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Indybay Feature

KPFA: Edwards-Tiekert Sics Bush-Cheney Lawyers on Pacifica

by Correct Info
In increasingly desperate maneuvers to recover his position as host of the Morning Show on KPFA after being laid off and establish a 14-11 Save KPFA majority on the local board, Brian Edwards-Tiekert today filed yet another lawsuit against Pacifica.

Edwards-Tiekert, who rumor has it has already filed no less than five individual union grievances on his own behalf, including one asserting he is a victim of reverse discrimination because he is a white man, today filed suit via Dhillon Smith, the law firm headed up by Harmeet Dhillon, the co-chair of Lawyers for Bush/Cheney 2004, former Heritage Foundation "journalist" and Republican challenger to Tom Ammiano.

Edwards-Tiekert is protesting his own penalty for taking to the airwaves at the end of Sptember to make wild accusations that board members not affiliated with his own faction were in secret meetings assembling political hit lists to fire everyone in sight and busting the union.

After due consideration of pages of transcripts and audio files from the on-air barrage, the now-departed Pacifica election supervisor decided that Edwards-Tiekert and 2 other staff members who also participated in lengthy on-air speeches at the end of the election period telling voters who they didn't want them to vote for, impacted the results. She concluded that members of the station's staff could not fail to be impacted by reports that Independents for Community Radio candidates were planning to fire them all, and this likely impacted the results of an election where 20% of the ballots came in in the last 2 days and the margin between 3rd and 4th place was one vote.

The available remedies included redoing the election (at some expense and certainly some inconvenience to candidates and voters), removing the programmers from the air (she was not permitted to do so by the station's managers) or disqualifying the offending members. The action she took was to disqualify.

The lawsuit names the Pacifica Foundation as a defendant, as well as the former election supervisor individually, and the 3rd place candidate (a member of the unpaid staff) individually.

It asks for unspecified monetary damages, as well as for the election results to stand with no remedy for the on-air violations committed by Edwards-Tiekert and others.


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by brightpathvideo
I was beginning to wonder if my hunches could be right about Brian. Now, with this revelation of hiring the Bush-Cheney attorneys it may seem so. David Ray Griffin has written a book about it. It's called cognitive infiltration. http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Infiltration-Appointees-Undermine-Conspiracy/dp/1566568218

The idea is to infiltrate a progressive organization or similar with what appears to be a semblance of affinity, then the infiltrator, having gained access begins a sophisticated set of maneuvers designed to cause internal disruption and diversions aimed at clouding and disturbing the organization's main goals. Voila Brian Edwards-Tiekert!
Try Googling Brian and you won't find much.
by Heard That
The case is Edwards Tiekert v Pacifica, Alameda Superior RG10549212 and the docket with printable documents is found at:
http://apps.alameda.courts.ca.gov/domainweb/html/casesumbody.html
The complaint in TIFF format, which must of us can print with no extra programs, is at
http://apps.alameda.courts.ca.gov/domainweb/service?ServiceName=DomainWebService&PageName=itree&Action=25289492

If you know the date of filing or the action number (RGplus numbers), you can find a case in Alameda Superior. This and the previous lawsuit are unlimited civil actions. Fortunately, these actions are in Alameda County, probably the only County that has all pleadings on the website.

As you can see, the case website also offers the calendar and names and addresses of the attorneys. They went for the injunction ex parte (on their own), so there is no opposing counsel yet. The plaintiffs are represented by Dhillon and Smith.

The full biography of the reactionary Republican Party lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, may be found at the Smart Voter website since she ran for Assembly against Democrat Tom Ammiano in San Francisco in November 2008. See
http://www.smartvoter.org/2008/11/04/ca/state/vote/dhillon_h/bio.html

Her endorsers are listed at
http://www.smartvoter.org/2008/11/04/ca/state/vote/dhillon_h/endorse.html

and her answers to questions are listed at:
http://www.smartvoter.org/2008/11/04/ca/state/vote/dhillon_h/questions.html

Much is made of her education, but anyone who states, as Dhillon does in answers to questions, that the teachers' unions are a problem in the school system and that the only viable medical system is the private profit health insurance disaster that we now have, is a person who is profoundly backward, ignorant and reactionary.

