Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died of complications from a heart attack Sunday at age 91. His death has cheated justice, snatching him from the material world just as he faced the possibility of standing trial for the murder of two bodyguards of his predecessor, President Salvador Allende.

A neatly timed exit, considering the former general was also facing charges on how and why he stashed as much as $17 million in overseas accounts, as well as continuing judicial investigations into numerous human rights atrocities that took place during the bloody and dark period of his rule that stretched from 1973 until 1990.

But Pinochet's demise doesn't save him from the harsh judgment of history. He dies not only decrepit and politically abandoned in a Santiago hospital but also discredited and reviled. His very name has come to rightfully symbolize and encapsulate all of the horrors and fears associated with brutal, dictatorial regimes.

It's not just the numbers, though they are horrific in themselves. In a country of barely 11 million at the time of his seizure of power, 3,000 were murdered by the state, more than a thousand disappeared (some of them thrown into the ocean, others into pits of lime), tens of thousands were tortured and hundreds of thousands sent into political or economic exile.

Pinochet also embodied a wave of authoritarianism that swept through all of Latin America during the time of his rule. Similar dictatorships imposed their own brand of fear as they clamped down on Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru.

Encouraged by the Reagan Administration in Washington and rising Thatcherism in Europe, these military regimes instituted a savage free-market capitalism, in many cases reversing decades of carefully constructed social welfare reforms. At gunpoint unions were outlawed, labor laws were abolished, universities were stifled, tuition was hiked, national healthcare and social security programs were privatized, and these already unequal societies were rigidly stratified into rich and poor, strong and weak, the favored and the invisible.

Pinochet even attempted to build a new Terror International by setting up what became known as Operation Condor. Established in Santiago, the short-lived network aimed at making repression and murder more efficient through increased coordination, information-sharing and joint secret operations among the allied dictatorships. The most prominent victims of this alliance in murder were former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his associate Ronni Moffett, blown apart by a 1976 car bomb in downtown Washington, DC--a bomb set by Pinochet's dreaded secret police, known as DINA.

Even after this barbaric act of terror, even after the world began to learn of Pinochet's other mass crimes, it was jarring to see how much the American press still pandered to him as the man who was bringing economic revival to Chile. No matter that his "shock therapy" nostrums prescribed by the recently deceased Milton Friedman pushed Chile to the brink of bankruptcy and that the first public rebellions against the regime in 1983 were motivated as much by hunger as political rage.

Years after Pinochet was voted out of power in a 1988 plebiscite (which he unsuccessfully tried to rig), the swaggering general seemed impugn. He remained head of the army until 1998 and then promoted himself to senator-for-life under the terms of a military-written constitution.

Only because of the intrepid efforts of a couple of crusading Spanish magistrates looking into the political murder of co-nationals in Chile and the bad luck of Pinochet being served with an international arrest warrant from them while visiting London in 1998 was the course of history righted. Five hundred days of British custody eroded the political magical shield that Pinochet had borne. He shrunk from invulnerable strongman to wanted war criminal. Upon his return to Chile, two decades of social taboo were shattered, and Pinochet was formally indicted for murder by the courageous former Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia.

The cascading indictments of Pinochet, the gruesome truths revealed by judges and government commissions, the accelerated erosion of his legacy, coincided with a tectonic political shift on the continent. A twenty-five-year cycle of military rule produced a radical counter-cycle of civilian and leftist reform. The chairs of power in Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Brazila and La Paz--once occupied by dictators and generals---now seat democratically elected reformers, liberals and socialists.

Their task is formidable: to heal the trauma, reverse the damage, and bridge the yawning social gaps that are the real legacy of the Pinochet era. In Brazil, President Lula struggles-–decades after the supposed economic miracle brought by the previous military dictatorship---to feed tens of millions who slip below the hunger line. In Chile, even the center-left government faces protests from a riled student population feeling enough self-courage to demand reform of an educational system left in tatters by the dictatorship. And so on.

Burying Pinochet this week in itself won't make this task any easier. In some odd ways it might make even make it more difficult. As long as he was alive, even in a gargoyle state, he was a grotesque reminder of all that has haunted the continent, all that has been left unresolved. Good, let's bury him now and post an armed guard at his grave site, making sure he again never rises. And then back to the work of healing what he has wrought.

Comments (32)

1. What's the betting line that Pinochet is the kind of person admired by the likes of LVLIBERTY1, CPT, RIO BLOTTO, MAASCH, OKSPORTSGUY, WOODYEE, etc., etc.? The entire list is too long to enumerate here-- the kind of people who are, thankfully, never encountered in the real world.

