Thomas Jefferson
During my investigation into who & how various groups are funded it became quiet clear that a person could spend years trying to tract down how the fund flow as they all interconnected and flow back and forth from one group to another and then back again. Some who provide funds may not even know where their money is going. I will try to make this report short and concise and to the point, hoping that it can be understood by all.
Let us start with some of the big name money providers:
George Soros was born on August 12, 1930, to date, he has amassed a personal fortune exceeding $7 billion. In addition, his management company controls billions of dollars more in investor assets.
In 1979 Soros established the Open Society Institute (OSI), which serves as the flagship of a network of Soros foundations that donate tens of millions of dollars each year to a wide array of individuals and organizations that share the founder's agendas. Those agendas can be summarized as follows:
• promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
• promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
• opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
• depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
• promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws
• promoting a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes
• promoting social welfare benefits and amnesty for illegal aliens
• defending the civil rights and liberties of suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters
• financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
• advocating America's unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending
• opposing the death penalty in all circumstances
• promoting socialized medicine in the United States
• promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is "not clean air and clean water, [but] rather ... the demolition of technological/industrial civilization"
• bringing American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations
• promoting racial and ethnic preferences in academia and the business world alike
• promoting taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand
• advocating stricter gun-control measures
• advocating the legalization of marijuana
Organizations Funded Directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute
by Discover The Networks, July 2007
Organizations that, in recent years, have received direct funding and assistance from George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI) include the following. (Comprehensive profiles of each are available in the "Groups" section of DiscoverTheNetworks.org). This is a very shortened list, a full list is available at DiscoverTheNetworks.org
American Civil Liberties Union, (New Left terrorist Bernardine Dohrn to its Advisory Board), , Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Center for American Progress ( headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, Democratic Party: (Soros' funding activities are devoted largely to helping the Democratic Party solidify its power base), Institute for Policy Studies: This think tank has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world. (Also receives funding from Ben & Jerry’s Foundation (the ice cream folks), Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the TIDES Foundation,(Apollo Alliance), MoveOn.org, Tides Foundation and Tides Center: Tides is a major funder of the radical Left.
Moreover, there are numerous "secondary" or "indirect" affiliates of the Soros network. These include organizations which do not receive direct funding from Soros and OSI, but which are funded by one or more organizations that do. These secondary affiliates also include groups that work collaboratively or synergistically with Soros-funded entities.
Some of these organizations:
• Service Employees International Union: The current President of SEIU is the former New Leftist Andrew Stern, who sat on the Executive Committee of the Soros-created America Coming Together.
• Think Progress: This "project" of the American Progress Action Fund, which is a "sister advocacy organization" of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress and Campus Progress, seeks to transform "progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world." Think Progress promotes an agenda identical to that of the left wing of the Democratic Party.
• Working Families Party: Created in 1998 to help push the Democratic Party toward the left, this front group for the Soros-funded ACORN functions as a political party that promotes ACORN-friendly candidates.
Having experienced this success in 2000, Soros moved to exploit the power of 527s on a much larger scale during the 2004 election cycle. Toward that end, he was a key force in the creation of the so-called "Shadow Party" in 2003. This term refers to a nationwide network of unions, non-profit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically to the left, and which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats. This network's activities include fundraising, get-out-the-vote drives, political advertising, opposition research, and media manipulation.
According to Richard Poe, co-author (with David Horowitz) of the book The Shadow Party:
"The Shadow Party is the real power driving the Democrat machine. It is a network of radicals dedicated to transforming our constitutional republic into a socialist hive. The leader of these radicals is ... George Soros. He has essentially privatized the Democratic Party, bringing it under his personal control. The Shadow Party is the instrument through which he exerts that control.... It works by siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions that would have gone to the Democratic Party in normal times, and putting those contributions at the personal disposal of Mr. Soros. He then uses that money to buy influence and loyalty where he sees fit. In 2003, Soros set up a network of privately-owned groups which acts as a shadow or mirror image of the Party. It performs all the functions we would normally expect the real Democratic Party to perform, such as shaping the Party platform, fielding candidates, running campaigns, and so forth. However, it performs these functions under the private supervision of Mr. Soros and his associates. The Shadow Party derives its power from its ability to raise huge sums of money. By controlling the Democrat purse strings, the Shadow Party can make or break any Democrat candidate by deciding whether or not to fund him. During the 2004 election cycle, the Shadow Party raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates, prompting one of its operatives, MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser, to declare, 'Now it's our party. We bought it, we own it.…'"
In 2004 Soros spent some $26 million of his own money in an effort to drive Bush from office. That sum included a $5 million donation to MoveOn.org, a $10 million grant to a Democratic Party 2004 get-out-the-vote initiative called America Coming Together, and $3 million to the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think-tank headed by former Clinton chief-of-staff John Podesta. (Soros himself was instrumental in establishing CAP in 2003 as "a nonpartisan research and educational institute" aimed at "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America.")
Though Soros and his Shadow Party failed to bring about "regime change" in 2004, the vast network of interrelated Shadow Party groups would prove to be key players in the 2006 midterm elections that saw Democrats seize control of Congress. Of particular significance was Democracy Alliance, a non-tax-exempt nonprofit entity registered in the District of Columbia, which Soros had founded in 2005, and whose long-term objective was to develop a funding clearinghouse for leftist groups.
In 2008, Soros' Shadow Party was again a major force in the movement that not only expanded the Democratic Party's congressional majorities, but also delivered the presidency to Barack Obama.
Soros' ties to Obama date back to 2004, when the multi-billionaire hosted a fundraiser for Obama during the latter's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate. In December of 2006, as Obama contemplated making a run for the presidency in 2008, Soros met in his New York office with the Illinois senator. Then, on January 16, 2007, Obama announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee. Within hours, Soros sent the senator a contribution of $2,100, the maximum amount allowable under campaign finance laws. Later that week, the New York Daily News reported that Soros would back Obama.
In 2008, Obama announced that upon his election to the office of President, he would create a "Social Investment Fund Network," which would provide federal money to "social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations [that] are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps, and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities." According to columnist Michelle Malkin, "this Barack Obama brainchild would serve as a permanent, taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democratic partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders," and would serve as a "George Soros Slush Fund" by continuing to bolster numerous Soros-founded and funded organizations.
In a November 2008 interview with Spiegel, Soros made some comments that accurately outlined precisely the course that President Obama's administration would eventually pursue in 2009:
"I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets -- because they are not allowed by the constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition, another infrastructure program is necessary. In total, the cost would be in the 300 to 600 billion dollar range [in addition to the $700 billion bailout which the government already had given to the financial industry]…. I think this is a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The U.S. needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. I would use the revenues from these auctions to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the current stagnation."
The interviewer then said: "Your proposal would be dismissed on Wall Street as 'big government.' Republicans might call it European-style 'socialism.'" Soros replied:
"That is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful –
All told, Soros' foundation network made an estimated $5 billion worth of grants between 1979 and 2007.
