Conservatives Monitoring The Liberal Left
Liberal Thugs
SEIU behind anti-tea party website
Jan 31st
Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?
Dec 7th
Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?
Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?
On August 31, I headed to the health care town hall meeting of my congressional representative, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). I suspected that she planned to stack the meeting with paid organizers, after shevowed on Real Time with Bill Maher to bring “millions” of people into the streets to support the so-called “public option.” So I brought a video camera.
A friend and I took turns filming protesters on both sides of the issue. We caught an organizer from the group Health Care for America Now (HCAN) instructing followers to block dissenting views: “So if they stand up and start asking questions, and you’re in that area, simply stand up, and start chanting… ‘Health care now! Health care now!’”
My experience at Rep. Schakowsky’s town hall meeting that night convinced me to challenge her in the 2010 election. I had already stood up to Rep. Barney Frank at Harvard University, when I asked him about his role in the financial crisis. I could not simply watch thugs drown out the people of my own community back home, and do nothing.
The HCAN video became a YouTube sensation, the “smoking gun” in the controversy over which side of the debate was “Astroturfing”—i.e. creating a false image of grass roots support. I have since discovered that the video contains clues about how the entire nationwide health care campaign was planned and executed by congressional Democrats and the White House.
It turns out that the organizer in the video is John Gaudette, the Illinois director of HCAN. Gaudette alsoworks for a left-wing group linked to ACORN called Citizen Action/Illinois. Rep. Schakowsky sits on the Policy Council of the group, which suggests that she may have known about or even coordinated the suppression of her own constituents’ views by HCAN.
The plot thickens.
Rep. Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, used to be the leader of Citizen Action/Illinois. He also founded its predecessor, Illinois Public Action, in which Ms. Schakowsky served as Program Director. He runs a political consulting firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, which lists ACORN and the SEIU among its clients and which made $541,000 working for disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
Creamer resigned from Citizen Action/Illinois after the FBI began investigating him for bank fraud and tax evasion at Illinois Public Action. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to five months in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, plus eleven months of house arrest.
While in prison—or “forced sabbatical,” he called it—Creamer wrote a lengthy political manual, Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win (Seven Locks Press, 2007).
The book was endorsed by leading Democrats and their allies, including SEIU boss Andy Stern—themost frequent visitor thus far to the Obama White House—and chief Obama strategist David Axelrod, who noted that Creamer’s tome “provides a blueprint for future victories.”
In the book, Creamer draws lessons from decades of experience on the radical left, including the teachings of arch-radical Saul Alinsky, and several episodes from Rep. Schakowsky’s political career. He also lays out a “Progressive Agenda for Structural Change,” which includes a ten-point plan for foisting universal health care on the American people in 2009:
- “We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.”
- “We must create a national consensus that the health care system is in crisis.”
- “Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”
- “We need to systematically forge relationships with large sectors of the business/employer community.”
- “We need to convince political leaders that they owe their elections, at least in part, to the groundswell of support of [sic] universal health care, and that they face political peril if they fail to deliver on universal health care in 2009.”
- “We need not agree in advance on the components of a plan, but we must foster a process that can ultimately yield consensus.”
- “Over the next two years, we must design and organize a massive national field program.”
- “We must focus especially on the mobilization of the labor movement and the faith community.”
- “We must systematically leverage the connections and resources of a massive array of institutions and organizations of all types.”
- “To be successful, we must put in place commitments for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used to finance paid communications and mobilization once the battle is joined.”
Creamer adds: “To win we must not just generate understanding, but emotion—fear, revulsion, anger, disgust.”
Democrats have followed Creamer’s plan to the letter. They have claimed our health care system is in crisis despite polls showing the overwhelming majority of Americans are happy with the care they receive. They have—with the help of President Obama—circulated false horror stories about Americans dying for lack of health care and health insurance.
They have targeted the health insurance industry, with Rep. Schakowsky herself promising to “put the private insurance industry out of business,” though it is a top employer in Illinois.