   Posted by fromredbird at 12/10/2006 @ 3:14pm

2. May Augusto Pinochet and Kenneth Lay travel the free markets of Hell via Mussolini's punctual trains. May Henry Kissinger receive justice before he joins them.

   Posted by georgepweb at 12/10/2006 @ 6:40pm

3. Excuse me for forgetting Milton Friedman; the free market will work, when corporations can be dissolved for operating contrary to the common good, as originally intended. As in the late 19th century and early 20th century, more than pocket change will come to the working classes only when the rich feel physically threatened. Increasing the number of Congressmen would go a long way toward restoring representative democracy and diluting the effect of corporate money. We should take a lesson from the English and Canadians.

   Posted by georgepweb at 12/10/2006 @ 6:55pm

4. Think this is bad....

   wait until Bush dies in the 2030s, or Cheney in the 2010s and with no impeachment, the nutters go bananas DEMANDING that every history text and university class teach how they were "criminals who eluded justice!!!!"

   Posted by Mask at 12/10/2006 @ 9:42pm

5. Posted by MASK 12/10/2006 @ 9:42pm

   That would be bad.

   That would also be another reason why thorough, bi-partisan investigation is crucial.

   Why does the administration that considers warrants superfluous and shows little regard for the privacy of ordinary Americans, have a problem with an open investigation of exactly what they've been up to, with our money and our army?

   Hmm. Maybe somebody should investigate.

   Eric

   Posted by Malcontent at 12/10/2006 @ 10:07pm

6. ...I mean, they haven't done anything wrong...Right?

   (That's what they'd tell me, if I objected to being investigated.)

   Posted by Malcontent at 12/10/2006 @ 10:09pm

7. Posted by MALCONTENT 12/10/2006 @ 10:09pm

   Sure they have....they're just going to get away with it.

   How do I know? Well, most RECENTLY, because a wackadoodle like Cynthia McKinney is "point man" on it!

   Posted by Mask at 12/10/2006 @ 10:42pm

8. Posted by MASK 12/10/2006 @ 9:42pm

   Think this is bad....

   wait until Bush dies in the 2030s, or Cheney in the 2010s and with no impeachment, the nutters go bananas DEMANDING that every history text and university class teach how they were "criminals who eluded justice!!!!"

   and

   Posted by MASK 12/10/2006 @ 10:42pm

   Sure they have....they're just going to get away with it.

   How do I know? Well, most RECENTLY, because a wackadoodle like Cynthia McKinney is "point man" on it!

   Oh come on Mask, it won't be "'nutters'... demanding", it will be mainline historians rendering the judgement that history always has for those who unequivocally perform an action. There is no doubt that BushCo has broken the law, because they have done so by their own admission (Georgie-boy himself has publicly admitted to violating FISA.) That constitutes a pretty damning piece of historical evidence and the reason why this won't be relegated to the realm of conspiracy theories and other fringe (i.e., "nutters") history. While the case against Pinochet is pretty clear too (thanks to the work of Spanish and Chilean investigative judges) it pales in comparison to BushCo's directly admitted guilt. Neither, by the way, need to rely on criminal convictions to arrive at solid and evidentially based judgements.

   As far as investigation goes, and the idea that somehow McKinney (who is not part of the 110th Congress) is the "point man", you seem to be forgetting that some far more important figures are already gearing up to investigate for real (just as examples, Waxman in the House and Feingold in the Senate.) That's the real set of "point men" Mask, not an admitted oddball like McKinney.

   Posted by Stwriley at 12/11/2006 @ 08:54am

9. Posted by STWRILEY 12/11/2006 @ 08:54am

   STW...again, hate to rain on the parade, but.....doubt it.

   Lyndon Johnson led us in one of the most disasterous wars in our history (heartless, but true...50,000 dead IS greater than 3000 dead, though both were useless and/or ill-conceived wars).

   Yet you have his chief cheerleader, Doris Kearns Goodwin, on "Meet The Press" or whatever talking about what a great guy he was and how "aside from the war" how great his Presidency was (even has apologists who try to pin Vietnam on Nixon and EISENHOWER!!! these days). So the "historical judgement" on Bush and Cheney is still years off, and maybe not going to be as harsh as you think.

   2nd...Pelosi....Conyers....Dean....all coming out saying "impeachment is off the table". Why? Only possible answer you can give..."They're ignorant" or "They're cowards".

   Answer that I can give....they're not stupid.

   Now, Cynthia McKinney on the other hand.....hehe!

   Posted by Mask at 12/11/2006 @ 10:21am

10. Posted by MASK 12/11/2006 @ 10:21am

    STW...again, hate to rain on the parade, but.....doubt it.

    Lyndon Johnson led us in one of the most disasterous wars in our history (heartless, but true...50,000 dead IS greater than 3000 dead, though both were useless and/or ill-conceived wars).

