There’s an extraordinary new book out that explains Democrats’ long-term strategy for winning and maintaining power.
It’s called The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans EVERYWHERE Should Care), by journalist Adam Schrager and former Colorado state Rep. Rob Witwer.
Drawing in part on the work of Capital Research Center, the book explores in depth the efforts of the Democracy Alliance, a donors’ consortium made up of left-wing millionaires and billionaires such as George Soros and Progressive Insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis. The mission of the low-profile Democracy Alliance is to build a lasting political infrastructure of think tanks, activist groups, leadership schools, and media outlets to help the left gain and keep power.
It was created after Democrats failed to reclaim power in the 2004 election — despite favorable polls and record contributions by high-dollar donors.
The Democracy Alliance, which counts both SEIU and AFL-CIO as institutional members, helped Democrats give Republicans a shellacking in 2008. Now it’s organizing state-level chapters in at least 19 states, and once-conservative Colorado, which hosts the Democracy Alliance’s most successful state affiliate, has turned Democrat blue. Colorado funders such as heiress Patricia Stryker, technology tycoons Tim Gill (Quark Xpress) and Rutt Bridges, poured money into state-level projects and it paid off. (Jared Polis, now a Democratic congressman representing Boulder, Colo., was also involved but it’s unclear if he is or was an actual member of CoDA — Colorado Democracy Alliance.)
The national Democracy Alliance funds key institutions on the left: Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America, Catalist, People for the American Way, EMILY’s List, (the now-dissolving) ACORN, and the Secretary of State Project which has helped elect the chief electoral officials in at least nine states.
The Democracy Alliance’s ultra-secretive “Committee on States” project has office space in SEIU’s D.C. headquarters a few blocks away from here in Dupont Circle.
To get a 35% discount (excluding shipping and handling) order the book through the publisher. The telephone number for Fulcrum Books is: 1-800-992-2908. The discount code is “Blueprint1″.
Art collector and retired plastics executive Stefan T. Edlis has been discovered to be a member of the ultra-secretive Democracy Alliance, a George Soros-led left-wing billionaires’ club that wants to turn America into socialist Europe.
His foundation, Edlis-Neeson Foundation NFP, funneled $200,000 to the Democracy Alliance via the Tides Foundation in 2008, according to the foundation’s 2008 tax return. See page 16 of the return available here.
I was tipped off to this several hours ago but it looks like my friend David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner beat me to the punch.
The document “National Progressive and Party Infrastructure,” purporting to have been co-written by Rob Stein of the Democracy Alliance, offers new information on how the left is trying to create a permanent left-wing political infrastructure throughout the nation.
The mention on page 10 of the “Independent Coordinating Entity: America Votes” under which 40 different groups are “working together to coordinate their independent electoral activity.”
The Atlas Project, which has compiled a database of more than 100,000 campaign documents. This will mean that future liberal campaigns will not need to reinvent the wheel. AP is also involved in plans for redistricting in key states.
On page 18 us a list of groups that have become prominent with their recent television ad buys promoting one or another of President Obama’s agenda items — the Employee Free Choice Act, health insurance reform, etc.
Page 19 looks ahead to the 2010 round of redistricting and how liberal groups are becoming involved to ensure that the process is “fair.”
The document was posted by Wellstone Action, an activist group named after the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, an arch-leftist Democrat who represented Minnesota.
Post script 5 p.m.: Whoever posted the document took it down. Fortunately, I made a PDF copy of it. Read it here.
I explore George Soros’s continuing effort to steal elections in a new American Spectator piece.
Here’s the top of the article:
History’s most notorious Georgian-turned-Russian, the politically astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”
The lesson has not been lost on the increasingly notorious Hungarian-cum-American George Soros.
A group backed by Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation. From such posts, secretaries of state can help tilt the electoral playing field.
This is, of course, the same Soros, the same hyperpolitical left-wing philanthropist who makes no secret of his intention to destroy capitalism. In an interview with Der Spiegellast year, Soros said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful — but also very harmful to our society.”
The vehicle for this planned hijacking of democracy is a below-the-radar non-federal “527″ group called the Secretary of State Project. The entity can accept unlimited financial contributions and doesn’t have to disclose them publicly until well after the election.
It was revealed during a panel discussion at the Democratic Party’s convention last year that the Democracy Alliance, a financial clearinghouse created by Soros and Progressive insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, approved the Secretary of State Project as a grantee. [...]
George Soros’s Democracy Alliance has added a new face to its board. The Democracy Alliance is a billionaires’ club that wants to turn America into socialist Europe.
The new board member is James Gollin. Here’s Gollin’s biography, as posted on the Democracy Alliance’s website:
James D. Gollin was educated at Princeton University, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Kokusai Daigaku (International University of Japan) as well as in France and Italy. After work at a number of think tanks in Japan and the US, Mr. Gollin joined Nomura Securities in Tokyo and then Morgan Stanley. He managed securities funds as well as M&A, real estate, resort development and other projects. He has worked in socially responsible business and environmentally-friendly venture capital.
Mr. Gollin is a Director of the Angelica Foundation, funding environmental, pro-democracy and human rights groups in the Southwest U.S. and Mexico. He is President of the Board of Rainforest Action Network, where he has overseen successful campaigns leading to landmark agreements between environmentalists and major industries. He is actively working to build progressive infrastructure in New Mexico, where he lives. He is also an award-winning writer and photographer.
Gollin is named “Progressive Secretary of the Interior” on a website for a group called Progressive Government. Progressive Government seems flaky so I’ll post Gollin’s bio from that website below for posterity just in case the site disappears. Here is the bio:
Appointee’s Background:
Background:
James Gollin currently resides in Santa Fe, NM. Though he is now a writer, he began his professional career as an investment broker for Morgan Stanley. The next step for Gollin was starting his own company. This venture allowed him to retire early and pursue a career in writing. His resume includes eleven books, articles for magazines like Fortune, New York, The Washington Post, and The American Scholar, and editing for Early Music America . In addition he is an adviser for several charitable foundations. Gollin has also spent time exploring and writing in Central America, particularly Honduras.
Professional Background:
* Investment Broker for Japanese equities with Morgan Stanley.
* Founded financial advising company
* Writer
Education:
* B.A. Princeton
* M.A. Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Study
* M.B.A. International University of Japan
Member of the Following Board of Directors:
* Chairman of Rainforest Action Network
* Grants Advisor for Angelica Foundation
Selected Publications:
* Pay Now, Die Later: A Report on Life Insurance: America’s Biggest and Strongest Industry (1968)
* Worldly Goods: The Wealth and Power of the American Catholic Church, the Vatican, and the Men Who Control the Money (1971)
* The Star Spangled Retirement Dream (1983)
* Desired Track (1994)
* Lights Out in Honduras, Planeta.com (1995)
Quotation:
“Without a healthy, sustainable environment, the economy of any nation will soon either collapse or, by importing precious resources, simply delay a more general environmental and economic collapse. This attitude, once put forward only by environmental activists, has now become the official creed of institutions such as the IDB and the World Bank.”
