SEIU leaders Andy Stern and Thomas Balanoff (DSA member) joined with Jesse Jackson and others, demanding that members of the American Bankers Association stop using taxpayer bailout funds to lobby against Progressive banking “reforms.”

From the SEIU website:

Thousands of Taxpayers to Converge on Bankers Convention to Demand Banks Stop Lobbying Against Financial Reform

Chicago, IL–In the largest taxpayer mobilization since the economic crisis began, thousands of Americans from 20 cities will converge on the American Bankers Association (ABA) conference in Chicago from October 25 to 27 to demand banks stop spending millions in taxpayer dollars to lobby against reforms that would protect Americans from the next economic crisis.

Below are some clips which have been posted to YouTube.

Something to keep in mind while watching these clips:  SEIU is in debt to some of these very same bankers to the tune of more than $100 million, creating the appearance of a potential conflict of interests.

These protesters are being bussed in (carbon footprint??) from as far away as North Carolina, and are organized by the ACORN’s red shirt brigade.

Here is Andy Stern revving up the crowd before marching on the gathering of bankers.

Here the angry mob (at least by Pelosi standards) takes over the Wells Fargo lobby.

It’s odd to see the ACORN/SEIU Pitchfork Brigade protesting the very banks they at one time helped usher into the sub-prime market, with the help of Uncle Sam.

From a 2000 report published by Fannie Mae, highlighting successful case studies of banks and community groups reaching the sub-prime market:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

As of 1998, the nation’s largest originator and second-largest servicer of residential mortgages. Vertically integrated mortgage subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Company

The nation’s top mortgage originator to minorities and LMI consumers. Offers integrated initiatives to reach underserved populations and neighborhoods.

Also from the same report, praise for ACORN and Wells Fargo subsidiary Norwest:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Nonprofit-facilitated instruction
(often with lender partnership)

BofA partners in counseling with National Council of La Raza and other community groups. People’s refers home seekers to the counseling services offered by ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)

Telecounseling

Potential borrowers can work with a counselor from the Norwest Mortgage HomeBuyers Club via telephone and mail contact. Countrywide’s HACC provides centralized homeownership counseling via a toll-free number.

Perhaps ACORN and SEIU just want a closer and more profitable relationship with Wells Fargo, but can you really blame Wells Fargo for wanting nothing to do with ACORN and their friends?

The larger issue here is that ACORN and SEIU, aided by the government, coerced banks into making risky loans by threatening bad PR in the form of embarrassing marches and campaigns accusing them of greed and racism. Now that the money has run out, ACORN and SEIU are protesting anyway, calling them greedy racists. You can’t win for losing!

The potential irony here is if ACORN is using government money to lobby on behalf of Progressive reforms by organizing these marches. What exactly would be the difference between that and what ACORN claims to be outraged about?

More video from this series of protests can be found here.

 
Internet Service Providers—the ones who have actually invested in the architecture and infrastructure that enables us all to access the internet—have long been opposed to net neutrality, as have conservatives and libertarians concerned about maintaining free markets and promoting innovation and quality service.  
 
But, with concerns that the FCC might now act to push net neutrality through, some voices less traditionally associated with opposition to the policy are speaking out regarding the proposed rulemaking, too.  In fact, a number of Democrats and groups typically aligned with the left—the online component of which has long treated net neutrality as a top three policy objective—seem to be feeling less than warm and fuzzy about increased government intervention with regard to the internet.

 Those groups include the Communications Workers of America labor union, which in a letter to Chairman Genachowski from Thursday, raised concerns regarding the impact that the FCC’s rulemaking could have on job creation at a time of 10 percent unemployment.  Groups like the Asian American Justice Center, National Council of La Raza, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Urban League, keen to avoid a widening of the “digital divide,” also voiced concerns in a letter to the FCC dated October 13.
 
Democratic Governors, including Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe and North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue, have urged caution with regard to the issue. Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s Democratic Gov. Brad Henry wrote to Genachowski earlier this month to tout the positive effects of his state’s model of “light or no regulation for landline, broadband and wireless services.”  
 
Last Thursday, 72 Democratic members of the House of Representatives, also in a letter to Genachowski, wrote that “it is our strong belief that continued progress in expanding the reach and capabilities of broadband networks will require the Commission to reiterate, and not repudiate, its historic commitment to competition, private investment and a restrained regulatory approach.”  
 
A restrained regulatory approach net neutrality would not be, of course.  Opponents of the policy rightly argue that its implementation would stifle innovation and impact service—a little bit the way that a government takeover of health care would with regard to that industry.  Also like health care, the internet is something that most Americans are unable and unwilling to go without.  Turning the internet into the functional equivalent of the US Postal Service (a communications system in which Genachowski takes a deep, and arguably ironic, personal interest) is the wrong answer to preserving it in a viable, useful form.  
 
Of course, Genachowski should know this.  Here’s hoping some of his fellow FCC commissioners bear it in mind before going along with their Chairman’s big government, overtly leftist and doomed-to-fail scheme.

In short, ACORN or not, the 2010 census will be an organizing tool for the American Left.

Here is a partial list of other census partners, according to the Census website:

AARP

A. Phillip Randolph Institute

AFL-CIO

American Federation of Government Employees

AFSCME

American Federation of Teachers

Coalition of Labor Union Women

Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

Community Action Partnership

Families USA

International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Labor Council for the Latin American Advancement

League of Women Voters of the United States

National Black Justice Coalition

National Council of La Raza

National Education Association

Pride at Work

Rainbow Push Coalition

Service Employees International Union

Southern Coalition for Social Justice

United Workers Workforce Alliance

My problem all along is that overtly political organizations, say SEIU or ACORN, would be out collecting sensitive information on Americans.  What would stop them from zapping off one copy of personal information for themselves as they submit it to the Census Bureau?  The federal government We will essentially be paying organized labor and “social justice” organizations to recruit new members.

With such a tight grip on the Census by the Obama administration and its allies, one wonders what the end result will be and if it can be trusted.