The Republicans are going to suddenly have that seat at the table, now that the Progressives can’t ram their agenda through unilaterally.

Republicans should demand to bring C-SPAN with them to the table in a non-partisan effort to help the President fulfill his campaign promise.

What do you say, Madam Speaker? Do you still feel like laughing today?

The meetings hosted by HCAN (like the one on August 6^th in St. Louis) were set up using these rules.  Americans showed up at these meetings thinking that it would be an opportunity to address their elected representatives and talk to them about the single most important piece of legislation our congress has proposed in decades.  Instead, they were pushed to the back of the room and shouted down by the well-trained SEIU members.  Eventually, an American citizen who was distributing “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and buttons was assaulted by a handful of the SEIU members.  His name is Kenneth Gladney.

Let’s look at that memo and how it matches the events of August 6^th:

• One advantage to organizing your own Town Hall or public event with Members of Congress is that you will have much more control over the event and limit the other side’s opportunities for disruption.
• Make sure you turn out a substantial number of people from your base and that everyone signs a sign-in sheet upon entering the event. Give everyone name tags so they are easily identifiable. If you want to ensure greater control over turnout, you can ask attendees to RSVP or even issue tickets to the event and require presentation of the ticket at the entrance.
• Choose a venue that is difficult for the opposition to access without being noticed. Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
• Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security should any need arise to ask noisy or disruptive protesters to leave.
• Another way to limit protesters’ ability to hijack your event is to confiscate signs or leaflets that they may bring into the venue from outside. The best way to do this is to make a blanket rule that no one can bring signs or leaflets and to advertise this fact as you do turn out in the weeks preceding the event. You can distribute your own signs in the event and offer them one as they enter if you choose to allow them to enter.
• It’s important that you take away right-wingers opportunities to talk with reporters by making sure that your staff or leaders are in constant contact with the media who attend.

According to Harris Himes an eyewitness at the scene of the town hall meeting the evening of the 6^th:

They let in about two hundred of us but had about 120 seats set aside, marked “RSVP,” and these were for Carnahan supporters. These people were let in by a side door for the “handicapped.” Many had purple t-shirts with “Organizing for America” in white letters on the back and large “SEIU,” smaller “Service Employees International Union” on the front. They shut the doors on about 1000 people around 6:30 pm for the 7:00 pm event. After being introduced, Carnahan spoke but was booed frequently while the supporters stood and applauded…. Finally, Carnahan stood for questions. It turned out that the questions had to be written and turned in. The dissenters booed, shouting that they didn’t know this and hadn’t been given a chance to write any. It didn’t make any difference, because he answered a couple of seminar questions and then announced that he had to leave about 8:30 for an “interview”—after most of the time had been taken up by the panel.

Also on the evening of the 6^th, a town hall meeting organized by HCAN and OFA was set up in Tampa Bay, FL with Rep. Kathy Castor.  An eyewitness describes what is seen on this YouTube video:

This is part one of the Tampa Town Hall meeting on August 6. Left Wing organizers are seen passing out Obama Flyers and signs.  Once they see that right wingers have their own sings, they quickly pick them up and hide them. Hundreds of people are outside trying to get in, many of them who had been waiting for hours while others were able to sneak in the back door. Even with all this, there was still many in the audience that booed once Kathy Castor started detailing the Health Care Plan.

And here is a second description on a YouTube video that shows the “marshals” and security forces in action:

Kathy Castor’s union thugs beat up a guy (in the green shirt – evidence 3:21) and shut the doors to prevent the opposing opinions from being heard. She then proceeded leave, not taking any questions, because “she couldn’t hear.

The Tampa Bay meeting and the St. Louis meetings followed the same templates and they were both arranged by HCAN and OFA.  Both ended with pushing and shoving (in both cases the pushing being done by card-carrying members of SEIU) and both ended with the elected official leaving after only answering a few scripted questions put forth by plants in the crowd.

It is hard to not reach the conclusion that the events of August 6^th were a result that could have been expected given the rhetoric from elected officials in the Democratic Party (Speaker Pelosi saying the protesters carries swastikas) and the President’s Advisers (Jim Messina telling Senators “if they hit you, we will punch them back twice as hard”) coupled with the instructions handed down to obedient union members by their union leaders.  If you agree that HCAN and OFA were instrumental in creating the climate for violent confrontation that led to Kenneth Gladney’s assault, then it is important to learn about the leadership of HCAN and the SEIU members who are suspects in the assault and learn who they are and what might have motivated their actions.

Meet Margarida Jorge.  She works for HCAN and is the person who released the memo that served as a template for the meetings in Tampa Bay and St. Louis.  Ms. Jorge worked for SEIU in Missouri prior to her position at HCAN.  She is often featured at the People’s World web page (a direct descendant of the Daily Worker the newspaper of the American Socialist and Marxist Movement).  In fact, Ms. Jorge was honored with an award from People’s World for her work with an organization called Progressive Vote, or Pro-Vote.  Pro-Vote is a coalition of many organizations including SEIU, HCAN and ACORN.  Their mission:  To fight for progressive issues and progressive candidates.

