Astro-turfing campaigns can generate big money, and ACORN’s lucrative protest-for-profit program is nothing new. As I note in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, ACORN has acquired great expertise in manufacturing so-called grassroots protests.

Left-wing billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler, the founders of World Savings Bank, gave ACORN affiliates close to $11 million to manufacture mobs to protest their competition in subprime mortgage lending. The United Federation of Teachers paid ACORN $500,000 to create a spontaneous uprising against charter schools in Manhattan.

The SEIU-funded Working Families Party, a front group for ACORN, placed a want ad on Craigslist dated Sept. 26. The ad indicates that WFP was recruiting activists to carry out “direct action,” leftist argot for a variety of activities aimed at forcing sociopolitical change.

The line between direct action and violent terrorism can become blurry. Extreme forms of direct action can lead to bodily injury and sometimes death. The labor movement is no stranger to assault and killings. Left-wing activists David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin participated in an attack on an armored car that left two police officers and a security guard dead. Two anarchists tried to disrupt the 2008 GOP convention with Molotov cocktails. The eco-terrorist Sea Shepherd Conservation Society admits both to attacking whaling ships with acid and sinking them.

WFP’s ad is titled, “FIGHT TO HOLD WALLSTREET [sic] ACCOUNTABLE NOW! MAKE A DIFFERNENCE [sic] GET PAID!” It states:

The WFP is seeking immediate hires.

You must be an energetic communicator, with a passion for social and economic justice.

Only outgoing, articulate dedicated, determined candidates will be considered for the positions.

For those candidates that qualify WFP offers substantial paid-training provided by senior leadership, on varied issues such as: advocacy, public speaking, mobilizing, fundraising, networking and organizing. We invest in passionate people with excellent communication skills and a full benefits package is offered to those candidates that qualify. In addition, there is opportunity for advancement and travel to our satellite chapters and out of state affiliates.

This is not a policy job! Through direct action you will be shaping NY state politics for the next 20 years.” [emphasis added]

As previously reported, WFP has been involved in organizing the Occupy Wall Street protests since the beginning.

As radical journalist Laura Flanders reported, WFP organizer Nelini Stamp has “been here since day one and she is part of the organizing team and the outreach team that has managed to bridge the distance between that first day and this day and between the grassroots folks here and the labor movement.” Stamp said the protests are aimed at “trying to change the capitalist system” and bringing “revolutionary changes to the states.”

WFP organizer Matthew Cain also acknowledged the party’s involvement on Oct. 5th and helpfully provided a photograph of party staffers bearing a blue and white WFP banner during a march in lower Manhattan. Across from Foley Square,

several WFP field staff were standing on the steps. For some of the staffers, it was their first time at the square, but for many others they had already spent nights sleeping in the park. Even those who have been there for two weeks or more have not seen their spirits diminished – they’re every bit as committed as they were when they first showed up.

Of course WFP executive director Dan Cantor, a longtime ACORN operative, is pleased with Occupy Wall Street so far. Cantor told supporters in an email that “the spirit of Wisconsin and Tahrir Square is alive and well in New York City.”

Nowadays WFP goes to great lengths to try to convince onlookers that it is separate from ACORN, the disgraced Saul Alinsky-inspired activist group. The shell corporation that ran the 370-plus affiliate strong ACORN network filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last November, but its state chapters changed their names and continue to operate. The vote-manufacturing nonprofit Project Vote, which used to employ Barack Obama as an organizer, is still in business. So is ACORN Housing, which changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers for America.

But the Working Families Party is ACORN. The minor political party shares an office address with ACORN a mile away from the Brooklyn Bridge. Among the party’s co-founders are ACORN’s former national chief organizer, Bertha Lewis. Her former right-hand man, Democratic National Committee executive director Patrick Gaspard, formerly an SEIU 1199 official and Obama White House political director, also goes way back with the party.

WFP’s confusing, ACORN-like organizational structure has been known to frustrate even the most dedicated investigators, allowing the party to keep some distance from ACORN.

