The Obama operative chosen to head the GOTV effort, Buffy Wicks, was deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. In that capacity she participated in a now-infamous 2009 conference call in which Obama officials urged artists to create art that would help advance Obamacare and the rest of the president’s policy objectives.

Wicks will head a GOTV effort named after the branch of ACORN that employed Obama in 1992. Perhaps to honor Obama’s radical roots, the “campaign-within-a-campaign” will be named “Project Vote,” according to Politico’s Mike Allen.

Obama’s storied performance as head of Project Vote in Illinois during the 1992 campaign was widely credited with getting the radical left-wing Democrat Carol Moseley Braun elected to the U.S. Senate. It also helped Obama cement his reputation as a master community organizer.

The original Project Vote is part of the ACORN network. It continues to operate out of ACORN’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, and works with the new ACORN front groups created after ACORN, the shell corporation that ran the network, filed for bankruptcy last November.

ACORN officials openly acknowledge that the new front groups will come together under a new name in order to help reelect President Obama next year, as I write in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

There is no wall of separation between the two organizations. On registration and mobilization campaigns, ACORN and Project Vote work together to the point where it is difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference. They share staff, office space, and money.

ACORN senior official Amy Adele Busefink, who earlier this year pleaded no-contest in a major ACORN-approved voter fraud conspiracy in Nevada, works at Project Vote as a field director even now according to the group’s website.

The mission of the new “Project Vote” that is part of the Obama campaign apparatus will be the same as the old Project Vote: the manufacture of voters.

“The big goal here is to expand the electorate,” an Obama campaign official told Politico. “That’s how we won in 2008, and we think that’s the path to victory again in 2012.”

It was two years ago that Wicks, acting on behalf of the White House, gave birth to the NEA propaganda scandal.

Readers of the “Big” websites will recall that Patrick Courrielche reported at the time that the NEA and the White House encouraged “a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate.”

Wicks acknowledged during the call that she was “actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda.” She said, “We’re going to come at you with some specific asks here.”

Yosi Sergant, then-communications director at the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for the Arts, also was on the call encouraging artists to do the administration’s bidding. Sergant was forced out of his cushy post after his involvement in the scandal was revealed.

On the call Michael Skolnick, political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, acknowledged the White House and the NEA “had the idea that I would help bring together the artist community.” The purpose was “to support some of the president’s initiatives,” he said.

Three days after the teleconference an alliance of arts organizations, led by Americans for the Arts, which participated in the call, issued a press release that urged the creation of “a health care reform bill that will create a public health insurance option.”

A few days later another group from the call, Rock the Vote, unveiled its own pro-Obama initiative. “We can’t stand by and listen to lies and deceit coming from those who are against reforming a broken system … Enough is Enough. We need designs that tell the country YES WE CARE! Young people demand health care.”

* * * * *

America needs to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.

Buy my book Subversion Inc. at Amazon and in Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million bookstores. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

A stinging report was issued yesterday by Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  The report, titled “Analysis of the First Year of the Obama Administration: Public Relations and Propaganda Initiatives,” outlines a host of propaganda activities conducted by the Obama administration at the direct expense of the American taxpayers.  It notes in part,

“The Obama Administration frequently used federal resources to promote the President’s agenda. In many cases, the Administration relied on the reach and resources of federal agencies and their personnel to promote certain of the President’s favorite programs. The White House also leveraged ties to the arts and entertainment community to embed propaganda in the content of television programming and artwork. These propaganda efforts violated appropriations riders and federal law prohibiting the use of appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda purposes.”

“The White House also used its inherent visibility advantages to multiply the effectiveness of websites containing misleading and controversial information. The White House used its resources to push visitors to websites that urge grassroots activism based on false and misleading information. The President’s right to sell his policy recommendations to Congress and the public is not disputed; however, using the resources of the federal government to activate a sophisticated propaganda and lobbying campaign is an abuse of office and a betrayal of the President’s pledge to create “an unprecedented level of openness in Government.”

Among the charges made in the report are the misuse of federal agency resources to publicize the President’s agenda, as well as capitalizing on the President’s visibility and pre-existing campaign relationships to push traffic to websites containing propaganda.  The report offers numerous examples to support such charges, including a few  notable instances:

