It has been well-documented that last year Rathke “left” ACORN U.S. to head over to ACORN International and export ACORN’s brand of organizing and tactics.  He has since changed the group’s name to Community Organizations International.

ACORN Community Organizing Model is not the type of document ACORN would wish to have on the Internet.  For ACORN, is tantamount to Eisenhower’s plan for D-Day being printed on the front page of the Washington Post.  Not a good thing for the ultra-secretive group.

Consider this frank section of “SETTING UP THE ORGANIZING DRIVE:”

2.  Contacts:  The whole process of making contacts is built on a pyramid theory.  Make one that leads to others.  The purpose of contacts is to gather information and resources, and to build power.  There are three types:  hot, warm, cold.  The hot contacts are people we have met before at some point in the organization’s history.  Check the biographical file in the state office.  Warm contacts are those we have not met but know something about in order to build an edge, i.e. we have an opener or a handle for the conversation – something they did, someone they know who we know, some reason to believe we can hit the core.  The cold contacts are those people we must meet for some reason, yet we have no lead to them.  The only edge there is simply an organizer’s skill in prying information and setting up his/her ego in order to loosen her/his tongue in person or on the phone.  It’s a skill to be perfected, if you’re greasy, you are in the hole. 

Groups such as Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations in Asia clearly didn’t nor don’t understand the pressure and scrutiny ACORN has faced over the last several months.  But their foolishness or naivete is the ACORN’s researcher’s gain.

For whatever reason, the LOCOA site doesn’t create a direct link to the individual page.  If you wish to see it for yourself on the LOCOA site, go here, then click on Program in the menu bar.  Then, go to the second page of documents and click on ACORN Community Organizing Model.  Or, to save yourself time (not to mention if and when the document disappears from the website), you can visit ACORNcracked.com for a PDF.

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis and Former Enron CEO Ken Lay

Substitute Bertha Lewis for Ken Lay and ACORN for Enron, in this hypothetical situation, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what was asked of us at Lewis’ tour-de-force theatrical performance at the National Press Club earlier this week. She alternated between attacking her critics, expressing disgust with the actions of her employees caught on tape by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles and vowing to pursue a lawsuit against the filmmakers for capturing on film her employees’ misdeeds. Oh, and by the way, she really, really—she means it this time—intends to “clean house” at ACORN.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank captured the surreal tableau best:

But Lewis, in playing the victim, is her own worst enemy. Forget the film of the pimp and prostitute: Watching a film of Lewis’s performance yesterday would probably be enough to cause lawmakers to cut off ACORN’s federal funding.

Which raises a question: Why does Bertha Lewis get to “clean house” at ACORN? Even today, actions have consequences. The fact that the employee behavior exposed by O’Keefe and Giles happened on her watch—and she has been less than forthcoming about it, by the way—would alone be enough to get most CEO’s booted. Worse, though, is the implication that Lewis has been complicit in ACORN’s missteps for a long time. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “Bertha Lewis isn’t the solution to ACORN’s problems. Bertha Lewis is the problem.”

Bertha Lewis has been a long-time leader of ACORN. She became CEO—“Chief Organizer” in the ACORN vernacular—in June, 2008. Around that time, an attorney hired by ACORN, Elizabeth Kingsley, delivered a detailed, 15-page memo to ACORN’s board, highlighting actual and potential problems with ACORN’s operations. Kingsley made a series of very specific recommendations to “clean house” within ACORN. In the 15 months since the memo was delivered, I’m not aware of any efforts ACORN has made to implement these reforms.

Also in 2008, ACORN’s board appointed a special committee to investigate a long-covered up embezzlement scandal. (Ms. Lewis was part of the cover-up.) The embezzlement had been recently revealed by the New York Times. This special committee, and other ACORN leaders, pressed for a full forensic audit of the organization. For this transgression, under the leadership of Bertha Lewis, they were booted out of ACORN. No audit of ACORN has ever been released to the public.

