ACORN to merge with Working Families Party

ACORN isn't going away. That much has become clear as local ACORN chapters reorganize and change their names to avoid stigma. Today the corrupt community organization got another big boost as City Hall News reports that ACORN New York -- now New York Communities for Change -- will most likely merge with the Working Families Party.

Without the restrictions tied to government funding, according to [former ACORN president Bertha] Lewis and others, ACORN’s successor organizations will likely be even more politically aggressive than ACORN was. Already, supporters and board members of New York Communities for Change have begun to discuss whether the organization should join the Working Families Organization, an association of labor unions and community organizing outfits tied to the Working Families Party, a significant force in local elections. Lewis was a co-chair of the Working Families Party and co-founder of the Organization, and ACORN was among the largest and most influential members.

“They were such an integral part of the organization and everything we did,” said Dorothy Siegel, the treasurer of both the WFP and the WFO. “If we needed troops on the ground, there were two ways to get them: through ACORN and through an affiliate.”

...

Though WFP co-chair Bob Master and executive committee member Peter Colavito were on the host committee for the event, neither they nor other officials from the WFP attended, according to Siegel, and ACORN leaders were absent from a meeting of the WFP executive committee in Albany in March. But Siegel said there has already been preliminary discussion among WFP members about whether New York Communities for Change should join the coalition.

“I think they want to participate,” Siegel said of the new organization’s leaders. “These are people who are very, very involved in the work of the WFP.”

ACORN and the WFP had always been sister organizations. While ACORN organized and rallied in the streets, the WFP exerted political pressure on candidates and threw its weight around in Albany. WFP allies, incorporated under the WFO, include powerful labor unions like the SEIU. Now, with the collapse of ACORN and the coming merger between NYCC and the WFP, all these groups and organizers are about to be brought under the same umbrella.

The WFP is already one of the most powerful community organizations in the country, and its creep over what was once ACORN New York will only make it stronger. They already have sway over numerous councilmen in New York City Hall and several legislators at the state level. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who took Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, is gaga for the WFP and actively sought out their endorsement. Andrew Cuomo, attorney general of New York and White House favorite for governor, has repeatedly refused to investigate the WFP. And of course there's Patrick Gaspard, former SEIU lawyer, friend of Bertha Lewis', and strong WFP ally. Gaspard is the White House's elusive political director and wields substantial power over New York politics.

Again, ACORN isn't collapsing -- far from it. It's reorganizing, consolidating, and merging with other radical groups. Ultimately, the community organizer scene may become stronger in New York because of it.

Craig Becker supports illegal alien workers

Over the weekend, President Obama announced 15 recess appointments. The most controversial of these is Craig Becker, a former SEIU lawyer. Becker was already in hot water because of his radical legal writings, including a 1993 piece arguing that workers should be forced to unionize. Now Naked Emperor News has dug up audio of Becker from a radio interview in 2001 voicing strong support for illegal alien workers.

BECKER: "SEIU, the largest union, and many of the other large unions now have a very, very progressive position on immigration and immigration reform, which, of course, unfortunately they didn't have 100 years ago. So it has a very great effect who we represent and who we're trying to represent on the politics of the labor movement."

HOST: "Can you be a little more specific about immigration? What do you mean a progressive policy on immigration"

BECKER "Well I think there's been a recognition that employer sanctions and the effort through punitive sanctions to prevent the hiring of aliens who do not have proper work papers has had a very deleterious effect. It's had a discriminatory effect. It's had a very harsh effect on a class of people who are here, who are going to remain here, who are going to keep coming here because of conditions which simply can't be affected through those kind of punitive sanctions. And then we have to have a different approach."

Becker's position seems to confirm what many have suspected for a long time: Unions are less representative of workers than progressive activists. Illegal aliens are horrible for American labor because they take blue-collar jobs and work for less. But instead of fighting for their members, unions are taking the standard progressive position. Obama has indicated that immigration reform will be his next project. It will be interesting to see which side the labor unions come down on.