Through the party’s multiple arms, WFP enjoys the “benefits of a political party (legitimacy in voters’ minds, ballot line), a non-profit (tax-exemptions, uncapped donation limits and tax deductions) and a for-profit (no disclosure requirements, ability to collect fees backed by taxpayer-supported matching funds from candidates),” notes Edward-Isaac Dovere of New York’s City Hall News.

The party has sister WFP-branded parties in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont. Like ACORN, WFP advocates more government spending, higher taxes, universal government-run healthcare, campaign finance restrictions, free universal higher education, rent control, same-sex marriage, an immigration amnesty for illegal aliens, and “greening” the economy by creating heavily subsidized union jobs in the energy sector.

Meanwhile, new front groups created by ACORN are also deeply involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. They include New York Communities for Change, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Action United (Pennsylvania), Organize Now (Florida), and New England United for Justice (Massachusetts).

The protests, which have spread to several large U.S. cities, are part of what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke calls an “anti-banking jihad.” ACORN allies are also involved in the protests, which aim to destabilize the nation’s financial system. SEIU board member Stephen Lerner said he wants to “bring down the stock market” through a campaign of disruption. He said last week that SEIU plans to terrorize bank executives at their homes.

With paid professional assistance from ACORN, Lerner’s work has become that much easier.

(This article was originally published by Front Page Magazine.)

* * * * *

Americans need 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.

The protests, which have spread to several other large U.S. cities, are part of what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke calls an “anti-banking jihad.”

Working Families Party (WFP) organizer Nelini Stamp has “been here since day one and she is part of the organizing team and the outreach team that has managed to bridge the distance between that first day and this day and between the grassroots folks here and the labor movement,” Flanders said at the protest in lower Manhattan.

We are “actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today because it’s not working for any of us,” Stamp told Flanders in an interview. Demonstrators are asking “how do we really reform and bring revolutionary changes to the states?”

As I note in my book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, the WFP is part and parcel of ACORN. In 1998 the party was officially recognized in New York State. WFP’s headquarters is at the same address as ACORN on Nevins Street in Brooklyn. WFP’s executive director is longtime ACORN operative Dan Cantor.

One of the SEIU-funded party’s co-founders is ACORN’s former national chief organizer, Bertha Lewis. Democratic National Committee executive director Patrick Gaspard also contributed to the creation of the party and sat on its board. Gaspard was a political director in the Obama White House and is a former SEIU executive. Gaspard was also an organizer for the radical New Party in the early 1990s. That party’s membership consisted largely of individuals from the Democratic Socialists of America, SEIU, and ACORN. The party endorsed Barack Obama when he ran for the Illinois State Senate.

WFP takes credit for raising taxes both in the city and state of New York and for pressuring the state’s congressional delegation to oppose Social Security reforms. The party has sister WFP-branded parties in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont.

Working with its radical friends at SEIU, WFP advocates more government spending, higher taxes, universal government-run health care, campaign finance restrictions, free universal higher education, oppressive rent control, same-sex marriage, amnesty for illegal aliens, “greening” the economy by creating heavily subsidized union jobs in the energy sector, and mandatory paid sick leave for all workers.

In 2009 Connecticut WFP sent busloads of thugs to confront American International Group Inc. (AIG) executives at their homes. The protests were calculated to intimidate executives who had been receiving death threats after the company reportedly paid out bonuses using taxpayer bail-out funds.

ACORN allies are also involved in protests aimed at destabilizing the nation’s financial system.

SEIU board member Stephen Lerner has vowed to do his part to drive a stake through the heart of capitalism. Lerner says he wants to “bring down the stock market” through a campaign of disruption. He said last week that SEIU plans to terrorize bank executives at their homes.

Last year George Goehl, executive director of Chicago-based National People’s Action, said that “the banking crisis” was “the next big thing,” and “the way to build a big economic justice movement in this country.”

Meanwhile, ACORN’s new front groups are also deeply involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In Pennsylvania, Action United said it plans to participate in Occupy Pittsburgh on Oct. 15. Organize Now will be occupying Orlando, Florida, on the same day.

New York Communities for Change (NYCC), led by longtime ACORN lobbyist Jon Kest, is one of the major protest groups leading the demonstrations in lower Manhattan. Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment is leading the Occupy L.A. protests.