Last week, Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN and victim of Lewis’ 2008 palace coup, made a rare appearance in DC to promote his recent book. Big Government contributor Maura Flynn attended, filmed his talk and asked questions. The interview is interesting. Rathke said they decided to cover-up the embezzlement because ACORN leadership feared its enemies would “weaponize” the scandal against them. He also conjectured that, based on the recent scandal engulfing ACORN, that decision looks to have been the right one.

Which raises several questions for Lewis, since she was a co-conspirator in the embezzlement cover-up: Are you going to truly “clean house” in ACORN or only in those areas that have been publically revealed? Are you focused on rooting out actual corruption or only the corruption the public knows about? Do you see your employees’ transgressions as potential “weapons” your opponents will use against you or actual misdeeds that need to be expunged from ACORN? Can I remind you that several of your offices believed they were assisting an underage sex-trafficking ring? And, they were happy to do so.

Lewis makes a nod to public sentiment in acknowledging the potential criminal activity, yet continues to devote a considerable amount of her time to attacking O’Keefe and Giles and some vast conspiracy against ACORN. (The most devastating take-downs of ACORN have been produced by Jon Stewart and Jay Leno, both absent from my vast right-wing conspiracy membership database.) Worse than this, though; she hasn’t been entirely forthcoming about the videos we have all seen. She continues to claim the videos are doctored, but it has been almost a month since we released the first video. I haven’t seen any evidence from you that these were doctored. Surely, roughly thirty days is enough time to build that case. We released the full audio recordings and transcripts of the interviews.

Second, we initially released videos from Baltimore and Washington, DC. Lewis said then that the filmmakers were thrown out of ACORN offices in “San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Philadelphia.” We have so far released videos from two of those cities. Was she lying? Or, simply misled by her staff?

The most troubling reservation, however, has to do with the “independent” panel Lewis appointed to guide ACORN through its current troubles. All are long-time ideological allies of ACORN. It asks too much of us to consider them independent. John Podesta is a long-time ally of ACORN. He was instrumental in the creation of Media Matters (for Bulgaria), who is currently exhausting any credibility it ever had spinning for ACORN. Andy Stern, as head of SEIU, has shoveled millions of dollars to ACORN over the years. His own organization has publically stated that they have “cut ties to ACORN,” yet there Stern remains deep in ACORN’s inner circle. Former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, the newly appointed “ACORN Czar,” is a kindred fellow-traveler. His thirst for political power may even exceed Lewis’, as he seems to have been willing to put an innocent man behind bars for two decades to further his own political career. Much more about all of these individuals will be revealed soon. (No, we haven’t begun to release all the information we have.)

So, is Bertha serious about wanting to “clean house?” Has she had a genuine “road to Damascus” moment and is now committed to reform. Color me skeptical, but here are three quick things she could do to begin to restore the public’s trust:

Disclose all of ACORN’s affiliates. Publically reveal the names of every entity that is part of the ACORN ‘family.” I’ve heard there are 100, 200 and even 400 different organizations. Please give the public the full list.

Order full audits of every ACORN affiliate. ACORN has been entrusted with millions of dollars of local, state and federal funds. Reassure the public that these funds haven’t been misspent. If they have been misspent, admit it and discipline the offenders. Release the audits to the public, with proprietary or personal information redacted.

Appoint a real independent panel. A review panel made up of your political allies is not independent. It is akin to appointing the foxes to review the henhouse. It has become accepted in recent years that boards of directors need a lot of “outside” directors to oversee operations. No institution would benefit as much from this as ACORN.

 Three simple steps, but, giant leaps to restoring any integrity ACORN may have once enjoyed. Lewis, you can pick the high road or the low road. If she continues on her current path–the low road–then she’s gotta go.

Bertha Lewis, the head of ACORN, is one tough nut.

She came to the National Press Club on Tuesday, ostensibly to report on the community group’s “internal probe” into the ACORN workers who were caught on tape advising people posing as a pimp and a prostitute. But Lewis made it clear that, far from apologizing, she was on a “set-the-record-straight tour” — and a tour de force it was.