#251 Leslie Dach, super-lobbyist for Wal-Mart brought in to move the company to the left; longtime Democrat operative.
#413,414 David Fenton, leftist PR maestro responsible for Alar apple scare and other frauds
#458,459 Michael Gaspard, brother of White House political director and longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard and lobbyist with Scott Levenson’s The Advance Group which represents ACORN
#877,879 Peter Lewis, which could be the founder of Progressive Insurance (his middle initial is “B,” but no middle initial is provided in the database); Lewis is a big player in George Soros’s Democracy Alliance
#960,961 Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos infamy; surname misspelled once but it’s got to be him
#1040,1041,1042 Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org (variation of first name shown as Elijah but it’s probably the same person)
#1448, 1449 another two visits by SEIU’s Andrew Stern
Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18. He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that used to employ President Obama and White House political director Patrick Gaspard counts for nothing.
But Americans really shouldn’t be surprised that Attorney General Holder is bending over backwards to help his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder, whom I’ve long argued is unfit to serve as the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer, supports ACORN’s goals.
ACORN wants to use the power of government to bring about a radical transformation of American society.
So does Holder.
He is unapologetic about his desire to force Big Government down the throats of Americans. Holder rarely misses an opportunity to advocate expanding the size and scope of the federal government. He told a 2004 gathering of the left-wing American Constitution Society, “Government has been the primary force for positive social change in our country’s history. It can be again.”
Like ACORN, he thinks electoral fraud is a myth manufactured by people who want to disenfranchise minorities and the poor. “I think there is a feeling among Republicans that there is a widespread amount of voter fraud out there. I don’t think the statistics actually would substantiate it,” he told Fox News in 2004.
When Darnell Nash, whom ACORN registered to vote nine times, was convicted of vote fraud –not just mere voter registration fraud— in Cleveland earlier this year, Holder couldn’t be bothered to comment. A spokesman for Cleveland prosecutor Bill Mason, a Democrat, told me last month that a local investigation of ACORN remains wide open.
Like ACORN, Holder supports the so-called Fairness Doctrine that would force conservative talk radio hosts off the air Hugo Chavez-style. He told the American Constitution Society:
The nation must be reminded that the word liberal is more than a conservative slur. The nation must be reminded that it was the progressive, liberal tradition that brought about the social and economic changes that were necessary many years ago. The nation must be convinced that it is a progressive future that holds the greatest promise for equality and the continuation of those policies that serve to support the greatest number of our people. In the short term this will not be an easy task. With the mainstream media somewhat cowered by conservative critics, and the conservative media disseminating the news in anything but a fair and balanced manner, and you know what I mean there, the means to reach the greatest number of people is not easily accessible.
Also like ACORN, Attorney General Holder hates conservatives. Viscerally.
His public utterances are weighted down with the same old tiresome liberal clichés about those on the right one might find on the ultra left-wing Daily Kos hate site.
Holder told the American Constitution Society gathering that “conservatives have been defenders of the status quo, afraid of the future, and content to allow to continue to exist all but the most blatant inequalities.” They have “made a mockery of the rule of law.” Conservatives try to “put the environment at risk for the sake of unproven economic theories, to play to the fears of our citizens, and not to their hopes, and to return the nation to a time that in fact never existed.”
Conservatives are “breathtaking” in their “arrogance,” Holder claimed. “From redistricting schemes, to attacks on abortion rights, to energy policies that are as shortsighted as they are ineffective, to tax cuts that disproportionately favor those who are well off and perpetuate many of the inequities in our nation, the conservative movement has been unafraid to push the limits in advancing this agenda.”
Holder denounced what he called “the conservative agenda of social division, mindless tax cutting, and a defense posture that does not really make us safer.”
ACORN’s chief organizer Bertha Lewis couldn’t have said it better.
Holder also has a long history of involvement in charities and nonprofits that seek to stick it to conservatives.
He has been a member of the board of directors of the American Constitution Society. The ACS believes in the myth of the “living” Constitution and views the limits that great charter places on government power as quaint anachronisms to be overcome through clever legal sophistry.
ACS is, of course, funded by the big players in left-wing political finance, including members of the billionaires’ club, the Democracy Alliance. Reliably liberal benefactors of ACS include George Soros’s Open Society Institute ($2,201,500 since 2002), Ford Foundation ($600,000 since 2003), Sandler Foundation ($200,000 in 2003), Tides Foundation ($25,000 since 2002), Barbra Streisand Foundation ($20,000 since 2002).
Meanwhile, it has been exhaustively documented that Holder has what could charitably be called a cavalier approach to a key civil right, you know, that inconvenient, archaic one described in the Second Amendment that the media wishes we would all forget about.
As the Independent Institute’s Stephen P. Halbrook, author of The Founder’s Second Amendment, told a Senate panel considering Holder’s nomination at the beginning of the year, “many Americans have reason to be uneasy about Mr. Holder’s nomination for attorney general. They deserve to have a person in this role who is committed to upholding all parts of the Constitution, including the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, Mr. Holder has proven himself not to be that person.”
As deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, Holder pushed for federal licensing of handgun owners and federal registration of guns, waiting periods for gun purchases, and rationing of handgun sales. The former Janet Reno acolyte signed on to a pro-gun prohibition amicus curiae brief in District of Columbia v. Heller, last year’s groundbreaking Supreme Court case in which justices struck down the District’s oppressive handgun ban.
Like Holder, ACORN has long supported gun control. Content to leave poor people in the inner city defenseless at the hands of violent criminals, ACORN intervened in court to defend a Jersey City, N.J., gun control ordinance.
Billionaire Melvin Simon, who started what became America’s largest shopping mall company and who was part owner of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, died earlier this month at 82.
Simon was a big contributor to the Democratic Party.
He is survived by his wife, Bren Simon, who is a member of the George Soros-led Democracy Alliance. The Democracy Alliance is a donors’ collaborative that funds think tanks, media outlets, and activist groups on the left.
Mrs. Simon is president of MBS Associates LLC, a property management and development firm.
That’s the question asked by the Washington Post’s chief digital officer, Vijay Ravindran, who wonders how much technological infrastructure backs up Sarah Palin’s speeches, the “tea parties,” and Newt Gingrich’s excellent adventures. Good question.