    Yet you have his chief cheerleader, Doris Kearns Goodwin, on "Meet The Press" or whatever talking about what a great guy he was and how "aside from the war" how great his Presidency was (even has apologists who try to pin Vietnam on Nixon and EISENHOWER!!! these days). So the "historical judgement" on Bush and Cheney is still years off, and maybe not going to be as harsh as you think.

    2nd...Pelosi....Conyers....Dean....all coming out saying "impeachment is off the table". Why? Only possible answer you can give..."They're ignorant" or "They're cowards".

    Answer that I can give....they're not stupid.

    Now, Cynthia McKinney on the other hand.....hehe!

    Oh Mask, how wrong can you be? (Answer, pretty thoroughly wrong.) My parade is still marching merrily in the sunshine, thank you, but you'd better get out the umbrella...

    First, LBJ hardly presided over the most disastrous war in American history if you're going to look at casualty figures (or virtually any other measurement), that honor goes to the Civil War with over 360,000 dead. That is, of course, rather beside the point when it comes to what I was talking about.

    Second, as far as LBJ's general legacy, Goodwin is not mainstream as an interpreter. She appears on the talking-head circuit for the simple reason that she is a presidential historian (i.e., a generalist on the presidency) and any time they want comment on an administration the MSM dig her up. If you want the historical consensus on LBJ, look no further than the specialists who actually study his legacy and put it in context. They are much less forgiving for Vietnam (and his foreign policy in general) and though many are complimentary of the goals of the Great Society, they all recognize that LBJ's foreign policy undermined his domestic policy initiatives. Take a look at Cohen, Warren I. and Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, eds. Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World: American Foreign Policy 1963-1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. That's the kind of mainstream opinion that will judge other presidents, and the list is impressive (the cited volumn has essays by Warren I. Cohen, Waldo Heinrichs, Walter LaFeber, Richard H. Immerman, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Robert J. McMahon, Frank Costigliola, Joseph S. Tulchin, and Terrence Lyons; eminent historians of LBJ and the middle Cold War each and every one.) You can also take a look at Brands, H. W. The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, for an even more damning look at the tangle created by LBJ's foreign and domestic policy views. I'd be glad to see who these LBJ "apologists" are, so feel free to cite some sources of your own. I have no doubts about the future course of BushCo history, they have sunk themselves into a hole so deep and obvious that historians are going to judge them harshly indeed. This also relates to the question of impeachment, since it will be a matter of further evidence that BushCo has at least partly concealed (or, more accurately, attempted to conceal with limited success) becoming better known and making a damning case against the entire administration.

    That, naturally, leads to the third point, one I've made to you before but you have apparently forgotten. I said from long before the election that Pelosi et. al. would not move directly to impeachment and would eschew the obvious pursuit of it as long as possible. That is the essence of the "off the table" idea. They will not push impeachment themselves and are not going to introduce articles in any way that might be construed as partisan. That does not mean, however, that there will not be impeachment. What they are going to do is investigate, investigate, investigate and let the facts come out. This will lead, as I've said before, to general public calls for impeachment from more than the Democratic party (especially from centrists and unaffiliated voters who are critical to any political success.) Then Pelosi and the rest will answer the public's call for impeachment, avoid overt partisanship, and keep their word. They will not have put impeachment on the table, but they will take it up when the political situation becomes favorable to it and the public has put it on the table. And that means; not ignorant, not cowardly, and not stupid, but rather clever and very politically savvy. McKinney is beside the point to this process and will be long gone before it takes the shape I've outlined here.

    All this leads us back to the point I was originally making about the BushCo legacy and historians. There is no doubt about the nature of their illegal action, as I made clear. They have made it a matter of public admission, which pretty much ends the debate and forms the historical jump-off for all future discussion of the matter. The fact that they have tried to justify their law-breaking by reference to a widely discredited Constitutional theory (the "Unitary Executive") will only make the judgement of history (and historians) harder on them, since that too is already flying in the face of established legal precident as regards the executive adherence to the law (Youngstown Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), which I've cited for you before, Mask.) The fact is that BushCo will be more reviled than Nixon in the long run, because in that long run of history it will be seen that they have done even more damage to our Constitutional system and for purposes even more petty. That's the thing that we should never lose sight of Mask, and the thing that historical judgement will damn most of all.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/11/2006 @ 3:54pm

11. Because I love irony, here are some facts about the late (and in many parts of Chile, unlamented) Augusto Pinochet:

    The date in which he was installed via an American-backed military coup d'etat: Sept. 11, 1973. If that date looks familiar, it should.