Also interesting was Becker's contention that illegal immigration has changed who the unions are "trying to represent". Just how many criminal aliens are in the SEIU and AFL-CIO?

Becker's recess appointment places him on the National Labor Relations Board without a proper Senate vote. There he'll be one of five members who will shape labor relations for years to come.

Obama's AFL-CIO threatens to primary rep for acting in its interest

Rep. Stephen Lynch is a South Boston Democrat and former union ironworker. Yesterday, he announced that he'd be voting no on ObamaCare. Lynch has voiced several concerns, but his most serious is the bill's punitive tax on so-called Cadillac health plans. Such plans are often used by unions and would hurt their bottom line. That didn't sit well with Lynch, a labor Democrat with a very blue-collar constituency.

The unions aren't particularly grateful. Yesterday the blog Plum Line was sent the following from a source inside the AFL-CIO.

The AFL-CIO source sends over the list of House Dems who are being targeted:

Dennis Cardoza, Jim Costa, Daniel Lipinski, Stephen Lynch, Michael Michaud, James Oberstar, Steve Dreihaus, Charlie Wilson Marcy Kaptur, John Boccieri, Zack Space, Tom Perriello, Jason Altmire, Christopher Carney, Paul Kanjorski, Tim Holden, Jerry Costello, Alan Mollohan, Nick Rahall, Kathy Dahlkepmer.

The source says that the threat of a primary or third-party challenge will be implicit, particularly since the AFL-CIO is already supporting Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter’s primary challenge to Blanche Lincoln.

Lynch is acting in the AFL-CIO's direct interest and they're threatening to primary him. It shows the extent to which many unions have become activist arms of the Obama Administration rather than organizations of workers. The Service Employees International Union, Obama's favorite union and the largest in America, is also working to primary ObamaCare apostates.

Obama pulls the SEIU's strings in Pennsylvania

The SEIU endorsed Arlen Specter over Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic primary today.

"SEIU fights for its members so we have a natural kinship with Senator Specter who is well known as a fighter for Pennsylvania," said Eileen Connelly, Executive Director for the SEIU PA State Council. "He's been there for us and now we are proud to be here for him. We have close to 100,000 SEIU members in PA and we are ready to play our part in making sure Senator Specter stays in the US Senate so he can keep working on behalf of Pennsylvania families".

Neal Bisno, President of SEIU Healthcare PA representing 22,000 healthcare workers across the State said: "Senator Specter's key vote for the Economic Recovery Act has provided billions for Pennsylvania. Those funds have helped keep thousands of our members on the job and thus able to help our communities care for those in need."

Specter did vote for the stimulus, but the SEIU doesn't have a "natural kinship" with him. Specter is opposed to Card Check, the Holy Grail of union legislation. His position didn't go unnoticed. Last year SEIU president Andy Stern met with Sestak to test the waters. And yet the mega-union still endorsed Specter, the former Republican. Sestak, meanwhile, was a co-sponsor of Card Check legislation in the House of Representatives and is more progressive on almost every issue than Specter.

The White House has been vociferous in its support of Specter, to the point that Sestak has accused them of trying to bribe him out of the primary race. Even though Sestak was by far a more natural ally for the SEIU, Obama likely leaned on Andy Stern to throw his support to Specter. It's getting to the point where the SEIU seems like little more than an activist political arm of the Obama Administration.

Car czar wants Toyota taken down

Ron Bloom, Obama's car czar, has surfaced, buried at the end of a U.S. News and World Report blog entry. Columnist Peter Roff reports that Bloom may have been the catalyzing force behind the Toyota recall.

Whatever the reality concerning the performance of the Toyota vehicles, the investigations are themselves riddled with conflicts of interest. Thanks to President Barack Obama's multibillion-dollar bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, the agencies looking into the safety of the Toyota fleet are part of the same U.S. government that owns large chucks of the same GM and Chrysler that have been losing market share to Toyota and the other Japanese automakers for decades.

