It should come as no surprise that on the campaign trail, President Obama refused to be interviewed about Saul Alinsky, the community organizing guru who wrote Rules for Radicals, a how-to guide for destroying American capitalism and democracy.

Presumably Obama, who taught courses on Alinsky’s brutal, sometimes violent organizing techniques, declined to speak to reporters about the late guru. He must have realized that such an interview would throw an unwanted spotlight on Alinsky’s radicalism, and by extension, his own. Such counterproductive publicity would also have undermined the candidate’s efforts to reinvent himself as a moderate. Alinsky’s adherents now dominate the modern Democratic Party establishment. Apart from President Obama himself, they include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, Federal Communications Commission diversity chief Mark Lloyd, Obama’s ex-green jobs czar Van Jones, former DNC trainer Heather Booth, Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to name just a few. “Who the hell isn’t [an Alinskyite] in this administration?” asks conservative author David Horowitz.

And President Obama hasn’t been the only longtime ACORN operative working in the White House. There’s also the low-profile Patrick Gaspard who, until recently, was White House political affairs director, one of the titles Karl Rove held in President Bush’s White House.

In a move that ought to disturb anyone who cares about the integrity of the democratic process, earlier this year Gaspard took 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.

Gaspard hails from the same world of radical left-wing community organizing that made Barack Obama who he is today. Gaspard is an expert in the harsh, street-smart organizing tactics taught by Alinsky. 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 Obama White House political director Patrick Gaspard is now ACORN's man at the DNC

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Haitian parents, not much is known about this Rasputin-like power behind the throne. Gaspard studiously avoids publicity and is reluctant to talk to journalists. Look him up on Nexis and you will find virtually nothing about this influential radical leader. But his colleagues hold him in high esteem. “Patrick is the best political mind of his generation in New York and maybe the nation,” according to Kevin Sheekey, a lieutenant of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “I wouldn’t dispute that,” added David Axelrod, at the time a senior advisor in the Obama White House.

Gaspard came to the White House from ACORN’s favorite labor organization, Service Employees International Union. (SEIU Locals 100 and 880 were, until recently, official affiliates of ACORN.) He had been executive vice president for political and legislative affairs for SEIU Local 1199 United Healthcare Workers East, which claims to be the largest union local on the planet, “representing more than 300,000 members and retirees in New York, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Massachusetts.”

Evidence suggests that before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis’ political director in New York. How do we actually know Gaspard, who goes to extraordinary lengths to shun the public spotlight and scarcely appears in Nexis searches, was Lewis’ right hand man?

Because Gaspard’s employment with ACORN was acknowledged by no less an authority than ACORN founder Wade Rathke himself.

Rathke wrote May 16, 2009, at his blog: “Tell me that 1199’s former political director, Patrick Gaspard (who was ACORN New York’s political director before that) didn’t reach out from the White House and help make that happen, and I’ll tell you to take some remedial classes in ‘politics 101.’”

ACORN founder Wade Rathke

The “before that” time period Rathke is referring to is 2003, when Gaspard was executive vice president for political and legislative affairs for Service Employees International Union Local 1199 (United Healthcare Workers East). It’s also worth noting that of all the entries in Bertha Lewis’ rolodex, a copy of which this writer gained possession of in 2009, the entry for Gaspard is the most extensive.

Gaspard’s ties to ACORN, SEIU, and Lewis go back at least to 1989, when he volunteered for the David Dinkins mayoral campaign in New York City. In 2003, he became acting field director for Howard Dean’s presidential bid. He was national field director in 2004 for America Coming Together, a now-defunct get-out-the-vote operation that received a $775,000 fine for campaign finance abuses. In 2006, Gaspard was acting political director for SEIU International. In 2008, Gaspard worked as national political director for the Obama campaign followed by a stint as associate personnel director for the Obama-Biden transition team.

As the old Washington saying goes, politics is personnel. Who knows how many administration offi cials were put in place by Gaspard with direct input from ACORN’s Bertha Lewis? It boggles the mind. Gaspard also worked for New York’s Working Families Party, an appendage of ACORN. Lewis is a co-founder of that party —which endorsed Obama in 2008— and has close ties to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who pointedly refused to have the House Judiciary subcommittee he chaired in the previous Congress investigate ACORN.

