A recent study of contributions made by the nation’s two largest teachers unions reveals that both shelled out millions in 2008-09, with a good chunk going to radical and scandal-ridden organizations.

The study, posted online by the Education Intelligence Agency, is further proof that the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers are out of step with their members, which union officials claim are evenly split between Democrat, Republican and Independent parties.

This is what the EIA found:

The AFT gave $46,894 to the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). That organization’s members gave tax evasion advice to pimps and prostitutes, encouraged struggling homeowners to walk away from their mortgages, and championed radical causes like softer immigration regulations and a government takeover of health care.

The AFT’s interest in government-run healthcare is also apparent in its $407,208 donation to the Economic Policy Institute, a union-funded progressive think tank that advocates for the expansion of unionized government jobs, and generally promotes organized labor’s interests.

The AFT also sent $125,000 to Health Care for America Now! HCAN, which is led by SEIU and ACORN, promotes a government takeover of health care.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network received $10,000 of AFT dues money to fight for gay rights. GLSEN’s leaders have a long-documented history of promoting sex-related issues to elementary-aged kids.

The AFT made smaller donations to groups that generally promote causes like the redistribution of American wealth. Those included $15,000 to the Apollo Alliance, and $25,000 to Jessie Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

In total, the AFT spent $5.3 million in dues income promoting radical left-wing advocacy groups and charities. Most of the money went to seemingly innocuous organizations with radical policies.

The NEA, which doled out $26 million in dues dollars, also sent the bulk of its money to the far left.

The anti-American, human rights fanatics at Amnesty International banked $7,500 from the NEA. The Economic Policy Institute got a quarter-million in NEA membership money. GLSEN received $157,500, and HCAN got $450,000 from the NEA.

MediaMatters, which attacks and distorts reports from conservative organizations, earned a $100,000 NEA check.

The NEA also gave a $10,000 donation to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and $165,000 to People for the American Way, two organizations with extreme left-wing agendas.

The population control advocates at the Sierra Club pocketed $150,000 in NEA dues dollars. The Zimbabwe Teachers Association is even partially bankrolled ($10,000) by the NEA. Seriously?

That union, the ZIMTA, is aligned with despotic dictator Robert Mugabe’s political party, media reports show.

Some will argue that these teachers unions can contribute their income to whatever organization they like. We agree, and strongly defend that freedom.

But we also feel that union membership, and the taxpayers that pay their wages, deserve to know where the money is going and why. We also believe that teachers should be able to keep their dues dollars from financing union PACs, if they wish.

Former NEA president Reg Weaver has repeatedly claimed that the NEA’s membership is evenly divided into Democrats, Republicans and Independents. We suspect AFT members are similarly split.

Then why does their union not distribute their dues dollars evenly to reflect that split? That’s a good question, and one we would encourage union teachers to demand an answer to.

Together they applied the Van Jones’ Apollo doctrine to tap into federal stimulus money allocated to New York.

Governor Paterson recently signed into law something called the “Green Jobs – Green New York Act of 2009″. The new law provides for the creation of a massive slush fund of federal stimulus dollars to be set aside for “green jobs”.

Those green jobs include but will not be limited to “Energy Auditors”, certified green contractors, green financing services to help pay for property upgrades, and more.

There are a number of places in the legislation where ACORN, SEIU, and their affiliates stand to gain access to this new green slush fund. Below is but one excerpt which must make them very happy:

How much money are we talking about? Hundreds of millions of dollars. From the legislation:

*Provides $112 million of capital funding from the Regional Greenhouse
Gas Initiative (RGGI), $70 million of which will be for a Green
Jobs-Green New York revolving loan fund designed to commit resources
fully during this phase with no less than 50 percent of capital monies
going to residential retrofits.

*Provides $2-4 million of RGGI funds to be used to establish green job
training throughout the state to establish a green workforce for the
2151 century and requires the NYS Department of Labor to work with
NYSERDA to development additional training resources.

Don’t worry, because the legislation calls for an advisory board to monitor all of the projects and how the cash is being distributed. That shouldn’t pose much of a threat to ACORN’s access to the cash though, because, almost every sponsor of the legislation just signed into law are card carrying members of President Obama’s Working Families Party, aka ACORN.

