Patrick Gaspard, Gathering Rotten ACORNs for 2012 Campaign

Gulag Bound ^ | January 24, 2011 | Janet Smiles

[cj in tx]

Reported in the Daily Caller:

ACORN’s man takes over the Democratic Party’s war machine

A longtime ACORN operative is about to take over the reins of the Democratic National Committee as its executive director – just in time to begin initial preparations for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

The activist in question is Patrick Gaspard. He currently holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush’s administration.

Gaspard comes from the same world of radical left-wing community organizing that shaped Barack Obama. Gaspard is well schooled in the brutal, street-smart organizing tactics taught by the late Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals. He’s the hatchet man Obama sent to New York over a year ago to strong-arm then-Gov. David Paterson into dropping his reelection campaign. As executive director running the DNC’s day-to-day operations Gaspard will oversee Organizing for America, a project of the DNC supposedly modeled on Alinskyite organizing principles. (Former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine will remain as general chairman of the DNC.)

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OOPS!

Reported in Politico:

White House aide failed to disclose $40K payout

President Barack Obama’s political director failed to disclose that he was slated to receive a nearly $40,000 payout from a large labor union while he was working in the White House.

Patrick Gaspard, who served as the political director for the Service Employees International Union local 1199, received $37,071.46 in “carried over leave and vacation” from the union in 2009, but he did not disclose the agreement to receive the payment on his financial disclosure forms filed with the White House.

In a section on his financial disclosure where agreements or arrangements for payment by a former employer must be disclosed, Gaspard checked a box indicating that he had nothing to report.

Bill Burton, a White House spokesman, told POLITICO Monday that Gaspard was in the process of correcting his disclosure form to reflect that he did in fact have an agreement for severance.

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Who is Patrick Gaspard? What has he done in the past to merit this position?

The New York Observer gives us a little background:

Mr. Gaspard’s political sensibilities were formed in part by his cosmopolitan (almost Obama-esque) personal background.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Haitian parents, Gaspard moved with his parents to the United States when he was three years old.^[1] He is married and has two children.

He was born in present-day Democratic Republican of the Congo to Haitian parents, but raised in America, in Manhattan and Queens.

He writes poetry and considers as a personal hero Aimé Césaire, the pioneering black-pride poet and politician who taught the anti-colonialist theorist Frantz Fanon. He also likes Anna Akhmatova, a Russian poet of the Acmeist school.

He has acted in plays and performed spoken word, holds strongly positive opinions about Otis Redding and collects Marvel comics. (His prize possession is the first issue of Conan the Barbarian.) He is a big Mets fan. He was married on the grass of Prospect Park; his wife and two children are about to join him in Washington after living for years in Park Slope.

Prior to working on Obama's campaign team, Gaspard worked nine years as the executive vice president for politics and legislation for the 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union, the largest local union in America.^[3][4] He helped coordinate political activity and government relations on behalf of 300,000 members. In 2006, Gaspard served as the acting political director for SEIU International during the national union’s successful effort to help Democrats capture majorities in the House and Senate. In 2004, Gaspard was the National Field Director for America Coming Together. Gaspard worked for Governor Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, the 1988 Jesse Jackson presidential bid and numerous congressional candidates and campaigns. In 1989, he worked on the successful and historic David Dinkins mayoral campaign.^[5] Gaspard is a former community organizer around school reform issues.

In the election of 2004 Gaspard was National Field Director of America Coming Together. Wikipedia provides a definition:

America Coming Together (ACT) was a liberal, political action, 527 group dedicated to get-out-the-vote activities. ACT did not specifically endorse any political party, but mostly worked on behalf of Democratic candidates. It was the largest 527 group in 2004 and was planning to be involved in future races. The group was primarily funded by Peter Lewis, George Soros, and labor unions, especially the Service Employees International Union, and was led by Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the AFL-CIO.

In the last three weeks before the 2004 presidential and congressional elections, ACT planned on funding over 12 million phone calls to targeted voters and having canvassers hand-deliver 11 million pieces of literature at targeted doorsteps. On Election Day, ACT had projected to have 45,000 paid canvassers in the battleground states and spent over $10 million on Election Day. It had 86 offices open every day, a staff of 4000 and a goal of reinforcing the army of 45,000 paid canvassers with 25,000 volunteers.

In the fall of 2004, ACT was featured in the Frontline Documentary, The Persuaders, which described ACT's use of narrowcasting.

In 2005 ACT was in the process of being wound down.^[1] Its website was not renewed and is no longer operational.

The Federal Election Commission announced on August 29, 2007, that it had reached a settlement agreement with ACT for violations of various federal campaign finance laws during the 2004 US presidential campaign. ACT has agreed to pay $775,000 in fines. ^[2]

Hmmm.

Back, back, back to 2009 from The National Review:

Patrick Gaspard, ACORN, and Obama

By Stanley Kurtz

With the revelation that White House Director of Political Affairs, Patrick Gaspard, has close ties to Bertha Lewis and to ACORN, Matthew Vadum and Erick Erickson appear to be onto something significant. While the Gaspard matter needs further investigation before we form any hard conclusions, it certainly seems to confirm that President Obama’s ties to a whole series of ACORN-controlled organizations are neither minor nor by any means long-past. In fact, making use of what Erickson and Vadum have discovered about Gaspard, we can trace these links still further.