As news of Gaspard’s involvement with ACORN spread, Rathke changed his blog entry. Where he had written that Gaspard worked for New York ACORN, he inserted two new sentences: “This line used to contain a reference to Patrick Gaspard working for NY ACORN. This is untrue, he never worked for ACORN.”

But Rathke wasn’t able to shove all evidence tying Gaspard to ACORN down the memory hole. If Gaspard isn’t tied to ACORN, why did he sign a letter to the editor of the Nation magazine (dated July 2, 2001) on behalf of the Working Families Party of New York? (Lewis signed the letter on behalf of ACORN and the Working Families Party.)

The party is part of ACORN, according to ACORN’s website, which in 2009 confirmed that in 1998, “ACORN members spearhead[ed] formation of the Working Families Party, the first community-labor party with official ballot status in New York state in more than 50 years.”

Internal ACORN documents obtained by this writer show Gaspard gave ACORN $40,000 before he joined the Obama administration. While Gaspard worked as an executive vice president of SEIU Local 1199, 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 an SEIU 1199 tax return. (If salary and deferred benefits are combined, the total is $151,869.)

Given Gaspard’s longstanding links to ACORN, it’s not at all surprising that Scott Levenson, a lobbyist and spokesman for ACORN, dropped by the White House to visit with his former co-worker. The purpose of the meeting was not disclosed. Another New Yorker in the Obama administration, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, has close ties to ACORN. Before taking office, Donovan was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s housing development commissioner. He worked closely with ACORN for five years on several projects.

ACORN's man at HUD, Shaun Donovan

“Perhaps no administration official has had more interaction with ACORN than” Donovan, according to the New York Times. Reinforcing the newspaper’s point, ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis praised the HUD secretary. “We grew to respect him, and he grew to respect us,” she said. Roll Call, a Washington, D.C., newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, reported Lewis admitted “ACORN has friends in high places for the first time in a long time.” Lewis acknowledged “that she has particularly good relationships with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and with Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director.”

This writer filed a Freedom of Information Act request with HUD last year seeking all correspondence between Secretary Donovan and ACORN. Instead of the maximum 45 days allowed, HUD responded eight months later. The letter said no such records of correspondence between ACORN and Donovan exist.

That’s hard to believe.

(This article is excerpted from “Subversion Inc.: A new book reveals how Obama’s ACORN friends are still ripping off American taxpayers,” by Matthew Vadum which was published in the May 2011 issue of Townhall magazine and is republished here with permission. Copyright © 2011 by Matthew Vadum.)

An award-winning investigative journalist, Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. Vadum is author of the new book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books), from which this piece is adapted. Of the book Andrew Breitbart says, “For too long the institutional left has been allowed to operate under cover of darkness because the Democrat-media complex refuses to hold them accountable. But these radicals who have been sticking it to Americans for decades scatter like cockroaches under the harsh spotlight of Matthew Vadum’s great new book, Subversion Inc.”

President Obama is looking to fill out the six-member Federal Election Commission (see recent pro-SEIU FEC decision) with someone he can count on to support his views on campaign law.  It is not surprising he turned to his friend Andy Stern’s union Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  Obama has appointed SEIU lawyer John Sullivan, who was intertwined in the Clinton/DNC/McAuliffe/Teamster scandal that resulted in Jimmy Hoffa’s ascension to the Teamster throne, but for over a year the nomination remains in political limbo.

Could it be that Obama appointees have finally reached such a level of ethical absurdity that even the Obama allies in the Senate are pulling back?

Sullivan was a lawyer for Teamster President Ron Carey when he was convicted of laundering Teamster forced-dues and fees through the Democratic [sic] National Committee.  He also served as SEIU’s lawyer for its 527 Federal Election Campaign Committee, “America Coming Together (ACT),” that received the second largest fine in Federal Election Commission (FEC) history.

While these facts render this appointment truly absurd, it is also appears unlikely that ethical concerns are the underlying issue in the appointment delay.

Here’s an update provided by the Center for Public Integrity in May 2010:

One full year after being nominated to the Federal Election Commission, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer John J. Sullivan is still waiting for Senate confirmation, caught in a dispute over other nominations for the agency. As a result of the standoff, the Obama administration has yet to put any stamp on the FEC.

