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Kathleen Parker is one of America's most popular opinion columnists, addressing the country's mental health through her views on current national ...
Read more about Kathleen Parker.
Kathleen Parker is one of America's most popular opinion columnists, addressing the country's mental health through her views on current national ...
Read more about Kathleen Parker.
What ACORN? I Didn't See Any ACORN
Kathleen Parker
WASHINGTON -- While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending
they've hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they've
never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation's largest unions.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Service Employees International Union are tight as Heidi Klum and a new pair of jeans.
You don't think about one without the other.
You also don't talk about either organization without mention of Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN and founder of SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans. Rathke, who resigned from ACORN last year as "chief organizer" after it became known that his brother embezzled almost $1 million from the association, continues to run Local 100, as well as ACORN International, recently renamed Community Organizations International.
Rathke's social justice empire is so vast that he is more hydra than man. Nine heads are surely better than one when you're organizing communities in at least 12 countries. While Rathke and ACORN undoubtedly have done much good for impoverished people here and abroad, it appears likely that American taxpayers indirectly have been helping underwrite unionizing activities and advance political goals through the commingling of Rathke's various interests.
As an ironic sidebar, America's health care reform debate could become stalled, not by Senate Republicans demanding a cost analysis (how mundane), but by dot-connecting prompted by the Halloweenish ACORN sting starring a faux pimp and prostitute.
Screenwriters, poise your pens. Just for fun, keep this name in mind: Rod Blagojevich.
Now picture a triangle. One point is ACORN; another point is the SEIU; the third point is the taxpayer. Now picture arrows flowing back and forth, representing the exchange of greenbacks and services.
While various government agencies funded ACORN to help poor people become voters and homeowners, ACORN under Rathke created SEIU Local 100 (Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas) and SEIU Local 880 (Illinois, Indiana and Kansas). In turn, the SEIU wrote checks to ACORN for political activities and union organizing, according to ACORN whistleblower affidavits. In 2008, the SEIU and Change to Win, a coalition of labor unions, gave ACORN $1,729,462, according to union financial reports filed with the Department of Labor.
To break it down, ACORN and the SEIU are hand and glove. Rathke himself referred to the SEIU as "one of the pillars of the ACORN family of organizations" in a June 9, 2007, blog posting. This coziness has been long known among conservative watchdog groups, but Washington has paid little attention until now.
Suddenly, ACORN is as popular as a sneeze on a crowded bus. President Obama, who once represented ACORN as a lawyer and helped train organizers, recently told ABC's George Stephanopoulos he doesn't really follow ACORN much. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, a longtime ACORN champion, has been scurrying to clarify his disapproval of the organization -- after he and a staffer gave contradictory statements about where he stood on proposals to halt ACORN funding.
Congress has voted to halt most of that funding; the Census Bureau and the IRS have cut ties with the group; the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Treasury have opened investigations.
And in a coup of absurdity, the now-infamous pimp and prostitute who tempted ACORN workers to help them set up a teenage-prostitution operation are the subjects of a lawsuit accusing them of illegally taping the staffers without their permission.
Such concerns -- and charges of voter registration fraud against ACORN -- ultimately may pale in comparison to the organizers' betrayal of public trust through the apparent commingling of taxpayer money and union funding, not to mention possible coercion and intimidation.
Just last week, the Kansas City Star reported that two state agencies acting on an SEIU public records request sought to identify in-home health workers who care for the elderly and disabled. After complaints, the state acknowledged that it was under no legal obligation to provide the information and ceased helping the SEIU. Unionizing is not a state function, needless to say. And never mind the invasion of privacy.
One needn't be a mathematician to imagine what a national health care option might mean to a union in search of new dues-paying recruits. The SEIU, which has promised "to fight tooth and nail" for a public option, is demonstrably persuasive. In Illinois, former Gov. Blagojevich (thank you for your patience) helped position the SEIU so that it could unionize health care workers when he signed an executive order allowing collective bargaining. The SEIU showed its appreciation in advance by becoming Blagojevich's largest contributor, handing over $1.8 million for his two gubernatorial campaigns.
Now that's community organization.