• The unlawful use of the National Endowment for the Arts as “the de facto strategic communications firm of the White House”. Note that BigHollywood’s own Patrick Courrielche broke this story this time last year, with his post entitled “The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?” after he was invited to participate on a joint conference call hosted by representatives from the NEA, United We Serve, Rock the Vote, Russell Simmons’ company, and by Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement (a department headed by Valerie Jarrett).  The purpose of that call: to gather artists and entertainers “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”  Hosts encouraged participants to create art that would serve to move the President’s agenda forward.  As proof of this abuse, Courrielche published a follow-up post that contained the full audio and transcript of that call.  Since NEA receives federal funding, the use of its artists and entertainers to support the President’s agenda is also highly inappropriate.
• Intentionally skirting around anti-lobbying laws and the Hatch Act by using First Lady Michelle Obama to promote the administration’s iParticipate initiative, a program that “conservatively amounts to $240 million of free advertising for the President’s service and health care agendas.” BigHollywood’s own John Nolte exposed this initiative and an apparent pattern of federally funded propaganda in his post entitled “LEAKED NETWORK MEMO REVEALS: Obama Controls Your Television Set,” which outlined the collaboration between the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) and the administration to “organically create and produce as many stories as possible about service and volunteerism and connect them in the plots of network dramas, comedies and reality shows.”  The leaked memo obtained and published by Nolte identified several policy areas on the President’s agenda around which the TV networks were to build the storylines of these programs.  The BH post also ties in additional collaborations with CreateTheGood and Serve.gov, as posted by other Big site bloggers.
• The “deployment of Justice Department resources to generate clandestine comments on message boards and blogs,” which refers to activities conducted by Tracy Russo, New Media Specialist for the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs.  According to the report, Russo, the former Chief Blogger and Deputy Director of Online Communications for the John Edwards for President Campaign, and former blogger for the DNC, is alleged to have been “covertly attempting to shape public opinion by searching online for articles, blogs or other entries critical of the Administration and then anonymously, or through the use of a pseudonym, posting comments to those sites attacking the author or contents,“ a practice that the report charges is a highly improper use of the Department’s resources.

Perhaps one of the most familiar policy themes we’ve recognized in so much of the propaganda has been that of Health Care reform.  Many of the administration’s activities in this policy area actually spilled out into the media and into other areas of public communication.

20100816obamaadministrationpropagandareport

Take for example Jonathan Gruber, a MIT health care economist who, according to Issa’s report, was contracted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide financial analysis on the cost changes of health insurance coverage under Obama’s health plan. Gruber was paid a total of nearly $393,000 for this and another project he conducted for HHS.  Until it was finally forced to be revealed by way of a NEJM publication, members of the administration, and Gruber himself, failed to disclose this relationship to numerous outlets, even while the administration and Democratic members of Congress relied repeatedly on Gruber’s work to support the President’s health care agenda.  As the Issa report indicates,

“While under contract with HHS, Gruber authored several editorials advocating on behalf of the President’s health care plan. Gruber was frequently used as a source for journalists writing about health care. Gruber’s status as a paid consultant to HHS was not disclosed in interviews with Time, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New Republic, and elsewhere.

The Obama Administration relied on Gruber’s commentary to promote the President’s health care agenda. Gruber’s study, for which he was paid $297,600 by HHS, figured prominently in a piece by Ron Brownstein that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.  Gruber did not disclose his status as a paid consultant to Brownstein while being interviewed for that piece.”

Jane Hamsher of Firedog Lake published an enlightening detailed post on January 13, 2010 that outlined exactly how this feedback loop worked.

“Well, take Gruber’s appearance before the Senate HELP Committee on November 2, 2009, for which he used his microsimulation model to make calculations about small business insurance coverage for his testimony.  On the same day, Gruber released an analysis of the House health care bill, which he sent to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post.  Ezra published an excerpt.”

“White House blogger Jesse Lee then promoted both Gruber’s Senate testimony and Ezra Klein’s article on the White House blog.   “We thought it would all be a little more open and transparent if we went ahead and published what our focus will be for the day” he said, pointing to Gruber’s “objective analysis.”  The “transparent” part apparently stopped when everyone got to Gruber’s contractual relationship to the White House, which nobody in the three-hit triangle bothered to disclose.”

Hamsher then describes in great detail the domino effect of the information flow of Gruber’s analysis.  For example, on November 20, 2009, two days after the Senate unveiled its version of the Health care bill, Gruber published “Impacts of the Senate High Cost Insurance Excise Tax on Wages: Updated.”  From there, that one report alone spread like wildfire to become the definitive case to support Democrats on their health care policies.  All without the disclosure that Gruber was contracted by the White House.  And throughout this contract, Gruber published multiple reports and analysis.  I created this graphic to help illustrate the process:

This sort of structured information flow is extremely similar to the inner-workings of other propaganda initiatives we’ve seen from the left to support this President’s agenda.  If you’ll recall, it’s precisely the way that members of the Cry Wolf Project – many of its members distinguished college professors, historians and researchers – planned to assemble and distribute analysis and commentary on the policies that make up the Obama agenda.

It’s just the kind of propaganda that has been widespread in this administration and extends far beyond just what’s indicated in Issa’s report.

Prior to this report being released, the “Big” sites have already observed many examples of Research-Propaganda – much of it publicly funded – being spun and fed to the media to support the same initiatives.  Fictional or flawed statistics like the medical bankruptcy numbers, which have been repeatedly debunked, were regurgitated as fact over and over by groups like SEIU and the AFL-CIO, and even by the President himself.  In some instances, there even appears to possibly have been a concerted effort on the part of special interest groups like big labor to manufacture some issues for permanent political sustenance.