Ravindran observes that the print and broadcast media mainly missed all the innovations initiated by Democrats in 2004 and 2008–social networking (MoveOn.org), online fundraising (Act Blue), and major donor fundraising for think tanks and advocacy groups (the Democracy Alliance). These improvements overcame older Republican advances in direct mail and talk radio.
Ravindran notes that “microtargeting” likely voters by data mining was important in helping leftwing interest groups turn out the vote in the 2005 Virginia governor’s race. He attributes Tim Kaine’s success to the sophisticated data aggregation techniques developed by former Clinton aide Harold Ickes, who started a private company Catalist. Ickes had clashed with Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and persuaded George Soros to put up $1 million to fund the Catalist operation.
Ravindran confesses to not knowing much about conservative capability in the new infrastructure architecture. However, the Washington Post’s chief digital officer knows lots about databanks and web-based tools since he was formerly the chief technology officer at Catalist.
President Obama’s new “green jobs” czar Van Jones, an avowed militant communist, had been on the board of the pressure group Apollo Alliance, which aspires to flatten the U.S. economy by having government fund “green jobs” scams, according to the “Glenn Beck Program” earlier this week.
Even worse, the green gangster group, which has ties to ACORN, SEIU, and Center for American Progress president John Podesta, has significant pull in Congress and helped to write the stimulus bill.
The Apollo Alliance “is designed to bring together the elements of organized labor with the community organizers with the green groups, the environmental groups, and to access all of the big foundation money that’s been supportive of those causes in the past,” explained Phil Kerpen, director of policy for Americans for Prosperity.
Jones described the group’s “mission as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes; it ties all these things together,” Kerpen said. He added
They really admire the Apollo mission, the moon-shot mission, and they think that we need a similar centrally-planned, organized massive mobilization to reorder society and take control of energy and their various other objectives. They admire that and they want it like a moon shot.
Beck asked if Wade Rathke, the disgraced founder of ACORN who was expelled by the radical left-wing group last year for covering up his brother’s embezzlement of nearly $1 million in ACORN funds, had been a member of the Apollo Alliance’s board.
Kerpen responded, “Yes. He’s on — he was until this year on the board of the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center, which are the parent organizations that host the Apollo Alliance.”
Loren Spivack of freemarketwarrior.com said that his Concord, N.C. shopping mall kiosk was shut down by a shopping mall chain because it carried anti-Obama and anti-liberal merchandise on the “Glenn Beck Program” Friday. (The Charlotte Observer also reported on the story.)
“What essentially happened was one of the largest corporations in the country decided to stomp on one of the smallest companies in the country, Free Market Warrior,” Spivack explained. The action was taken based on one complaint from “one person who was not willing to be in the same mall as material that she disagrees with.”
Spivack said his kiosk sold baby bibs that read “My parents chose life: thanks mom and dad,” and bumper stickers that read “Impeach Obama” and “Al Qaeda’s 2 favorite days: 9/11/01 & 11/4/08.”
Beck noted that the owners of the shopping mall holding company are big contributors to the Democratic Party but not did identify them on-air.
In fact, the Concord Mills mall is owned by the Simon Property Group Inc., which is run by Melvin and Bren Simon. Mrs. Simon is a member of the Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal plutocrats determined to turn the U.S. into a European-style socialist state. The Democracy Alliance is led by left-wing philanthropist and political meddler George Soros.
A new congressional report accuses the radical activist group ACORN of organized criminal activities. I will have a full article on the American Spectator website in the morning about it.
The report, called “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?” comes from minority staff on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The ranking member on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), is appearing on the “Glenn Beck Program” on Fox News today to discuss the report.
The report, available here, is based to an extent on my research detailing the ACORN network’s interlocking directorates, its millions of dollars in unpaid taxes, and various unethical and possibly unlawful activities. Its executive summary mirrors the many articles I have written about ACORN for the American Spectator.
Here’s an excerpt from the congressional report:
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate.
Emerging accounts of widespread deceit and corruption raise the need for a criminal investigation of ACORN. By intentionally blurring the legal distinctions between 361 tax-exempt and non-exempt entities, ACORN diverts taxpayer and tax-exempt monies into partisan political activities. Since 1994, more than $53 million in federal funds have been pumped into ACORN, and under the Obama administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds.
Operationally, ACORN is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators. Structurally, ACORN is a chess game in which senior management is shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act. [...]
One small proviso: I don’t think the $8.5 billion referred to consists entirely of funding from President Obama’s February stimulus package. Much of the money ACORN and other advocacy groups are eligible for is to be found in the fiscal 2010 budget for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Congressional Democrats have shown little interest in probing ACORN. After initially expressing interest in an investigation, House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-Michigan), a longtime ACORN ally, backed off saying “the powers that be decided against it.”
The website of “Lou Dobbs Live” indicates Issa will also be on that show at 7 p.m. (Eastern) tonight to talk about the report.
Updated: Here is the video from Issa’s appearance today on the “Glenn Beck Program”:
A congressional report accusing the radical activist group ACORN of organized criminal activities is set to be unveiled on the “Glenn Beck Program” tonight.
The report comes from minority staff on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The ranking member on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), announced on Twitter that he is appearing on Beck’s TV show tonight at 5 p.m. Eastern time to discuss the report. The website of “Lou Dobbs Live” indicates Issa will be on that show at 7 p.m. tonight to do the same.
The report is called “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?”
The report is based, to an extent, on my research detailing the ACORN network’s interlocking directorates, its millions of dollars in unpaid taxes, and various unethical and possibly unlawful activities.
Teo Molin of Human Events has an interesting article called, “The ActBlue-Soros Complex.”
Here is the top of the article:
In an era when the most vehement proponents of big government happen to be the most politically active billionaires, it is not surprising that the Democracy Alliance, a collaborative of liberal donors led by George Soros and Peter B. Lewis, has set out on an offensive to pile funds into the liberal machine.
The tactics of Soros, his constituent investors and foundations are revealed easily — and in considerable detail — by an examination of the seemingly “grassroots” groups that this very non-grassroots collection of billionaires and bureaucrats fund.
In fact, staples of the “grassroots” political movement — especially progressive websites such as MoveOn.org and ActBlue — are not driven by the average Democrat, as their image may suggest, but are rather mouthpieces for the radical agendas of the likes of Soros and labor unions. [...]
I just stumbled on an arrow in the left’s propaganda quiver I’d never heard of before.
It’s a Massachusetts-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Political Research Associates, which operates the publiceye.org website. Its 2007 tax return (PDF) shows it operates on a shoestring budget.
In its mission statement, Political Research Associates describes itself as “a progressive think tank devoted to supporting movements that are building a more just and inclusive democratic society. We expose movements, institutions, and ideologies that undermine human rights.”