New England United for Justice, which is headed by former ACORN national president Maude Hurd, is participating in the related “Take Back Boston” protests in Massachusetts, according to watchdog group Judicial Watch. Hurd is a close political ally of Boston mayor Thomas Menino.

The influence of ACORN on the Wall Street protests should have been clear by the unhinged nature of much of the demonstrations. The question is really only whether the radical outfit will push the mob into more and more extreme behavior. Determining the answer to this question will likely not be pleasant.

(This is a modified version of an article that was first published in Front Page Magazine).

* * * * *

Americans need 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.

It seems like a reasonable question to ask. SEIU is President Obama’s favorite union and ACORN is his favorite community organizing outfit.

The campaign, engineered by SEIU board member Stephen Lerner, is designed, in Lerner’s words, “to disrupt and create uncertainty for capital, for how corporations operate … there are actually extraordinary things that we could do right now that would start to destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement.”

According to White House visitor logs, “Stephen Lerner” paid four visits to the Obama White House. On two of those visits he apparently met with then-White House political director Patrick Gaspard, a former executive vice president at the militant SEIU Local 1199. Gaspard, a longtime ACORN operative and Alinskyite, is now executive director of the DNC where he oversees the odious Organizing for America project.

I wonder what they talked about. Hmmmm.

Obama has named SEIU officials to senior posts in his administration, including former SEIU lawyer Craig Becker whom Obama sleazily recess-appointed to the National Labor Relations Board. Becker is a kind of fascist, or more precisely, a syndicalist. He thinks no one should have the right not to join a union: people should only get to choose which union to join. (Incidentally, Becker lied to a congressional committee when he denied having ties to ACORN.)

Earlier this year Lerner said that after consulting his allies he decided that JPMorgan Chase would be “a really good company to hate.” If leftists really believe capitalism is in a “transformative stage,” they “need to confront this in a serious way and develop a real ability to put a boot in the wheel.”

Not coincidentally, Obama has had a falling out with JPMorgan Chase. Although some once described the bank’s chairman Jamie Dimon as “Obama’s favorite banker,” their bromance is on the rocks now that Obama habitually demonizes bankers as “fat cats.”

The SEIU/ACORN war against JPMorgan Chase has recently kicked into high gear.

ACORN’s newly renamed chapters in New York (New York Communities for Change), California (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), Missouri (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment), and Washington state (Organization United for Reform) make no secret about their participation in the subversive scheme.

To recap what I wrote earlier this week, Lerner’s plan echoes the infamous Cloward-Piven Strategy of orchestrated crisis (which I write about in my new book Subversion Inc.). He urges crippling attacks against the banks to bring them to their knees. He calls upon “under water” homeowners facing foreclosure to refuse to leave their homes. “If you could double [the number of homeowners refusing to leave their homes], you would … put banks on the edge of insolvency again.”

Small-c communist Frances Fox Piven said the same thing last year. She urged delinquent mortgage holders to stay in their homes for as long as possible without paying in order to bring the system crashing down. She told videographer Kyle Olson:

But if millions of people … refuse to go along with foreclosure proceedings, and refuse to pay off those mortgages that are under water, that will be enormous pressure on the banks. And if they do it in the form of a social movement, if they do it with pride and audacity, if they do it with a sense of self-righteousness, the political leaders of this country will not be able to round them up.

Lerner’s plan calls for banks that don’t pay their “fair share” in taxes or that refuse to slash interest rates and forgive mortgage principal to be targeted. It also calls for state and local governments to stop doing business with such banks.

If you’re a radical socialist like Obama, what’s there not to love about the plan?

* * * * *

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

Judicial Watch discovered that the president is flouting the will of Congress by surreptitiously giving federal taxpayer money to ACORN, his former employer and legal client. This is the first such grant to surface this year but more are certain to follow.

Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave a $79,819 grant to a Florida office of the largest branch of the ACORN tree, the massive conglomerate known as ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC). AHC filed papers last year legally changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). Despite the nifty new moniker, it’s the same old corrupt, antisocial organization.