Democrats have cut deals with the pharmaceutical industry and the American Medical Association, among others. They have brought in the President himself to tell wavering “Blue Dog” Democrats that their re-election chances depend on passing health care reform. They have bused in SEIU members to town hall meetings, and used rabbis and pastors to back health care reform from the pulpit.
They have used a complex, interconnected web of organizations—including HCAN and Organizing For America, the former Obama campaign arm—to whip up support and silence opposition. And they have benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to convince the public to support bills that their representatives have never read themselves.
Creamer wrote his plan in 2006, explicitly proposing that it be carried out in 2009, once a “progressive Democrat is elected President” and once Democrats could count on 60 votes in the Senate. It is curious that Creamer, sitting in prison, could have predicted the details and the timing of President Obama’s legislative agenda so precisely.
The likeliest explanation is that Creamer helped design the Democrats’ health care strategy. That would explain why President Obama made health care an obsession in 2009, when it was only one among many issues he raised on the campaign trail in 2008. It would explain the role of several overlapping left-wing groups, including Creamer’s own Citizen Action/Illinois.
It would explain why HCAN was particularly aggressive at Rep. Schakowsky’s own town hall meeting. And Creamer’s involvement would also explain his high profile after being released from prison. He worked for the Obama campaign, training volunteers at “Camp Obama.” He has continued his work at the Strategic Consulting Group, leading “many of the country’s most significant issue campaigns,” he claims. He was also at the White House state dinner last month—together with Stern, Axelrod, and other cronies—despite the fact that ex-convicts are usually barred from such events.
Creamer’s broader aim, as laid out in his book, is the “democratization of wealth” in America and “progressive control of governments around the world.” As he recently wrote on his blog at the Huffington Post: “If we succeed in winning health insurance reform we will have breached the gates of the status quo. We will demonstrate that fundamental change is possible. Into that breach will flow a wave of progressive change.”
It is a radical agenda, making use of Rep. Schakowsky’s public profile, a network of far-left organizations, and Creamer’s old friends in the White House. It began in federal prison, and has unfolded exactly as intended, over the protests of thousands of ordinary Americans across the nation. It will not end with health care. It will continue until Mr. Creamer’s Alinskyite dream of radical change is realized—or until voters stand up and put a stop to it in 2010.
Anatomy of a Beat-Down Part 1: Why Kenneth Gladney Was Beaten, And by Whom
Nov 30th
Anatomy of a Beat-Down Part 1: Why Kenneth Gladney Was Beaten, And by Whom.
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Anatomy of a Beat-Down Part 1: Why Kenneth Gladney Was Beaten, And by Whom
by Stage Right
On August 6, 2009 two Service Employee International Union (SEIU) leaders and a volunteer for Organizing for America (OFA) assaulted Kenneth Gladney outside of Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town hall meeting on health care. The perpetrators were arrested at the scene of the crime, and three months later charges have finally been filed.
Much has been said in the past three months about this incident. Here at Big Government calls have been made for justice, for formal charges and mostly for the mass media to follow the story and delve into the government’s role in this violent attempt to intimidate and silence dissent. We can no longer wait for the establishment journalists to connect the dots and bring to light the insidious relationships between the SEIU, OFA, Russ Carnaham’s office and the Obama Administration.
Was this assault merely a flare up of tempers during a heated exchange of rival political camps? Or was it a coordinated attempt to silence the scores of protesters who had been so effective at swaying public opinion against the President’s health care scheme? Today, Big Government will bring to light documents that read like an instruction manual for the SEIU forces in St. Louis the evening of August 6th. We will also show that on the very same evening of the St. Louis assault, an almost identical scene played out in Tampa Bay, Florida. Also involving SEIU and OFA. Also resulting in hordes of union members shouting down and physically evicting protesters from a U.S. Representative’s Town hall meeting. Finally, we will introduce all of the various players in leadership roles at these organizations, what they said in instructing their members in how to fight back against the Town hall protesters, and how these individuals all connect to each other and to the Obama Administration. As I said, we’ve been waiting for the “Real” journalists to do this, we’ve waited long enough.