    I don't know about you, but I think it's ironic that the same date that this country suffered a terrible terrorist attack was exactly 28 years to the day that it helped a replace a democratically elected government with a dictator whose claim to fame was taking a large group of his opponents into a football stadium and shooting them to death.

    The date that this unrepentant dictator bit the dust: Dec. 10, 2006, otherwise known as International Human Rights day, something this dude wasn't big on.

    It was probably knowing this information that sent Pinochet on his way.

    Posted by edwriter at 12/11/2006 @ 4:38pm

12. "Encouraged by the Reagan Administration in Washington and rising Thatcherism in Europe, these military regimes instituted a savage free-market capitalism, in many cases reversing decades of carefully constructed social welfare reforms. At gunpoint unions were outlawed, labor laws were abolished, universities were stifled, tuition was hiked, national healthcare and social security programs were privatized, and these already unequal societies were rigidly stratified into rich and poor, strong and weak, the favored and the invisible."

    Sounds a lot like the USA in 2006.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 12/11/2006 @ 6:15pm

13. Is Daddy or Jesus W. going to attend the funeral? Uncle Dickie, Rumschtick? Or how about that used Ford that drove into the Whitehouse. Henry Killenger? Augusto Pinochet was a wonderful guy, I mean, he was sooooo CIA. One of those pigs must have shook Pinochet's hands.

    Posted by jazzfan at 12/11/2006 @ 6:34pm

14. "Encouraged by the Reagan Administration in Washington and rising Thatcherism in Europe, these military regimes instituted a savage free-market capitalism, in many cases reversing decades of carefully constructed social welfare reforms. At gunpoint unions were outlawed, labor laws were abolished, universities were stifled, tuition was hiked, national healthcare and social security programs were privatized, and these already unequal societies were rigidly stratified into rich and poor, strong and weak, the favored and the invisible."

    Sounds a lot like the USA in 2006.

    Posted by MTSPENCE05 12/11/2006 @ 6:15pm

    For one thing, the comparison is pretty silly; I bolded the part that I feel encapsulates the failure of your analogy. Moreover, outside of the vicious adjectives attached to them, it's unclear why many of these things are even bad. Privatizing national healthcare and social security? How awful! How could anyone even conceive of the idea that some government programs might be better managed by the private sector?? The nerve....

    Posted by Thrawn at 12/11/2006 @ 6:56pm

15. Conservative Republican Authoritarians Conservative Republican Authoritarians Conservative Republican Authoritarians Conservative Republican Authoritarians Conservative Republican Authoritarians Conservative Republican Authoritarians Conservative Republican Authoritarians Conservative Republican Authoritarians

    Posted by LiberalPride at 12/11/2006 @ 8:13pm

16. who try to pin Vietnam on Nixon and EISENHOWER

    Posted by MASK 12/11/2006 @ 10:21am | ignore this person

    Conservative Republican Authoritarians are still battling Liberal Geniuses who knew better, in the American culture war over THE DISASTER IN Vietnam

    Posted by LiberalPride at 12/11/2006 @ 8:17pm

17. Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses Liberal Foreign Policy Geniuses

    Posted by LiberalPride at 12/11/2006 @ 8:22pm

18. Republicans regarding the Pinochet coup: it was "necessary"

    Posted by LiberalPride at 12/11/2006 @ 8:25pm

19. At gunpoint unions were outlawed - PATCO?

    labor laws were abolished. U.S version: labor laws rendered toothless by 26 years of pro-management appointees to the NLRB etc including the recent bit of farce declaring RNs exempt employees since they supervise themselves.

    Posted by canaar at 12/11/2006 @ 8:32pm

20. At gunpoint unions were outlawed - PATCO?

    Are you talking about Reagan's decision to fire the striking air traffic controllers? If you are, that's still not the least bit analogous. They're government employees whose jobs have a great deal of influence on the safety of air traffic, and as long as they strike, planes can't safely fly. That's bad.

    abor laws were abolished. U.S version: labor laws rendered toothless by 26 years of pro-management appointees to the NLRB etc including the recent bit of farce declaring RNs exempt employees since they supervise themselves.

    This doesn't make sense either. Do you actually have any justification for your claim that these appointees actually made labor laws toothless in any meaningful sense? The laws themselves still exist, and presumably are still enforced as they are; appointments cannot change the substance of the law itself. In fact, there are many avenues in which unions are still extremely influential, like education. Given these facts, I think it's a little dubious to suggest that our system underwent anything like the "gunpoint abolition" that you seem to suggest.

    At the very least, though, I appreciate the dialogue; it's much preferred over mere repetition of slogans and ad hominems.