Soros and his foundations have had a hand in funding such noteworthy leftist organizations as the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy; the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the National Organization for Women; Feminist Majority; the American Civil Liberties Union; People for the American Way; Alliance for Justice; NARAL Pro-Choice America; America Coming Together; the Center for American Progress; Campaign for America's Future; Amnesty International; the Sentencing Project; the Center for Community Change; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Human Rights Watch; the Prison Moratorium Project; the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; the National Lawyers Guild; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Coalition for an International Criminal Court; The American Prospect; MoveOn.org; Planned Parenthood; the Nation Institute; the Brennan Center for Justice; the Ms. Foundation for Women; the National Security Archive Fund; the Pacifica Foundation; Physicians for Human Rights; the Proteus Fund; the Public Citizen Foundation; the Urban Institute; the American Friends Service Committee; Catholics for a Free Choice; Human Rights First; the Independent Media Institute; MADRE; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the National Immigration Law Center; the National Immigration Forum; the National Council of La Raza;(Our new supreme court justice was a member) the American Immigration Law Foundation; the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee; and the Peace and Security Funders Group.
Apart from the more than $5 billion that Soros' foundation network has donated to leftist groups like those listed above, Soros personally has made campaign contributions to such notable political candidates as Charles Rangel, Al Franken, Tom Udall, Joe Sestak, and Sherrod Brown.
Now we will start looking at the other groups that include ACORN, TIDES FOUNDATION, TIDES CENTER, SEIU, and .APOLLO ALLIANCE. And the PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS (DEMOCRATIC)
ACORN: Largest radical group in America, with more than 400,000 dues-paying member families and more than 1,200 chapters in 110 U.S. cities
• Was implicated in numerous reports of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging, voter intimidation, and vote-for-pay scams during recent election cycles
• Pressured banks to lend money to under qualified minority borrowers
• Maintains close ties to organized labor
• Opposes capitalism
• Calls for more government control over citizens and the economy
• Favors a government monopoly in healthcare
• Advocates an open-door immigration policy.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a grassroots political organization that grew out of George Wiley's National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), whose members in the late 1960s and early 1970s invaded welfare offices across the U.S. -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. In the late Sixties, ACORN co-founder Wade Rathke was an NWRO organizer and a protégé of Wiley. In 1970 Rathke -- along with the aforementioned Wiley and Gary Delgado (a lead organizer for Wiley's NWRO) -- formed a new entity called Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The group's name was later changed to Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, but the acronym ACORN remained. Instead of focusing only on welfare recipients, Acorn’s mandate now included all issues touching low-income and working-class people. Foundation Watch editor Matthew Vadum explains specifically what ACORN has done ever since its inception:
"ACORN ... organizes crude protests against businesspeople and public officials. Opposed to the profit motive and capitalism in general, it pushes for more government control over citizens and the economy. ACORN supports gun control, a government monopoly in healthcare and an open door immigration policy. It supports a big raise in the federal minimum wage and so-called 'living-wage' laws enacted by states and cities. ACORN wants more funding for urban public schools, and wants federal and state laws enacted guaranteeing paid sick leave for all full-time workers. The group claims to fight for affordable housing and it rails against foreclosures and so-called 'predatory' lending, even though it demands that banks make loans [to under qualified borrowers] destined to default."
In the early Seventies, Wade Rathke and his ACORN co-founders enlisted civil-rights workers and trained them in a program (at Syracuse University) patterned after Saul Alinsky's activist tactics. Often those tactics were subtle, featuring the quiet infiltration of political, educational, and financial infrastructures by ACORN members. In other cases, the methods were brazenly confrontational. In 1995 ACORN protested what it characterized as the Republican-led Congress' proposed "spending cuts" on welfare programs. (In actuality, no cuts were being proposed; the Republicans were calling for an increase in welfare spending, but it was a smaller increase than ACORN wanted.) The New York Post describes the scene of this ACORN demonstration:
"House Speaker Newt Gingrich was scheduled to address a meeting of county commissioners at the Washington Hilton. But, first, some 500 protesters from [ACORN] poured into the ballroom from both the kitchen and the main entrance. Hotel staffers who tried to block them were quickly overwhelmed by demonstrators chanting, 'Nuke Newt!' and 'We want Newt!' Jamming the aisles, carrying bullhorns and taunting the assembled county commissioners, demonstrators swiftly took over the head table and commandeered the microphone, sending two members of Congress scurrying. The demonstrators' target, Gingrich, hadn't yet arrived -- and his speech was cancelled. When the cancellation was announced, Acorn’s foot soldiers cheered."
Such tactics are by no means a thing of the past for ACORN. As recently as June 2009, an angry mob of at least 150 ACORN protesters nearly knocked New York state Sen. James Alesi, a Republican, down to the floor and also spat in the face of his chief of staff. The protesters were reportedly upset that two Democratic senators had decided to caucus with Republicans — a move that, when finalized by the state Senate, would hand Republicans control of that body.
As of May 2009, ACORN claimed more than 400,000 dues-paying member families and more than 1,200 chapters in 110 U.S. cities. (The organization is also active in Canada and Mexico). It owns two radio stations, a housing corporation, and a law office, and maintains affiliate relationships with a host of trade-union locals. In addition, ACORN runs schools where children are trained in class-consciousness (New York City's Bread and Roses High School and the ACORN High School for Social Justice); a network of "boot camps" for the training of street activists; and operations that extort contributions from banks and other businesses under threat of racial violence and trumped-up civil-rights charges.
ACORN makes a great deal of money from its "community organizing" campaigns, and shows little tolerance for rival leftist groups infringing on its turf. For instance, when ACORN set up shop in San Francisco in May 2002, it discovered that many of its potential recruits -- low-income blacks and Hispanics -- were networked with the Outer Mission Resident's Association (OMRA). The San Francisco Examiner reports, "ACORN soon began a process of intimidation by busing in activists from Oakland to disrupt OMRA events. ACORN members then began showing up at some neighbors' homes, and in one case jabbed a person in the chest."
Since ACORN is a private corporation, it does not divulge its finances. Complicating any effort to calculate Acorn’s income is the fact that the organization operates an enormous number of front groups, many of which conceal their relationship to ACORN. As of October 2008, there were at least 294 front groups, nonprofits, and businesses related to ACORN, the vast majority of which listed their headquarters as: 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana -- the site of a now-defunct funeral home.
But we can gain some idea of Acorn’s revenues by multiplying the organization's 400,000+ member families by the $120 annual membership fee, which yields a total of approximately $48 million. According to Acorn’s website, "Membership dues and a host of grassroots and chapter-based fundraising programs pay for 70 to 75 percent of the entire organization's budget." If that is the case, Acorn’s annual revenues are at least $64 million. Some of those revenues come in the form of taxpayer dollars furnished by the federal government: Between 1994 and 2008, ACORN received a total of $53 million in federal funds earmarked for so-called "community organizations."