Take an organization like the AARP, which has received nearly $400,000,000 in federal funds over the last eight years.  We’ve seen this organization’s definitive support for this administration’s agenda through its joint initiatives like Divided We Fail, with SEIU, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), and Business Roundtable.  And just one arm alone of SEIU received over $5,000,000 in federal funds over the last eight years; the labor union has received even more under other organizations and programs by alternate names.  Such joint partnership projects like those from AARP-SEIU have worked together on studies, some of which are mentioned in SEIU: Building a New American Health Care Empire, including from Families USA and Americans for Stable Quality Care.  While these two massive organizations rake in millions in taxpayer dollars separately, they are jointly complicit not only in endorsing political agendas, but in collaborating on and distributing supporting propaganda, especially on behalf of this administration.

Let’s also not forget all of the cover that’s been provided by so many of the left-leaning outlets on behalf of this administration and its propagandist allies.  On numerous occasions, Media Matters jumped to defend the SEIU, even when the timeline indicated that it was quite possible the two organizations – and possibly many other liberal journalists and White house staffers – were colluding together.

But there is one other important issue that cannot necessarily be addressed in a report like Issa’s.

While the spending during the Bush administration on similar activities was inexcusable and irresponsible, both fiscally and morally in some sense, there is one distinct difference in the type of propaganda that this administration engages in, and in the level of collusion involved.  Seldom has there been a time in history, if any, when a sitting President has actually taken aim directly at certain citizens of this country, based upon their political beliefs.  When the political elite become so disconnected from the voting citizens of this country, it becomes easy to demonize and attack those who oppose you, as though they’re inanimate objects. For the propagandist, doing this makes it that much easier to inflate an issue and create an environment of intense emotion that polarizes people, while you step away as the emotions cause people to fight and your base to mobilize.  The penchant for this administration to directly attack citizens who disagree with the policies is all but unprecedented.  This is what largely differentiates the propaganda activities of the Obama administration from any others mentioned in the Issa report.

While the left will incessantly demonize anyone who disagrees with Obama’s policies, insisting they’ve been brainwashed by FOX News or “evil Republicans”, but all I hear from that side of the tracks are the same words that have been uttered by our favorite billionaire, George Soros, for the last ten years now.

And as we all know, he’s the master of propaganda.  Which leaves me to wonder: Who’s brainwashing who?  But if you don’t believe me, see it for yourself.

Video Part 2 |  Video Part 3

Democrat party front group Media Matters for America has released several statements in recent days seeking to throw reporters off the trail of the strong ties between President Barack Obama and Jodie Evans, co-founder of the terrorist support group Code Pink.

Media Matters attempts to influence public opinion by getting their politically-slanted, factually-challenged reports in the hands of sympathetic liberal reporters who then either regurgitate Media Matters’ propaganda to the public as news or use it as guidance to bury news.

In this case, Media Matters was responding to a report by World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein, picked up by Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit and Big Government, and by Glenn Beck, tying Obama to leaders of the so-called Gaza Freedom Movement, the group behind the terror flotilla intercepted by Israel as the six ship convoy attempted to break a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the terrorist enclave of Gaza.

Much of the information forming the basis for Klein’s report was originally researched and published at Big Government months ago, which Klein (a solid researcher in his own right who has added much to this story) acknowledged at the time.

Klein reported last weekend that Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers, his wife Bernardine Dohrn and Obama funder Jodie Evans each had ties to Obama and the Gaza Freedom Movement.

In spite of plenty of evidence that shows that Obama and the Ayerses were more than just neighbors in Hyde Park, Chicago, Media Matters devotes much energy into dismissing any notion of political connections between Obama and the unrepentant terrorists. In fairness, no direct ties were documented between Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and Ayers and Dohrn.

The same cannot be said when it comes to Obama and Jodie Evans. Media Matters initially dismissed as “flimsy” reports by Klein (and Hoft) of ties between Obama and Jodie Evans:

“Klein’s effort to connect Jodie Evans to Obama is equally flimsy. To wit: the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Obama ‘dropped into an exclusive VIP dinner,’ during an October 2009 California fundraiser “for about 160 high-level party donors, some of whom wrote checks of $30,400 or more for a pair of tickets and the privilege of shaking hands and taking a picture with him. The Chronicle further reported:

“Jodie Evans, a co-founder of Code Pink, paid $30,400 for a pair of tickets to the VIP dinner, where she presented Obama with a petition from women in Afghanistan urging him not to send additional troops. Evans said she spent several minutes discussing the war there with the president and told him that the country’s women “want a place at the table” in resolving the conflict.”

As anyone who has followed the reports on Big Government knows, Media Matters was lying. Jodie Evans’ ties to Obama are anything but flimsy.