As I wrote in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, ACORN Housing grew out of crime: trespassing. It emerged from a 1982 squatting campaign in which ACORN built a squatters’ tent city behind the White House. Rampaging ACORN activists break in and illegally occupy property already owned by others – and your tax dollars subsidize this criminal activity.

The secretary of HUD is Shaun Donovan. Donovan and ACORN are tight. (Donovan and ACORN’s then-chief organizer Bertha Lewis are seen in the above screen grab from footage shot for the documentary film Battle for Brooklyn.)

“Perhaps no administration official has had more interaction with ACORN than” Donovan, the New York Times has reported. Reinforcing the newspaper’s point, ACORN’s Bertha Lewis praised the HUD secretary. “We grew to respect him, and he grew to respect us,” she said.

Roll Call said Lewis admitted “ACORN has friends in high places for the first time in a long time.” She acknowledged “that she has particularly good relationships with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and with Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director.”

Donovan’s close ties to ACORN might help to explain why the cabinet member went into overdrive two years ago publicly distancing himself from the group. That’s around the time Big Government began promoting the undercover brothels-for-pedophiles videos that showed ACORN employees giving two conservative activists helpful advice on how to break the law without getting caught.

No doubt Donovan was personally involved in making sure ACORN landed this new grant.

Moving along, it needs to be said that the $79,819 HUD grant that has gone to ACORN funds a political agitation and indoctrination program. Saul Alinsky himself couldn’t have devised better euphemisms than the ones HUD uses to describe the program:

Education and Outreach Initiative grants (EOI) – HUD awarded $6.8 million to organizations that educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws. Groups will also conduct fair lending workshops, community meetings, and individual counseling activities focused on homeowners at risk for discrimination.

According to HUD, the grant money came out of fiscal 2010 appropriations.

That’s a big problem.

As I reported previously, in 2009 Congress passed four separate appropriations measures that contained language blocking federal funds from flowing to ACORN during federal fiscal year 2010, which ran from Oct. 1, 2009 through Sept. 30, 2010. All four of the laws prevent ACORN and its affiliated groups from receiving federal taxpayer dollars.

The funding prohibition in Public Law 111-117 (PDF) applies specifically to HUD. It spells out in pretty clear terms that ACORN shouldn’t be getting any government funding. Let’s see just how clearly it spells it out:

Division A – Section 418. None of the funds made available under this Act or any prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations. [p. 80 of PDF]

Division B – Section 534. None of the funds made available under this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries. [p. 125 of PDF]

Division E – Section 511. None of the funds made available in this division or any other division in this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries. [p. 279 of PDF]

Yet despite the ban, President Obama, who worked for ACORN as an employee and as the group’s lawyer, found it in his heart to hand over $79,819 of your money to his thug friends at ACORN.

*  *  *  *  *

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, Machiavellian pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.

Buy the book at Amazon. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

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.”

I’m about to celebrate a very important birthday myself, Matt.  On November 13^th, I turn 41 ! I know, I can’t believe it either.

If there’s something you want to give me for my birthday that’s going to really cheer me up, please tell the recently departing Working Families Party co-chair Bertha Lewis to stop referring to constitutional conservatism as “McCarthyism”.  And while you’re at it, could you please ask your friend, President Obama not to call American citizens “enemies” simply for not belonging to his political party?

I think maybe it’s time to step away from Soroswood and start paying attention to the real world.

Perhaps we need to remind folks about the Working Families Party.

Originally founded by ACORN, the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the Communication Workers of America (CWA), the Working Families Party serves as a coalition of organizers and activists for what it claims are social and economic justice causes.  In states where it is legally permitted, WFP also sponsors candidates via what’s called “fusion voting“.  Instead of splitting the vote with a third-party, fusion voting allows groups to endorse a candidate under a different banner.

So, in reality, WFP enables their coalition’s endorsed candidates to get listed on the ballot – twice.  I’m sure that’s not intentionally misleading for voters at all (eye roll).