The group explains why it focuses on the right:
While attacks on civil liberties can come from any direction, the political and Christian Right use skillful marketing that exploits the public’s desire for quick solutions and capitalizes on today’s hectic information flow. With clever slogans that oversimplify complex public policy issues, the Right routinely scapegoats others in pursuit of their agenda.
PRA responds with fair and accurate analysis, looking beneath the sound-bites and slogans of the Right, exposing the true goals and agendas of specific leaders, organizations and movements. We then present our analysis in ways that can help the media, advocates and educators understand and challenge the Right.
On its website a table shows a continuum of right-wing beliefs. It divides right-wing thought between the Secular Right, Religious Right, and Xenophobic Right.
The group’s donors include left-wing funders the Ford Foundation ($385,000 since 2002), the Public Welfare Foundation ($300,000 since 2000), the secretive Tides Foundation ($278,601 since 1999), and the Barbra Streisand Foundation ($5,000 in 2000).
After the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit today, Republican Norm Coleman graciously conceded the bitterly disputed contest over the second U.S. Senate seat for Minnesota.
None of this changes the fact that as a senator Al Franken is not legitimate. The election was stolen at the precinct level, during the recount, and during the post-election litigation.
As ACORN-aligned Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a former community organizer, presided over the vote-counting process, Coleman’s original lead dwindled. The morning after the election, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. Over the next five days, Coleman’s lead had dwindled to just 221. Election officials claimed they had to correct typos on vote tally sheets and that these corrections gave Franken 435 votes and took 69 away from Coleman.
There were mountains of other irregularities which I’m not going to bother detailing here and somehow in the end Franken came out on top.
Ritchie was elected Minnesota secretary of state in part because of outside help. He defeated two-term incumbent Republican Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006 after receiving an endorsement and financial assistance for his run from a below-the-radar non-federal “527″ group called the Secretary of State Project. The entity can accept unlimited financial contributions and doesn’t have to disclose them publicly until well after the election.
The founders of the Secretary of State Project, which claims to advance “election protection” but only backs Democrats, religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 (Katherine Harris) and in Ohio in 2004 (Ken Blackwell).
The secretary of state candidates the group endorses sing the same familiar song about electoral integrity issues: Voter fraud is largely a myth, vote suppression is used widely by Republicans, cleansing the dead and fictional characters from voter rolls should be avoided until embarrassing media reports emerge, and anyone who demands that a voter produce photo identification before pulling the lever is a racist, democracy-hating Fascist.
In 2006, the Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee endorsed Ritchie and donated to his campaign. According to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, contributors to Ritchie’s campaign included liberal philanthropists George Soros, Drummond Pike, and Deborah Rappaport, along with veteran community organizer Heather Booth, a Saul Alinsky disciple who co-founded the Midwest Academy, a radical ACORN clone. One article on Ritchie’s 2006 campaign website bragged about the fine work ACORN did in Florida to pass a constitutional amendment to raise that state’s minimum wage.
It was revealed during a panel discussion at the Democratic Party’s convention in Denver last summer that the Democracy Alliance, a financial clearinghouse created by Soros and insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, approved the Secretary of State Project as a grantee. The Democracy Alliance aspires to create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups-a kind of “vast left-wing conspiracy” to compete with the conservative movement. It has brokered more than $100 million in grants to liberal nonprofits including ACORN. The aforementioned Pike and Rappaport, who gave money to Ritchie’s campaign, are members of the Democracy Alliance.
According to IRS 8872 disclosure forms, the Secretary of State Project received donations from Democracy Alliance members including Soros, Rob Stein, Gail Furman, and Susie Tompkins Buell.
Meanwhile, for conservatives, it hardly needs to be pointed out that this Frankenstein is a fundamentally unserious and untested figure worthy of ridicule. After being isolated in the echo chamber of the entertainment-media-academia complex where he got nothing but praise for decades, Franken is quite unsuited for the world outside. He cannot tolerate criticism and characteristically responds to it with over-the-top vitriolic attacks. He is the living embodiment of all the horrible things that conservatives fairly or unfairly impute to DailyKos bloggers.
A professional comedian originally, Al Franken remains a joke.
The “Glenn Beck Program” did an excellent piece on June 3 about Herb and Marion Sandler, the toxic mortgage king and queen, and their connection to ACORN and the inappropriately named Center for Responsible Lending. (The video clip is embedded above.)
Through their charity, the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation, they gave at least $5,723,222 to the ACORN network. Specifically, the charity gave $4,498,222 to American Institute for Social Justice (since 2003), $700,000 to Project Vote (in 2005), $525,000 to ACORN (2000–2001 according to Activist Cash). This excludes any contributions that either Sandler may have made personally to ACORN or its affiliates.
According to the “Glenn Beck Program,” the Sandlers paid ACORN to send out protesters to hound Wells Fargo Bank, which competed with Golden West, the Sandlers’ bank. If true, this is an explosive allegation.
The Sandlers have also given heavily to the Center for Responsible Lending, an ACORN ally that champions the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Their foundation has given the Center at least $11,200,000 since 2005.
The Sandlers are also deeply involved in an effort to push America’s journalistic culture even farther to the left. They have given a reported $10 million to ProPublica, a left-leaning investigative journalism outfit. Cheryl K. Chumley profiled ProPublica in last month’s Foundation Watch.
The Center for Independent Media has joined PolitiFact in smearing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) because she dares to speak the truth about ACORN.
I’ve tried to educate Minnesota Independent (part of the Center for Independent Media) writer Andy Birkey about ACORN.
The exchange may be found at the Minnesota Independent website here.
Arianna Huffington (L) with Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans (R)
* * * * *
The Huffington Post Investigative Fund is struggling, according to the Business Insider.
Arianna Huffington unveiled plans for her left-leaning gossip website’s foray into investigative journalism in March but so far the site is reportedly having trouble generating content.
The evidence of internal chaos is somewhat thin so far but respected writers claim they were treated poorly by the outfit. One unhappy writer suggests that the Huffington Post Investigative Fund doesn’t have much cash.
In March it was revealed that the program’s startup budget would be $1.75 million. The money would be provided by the Huffington Post and the Atlantic Philanthropies. The Bermuda-based Atlantic Philanthropies is headed by Gara LaMarche, who used to be a vice president of liberal uber-philanthropist George Soros’s Open Society Institute. LaMarche is a member of Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a billionaires’ club that is organizing to turn America into a European-style socialist state.
Meanwhile, we’ve had two articles out in as many months on the state of American journalism.