Her co-chair role of Lawyers for Bush/Cheney'04 and her "journalism" for the reactionary Heritage Foundation, are more fully described at:
http://www.imakenews.com/sfgop/e_article001049029.cfm?x=b11,0,w

Please note that Bush/Cheney's fascism in committing election fraud in 2000 and all their other crimes against humanity at home and abroad were well known by 2004.

Her law firm's website lists a successful lawsuit in which they represented the Republican Party of Los Angeles County. See:
http://www.dhillonsmith.com/2010/05/dhillon-smith-prevails-in-lawsuit-over-the-leadership-of-the-republican-party-of-los-angeles-county/

This is the anti-labor law firm that Brian Edwards-Tiekert somehow contacted and agreed to represent him and others. And as the above article states, Edwards-Tiekert also filed a union grievance claiming "reverse discrimination" as a white man. There is no person left of the Republican Party that would get near a lawyer liked Harmeet Dhillon and her law firm or claim any kind of "reverse discrimination." Now we know who Brian Edwards-Tiekert, and his fellow plaintiffs represented by Dhillon's office, Mitch Jeserich and Lewis Sawyer are and therefore all 3 of them have no busines being at KPFA at all.

The question remains, what are the Wellstone Democratic Club members in the Thug Hallinan Gang who support Brian Edwards-Tiekert and fellow plaintiffs in both lawsuits, as well as Democrats like the following doing supporting this reactionary group of plaintiffs? Are they intent on proving, although no more proof is needed, that there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties when it comes to attempting to destroy both KPFA and Pacifica, which would have happened if Pacifica had not ended the Morning Show for the time being so as to stop the excess spending. The savekpfa website lists the following Democrats supporting Edwards-Tiekert and friends:
State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano
San Francisco Superivsor John Avalos
State Senator Loni Hancock
Alameda Cty Supt of Schools Sheila Jordan
Albany Mayor Joanne Wile
Berkeley Auditor Ann-Marie Hogan
Berkeley City Councilmembers Darryl Moore and Laurie Capitelli
Albany City Councilmembers Robert Lieber and Marge Atkinson
Emeryville City Councilmember Ruth Atkin
Peralta Community College Boardmembers Nicky Gonazlez Yuen, Linda Handy, Abel Guillen
Ron Rosenbaum, Pres of Albany School Board
by listener member voter
So you are OK with disenfranchisement of legitimate voters, peeping at secret ballots to see if invalidating them will throw an election and actual thuggery? The judge apparently wasn't because BET got the TRO.

The most bizarre part is that Pacifica's own attorney agrees that the original vote count must stand and Renee Asteria and her handler, Tracy Rosenberg, had no right to disenfranchise anyone and strip their most basic right in this "democracy," which is the right to vote. And yet Engelhardt, Asteria and Rosenberg refuse to even accept their own hand-picked attorney's advice on the matter. This insanity is at Pacifica's feet now. They should agree to certify the original election results, at their attorney's advice, and stop draining the foundation.

Keep this shit up, and even the sacred cows at Flashpoints and the weekend news will go down, too, when Pacifica's stupidity drains the last cent.
by We know, we know
The hearing is tomorrow. Nothing has been granted and nothing has been presented to a judge.

The issue is what to do when people egregiously abuse the power of the microphone to exert undue influence, which is exactly what happened. It's ridiculous to claim accusations that board members were trying to fire all the staff didn't impact the staff. Of course they did. The accusations were totally untrue. The entire board approved several budgets requiring the layoffs. The executive director finally carried them out - after 2 years of bullshit.

The possible remedies include redoing the election or disqualifying those who broke the rules. The election supervisor decided that rather than inconveniencing 250 voters and 6 candidates for the ridiculous actions of a few, she would disqualify those who could be documented with audio evidence and written transcripts to have defamed and unendorsed candidates on the air in contradistinction to the agreed-upon rules - which all are bound by.