    Posted by Thrawn at 12/11/2006 @ 8:42pm

21. I suspect that Pinochet had reasons of national security and safety in mind as well. The similarity to the gunpoint abolition was in the determination to eliminate a pesky nuisance through the expedient exercise of executive power in such a manner that the ability to appeal was rendered impotent. The major difference was in the chosen weaponry and number of immediate deaths readily attributable to the nature and derivation of the power.

    It is doubtful that Johns Hopkins ran mortality studies on the PATCO families although mortality studies were conducted and/or referenced by soft-headed liberal thieves of the fruits of the owners toil, on the impact of Reaganomics and at the outset of the wholesale dismantling of the nation's social safety net. These parasites on the profits of the righteous produced statistical analyses that predicted significant adverse impacts on health, public violence, mortality, suicide rates, etc., that were not argued against as statistically invalid by the supply siding, small governmenteers. Rather, my recollection is that they were roundly ignored as being irrelevant.

    An unworthy argument concerning the "substance of the law," which you well know is implemented through regulations that are interpreted by political appointees to the regulatory agencies. A prime example of which is the Weingarten Law that originally provided a unionized employee with the right to union representation upon request at any meeting with management in which the employee reasonably believed might be disciplinary.

    Until the Reagan era, the employee's right to representation was interpreted as giving the employee the right to refuse (to be insubordinate) to participate in such management inquiry if the employer denied the employee the right to have a union representative present at the meeting. The law additionally was interpreted as grounds for overturning any discipline that the employer might impose after the employer denied the employee request for union representation. The current status of the NLRB interpretation of Weingarten is that the employee may be disciplined for insubordination if the employee refuses to cooperate with the employer's investigation after the employer denies the employee the right to representation. If the employee is disciplined as the result of the employee cooperating with the investigation after the employer has denied requested representation, the standard for "modifying" the discipline is whether the employee would have been disciplined and to the same degree if the union representative was present.

    I am sure you can recognize this as shifting the burden of proof off the employer and onto the employee as well as creating such a subjective standard of proof as to require an action by the employer that would shock the conscience before the employee would be granted any relief.

    Not only have the standards changed but the presumption of a level playing field has been tilted in favor of the employer. Understanding that the following is a rhetorical device, the game has gone from the employee having a Miranda right Pre-Reagan, to the employee being required to submit to a third degree with rubber hoses until a confession is extracted before the employee gets a right to counsel. And if the interrogators could have reached a similar conclusion without the use of the rubber hoses, then using the rubber hoses was OK.

    But, the employee was probably horseshit anyhow and likely caused John to have to wait in line at the DMV. A salutory step forward in the jurisprudence of the workplace.

    The right wing philosophy toward labor shared similarities in the respective countries at the historical conjunction. We may congratulate ourselves that our restraints on permissible "corrective" action were more refined.

    Posted by canaar at 12/11/2006 @ 9:56pm

22. Posted by THRAWN 12/11/2006 @ 6:56pm

    Moreover, outside of the vicious adjectives attached to them, it's unclear why many of these things are even bad. Privatizing national healthcare and social security? How awful! How could anyone even conceive of the idea that some government programs might be better managed by the private sector?? The nerve....

    Well, there would be the fact that neither actually worked as free marketers insist such "reforms" would in Chile. The collapse of the privatized social security system is well documented and is a problem the current Chilean state still struggles with. See this article [socsec.org] about the collapse and the reasons behind it; basically that the initial apparent success was artificially funded by other state privatizations and indexing to artificially high interest rates, and when these ran out after 1990 (with the more general down-turn of the Chilean economy), the entire scheme collapsed and actually went into a negative earnings state (down -2.5% per year by 1995 on average.) Worse yet, those gains even during the good years were sapped by very high expense rates (averaging about 23%, compared with about 2% for U.S. Social Security), which reduced the purported benefits even more. Real rate of return since 1991 has been calculated at -6.8%. The current government is now trying to repair the situation, mostly by increased public spending to bail out the privatized system. There is only one sector of the Chilean pension system that still operates as it did before privatization (i.e., by a government funded defined-benefits system); the military pension system, which is still well funded and not in trouble.

    The health care privatization did go slightly better than social security privatization, but that is no great recommendation. Once again, the privatization had perfectly predictable results (see articles here [studentbmj.com] and here [heapol.oxfordjournals.org] for a good pair of studies.) Higher income (and as a result generally healthier) individuals fled the public system (which had been defunded before privatization by Pinochet) until the upper 23% were in private insurance. The rest of the poorer and sicker population which could not afford the private system was relegated to an underfunded public system which produced much poorer healthcare than the previous all-public system. The post-Pinochet government has only corrected this lack of healthcare by spending much more on the public system (essentially returning to a strong public system that allows private insurance, as the pre-1981 system did.) So that was hardly a success either, though at least the private insurance did work for those who could afford it.