On June 1, 2009 President Obama enjoyed a 64% Job Approval rating with a disapproval rating of 30%. As Summer approached, the President began the plans for the roll out of his comprehensive plan to overhaul the entire distribution system for America’s health care services. As the messaging began, the talking points were clear: “If you like your current health plan, you can keep it”, “This plan will cover the 40 million Americans who have no insurance”, “This plan will not add to the deficit and not raise taxes”. It all seemed too good to be true. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce promptly passed the first version of a reform bill in June. President Obama planned multiple town hall meetings across the country including an unprecedented event televised live on ABC and everything seemed moving toward a major victory for the President and the Democratic Party.
In late June and through the month of July, members of congress held scattered town hall meetings in their districts to get their constituents’ feedback on the proposed health care bill. The clusters of semi-organized protesters who had rallied at “Tea Parties” earlier in the Spring took these meetings as opportunities to rejuvenate their energies with passionate opposition to these congressmen. YouTube videos began circulating showing outraged citizens challenging their representatives and showing those representatives completely unprepared for any legitimate questions about the proposed bill. It was clear in many cases that the representatives were not well versed on these bills beyond the boiler-plate talking points the administration had handed them. They were not used to being questioned.
By the beginning of August Sarah Palin had caught headlines by describing certain policy discussions that evaluate a patients “level of productivity in society” and how it relates to the level of prioritized care they would receive as ‘death panels’ , Rep. Michelle Bachmann had delivered a stinging speech on the House floor tearing apart the President’s advisors on health policy, Sen. Arlen Spector was caught flat-footed at a town hall meeting and protests began cropping up all around the country at various town hall meetings of Senators and Congressmen. President Obama’s job approval rating had now plummeted to 52% with a disapproval rating of 41% (an unbelievable 23% swing in approval loss and disapproval gain combined in 60 days). The White House had seen enough. It was time to take action and engage the opposition.
Somewhere between August 2nd and August 6th a strategy was devised that put all tools at the administrations disposal in line and firing at the protesters. August 4th seems to be an important day in the roll out of this strategy. The White House famously posted a new aggressive offensive on their blog calling out what they described as “mis-information” about the proposed bill and directed true-believers to report any sources of these “lies” to a special e-mail address: flag@whitehouse.gov. Also on the 4th, an organization called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) released a document that became a blueprint for intimidation and, ultimately, violence under the guise of confronting the tea party protesters at these town hall meetings.
HCAN is an organization funded by various unions, most significantly SEIU, whose main purpose is to promote and push the effort for government-provided, universal health care. (To understand the SEIU’s reasons for pushing for this government health care, read this post.) The National Field Director for HCAN is Margarida Jorge. Margarida Jorge used to work for the SEIU as an organizing director.
On August 4th Margarida Jorge released a four page memo instructing members of HCAN on how best to combat the mounting opposition on display at the town hall meetings. On the HCAN web site, the new tactics were filed on a post under the heading “Fight Back Against the Right”. A subsequent HCAN call to action on August 5th was under the benign headline “The Guns of August: A Call to Arms for Progressives and Obama Activists” likening the debate to World War I.
The entire memo can be seen here
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The memo features instructions and tactics for the left on how to dominate the meeting and marginalize the protesters from the right:
- Their side will be smaller but noisier. You must bring enough people to drown them out and to cover all our bases so as to marginalize their disruptive tactics.
- We need to stack our folks in the front to create a wall around the Member, and we need to stake out the best spots for visibility and signs. Reconnaissance on the venue and an understanding of the staging will be important here. Make sure you do your homework so you can position your folks most effectively.
It features ideas on how to manipulate the media:
- Make sure you have people holding signs in every place where a TV camera is likely to be and that next to every right wing sign, there’s one of your signs with your message.