"Ironically, ACORN and its affiliates, all reliable cheerleaders for higher taxes, are longtime tax deadbeats. A search of public records found more than 200 federal, state, and local tax liens adding up to more than $3.7 million that are associated with groups that share Acorn’s address on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans…. It is unclear what kinds of taxes ACORN and its affiliates failed to pay, but because almost all ACORN affiliates are exempted from paying most or all taxes, it seems likely that the liens were issued for non-payment of employees' payroll taxes. If so, this would be ironic because payroll taxes fund the social and wealth-distribution programs that ACORN so staunchly supports."
In addition to membership fees and government grants, ACORN (and its partner group the ACORN Institute) also have received large donations from a number of charitable foundations, including but not limited to the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the Minneapolis Foundation; the Open Society Institute; the Public Welfare Foundation; the Sudan Foundation; the Woods Fund of Chicago; the Sherman Foundation; the Ben and Jerry's Foundation; the Marguerite Casey Foundation; the Robin Hood Foundation; the Beldon Fund; the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation; the Haymarket People's Fund; the Streisand Foundation; the Union Bank of California Foundation; the Provident Bank Foundation; the JP Morgan Chase Foundation; the Bank of America Charitable Foundation; the US Bancorp Foundation; the PNC Foundation; the Wachovia Foundation; the Roseanne [Barr] Foundation; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the Lear Family Foundation; the Starbucks Foundation; the Arca Foundation; the Tides Foundation; the Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Trust; the Needmor Fund; the Citigroup Foundation; and the Democracy Alliance. Let’s not forget George Soros.
Another of Acorn’s chief objectives has been to enact "living wage" ordinances at the local, state and federal levels. It has succeeded in getting many such laws passed. Acorn’s model legislation contains a clause that exempts unionized businesses from having to pay the minimum wage. As a result, companies that stubbornly resist unionizing struggle and, in many cases, go bankrupt. By contrast, those that unionize thrive, thereby providing an ever-expanding membership base for union recruiting. This is the main reason that unions such as AFSCME and the SEIU contribute so generously to ACORN.
The Capital Research Center (CRC) provides a more up-to-date look at Acorn’s payroll and employment practices:
"A 2003 study of ACORN by the Employment Policies Institute found the group paid a wage of $5.67 per hour, which was 'less than half the level demanded by many proposed living-wage ordinances that ACORN supports.' Although it demands all workers be allowed to organize unions, ACORN doesn't like it when its own workers try to organize. It has tried to block its own employees from signing up with unions, and in 2003 the National Labor Relations Board determined it had unlawfully blocked its workers from organizing."
Acorn’s close ties to big unions are noted further by CRC researchers Matthew Vadum and Jeremy Lott:
"Organized labor is both a client and ally of ACORN. ACORN (including its affiliates) took in almost $3 million [in 2007] from unions to assist their anti-corporate campaigns, provide strike support, and help with research and staffing, among other things…. ACORN and union interests are tightly intertwined. ACORN founder and deposed former president Wade Rathke continues to serve as chief organizer of the New Orleans local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and as Board Chairman of the TIDES CENTER and member of the TIDES FOUNDATION Board of Directors. As unions spend hundreds of millions of dollars in 2008 to get out the vote for a more pro-union Congress and White House, they are counting on the officially nonpartisan ACORN to work feverishly to register pro-union voters and get them to the polls."
• This effort to persuade union members to vote dovetails with another of Acorn’s top priorities: to register as many new voters as possible. ACORN claims that its voter-registration drives leading up to the 2004 and 2006 elections resulted in the registration of more than 1.68 million people. Subsequently, at a March 2008 "Take Back America" conference sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future (CAF), ACORN joined CAF and five additional leftist organizations in announcing plans for "the most expensive [$350 million get-out-the-vote] mobilization in history this election season." Other members of the coalition included MoveOn.org, Rock the Vote, the National Council of La Raza, the Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund, and the AFL-CIO. During the 2008 election cycle, ACORN registered, by its own count, 1.3 million people in 26 states across the U.S.
These impressive numbers are tarnished, however, by the fact that ACORN and its affiliates (most notably Project Vote, which is Acorn’s voter-mobilization arm) have engaged in massive campaigns of voter-registration fraud. Untold numbers of the registration forms that ACORN has submitted to election boards across the United States were fraudulent. The organization's get-out-the-vote activists have been implicated in schemes involving the falsification and destruction of registration forms, the forging of signatures, the registration of dead or non-existent people, the registration of the same individuals multiple times, and the registration of convicted felons even in states where felons are ineligible to vote.
In 2008, election officials in several states said that fully half of ACORN voter registrations were fraudulent. As of October of that year, ACORN was under investigation for voter-registration fraud in 13 states -- Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Just as ACORN was heavily involved in voter-registration fraud, so was it a key player in the chain of events and policies that led to the housing and banking crash of 2008. That crisis had its roots in the 1977 passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a federal law that outlawed "redlining" (the refusal of banks to lend money to borrowers located in areas known for their high default rates on loans). The CRA required banks to extend credit to undercapitalized, high-risk borrowers in low-income, mostly-minority areas. The Act also established extensive government oversight to monitor how well banks were complying with its mandates.
Under CRA guidelines, any bank wishing to expand or to merge with another financial institution would be required to first demonstrate that it had complied with all CRA rules. Final approval for expansions or mergers could be stalled, or derailed entirely, if "community groups" like ACORN were to accuse a bank -- however frivolously or unjustly -- of having violated the mandates of CRA.
In the early 1990s ACORN, thus empowered by the CRA, insisted that banks demonstrate their commitment to minority lending by drastically lowering their standards on down-payments and underwriting, and by making loans even to borrowers -- especially nonwhite minorities -- with bad credit histories. If banks expressed reluctance to do so, ACORN intimidated them into compliance by threatening to sue them, to smear them in the media with negative-publicity campaigns (accusing them of racist and anti-immigrant lending practices), and to block any mergers which the banks might seek in the future. These threats were often accompanied by rowdy crowds of ACORN demonstrators swarming bank offices and lobbies.
In response, terrified bank executives routinely agreed to appoint ACORN as their official "advisor" on CRA compliance, thereby giving the group carte blanche to channel loans to its own hand-picked recipients. One ACORN leader boasted that her organization had become proficient at dragging banks "kicking and screaming" into high-risk loans for low-income people with shady credit histories. By September 1992, ACORN was issuing fact sheets broadcasting its success in having forced lenders to lower their credit standards on behalf of minorities. Ultimately, ACORN proudly claimed "credit for saving the CRA." As noted above many of these bank foundations now help fund this group.
The New York Post explains what happened next:
"As ACORN ran its campaigns against local banks, it quickly hit a roadblock. Banks would tell ACORN they could afford to reduce their credit standards by only a little -- since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage giants, refused to buy up those risky loans for sale on the 'secondary market.'
"That is, the CRA wasn't enough. Unless Fannie and Freddie were willing to relax their credit standards as well, local banks would never make home loans to customers with bad credit histories or with too little money for a down-payment.