Sources who follow the issue suggest that Ron Bloom, the former White House car czar who is now a senior counselor on manufacturing issues, is at least partly to blame for keeping the spotlight focused on Toyota's troubles.

Bloom is an unelected czar charged with overseeing the reconstruction of America's domestic auto industry. The government initially put pressure on Toyota to recall their cars after it was revealed many Toyota models were suddenly accelerating, injuring and killing drivers. Toyota had the highest rate of sudden acceleration problems, although GM and Chrysler had plenty of incidents as well.

Bloom previously worked for the SEIU. Toyota, meanwhile, has refused to unionize its workers. Bloom is also charged with remaking the American auto industry, while Toyota is based in Japan. Bloom has previously said he agrees with mass murderer Mao Tse-tung that "Political power largely comes from the end of a gun." He has also said, "In today’s world the blather about free trade, free markets and the joys of competition is nothing but pablum for the suckers."

Obama puts his inside man Andy Stern on the deficit commission

Yesterday ObamaWatchNews reported that the deficit commission the president is planning is a total sham. As if we needed any more proof, now comes word that the president is considering appointing Andy Stern, SEIU president and his favorite crony, to the commission.

Stern is the last person qualified to help take down the country's debt. His entire mission has been to enact regulations that cost businesses and taxpayers billions of dollars. He has wholeheartedly supported every one of Obama's wasteful spending schemes, including health care reform and cap-and-trade. He is less of an advocate for working people than a left-wing activist demanding that the government do more. Meanwhile unions have cost state governments, which can't fire organized public employees, millions.

More likely, Obama is appointing Stern to his fraud of a commission as another kickback. Stern and the unions have been kicked around a lot lately. Congress has abandoned card check and the president is now supporting an excise tax on expensive health care plans, which would cost Big Labor millions. Looks like the president wanted to soothe Stern's nerves. And with Stern's close relationship to the president, Obama can now control the "independent" commission from the inside.

Big Labor throws a temper tantrum

Oops, the SEIU and the AFL-CIO are pissed off. We all know that BHO has spent much of his first year sucking up to his union cronies. He nominated a radical Secretary of Labor, reduced transparency requirements for labor unions, kicked back huge amounts of stimulus money to the unions, rewrote the laws governing government contracts to give labor ultimate control, tried to ram Card Check legislation through Congress, invited SEIU president Andy Stern to the White House every other week, called off Bush administration-era investigations into union officials, and practically let labor write a compromise on health care reform.

But it's just not enough. After Craig Becker, Obama's nutty nominee for the National Labor Relations Board was rejected by the Senate this week, the unions are blind with rage. John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, bleated, “Here’s labor getting thrown under the bus again. It’s really frustrating for labor, and a lot of union people are thinking: We put out big time in money and volunteers and support. And it seems like the little things that could have been aren’t being done.”

It's almost tempting to defend Barack Obama here. What more does he have to do to satisfy these people? Fortunately, if Big Labor remains petulant and whiny every time they don't get their way, Obama could lose his most potent and evil allies. Without Big Labor's big pockets, Obama would be just another Chicago pol.

Obama's wish is granted: Illinois Senate heir is long-time crony

Remember the Blagojevich scandal? Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, and Mr. Blago himself were all caught on tape plotting to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. As far as we know, Blagojevich wanted money while Jarrett, Rahm, and Obama wanted something else: a loyal crony to keep the seat warm in Obama's absence.

It looks like they'll get their wish. The Democratic nominee to run for the seat in 2010 is an old Democratic pol entangled in the slimy web of crooks and cronies that lurk in Barack Obama's Chicago.