- Don’t wait for the reporter to approach you. You must approach the reporters and be assertive in shaping the narrative that they write. Have someone assigned to greeting the media or checking in media as they arrive. That way you will know who they are and be able to work with them both during the event and afterwards.
It has ideas about how to dominate the conversation by asking the congressman prepared, rehearsed questions:
- Line up a number of people who feel comfortable interrupting and prepare them with statements like:
- Excuse me, I came today to listen to Representative XXX explain how this bill is going to make health care more affordable for me and my family. We’re being gouged by insurance companies that just want to make more profits while we struggle to keep up with premiums and co-pays. Representative, how are you going to fix that?”
- “I’m retired and can’t afford my prescription drugs because I’m on a fixed income. Representative, how is this bill going to affect me?”
- “I want to hear the Representative speak. He’s the one voting on the bill. Representative, how will this bill help people who already have insurance at work?”
- “What I’m worried about is how we’re going to keep the insurance companies from continuing to charge people more for being sick and keep them from taking away coverage when we need it most. What’s the plan for that?”
And, on page four of the memo written by Margarida Jorge of HCAN are instructions for hosting a town hall meeting. These instructions include:
- One advantage to organizing your own Town Hall or public event with Members of Congress is that you will have much more control over the event and limit the other side’s opportunities for disruption.
- Make sure you turn out a substantial number of people from your base and that everyone signs a sign in sheet upon entering the event. Give everyone name tags so they are easily identifiable. If you want to ensure greater control over turnout, you can ask attendees to rsvp or even issue tickets to the event and require presentation of the ticket at the entrance.
- Choose a venue that is difficult for the opposition to access without being noticed. Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
- Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security should any need arise to ask noisy or disruptive protesters to leave.
- Another way to limit protesters’ ability to hijack your event is to confiscate signs or leaflets that they may bring into the venue from outside. The best way to do this is to make a blanket rule that no one can bring signs or leaflets and to advertise this fact as you do turn out in the weeks preceding the event. You can distribute your own signs in the event and offer them one as they enter if you choose to allow them to enter.
- It’s important that you take away right-wingers opportunities to talk with reporters by making sure that your staff or leaders are in constant contact with the media who attend.
On August 5th the DNC released a video advertisement calling the protesters an “angry mob” and showing a photo of one alleged protester hanging a congressman in effigy. Also on August 5th we hadSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi derisively calling the protesters “Astro-turf” and claiming that they were carrying signs with swastikas.
By August 6th liberal web sites like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos were cheering HCAN’s instructions and the stance taken by Organizing For America (The left-wing volunteer web site evolved from the Obama Campaign) urging liberals to call congress (providing them instructions on how to do this) and then to register the call at the OFA web site. Huffington Post celebrated the new bold move with a post urging the unions to get more involved (an astounding 11,000 comments appear on this post in just 6 days, many of them from early in the day on August 6th show that the readers of HuffPo knew exactly what this union engagement meant and what the results would be).
Finally on August 6th, hours before the Carnahan town hall meeting where Kenneth Gladney was assaulted by members of the SEIU, David Axelrod and Jim Messina gave a pep talk to Senators on Capitol Hill prior to their leaving for the August recess. According to Politico:
They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said. And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.
”If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting
Two days after the instructions on how to manage and control protestors at town hall meetings were released by Margarida Jorge at HCAN, one day after the Speaker of the House likened protestors to Nazis and mere hours after President Obama’s top political advisors assured Congressional Democrats that “If you get hit, we will punch them back twice as hard”, Kenneth Gladney lay beaten and bloody on the ground outside Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town Hall meeting.
Tomorrow we will show how the people who are now charged with assaulting him are connected to SEIU and HCAN, how they followed HCAN’s instructions perfectly which inevitably led to the violence, and we will show how St. Louis was not the only meeting that followed HCAN’s template and ended in much the same way.