"So Acorn’s Democratic friends in Congress moved to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to dispense with normal credit standards. Throughout the early '90s, they imposed ever-increasing subprime-lending quotas on Fannie and Freddie….(thanks to, you guessed it Barnie Franks & Chris Dodd).
"Acorn’s intimidation tactics, and its alliance with Democrats in Congress, triumphed. Despite their 1994 takeover of Congress, Republicans' attempts to pare back the CRA were stymied….
"ACORN had come to Congress not only to protect the CRA from GOP [Republican] reforms but also to expand the reach of quota-based lending to Fannie, Freddie and beyond….
"[In June 1995] the Clinton administration announced a comprehensive strategy to push homeownership in America to new heights -- regardless of the compromise in credit standards that the task would require. Fannie and Freddie were assigned massive subprime lending quotas, which would rise to about half of their total business by the end of the decade."
This strengthening of the CRA's loan mandates, coupled with the authority that ACORN and other "community organizations" were given to intervene at yearly bank reviews, placed ACORN and likeminded activist groups in a position of great influence. Banks, eager to receive good reports from these groups (in order to avoid having their merger plans blocked or their lending practices challenged by the Justice Department), funneled immense sums of money to ACORN, et al. As the New York Post puts it, "intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America's financial institutions. "One financial-industry consultant explains, with resignation: "The banks know they are being held up, but they are not going to fight over this. They look at it as a cost of doing business."
Robert L. Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (a community-action group that calls for individual responsibility rather than reliance on government handouts), puts it this way: "ACORN knows that corporate America has no starch in their shorts and, therefore, what they try to do is buy peace from groups that agitate against them. The same corporations that pay ransom to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton pay ransom to ACORN. Since 1990, Steven Kest has been Acorn’s national Executive Director, and Maude Hurd has been the organization's President.
On June 2, 2008, Wade Rathke stepped down from his position as Acorn’s chief organizer. Shortly thereafter, ACORN publicly acknowledged that Dale Rathke -- Wade's brother -- had embezzled nearly $1 million from ACORN and its affiliated groups in 1999 and 2000. ACORN further admitted that for eight years its executives had kept this information secret from almost all of their organization's board members and from law-enforcement authorities, while Dale remained on Acorn’s payroll. (Acorn’s public admission only came to pass because a group of foundations and private donors had recently learned of Dale Rathke's crimes and were preparing to go public with them.)
Acording to ACORN president Maude Hurd, "We thought it best at the time to protect the organization, as well as to get the funds back into the organization, to deal with it in-house. It was a judgment call at the time, and looking back, people can agree or disagree with it, but we did what we thought was right." Wade Rathke, meanwhile, said the decision to keep his brother's crimes secret was not made to shield the latter from public criticism or legal action, but rather because news of his embezzlement could have been exploited as a "weapon" by Acorn’s detractors. The funds embezzled money was repayed by Drummond Pike, founder & president of the TIDES FOUNDATION and head of the TIDES CENTER.
ACORN supports the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would authorize a federal arbitrator to render a final and binding resolution for any union negotiations that are not settled quickly, meaning that, as journalist Claire Berlinski puts it, "the federal government will gain the power to dictate the terms of a contract and to set wages, benefits, hours, and work rules." Moreover, the EFCA would make it easier for organizers to intimidate workers into forming new unions.
In the absence of EFCA, employees may choose any of three methods for deciding whether or not to become unionized: (a) a secret ballot wherein they privately and anonymously indicate their preference; (b) a signature drive, where they publicly affirm their wishes; or (c) a "card check" system, which unionizes employees if a majority sign their names on union-authorization cards. The latter two options are far likelier than the first to expose employees to coercion or intimidation by union leaders or organizers; but an employer, if he suspects that union organizers may be pressuring his workers to unionize, can demand a government-supervised secret-ballot vote to settle the matter. The EFCA would eliminate this right.
ACORN also favors the so-called Fairness Doctrine. One former Kennedy administration official candidly acknowledged many years ago: "Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass the right-wing broadcasters, and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too costly to continue."
ACORN is adamantly opposed to school vouchers that would help parents defray the cost of tuition if they wish to send their children to private schools. When Sol Stern, on one occasion, politely suggested to ACORN official Bertha Lewis that ACORN families might benefit by a school-voucher program for students who were failing in public schools, Lewis angrily replied that vouchers were "a hoax to destroy the public schools" and to divide people on the basis of "race and class." "This is capitalism at its worst," she shouted. "You always do it on the backs of the poor. It's all bullshit, and you know it."
ACORN has a more longstanding ties to Barack Obama. Thus on Feb. 21, 2008, the organization officially endorsed Obama for U.S. President. This endorsement came at the very height of Obama's hard-fought Democratic primary battle against Hillary Clinton. Welcoming the endorsement, Obama told an audience of ACORN workers and supporters: "I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues that you care about my entire career."
Tracing Acorn’s historical ties to Obama, columnist Mona Charen writes:
"ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott [a Chicago activist who led the aforementioned ACORN effort to storm the Chicago City Council in July 1997] hired him to train her staff -- the very people who would later descend on Chicago's banks as CRA shakedown artists. [Obama] later funneled money to [ACORN] through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, ditto. Obama was not just sympathetic -- he was an ACORN fellow traveler."
The New York Post reports the following about Acorn’s links to Obama:
"Chicago ACORN sought out Obama's legal services for a 'motor voter' case and partnered with him on his 1992 'Project VOTE' registration drive. In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for Acorn’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks. More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers -- and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.
"The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by Acorn’s Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.
"And, as the leader of another charity -- the Chicago Annenberg Challenge -- Obama channeled more funding Talbott's way, ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of Acorn’s overall efforts. In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate in 1996, saying, 'We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.'"
In 2008 Obama's presidential campaign demonstrated its solidarity with ACORN by quietly giving one of the organization's front groups some $800,000 to fund a voter-registration drive on the Senator's behalf.
In November 2008 Matthew Vadum revealed how ACORN, after news of its implication in voter-fraud began to surface during Obama's 2008 presidential bid, tried to protect the Democratic candidate by covering up its own ties to him:
"In early October 2008, as media coverage of ACORN election fraud scandals intensified, ACORN removed a smoking gun from one of its websites. This was an article that linked Obama to ACORN and to Project Vote and made clear that the two entities were joined at the hip.
"The 2004 article was by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago-based member of the ACORN national board and now a Chicago alderman, and it appeared in Social Policy, a publication of Acorn’s American Institute for Social Justice. Extolling Obama's political organizing abilities, Foulkes described the close connections between ACORN and its affiliate, Project Vote. She wrote that ACORN 'invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office.' So it was only 'natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress.' The upshot? 'By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.'"
On June 17, 2009, Acorn’s global entity, ACORN International, announced that it had changed its name to "Community Organizations International." "This may indeed be the beginning of an ACORN network-wide rebranding, but a rotten ACORN by any other name still stinks," said Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center. Speculation swirled that the parent organization, referenced throughout this profile as ACORN, was considering a name-change as well -- mainly to distance itself from its corruption-tarnished image.
