Free Republic

http://chieforganizer.org/ "Is a Progressive Tea Party a Good Idea?" "Report from Behind the Bunker, that What We’re Doing is Working" Worth looking at from one of VJ's inner circle.

In addition to major telecommunications firms aiming to influence the public debate on net neutrality, there’s the Ford Foundation, the second-largest private foundation in the world. “If you are a foundation for justice in the world, and you don’t understand that the Internet is going to be a major battleground in this century, and you’re not engaged in that fight and supporting people who are concerned about access and security, you’re going to be left out of one of the most important justice issues of the day,” Foundation President Darren Walker told the Council on Foreign Relations this summer. “And...

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) founder and Service Employees International Union organizer Wade Rathke acknowledged that the tea party movement has been more effective than Occupy Wall Street in influencing American politics. Rathke was unequivocal about the Occupy movement, telling The DC that “in no way has it had the political impact that the tea party movement has.” Yet because Occupy organizing is “still in its embryonic stages” while tea partiers have been organizing for more than two years, he cautions that “comparing the tea party movement to OWS...

Obama’s ACORN operative in the White House Patrick Gaspard, a former Working Families Party associate, is helping shape domestic policy– Obama political advisor Patrick Gaspard holds the same White House position his Bush-era predecessor, Karl Rove, did. But before he was the White House political czar he worked in several far left organizations as activist and agitator. NLPC.org reported: One of the more disturbing aspects of the Obama-ACORN connection is that the White House political affairs director is one Patrick Gaspard. Gaspard doesn’t register on the media radar screen in the way that his immediate Bush-era predecessor, Karl Rove, did....

When I was assigned to write a about tomorrow’s ”Day of Rage,” organized by the likes of ACORN Founder Wade Rathke and SEIU’s Stephen Lerner I resisted it mightily. I heard a grumble in my lower intestine and a silent yell, “Nooooooooo, don’t make me, puhleeeeeze!” I knew the cognitive dissonance and just plain idiocy of a group that regularly claims to be more “tolerant” and “compassionate” than the rest of us and then incites hatred and chaos in order to declare themselves entitled to what other people earn, would put me dangerously close to head-exploding territory. Then, I settled...

Wade Rathke, the America-hating 1960s radical who founded ACORN, isn't too happy with the adverse publicity he's been receiving lately as a result of my book Subversion Inc: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books). Here's what cult leader Rathke, who's not a bad writer sometimes, has to say about yours truly: It isn’t hard to hear the death rattle of desperation in the latest farcical efforts of Congressman Steve King to try to revive a dying political career and a blogger trying to flack a mail-order book at the expense of...

What Did Wade Rathke Know About Egypt that the CIA Didn’t and What Will Obama Do Now?Michael Gaynor at Emerging Corruption has done some digging into the situation in Egypt – about how much Wade Rathke knew about it beforehand and what influence Obama may wish to have on the situation now. Meanwhile... on to what the media thinks is more important. [caption id="attachment_15781" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="'The president says he’s a Christian. I accept him at his word,' said John Boehner. | AP Photo"][/caption] John Boehner speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Not his job to tell people...

Rather than carryover National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) nominee and current AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union lawyer Craig Becker until next year like most of president Obama’s nominees, the U.S. Senate sent a message back to the President about his nominations. While not a severed horse head in his bed … it is like the canary in the coal-mine. Right after the Becker nomination, The National Right to Work Committee posted this President Obama Personnel Alert video regarding Becker (link here) along with the Committee’s Becker Alert report (link here).

According to a July 9, 2008 article in the New York Times, Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN’s founder, Wade Rathke, “embezzled nearly $1 million from Acorn and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000.” The Times reported Dale Rathke embezzled $948,607.50, “carried as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc., which provides bookkeeping, accounting and other financial management services to Acorn and many of its affiliated entities.” ACORN “chose to treat the embezzlement of nearly $1 million eight years ago as an internal matter and did not even notify its board.” According to an October 10, 2008...

On Nov. 9 Wade Rathke will be speaking at Springfield college,Marsh Hall in Springfield Mass at 7:0PM and at UMASS on Nov. 10, Gordon Hall at 4:00PM. We will be arriving a half hour early to both. When I say we, I mean the western Mass 912 project. Our signs will be aimed specifically at ACORN's and Rathke's legal problems; they will also be aimed at student age people. Apparently we have a troll on our site, they have discovered our plans and plan to counter us. I am asking for help from anyone that can make it. The following...

