Archive for the ‘ACORN’ Category
Official at ACORN Funder to Head Corporation for National and Community Service
Posted by Matthew Vadum in ACORN, Hannah Giles, Obama on October 6th, 2009
President Obama announced he plans to nominate Patrick Corvington to be chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America. Big Government readers will remember that “the Corporation” assumed a prominent role on the infamous NEA Conference call, where ”the Corporation’s” Nell Abernathy joined White House and NEA officials to nudge artists to produce works supporting the Obama Administration’s legislative priorities.
Although the charity Corvington works for, Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, has granted funding to ACORN during his tenure, it is unclear if Corvington has ties to ACORN.
Nonetheless, Corvington is part of the same cluster of organizations that provides financial and other support for ACORN which is a longtime fixture in the activist community.
Since 2001 the Annie E. Casey Foundation has pumped at least $1,705,500 into the ACORN network, according to philanthropy database information.
Of the $1,705,500, at least $850,500 was earmarked for ACORN operations in Baltimore, Maryland, home of the ACORN branch office first shown in the recent undercover videos that debuted on BigGovernment.com. Those videos show James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute and receiving mountains of advice on evading laws pertaining to tax evasion and prostitution (among other things).
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a major funder of other groups on the left.
Looking at just the first letter of the alphabet, its grant recipients are labor federation AFL-CIO, abortion rights think tank Alan Guttmacher Institute, and liberal policy shop the Aspen Institute.
Although most of its grants go to groups on the political left, the foundation has funded at least one think tank on the political right. It has provided a few grants to the American Enterprise Institute.
Official at ACORN Funder to Head Corporation for National and Community Service
Posted by Matthew Vadum in ACORN, Hannah Giles, Obama on October 6th, 2009
President Obama announced he plans to nominate Patrick Corvington to be chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America. Big Government readers will remember that “the Corporation” assumed a prominent role on the infamous NEA Conference call, where ”the Corporation’s” Nell Abernathy joined White House and NEA officials to nudge artists to produce works supporting the Obama Administration’s legislative priorities.
Although the charity Corvington works for, Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, has granted funding to ACORN during his tenure, it is unclear if Corvington has ties to ACORN.
Nonetheless, Corvington is part of the same cluster of organizations that provides financial and other support for ACORN which is a longtime fixture in the activist community.
Since 2001 the Annie E. Casey Foundation has pumped at least $1,705,500 into the ACORN network, according to philanthropy database information.
Of the $1,705,500, at least $850,500 was earmarked for ACORN operations in Baltimore, Maryland, home of the ACORN branch office first shown in the recent undercover videos that debuted on BigGovernment.com. Those videos show James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute and receiving mountains of advice on evading laws pertaining to tax evasion and prostitution (among other things).
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a major funder of other groups on the left.
Looking at just the first letter of the alphabet, its grant recipients are labor federation AFL-CIO, abortion rights think tank Alan Guttmacher Institute, and liberal policy shop the Aspen Institute.
Although most of its grants go to groups on the political left, the foundation has funded at least one think tank on the political right. It has provided a few grants to the American Enterprise Institute.
Is SEIU’s Purple Brand Fading to Pink?
Posted by Don Loos in ACORN, Featured Story, Politics, Wade Rathke on October 6th, 2009
Stern’s New Big Labor Same as the Old Big Labor
For the past four years, the highest profile Big Labor Boss was Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern. Stern has deliberately parlayed his controlling style as that of a New Labor Boss, and he has painstakingly worked on the SEIU “purple brand.” And yet, Stern and the SEIU union have failed to live up to the New Labor Boss identity that he claimed in his New York Times Magazine and CNN/Fortune Magazine articles.
Stern tried to separate himself from the herd of “old-styled” labor bosses in several ways, most noticeably with his dress. He conscientiously wore his beloved SEIU purple with its slight pinkish hue. Apparently, Stern is trying to replicate for his union what brown does for UPS.
Stern’s limitless purple attire led some to refer to him as the Lavender Labor Leader. And recently, SEIU’s Anna Burger looked very chic in her purple suit as Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) grilled her about SEIU’s relationship with ACORN.
Whatever color of scarves, suits, or hats Andy Stern decides to wear, you cannot deny his influence with the White House, U.S. Congressional King Pins, the Democrat National Committee, and ACORN among others. But, has Stern’s smash-mouth organizing and relationship to ACORN begun to turn SEIU’s purple into black and blue? You bet it has!