A July 2009 congressional report -- titled "Is ACORN Intentionally Structured as a Criminal Enterprise?" -- accused ACORN of massive fraud, money laundering, and racketeering directed from the highest levels of the organization's management.
On September 10, 2009, Glenn Beck of Fox News aired secretly videotaped footage of two employees at Acorn’s Baltimore office advising a young man and woman (investigative journalists posing undercover as a pimp and a prostitute) on how they could defraud the federal government out of taxpayer dollars for the purpose of financing a brothel staffed by more than a dozen underage illegal aliens from El Salvador. The ACORN workers happily advised the couple on how they could go about obtaining government money to fund their prostitution ring. ACORN initially called Beck's report an unfounded "smear" campaign, but the following day the organization fired both of the workers who had appeared in the video. This is an ongoing probe into ACORN.
• SEIU One of the largest labor unions in North America
• Gives millions of dollars to Democratic lawmakers and politicians who promote government expansion and higher taxes
With 1.8 million members across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) ranks among the largest and fastest-growing unions in North America. It has more than 300 local affiliates and 25 state councils. Giving voice to its wish to radically transform an American society that it deems rife with inequity, SEIU's mission is "to improve the lives of workers and their families and create a more just and humane society." Classifying Women and minorities as the most aggrieved victims of discrimination and maltreatment, SEIU notes that 56 percent of its members are women and 40 percent are "people of color."
SEIU members work in four service industry "divisions":
Hospital Systems: As America's largest union of health care workers, SEIU represents more than 900,000 caregivers and hospital employees, including some 110,000 nurses and 40,000 doctors in public, private, and non-profit medical institutions.
Long-Term Care: SEIU is the largest union of long-term care workers (including 350,000 home care workers and 150,000 nursing home employees) in the United States.
Public Services: The second largest union of public service employees, SEIU represents 850,000 local and state government workers, public school employees, bus drivers, and child care providers.
Property Services: SEIU is the largest property services union, with 225,000 workers who clean, maintain, and protect commercial and residential office buildings.
WADE RATHKE founded Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in New Orleans and heads it to this day. Rathke is president and co-founder of SEIU's Southern Conference and a member of SEIU's national executive board. The current President of SEIU is the former New Leftist Andrew Stern, who advanced to the Union's top post in 1996 when his predecessor, John Sweeney, became President of the AFL-CIO. At the outset of his tenure with SEIU, Stern told his members that he expected "every leader at every level of this union -- from the international President to the rank-and-file member -- to devote five working days this year to political action."
In effect, this was a mandate for those union leaders to work in support of the Democratic Party. Stern sits on the Executive Committee of America Coming Together, a Democratic Party auxiliary funded by George Soros. Moreover, SEIU is a major component of the so-called "Shadow Democratic Party," a nationwide network of more than five-dozen unions, nonprofit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically to the left, and which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats. Designated as a "527 organization" (so named in reference to Section 527 of the U.S. tax code), SEIU is not required to register as a "political organization" with the Federal Election Commission, and consequently may collect as much "soft money" as it wishes, with no limits on how much it may receive from individuals or corporations. This money, in turn, is funneled to Democratic candidates, political action committees, and other "527" groups pursuing similar agendas.
In November 2003, SEIU endorsed then-presidential candidate Howard Dean, sending thousands of volunteers to work on his behalf in states where early primaries were scheduled. After Dean dropped out of the race in early 2004, Andrew Stern played a major role in persuading the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, to pick as his running mate Senator John Edwards. As of June 2004, SEIU had already committed $65 million toward the effort to defeat incumbent President George W. Bush in that year's November election. (This money was used to finance voter registration drives, voter "education" initiatives, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and the efforts of some 2,000 political organizers working full-time against President Bush in 17 key battleground states. Moreover, the Union pledged to supply 50,000 "volunteers" from its membership rolls just prior to, and on, election day.)
SEIU's membership growth is heavily dependent on the public (i.e., government) sector, where 37.2 percent of employees are currently unionized (as compared to only 8.2 percent of private sector workers). Since the middle of the twentieth century, union membership in the private sector has declined by more than 80 percent; only in the public sector have unions grown during this period. Because this is precisely the niche in which SEIU dwells, the Union has a vested interest in helping to elect Democratic leftists who will press to make government ever-larger, so that it can produce an ever-increasing number of union-dues-paying jobs for welfare workers, socialized medicine healthcare workers, Medicare nursing home workers and the like. SEIU advocates taxpayer-funded, government-run program of socialized medicine, which it dubs "increased access to quality, affordable health care". Under Andrew Stern's leadership between 1996 and 2006, SEIU membership grew by nearly 900,000.
Representing more immigrants than any other union, SEIU also seeks to "ensure that immigrant workers have a shot at the American dream." Toward that end, it supports the legalization of illegal aliens, who it characterizes as "hard-working, tax-paying immigrants." SEIU is a sponsoring organization of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride Coalition, which seeks to secure amnesty for illegal aliens, and favors policy reforms that will diminish or eliminate future restrictions on immigration. SEIU views such immigrants as a potentially plentiful source of future SEIU dues-paying members.
As the largest union of child care workers in America (representing more than 200,000 people who work in child care and early education), SEIU seeks to "improve funding for child care and early education, and expand parents' access to affordable, quality care." In short, it favors the expansion of taxpayer-funded programs that finance such services.
Viewing the United States as a nation where discrimination against minorities and women is widespread, SEIU endorsed Pay Equity Now! -- a petition jointly issued in 2000 by the National Organization for Women, the Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women, and the International Wages for Housework Campaign -- to "expose and oppose U.S. opposition to pay equity" for women. The petition charged that: "The U.S. government opposes pay equity -- equal pay for work of equal value -- in national policy and international agreements … Underpaying women is a massive subsidy to employers that is both sexist and racist."
To boost its effort to create an ever-expanding supply of social activists and labor union leaders, SEIU recently launched an "Institute for Change," which seeks "to advance social and economic justice by helping SEIU locals develop their leaders, strengthen their organizations, and increase the power of the labor movement."
SEIU has also taken a stand on matters of national security: In 2004, the Union endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act, which was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital national-security policies (such as the Patriot Act) that had been adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Funding for the SEIU comes from dues of its 1.8 million members and again indirectly George Soros.
TIDES FOUNDATION & TIDES CENTER:
• Net Assets: Tides Foundation - $142,007,356 (2006); Tides Center - $43,969,744 (2006)
• Grants Received: Tides Foundation - $68,725,557 (2006); Tides Center - $49,859,754 (2006)
• Grants Awarded: Tides Foundation - $67,319,624 (2006); Tides Center - $5,566,058 (2006)
Established in 1976 by California-based activist Drummond Pike, the Tides Foundation was set up as a public charity that receives money from donors and then funnels it to the recipients of their choice. Because many of these recipient groups are quite radical, the donors often prefer not to have their names publicly linked with the donees. By letting the Tides Foundation, in effect, "launder" the money for them and pass it along to the intended beneficiaries, donors can avoid leaving a "paper trail." Such contributions are called "donor-advised," or donor-directed, funds.