The internal review by ACORN’s board, disclosed this week by the Louisiana attorney general, that $5 million had been embezzled from the group rather than the $1 million previously alleged? “This is speculation, completely false and not based on any documentation or any audit or anything other than two disgruntled former board members,” Lewis reported.

Accusations of voter fraud after ACORN workers filled out voter registrations for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys? “An utter fabrication and a work of fiction that was created by the people who wrote it.”

The report by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee that ACORN created a “shell game that funneled charitable funds to for-profit organizations”? “Another stretch of allegations of how to pound on ACORN. . . . It’s just false.”

And, of course, the secretly recorded videos of ACORN workers providing help to people claiming they wished to set up an underage-prostitution business? “These highly edited tapes,” Lewis said, “don’t tell the whole story.” ACORN’s accusers “have to stoop to break the law in order to create something sensational,” she added.

In creativity, the ACORN boss’s denials were matched only by her assignments of blame. She blamed her predecessor: “I don’t think it’s fair to judge me, as I’m cleaning up a previous administration.” She blamed the powerful: “We’ve seen this play before, whether it was the civil rights movement or whatever, when you organize poor people to have real power, what you do is often turned against you.” And most of all, she blamed Republicans: “The RNC . . . because we’ve been inflated as the boogeyman, raises almost $2 million a day, every day, and this form of modern-day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop.”

Assigned only a minor role in this orgy of blame were ACORN and Lewis herself. “My biggest weakness is a certain naivete about folks coming after you,” she said in a moment of self-interested introspection. “I guess maybe others might have known and could have set up some other barriers and could’ve been better with media and PR.”

Read the whole story here. But, first savor this quote. Perhaps one of the best Big Media comments during this breaking saga:

But Lewis, in playing the victim, is her own worst enemy. Forget the film of the pimp and prostitute: Watching a film of Lewis’s performance yesterday would probably be enough to cause lawmakers to cut off ACORN’s federal funding.

Bertha Lewis, the head of ACORN, is one tough nut.

She came to the National Press Club on Tuesday, ostensibly to report on the community group’s “internal probe” into the ACORN workers who were caught on tape advising people posing as a pimp and a prostitute. But Lewis made it clear that, far from apologizing, she was on a “set-the-record-straight tour” — and a tour de force it was.

The internal review by ACORN’s board, disclosed this week by the Louisiana attorney general, that $5 million had been embezzled from the group rather than the $1 million previously alleged? “This is speculation, completely false and not based on any documentation or any audit or anything other than two disgruntled former board members,” Lewis reported.

Accusations of voter fraud after ACORN workers filled out voter registrations for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys? “An utter fabrication and a work of fiction that was created by the people who wrote it.”

The report by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee that ACORN created a “shell game that funneled charitable funds to for-profit organizations”? “Another stretch of allegations of how to pound on ACORN. . . . It’s just false.”

And, of course, the secretly recorded videos of ACORN workers providing help to people claiming they wished to set up an underage-prostitution business? “These highly edited tapes,” Lewis said, “don’t tell the whole story.” ACORN’s accusers “have to stoop to break the law in order to create something sensational,” she added.

In creativity, the ACORN boss’s denials were matched only by her assignments of blame. She blamed her predecessor: “I don’t think it’s fair to judge me, as I’m cleaning up a previous administration.” She blamed the powerful: “We’ve seen this play before, whether it was the civil rights movement or whatever, when you organize poor people to have real power, what you do is often turned against you.” And most of all, she blamed Republicans: “The RNC . . . because we’ve been inflated as the boogeyman, raises almost $2 million a day, every day, and this form of modern-day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop.”

Assigned only a minor role in this orgy of blame were ACORN and Lewis herself. “My biggest weakness is a certain naivete about folks coming after you,” she said in a moment of self-interested introspection. “I guess maybe others might have known and could have set up some other barriers and could’ve been better with media and PR.”

