Archive for the ‘Obama’ Category
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…)
Just Act: Response to Will Ferrell
Posted by Jon David in Obama, Politics, health care on October 5th, 2009
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
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.
ACORN Paycheck Aside, Patrick Gaspard is a Radical
Posted by Kyle Olson in ACORN, Obama, Van Jones, Wade Rathke on October 5th, 2009
Several days ago, Capital Research Center’s Matthew Vadum published research here indicating an ACORN alumni in the White House (other than the president): Political Director Patrick Gaspard. As I did three weeks prior at ACORNcracked.com, Matthew used a Wade Rathke blog as the source, which Rathke, the founder of ACORN, immediately changed after Vadum’s report, citing “memory tricks.” Politico led the way in poo-pooing the connection once Rathke played cover-up.
Rathke said it not only on his blog, but also at a book signing in New Orleans, which was recently covered in the Fox News Special: The Truth About ACORN.” While we attended that book signing and were not able to get that portion on tape, the Fox documentary crew did. Sadly, the remarks apparently ended up on the cutting room floor.
The fact is, Patrick Gaspard, Obama’s “Glue Man,” is more important than Van Jones ever hoped of being. The fact is, one of the most critical and influential jobs in a White House, the Director of Political Affairs, is occupied by a former SEIU health care lobbyist and ACORN organizer. To be exact, he was Executive Vice President–the #2–at SEIU 1199 in New York City.
After Gaspard was appointed to the White House, Carribbean Voice quoted him as saying, “I grew up in 1199…and I will always be an 1199er wherever I am.” SEIU’s luxury is that now taxpayers are paying for it.
Wade Rathke, current organizer with SEIU Local 100 (in New Orleans) and ACORN International (now “Community Organizations International”), called Gaspard a “great friend” on his ChiefOrganizer.org blog. Additionally, Rathke theorized how Gaspard was likely instrumental in working with SEIU to bring “big health care operators” to the table. [Figuring once scrutiny came to someone high-level in the White House, the evidence would be changed, we turned Rathke's blog posting into a PDF.]
That is curious, given the Obama Transition team’s pledge that Gaspard would refrain from issues he had lobbied previously. According to the Washington Post, a transition spokesman said, “Patrick and Mark [Gitenstein] have jobs on the campaign that are general in nature, but per the unprecedented ethics policy laid out earlier this week they will recuse themselves from the fields of policy or agencies they lobbied in the previous 12 months.”
So we are to believe the Political Director of the White House—one of the most important players in the administration—is sitting on his hands while Obama attempts to salvage his biggest “reform” yet, and likely ever? Ethics schmethics.
When Sean Bell was shot by New York City police in 2007, Al Sharpton reached out to Patrick Gaspard (while he was at SEIU 1199) to formulate a response. According to Politicker NY, “In December 2006, Mr. Sharpton asked Patrick Gaspard to help him assemble an emergency meeting of about 300 activists, black nationalists, union and political leaders to decide on an appropriate response to the police shooting…”
Sharpton used the SEIU 1199 office to hold a protest organizational meeting. According to The Observer, the union was represented by Gaspard at the meeting.
The People’s Organization for Progress, along with the New Black Panther Party, organized protests against the New York City police department, carrying signs saying such things as “KILL THE PIGS THAT KILL OUR KIDS.”
In October 2007, under Gaspard’s eye, the union hosted an event at its headquarters to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Che Guevara “by the military dictatorship of Bolivia under the direction of the CIA.”
“The bitter truth for U.S. imperialism forty years later is that Che’s example and ideas are more powerful and resonant than ever among oppressed peoples of the world, especially the Americas,” an announcement of the event read. Yes, under Gaspard’s watch and likely authorization, the union hosted a celebration of Che Guevara’s life. See an accouncement flier for a similar event.
Other participants included Communist Party USA, Freedom Socialist Party, People’s Organization for Progress, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Action and many others.
SEIU 1199, in 2007, was a signatory on a petition to “free Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
Shortly after that, SEIU 1199 hosted the “International Secretary of the Hands Off Venezuela Campaign and Latin America correspondent for Marxist.com.” SEIU 1199, under Gaspard’s leadership, has filled a radical role in New York and national politics.
Gaspard has contributed to the Working Families Party, a political party founded—and still co-chaired—by ACORN.
He is still listed as a member of the advisory board to the Center for Working Families. The CWF’s address is the same as New York ACORN.