Through this legal loophole, nonprofit entities can also create for-profit organizations and then funnel money to them through Tides -- thereby circumventing the laws that bar nonprofits from directly funding their own for-profit enterprises. Pew Charitable Trusts, for instance, set up three for-profit media companies and then proceeded to fund them via donor-advised contributions to Tides, which (for an 8 percent management fee) in turn sent the money to the media companies. If a donor wishes to give money to a particular cause but finds that there is no organization in existence dedicated specifically to that issue, the Tides Foundation will, for a fee, create a group to meet that perceived need.
In 1996 the Tides Foundation created, with a $9 million seed grant, a separate but closely related entity called the Tides Center, also headed by Drummond Pike. The Tides Center functions as a legal firewall insulating the Tides Foundation from potential lawsuits filed by people whose livelihoods or well-being may be harmed by Foundation-funded projects. (These could be, for instance, farmers or loggers who are put out of business by Tides-backed environmentalist groups.) In theory the Foundation's activities are restricted to fundraising and grant-making, while the Center focuses on managing projects and organizations; in practice, however, both entities do essentially the same thing.
The Tides Center's Board Chairman is Wade Rathke, who is also a member of the Tides Foundation Board. Rathke, a protege of the late George A. Wiley, serves as President of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union, and is the founder and chief organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
Chip Berlet sits on the Board of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a Tides Center project formed in 2005 to combat "the growing power of the religious right" and to "fight for the separation of church and state." Berlet is a senior analyst for Political Research Associates, and has had affiliations with the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, the Christic Institute, the Socialist Workers Party, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Tides Foundation promotes a multitude of leftist agendas, as evidenced by its assertion: "We strengthen community-based organizations and the progressive movement by providing an innovative and cost-effective framework for your philanthropy." Among the crusades to which Tides contributes are: radical environmentalism; the "exclusion of humans from public and private wildlands"; the anti-war movement; anti-free trade campaigns; the banning of firearms ownership; abolition of the death penalty; access to government-funded abortion-on-demand; and radical gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender advocacy. The Foundation is also a member organization of the International Human Rights Funders Group, a network of more than six-dozen grantmakers dedicated to finaning leftwing groups and causes.
Immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Tides formed a "9/11 Fund" to advocate a "peaceful national response." Tides later replaced the 9/11 Fund with the "Democratic Justice Fund," which was financed in large measure by the Open Society Institute of George Soros, who has donated more than $7 million to Tides over the years. Reciprocally, the Tides Foundation is a major funder of the Shadow Party, a George Soros-conceived nationwide network of several dozen unions, non-profit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically to the left, and which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats.
Tides also set up a Peace Strategies Fund and an Iraq Peace Fund, the latter of which has granted money to such groups as MoveOn.org, the National Council of Churches, the Arab-American Action Network, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the pro-Castro groups United for Peace and Justice and Center for Constitutional Rights. In addition, Tides funds "A Better Way Project," which coordinates the activities of United for Peace and Justice and the Win Without War Coalition/Keep America Safe Campaign.
Tides and the organizations it supports interact closely with one another on a regular basis. For example, Drummond Pike sits on the Board of the Environmental Working Group along with David Fenton, founder of Fenton Communications.
Recent recipients of Tides Foundation grants include: the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute; the American Civil Liberties Union; the ACORN Institute; the Agape Foundation; Alliance For Justice; American Family Voices; the American Friends Service Committee; the American Immigration Law Foundation; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Amnesty International; the Border Action Network; the Brennan Center for Justice; Campaign for America's Future; the Center for American Progress; the Center for Community Change; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Center for Reproductive Rights; Changemakers; the Children's Defense Fund; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; the Council on American-Islamic Relations (as revealed in FrontpageMagazine); Democracy Now!; Earth Day Network; Earth Island Institute; Earthjustice; Environmental Defense; Environmental Media Services; the Environmental Working Group; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; the Feminist Majority Foundation; Free Press; Funding Exchange; Global Exchange; Grantmakers Without Borders; Grassroots International; Greenpeace; Human Rights First; Human Rights Watch; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; Institute for America's Future; Institute for Policy Studies; Institute for Public Accuracy; the Israel Policy Forum; the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy; the Jane Addams Peace Association; the League of Conservation Voters; the League of United Latin American Citizens; the League of Women Voters; the Liberty Hill Foundation; MADRE; Medecins Sans Frontieres; Media Matters for America; Mercy Corps; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the Mexico Solidarity Network; the Middle East Children's Alliance; Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet; the Ms. Foundation for Women; the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; the National Council of Churches; the National Lawyers Guild; the National Network of Grantmakers; the National Organization for Women Foundation; the National Wildlife Federation; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Nature Conservancy (of California and of New York); the New Israel Fund; the New World Foundation; Nonviolent Peaceforce; the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; Oxfam America; the Pacifica Foundation; Peace Action; the Peace Development Fund; People for the American Way; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Planned Parenthood; the Ploughshares Fund; Population Connection; the Progress Unity Fund; Project Vote; the Proteus Fund; the Public Citizen Foundation; the Rainforest Action Network; the Rainforest Alliance; the Rockefeller Family Fund; the Ruckus Society; the Sentencing Project; September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows; the Sierra Club; the Shefa Fund; Sojourners; the Threshold Foundation; TrueMajority Action; Trust for Public Land; the Union of Concerned Scientists; USAction; Veterans For Peace; Waterkeeper Alliance; the Wilderness Society; Witness For Peace; Women's Action for New Directions; and the World Wildlife Fund.
Tides also runs a tax-exempt "alternative media source" called the Institute for Global Communications (IGC), a leading provider of Web technology to the radical left.
Between 1993 and 2003, at least 91 foundations made grants to the Tides Foundation. These included the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the Arca Foundation; the AT&T Foundation; the Barbra Streisand Foundation; the Bauman Family Foundation; Ben and Jerry's Foundation; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;(Most government computers use MS products) the Blue Moon Fund; the Bullitt Foundation; the CarEth Foundation; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; Changemakers; the ChevronTexaco Foundation; the Columbia Foundation; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the Energy Foundation; the Fannie Mae Foundation; the Ford Foundation; the Foundation for Deep Ecology; the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; the Heinz Family Foundation; the Hoffman Foundation; the Homeland Foundation; the Howard Heinz Endowment; the J.M. Kaplan Fund; the James Irvine Foundation; the JEHT Foundation; the Jenifer Altman Foundation; the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Joyce Foundation; the Lear Family Foundation; the Liberty Hill Foundation; the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; the Ms. Foundation for Women; the Nathan Cummings Foundation; the New World Foundation; the Open Society Institute; the Pew Charitable Trusts; the Ploughshares Fund; the Proteus Fund; the Public Welfare Foundation; the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund; the Righteous Persons Foundation; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the Roberts Foundation; the Rockefeller Family Fund; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy; the Stern Family Fund; the Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust; the Summit Charitable Foundation; the Surdna Foundation; the Threshold Foundation; the Turner Foundation; the Vanguard Public Foundation; the Verizon Foundation; the Vira I. Heinz Endowment; the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and the Woods Fund of Chicago.
