighting for the members."
Another shock to Hoffa came last July when Tom Keegel, secretary-treasurer of the IBT, announced he would retire instead of running again on the Hoffa slate. Keegel warned that the Teamsters were being led in the wrong direction and said “"I do not claim to have all the answers, but I do know that continuing down the same road as the IBT has traveled for the last few years will not lead us out of our present difficulties or help us avoid the problems yet to come."
In my latest novel, THE TRUCKERS, there are two characters who seem to be very much like two of the real life characters in this year’s IBT election. The rank and file candidate, Carolyn Gordon, a tough, fearless woman who heads a small Truckers local in Colorado, is running against Steve Staski, a minor television and film actor. Steve is the choice of the Old Guard because he can run on the name of his famous father, Steamer Staski, The Truckers who was murdered on a picket line.
The rank and file leader Helmut Knall says to a doubting aide who thinks Carolyn doesn’t have much of a chance against the Staski name: “We’re going to get a million dollars worth of free publicity because she’s so young and she’s a woman.”
“Like Little Stevie gets because he’s a Staski and an actor,” the aide says.
Knall replies: “The difference is he acts tough. Gordon is tough. And don’t forget she made a name for herself, while he inherited his.”

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.