Their names are listed below, WFP members are in red:

Introduced by Sens. AUBERTINE, BRESLIN, FOLEY, HUNTLEY, C. JOHNSON, LAVALLE, MAZIARZ, MONSERRATE, MORAHAN, ONORATO, OPPENHEIMER, PARKER, PERKINS, SAMPSON, SAVINO, SCHNEIDERMAN, SERRANO, STACHOWSKI, STEWART-COUSINS, THOMPSON, VALESKY, VOLKER, WINNER

One concerned lawmaker tried to force the ACORN issue when the bill was being debated:

A group calling itself Lawyers 4 Green Jobs authored the legislation with help from the following:

Lawyers for Green Jobs was formed in 2008 by a group of young environmental attorneys who met while attending the New York City Environmental Law Leadership Institute (NYCELLI) and shared a strong passion for the economic implications of environmental and social issues. Their idea to propose green jobs legislation for New York State grew in part from their coursework in NYCELLI and in part due to the fact that there currently exists no such law. Since that time, L4GJ has been engaging national and New York-based green jobs advocacy organizations, such as Green For All, the New York Apollo Alliance, and several environmental justice groups, to foster a statewide policy for green jobs in New York.

Green For All was founded by Van Jones. Now we all know what green he was talking about. Yours and mine.

Working Families Party Director Dan Cantor is crowing about this victory:

Together with Governor Paterson and legislative leaders (both Democrats and Republicans), that coalition helped put together innovative legislation that we hope will be a model for other states.

It’s funny to see Dan Cantor praising Governor Paterson, since it wasn’t that long ago the Working Families Party was slamming Governor Paterson, and his “Right-wing allies in the senate”

Angelides’s San Francisco-based Apollo Alliance describes itself as a “coalition of labor, business, environmental, and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution.”  Based on the radical past of some of its key figures, the use of the word revolution is appropriate.  Apollo was conceived of, and presently serves, as a clearing house to align the otherwise disparate interests of environmental groups, labor unions, social justice organizations, and rent-seeking corporations.

Disgraced former White House green jobs czar Van Jones was an Apollo board member, involved with the group from its founding, and was its model for a new type of leader.  Apollo board member John Podesta, who was chairman of Obama’s transition team, already brought Van Jones back to the Center for American Progress, Podesta’s influential think tank where Jones had previously been a senior fellow.  These are Angelides’s friends and ideological peers.

Apollo’s roster of endorsers includes the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the United Steelworkers, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, ACORN, the Ella Baker Center, and all the major wind and solar industry players.  By uniting labor unions with environmentalists, Apollo seeks to repair the historical rift between those elements of the big-government coalition by tapping the U.S. Treasury to gain access to taxpayer dollars for a wide-variety of projects that fund their constituents.  Not surprisingly, there is huge overlap between Apollo endorsers and Angelides’s endorsers in his 2006 run for governor of California, including ACORN, which actively campaigned for him.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) specifically credited Apollo for helping write and pass the stimulus, saying: “This legislation is the first step in building a clean energy economy — The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them.”

ACORN got a big piece of the stimulus pie, eligible to apply for as much as $4.19 billion of stimulus funding under the so-called “Neighborhood Stabilization Program” and likely eligible for other stimulus programs as well.  David Vitter of Louisiana offered an amendment that would have blocked ACORN from receiving stimulus funds that failed on a 45-51 vote.

Angelides earned his position as chairman of the Apollo Alliance by loyally steering literally billions of dollars of the pension funds he controlled as California State Treasurer to the pockets of the renewable energy, organized labor, and community organizing interests that make up Apollo.  His biography on the Apollo web site boasts:

“He directed $26 billion in state investments to promote smart growth. He put the weight of California’s $400 billion pension funds behind investment in clean energy and the fight against global warming.”

Angelides brought his top staffer, Cathy Calfo, with him from the California State Treasurer’s office to become Apollo’s new executive director.  Apollo boasts that, while in the Treasurer’s office, Calfo steered an incredible $1.5 billion in state funds to “renewable energy, cutting edge environmental technologies, and environmentally responsible companies.”

So the man charged with investigating the financial crisis is the bagman for the union and ACORN influenced Apollo Alliance.  Don’t expect much in the way of honest inquiry from the commission he chairs, and you can be sure that ACORN and its fellow so-called community organizations will be held blameless.