One particularly notable donor to the Tides entities is Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Senator John Kerry. From 1994 to 2004, the Heinz Endowments, which Mrs. Kerry heads, gave the Tides Foundation and Center approximately $8.1 million in grants. Until February 2001, Mrs. Kerry also served as a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which has given Tides numerous six-figure grants.
The Tides Foundation and Tides Center also receive grants from the U.S. federal government. Between 1997 and 2001, these grants included the following: $395,219 from the Department of Interior; $3,350,431 from the Environmental Protection Agency; $3,487,040 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development; $208,878 from the Department of Agriculture; $39,550 from the Department of Energy; $93,500 from the Small Business Administration; $10,986 from the Department of Health and Human Services; and $84,520 from the Centers for Disease Control U.S. Agency for International Development, and of course George Soros as note above.
THE APOLLO ALLIANCE (Project of the Tides Center)
• Environmental organization that grew out of the Campaign for America's Future
• Believes that expanded government intervention and control is the solution to all social and economic problems
• A notable Apollo Alliance board member is Van Jones.
• Has much influence on the Obama administration's environmental policies
MISSION: The Apollo Alliance is a coalition of labor, business, environmental, and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs. Inspired by the Apollo space program, we promote investments in energy efficiency, clean power, mass transit, next-generation vehicles, and emerging technology, as well as in education and training. Working together, we will reduce carbon emissions and oil imports, spur domestic job growth, and position America to thrive in the 21st century economy.
Background Apollo was launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy to catalyze a clean energy revolution in America, a revolution in the way our country generates and uses energy so profound that it will touch literally every quarter of American life. Harkening back to President Kennedy’s visionary call to restore America’s technological leadership by landing the first man on the Moon within the decade, the Apollo Alliance spoke directly to the core values we share as Americans: our can-do spirit, our inherent optimism, and the pride we feel (or want to feel) about our country’s place in the world. The subtext was clear: we did it before, we can do it again. This is America, the richest, most technologically advanced and industrious country in the world. If anyone can do it, we can. And we will.
Not surprisingly, the Apollo message captured the imagination of people throughout the country. Soon our phone lines were buzzing with calls from political leaders of all stripes wanting to find out what they could do in their states, in their cities, and at the national level to advance Apollo’s clean energy agenda. Apollo responded to the increasing demand for our work by establishing Apollo coalitions in nine states and five cities to promote policy change consistent with our Ten-Point Plan for reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil. We released highly regarded energy analyses that confirmed the economic benefits of converting to a clean energy economy and published guides outlining specific strategies for investing in clean energy, greater energy efficiency, and innovative transit and transportation solutions.
Apollo’s unique role in the climate debate is our ability to mobilize a coalition unprecedented in its strength and diversity by speaking directly to the economic benefits of moving toward a clean energy economy. In 2008, as the economy and energy rose to top Americans’ concerns, we released The New Apollo Program, an update of our original Ten-Point Plan developed for the 2004 elections. The plan identifies priorities for federal action and investment, including a “cap and invest” program to reduce carbon emissions; investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and mass transit; a plan to revitalize the manufacturing sector; and specific strategies to expand opportunities for American workers in the clean energy economy.
The New Apollo Program outlines a comprehensive economic investment strategy to build America’s 21st century clean energy economy. Released at a critical juncture in our nation’s economic future – as Congress and the administration called for a $700 billion rescue package to shore up our unstable financial infrastructure – the Apollo program would generate and invest $500 billion over the next ten years to accelerate the development of our vast clean energy resources, dramatically reduce carbon emissions that are destabilizing our planet, and transform America into the global leader of the new green economy.
In addition to releasing The New Apollo Program, our key accomplishments in 2008 included:
Publishing The Apollo Economic Recovery Act, Apollo’s proposal for a comprehensive quick start, clean energy economic recovery strategy to immediately create or retain 650,000 direct green-collar jobs and an additional 1.3 million indirect jobs in communities across the country.
Gaining inclusion of $25 billion in the 2008 federal economic rescue package for low-interest loans to auto manufacturers who retool their factories to make cleaner vehicles. Apollo worked with Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow to secure the loan provisions and funding.
Securing funding to launch Apollo organizing campaigns in Missouri and North Dakota to build broad state, local and federal support for clean energy, good jobs initiatives.
Convening a roundtable of policymakers and national business, labor, and environmental leaders to develop recommendations supporting the domestic manufacture of renewable energy systems and components – our “Made in America” manufacturing agenda from The New Apollo Program. We are working with several Midwest senators to incorporate these recommendations into recovery and stimulus packages, and in a broader energy bill expected to be introduced next year.
Organizing Newark’s Green Future Summit in partnership with Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker and other national and local partners. The September 2008 summit and the year of planning leading up to it were the products of a commitment we made together at the Clinton Global Initiative last fall to help establish Newark as a national model for clean and efficient energy use, green-collar job creation, and green economic development.
Writing and publishing Imagining Newark’s Green Future, a report documenting our year working in Newark. The report reviews our Newark project in depth and presents it as a model for how other cities and communities can organize green-collar job programs.
Writing and co-publishing Green-Collar Jobs in America’s Cities, a guide for urban leaders about ways to expand local green-collar jobs. The guide explains how to link job creation and economic development strategies to methods of reducing CO2 emissions and meeting other energy goals. At the same time, we co-wrote (with the Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the Workforce Alliance) a state version of the report, Greener Pathways.
Co-convening, with Green For All, a roundtable for local green-collar job practitioners (within the Apollo network and beyond) to discuss best practices and identify shared priorities. Like our reports and the summit, the roundtable is a tool for moving the idea of green-collar jobs from a theory to a reality across the country.
2009 Program Priorities
Apollo’s 2009 program priorities are to:
Promote federal policies, within the framework of The New Apollo Program, to spur national economic recovery through strategic investment in America’s clean energy economy.
Strengthen and build state and local Apollo coalitions to promote policies, implement programs to speed investment in clean energy and energy efficiency, and put people to work in well-paid, green-collar jobs.
Organization
In late 2007 Apollo spun off from its founding organizations, Campaign for America’s Future and Center for Wisconsin Strategy, formed its own Board of Directors, and expanded its staff and program to better meet the critical challenge of promoting clean energy and good jobs. The Apollo Alliance is a project of the Tides Center, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization.
A project of the Tides Center, the Apollo Alliance (AA) claims to have been "launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy to catalyze a clean energy revolution in America." AA says that in late 2007 it "spun off from its founding organizations, Campaign for America's Future and Center for Wisconsin Strategy, formed its own Board of Directors, and expanded its staff and program to better meet the critical challenge of promoting clean energy and good jobs."