This month Tim Cavanaugh penned “Bailing Out the Press: Can Non-Profit Status Save American Newspapers?” Here’s a summary of the Foundation Watch article:
Could a bailout of the newspaper industry be on its way? A new Senate bill would offer financially struggling newspapers non-profit status in order to save investigative journalism. Critics say it probably won’t work, gives nonprofit media a tax advantage, could subject the free press to IRS oversight, and could open the door to more serious government interference in the media. But when has that ever stopped a crusading politician?
Last month Cheryl K. Chumley wrote “ProPublica: Investigative Journalism or Liberal Spin?” Here’s a summary of that Foundation Watch article:
The press is filled with sad stories about venerable for-profit newspapers that have been forced to declare bankruptcy and shut down. So it’s striking that the billionaire liberals Herb and Marion Sandler have decided now is the time to fund a new nonprofit group called ProPublica whose mission is to serve the public interest by funding independent investigative journalism. Too bad Pro Publica churns out little more than left-wing hit pieces about Sarah Palin and blames the U.S. government for giving out too little foreign aid.
House Judiciary Committee member Steve King (R-Iowa) is demanding congressional hearings about the twisted finances of the radical activist group ACORN.
“This spider web, this myriad web of ACORN dollars and revenue streams, every bit of them should be looked at, all the corporations that they are networked with all of the boards of directors of those corporations, the inner locking connecting, the faces that are the same from board to board,” King said.
We explored this very topic at length in the November Foundation Watch.
King’s call came the same day that Judicial Watch released a pile of documents from the Department of Commerce. The documents show internal communications at Commerce regarding ACORN and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Meanwhile, Kevin Mooney of the Washington Examiner tried to attend a meeting at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and was denied entry by an ACORN spokesman. The meeting attended by representative of various left-wing groups was organized to come up with a PR strategy to deflect attention from ACORN’s corruption.
Was this photo taken at Shining Path headquarters? (just kidding) Disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke (left) and ACORN enabler Drummond Pike (right) in an undated photo taken in Peru. On the wall is a large poster of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. (photo: Pike’s blog)
* * * * *
John Podesta’s left-wing Center for American Progress Action Fund has invited many liberal and radical groups to a meeting Thursday morning to discuss how to use rhetorical misdirection to take the focus off ACORN’s increasingly well publicized corruption. One of the groups, Alliance for Justice, is advertising the crisis management meeting called “Reframing the Attack on Voter Registration” on its website.
The intrepid investigative journalist Kevin Mooney of the Washington Examinerreports
Nearly a dozen left-wing advocacy groups are meeting Thursday at the Center for American Progress (CAP) to discuss how to respond to a growing barrage of damaging news reports and editorial criticism of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform (NOW). [sic]
The strategy meeting at the liberal think tank is being described as a “briefing and discussion” on how to respond to the negative coverage. ACORN is currently under investigation for voter registration fraud and related allegations in at least 14 states.
Among the organizations expected to attend the strategy session are: Advancement Project, Alliance for Justice, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for Community Change, Common Cause, Fair Elections Legal Network, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and People for the American Way.
Bertha Lewis, billed as “ACORN’s new chief organizer and CEO,” is a featured speaker. [...]
Lewis is the ACORN executive who lied to Lou Dobbs on CNN last month. Lewis can’t stand controversial Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and she said he claimed to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan. As Newsmax reported:
What Arpaio actually said was that whenever he tried to enforce U.S. immigration laws, activists on the left accused him of being a racist, like a member of the Klu Klux Klan. He then went on to say he didn’t let the insults bother him.
Lewis refused to back down from her malicious lie, which is not surprising because when confronted, ACORN officials routinely lie, lie, and lie some more.
I suspect that ACORN and its allies will play the race card. Useful idiot Adam Serwer of the American Prospect summed up last fall what they’re likely to say in coming days:
The allegations against ACORN are part of a tangle of misinformation and insinuation that is being played out across the media, and within the Justice Department. ACORN, because of its advocacy on behalf of low-income and minority families, and its efforts to register voters in poor and minority districts, has become a focus for the right’s racial anxieties.
They’ll say conservatives and Republicans are sinister, racist scum who don’t want minorities to vote, and all the negative publicity is the result of a vast conspiracy that originated among scab health care workers on the planet Klendathu who all belong to country clubs that frown on same-sex marriage unless it’s solemnized by a non-union pastor who dines on endangered species and who enjoys maximizing his carbon footprint, yada yada yada, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
We’ve heard this fanciful narrative before but the difference is now a surprisingly large segment of the population is paying attention to ACORN’s illicit activities.
To be criticized by the character assassination factory, Media Matters for America, is an honor and tends to suggest that the person criticized is doing the right thing.
I feel so honored to have had my research referenced in a report about the vast crime syndicate known as ACORN. The racketeers at ACORN also posted the report on their own website.
I was celebrated by these lefties for my influential American Spectator article, “SOS in Minnesota,” which is referenced under the subheading “2008-2009 Minnesota Senate recount” in the Media Matters report.
Both ACORN and Media Matters are funded by George Soros’s Democracy Alliance.
The “Glenn Beck Program” had a segment yesterday on Fox News about the connection between ACORN and the Tides Foundation, as I noted on this blog yesterday.
The video clip of the segment wasn’t available yesterday but it’s available now. I have embedded the video below at the bottom of this post.
Meanwhile, from the useful idiots file, comedian Roseanne Barr, a longtime ally of ACORN who gave the ACORN Institute $50,000 through her foundation in 2005, has leapt to the defense of the embattled leftist group.
Barr lent her name to ACORN’s fundraising efforts. The full letter is available here, but immediately below is the top of the letter:
Dear Friend,
They just can’t help themselves. Turn on Fox News this week and all you hear the right wing talk about is ACORN, ACORN, ACORN.
On Tuesday, right-wing nutjob Representative Michelle Bachmann accused ACORN of getting billions of dollars in stimulus money to carry out voter fraud.
She knows it’s a lie — but these guys just really can’t stop. They’re so scared of ACORN they’re willing to try every lie in the book. [...]
Of course Bachmann said no such thing. Bachmann told Lou Dobbs Tonight that ACORN is eligible for a lot of federal money, a point lost on ACORN’s direct mail department.
Barr explained why she supports ACORN in a Huffington Post article. Michael Moore introduced her to ACORN on the campaign trail in 2004, she said.
Returning to the Beck story, the TV host said that Drummond Pike, head of the Tides Foundation, wrote a personal check for about $700,000 to ACORN to cover the bulk of the $948,000 that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled from the ACORN network.
The Tides Foundation is a pass-through entity. Wealthy liberals give the charity money, take the tax deduction, and then tell Tides which causes to give their money to. The money is then given in the name of Tides and the real donor’s name is withheld. Pike has said that keeping the identity of Tides donors secret is very important and that’s why he covered Dale Rathke’s debt. Pike is also treasurer of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, which funds ACORN and plenty of other left-wing causes.