    So the answer for Chile was, indeed, that the government could manage both of these systems better than the private sector. Privatization is not some magic cure-all for the imagined ills of the public sector, Thrawn. It is a risky gamble unless we know exactly what we're getting. It is also a bad way to deal with public goods like social security and healthcare that are not easily molded to the profit motive.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/11/2006 @ 10:44pm

23. An unworthy argument concerning the "substance of the law," which you well know is implemented through regulations that are interpreted by political appointees to the regulatory agencies. A prime example of which is the Weingarten Law that originally provided a unionized employee with the right to union representation upon request at any meeting with management in which the employee reasonably believed might be disciplinary.

    Until the Reagan era, the employee's right to representation was interpreted as giving the employee the right to refuse (to be insubordinate) to participate in such management inquiry if the employer denied the employee the right to have a union representative present at the meeting. The law additionally was interpreted as grounds for overturning any discipline that the employer might impose after the employer denied the employee request for union representation. The current status of the NLRB interpretation of Weingarten is that the employee may be disciplined for insubordination if the employee refuses to cooperate with the employer's investigation after the employer denies the employee the right to representation. If the employee is disciplined as the result of the employee cooperating with the investigation after the employer has denied requested representation, the standard for "modifying" the discipline is whether the employee would have been disciplined and to the same degree if the union representative was present.

    Just for clarification, is this what the Weingarten law actually said, or what the NLRB interpreted it to say?

    If both are interpretations, I'm not convinced this is a bad thing. Presumably, the purpose of the union representative has to be one of two things; they either act (roughly) as a lawyer or a witness. It's not clear why the first would really make sense, insofar as all discipline doesn't involve criminal charges, and no business could operate under such a paradigm. Moreover, it's unclear that a union representative would have legal expertise anyway; this isn't the government acting against a citizen, it's a corporation acting against an employee who freely chose to work for them and can freely choose to quit.

    Given that, I'll assume that the union representative is supposed to act as a witness. If that's the case, the only thing that would affect the decision is their mere presence, and not anything they do. That's important, because the only possible benefit of having the witness there is that they prevent the employer from either lying about the record or threatening the employee. However, in situations where the witness' presence would make no difference, it's not clear why allowing the discipline is unfair. If you're worried about the burden of proof, I'm not sure why it necessarily tilts towards the employee here; it seems just as plausible to suggest that the employer would have to demonstrate that the discipline would have been identical.

    Well, there would be the fact that neither actually worked as free marketers insist such "reforms" would in Chile. The collapse of the privatized social security system is well documented and is a problem the current Chilean state still struggles with. See this article [socsec.org] about the collapse and the reasons behind it; basically that the initial apparent success was artificially funded by other state privatizations and indexing to artificially high interest rates, and when these ran out after 1990 (with the more general down-turn of the Chilean economy), the entire scheme collapsed and actually went into a negative earnings state (down -2.5% per year by 1995 on average.) Worse yet, those gains even during the good years were sapped by very high expense rates (averaging about 23%, compared with about 2% for U.S. Social Security), which reduced the purported benefits even more. Real rate of return since 1991 has been calculated at -6.8%. The current government is now trying to repair the situation, mostly by increased public spending to bail out the privatized system. There is only one sector of the Chilean pension system that still operates as it did before privatization (i.e., by a government funded defined-benefits system); the military pension system, which is still well funded and not in trouble.

    Though the analysis here is solid, it's not quite to the point. All of these, at most, are reasons why privatization was a poor policy decision in this case. None of them, however, are reasons why privatization is actually evil or anything like that. Even if a theory turned out to be incorrect, that doesn't make it malicious.

    I'll have to read your links at a later time, when I don't have loads of work to deal with, but I'll suffice to suggest that problems with such programs could lie just as much in their implementation as in their fundamental nature; maybe it would help if they didn't do it the dumb way.

    Posted by Thrawn at 12/11/2006 @ 11:34pm

24. As I may have mentioned before, though, I really appreciate the dialogue that you guys have been willing to participate in.

    Posted by Thrawn at 12/11/2006 @ 11:35pm

25. Posted by THRAWN 12/11/2006 @ 11:34pm

    Generally speaking, employers must meet a "just cause" standard when disciplining non-managerial employees. Classically, there were seven elements of the just cause standard that needed to be met (now generally reduced to the standard of whether the employer acted "reasonably," a further weakening of employee/union rights in the workplace through arbitral interpretation).

    A couple of the elements germane to this discussion are/were that the employer is required to conduct a "fair investigation" prior to imposing discipline and that the employee must be granted a due process right (generally interpreted to mean that the employee has the right to tell his/her side of the story prior to a determination to impose discipline).