There’s been a good deal of attention to ACORN of late, and deservedly so. Yet for all the fuss, what is arguably the most important Obama-ACORN tie of all has gotten short shrift. During the 2008 election, Obama’s close links to the far-left New Party were revealed and explored (although not by the mainstream press). Yet many seem to have forgotten that the New Party, particularly in Chicago, was dominated by ACORN (and by an ACORN-controlled SEIU union local). During the campaign, I detailed Obama’s New Party ties in two pieces, “Something New Here,” and “Life of the New Party.” Important evidence of Obama’s pursuit of the New Party endorsement can also be found in the September-October 1995 issue of “New Ground,” newsletter of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Obama’s New Party ties matter because they show that his links to ACORN went far beyond shared on-the-ground organizing, legal representation, training, or even funding (although all of those ties existed and were important). By running for office with the New Party, Obama was effectively indicating that he shared ACORN’s radical political goals.

So it’s of interest that in late 1995, just as Obama was seeking New Party endorsement in Chicago, Patrick Gaspard was working as a New Party organizer in New Jersey. (This was reported in “Jersey Man Hopes to Create Third Political Party,” NPR, “Morning Edition, ” September 28, 1995). Then, in the July 2, 2001 issue of “The Nation,” Gaspard and Bertha Lewis jointly published a reply to a June 4 Nation article by Doug Ireland which had been critical of the New York’s Working Families Party (a successor to the New Party, led by New Party co-founder Dan Cantor, and largely controlled by ACORN and the SEIU). In the course of their letter, Gaspard and Lewis describe their extensive joint involvement in Working Families Party activities. The letter is signed: “Bertha Lewis, ACORN, WFP; Patrick Gaspard, SEIU State Council, WFP.” This does seem to confirm and extend the new evidence of a close political tie between Patrick Gaspard and ACORN’s Bertha Lewis.

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Reported in the American Spectator:

ACORN's Big Spender

By Matthew Vadum on 11.6.09

More proof has emerged of White House political director Patrick Gaspard's ties to the radical advocacy group ACORN.

Gaspard, a longtime operative for ACORN and one of its partisan arms, New York's Working Families Party, currently holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House.

Internal ACORN documents show that Gaspard gave ACORN $40,000 over the past two years. Specifically, while Gaspard worked as an executive vice president of Service Employees International Union Local 1199 in New York he gave ACORN $15,000 in 2007 and $25,000 in 2008.

That's an awfully large tithe for someone who made $111,894 in 2007 and who has a wife and two children. The $111,894 figure comes from SEIU 1199's most recent publicly available tax return. (If salary and deferred benefits are combined the total is $151,869.)

Moreover, Gaspard hails from New York which has a crushing tax burden, especially for individuals earning six-figure salaries -- and he lived in the upscale neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was unclear at press time if Gaspard's wife contributes to the family fisc.

It is also entirely possible that the $40,000 Gaspard handed over to ACORN was SEIU money.

And in the scheme of things it really doesn't matter whether the lefty lucre belonged to Gaspard or SEIU. What matters is the fact that Gaspard handed over the money to ACORN. This is yet more proof of his closeness to the radical group.

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So, for those of you who are eternal optimists and are willing to believe that Obama has "seen the light" and is now veering to the center; think again. if you excuse the Scripture "a dog returns to his vomit" and "even a youth is known by his companions." The tigers are not changing their stripes.

Obama has put a neo-Marxist "progressive," Union backed, Socialist Democrat with an Alinskyite "community organizer" entry on his resume, a George Soros funded organization directorship in his experience column, and all the connections a political operative could wish for -- and he's rearing to get the "Democratic War Room" operating to get the putative president re-elected.

The ACORN tree has not been chopped down, the left-wing nuts are a gathering.

More on the audacity of Gaspard in Gulag Boun, here, from Trevor Loudon.

[OldMissileer]

If we do not find a way to stop it there will be voter fraud, by the Democrats, so massive that we will look like a third world country

[Liz]

ACORNS in the White House.

ACORN/ SEIU's man in the Obama White House is longtime operative Patrick Gaspard. He holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House. He's the President’s fixer and the man who gets ACORN projects and money. Gaspard once worked for ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis.

Patrick Gaspard’s brother Michael Gaspard works for The Advance Group....ACORN’s registered lobbying organization and also with ACORN’s national spokesman Bertha Lewis. Michael apparently keeps a lower profile than his brother. He does not appear on lobbyist disclosures for The Advance Group NY State. Nonetheless, he works there. Ms. Lewis’s contacts list confirms Michael Gaspard’s employment there.