REVEALED: ACORN, NBC Worked Together in ‘Undercover Video Sting’
Nov 30th
REVEALED: ACORN, NBC Worked Together in ‘Undercover Video Sting’
by Publius
Since the undercover ACORN videos from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles first broke, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism have gone into self-absorbed philosopher mode. Rather than report on the ACORN corruption playing out before our eyes, “journalists” have tsk-tsked their way through thousands of words and yards of column inches making certain that everyone understands that what James and Hannah did IS…NOT…JOURNALISM. (As if that is the existential question to make sense of the ACORN videos.) Undercover videos and assuming fake identities are things real journalists do not do…except when they do.
Read the rest of the article at : Big Government
Best Buy Ditches ‘Christmas’ But Celebrates Muslim Holiday in Fliers
Nov 28th
Best Buy Ditches ‘Christmas’ But Celebrates Muslim Holiday in Fliers.
Christmas. Who needs it? Not Best Buy, that’s for sure. After all, Best Buy is loathe to use that hateful word in its advertising. It’s so “religious” and tinged with racism, America, and tradition. It makes Best Buy shudder to think of using that foul word, Christmas. But, advertising for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha? Heck, why not? What could be more welcoming and tolerant?
And so, Best Buy has issued a Thanksgiving sales flyer wishing all good multi-cultural, Muslim loving Americans a happy Eid al-Adha this year.
Don’t you feel your heart warming already? Isn’t your PC bone tingling with happiness? And aren’t you secretly gleeful that those rotten, evil, reactionary, hatemongering Christians are getting theirs… even if Christians do make up about 75 percent of the United States?
Well, let’s give Best Buy a hand for its politically correct sales flier excising that horrid Christmas nonsense and being enlightened enough to help us all convert to the “Religion of Peace.”
Thanks be it to Allah and Best Buy for helping us forget little things like the Khobar Tower bombing, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Towers, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, 9/11, or that silly little incident with Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood. It was but a trifle, after all.
In this happy Eid al-Adha season we can thank Best Buy for its sacrifice, too. For its sacrifice of America to its enemies, for the sacrifice of our traditions, religious principles, and culture to an alien, hostile ideology. We can thank Best Buy for helping organizations like CAIR to spread its message of cultural jihad.
Yes, thanks Best Buy for showing us how to be better “Americans.”
Now go ye forward and shop, America. Happy Eid al-Adha to everyone. And don’t let PETA stop you from buying that goat. And don’t mind us, folks. We are just committing cultural suicide is all.
Source: Big Government
‘They Tried to Steal an Election,’ N.Y. Voter Fraud Case Heats Up
Oct 21st
Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out, according to records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y. Enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the November election to the Democrats.
By Eric Shawn
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Brian Suozzo voted with an absentee ballot in the Working Families Party primary on Sept. 15 because, as his application stated, he was “at home recovering from medical procedure.”
Jessica Boomhower’s application said she would be attending a “work conference in Boston.”
Michael Ward couldn’t vote in person because he was “taking care of elderly parent.”
Kimberlee Truell was on a “Bus trip to casino,” as was Miguel Vazques.
The only problem with these absentee ballot records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y., is that they’re phony, voters and investigators say — and they’ve prompted what’s being called an unprecedented investigation of suspected voter fraud.
Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out — enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the city council and county elections in November to the Democrats. Candidates would have been able to run both on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines in two weeks, and that could have given the Democrats the general election.
A special prosecutor is investigating the case and criminal charges are possible. New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Lynch ruled that there were “significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the election process.”
Among the reasons cited on the fraudulent forms for absentee voting: “traveling to Buffalo,” attending a “screen printing conference in Syracuse,” “working late shift,” “working construction,” and “home — ill.”
“Someone took my signature and voted with it and I felt extremely violated,” Suozzo told Fox News. He is a soft-spoken 28-year-old environmental engineer who says he never saw, let alone signed, the Working Families Party Absentee ballot application that carried his supposed signature. He was flabbergasted that someone would vote for him and submit it.