Two days later, after Glenn Beck picked up the story, Media Matters acknowledged that Jodie Evans was a bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign, but then downplays that by saying she was just one of 560 bundlers and that 324 bundlers did better than she in bundling for Obama.

“Beck links Evans to Obama because she was a bundler for his campaign. After tying Evans to the Gaza flotilla, Beck and his producer Stu Burguiere linked Evans to Obama on the basis that she was a bundler for the Obama campaign:

“BECK: Evans, she’s with Code Pink, right? And Stu, was she not a bundler for Obama as well? [...]

“BURGUIERE: By the way, confirmed, that was a Politico story that reported that Jodie Evans was a bundler for Obama, meaning that she was raising over $50,000 for the campaign.

…”Evans was one of hundreds of bundlers to the Obama campaign.

“More than 300 bundlers directed more money to Obama’s campaign then did Evans. Beck ties Evans to Obama solely on the basis that she was a bundler for the Obama campaign. OpenSecrets.com lists 560 Obama bundlers of $50,000 or more; at least 324 of those bundlers directed more money to Obama than did Evans.”

For the benefit of reporters who have been misled by Media Matters, here are some details of Obama’s ties to Jodie Evans:

February 2007 — Jodie Evans co-hosts Obama’s breakthrough Hollywood fundraiser just weeks after he announced his candidacy. She gives the maximum $2300 to Obama’s primary effort. The other co-hosts were her husband Max Palevsky (now deceased) and the Dreamworks Trio of Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg (Note to Media Matters: That makes Jodie Evans one out of five). A few weeks before the fundraiser, Jodie Evans was in Cuba as a guest of that state sponsor of terrorism.

April 2007 — Obama campaign announces early fundraising bundlers. Jodie Evans is on the list.

June 2008 — Jodie Evans meets with Obama at a high dollar fundraiser days after she expresses sympathy in a radio interview for Osama bin Laden.

Jodie Evans: …”We were attacked because we were in Saudi Arabia, that was the message of Osama, was that because we had our bases in the Middle East, he attacked the United States.”

Paul A. Ibbetson: “Do you think that’s a valid argument?”

Jodie Evans: “Sure. Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that country. Why do we get to have bases in the Middle East?”

Late August 2008 — Jodie Evans attends the Democrat national convention. As a bundler, she was invited to private receptions with Obama and his vice presidential nominee Joe Biden on successive nights.

A week later, in early September, Jodie Evans stole people’s identities to crash events at the Republican national convention. She was detained by the Secret Service as she tried to rush the stage during vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech.

Shortly thereafter, Jodie Evans attended two exclusive Hollywood fundraisers with Obama — one a private dinner with about one hundred donors. Two weeks later she met with a state sponsor of terrorism, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in New York City.

In October, Jodie Evans worked with Code Pink’s Los Angeles chapter on a get out the vote effort for Obama.

After Obama’s election in November, Jodie Evans and Code Pink traveled to Iran at the personal invitation of Ahmadinejad. Their government minders took them to the power centers of the Islamic Republic, Tehran and Qom.

In 2009 Jodie Evans and Code Pink led several trips to Gaza, Egypt and Israel to deliver “humanitarian aid” to Hamas and propagandize against Israel. During one trip to Gaza in early June, Hamas gave Code Pink a letter for Obama. On June 19, Jodie Evans visited the White House and met with Buffy Wicks, the deputy of Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett.

Also in June, Jodie Evans visited the White House residence, according to White House records.

After Jodie Evans met with the Taliban in Afghanistan in September 2009, she was videotaped giving a propaganda package from that trip directly to Obama at the aforementioned San Francisco fundraiser.

The next day, Jodie Evans says, Obama’s deputy chief of staff gave her a briefing.

When Obama announced his new Afghanistan strategy in November 2009, White House staff coordinated dissent against Obama’s own war policy with Jodie Evans.

December 2009, bearing a letter of support from Sen. John Kerry, Jodie Evans and Code Pink led over 1000 global leftists to Cairo to deliver “humanitarian aid” to Hamas in Gaza. Joining them were Ayers and Dohrn.

Jodie Evans enlisted the aid of Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak to allow passage into Gaza while Code Pink and their fellow leftists tried to provoke the Egyptian government into violence in the streets of Cairo.

Eventually, around 100 activists were allowed into Gaza in a trip controlled by Hamas. Before the trip, the Hamas terrorists guaranteed the safety of the Code Pink group in Gaza.

In January 2010, Jodie Evans and Code Pink beseeched the jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood to “join us in cleansing our country!” by kidnapping former President and Mrs. Bush, Karl Rove and other members of his administration.

On May 31, Code Pink released a statement demanding that the U.S. condemn and cut off all aid to Israel for what Code Pink called a “terrorist act” by Israeli commandos armed with paintball guns who boarded the terror flotilla ships.