While WFP lobbies for a “free public education for all”, its interests are really focused more on those of the militant labor unions with which they are allied, not the genuine interests of working families.  Simply watch the documentary, “The Lottery,” and you’ll see members of the Working Families Party at their finest.  As successful charter schools are lifting minorities and low-income families up to a whole new educational level that never would have existed through “free public school” in their communities otherwise, WFP and its union allies like the United Federation of Teachers instead shout them down and threaten them.  WFP’s allies of course vehemently oppose both private and public charter schools, because those facilities don’t submit to the commands of labor unions.  The charter school featured in the film is of course focused on the well-being of the children, not of the labor unions.  Union bosses don’t take well to that.

Former Working Families Party co-chair and NY state co-chair Bertha Lewis was also once the CEO and Chief Organizer of the mighty ACORN, before it disbanded from its national brand name to a multitude of local and statewide affiliates under different names (thanks to those infamous prostitution tapes).

Ms. Lewis departed from the WFP organization in February this year, in the wake of the federal investigation of its for-profit company, Data and Field Services over claims it was using their company to skirt around the city’s stringent campaign finance laws.  In the end, the feds decided not to file any charges against WFP; however, the investigation resulted in the organization’s restructuring to create firewalls between the for-profit company from the rest of WFP.

Let’s also not forget the sordid story behind real estate mogul Bruce Ratner of Forest City Ratner.  The infamous Atlantic Yards project in NY is a multi-year long story of buyoffs, intimidation and corruption, not to mention the audacity of a massive land grab.  Bertha Lewis and the WFP, initially opposed to the land grab because of their concerns about the “gentrification” of Brooklyn, quickly turncoated on their Brooklyn neighbors as soon as Ratner offered Lewis a $1.5 million bailout and a 50/50 deal on housing in his future high-end condos.  (The Atlantic Yards Report is the go-to source on this never-ending saga).

Also a notable personality associated with the Working Families party you may recognize – White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard.  While the liberal media once did all it could to deny that Gaspard ever had any relation whatsoever to the corrupt WFP or ACORN, the truth is, the evidence says otherwise.

Harassment, intimidation, corruption, race baiting, union pandering, back-room deals.  That’s progressive, all right.

And so, Matt Damon, as we remember one of the voices of the Working Families Party,  I leave you with this final word.  Brought to you by none other than Client Number Nine.

“Progressive values.  That’s what the Working Families Party is all about:  Progressive values.”

Yeah, Matt.  Let’s keep that change alive.

And sadly, rank-and-file teachers, who probably aren’t like the leftists that run the national unions, don’t speak up or take their dues back.  So they perpetuate the problem.

So it was a big disturbing – but completely predictable - to see the American Federation of Teachers recent convention used as a platform for NAACP president Ben Jealous to launch his tirade against the Tea Party, which culminated with a condemnation of it at his own convention.

So as this group of folks who drink tea and apparently are very gainfully employed according to all the polls say they’re going to take this country back, I suggest we take them very seriously.  ‘Cause they will take us right back to the 18th Century if we let them. (applause)

And my white dad would remind my black mama that the 18th Century wasn’t that good for anybody. … We have got to reacquaint these tea drinkers with volunteers who drink coffee.

Is this what the rank-and-file public school teacher believes?  Is this was they want to fund?

This isn’t the first time the AFT sided with questionable people.  According to Socialist Action Newspaper, now-AFT president Randi Weingarten participated in marches, along with the Black Panthers and other black nationalist groups, against the New York Police Department because of the shooting of Sean Bell.  The article also says SEIU provided many of the marshals along the march route.

Paranthetically, who was the go-to person for the local SEIU chapter?  Patrick Gaspard, now political director of the White House.

In his AFT speech, Jealous also connected their 2008 work electing Obama to what is currently happening today.

…If we don’t pull ourselves back together, push forward with all our might and make sure the economy of this country works for all of us, then all those voters that we registered in 2008, all those people that we asked to take a leap of faith two years ago and really vote their best intentions will become discouraged and we’ll lose a generation.

America’s public school employees should be embarrassed that they’re forking over hard-earned money to fund such causes.  But are they?  Because their silence allows the teachers unions to continue acting like the politically-driven, power-hungry radicals they’ve become.