“The whole thing seems dirty to me,” Suzzo said. “You wonder how often this happens and people don’t get caught.”
He says he did not have any type of medical procedure, adding “I haven’t been to the hospital in years.”
“I feel that I was gypped,” Boomhower said, ruefully. “I didn’t get to cast my vote on my own.”
Boomhower, a 28-year-old home health care worker, says three men came to her door asking her to sign a ballot application. It wasn’t until after the election that a private investigator brought her the news that an absentee ballot indeed showed she had voted, when she actually had not.
“I can’t believe they thought they would get away with this,” she says angrily, noting that the false claim that she was in Boston could have jeopardized her job. “I don’t want to see this get tossed aside,” she told Fox News.
Michael Ward, whose ballot said he was taking care of an elderly parent, said “I got one parent left, and he lives in Albany and takes care of himself.”
“They tried to steal an election,” says Bob Mirch, the majority leader of the Rensselaer County legislature who suspected voter fraud and started the investigation after being alerted to a large number of absentee ballot application requests that were noticed by the Republican Board of Elections commissioner .
“Not only does it undermine the system, but if these people were allowed to do this, we could never have a fair election… I’ve been doing this for 35 years, when I saw this, it sends a chill through my body right now.”
Mirch is a pugnacious veteran of the bruising county politics, a Conservative Party and Republican politician who is also Commissioner of Troy’s Department of Public Works, which is why he relishes his sobriquet, “Bob, the Garbage Man.” He brands local politics “a blood sport,” in a city that in the 19th Century was once one of the country’s wealthiest, has an abundance of elegant townhouses from that era, yet is often overshadowed by its neighbor Albany, the New York State capital. Campaign signs dot many front lawns, and it seems local political maneuvering is followed as closely as the Yankee playoffs. Mirch proudly admits he runs his own candidates in the left-leaning Working Families Party primaries to try and sap strength from the Democrats or gain the line for Republican candidates, but he insists he has never acted unlawfully, and blames his political opponents for doing just that.
“These Democrats and Working Families people couldn’t bear taking another defeat at the hands of the garbage man, as I’m known in Troy, so they went out and took the law in their own hands to claim victory,” he says.
“As soon as I heard it — I was mad, disappointed, frustrated,” says Troy Democratic Chairman Frank LaPosta. He blames what he calls “a rogue group of Democrats,” and says what happened “is beyond comprehension.”
LaPosta stood in his apron in his Italian salumeria, stocked with fresh delicacies and cuts of meat. He once ran for Mayor and appears genuinely wounded by the scandal.
“I believe we could have won without the Working Families Party line,” he says. “To have something like this darken the election, its just an outrage for true Democrats in the city of Troy. This is not what the Democratic party in the city of Troy stands for,” he said. “Some people think you have to have all the lines to win. I believe you have to have the issues to win.”
The Working Families Party has recently gained strength, and controversy, in New York. Republican and Democratic candidates in the Empire State can also run on third party lines, such as the Working Families Party, as well as the Liberal, Conservative, and Independence parties, among others. The extra line means extra votes that could bring victory.
Hillary Clinton garnered 2.7 percent of her total votes from the WFP line when she first ran for Senate in 2000, which increased to 5 percent of her total vote in 2006. In September, Clinton’s former campaign manager for her 2000 Senate run, New York City Councilman Bill DeBlasio, who has been endorsed by the WFP, beat two long-established politicians in the Democratic primary. Critics also accuse the Working Families Party of having a long association with the troubled activist group, ACORN. Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s CEO, is one of the party’s co-founders. The New York Times reported this month that “Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, worked with ACORN in New York to set up the Working Families political party and sat on the party’s board with Ms. Lewis.”
The WFP has also endorsed New York Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was one of only seven Senators who voted against cutting federal housing funds to ACORN in September.
But the jockeying for a candidate to win the Working Families Party line may have crossed the line in Troy.