Obama and Jodie Evans share many radical policies, even if they have a few disagreements on the war. Areas where they largely agree include: an anti-American, anti-free enterprise worldview; radical environmentalism (they both worked with Van Jones); marijuana decriminalization; abortion on demand; gays in the military; closing Gitmo; kow-towing to radical Islam; and working with unrepentant terrorists.

Reporters, don’t let Media Matters fool you into not investigating why the president of the United States works with someone with this current history.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink have worked with state sponsors of terrorism including the governments of Saddam Hussein, Cuba’s Castro brothers, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar Assad as well as the anti-American governments of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink have also worked with terrorists including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Sunni terrorists in Iraq and the father of Islamic terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood. They brag about giving cash and humanitarian aid to terrorists who murder Americans, Israelis and free Iraqis.

Bonus tip: Jodie Evans and Code Pink delivered cash and humanitarian aid to “the other side” in Fallujah in late 2004 as U.S. forces were clearing the Iraqi city of al Qaeda community organizers.  Sen. Barbara Boxer reportedly gave a letter of support for Code Pink’s effort. Jodie Evans is a big money donor to Boxer, also.

[Attention reporters: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink, its co-founder Jodie Evans and President Obama. Click here to read earlier articles.]

But let’s just look for one moment at where some of that line of thinking comes from on the other side.  I’ve written previously about the birth of Media Matters as a spawn of Rob Stein’s Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix road show, from which the Democracy Alliance was born.  It’s through this organization from which much of the organization’s funding had come; in recent years, more has been spread out across other progressive organizations, but the funders often remain the same names in most cases.  For instance, The Tides Foundation gave Media Matters and their Action Network over $175,000 just last year.  In earlier years, groups like Montclair, New Jersey-based (hometown of Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert) Schumann Center for Media & Democracy gave the organization $500,000.

The donors’ list is vast and diverse, and we plan to cover that in detail in the future.  So I’ll focus in on one set of donors to Media Matters, which is the Labor Unions.  More specifically, in light of some recent posts regarding the Kenneth Gladney incident, I thought it appropriate to revisit donations made to Media Matters specifically by the Service Employees International Union.

When you look at the timeline of events and the media calendar in general leading up to the Gladney incident last August, it’s difficult not to conclude that there was collaboration amongst White House staff, components of Big Labor, and certain liberal media outlets.  However, we know that all will continue to deny it.

Further, just as the flurry of media activity finally starts to wind down a bit around October last year, this is when SEIU makes three separate donations to Media Matters totaling $50,000, under the classification of “Communications”, according to the SEIU LM-2 report. (In reviewing other LM-2s for several previous years, this appears at least to be the first time that SEIU has donated to Media Matters, and there does not seem to have been another donation recorded since these.)

This is the type of funding that I would question in return to Media Matters.  With their membership being so low and their unfunded pension expenses so high, can the SEIU really afford to be randomly donating funds to an organization like Media Matters?  Perhaps SEIU purchased advertising on Media Matters’ website, but then I’d think it would be categorized as such, as others ad expenses in the LM-2 were.  If not advertising, if not random donations,  then what’s the reason for SEIU having donated these funds?  One could logically conclude that Media Matters performed a service in return.  Only they can answer that.

That said, I can simply present the basic information here and suggest that readers do their own research and draw their own conclusions, in the absence of any explanation from Media Matters.

The timeline follows below.  While it is not all inclusive, it presents a collection of the most pertinent sources at that time.

8/4/2009

• 6:55 AM ET:  White House launchesFlag@whitehouse.gov, its “fishy” snitch program
• 4:45 PM ET:  SEIU Posts the White House snitch program & video in a post titled “Pushing Back on Right-Wing Lies on Reform“
• Margarida Jorge, National Field Director for Health Care for America Now, releases a four page memo instructing members of HCAN to fight “militant right-wing activists” and “teabaggers”.  Even the URL uses the word “fight”:
  http://healthcareforamericanow.org/site/fight

• Back in St. Louis, Congressman Russ Carnahan’s campaign announces Sara Howard as the new director of communications.  Howard was formerly Senior Strategist at Obama for America, National Media Relations Specialist for Anna Burger / SEIU, Communications Director for Senator Mark Dayton, and spokesperson for George Soros funded American Coming Together (ACT).  She also worked with Buffy Wicks while with SEIU on door-to-door campaigns in Missouri.
• 11:09 pm ET:  Media Matters tries to discredit Tea Party protesters by broadly painting the entire movement as “birthers”

8/5/2009

• The DNC releases “Enough of the Mob” ad calling the protesters an “angry mob” and focuses the ad repeatedly on “right-wing birthers” disrupting town hall events.