His name is Alexi Giannoulias. So far, he's received the most flack for his boneheaded management of Bright Start, a state-run Illinois program that helps parents invest for their kids' college bills. The program ultimately lost $85 million. But as with any Obama Chicagoan, there's always cronyism in addition to incompetence. Giannoulias is a close friend of Obama's. The two of them both broke into major league Illinois politics in 2006, Giannoulias as the state treasurer and Obama as a senator. They were friends and played basketball together.

Giannoulias was Blago's treasurer, but the connections between Giannoulias and Bond villain Blagojevich run deep thanks to a familiar face: felonious Chicago developer Tony Rezko. At one point, Rezko's company, Rezmar Corp., needed financing to build a new 24-story condo building. The money was provided by Broadway Bank, which is owned by Giannoulias' family. Another Giannoulias, Alexi's brother Dimitri, was appointed to a state board position by Blago that ultimately lasted three years, from 2005 to 2008. Tony Rezko wanted Dimitri's star to rise even higher, pressing Blago to appoint him to the Illinois Finance Authority board. Meanwhile, Rezko was meeting frequently with Obama and getting him plum deals on his new homes.

Hell, in some cases Giannoulias associated with people even Obama wouldn't touch. He personally approved $12 million in loans from Broadway Bank to Michael Giorango, a notorious Chicago mobster.

Broadway Bank has become a huge liability for Giannoulias. Its fortunes plunged after the real estate bubble collapsed to the point that the FDIC ordered the Giannoulias family to pump $19 million in capital into Broadway. Why? The bank was straggling under "mounting delinquent loans." In other words, Broadway made loans to poor people who couldn't pay them back -- just as Chicago community organizers like Obama and the fine folks at ACORN were demanding.

It's no wonder ACORN's kissing cousin, the SEIU, enthusiastically endorsed Giannoulias. Giannoulias is following the footsteps of Blago, whose entire political career was bankrolled by the SEIU. The mega-union has even been named in Blagojevich's indictment...good company for Chicago slimeballs like Giannoulias and professed SEIU ally Barack Obama.

The best way to stop this Chicago machine is to elect the GOP challenger, Mark Kirk, to Obama's former Senate seat. Not only would it stop the advance of another corrupt crony, but imagine the look on Barack Obama's face if his old job goes to a Republican!

The big labor payback: Obama gives unions veto control over government contracts

We all know that Obama is a tool of big labor, but his latest union giveaway makes all the other kickbacks look like child's play.

Obama just announced his new High Road Contracting Policy, (that's Orwellian/Obamian doublespeak for "union tyranny.") Under the plan, government contracts will be given to companies that meet conditions laid out by the Department of Labor. Labor will get to assess and "score" companies based on how effectively they toe the union line. For example, if the Department of Labor decides that a certain corporation isn't paying its workers a "living wage" (whatever the hell that means), they can give them a low score and kill their government contract.

It gets worse. Each government department must now appoint a "labor advocate." (Like Stalin's 'political officers' their mission is to implement the boss's wishes and report those who fail to observe them). These sneaky tyrants will be responsible for scoring companies in the running for a departmental contract. Their arbitrary decisions will instantly kill deals for businesses that fail to conform to their specious standards.

This much power is unprecedented. So guess who's getting to handle the payback?

The Ministry of Work, excuse us, Department of Labor is headed up by SEIU- backed, Hilda Solis, a radical left-wing labor hack and former lobbyist* for American Rights at Work, a pro-labor group. Thanks to Obama, she now has control over the hundreds of billions of dollars of business performed every year through government contracts. We can only speculate upon the political color of her 'labor advocates'.

First, the government. How much longer will it be before these spies are placed in every business in America?

* One of more than 40 in Obama's Administration. Didn't he say he was against them?

Even Obama's obesity program not safe from the SEIU

During his State of the Union speech, Barack Obama pledged to make your child's nutrition the federal government's business. To do this, he wants to revive Lyndon Johnson's Child Nutrition Act, which used taxpayer money to provide subsidized meals for 30 million children. The wasteful program was killed by Republicans during the 1990s.