Clearly, ACORN’s partnerships with SEIU and other Big Labor outfits has begun to drag down SEIU’s image. SEIU has decided, now that ACORN is damaged goods, to cut ties for now. But, that will be very difficult because ACORN and ACORN’s training programs are totally interwoven into the purple fabric that makes up SEIU.
From 2005 through 2008, SEIU spent $9 million on ACORN training programs and contracting out ACORN organizing services. SEIU even hired ACORN founder Wade Rathke to command SEIU national organizing programs. The ACORN listings below illustrate that the SEIU-ACORN relationship is much deeper than SEIU may want publicly known:
ACORN is not the only Brand Destroyer for SEIU
But, SEIU cannot blame its deteriorating image solely on it incestuous relationship with ACORN. The “New Labor Boss” Stern has failed to live up to the image he created.
New Boss Stern is the same as Old Big Labor Bosses that Robert F. Kennedy described in his book, “The Enemy Within.” Those Old Bosses would consolidate power and control over local unions by placing and threatening to place locals into trusteeships (Taking over operations of a local union and ousting of the elected union officials). In addition, these bosses would cut deals with employers that allowed union members to be paid below contract rates.
Local SEIU officers have claimed that Stern aggressively eliminates local autonomy via trusteeships and approved payoffs (e.g.An indictment alleged that in exchange for payments, SEIU local president Danny Iverson’s resigned so that Stern associate Debra Timko would became president.); and, at least one SEIU contract allows an SEIU contracted employer to pay below contract rates (of course, workers are still forced to pay SEIU union dues and fees for its representation):
“In any instance where the Company signatory hereto desires to submit a bid to perform unit work at a building being serviced by a contractor not a party to a collective bargaining agreement with the union which would cover the work in question, it is agreed that the wage and fringe benefit provisions of this Agreement may be waived …”
Stern’s internal self-serving tactics have resulted in minimal public image damage because most of these actions primarily involve SEIU internal politics. However, internal struggles combined with SEIU’s ruthless corporate campaigns and associations with groups like ACORN are causing even mainstream columnists like Kathleen Parker to question why anyone would want to be associated with SEIU. She wrote:
While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending they’ve hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they’ve never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation’s largest unions.
Since the 1990s, SEIU used ACORN-type tactics in so-called “corporate campaigns.” As previously mentioned, ACORN trained SEIU organizers, and ACORN founder Wade Rathke spearheaded SEIU national organizing campaigns.
During these corporate campaigns, SEIU coordinates personal attacks against employees, customers of targeted employers, and the employers. SEIU organizers systematically increase their attacks with assistance from outside pressure groups in accordance with SEIU’s corporate campaign stratagem.
Here is the real kicker in SEIU’s corporate campaign; SEIU’s harassment is not designed to force the employer into allowing employees a secret ballot union representational election, but SEIU pressures employers to sign away employees’ opportunity to have a secret ballot election. That’s right; SEIU developed the corporate campaign to prevent employees from having a secret ballot election.
SEIU, along with its partners ACORN, Justice for Janitors, Interfaith Worker Justice, and others stage disruptive demonstrations, place derogatory ads, hand out offensive flyers, send defamatory letters, and pressure politicians. SEIU organizers have even used children to hand out nasty flyers as they trick-or-treat. All of these actions are designed to irritate everyone in the community and hopefully focus the unrest on the employer, not SEIU. And, in the end, it’s all about money – union dues extracted from workers for the privilege of having a job.
All of SEIU’s in-your-face activities in numerous communities across the country has dramatically begun to weaken SEIU’s own brand.
Here’s three quick true life SEIU corporate campaign sagas that span across America over two decades:
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In the 1990’s, Sacramento’s Randy Schaber endured an SEIU four-year battering of his company and his employees. SEIU’s attacks on Schaber included coordination with a Clinton Administration Big Labor appointee inside the U.S. Department of Labor that resulted in a Congressional investigation, headed by Rep. Pete Hoekstra, documenting SEIU’s corporate campaign and the removal of the SEIU insider.
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In Indianapolis, David A. Bego, author of The Devil at My Doorstep, had an SEIU organizer tell him, “we enjoy conversation, but we embrace confrontation,” shortly before SEIU goons began to ratchet up the pressure. Bego’s book provides a concise description of his three-year SEIU ordeal, and details of hard-to-believe ACORN-modeled intimidation. SEIU even had trick-or-treating children handout out offensive flyers in Bego’s and a customer’s neighborhood.