8/5/2009

12:13 am ET, Media Matters:  Special Report says “public venting” at health care town halls, ignores conservative efforts to pack events

8/6/2009

• 9:53 AM ET, Huffington Post/Sam Stein:  Unions To Take On Conservative Groups Health Care Town Halls; “In a memo sent out on Thursday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney outlined the blueprint for how the union conglomerate would step up recess activities on health care reform… also uses the specter of the infamous 2000 recount “Brooks Brothers” protest to rally its members to the administration’s side.”
• Richard Trumka, then AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer (now President) issues a statement, slams the town halls, calls the events corporate funded and part of the conservative strategy.
• 12:47 pm ET, Media Matters:  AP reported on town hall disruptions, ignored conservative strategy
• Afternoon:  White House aides give Senate Democrats a recess battle plan; David Axelrod and Jim Messina tell senators, “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.” See Politico:  White House to Democrats: ‘Punch back twice as hard’
• Organizing for America sends out mass email for the Bernard Middle School event in St. Louis, MO:

That very evening, the Kenneth Gladney incident happens in St. Louis at the Bernard Middle School event.  A black conservative is beaten by members of SEIU.  I’ll let the guys at 24^th State cover the details of that evening’s outcome.

8/7/2009

7:14 PM ET by Kate Thomas:  Violent tactics at last night’s St. Louis town hall meeting

8/8/2009

10:11 am ET by Media Matters, Eric Boehlert:  Inventing tales of a union ”beating”

And after this date, there are so many more, from SEIU and from Media Matters.  Simply type in this Google search to retrieve a relatively thorough list.

As you’ll see from Google’s timeline, October is when the activity calmed down.

Seems to me that -hypothetically speaking, of course – if there were any sort of service arrangement in place, October would have been the most appropriate time for SEIU to make its payment installments and thank Media Matters for a job well done.  (That’s of course before anyone knew things would be heating up again once the police report would become available in November)

Hm.  I wonder if these types of payment installments are regulated under the financial reform bill?

]]> http://biggovernment.com/libertychick/2010/05/18/did-seiu-pay-media-matters-to-cover-up-the-gladney-beating/feed/ 387 http://biggovernment.com/mrichmond/2010/04/27/buffy-wicks-departs-white-house-joins-axelrods-old-media-firm/ http://biggovernment.com/mrichmond/2010/04/27/buffy-wicks-departs-white-house-joins-axelrods-old-media-firm/#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:17:40 +0000 Morgen Richmond http://biggovernment.com/?p=112174 Buffy Wicks, remember, was the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement who was implicated (along with Yosi Sergant) in orchestrating a propaganda campaign for health care reform with the National Endowment for the Arts. Sergant ended up resigning over this incident, but I believe “Buffy the Integrity Slayer” was more to blame.

Anyway, I’m not sure how this news slipped through the cracks but according to this press release posted by Politico on April 4, Buffy has joined David Axelrod’s old firm, AKPD Message and Media:

AKPD Message and Media today announced that political strategist Buffy Wicks has joined the firm as a vice president. Wicks will join AKPD media buyer Debra Schommer Klein in the firm’s West Coast operation, located in Los Angeles, California.

A veteran of the Obama presidential campaign and White House, Wicks will advise AKPD’s clients on matters of campaign strategy, field organizing, and grassroots mobilization.

“Buffy is one of the most respected political organizers in the country, and she knows what it takes to build a strong and successful relationship with campaign supporters,” said AKPD partner John Del Cecato. “As AKPD continues to serve our local, state, and federal clients across the nation, we’re thrilled to add someone with Buffy’s expertise to our firm.”

Curiously, Wick’s profile is still listed on the constantly-updated White House web site, and I can find no other reports of her departure. So perhaps she is pulling double-duty? Wouldn’t that be a story!

Well, based on this subsequent paragraph from the AKPD press release, I see no reason why she wouldn’t be able to continue her White House duties while concurrently serving as a paid media flack with AKPD: (emphasis added)

Wicks served most recently as the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement for President Barack Obama. Her portfolio included outreach to the progressive community on key presidential initiatives like health reform, financial regulation, and job creation. She led President Obama’s efforts in the area of national service, and was the architect of both the Renew America Together service day activities held during Obama’s Inauguration and the United We Serve initiative launched in 2009.

Apparently in the New Era of Accountability and Transparency, “public engagement” entails the White House engaging with the only segment of the public they give a rat’s ass about – the “progressive community”. This is not only wholly unsurprising, it confirms what I and many others have been claiming for months: that the White House Office of Public Engagement has been run exclusively as an instrument for partisan political organization.

While anti-lobbying laws exist to prevent federal employees from partisan lobbying at taxpayer expense, White House staff are traditionally granted a lot of leeway when it comes to advancing their policy and legislative agenda. But this shameless partisanship on the part of the Office of Public Engagement – an organization whose stated purpose is “making government inclusive” – further demonstrates why this Administration has been just as polarizing, if not more so, than any others that have come before it.

We truly did elect the Organizer-in-Chief to the White House.