Wade Rathke, who was expelled by ACORN’s national board last summer for his role in covering up the embezzlement, is a member of the Tides board. Suspicious? You betcha.
Meanwhile, ACORN stands accused of election fraud, extortion, and racketeering, yet congressional leaders have no interest in investigating the group. House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan) refuse to probe ACORN.
Why?
In the clip shown on Beck’s show yesterday, Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins asked Frank about ACORN. Frank, who claims ACORN is not eligible for $8.5 billion in federal funding, tried to blame ACORN on the out-of-office Bush administration.
The congressman probably won’t do anything about ACORN. Why would he? ACORN supporters are his power base.
The “Glenn Beck Program” had a segment today on Fox News about the connection between ACORN and the Tides Foundation. (I can’t find a video clip of the segment online yet.)
He said that Drummond Pike, head of the Tides Foundation, wrote a personal check for about $700,000 to ACORN to cover the bulk of the $948,000 that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled from the ACORN network.
The Tides Foundation is a pass-through entity. Wealthy liberals give the charity money, take the tax deduction, and then tell Tides which causes to give their money to. The money is then given in the name of Tides and the real donor’s name is withheld. Pike has said that keeping the identity of Tides donors secret is very important.
Wade Rathke, who was expelled by ACORN’s national board last summer for his role in covering up the embezzlement, is a member of the Tides board. Suspicious? You betcha.
Meanwhile, ACORN stands accused of election fraud, extortion, and racketeering, yet congressional leaders have no interest in investigating the group. House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan) refuse to probe ACORN.
Why?
In a clip shown on Beck’s show today, reporter Griff Jenkins asked Frank about ACORN. Frank, who claims ACORN is not eligible for $8.5 billion in federal funding, tried to blame ACORN on the out-of-office Bush administration.
The congressman probably won’t do anything about ACORN. Why would he? ACORN supporters are his power base.
The White House brought in SEIU to help muscle California, according to a report from Investors Business Daily:
After decades of decline, Big Labor now has reason to be optimistic about the future: It has fast friends in the White House.
California officials recently learned just what that meant when they tried to trim the pay of state health workers. A top union got the administration to tell California to back down.
The debt-ridden state had sought to trim $74 million from its budget by reducing its contribution to home health workers’ pay from $12.10 an hour to $10.10.
The Obama administration subsequently told them in an April 15 conference call that if the wages were cut it could endanger $6.8 billion in federal stimulus funds.
Also on the call were the Service Employees International Union’s associate general counsel and two California union officials, one a lobbyist.
The SEIU had lobbied the administration to step in. Many of the workers are SEIU members.
“We found what the Californians were doing was in violation of the law,” SEIU President Andy Stern told IBD on Thursday. “We were asked by the administration to join a conference call to explain our legal position on this.”
He argued that under the terms of the stimulus the state had no right to make the cuts.
California Secretary of Health and Human Services Kim Belshe told the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the story, that the union’s presence was “unusual at best.” [...]
SEIU is a key institutional member of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a billionaire leftists’ club that seeks to radically transform America.
The Heritage Foundation’s InsiderOnline highlights our profile of ProPublica, which appears in the current issue of Foundation Watch. Here’s a summary of the article:
The press is filled with sad stories about venerable for-profi t newspapers that have been forced to declare bankruptcy and shut down. So it’s striking that the billionaire liberals Herb and Marion Sandler have decided now is the time to fund a new nonprofit group called ProPublica whose mission is to serve the public interest by funding independent investigative journalism. Too bad ProPublica churns out little more than left-wing hit pieces about Sarah Palin and blames the U.S. government for giving out too little foreign aid.
Democracy Alliance, the left-wing donors’ collaborative whose most famous member is George Soros, has welcomed a new board member, Ted Trimpa.
Here is Trimpa’s bio, according to the group’s website:
Ted Trimpa practices in all areas of federal, state, and local legislative law, with a special concentration on public policy, political strategy, and political participation. He has extensive multistate experience and handles legislative matters on behalf of firm clients before the Colorado General Assembly and legislatures throughout the country.
Ted is a sought-after advocate resulting from his deep understanding of the national and multistate political and nonprofit landscape. He has been recognized in national publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, The Advocate, and The Weekly Standard for his central role in designing cutting edge public policy strategies.
Prior to joining Hogan & Hartson, Ted was a shareholder with a national firm where he was responsible for matters before the Colorado General Assembly and had a multistate public policy practice. Ted has orchestrated the successful passage of several public initiatives, including major social policy changes and landmark reforms to state fiscal policy. He also previously served as the Director of Regulatory Affairs and Assistant General Counsel for a prominent lobbying firm in Colorado. Before attending law school, Ted served as a legislative aide for United States Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum.
And here is a link to Trimpa’s page at the Hogan & Hartson law firm’s website.
An Atlanticarticle from 2007 describes Trimpa as “an acerbic lawyer and former tobacco lobbyist.” It also describes him as “Colorado’s answer to Karl Rove.” Trimpa was also mentioned in a Time article in the fall.
John Vaught LaBeaume cites our work on the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA) in an op-ed in today’s Washington Examiner about former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) and the changing political scene in Colorado.
A photo retrieved from SEIU Local 100’s website today. The original photo caption reads: “Organizers from Local 100, ACORN, and SEIU, supporters and attorneys celebrate our victory on February 3, 2002.” The man with the sandy hair to the right of the microphones is Wade Rathke, founder and then-chief organizer of ACORN.
* * * * *
ACORN, which until recently proudly listed locals 100 and 880 of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as ACORN affiliates, has scrubbed its website.
As of right now, the allied organizations section on the ACORN website makes no mention of the group’s ties to SEIU.
As of April 20, the day before Kevin Mooney’s article on ACORN and its ties to unions ran in the Washington Examiner, the ACORN website page contained short blurbs on SEIU Locals 100 and 880 and their respective logos. I made a PDF of the page on Oct. 30, 2008. You may look at the PDF file here. From the same website, here is a copy that I made on Oct. 24, 2008 of an official list of ACORN’s affiliates, a document called “ACORN, ACORN Affiliate, and COUNCIL Offices.”
Moreover, SEIU Local 100’s most recent publicly available IRS Form 990 shows ACORN founder Wade Rathke as that local’s chief organizer (see page 5 of PDF).
Arianna Huffington (L) with Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans (R)
* * * * *
Internet gossip Arianna Huffington announced that her left-wing gossip website, the Huffington Post, is launching the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. She said on her site that
This nonprofit Fund will produce a wide-range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers.