    The right to have a union representative (advocate) present at an investigation meeting loosely follows the similar right that citizens have with respect to legal representation during criminal investigations and the rights of the employee and advocate are similar. In short, the advocate performs some of the functions of a lawyer in such investigation meetings. These advocates are not attorneys in most cases but it is not uncommon for a union to provide attorney representation at such investigation meetings depending on the potential severity of the discipline, etc.

    The Wikipedia link below provides a brief and superficial overview of Weingarten. Linked text [en.wikipedia.org]

    Posted by canaar at 12/12/2006 @ 09:15am

26. Posted by STWRILEY 12/11/2006 @ 3:54pm

    STW, if you're not a Johnson apologist, big UPS to you. But in discussions on Vietnam I have had with some "progressives", they leap to his defense, because ....well, because he's a Democrat and he created the "Great Society"...period.

    On Pelosi, Conyers, and "off the table"....heard this theory before too. That somehow "enough damning evidence will come out that the public will FORCE Speaker Nancy to impeach Bush!!!!!!"

    Problem?...what's left to "come out"? NSA Spying?....out. No WMDs in Iraq?....out. Gitmo prisoners "maltreated"?....out.

    Everything can be called "old news" by Tony Snow and he can point to a dozen appearances on "Meet The Press" from 2004-2006 to show that "everybody has known about **** for years..." and then go into discussions of how the Dems were informed of the NSA taps, Clinton said there were WMDs, and ask Dems to "go to Gitmo and find out for themselves".

    Posted by Mask at 12/12/2006 @ 10:28am

27. Crimes against humanity must be punished regardless where they have occurred, therefore criminals such as Bush and Blair should be prosecuted for their crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia. We cannot let them go free like we did Pinochet.

    Posted by PARCELITO at 12/13/2006 @ 04:41am

28. Posted by MASK 12/12/2006 @ 10:28am

    STW, if you're not a Johnson apologist, big UPS to you. But in discussions on Vietnam I have had with some "progressives", they leap to his defense, because ....well, because he's a Democrat and he created the "Great Society"...period.

    But my point was on the judgement of history and historians, not "progressives" in general, which is why I took you to task on this Mask. I can and do defend LBJ on many of his domestic policies without doing the same for his misguided and very poor foreign policies. These are the kind of sophisticated distinctions we should be making, rather than just excoriating a president generally for some of his policies. I have defended Nixon too, though I've also severely criticized him for fairly obvious reasons. Hell, even Georgie-boy has occasionally done something right (invading Afghanistan comes to mind, though of course he the flubbed the execution of what was a necessary policy.) Judging whether a presidential tenure was a success or not is the balancing of these positive and negative factors. I'd say that on balance LBJ was a failure, despite the undoubted good some of his domestic policies achieved. I'll say the same right now for BushCo, but without the last clause.

    On Pelosi, Conyers, and "off the table"....heard this theory before too. That somehow "enough damning evidence will come out that the public will FORCE Speaker Nancy to impeach Bush!!!!!!"

    Problem?...what's left to "come out"? NSA Spying?....out. No WMDs in Iraq?....out. Gitmo prisoners "maltreated"?....out.

    Everything can be called "old news" by Tony Snow and he can point to a dozen appearances on "Meet The Press" from 2004-2006 to show that "everybody has known about **** for years..." and then go into discussions of how the Dems were informed of the NSA taps, Clinton said there were WMDs, and ask Dems to "go to Gitmo and find out for themselves".

    I know you've heard this argument before, from me for one. Seriously though, it's not so much about the idea that they'll be forced to move to impeachment, but rather that the public at large will catch up to the idea and provide them the support necessary to make impeachment not look like a partisan exercise in payback. That is what Pelosi et.al. are running from right now and what a significant public outcry will shield them from.

    As to what's left to come out, there are a host of things that have only been hinted at in the press and that the general public (i.e., beyond the rather limited world of the blogosphere) knows almost nothing about. It is exactly because the details have yet to be revealed that there is not a public outcry over what BushCo has done. The "old news" spin isn't going to work when the news isn't old and the public sees new revelations about just what has really been going on. Do you think that when the real extent of the domestic spying scandal comes out and the average Joe realizes that the government has been gathering data on virtually everything that he's been doing there won't be outrage? And that's just one issue. People make a big show of the "all government is corrupt" stance, but confront them with the exact nature of the criminal acts taken by BushCo and no amount of Tony Snow's spin is going to deflect a popular call for impeachment.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/13/2006 @ 08:46am

29. Posted by THRAWN 12/11/2006 @ 11:34pm

    Though the analysis here is solid, it's not quite to the point. All of these, at most, are reasons why privatization was a poor policy decision in this case. None of them, however, are reasons why privatization is actually evil or anything like that. Even if a theory turned out to be incorrect, that doesn't make it malicious.