In 2004, Gaspard worked for America Coming Together, a George Soros-funded 527 organization that worked in swing states to elect John Kerry president. According to Michelle Malkin’s new book, Culture of Corruption:
During the 2004 election cycle, he had led the radical, left-wing, George Soros-funded group, America Coming Together (ACT) as national field director. SEIU poured $23 million into ACT in a costly, unsuccessful attempt to put Democratic Senator John Kerry in the White House. Under Gaspard’s tenure at ACT, the get-out-the-vote group employed convicted felons as canvassers and committed campaign finance violations that led to a $775,000 fine by the Federal Elections Commission–the third largest civil penalty levied in the panel’s history.
So, ACORN connection or not, Gaspard is a radical. Whether or not he drew a paycheck from ACORN is a distinction without a difference. And we shouldn’t allow a whitewash of the evidence to negate the rest of Gaspard’s background.
Artists: Another ‘Entitlement’ Group
Posted by Endre Balogh in Obama, Politics on October 5th, 2009
I must admit that when I first heard about the National Endowment for the Arts conference call to enlist the arts community in propagandizing the White House’s agenda, I was a little mystified as to why it was so controversial. After all, the NEA, through its funding choices, has been actively undermining American values for many years. Way back in 1986 we were treated to the scandal of Andres Serrano getting $15,000 from the NEA for his mediocre photo of a plastic crucifix in his own urine – “Piss Christ.” That is just one of a myriad of egregious examples of NEA funding going to support dubious “art” that functions solely to corrode the fabric of civilized society.
Sure, the NEA gives money to major established arts organizations – symphonies, ballet companies, repertory theater groups, and the like — but that is how they maintain their veneer of staid respectability, all the while promulgating their Leftist, nihilistic agenda through their smaller grants. For example, I know a truly great American artist, Harry Carmean, who, among his other credits, was the Chairman of the Fine Arts Department at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and taught there for 43 years. He applied for NEA grants repeatedly to help fund his work but was rejected each time because his paintings were deemed “not edgy enough.” Translation: he actually possesses artistic talent, skill, and discipline, which he uses to create beauty instead of pseudo-artistic, politicized claptrap. We all know he would have had a far better chance of getting a grant out of the subjective and ideologically driven apparatchiks at the NEA had he used dog feces to paint images of female genitalia.
Like President Obama and his advisors who live within an Alinskyite bubble of Leftist Chicago politics, the NEA also maintains a closed, incestuous relationship between it’s administrators and the “artists” it funds. To them, art, by definition, is inherently political in nature. To produce “real” art today, artists must embody narcissistic self-indulgence and infuse their work with identity politics or otherwise “challenge” their audience. To be “meaningful” art must shine a spotlight on the dark underbelly of society or explore the twisted depths of human iniquity. By contrast, art that celebrates the higher aspirations of humanity or embraces beauty as a mere end in itself is thought to be frivolous and, therefore, unworthy of financial support.
So, it came as no surprise to me that the White House and the NEA teamed up to conscript the arts community into helping promulgate their agenda. I’m sure that over at the NEA they are totally perplexed by any outcry against their call to enlist the aid of “socially conscious” artists to help push the self-evidently wonderful Obama Administration plans for radically altering the American landscape. The fact that their radical agenda is unacceptable to so many Americans has never even appeared on their radar.
The conference call initiated by the NEA brings up larger issues about what happens when the Government attempts to engineer society via its largesse. All along, the NEA has been doling out money to its group of anointed artists and now the Government is simply calling for payback. While all Government handouts come with inevitable strings attached, in this case, since the vast majority of artists on the receiving end of NEA munificence are on the Left, they see nothing wrong with overtly working to further the Obama Administration goals. This toxic symbiosis comes as a result of turning the arts community into yet another “entitlement” group. There are innumerable examples of artists complaining bitterly that their “freedom of expression” has been abridged when federal grant money is denied them. In other words, government handouts (of other people’s money) have so weakened them that they actually imagine it is a “right” to have their self-indulgent art paid for by the taxpayers.
It has long gone out of fashion for artists to simply want to create things of beauty and to derive satisfaction from bringing joy to the lives of those whose lives are touched by their art. Instead, for so many, artistic significance is now only measured by how politically or societally influential a work of “art” is. The White House and the NEA know well the psychology of their hand-picked group of leftist artistes. That is why they could be so confident that the “arts community” would jump onboard with both feet and embrace the opportunity to “serve” the President. The fact that grants might be coming down the pike for those who “serve” particularly well is, in the end, of only secondary importance to massaging their narcissistic feelings of self-importance.
Creating political propaganda is not the province of real artists, though. While it is obvious that throughout history great art has been created when artists have been commissioned to do so, all real artists recoil at the idea of making propaganda art to support the State. That these NEA grantees seem so willing to “make a stink” (as Yosi Sergant so colorfully put it in the NEA call) to benefit the Obama Administration says volumes about their lack of artistic integrity.