As the newspaper industry continues to contract, one of the most commonly voiced fears is that serious investigative journalism will be among the victims of the scaleback. And, indeed, many newspapers are drastically reducing their investigative teams. Yet, given the multiple crises we are living through, investigative journalism is all the more important. As a result, all who recognize the indispensable role good journalism plays in our democracy are looking for ways to preserve it during this transitional period for the media. For too long, whether it’s coverage of the war in Iraq or the economic meltdown, we’ve had too many autopsies and not enough biopsies. The HuffFund is our attempt to change this. It will also provide new opportunities for seasoned journalists who have been laid off or forced into early retirement. [...]
The program’s startup budget will be $1.75 million. The money will be provided by the Huffington Post and the Atlantic Philanthropies. The Bermuda-based Atlantic Philanthropies is headed by Gara LaMarche, who used to be a vice president of liberal uber-philanthropist George Soros’s Open Society Institute. LaMarche is a member of Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a billionaires’ club that is organizing to impose socialism on America.
Don’t count on the new program funding anything other than left-wing hit pieces.
Media Matters for America, the George Soros-funded* organization that even the New York Times calls a “highly partisan research organization,” is deliberately misrepresenting the political purge of GM CEO Rick Wagoner by the Obama administration.
“In fact, the government did not ‘fire[]‘ Wagoner, but made his departure a condition of further government aid for the company,” according to Media Matters.
If one were to be charitable toward the Media Matters mendacity factory, one could say, if it’s not a lie, it is at a minimum lawyerly sophistry.
But I’m not feeling charitable toward Media Matters at the moment. It is abundantly clear that the GM chief was fired. Lawyers might call it “constructive” dismissal, but it’s dismissal nevertheless. President Obama or Treasury Secretary Geithner might just as well have said, “Wagoner, either your signature or your brains are going to be on this contract.”
And I’m sure Erwin Rommel thought he was being given a choice too.
AP’s Tom Krisher and Dan Strumpf apparently didn’t get the memo. They reported Wagoner was fired by the U.S. government: “While ousting Wagoner, the Obama administration made no management changes at Chrysler LLC, which also is getting government loans.”
*Soros funds Media Matters directly and/or indirectly. Soros is the dominant player in the billionaires’ club known as the Democracy Alliance, which funnels millions of dollars to Media Matters, and openly collaborates with Media Matters CEO David Brock on political projects such as Progressive Media.
Claiming to be outraged at the aggressive news-gathering techniques of Bill O’Reilly’s team, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) lobbying organization that grew out of CAP, rejoiced Friday after getting UPS to stop advertising on “The O’Reilly Factor.” The Fund released this statement on its Think Progress website:
In response to our Stop Supporting The O’Reilly Harassment Machine campaign, UPS told us yesterday that it was investigating whether to continue supporting O’Reilly’s show. “We are sensitive to the type of television programming where our messages and presence are associated and continually review choices to affect future decisions,” spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg told us.
Today UPS announced it will stop advertising on O’Reilly’s show. Here is the statement UPS emailed out just moments ago:
Thank you for sending an e-mail expressing concern about UPS advertising during the Bill O’Reilly show on FOX News. We do consider such comments as we review ad placement decisions which involve a variety of news, entertainment and sports programming. At this time, we have no plans to continue advertising during this show. [emphasis in thinkprogress.org post]
I regret I missed this anti-Bill O’Reilly campaign until it struck gold. The campaign also claims to have elicited responses from Capital One, AT&T, and Ford.
I’ve never been a fan of ambush-style interviews but sometimes in the news-gathering process the approach is justified as a last resort. Surely nothing the O’Reilly team has done is any worse than anything done by myriad leftist commentators such as Michael Moore and journalists such as Geraldo Rivera and the team at “60 Minutes.”
The whole campaign by the CAP Action Fund seems like a cheap publicity stunt that has the added benefit of hurting the revenues of a prominent right-leaning TV commentator perhaps with the ultimate goal of removing him from the airwaves.
Incidentally, both CAP and Media Matters are funded by Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a billionaire’s club that is funding a drive to turn America into a European-style socialist country.
CAP is a well-funded machine that has aspirations of becoming a “Heritage Foundation” of the left. It has an approximately $25 million annual budget and took in $64,681,960 in donations from 2003 through 2006, according to its tax returns.
The CAP Action Fund, 501(c)(4), may be legally separate from CAP, a 501(c)(3), but both have roughly the same goals: pushing liberal, Big Government policies.
CAP funds the CAP Action Fund directly. It gave $1,796,235 in “grants” to the CAP Action Fund in 2007 alone, according to the CAP 2007 tax return.
Dozens of employees of the Service Employees International Union picketed their own union Friday over its decision to lay off about 75 workers.
The staffers marched outside SEIU headquarters in Washington as they yelled into bullhorns, passed out flyers and chanted, “Justice for all, not just some.”
“This union is supposed to be at the forefront of the progressive movement, but it can’t seem to follow its own ideology,” said Malcolm Harris, president of the Union of Union Representatives, which represents 210 SEIU organizers and field staff around the country.
The UUR has filed unfair labor practice charges and age and race discrimination claims against SEIU. Harris called SEIU leaders “hypocrites” for calling out corporations that shed workers, yet moving to lay off their own employees. [...]
ACORN, of course, is also a serial violator of workers’ rights. Jeremy Lott and I wrote:
For a group that claims to be an advocate for workers, ACORN doesn’t treat its workers well. In 2006, $250-a-week Baltimore ACORN intern Sandra Stewart told Baltimore City Paper that the Baltimore chapter hadn’t bothered to pay her for her work. Three other former ACORN workers told the paper that the group failed to pay them back wages. The paper also found that the local chapter had a $7,000 civil judgment entered against it for unpaid office rent. Another Baltimore area ACORN affiliate failed to pay its real estate taxes and water bills.
The Heartland Institute reported that in 1995 ACORN actually sued the state of California
seeking an exemption from the law that requires it to pay its own employees a minimum wage. ACORN, which argued that paying its employees more would reduce their activist zeal for the poor, lost. A 2003 study of ACORN by the Employment Policies Institute found the group paid a wage of $5.67 per hour, which was “less than half the level demanded by many proposed ‘living wage’ ordinances that ACORN supports.”
Although it demands all workers be allowed to organize unions, ACORN doesn’t like it when its own workers try to organize. It has tried to block its own employees from signing up with unions, and in 2003 the National Labor Relations Board determined it had unlawfully blocked its workers from organizing. [...]
Former Colorado state rep. Rob Witwer has an excellent article in National Review on what the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes has dubbed the Colorado Model.