“We welcome the investigation,” says former Working Families Party County Chair Pat Pafundi. WFP officials would either not return our calls or comment about the investigation, but Pafundi, a current party member, was clear. While she believes the political tactics engaged by Mirch to run candidates on the WFP line undermine the party, she admits “it looks like there has been some kind of fraud” regarding the questionable absentee ballots.
“For six years, we’ve gone door to door to work hard to do this the right way,” she told Fox News. “Good government includes elections held with integrity and that is the way we have conducted ourselves and we hope the Democrats and Republicans would do the same also.”
A lawsuit filed by Working Parties candidate Christian Lambersten, who ran in the primary, led to the suspected ballots being tossed. He is a lifelong friend of Mirch, who urged him to run in the WFP primary, along with five other Mirch-backed candidates.
“I always thought everything was done above board,” he told Fox News about the absentee ballots. “You hear stories about this or that but I really didn’t belive it until actually this happened,” he said. “These people were taken advantage of — whether they voted for me or not.”
Read More @ Foxnews.com
Is ACORN DOA?: Blame The Board!
Oct 14th
A pimp, prostitute, underage human trafficking and now a self-professed murderer; what could be next for the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now?!?
Margaret Williams, Maryland ACORN board member and Sonja Merchant-Jones, Baltimore ACORN President both reported that the low level ACORN employees caught on tape in the Baltimore office were immediately terminated for behaving unprofessionally; but yet, senior staff members who assisted and concealed a million dollar Rathke embezzlement remain employed.
The ACORN 8 commends these board members’s decisive action, but find it extremely ironic since the board of directors do not actually control ACORN employees. According to ACORN’s by-laws that authority is exclusively exercised by the “Chief Organizer,” formerly Wade Rathke and now Bertha Lewis. This fundamental disconnect between an actual functioning board of directors and senior management is the true problem and real scandal within ACORN. It causes low-income members and staff to become mere pawns of senior management.
Ultimately, ACORN’s low-income workers are simply trying to meet and fulfill unreasonable membership quotas set by senior staff. This undue management pressure results in fraudulent voter registrations, tax assistance for “pimps and prostitutes” or worse. Poor governance and lack of accountability are the real problems. Voter fraud or rather voter registration fraud are just symptoms of a far greater problem. And that is the lack of meaningful control and accountability by the membership. So don’t fault poor workers – blame the board!
If ACORN hopes to survive then the know-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing board of directors must by replaced by individuals with the strength and capabilities to fulfill their fiduciary obligations and the courage to reign in corruption by ACORN’s senior management. If they fail, it is the low income communities which ACORN serves which will suffer the loss.
The damage to the ACORN brand and its overall effectiveness has been immeasurable due to poor governance, mismanagement and corruption within senior management. Consequently, the board of director’s missed the last best chance to save ACORN through reform. It seems apparent to all, except the most ardent and the culpable, that ACORN has been mortally wounded; and the only question now is who goes down with the ship?
But it may already be too late; ACORN had its chance to do the right thing following the million dollar Rathke embezzlement. There was a glimmer of hope when the board of directors appointed an interim management committee tasked to investigate the embezzlement and reorganize ACORN. But they were terminated for seeking a forensic audit.
From the very beginning, the ACORN 8 have always sought to reform – not destroy – the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now. But now find it impossible to imagine that even this once venerable association can withstand the latest onslaught of negative publicity.
The Census Bureau and IRS recently severed ties with ACORN, and the U.S. Senate voted 83 to 7 to cut off funding for the embattled group. The House followed suit by a vote of 345 to 75. Unfortunately, this is yet another example of poor governance, mismanagement and corruption within the once venerable organization. ACORN cannot survive if it can’t raise any more money.
No More Charitable Donations: No tax exempt 501(c )(3) organization will donate money to ACORN under the present circumstances. Since they cannot prove that the 501(c )(3) funding was not commingled with partisan activities.
No More Federal Contracts: Likewise, the federal government has already begun to sever ties to ACORN and could not fund the association through CCI a registered lobbying organization.