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Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is kathleenparker(at)washpost.com
Copyright 2009 Washington Post Writers Group
This news arrived on: 09/27/2009
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Posted Comments:
09-28-2009 18:35
JCE wrote:
ssssssssss
Somehow you don't seem to understand the money trail, or the fact that the special interests who buy the politicians are not partisan, the are equal opportunity employers and destroyers. They use both parties. Most things do start of with good intentions, and for the people, but the special interests and politicians and even the people are interested only in money, until someone cuts into their profit. So they take over the things like unions, congress, or ACORN. Doesn't mean unions, congress, or ACORN are evil, or all bad, but when the fox takes over the henhouse, it doesn't take a genius to see what is going to happen to the hens. Why can't you see that those who decided to control ACORN could care less who they use, the right or the left? As far as reality and me being in the middle, all your denials don't change a thing. It is what it is.
09-28-2009 11:26
Renee wrote:
Unions
Their day has come and gone.....gone, gone. The corruption is so deep, but hopefully the ACORN scandal will dig deep enough to expose it all.
When will people stop paying unions to advocate for them. They line their pockets...period!
When will people stop paying unions to advocate for them. They line their pockets...period!
09-28-2009 11:11
sssssssss wrote:
what a stretch JCE that even now the left wing corruption is now the right wing corruption. Acorn and the unions have always been left, have always been corrupt and have only cared about membership and money to line their pockets , just the same as CEO's of companies. Why you cant or arent willing to see that just shows what side of the isle you are on, even tho you constantly clain you have no side. BULL Once the companies close and move out of union control, the union does not care, they move on to try to grab the next sucker.
09-28-2009 11:05
Dick from Chaska wrote:
Acorn
Soory Redneck but I am not employed be Acorn but I would rather work for them than the Republican Party. And I do think beheading is worse than waterboarding but should our civilized country lower ourselves to the level of the terrorist? Bush and his motley crew need to be investigated for their deeds for us to regain the moral highr ground. If they did nothing wrong they should be cleared but if found guilty they should be punished.
09-27-2009 14:57
JCE wrote:
Myk Sorry to disappoint, old chap. Here goes. Acorn has done a lot of good, still has a lot of good going. But obviously, it has a lot of bad. Tell me of an organization in the country that isn't like that. The NRA comes to mind. A bad apple there. The truth of ACORN lies somewhere in between all the lies of the far right and left, somewhere between all the bad coming out that is true, and all the good it has done. Somewhere in the middle. The right calls for its destruction not because it is evil or needs destroying. It isn't and doesn't. They call for it to distract from their own illegal involvement in it, to distract from their backing the insurance companies in health care, to distract from their supporting war crimes, and corporate fraud and abuse, and for their fight to pull down Obama, who is fighting special interests, however feebly.
Redneck Funny you bring up employees and party line. Must be something you know something about. I never discuss politics with my boss, and not belonging to a party, I have no party line. Luck you don't have. Of course, unlike you guys, I can see, hear, read, and think for myself, what with being ubiquitous and all, so I know what is going on and what I am talking about. And no, I wouldn't even approve of the police killing you RWET terrorists.
casey42 Most things like the unions or ACORN that start off doing good for the people get taken over by the right or by the capitalists, and become either wholly or partially a tool against the people, as has happened with the unions.
old cowboy Well said. If the republicans get back in power, they won't do anything about ACORN. That way they can use it again someday.
Well I am like Santa Claus. I have so much to give people today, and so many places to be. You all have a nice day, ya hear?
Redneck Funny you bring up employees and party line. Must be something you know something about. I never discuss politics with my boss, and not belonging to a party, I have no party line. Luck you don't have. Of course, unlike you guys, I can see, hear, read, and think for myself, what with being ubiquitous and all, so I know what is going on and what I am talking about. And no, I wouldn't even approve of the police killing you RWET terrorists.
casey42 Most things like the unions or ACORN that start off doing good for the people get taken over by the right or by the capitalists, and become either wholly or partially a tool against the people, as has happened with the unions.
old cowboy Well said. If the republicans get back in power, they won't do anything about ACORN. That way they can use it again someday.
Well I am like Santa Claus. I have so much to give people today, and so many places to be. You all have a nice day, ya hear?
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