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Houston’s Brent Southwell story, as posted on BigGovernment.com by Bret Jacobson, repeats Schaber’s and Bego’s stories but with his own twist. Southwell filed suit against SEIU claiming, among other things, that a top SEIU organizer “has stated directly to Professional Janitorial Services (PJS, Southwell’s company) that SEIU wants ‘to kill’ PJS.” Certainly, this SEIU organizer was not concerned about the welfare of PJS employees. The lawsuit against SEIU is currently ongoing.
Conclusion
To borrow a phrase from ACORN’s Wade Rathke, no matter how you shake and bake it, a nationwide campaign that embraces confrontation and irresponsible personal attacks will eventually stick to the SEIU brand. Constantly filing unsubstantiated accusations with enforcement agencies and then using these SEIU-generated unsubstantiated claims to force politicians to act eventually hurts the credibility of the accuser.
Remember the childhood story of the boy who cried wolf?
In the end, SEIU’s smash-mouth, no-holds-barred organizing, internal power struggles, and associations with the likes of ACORN have irrefutably begun to bring down Stern’s SEIU purple brand.
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Using Arts for Conservative Purposes
Posted by Michael van der Galien in ACORN, Obama, Politics on October 5th, 2009
Big Hollywood and Big Government have done tremendous work in recent weeks. They have proved without a doubt that the Obama administration and its allies have gone too far. They’ve crossed the line. Federal agencies are turned into propaganda tools. This is something we haven’t seen in the U.S. since, well, ever. This administration knows no shame. Everything is permissible in order to push its legislative agenda through the collective throat of the American people. And the MSM are covering it all up, refusing to spend time and attention to the ACORN scandal first and now the NEA scandal.
It’s a good thing there are conservatives willing to expose this administration for what it is.
President Obama and Kalpen Modi, Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement
But the question is, what’s next? How can this be countered and how can the Obama administration be forced to back down? As it is, liberal groups, news organizations and individuals continue to cover up for the administration. Perhaps someone will be thrown under the bus again, but the thugs of Team Obama will remain in place and continue to “transform America.”
Exposing their tactics is necessary to fight them, but it’s not enough to actually beat them. Mr. Breitbart and team have learned that the tactics the left has used against conservatives for decades; to discredit them works wonders. But if conservatives want to take back the government, we have to copy the left’s organizing skills as well.
It’s an outrage that the NEA has been turned into a propaganda tool by the most liberal president the U.S. has ever had. But there is a reason the administration spoke to artists on the August conference call and was willing to take the risk of exposure: artists influence the people. The effect isn’t always immediate–it may take years for artists to truly influence society as a whole–but it’s there. If you want to “transform” society you need artists on your side.
Liberals have always understood this. They’ve been working with artists for decades. A lot of art already is politicized. The only reason this is a scandal now is because the radical left isn’t some fringe group at this moment but is in charge of the government. As Buffy Wicks put it, “we [meaning they] won.”
If they weren’t in charge of the government but were still activists, some would still be outraged, but it would not be considered a big thing. The strategy is nothing new–the only new aspect of it is that these people have taken over the government and continue to use artists as propaganda tools.
Whether we like it or not, this strategy has paid off. Liberals have influenced society tremendously by, among other things, using the arts to indoctrinate the American people. They’ve done this in the United States and in Europe. They’re influencing society by doing what free market thinker Friedrich Hayek told conservatives to do: getting second-hand dealers of ideas on their side who then slowly but surely influence society by a constant and never-ceasing flow of propaganda.
If we conservatives want to fight back in the long run, instead of just bringing down this particular liberal administration, we have to do what liberals have been doing for years. We too have to get as many second hand dealers of ideas on our side. Then and only then will be successful in the long run.
Breitbart has taught us that the strategies the left has used to discredit the right can be used against them. We have to act on that, continue to do what Breitbart and some here at Big Hollywood have been doing. But we have to do more than that: we have to destroy and create. And the wonderful thing is that to do this we can learn from the left once again, we can use their tactics against them in this aspect as well.
If we want the victories of the last weeks to be permanent, we should copy the left’s strategy in every way possible. Destroy and create.
Let’s get going.
Wade Rathke’s a ‘Dangerous Fellow’
Posted by Chris Berg in ACORN, Wade Rathke on October 5th, 2009
“I’m Recognized to be a Fairly Dangerous Fellow Out There in the Community” – Wade Rathke
Let’s be honest, if Wade Rathke saw me walk into his book signing last Tuesday, he wouldn’t have been at his most candid. I wanted insight into the man who created this racket that is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or is it the American Institute for Social Justice, or Citizens Consulting Inc? I’m still not too sure. I know it operates under 361 different affiliates in at least 43 states and the District of Columbia.