The War on Propaganda
Posted by Chris Burgard in Entertainment, Obama, Politics on October 5th, 2009
“The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.” Joseph Goebbels
There is no shame in artists receiving monetary compensation to sell ideas, products or a presidential agenda. When everything is transparent and contracted above board, this is called advertising. When this process is whispered into being, strategized and set into motion from the shadows of government and from behind closed doors, it is propaganda.
From Sun Tzu to Psy Ops, propaganda has won wars, toppled cultures and changed civilizations. As a self-identified enlightened and educated culture, we thought ourselves beyond such base manipulation. We were wrong.
Where were the voices of dissent on the NEA conference call when so called “artists” were asked to further the President’s agenda?
I have danced ballets and I have done commercials; one side art, the other side business. What side were the NEA recipients on?
Art for propaganda was an essential tool of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. What the heck is it doing in the White House? This should outrage freethinkers, citizens and artists from every corner of America.
The National Endowment of the Arts strategy has been traced straight to Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s policy facilitator and Grande Dame of his inner circle. As disturbing and possibly illegal as this is, it becomes truly frightening when you connect the rest of the dots:
1) The Democrats repeated commitment to implement the Fairness Doctrine and destroy conservative talk radio.
2) S.733: The bill that would give the President control over the internet in the event of an “emergency.”
3) On Sept. 20, 2009, President Obama stated that he would look into bailouts for print newspapers because he is concerned that blogs will take over the world and be a threat to democracy.
Imagine that: the President of the United States is concerned free speech may be a threat to democracy. Is anybody paying attention?
Thomas Jefferson knew that a free press is essential to a free republic. Control the flow of information and you control the people. This hasn’t changed much since 1933.
Perhaps this is not as visually arresting as book burning, but the results are the same. Joseph Goebbels needed to ensure that the views of the Nazis were put forward in the most persuasive manner possible and make certain that no one in Germany could read or see anything that was damaging to the Nazi Party.
Is this that far removed from the news coverage of Honduras or the under-reporting of turnout for the 9/12 DC rally?
But I submit to you that these propaganda assaults will fail because they are lacking the one element critical to mission implementation: fear.
President Obama and his team are convinced that they are smarter than the average American citizen. They don’t just say Middle Americans “cling to their Bibles and guns out of fear,” they truly believe it. This administration has banked on using fear to push stimulus packages, carbon taxes, bailouts and health care reform. That is their Waterloo.
Fear is not at the core of the American psyche; independence and patriotism are. And when enough Americans step back, take a breath and realize the extent of this manipulation, they awaken with a determination and that is truly frightening to those that would attempt to govern from the shadows.
The fear is now on the other foot.
The Muslim Brotherhood has long taught their operatives in the USA to attack their opponents with charges of “hate speech” and “racism” whenever they were called out to defend their positions in public. The Democrats have called out their big guns: congressmen, congresswomen and even an ex-President to do the same. Why would anyone do this if they were not “afraid” of an informed public debate?
It will not work this time. The sleeper has awakened and she sees the man behind the curtain.
Apathy can no longer be counted on as a tool for those who would seek to control the populace and erode the Constitution.
In this “Constitution Revolution,” the American people are not coming after you with guns or explosives; they are armed with truth, a desire for transparency, a desire for enlightened and informed public discourse, a demand for civic responsibility and a call to politicians to honor their oaths to the US Constitution.
The Big Truth: Selling White House Policy Through Art
Posted by Patrick Courrielche in Featured Story, Obama, Politics on October 5th, 2009
A few days ago I received a call from my cousin. He’d been hearing some chatter from the family about something happening with a series of NEA articles that I’d written for Big Hollywood and wanted to find out from the horse’s mouth what was going on. His question was simple and concise.
“What did the White House do wrong,” he asked.
“The White House attempted to use federal agencies for political gain,” I blurted out.
President Obama with former NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergant
And that is The Big Truth in a nutshell. A moment of clarity hit me, and as with most eureka moments, a path of how to explain this big truth came into sight. The full story needed to be told – including possible collusion, the White House’s novel mode of operation, and the eventual cover-up – to fully understand and illuminate the government’s intention with their arts effort.
Up until now, I have not discussed Sergant’s former job in the White House Office of Public Engagement, where Buffy Wicks currently resides, because the story had to develop to understand the significance. I also haven’t discussed the email that I received from Michael Skolnik, the moderator of the call, immediately after the publication of the original conference call article – an email that attempted to revise history and the role of the NEA and the White House in the meeting. And what has yet to be discussed is the White House’s recent ability to set up an ArtistCorps, brought into existence with less than 20 words in the Serve America Act. (more…)