The judge will likely uphold her actions or order the election redone.

Pacifica's attorney said nothing of the kind. Stop drinking so much koolaid. It's not good for the mind.

I'm glad to know you intend to bankrupt KPFA since you were unable to force the layoffs on Flashpoints and Hard Knock Radio as planned and against the contract. Very progressive.

by deanosor (deanosor [at] mailup.net)
1. Can the union grievances BET filed be read by the public?
2. If the grievances are what it says they are, is BET trying to get a job at Fox News? They're the kind of "news" outlet that would hire someone who claims he was discriminated against because he is a white man.
By conspiring with a blatantly right-wing law firm to sue Pacifica, both Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Mitch Jeserich have shown that they are either conscious agents of (government or private) reactionary forces out to destroy Pacifica and KPFA or just totally self-centered egoists who don't give a damn about anything that matters to KPFA listeners.

Pacifica is likely to lose money due to the Edwards-Tiekert clique's various lawsuits and NLRB complaints, and to their disruption of morning programming. I hope that the amount lost is just enough to require the layoff of the remaining on-air programmer with lowest seniority -- if, as I believe, that programmer is Mitch Jeserich. And Arlene Engelhardt can't afford to pass over Jeserich in the next round of layoffs for fear of being sued for reverse discrimination by whatever able-bodied person she lays off instead. (;->)

What goes around comes around, Mitch!


The complaint filed by E.-T., et al., can be found at:
by BIG POTATO
I wonder where teacup get all the money for all this lawers and law suits.I mean kpfa job never paid too much.I bet aipac or adl is helping him a lot financially.Any way as a typical zionsit teacup try to do to kpfa what zionsit done to the democrap party.Infiltrate the institution from inside to dIsimantel it . I wish we can defait this fuckers.
by Eric Brooks
If what is being said about the law firm Edwards-Tiekert has hired is true, then it's pretty damned obvious what is going on.

It already looked like Edwards-Tiekert was some sort of CoIntelpro style mole seeking to stir up enough financial losses and internal bullshit to do the station in.

Now there is little doubt. And even if there -is- some shred of doubt remaining, this pathetic little elitist twit has done enough damage to KPFA already.

It's time to show him the door not only to KPFA, but to California, and direct him not to let it hit him on the ass on his way out.
At least in the case of the lawsuit over the attempt to repair the election, there's little doubt that:

1) the lawyers are doing it on contingency or something similar, like having the court force Pacifica to pay if they win, and

2) they're not doing it for the money, which can't be all that much to these capitalist scum, but for political reasons.

Regarding E.T.'s alleged complaint of "reverse discrimination", does anybody have any information about this? A copy of any such complaint should be posted if it is available.
by no fool
bRAIN EDWARDS TIEKERT + Entrenched managment clique =cOGNITIVE iNFILTRATION

1.RAISING ARCHANE POINTS UNTIL PEOPLE STOP COMING TO MEETINGS (See Brians' use of ROBERTS' RULES and efforts to dismantle LSB) AND 2. INGRATIATING himself to MANAGEMENT 3. creating a divisive clique that controls both the board and the CWA union-4. Working with S Lilley, killing local news to use imported programs to stifle the coverage of local issues and 5. ASSUMING A POSITION FOR WHICH HE IS UNQUALIFIED (treasurer)AND THEN USING THE POSITION TO undermine the organization see bankruptcy 6.CHANGE NEWS COVERAGE TO WEAKER LESS RADICAL SUBJECT MATTER AND 7. SLOWLY WORKING TO DISMANTLE THE ORGANIZATION FROM THE INSIDE...

Who is this guy really?????
by Ann Garrison
This would be rather large news were it more than rumor. Any way of confirming it?
by Silent Staff
RE: "By conspiring with a blatantly right-wing law firm to sue Pacifica, both Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Mitch Jeserich (sic) have shown that they are either conscious agents of (government or private) reactionary forces out to destroy Pacifica and KPFA or just totally self-centered egoists who don't give a damn about anything that matters to KPFA listeners."

The latter.
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