In his newly released book Citizen Wealth, he paints himself as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the evil faceless corporations to give to the poor. But as he recounts these campaigns it becomes clear the corporations have faces, their CEOs, who he doesn’t hesitate to harass at home to demand financial concessions. Wade’s stilted story almost makes him sound noble as he provides innocuous reasons why he would like to collect and store copies of people’s personal financial records and birth certificates or as he tries to rationalize why people would be well served by becoming dues paying ACORN members.
These past few months I believed Wade’s the blissfully ignorant captain whose been stripped of his command but still seems intent to go down with the ship. He hasn’t “run” the organization since the very public revelation that his brother embezzled close to $1 million from ACORN and Wade went about covering it up. He was negotiated out of the coveted “chief organizer” role that he had held for decades. The ACORN Board allowed him to retain control of ACORN International, but when public pressure started building, he even went ahead and changed its name to COI – Community Organizations International.
Even in exile he denies that ACORN is a criminal enterprise and claims that allegations that federal and tax-exempt funds have been used for political purposes are a “complete fabrication.”
I had to hear him speak. I had to see for myself if he really bought what he was selling. But let’s be real. I’m a twenty-eight year old Republican lawyer… and I look like one. I wear Brooks Brothers suits, bold ties, and nine times out of ten there’s a pair of elephant cufflinks on my wrists. If he saw me coming I doubted he would be as open in his proselytizing for community organizing.
I had to tone it down a notch. No, I didn’t borrow James O’Keefe’s vintage chinchilla shoulder throw. I just threw on jeans and a t-shirt, jumped in my SUV, and headed off to see ACORN’s Founding Father.
I arrived early and grabbed my seat in the middle of the room. I expected a crowd. Instead I was greeted by six reporters and ten supporters.
Wade had barely gotten started when that folksy “aw shucks” Wade Rathke persona took over:
“It’s all a new ride on the rodeo to me” when discussing how he is no longer accountable to ACORN members.
“The Single largest success in the last 20 years of the organized labor movement is home healthcare workers.”
On the Cloward-Piven model he cited his book which laments the fact that Americans who are eligible for government programs are not taking advantage of them. He seemed wistful in his dreams of “maximum eligible participation.”
Then he hit his stride…
“I think it’s ridiculous that an organization like ACORN has to be involved in voter registration”
“We were raising up to $20 million to register voters before I left”
Throughout his remarks he was a steadfast defender of ACORN.
Maybe he truly believes in ACORN or whatever affiliates it’s doing business as. Maybe he’s just doing right by the organization he built that did right by him. It did provide him a steady living for decades, his embezzling brother too. But they’re not the only members of the ACORN family. ACORN also employed Rathke’s wife Beth Butler, his daughter Dine, and his son Chaco. Who’d have expected nepotism in New Orleans?
Wade noted that “I’m a huge fan of ACORN, I pay my dues now.”
After hearing him speak I must admit, I was wrong about Wade. He’s not the captain going down with his ship. He’s more like the Iraqi Information Minister “Baghdad Bob” – in denial, steadfastly claiming victory even as American tanks rolled past.
White House Creates ACORN for the Arts
Posted by Ben Shapiro in ACORN, Obama, Politics, health care on October 5th, 2009
Over the last week, Big Hollywood and Big Government have been extensively covering the August 10 conference call between the National Endowment for the Arts and a group of artists – a call on which the artists were encouraged to support President Obama’s agenda, with the tacit promise that they would be handsomely rewarded with government grants. The NEA representative on the call was then-Communications Director of the NEA Yosi Sergant.
Now we have new evidence that the White House itself has been using its sway to recruit artists – not just to support President Obama’s “volunteerism” initiatives, but to support basic planks of his political agenda, including health care. In fact, the White House has been tapping its extragovernmental political allies to work with artists with the tacit promise that NEA funds will be in the offing for those who join the Obama Administration political program. (more…)
White House Creates ACORN for the Arts
Posted by Ben Shapiro in ACORN, Featured Story, Obama, Politics, Wade Rathke on October 5th, 2009
Over the last week, Big Hollywood and Big Government have been extensively covering the August 10 conference call between the National Endowment for the Arts and a group of artists – a call on which the artists were encouraged to support President Obama’s agenda, with the tacit promise that they would be handsomely rewarded with government grants. The NEA representative on the call was then-Communications Director of the NEA Yosi Sergant.
Now we have new evidence that the White House itself has been using its sway to recruit artists – not just to support President Obama’s “volunteerism” initiatives, but to support basic planks of his political agenda, including health care. In fact, the White House has been tapping its extragovernmental political allies to work with artists with the tacit promise that NEA funds will be in the offing for those who join the Obama Administration political program.