Read the whole story here. But, first savor this quote. Perhaps one of the best Big Media comments during this breaking saga:

But Lewis, in playing the victim, is her own worst enemy. Forget the film of the pimp and prostitute: Watching a film of Lewis’s performance yesterday would probably be enough to cause lawmakers to cut off ACORN’s federal funding.

The brother of ACORN’s founder embezzled $5 million from the organization, nearly five times more than the figure previously acknowledged by the New Orleans activist group’s officials, according to a subpoena served Monday by the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office.

“The exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on October 17, 2008 by (ACORN Chief Executive Officer) Bertha Lewis and (ACORN board member) Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5,000,000,” reads the court document. “It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal of private funds.”

ACORN 2nd Subpoena –

ACORN officials have said that Dale Rathke, brother of founder and former CEO Wade Rathke, in 1999 and 2000 inappropriately charged $948,000 to accounts controlled by Citizens Consulting, the bookkeeping arm of ACORN. Under a quiet arrangement known to only a fraction of the organization’s 50-member board, Dale Rathke was allowed to set up a repayment plan. He eventually repaid about $200,000 before a private donor paid the balance.

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said the statute of limitations for theft from ACORN could present problems. However, the language about the source of the money in the new subpoena hints that ACORN might not be the only victim of the alleged embezzlement and could open new avenues of investigation or prosecution.

Though the debt is paid, the attorney general’s office can still consider whether ACORN or Citizens Consulting intended to defraud the state when it failed to submit employee payroll withholding taxes for nearly six years.

The document says former members of the ACORN board of directors approached state officials with claims that the group was breaking laws “related to the filing of employee withholding taxes, failing to report an embezzlement of nearly $1 million by the brother of the founder…., obstructing justice and violations of the Employee Retirement Security Act.”

The obstruction allegation comes from the failure to report Dale Rathke’s improper charges, and the retirement-account contention refers to the possible illegal use of money in those accounts for ACORN employees.

It seeks myriad financial records dating from 1998 from Citizens Consulting regarding ACORN and all related entities, such as income paid on behalf of all ACORN affiliates, all financial audits and statements, a list of all employees for each related group, notices of tax liens and all tax returns.

The subpoena also focuses on Dale Rathke’s actions, seeking information “detailing the theft of funds by Dale Rathke…and failure to report the theft to the proper law enforcement agencies.” It also demands records “dealing with the issue of Dale Rathke’s illegal use of employee benefit funds” and “records that detail all of the funds received by Dale and Wade Rathke in either income, benefits, use of properties, credit cards or other accounts, loans or other means of deferred compensation.”

Regarding the tax many tax liens filed against ACORN and related groups, the subpoena said that “a substantial portion” of the $306,000 owed was not paid until “bank accounts were levied.”

Records in the Orleans Parish Clerk of Courts Office shows that ACORN-related entities still owe more than $1.5 million in federal taxes, as well as about $30,000 in state taxes. The most recent filing from the IRS was recorded last month for more than $500,000. It makes a claim on the ACORN building on Canal Street until the debt is paid.

Most liens stem from payroll taxes withheld from employees but not submitted to the state or the IRS. The $306,000 bill from the state says payments were missed in 66 tax periods, from 2002 through mid-2008.

Original story here.

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:

1. 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. 

2. 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. 

3. 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.

.

An internal review by the board of directors of the community organization ACORN determined that the amount allegedly embezzled from the community organization was $5 million, well more than the previously reported amount of nearly $1 million, according to a new subpoena in an investigation by Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell.

The subpoena, released this afternoon, says, “It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal or private funds.”

Caldwell issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to Acorn International then-President Wade Rathke and his brother Dale Rathke, who kept the group’s books. Those subpoenas were focused on possible Acorn violations of state employee tax law, obstructing justice and violating the Employee Retirement Security Act.

Whole blockbuster story here.

Update: According to the new subpoena issued by the Louisiana Attorney General, it seems ACORN leadership was aware of the full extent of the embezzlement. That they have covered up the true figure cast doubt on their ability to truely reform the organization. In other words, they will only admit to what they get caught at.

“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.

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.

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 40^th 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.