Membership

Marilyn Vann can trace her Cherokee roots back more than 200 years through generations of Native Americans and the descendants of black slaves who lived among them. She has mountains of paper -- birth certificates, tribal enrollment cards, land deeds, affidavits, yellowing photographs -- documenting her family's life within the tribe.

As the first threesome prepares to tee off at the Masters Tournament this morning, it's proper to keep the spotlight on the tournament's biggest commercial sponsors--AT&T, Exxon Mobil, and IBM--for their complicity in the unsavory history of discrimination at the hosting Augusta National Golf Club.  IBM has gotten most of the heat, because its new CEO, Virginia Rometty, would be most obviously disadvantaged by the club's men-only membership...

The marble walkway leading into the California Club echoes with the ghostly footsteps of land barons, railroad tycoons and political kingmakers. So does the ostentatious front lobby of the Jonathan Club nearby. Private business clubs once were centers of power in downtown Los Angeles. You might have found rail magnate Henry E. Huntington playing dominoes and plotting his next expansion beneath the high, oak-paneled walls. Or William May Garland, the real estate developer, scheming to bring the 1932 Summer Olympics to Los Angeles.

Augusta National Golf Club Chairman Billy Payne really didn't surprise anyone Wednesday with his comment on admitting women to membership at the all-male club. His comment was: No comment. As my Wednesday column observes, Augusta, whose annual Masters Tournament starts Thursday, has a long tradition of discrimination, racial and sexual, and an even longer tradition of silence on membership issues. At his pre-tournament press conference, Payne was asked repeatedly to comment on the latest iteration of the membership issue, which arises because the new CEO of IBM, a tournament sponsor, is a woman, Virginia Rometty.

Despite economic uncertainty and cost-cutting, club membership perks for corporate chief executives showed no signs of decline in 2008-09 -- including at toy giant Mattel Inc. According to a report released Tuesday by research firm the Corporate Library, 382 CEOs received club membership fee benefits in 2008-09, compared with 372 in 2007-08. The firm reviewed filings of more than 3,200 U.S. publicly traded companies. Among the top spenders was El Segundo-based Mattel, which reimbursed CEO Robert A. Eckert $150,000 for a country club initiation fee, the report said.

Union membership throughout California is rising despite the ongoing recession, according to a study released Monday by UCLA's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Between July 2008 and June 2009, unions gained almost 25,000 new members in Southern California and more than 131,000 statewide, according to the institute's fifth annual report on the state of organized labor. Union workers still represent fewer than one in five employees in the state, but membership has grown steadily for two years.

The expectation that the Augusta National golf club would do the right thing and avoid another wave of controversy over its male-only perception ended quickly here Wednesday. The issue, which created great noise and no action back in 2003, when Martha Burke campaigned for female membership at the host of the legendary Masters Golf Tournament, emerged again recently when IBM named a woman as its chief executive. Most previous IBM CEOs have been Augusta members, and IBM is one of the main sponsors of the Masters.

California's labor battle over who will represent tens of thousands of hospital workers will apparently be determined in voting booths at dozens of hospitals and nursing homes around the state. The National Union of Healthcare Workers, formed last week by the ousted leaders of United Healthcare Workers West, on Monday asked state officials to conduct elections at 64 healthcare facilities where it says a majority of employees currently represented by Oakland-based UHW want to join the new group.

Kazakhstan applied for membership in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on Sunday, following in the footsteps of Russia and other former Soviet republics.

Membership in the United Methodist Church dropped by 38,477 last year, the smallest decline since a gradual erosion began 30 years ago. Membership now stands at 8.4 million, United Methodist News Service reported, down from 11 million when the denomination was formed in a two-way merger in 1968. The United Methodist Church is America's third-biggest denomination, behind the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention.

The expectation that the Augusta National golf club would do the right thing and avoid another wave of controversy over its male-only perception ended quickly here Wednesday. The issue, which created great noise and no action back in 2003, when Martha Burke campaigned for female membership at the host of the legendary Masters Golf Tournament, emerged again recently when IBM named a woman as its chief executive. Most previous IBM CEOs have been Augusta members, and IBM is one of the main sponsors of the Masters.