That is Margarida Jorge.  She wrote the HCAN memo.  In the past she worked with Sara Howard.

Meet Sara Howard.  She used to work with SEIU.  She also worked for a group called America Coming Together (ACT).  In the 2004 campaign, ACT was very active in registering voters on behalf of the Kerry Campaign.  ACT was later fined $775,000 for taking illegal donations (including those from SEIU), the largest FEC fine in history.  She also worked as a Senior Strategist for Obama for America.  On August 5^th, the day before the St. Louis town hall meeting featuring Rep. Russ Carnahan, Sara Howard was named the Communications Director for the Missouri Democrat.

That is Sara Howard.  She is Russ Carnahan’s Communication’s Director.  When she was working on the Obama Campaign, she was under the direction of Buffy Wicks.

Meet Buffy Wicks.  Buffy Wicks is the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement directly under Valerie Jarrett.  She was the White House representative on the infamous conference calls involving Yosi Sergant and the NEA which were exposed by Big Hollywood resulting in Mr. Sergant’s forced resignation.  Before her job at the White House Buffy Wicks ran the Obama Campaign operation in Missouri where she was instrumental in get out the vote programs involving SEIU, ACORN and Pro-Vote, where she worked with Sara Howard and Margarida Jorge.

That is Buffy Wicks, Sara Howard and Margarida Jorge.  In their capacities with SEIU and Pro-Vote and HCAN and the Obama Campaigns, they were involved with SEIU Public Service Director and former organizer Elston McCowan and SEIU Business Agent and Organizer Perry Molens.  McCowan and Molens are the men charged with the assault on Kenneth Gladney.

Let me just lay this out once more:

• Margarida Jorge worked at SEIU in St. Louis.  She wrote the HCAN memo on fighting back against the right.
• Sara Howard worked at SEIU in St Louis.  She also worked for Obama For America.  The day before the St. Louis town hall, she was hired by Rep. Russ Carnahan.
• Elston McCowan and Perry Molens worked at SEIU in St. Louis.  They have been charged with the bloody assault of Kenneth Gladney.
• Jorge, Howard, McCowan and Molens were all involved with Buffy Wicks at Obama For America in Missouri.
• Buffy Wicks now works for Valerie Jarret in the White House Office of Public Engagement and was involved in the NEA Conference Calls.

Does your head hurt yet?  If it doesn’t, it will tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will show how this small network of insiders in the leftist political power structure of St. Louis are inter-connected with the very people charged with investigating and prosecuting the individuals responsible for beating Kenneth Gladney.  And, how those same people were also instrumental in the Obama Campaign in Missouri in 2008.  We will show how the three month delay in bringing charges against the assailants appear to be motivated by political and personal relationships in the close-knit family that is the St. Louis Democratic Party.

Earlier this week, we learned that Recovery.gov, the official Administration website charged with reporting abuse was its own worst offender.  It is full of fake stimulus jobs in fake Congressional districts.   It also shows that $3 million couldn’t even produce a single job in South Carolina’s fake 43rd district.  Somehow, $1.8 million was spent for 1.4 jobs in the fake 00 district.  This would be funny, but the money belongs to taxpayers, not the government.

Wednesday night, ABC News broke the news that the Government Accountability Office says that one out of every 10 jobs claimed to have been “saved or created” by the Administration came from projects where no stimulus funds had been spent. When asked about the inaccuracies, the spokesman for Recovery.gov replied, “Who knows, man, who really knows. There are 130,000 reports out there.”

After a week of reports on blatant inconsistencies in stimulus spending, and a hearing in the House Committee on Oversight and Government, this Administration still has not provided adequate answers as to the whereabouts of stimulus funds.  In response to this Administration’s insufficient communication on stimulus spending, I called for an examination of all stimulus dollars appropriated.

You see, the Recovery Act includes a provision that allows for the establishment of a Recovery Independent Advisory Panel (RIAP).  This panel consists of five presidentially appointed members to advise the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board on how it could prevent fraud, waste, and abuse relating to covered funds.  The President has yet to appoint this panel despite widespread stimulus inaccuracies.

On Thursday, I publicly called on the President to appoint this panel immediately. The Recovery Act is one of the largest spending bills in our nation’s history and it’s critical that we work together to maintain our goals of transparency and accountability.  If this panel is not appointed by December 1, 2009, I will call for an outside, independent examination of spending and reporting inaccuracies.

These actions will address short-term reporting problems. But we really should have our eyes on the horizon.  In the long term, we must continue to push this Administration and Speaker Pelosi to give this economy the economic jolt it needs.

Our plans like the Economic Recovery and Middle-Class Relief Act of 2009 (H.R. 407) unleashes the potential of American businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs.  We help stabilize home values and help more responsible families achieve the American dream of owning a home. Instead of continuing to skyrocket federal spending, our plan offers incentive-based relief to individuals and job creators.  It reduces the burden that the government places on both employers and employees and provides assistance to the unemployed.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together to demand immediate accountability for stimulus spending inaccuracies and in the long-term, work together on bipartisan job creation plans to get America rolling again.