In fact, this month when Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri unsuccessfully sought unanimous consent to confirm a long list of held-up nominees, she did not include Sullivan. When the Republican Minority Whip inquired as to why his name was skipped over, she blamed a fellow Democrat for the hold.

The Center contacted Sullivan, still working at SEIU, to ask him where the nomination stands. “I honestly don’t know,” he replied. He said McCain and Feingold have been clear that their concern is not with him, but with the lack of other nominations for the commission, and noted that he keeps in touch with the White House but “nothing’s really changed so there’s not a lot to talk about.”

Yet important questions remain. Why has the administration not nominated anyone to fill the other two seats? Why has Sen. Reid not attempted to force a vote on the Sullivan nomination? Why are Sens. Feingold and McCain continuing to hold up the nomination when doing so has not spurred the administration to action?

Calls to the White House press office and the offices of Senators Feingold, McCain, and Reid were not returned.

It would be interesting to know for certain why the nomination of SEIU’s Sullivan remains in limbo.

Rep. Issa’s request refers to the same Patrick Gaspard who while working for a Soros-SEIU political committee employed convicted felons to go door-to-door.  In fact, that same Soros-SEIU committee received one of the steepest fines in Federal Election Commission history ($750,000) because its leadership, in Machiavellian fashion, chose to ignore federal laws and take the risk of paying fines if caught.  So, ignoring a few pesky public disclosure laws is not as unlikely as it may sound.

Politico was first to provide the White House narrative that “Gaspard forgot” and that his actions require only “small administrative change” in its coverage:

“We have made the small administrative change to this year’s and last year’s forms to indicate that part of the final payment to Patrick reflected their typical severance of one week of pay for each of his nine years of service at Local 1199 of SEIU,” [White House spokesman Bill] Burton wrote POLITICO in an e-mailed statement.

Such financial disclosures are governed by federal law, but Stan Brand, a former House general counsel and ethics expert, said the Justice Department is unlikely to pursue an investigation unless they suspected a “knowing or willful” intent to deceive.

But, crosschecking Gaspard’s financial disclosure reports with SEIU financial reports and Obama campaign reports reveal that Gaspard’s recent revisions remain inconsistent and with that may rise to the “knowing or willful” standard mentioned in the Politico article.

In fact, Gaspard continues to file his federal employee disclosure forms incorrectly. We may not get a complete answer for Gaspard’s and the White House’s actions; however, we do know that Gaspard has had at least two attempts to report his financials accurately.

1. SEIU paid Gaspard 38 weeks worth of salary in 2008 using his 2010 pay scale as reported in his recently submitted form (or as much as 42.5 weeks using Gaspard’s 2007 avg. pay scale). But, Obama’s presidential campaign starting paying Gaspard beginning about the 27^th or 26^th week of 2008.  Since SEIU is legally prohibited from paying Gaspard to work for Obama, it is assumed that the 11 to 15.5 extra weeks of salary payments to Gaspard were for earned vacation time.
2. In Gaspard’s revised financial disclosure, he reported “$17,238.56” for “SEIU, 1199 (carried over leave & vacation) [ii].”
3. “SEIU, 1199, (severance – see Sched, C part II). Pursuant to SEIU policy. I received 9 weeks of severance payment (1 week of salary for each year of service). $17,488.40”[iii] – Gaspard did not work nine years at SEIU 1199 according to SEIU 1199’s union financial disclosure forms from 1999 to 2009.  This should send up red flags to congressional investigators.  (Gaspard’s severance number translates into $1,943.16 per week.)
4. “SEIU, 1199 (salary January 1-16, 2009) $2,344 .50”[iv] – Based on Gaspard’s severance payment of $1,943.16 per week, this $2,344 .50 would translate into about 6.03 days of work for SEIU 1199 in 2009.
5. “Obama-Biden Transition, $11,500 (income)”[v] – from Nov. to December 31^st, Gaspard was paid $10,000 for his transition work, and then an additional $11,500 in 2009.