It's also yet another kickback to Obama's allies at the SEIU. Michelle Malkin dug up this quote by SEIU Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerma: "A more robust expansion of school lunch, breakfast, summer feeding, child care and WIC (the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program) is critical to reducing hunger, ending childhood obesity and providing fair wages and healthcare for front line food service workers(emphasis added)."

The SEIU is embarking on a nationwide march to bring all American service workers under its control. It already represents tens of thousands of school lunch servers. With Barack Obama's anti-obesity sham in place, schools will need more of those servers...which can then fall prey to the SEIU.

Obama disowns another radical with a wink and a nudge

Barack Obama has become the master of a political two-step. Disown radical friends and business partners to the public while soothing their nerves in private.

Last week, SEIU union boss Andy Stern said that opponents of health care reform and card check like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson were "terrorists". Obviously Stern has been feeling the pressure as majorities of the American people turn against his radical liberal agenda. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs firmly repudiated Stern's comments and said they "make no sense."

It's a pattern with this president. When his friendship with Bill Ayers surfaced during the campaign, he condemned Ayers. When his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright came to light, he gave an entire speech distancing himself. Then several months into his presidency, the White House guest list came out. Ayers and Wright were both on there. The newest offender, Stern, was the most frequent guest.

So the president may pretend to regret Stern's radical comments through his press flack. But no doubt the two of them will remain attached at the hip going forward.

Obama chooses the unions over school students

Barack Obama has always been a tool of the unions, from the SEIU to the AFL-CIO. His latest union cave came today when he decided to redesign the No Child Left Behind Act at the behest of the teachers' unions.

For years, teachers' unions have been complaining that NCLB tests schools and gives them a pass/fail grade based on teacher performance. (Heaven forbid.) Today, Obama announced that requirement will vanish as the president tries to broadly change America's education system. Instead, Obama is shilling out taxpayer money in the form of grants to whatever schools he chooses. In other words, spending, not standards.

A loss for Martha Coakley is a loss for Barack Obama

Barack Obama's Democratic Party is going into full swing, ready to spin today's likely Republican victory in Massachusetts. All the blame will be heaped upon Martha Coakley, the uninspiring Democrat Senate contender there, in order to deflect responsibility from Barack Obama. But here's the truth: A loss for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts is a loss for Barack Obama and his entire agenda.

-- Obama campaigned for Coakley. After polls showed Scott Brown likely winning the election, Obama started stumping hard for Coakley. First he recorded an online video encouraging supporters to "put on your walking shoes" and campaign for Coakley. Then he headed up to Boston yesterday to give a speech urging her election. The two of them are joined at the hip.

-- The race has become nationalized. The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are working on behalf of Coakley. Volunteers at the DNC in Washington, DC are making phone calls up to Massachusetts. Obama pal and DNC strategist Michael Meehan is in Massachusetts campaigning for Coakley (and assaulting reporters in his spare time). The national press is abuzz over the race.

-- Obama thugs from across America are in Massachusetts trying desperately to get Coakley elected. Union members are being paid to stand outside with Coakley signs. The SEIU alone is spending $700,000 on ads demeaning Brown. Meanwhile, Massachusetts is worried about ACORN, with a quarter of voters saying they believe the group could steal the election for Coakley.

-- Scott Brown is specifically campaigning against Obama. Brown has made his promise to be the 41st vote holding up Obama's health care bill the centerpiece of his campaign. He has condemned excessive spending and repeatedly said that Washington needs a change.

This election isn't an anomaly. It's a referendum on Obama's radical policies.

Obama Wines and Dines with his SEIU Cronies

The White House held its first state dinner last night in honor of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh. America’s and India’s first families dined on a feast of meatless Indian cuisine along with 335 other guests – very few Republicans among them. House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were both invited, though neither attended. Governor Bobby Jindal made the guest list, presumably because he’s an Indian-American. But the political names at the dinner consisted almost entirely of Democrats. Journalists also showed up from all five of the major television networks…except for Fox News.