The Colorado Model refers to liberal activists’ political strategy to make Colorado safe for Democratic candidates for years to come. The strategy, as Barnes described it, consists of seven different “capacities”: 1) “to generate intellectual ammunition,” 2) “to pursue investigations,” 3) “to mobilize for elections,” 4) to combat media bias, 5) to sue strategically, 6) “to train new leaders,” and 7) “to sustain a presence in the new media.” The Colorado left now has all seven in place, according to Barnes.
James Dellinger and I examined the rapid conversion of Colorado from red state to blue state in our most recent profile of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance. (Capital Research Center’s Foundation Watch, December 2008)
The left accomplished this transmogrification by pumping millions of dollars into select activist groups and institutions. The money came from the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA), a state-level spinoff of the national Democracy Alliance, a billionaire leftists’ club.
Funders of the takeover push included Pat Stryker, Tim Gill, and Al Yates. Newly minted congressman, Jared Polis (D-Colorado), while not a funder, was involved in planning the onslaught.
An excerpt from Witwer’s article:
In hindsight, what Colorado Democrats did was as simple as it was effective. First, they built a robust network of nonprofit entities to replace the Colorado Democratic party, which had been rendered obsolete by campaign-finance reform. Second, they raised historic amounts of money from large donors to fund these entities. Third, they developed a consistent, topical message. Fourth, and most important, they put aside their policy differences to focus on the common goal of winning elections. As former Democratic house majority leader Alice Madden later said, “It’s not rocket science.”
In a larger sense, this is also a story about the unintended consequences of campaign-finance reform. In 2002, Congress passed McCain-Feingold. That same year, Colorado citizens enacted Amendment 27, a constitutional amendment that capped state-legislative contributions at $400 per donor. By lowering the amounts candidates could raise and spend, these laws effectively took message control out of the hands of candidates and handed it to outsiders.
Campaign spending in large quantities can now be accomplished only through the “independent sector” — a collection of nonprofit organizations that has stepped into the role once occupied by political parties.
Speaking to a group of lawyers in Denver last year, Democratic attorney Mark Grueskin summed up the new reality of political giving: “With the increased imposition of contribution limits, political money finds a way to the political system — always does, always has. . . . And those of you in this room are simply among the blessed, because you get to help people give politically. They’re going to give. And now they do it through nonprofit entities.”
The cost of participation in elections through the independent sector is high, especially at the state level. Political nonprofits are subject to byzantine tax, corporate, and accounting rules, and require constant guidance from lawyers and accountants. That guidance is expensive, which is why there’s no such thing as a “mom and pop” 527. Small and medium donors need not apply.
Colorado Democrats knew they needed a large infusion of seed capital to get their fledgling independent sector off the ground. At the same time, and quite serendipitously, a new breed of business-savvy multimillionaires (and one billionaire) emerged — and they were willing to write big checks. Unlike the traditional moneyed-liberal elites who try to change the world through charities, foundations, and think tanks, these donors just wanted results on Election Day. For Democrats, that wasn’t a problem; they wanted the same thing.
By leveraging big dollars against traditionally sleepy local races, Colorado Democrats raised the ante to a level once seen only in federal campaigns. The influx of congressional-level cash has turned state-legislative races inside out. What used to be a local affair of meet-and-greet coffees and door-to-door campaigning now consists of paid staff, television and radio ads, glossy mailers, and platoons of hired door walkers. [...]
Common Cause’s state chapters in Florida and New Jersey are going out of business, Tampa Bay Online reports:
After 30 years of advocating campaign finance reform, tougher ethics laws, election reform and other “good government” issues, the Florida chapter of Common Cause is shutting down for lack of funding. [...]
The two Common Cause full-time staff members, Wilcox and development director Alex Chavez of Sarasota, were told yesterday their jobs were being terminated at the end of March, along with a total of 20 staffers nationwide, said Chavez. He said that will include closing at least one other state office, in New Jersey.
The Florida chapter was opened in 1974, four years after the national organization was founded by John Gardner, a former high official of the Lyndon Johnson administration, who described it as a lobbying group for the common interests of the populace. [...]
Chavez, hired less than a year ago to boost the organization’s membership and fundraising, called the situation “a sign of the times – really a sad story, a sad situation for the progressive movement.”
Wilcox said direct mail fundraising for small donors is drying up, and “major donors are the ones who were burned by Madoff. Non-profits are struggling.”
That’s Bernard Madoff, by the way, the now-jailed liberal embezzler who has helped to kill at least two big left-wing grant-making charities, the Picower and JEHT foundations, so far.
Big liberal institutional donors to Common Cause include Arca Foundation ($1,395,000 since 2000), Carnegie Corp. of New York ($1,360,000 since 2001), Beldon Fund ($1,300,000 since 2005), and Joyce Foundation ($570,000 since 2002). Before he became U.S. president, Barack Obama served on the Joyce Foundation’s board.
At least four members of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, the billionaire socialists’ club, have also given big to Common Cause, which suggests that Common Cause is a Democracy Alliance-approved grantee. The list includes Soros’s Open Society Institute ($1,225,000 since 2001), Lewis B. & Dorothy Cullman Foundation Inc. ($75,000 since 2004), Rutt Bridges Family Foundation ($23,000 since 2004), and Gill Foundation ($20,000 since 2004).
Common Cause attacks pharmaceutical companies for opposing government-run health care, demands federal regulation of drug prices, and pushes for so-called campaign finance reform and public financing of campaigns for political office.
According to its most recent tax returns, Common Cause Education Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, generated a $1,651,117 deficit in the tax year ending June 30, 2007, down from a $1,316,229 surplus the previous tax year.
The group’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm known as Common Cause is doing better, but, ominously, reported on its most recent publicly available tax return that its 501(c)(3) affiliate owed it $1,900,805 as of June 30, 2007.
Common Cause (the c4) reported a $2,219,933 surplus in the tax year ending June 30, 2007, which was an improvement over the $1,057,107 deficit it reported the year before.
Blogger Jan Tyler, Denver Election Reform Examiner, quoted me in an article about Colorado Ethics Watch, which is the Colorado branch of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW is funded by George Soros’s Democracy Alliance.
Ohio’s notorious secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, who openly defied federal election law last fall in accordance with ACORN’s wishes, is running for the U.S. Senate.
Brunner, a Democrat, refused to enforce the Help America Vote Act which required her to use a database to allow the verification of 600,000-plus registrations from new Ohio voters. Brunner admitted there were “discrepancies” on about 200,000 of the new registrations, but wouldn’t give local election officials the registration data they needed to verify the validity of the registrations, as I recounted in the American Spectator.
When she ran for state office, Brunner was backed by the George Soros-funded Secretary of State Project, which I also wrote about in the American Spectator.