According to a briefing report from Arlene Goldbard, the Pratt Center for Community Development, State Voices, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, on May 12, 2009, “more than 60 artists and creative organizers engaged in civic participation, community development, education, social justice activism, and philanthropy came together for a White House briefing on Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery.” Each of the sponsors of the meeting was contacted by – yes, you guessed it – Yosi Sergant, who had just been promoted from the Office of Public Engagement to serve at the NEA.
According to the briefing report, the meeting had three segments: “(1) a meeting at the Kaiser Family Foundation to prepare for the briefing, (2) the two-hour White House briefing at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and (3) a post-briefing meeting at Bus Boys & Poets to interpret and respond to what we had learned …”
Mike Strautmanis, Chief of Staff for the Office of Public Liaison, spoke at the White House meeting. He introduced Sergant, and stated that Sergant represented the “commitment to bring in people not traditionally part of the political process to share their talents and skills.” More ominously, he stated that “With Yosi and Anita Decker (Director of Government Affairs at the NEA) in place… people very close to the President are involved in the effort.”
Joseph Reinstein, Deputy Social Secretary for the President, spoke at the meeting as well. When he was asked by one artist whether there was a “direct link between arts policy and the Department of Education,” Reinstein stated, “President Obama has asked for greater cohesion and collaboration between agency work and departments …” In other words, departments under the President’s control are being coordinated with supposedly independent agencies like the NEA.
As if the promise of “quid pro art” weren’t explicit enough from that comment, one questioner (artist Doria Roberts) asked about grants for individual artists: “how open will administration policy be to grants for individuals?” Reinstein replied that while he couldn’t speak to that issue personally, others in the room – read Sergant and Buffy Wicks – could. The proper legal response would have been to reject any link between the meeting and NEA funding. Instead, Reinstein punted, implying that such funding would be forthcoming.
Then it got downright disturbing. Mario Garcia Durham, Director of Presenting for the National Endowment for the Arts, spoke as well. Apparently, he explained that “what the NEA supports and emphasizes comes from artists and organizations.” He also told people to apply to the NEA, and that the NEA was committed to “the new Administration’s goals.” Then he made the king of all booboos: he announced that there was a direct link between shaping government policy and the NEA. “Government and its policies,” the brief reports Durham said, “should be shaped by participants’ voices in connection with the NEA.”
Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the meeting, however, was that it wasn’t just the White House and artists at this meeting – it was the White House, artists, and community organizers: specifically, far-left community organizers in the ACORN mold. The NEA has a commitment to be nonpartisan, but by inviting community organizers and unions to a meeting with artists, it breaks that commitment.
This meeting was designed to concretize the synergistic relationship between far-left community organizers, the White House, the NEA, and artists. Last week, I said that the White House was trying to set up an ACORN for the Arts. I was speaking figuratively. This meeting, however, makes that accusation literal.
At the after-meeting, Michael Nolan of Communications, Contacts & Concepts headed up a group that discussed artists actually writing legislation – in particular, “finding places in the Stimulus Bill where Community Arts organizations can insert themselves.” That’s right – artists, with the tacit promise of NEA funding, attempting to rewrite Congressional legislation.
It gets worse. The post-White House meeting working group on Healthcare Reform was led up not by an artist but by Michelle Miller of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The SEIU is led by Andy Stern, who picked ACORN head Wade Rathke to handle SEIU’s organizing projects across the country (for more on the SEIU-ACORN relationship, see pieces by Don Loos and Anita Moncrief at Big Government). At the May 12 meeting, SEIU was essentially tapped by the White House to lead artists in the right direction on health care.
The immigration reform working group was led by Sally Kohn of the Center for Community Change, a far-left pro-illegal immigration organization. Again, why was the White House, in conjunction with the NEA, sponsoring an event for artists where leftist community organizers were tapped to discuss these issues with possible grantee artists?
The White House’s total unconcern with using the NEA to promise funding, then bringing in a combination of radical left community organizers to help brainstorm with artists is troubling in the extreme. Again, if all of what has been reported in this briefing report is true, laws were broken. By law, the NEA must remain apolitical. By law, the White House must not funnel federal funds to its friends, or use the NEA to do so. By law, neither the White House nor the NEA may use their governmental status to push outside entities to shape legislation, or provide administrative support for lobbying activities of private organizations.
All of these things were done at this meeting, if the briefing report is correct. Congress must investigate this meeting, too. And Americans must be on a sharp lookout for the quid pro art that is quietly and steadily taking place with our tax dollars.