Many of you are really good with visual presentations. Wade Rathke is giving a speech at Springfield College on the ninth. We will be protesting outside the hall. We want to pass out a flier depicting a professor re-distributing grades from hard working students to slackers; this as a clear example how socialism and "social justice" works. I am not good with art or drawing! If anyone out there has a cartoon or diagram similar to this, I would appreciate your sharing it with us as we are trying to change minds and influence the thoughts of the future generation.

Last week, longtime of head of ACORN's Louisiana branch, Beth Butler, was summarily fired from ACORN by a directive that came straight from ACORN's chief organizer, Bertha Lewis. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, this had to do with an internal struggle over where the power center would be, near Louisiana or in New York. At the time, I speculated that Butler, the common law wife of Wade Rathke, would join him at Community Organizations International. I was wrong. Several Louisiana ACORN leaders, including the recently ousted state leader, are expected to announce today that they have...

Several Louisiana ACORN leaders, including the recently ousted state leader, are expected to announce today that they have started a new organization under the same name after national authorities of the community action network voted to take over the chapter. A notice of a news conference scheduled for 3 p.m. in Light City Church, 6117 St. Claude Ave., says the event will include "Louisiana ACORN Executive Director Beth Butler, " who was fired from that post Oct. 12 by national ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis. The document states that Butler will be joined by several Louisiana ACORN officers, board members and...

have spoken to a couple of current and former ACORN insiders and here's how they characterize the firing of Beth Butler. First, Beth Butler is the common law wife of Wade Rathke, the long time former CEO of ACORN. Butler was the head of the New Orleans branch of ACORN. That branch rivaled the New York branch, currently run by the Kest brothers, as the most profitable and most powerful. She was kept on after Rathke himself was removed following his dismissal in the aftermath of the revelations that he covered up his brother's embezzlement.

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....

...It was a Megyn Kelly interviewing Wade Rathke, founder and former and chief organizer of ACORN. My initial impression was this was a very fair and objective interview by Kelly. She took him through his formative years of the radical 60s to the present. As the show went on Kelly, with the help of Stanley Kurtz and others, proceeded to eviscerate Rathke to the point he boiled over. It was devastating.... But the revelations were only half the story. The special was powerful because it relied heavily, very heavily, on the subtle audio and visual effects pioneered by CBS’s “60...

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) founder Wade Rathke wants to use the Internet to overthrow the capitalist system. He said so in his new book, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families, in which he serves up some community organizing war stories, and offers his thoughts on the future of organizing. Rathke’s currently on a cross-country book tour. Rathke, a pioneer of the so-called welfare rights movement that aims to get Americans on welfare, devotes an entire chapter of his book to what he calls “The ‘Maximum Eligible Participation’ Solution.” It is a strategy for...

“But whether you try to implement some or all of these recommendations, there must be someone committed to follow-up. There must be a review mechanism, and a means of holding people accountable after any final decisions are made. If you do not make some hard choices now and ensure they are carried out, they almost certainly will be made for you.” –Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg Eisenberg LLP, in a prophetic legal memo to ACORN dated June 19, 2008, the day before ACORN’s national board ousted ACORN founder organizer Wade Rathke ACORN’s lawyer warned ACORN 15 months ago to...

ACORN's lawyer warned ACORN 15 months ago to begin fixing its massive internal problems or face certain catastrophe. ACORN didn't listen. It let the problems fester. The advice from Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg Eisenberg LLP came in the form of an eerily prophetic legal memo to ACORN dated June 19, 2008, the day before ACORN's national board fired disgraced founder Wade Rathke. The memo is a kind of Holy Grail for ACORN researchers. One source of mine keeps a copy in a safety deposit box. I've lost track of how many people have asked me over the last...

Last night, ACORN founder Wade Rathke spoke at Busboys and Poets, a Washington coffeehouse and well-known lefty hangout. Rathke was promoting his new book, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families. Given the controversy over ACORN, you'd think the media would have been interested in Rathke's making a public appearence and taking questions. But you'd be wrong.