ACORN Shaun Donovan. Mr. Donovan is HUD Secy. Before that, Mr. Donovan was NYC Commissioner of Dept of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)---where Donovan worked on affordable housing initiatives----projects right up ACORN’s alley. (*see more below)

ACORN Karine Jean-Pierre is WH liaison for Dept of Labor (headed by latino agitator Hilda Solis). Karine once worked for John Edwards (vertical or horizontal?). She left there to work for Cong Anthony Weiner, then became Barack Obama’s regional political director.

ACORNS EVERYWHERE Senate Finance Committee Study

ACORN comprises a mind-boggling 94 different affiliates, that amounts to "a big shell game," a biting Senate Finance Committee study shows. The study, by the staff of Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, reveals four ACORN charity groups give more than half their revenue to taxable entities that engage in "impermissible lobbying and political activity." ACORN and it’s subsidiaries for decades have moved taxpayer money into their own pockets and into the left-wing Marxist machine.

Sen Charles Grassley's documents show leaders of ACORN community groups transferred several million dollars in charitable and government money-----meant for the poor---- to parts of the group that have political (and sometimes profit-making) missions.

Sen Grassley's documents indicate that ACORN's tax-exempt groups----along with its tangled web of allied organizations---- used more than half their charitable and public money in 2006 to pay other ACORN affiliates.

===========================================

* OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES NEARLY $73 MILLION IN COUNSELING GRANTS (2014 campaign money laundering?)
HUD ^ | 12/23/10 | Lamar Wooley
FR Posted on Thursday, December 23, 2010 12:29:37 PM by illiac

WASHINGTON – In an effort to help families find decent housing and to prevent future foreclosures, the Obama Administration today announced nearly $73 million in housing counseling grants to more than 500 national, regional and local organizations. As a result of the funding announced today, hundreds of thousands of households will have a greater opportunity to find housing or keep the homes they have because of the housing counseling and counseling training grants awarded today by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

The grants announced today represent a $13 million, or 22 percent increase over last year’s funding level. In announcing the grant awards, Donovan said HUD-approved housing counseling agencies are a critical part of the nation’s housing recovery.

"These organizations are on the front lines of helping families who are desperate to remain in their homes," said Donovan. "Now, more than ever, it’s crucial that we support these agencies that are working with struggling families on a one-to-one basis to manage their money, navigate the home buying process, and secure their financial futures." Housing counseling grants will assist families in becoming first-time homeowners and remaining homeowners after their purchase.

HUD-approved counseling agencies not only provide home ownership counseling, but also offer financial literacy training to renters and homeless individuals and families. "Now, more than ever, it is crucial that Americans better understand how to manage their money, navigate the homebuying process, and secure their financial future." said Donovan. "This critical funding will help counseling organizations continue to assist families in making more informed choices before they purchase a home and counsel families facing foreclosure."

Nearly $68 million will support the direct provision of housing counseling services by 24 national and regional organizations, 5 multi-state organizations, and 484 state and local housing counseling agencies.

In addition, HUD is awarding more than $5 million to three national organizations to train approximately 4,500 counselors who will receive the instruction and certification necessary to effectively assist families with their housing needs.

National and regional agencies distribute much of HUD’s housing counseling grant funding to community-based grassroots organizations that provide advice and guidance to low- and moderate-income families seeking to improve their housing conditions.

In addition, these larger organizations help improve the quality of housing counseling services and enhance coordination among other counseling providers.

Counseling agencies will use $9.5 million to help assist senior citizens seeking reverse mortgages or Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM). These agencies will provide counseling for the rapidly growing number of elderly homeowners who seek to convert equity in their homes into income that can be used to pay for home improvements, medical costs, and other living expenses. The organizations that provide housing counseling services help people become or remain homeowners or find rental housing, and assist homeless persons in finding the transitional housing they need to move toward a permanent place to live. Grant recipients also help home buyers and homeowners realistically evaluate their readiness for a home purchase, understand their financing and down payment options, and navigate what can be an extremely confusing and difficult process.

In addition, grantees help combat predatory lending by helping unwary borrowers review their loan documentation, and avoid potential mortgage scams, unreasonably high interest rates, inflated appraisals, unaffordable repayment terms, and other conditions that can result in a loss of equity, increased debt, default, and even foreclosure.

Likewise, foreclosure prevention counseling helps homeowners facing delinquency or default employ strategies, including expense reduction, negotiation with lenders and loan servicers, and loss mitigation, to avoid foreclosure. With foreclosures at critical levels nationwide, these services are more important than ever. HUD awards annual grants under the housing counseling program through a competitive process. Organizations that apply for grants must be HUD-approved and are subject to performance reviews to maintain their HUD-approved status.

[cj in tx]

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[Regulator]

A French union agitator from Haiti.

Perfect. Put this foreigner on TV. Let America see what kind of freak the Kenyan administration has in the White House.

[backwoods-engineer]

We need voter ID laws from sea to shining sea before 2012. We’ve got all these new Republican state legislatures. Let’s get busy. I’ve already talked to a member of our state’s GOP Executive committee about it.

[Jet Jaguar]

Acorn ping.

[stephenjohnbanker]

It is the job of Republicans in the House & Senate to run Gaspard out of town. They, of course, will do nothing.