    I'll have to read your links at a later time, when I don't have loads of work to deal with, but I'll suffice to suggest that problems with such programs could lie just as much in their implementation as in their fundamental nature; maybe it would help if they didn't do it the dumb way.

    I'm not so sure you can write off even Chile's experience with this privatization as simply bad policy (though given the results it clearly was that.) There was a certain element of maliciousness there, since we're talking about a plan that inherently transferred wealth from the less to the more fortunate (i.e., the private sector entities that must run the social security system if the government does not.) That is an element that underlies all of these privatization plans no matter how the policy is formed, since there is no getting around the profit motive behind them. I and many others who oppose the idea of privatizing many kinds of social services and other public goods do so because we see them as incompatible in goals with the profit motive and thus belonging to nthe realm of government and the public/non-profit motive of social benefit (versus the profit motive of private benefit.) The underlying ideology of these privatization efforts is "the private sector always does it better", which is no more true than the idea that government always does it better. Rational policy is formed by recognizing where the profit motive has advantages and where it does not. Exposing those who need their retirement safty net to new risk and leaving them to the mercies of a market many of them do not understand and cannot afford to educate themselves on is definately not what I would consider a proper attention to the public good of ensuring that the elderly do not fall into poverty. That is not a problem of execution, but an inherent flaw in the entire idea. Do those who push this idea know this? Some no doubt do but simply don't care as long as they increase their own wealth as a result, and that is about as malicious as anything I can think of.

    I do not say that you think this way; most of those who support the idea of privatization don't, since they see this as a way to reduce government in general and believe in this as a general good. The problem is that there are things that need to be done by government, and they have been misled to think that this is not one of them. I am no great advocate of government intrusiveness, but to regard government as an evil in and of itself is a foolish notion, since in this country at least, that government is us.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/13/2006 @ 09:09am

30. 9/11 is not only a sad date for Americans, but also for the Chilean people. That is the day Pinochet, with the help of the CIA overthrew the legally elected government of Salvador Allende and issued in nearly three decades of fascist repression. I hope he rots in hell.

    Posted by Mike Quirk at 12/13/2006 @ 2:19pm

31. PATCO members were "permanently replaced," a euphanism for being fired. Why the distinction? Because under federal labor law, strikers may be permanently replaced, but they may not be fired. Reagan's decision to invoke this rarely used loophole - under a plan developed by the Carter Administration, I might add - opened up a giant tunnel through which corporate America drove over the American working class. Under threat of "permanent replacement," the strike weapon became almost useless in the 1980's.

    Combining the lesson of PATCO with spineless International unions stabbing locals in the back; plants and factories being played off against each other ("whipsawing") in a race to see which one could give the most concessions to the company (sounds like the way states and countries are played against each other for tax breaks and lower labor costs today, doesn't it); offshoring; outsourcing; capital flight to the U.S. South (the First World's very own Third World!) and to the Third World; and automation, the result has been that real wages have been stagnant for nearly 30 years, and the percentage of the private sector workforce in unions has plummeted. This, even though poll after poll shows that workers would join a union if they could. But when the case load at the NLRB is ridiculously backed up and when workers are fired every day for trying to form a union - as opposed to being killed in China or Columbia, true enough - national labor law has almost become a joke.

    One object example recently in the news: meatpacking. Never a pleasant job but once a safer and far better paid one where employees could support a middle class lifestyle thanks to union wages and benefits. After the 80's, meatpacking is back to being a low wage, low benefit and incredibly dangerous industry staffed largely by immigrant labor because the American citizens who once worked in the slaughter and packing houses have all been "permanently replaced," laid off or forced into early retirement by round after round of concessions, or fired when their employers were reorganized under bankruptcy protection or (Oh My God, how could I forget this one!) after some merger or acquisition left the company burdened with a ton of debt. Goodbye to post-World War II prosperity. Hello again to Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and La Migra.

    There are conservatives who decry the current low wage economy, but if they remain fans of the Reagan presidency, this is the legacy that they will have to struggle with.

    Posted by cka2nd at 12/13/2006 @ 3:46pm

32. I'll apologize from the get-go for sounding like a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, but Augusto Pinochet was supposedly recovering from a heart attack, and then suddenly dies when he is indicted for the murder of two of Allende's body guards. He dies at a military hospital with no outside witnesses, his body is cremated,so no outside party actually sees the dead body. How does anyone insure that he is, in fact , dead, as opposed to living he last of his years in quiet solitude somewhere?

    Posted by lpacheco at 12/14/2006 @ 12:56am