Questions:

• How did Gaspard work six days in January for SEIU 1199 ^h while simultaneously working for the “office of the President-Elect” during “January 1-16” of 2009?
• How did Gaspard earn, in those six days of work for SEIU 1199, “$17,238.56 [of] carried over leave & vacation,” in particular, after apparently having already been paid 2.5 to 4 months vacation pay in 2008?
• How did Gaspard earn a 9 week severance payout from an employer (SEIU 1199)? According to available SEIU 1199 financial reports (2000-2009), Gaspard was not paid by SEIU 1199 in years 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004. For the year 2001, SEIU 1199 paid Gaspard only $3,723.  It appears that in at least 5 of the 9 years Gaspard was not on the payroll or worked only a week or two.

An investigation by the House Oversight Committee is warranted.  Unfortunately with Democrats so firmly in the pocket of Big Labor, it will take a Republican victory in this year’s elections before Rep. Issa will be allowed to issue a subpoena and begin an earnest investigation.

It has only been a few decades since the federal government created mandatory monopoly bargaining and granted labor union bosses the power to coerce workers to pay union fees.  But, this coercive power has created huge treasuries that union bosses use to buy political power and turned democracy on its head.

This undemocratic and coercive political force skews the political process away from legitimate arguments over ideas, towards the raw use of political power to continually expand Big Labor’s power — through legislation, regulation, and government fiats — at the expense of American workers and their freedoms.

This kind of power breeds an arrogance that allows people to convince themselves that the rules are for the “little people” not the kingmakers – an arrogance easily seen in people who create ethics rules and then fail to live up to those rules.

Let’s face it; Gaspard is in the White House to coordinate SEIU political activities from inside its secured doors.   SEIU and Big Labor do not need to lobby the White House; they own the White House.   Gaspard need not meet secretly with union lobbyists in coffee shops, as others in the White House, because he is the embodiment of Big Labor.

Compulsory unionism and confiscation of worker freedoms must end to stop  Big Labor-owned politicians and their continuous drive  to erode worker liberties for personal political gain.  After all, this is “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” isn’t it?

[i] Service Employees International Union

[ii] Revised 2009 SF-278

[iii] Revised 2009 SF-278

[iv] Revised 2009 SF-278

[v] Revised 2009 SF-278

Rathke said it not only on his blog, but also at a book signing in New Orleans, which was recently covered in the Fox News Special: The Truth About ACORN.”  While we attended that book signing and were not able to get that portion on tape, the Fox documentary crew did.  Sadly, the remarks apparently ended up on the cutting room floor.

The fact is, Patrick Gaspard, Obama’s “Glue Man,” is more important than Van Jones ever hoped of being.  The fact is, one of the most critical and influential jobs in a White House, the Director of Political Affairs, is occupied by a former SEIU health care lobbyist and ACORN organizer.  To be exact, he was Executive Vice President–the #2–at SEIU 1199 in New York City.

After Gaspard was appointed to the White House, Carribbean Voice quoted him as saying, “I grew up in 1199…and I will always be an 1199er wherever I am.”  SEIU’s luxury is that now taxpayers are paying for it.

Wade Rathke, current organizer with SEIU Local 100 (in New Orleans) and ACORN International (now “Community Organizations International”), called Gaspard a “great friend” on his ChiefOrganizer.org blog. Additionally, Rathke theorized how Gaspard was likely instrumental in working with SEIU to bring “big health care operators” to the table.  [Figuring once scrutiny came to someone high-level in the White House, the evidence would be changed, we turned Rathke's blog posting into a PDF.]

That is curious, given the Obama Transition team’s pledge that Gaspard would refrain from issues he had lobbied previously.  According to the Washington Post, a transition spokesman said, “Patrick and Mark [Gitenstein] have jobs on the campaign that are general in nature, but per the unprecedented ethics policy laid out earlier this week they will recuse themselves from the fields of policy or agencies they lobbied in the previous 12 months.”

So we are to believe the Political Director of the White House—one of the most important players in the administration—is sitting on his hands while Obama attempts to salvage his biggest “reform” yet, and likely ever?  Ethics schmethics.

When Sean Bell was shot by New York City police in 2007, Al Sharpton reached out to Patrick Gaspard (while he was at SEIU 1199) to formulate a response.  According to Politicker NY, “In December 2006, Mr. Sharpton asked Patrick Gaspard to help him assemble an emergency meeting of about 300 activists, black nationalists, union and political leaders to decide on an appropriate response to the police shooting…”

Sharpton used the SEIU 1199 office to hold a protest organizational meeting.  According to The Observer, the union was represented by Gaspard at the meeting.