No More Negotiated Settlements: ACORN no longer possesses the necessary moral authority to pressure corporations or any organization through public demonstrations or protests. Thus, even this revenue stream will be unavailable to ACORN.
ACORN has been hijacked by senior staff and executive leadership who are acting in their own personal interest and not the best interest of the association or its membership. Only one question remains. Is ACORN now dead on arrival?!?
ACORN has survived in the past as a surprisingly well funded, politically well connected, dictatorial operation which flew under the public’s radar. Ironically, the election of President Barack Obama was actually the worst thing that could happen to ACORN. The attention that the election of the first African-American and community organizer to the highest office in the land has made it impossible for ACORN to avoid real scrutiny as it has in the past. Ironically, President Obama’s ascent has turned into ACORN’s demise.
SEIU! SEIU! SEIU!: Obama Pledges to “Paint the Nation Purple”
Oct 12th
SEIU Local 880, based in Chicago, is one of the largest SEIU union locals. It was founded and has been long controlled by ACORN and Wade Rathke. This recently uncovered video shows presidential candidate Barack Obama discussing his long and close ties to SEIU. This is not your typical political pandering. This is someone who feels at home, talking to close friends and family.
Rathke’s Reach: Critical ACORN Doc Found on Asian Website
Oct 11th
Rathke’s Reach: Critical ACORN Doc Found on Asian Website
by Kyle Olson
If one wonders or doubts Wade Rathke’s reach around the world, consider the following document found on a community organizing website in Asia and published on ACORNcracked.com.
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 click here for a PDF.
ACORN CEO Doubts Congress Will Defund ACORN ‘Because We Actually Do The Right Thing’
Oct 9th
(CNSNews.com) – Bertha Lewis, CEO of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), said on Tuesday that she doubts Congress will ultimately defund her organization “because we actually do the right thing.”
The House of Representatives has already overwhelmingly approved an amendment to deny ACORN all federal funding and the Senate has overwhelmingly approved two amendments–one that would deny ACORN any funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development and another that would deny ACORN any funding through the Department of Interior.
“We didn’t have government funding for years,” Lewis said. “We may not have government funding in the future. I doubt it, because we actually do the right thing and perform. But if we don’t [have government funding], ACORN will still go on with its member and its donors.”
Lewis was answering a question submitted by CNSNews.com at an event held October 6 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.
The movement in Congress to prohibit funding of ACORN came after a series of hidden-camera videos were posted last month on www.biggovernment.com. The videos show James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles posing as a pimp and prostitute at various ACORN offices. In the videos, O’Keefe and Giles get advice from ACORN employees about how to prepare tax documents that hide prostitution proceeds and the employment of teenage Latin American girls as prostitutes.
After the videos appeared, the Senate voted 83-7 on Sept. 14 for an amendment that would prohibit ACORN from receiving grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Sept. 17, the Senate voted 85-11 for another amenmdent that would prohibit ACORN from receiving federal money through the Department of Interior. Also on Sept. 17, the House voted 345-75 for an amendment to deny all federal funding to ACORN.
For any of these amendments to become law, it would need to be approved by the other congressional chamber and signed by President Obama.
The New York Times reported on September 18 that ACORN had received $53 million in federal funding since 1994. Lewis said at the National Press Club on Tuesday that she estimated the group received about 10 percent of its $20-$25 million annual budget from the government.
“Our average budget may have been between 20 and 25 million dollars a year for everything, all of the offices combined,” said Lewis. “So you look at about 10 percent of our budget, yes, we would like to provide those services because we actually got results for tens of thousands of people, results from getting funded from competitive grants.
“But if we lose that money as long as there is one ACORN member who is willing to have a meeting in their house or one church that allows us to have a meeting in their basement, we will go on,” she said.
“We didn’t have government funding for years. We may not have government funding in the future,” she said. “I doubt it, because we actually do the right thing and perform. But if we don’t ACORN will still go on with its member and its donors.”
Read More at cnsnews.com