The name of Obama funder and terrorist sympathizer Jodie Evans turns up twice in recently released White House visitor logs.

Buffy Wicks, center, 2008 photo by St. Louis Argus

The logs show that a ‘Jodie Evans’ met with Buffy Wicks, the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement (OPE) on June 19, 2009. The meeting came just days after Evans’ group, Code Pink, visited the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza from May 28th to June 14th and was given a letter by Hamas to deliver to President Barack Obama.

On December 30th, the Obama administration released 25,000 records of visitors to the White House complex from the latter half of September. Mixed in those records were visits from other dates, including two by ‘Jodie Evans’ in June.

One visit is listed as a two-person meeting with Buffy Wicks in Room 146 in the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB). The meeting was scheduled at 19:02, June 16th for 10:30, June 19th by Ashley Baia, Staff Assistant with OPE. The meeting end time is recorded in the default setting of 23:59 for that day.

The record slots are blank for arrival, departure and cancellation notations, as are many of the records for visitors. There is no record of who was the second person in the meeting between ‘Jodie Evans’ and Buffy Wicks.

A week later, on June 24th, ‘Jodie Evans’ is listed as part of a group of 183 people given a “10 AM STAFF TOUR” that the log says met in the “RESIDENCE” in “WH.”

The log shows that visit by ‘Jodie Evans’ was scheduled five minutes after the tour began and was set by “VISITORS OFFICE.”

The June 24th appointment was apparently made by ‘Max Palevsky,’ a name shared by Jodie Evans’ ex-husband and current partner (it’s a California thing), on June 22nd at 17:53.

Taliban sympathizer Jodie Evans and President Barack Obama, Oct. 15, 2009

Like Jodie Evans, Max Palevsky was a bundler and donor for Obama’s presidential campaign. He was a co-host of Obama’s breakthrough Hollywood fundraiser in February 2007 along with Jodie Evans and the Dreamworks Trio.

When names of controversial associates of Obama and his administration have turned up in the visitor logs, the White House has denied that it was the controversial person and just a coincidence that similarly named people were on the list–including  ‘Jeremiah Wright’, ‘Bill Ayers’ and ‘Malik Shabazz’.

In last week’s holiday data dump, the name ‘Bertha Lewis’ turned up. The White House went on the record to deny that it was ACORN chief Bertha Lewis who visited the Obama residence in the White House. ACORN’s Bertha Lewis also denied it was her on the list.  In Big Journalism’s debut on Jan. 6 (Big Government’s sister publication), Andrew Breitbart reported about his confrontation with ACORN’s Bertha Lewis regarding her name on the White House Visitor Log.  She again denied it was her.

The White House will have a harder time denying that it was Obama funder and terrorist sympathizer Jodie Evans who twice visited the White House in June.

Last month, Jodie Evans wrote about her working with Obama’s Office of Public Engagement to coordinate communications undermining public support for Obama’s recently announced Af-Pak war strategy.

Since Obama was elected president, Jodie Evans (and Code Pink) has met with the Taliban, Hamas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and President Obama, raising questions as to whether she is acting as a conduit for the terrorist groups to or from the president.

Jodie Evans has been quite outspoken in her her sympathies for terrorist groups that target the United States and our allies.

In a reprise of Code Pink’s aid for ‘the other side’ in Fallujah five years ago, Jodie Evans helped deliver ‘humanitarian aid’ to Hamas-controlled Gaza this past week. The trip was Code Pink’s seventh “delegation” to Hamas-controlled Gaza this year.

Jodie Evans was joined in her efforts aiding Hamas last week by Obama’s Hyde Park, Chicago friends and neighbors Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn–both former Weather Underground terrorists who waged war against the United States.

Are they circling the wagons?  The Democrat-party-front-group-acting Media Matters for America took great delight in hectoring Big Government over its report on ‘Bertha Lewis’ visiting the Obama White House.

Media Matters has ignored BG’s articles about Obama and Jodie Evans so far. Let’s see if they also try to knock this story down about Jodie Evans’ visits to Obama’s White House.

Some editors told me they were not immediately aware of the Acorn videos on Fox, YouTube and a new conservative Web site called BigGovernment.com.  When the Senate voted to cut off all federal funds to Acorn, there was not a word in the newspaper, although a report in the Caucus blog that day covered the action. When the New York City Council froze all its funding for Acorn and the Brooklyn district attorney opened a criminal investigation, there was still nothing.

Well Mr. Hoyt, welcome to the world of the “undernews” – Mickey Kaus’s apt word for the news that everyone in the blogosphere knows about but, apparently, no one who gets his news strictly from the Times, other major newspapers, the newsweeklies, and most of the networks has the slightest inkling of.

10. “Fistgate”

Why it’s important: Because Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” Kevin Jennings, appears to be the kind of guy parents used to warn their kids about, and his elevation by Obama to a position of national prominence shows how far and how fast the culture has changed.  Jennings’s views – alien to most of America, but perfectly normal in his Harvard-educated social circle – are only now beginning to sink in, as his at least tacit approval of teaching various gay sexual practices to children has come to light.