The People’s Organization for Progress, along with the New Black Panther Party, organized protests against the New York City police department, carrying signs saying such things as “KILL THE PIGS THAT KILL OUR KIDS.”

In October 2007, under Gaspard’s eye, the union hosted an event at its headquarters to mark the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Che Guevara “by the military dictatorship of Bolivia under the direction of the CIA.”

“The bitter truth for U.S. imperialism forty years later is that Che’s example and ideas are more powerful and resonant than ever among oppressed peoples of the world, especially the Americas,” an announcement of the event read. Yes, under Gaspard’s watch and likely authorization, the union hosted a celebration of Che Guevara’s life.  See an accouncement flier for a similar event.

Other participants included Communist Party USA, Freedom Socialist Party, People’s Organization for Progress, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Action and many others.

SEIU 1199, in 2007, was a signatory on a petition to “free Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

Shortly after that, SEIU 1199 hosted the “International Secretary of the Hands Off Venezuela Campaign and Latin America correspondent for Marxist.com.”  SEIU 1199, under Gaspard’s leadership, has filled a radical role in New York and national politics.

Gaspard has contributed to the Working Families Party, a political party founded—and still co-chaired—by ACORN.

He is still listed as a member of the advisory board to the Center for Working Families.  The CWF’s address is the same as New York ACORN.

In 2004, Gaspard worked for America Coming Together, a George Soros-funded 527 organization that worked in swing states to elect John Kerry president.  According to Michelle Malkin’s new book, Culture of Corruption:

During the 2004 election cycle, he had led the radical, left-wing, George Soros-funded group, America Coming Together (ACT) as national field director.  SEIU poured $23 million into ACT in a costly, unsuccessful attempt to put Democratic Senator John Kerry in the White House.  Under Gaspard’s tenure at ACT, the get-out-the-vote group employed convicted felons as canvassers and committed campaign finance violations that led to a $775,000 fine by the Federal Elections Commission–the third largest civil penalty levied in the panel’s history.

So, ACORN connection or not, Gaspard is a radical.  Whether or not he drew a paycheck from ACORN is a distinction without a difference. And we shouldn’t allow a whitewash of the evidence to negate the rest of Gaspard’s background.

Ross said that by executing a search warrant at ACORN headquarters in Nevada the authorities were able to substantiate charges and have a very solid case against ACORN. They believe they can prove that it’s not just a few bad apples it went much higher up in the organization. Ross believes that ACORN and the regional director should be held accountable for the criminal activity that took place in the state.

Ross told FOX News that they found prisoners on the ACORN payroll:

Ross Miller: Obviously we believed that it went much higher on the food chain. That ACORN had a quota system in place and they were paying individuals this black jack. That encourages voter registration fraud and that is why it is important that we go after them and charge them criminally and try to obtain a conviction. They constantly say we have a bad apple. We have a bad a bad employee like most people do. Clearly that’s not the case. This is an organization that came to Nevada and hired people that were still in prison convicted of identity theft that were on work release programs for canvassing voters.

Eric Shawn: Wait a minute… Hired people that were still in prison?

Ross Miller: Correct. There’s a transitional housing facility, Casa Grande, down there. ACORN approached them. They hired individuals that were still in prison. Some of them were convicted of serious offenses, identity theft. A violation of state law that these inmates should not have had contact with people’s personal information. Those were the individuals that were our canvassing people.

This is not the first time we’ve seen convicts used for canvassing. In 2004 another federally funded far left organization America Coming Together was fined $775,000 in civil penalties after the election. ACT hired dozens of felons some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary – to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in Missouri and other swing states. Seven of the ACT employees lived at Missouri halfway houses and at least four were later returned to prison.

Newly discovered evidence shows the radical advocacy group ACORN has a man in the Obama White House.This power behind the throne is longtime ACORN 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.

Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis’s political director in New York.

 Lewis, the current “chief organizer” or CEO of ACORN, was head of New York ACORN from at least 1994 through 2008, when she took over as national leader of ACORN. With Gaspard at work in the White House, Lewis might as well be speaking to President Obama through an earpiece as he goes about his daily business ruining the country.

Read the whole story here.