Obama wasn’t gracious enough to invite his former presidential rival, John McCain, but he did find room on the guest list for two SEIU hacks: Andy Stern, president of the organization, and Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer who is often described as the “Queen of Labor.” Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO was also in attendance. Andy Stern is no stranger to the White House, where he has been Obama’s most frequent guest since new president moved in.

It looks like that $31 million that the SEIU donated to Obama’s campaign really paid off.

In contrast, George W. Bush wasn’t throwing around state dinner invitations to NRA board members or Family Research Council spokesmen. The guest list for Bush’s last state dinner, honoring the Queen of England in 2007, was generally unremarkable, including mostly government officials and a small handful of prominent businessmen.

Rewarding prominent cronies and donors with prestigious White House invitations usually reserved for honorable and decent people? Sounds like classic Chicago politics to me.

And speaking of classic Chicago politics, the most awkward attendee at the dinner had to be former White House attorney Greg Craig. Craig was in charge of developing the legal framework for shutting down the Guantanamo Bay prison. As soon as the political winds began shifting on that issue, Obama unceremoniously kicked Craig to the curb.

Obama Administration hands the unions another gift, this time erasing 75 years of labor law

It’s fitting that our first post on Obama Watch News should be about Big Labor. After all, the unions bankrolled his campaign and there is no constituency to which Obama is more beholden.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The National Mediation Board, which oversees labor relations in the air and rail industry, this month moved to overturn 75 years of labor policy.
The board plans to stack the deck for organized labor in union elections. Under a proposed rule, unions would no longer have to get the approval of a majority of airline workers to achieve certification. Not even close. Instead, a union could win just by getting a majority of the employees who vote. Thus, if only 1,000 of 10,000 flight attendants vote in a union election, and 501 vote for certification, the other 9,499 become unionized.
This radical break with precedent is the handiwork of President Obama's appointees to the three-member board: Harry Hoglander, once president of a pilots union, and Linda Puchala, former president of the Association of Flight Attendants.
The board got a request to adopt the jerry-rigged voting standard from the AFL-CIO in September. Without a hearing or invitation for preliminary views, the Obama duo drafted the AFL-CIO demand and published it in the Federal Register. It's now subject to a 60-day comment period, after which Ms. Puchala and Mr. Hoglander will no doubt vote to inflict it on all the nation's airline and rail carriers.

In other words, it’s Card Check without the congressional approval. It’s also the latest product of Obama’s labor strategy, which has been working furiously to cut the regulatory ropes that hold unions down. (Deregulation of businesses wrecks the economy, but deregulation of shadowy labor bosses is okay, apparently.) The NMB is an independent government agency established in 1934, which is when the original certification rules were established. Obama’s appointees, at the behest of their cronies in the AFL-CIO, are the only ones since who have made such a radical change. This swings a wrecking ball at 75 years of labor regulation.

It’s no shocking development. The AFL-CIO was one of Obama’s earliest fans in 2008. A quick scan of independent expenditure donations to Obama’s campaign on Opensecrets.org reveals a campaign with coffers stuffed with union money. (Independent expenditures are made without the candidate’s coordination and aren’t privy to restrictive campaign finance laws.) The labor colossus Service Employees International Union donated close to $31 million alone. Their main claims to fame recently have been threatening legal action against a Boy Scout for cleaning up a union-controlled park and deploying hulking thugs to town hall meetings to bloody up conservative protesters.

Obama’s politics are nothing fresh and new. He’s engaging in the same political trick that’s been in play since ancient times: know who your friends are and pay them back once you’re in power. The top visitor to the White House during Obama’s tenure? Andy Stern, the president of SEIU. Big Labor created Barack Obama and now they want to be a loud voice in his ear.

You have to wonder how Amtrak Joe Biden will react to this. Then again Amtrak workers are already unionized, so ten bucks says he’ll be dancing down Pennsylvania Avenue.