Why the MSM ignored the story: Are you kidding?  And get branded as “homophobic?”  Far better to simply mainstream homosexuality in a non-judgmental way,  which has been one of the goals of the The New York Times for years now.   For a time after his appointment, Jennings appeared to be on the ropes over his 1988 counseling of a teenage boy regarding a sexual relationship with an older man.  But the boy turned out to be 16 at the time, not 15, so that’s okay then. (For a defense of Jennings, such as it is, go here:

9. Van Jones

Why it’s important: Because a self-identified communist, “Free Mumia” radical and 9/11 “Truther” nut became, however briefly, Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar,” a bogus position addressing an imaginary issue that turned out to be just another way to get Hussein’s camel’s nose under the tent in the president’s continuing end-run around the Constitution.

Why the MSM ignored the story: Are you kidding?  Jones is exactly the kind of target the MSM isn’t going to go near: black, articulate, persuasive – and absolutely hostile to the kind of country America used to be.  Fundamental change!  What’s not to like?  Which is why the Huffington Post readers were stunned when Glenn Beck finally got Jones’ scalp.  Oh well…

8. Anti-Americanism as official State Department policy

Why it’s important: Because  Foggy Bottom – long regarded by sensible policy-makers as “Indian country” – has now fully embraced its inner Kim Philby and has gone completely over to the other side.  Yes, an institution so penetrated by enemy operatives that it makes porn star Jenna Jameson look like Bernadette of Lourdes, came down squarely on the side of the mullahs as protesters battled the evil Iranian regime during the recent “elections” and, via its lapdogs at CNN, barked at the Hondurans about an illegal “coup,” as they, perfectly constitutionally, removed a Chavez-wannabe from office and, in an orderly transition, replaced him and then held free elections.

Why the MSM ignored/distorted the story: Are you kidding? The CNN en Español correspondent on the case was named Krupskaia Alis, “Krupskaya” being the famously randy wife of you-know-who; they don’t call it the “Chavez News Network” south of the border for nothing!  (Remind me to tell you my favorite Soviet-era joke about “Lenin in Warsaw” some day.) In lockstep, the rest of the media parroted the White House party line that what occurred in Honduras was a “coup” — apparently the only word they could think of to describe a “constitutional regime change.”   Bravo to the Hondurans for telling the State Department to go pound sand.

7.  The National Endowment for the Propagation of Obama

Why it’s important: The White House and the National Endowment for the Arts were recorded during a conference call encouraging pro-Obama arts types to create “art” on the theme of health care (among other issues) at a time when health care reform legislation was heading toward hot-button status. This shameless attempt at propaganda was abruptly halted after the appearance of the story on Big Hollywood, and the revelations led to the resignation of the NEA Communications Director, Yosi Sargent, and the issuance of conduct guidelines by the White House to deal with the “appearance” issues of the call.

Why the MSM ignored the story: Are you kidding? There was a direct connection to Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s top aides, since Sergant’s boss, Buffy Wicks, reports to Jarrett, the jewel of Shiraz, Iran, who’s a major player in Obama’s Chicago mafia.  And you know how disinclined the MSM is to harm a Democratic administration, especially while their legs are still tingling.  Luckily, Sergant’s forced resignation gave the media a perfect excuse to roll over, go back to sleep, and not cover the story.  La Buffy, meanwhile, could not believe her good fortune:  “I’m actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda.” Smile, Buffy — you’re a model public servant!

6. Andy Stern and the SEIU

Why it’s important: Return with us now to those glorious days of yesteryear, when the labor movement ruled the roost and “collective bargaining” was often negotiated at the point of a gun, one way or the other.  It was a time when labor and capital were at each other’s throats, and every right-thinking, soon-to-be-the-parent-of a red diaper baby knew whose side the Engels were on.  Because, if your cause is just, it’s OK to beat the crap out of Kenneth Gladney, a conservative African-American selling patriotic gear, and call him a “nigger.”  After all, in the ongoing struggle between labor and capital, the ends justify the means, and if a black guy gets in the way of Hope and Change, tough.

Why the MSM ignored the story: Are you kidding?  Under Andy Stern – the most frequent visitor to the Obama White House – the Service Employees International Union has gone from “who?” to the most powerful muscle operation in the country.  Recruiting heavily from the minority community – which he uses as human shields, testifying by their presence to his good motives – Stern has cleverly positioned his collection of labor gangsters as the champions of the Little Guy, the better to fly under the radar of the MSM, which is more concerned the with the “narrative” than, you know, the facts.   Following in the footsteps of such great “labor leaders” as Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, the new Stern Gang bids fair to surpass their achievements.  But he might want to avoid their fate:

This Afternoon: Part Two