Calling solitary confinement "torture," California prisoners and advocates are asking the United Nations to investigate the segregated housing of gang members at prisons throughout the state. "We have California treating several thousand prisoners in much the same way the U.S. government treats enemy combatants held in Guantanamo," said Peter Schey, an attorney representing hundreds of inmates. Schey, who announced the petition at a news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday alongside prisoners' relatives, said solitary confinement was devastating to the physical and mental health of prisoners and was likely to increase their risk of committing more crimes upon release.

The Los Angeles Times will begin charging readers for access to its online news, joining a growing roster of major news organizations looking for a way to offset declines in revenue. Starting March 5, online readers will be asked to buy a digital subscription at an initial rate of 99 cents for four weeks. Readers who do not subscribe will be able to read 15 stories in a 30-day period for free. There will be no digital access charge for subscribers of the printed newspaper. Separately, The Times announced plans to launch a new weekly lifestyle section called Saturday for its print subscribers.

My wife is worried I'm going to become a shut-in surrounded by a dozen or so cats - though in my case the cats would have names like Schwarzenegger and Thor. This is because my home gym recently evolved from "not that good" to "almost awesome," so why would I want to keep paying for a gym membership just for the sake of leaving the house and getting social interaction? I used to think home gyms were a bad idea. After all, studies show that exercise adherence is lowest for people who do it at home, alone.

Syria's increasingly isolated government fought to maintain its grasp on power in the face of bitter criticism from neighbors and former allies who questioned the right of President Bashar Assad to continue ruling his country after months of bloody repression. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former supporter of Assad, declared that Syria was on "the edge of the cliff" in a blunt, personal message to the embattled president. "Those who fire on their own people will go down in history as leaders who feed on blood," warned Erdogan, who also referred to Assad by his first name, a show of disrespect.

Syria has been the outlier in the Arab Spring, with President Bashar Assad holding on to power while other autocrats in the region have been ousted — or worse — one after another. But now that the reforms he promised have failed to materialize, Assad is losing the support of other Arab leaders. That development doesn't guarantee that he will step aside, but it makes it more likely. And it vindicates the case for Western sanctions. Over the weekend, the Arab League suspended Syria's membership in the organization, two weeks after a delegation from the group reached an agreement with Assad.

After posting its first membership loss since 1926, the Southern Baptist Convention has reported an increase of 122,400 for 1999. The new membership figure--15,851,756--remains a bit below the 1997 total. The convention is America's largest Protestant body and a bellwether for conservative Protestant trends. The denomination said the 419,342 baptisms for 1999 exceeded 1998 and 1997 totals. Sunday School enrollment was down 482 for the year, to 8,147,457. Total giving rose 5.4%, to $7.3 billion.

China and its backers blocked a bid to get the General Assembly to consider granting Taiwan membership in the world body. The proposal, sponsored by 14 mostly Central American and African nations, was rejected by the assembly's general committee. Chinese Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing to the Communists in a civil war. But Taiwan held China's U.N. seat until 1971, when it was replaced by the Beijing government.

After gaining momentum with their successful bid to join UNESCO, Palestinians now seem uncertain about their next move to win full membership in the United Nations and frustrated with their progress. The Palestinians' U.N. application was discussed Friday at the world body's Security Council, but no vote was taken. Divisions among council members - including a veto threat from the U.S. - make the application almost certain to fail. In recent days, Palestinian leaders have acknowledged privately that they don't even have the nine votes needed to forward the application to the U.N. General Assembly, meaning the Obama administration may not have to use its veto.

Demonstrators across Syria demanded Friday that the Arab League take decisive action against the government of President Bashar Assad, opposition activists said, as a rights group accused Damascus of crimes against humanity during its crackdown on dissent. The opposition reported that government forces killed at least 37 people, half in the central city of Homs, which has become a center of the almost eight-month rebellion against Assad's rule. The casualty numbers could not be independently verified.