The watchdog website UndueInfluence.com describes AA as a coalition composed of "true believers with an absolute belief that government is the solution to all social and economic problems, allied with labor unions, subsidy-seeking companies and global warming / weather control advocates."
Apollo Board of Directors
Chairman: Phil Angelides, Chairman, Canyon Johnson Urban Communities Fund
Members:
Frances Beinecke, President, Natural Resources Defense Council
Robert Borosage, President, Institute for America’s Future
Leo Gerard, International President, United Steelworkers Union
Gerald Hudson, International Executive Vice President, Service Employees International Union(SEIU)
Mindy Lubber, President, CERES
Nancy McFadden, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for PG&E Corporation
Kathleen McGinty, former Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Terence M. O’Sullivan, General President, Laborers’ International Union of North America
Ellen Pao, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
Michael Peck, Principal, MAPA Incorporated
John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress
Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club
Dan W. Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, Google
Joel Rogers, Director, Center on Wisconsin Strategy
Van Jones, a self-procaimed "communist" and "revolutionary," served on the AA board of directors for several years along with such luminaries as: Gerald Hudson, International Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); environmentalist Carl Pope; Joel Rogers, a founder of the Marxist political coalition known as the New Party; John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; Robert Borosage, co-founder of both the Institute for America's Future and Campaign for America's Future; actor and environmentalist Robert Redford; former Bill Clinton administration officials Kathleen McGinty and Dan Reicher; and key figures from the Natural Resources Defense Council, the United Steelworkers Union, and the Laborers' International Union of North America.
AA describes itself as "a coalition of labor, business, environmental, and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs." "Inspired by the Apollo space program," adds AA, "we promote investments in energy efficiency, clean power, mass transit, next-generation vehicles, and emerging technology, as well as in education and training. Working together, we will reduce carbon emissions and oil imports, spur domestic job growth, and position America to thrive in the 21st century economy."
Van Jones describes Apollo Alliance's mission as "sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes."
A director of New York State's chapter of Apollo Alliance is Jeff Jones (no relation to Van Jones). AA's website describes Jeff Jones as someone devoted to "cleaning up toxic pollution in inner-city and rural neighborhoods and reversing global warming." The website does not mention that in the 1970s Jones was one of the four key leaders of the Weather Underground terrorist organization, along with Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn.
The Apollo Alliance has a long list of endorsers, among which are: ACORN; Change to Win (an ACORN entity); the SEIU; the Van Jones-founded Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which claims that the American criminal-justice system is infested with racism; Green For All (another organization founded by Van Jones); the Working Families Party; Greenpeace USA; the League of Conservation Voters; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Rainforest Action Network; the Sierra Club; the Union of Concerned Scientists; Working Assets; EarthJustice; the National Wildlife Federation; the Progressive States Network; and a host of big labor unions (including the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Teamsters, Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Electrical Workers, SEIU, Sheet Metal Workers, Transportation Workers, United Auto Workers, Food and Commercial Workers, Mine Workers, and Steel Workers).
Apollo Alliance exerts a powerful influence on the views and policies of the Obama administration. AA helped craft portions of the $787 billion "stimulus" legislation (officially called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) that President Obama signed into law in early 2009. Specifically, AA had a hand in writing the "clean energy and green-collar jobs provisions" of the bill, for which $86 billion was earmarked. This included funds "to build new transit and high speed rail lines, weatherize homes, develop next generation batteries for clean vehicles, scale up wind and solar power, build a modern electric grid, and train a new generation of green-collar workers." AA recommended that the stimulus bill allocate $11 billion for the development of a so-called "Smart Grid," which would use digital technology to deliver electricity from suppliers to consumers; ultimately the bill allocated precisely that amount to Smart Grid-related projects, including a $100 million provision for job training related to Smart Grid technology.
Confirming the magnitude of AA's role in shaping the stimulus bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in mid-2009: "The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us the U.S. Senate develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them."
In July 2009, Senator Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed AA Board Chair Phil Angelides, the former Treasurer of the State of California, to serve as chairman of the newly created Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
Apollo Alliance has received funding directly from the Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation and the Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation. In addition, AA has been the beneficiary of grants made to the Institute for America's Future that were earmarked specifically for AA; among these were grants from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Town Creek Foundation, the Overbrook Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Max and Anna Levinson Foundation, and the Energy Foundation.
The centerpiece of Apollo Alliance's environmental program is a "Ten-Point Plan for Good Jobs and Energy Independence," which features the following elements:
1. Promote advanced technology & hybrid cars.
2. Invest in more efficient factories: "Make innovative use of the tax code and economic development systems to promote more efficient and profitable manufacturing while saving energy through environmental retrofits …"
3. Encourage high performance building: "Increase investment in construction of 'green buildings' and energy-efficient homes and offices through innovative financing and incentives, improved building operations, and updated codes and standards …"
4. Increase use of energy-efficient appliances.
5. Modernize electrical infrastructure.
6. Expand renewable energy development: "Diversify energy sources by promoting existing technologies in solar, biomass and wind …"
7. Improve transportation options: "Invest in effective multimodal networks including bicycle, local bus and rail transit, regional high-speed rail and magnetic levitation rail projects."
8. Reinvest in smart urban growth: "Revitalize urban centers to promote strong cities and good jobs, by rebuilding and upgrading local infrastructure including road maintenance, bridge repair, and water and waste water systems, and by expanding redevelopment of idled urban 'brownfield' lands, and by improving metropolitan planning and governance."
9. Plan for a hydrogen future: "Invest in long-term research & development of hydrogen fuel cell technology, and deploy the infrastructure to support hydrogen-powered cars and distributed electricity generation using stationary fuel cells, to create jobs in the industries of the future.
10. Preserve regulatory protections: "Encourage … regulation that ensures energy diversity and system reliability, [and] that protects workers and the environment …"
Sounds a lot like the provisions of the Cap & Trade Bill, Stimulas Bill and many of the "PORK" in the budget.
PROGRESSIVE CAUCAS (DEMOCRATIC)
• Radical caucus of nearly six-dozen members of the House of Representatives
• Until 1999, worked in open partnership with Democratic Socialists of America
The Progressive Caucus is an organization of Members of Congress founded in 1991 by newly-elected House Representative Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont), who is a self-described socialist. Nancy Pelosi joined right after its startup, left when she became Speaker of the House
As of April 2007, the Progressive Caucus included Sanders (who became a U.S. Senator in 2006), Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and 69 members of the House of Representatives, all of them leftist Democrats and almost all in districts heavily gerrymandered to guarantee the re-election of any Democratic Party incumbent, no matter how extreme.
On November 11, 1999, the Progressive Caucus drafted its Position Paper on economic inequality. It reads, in part, as follows: "Economic inequality is the result of two and a half decades of government policies and rules governing the economy being tilted in favor of large asset owners at the expense of wage earners. Tax policy, trade policy, monetary policy, government regulations and other rules have reflected this pro-investor bias. We propose the introduction or reintroduction of a package of legislative initiatives that will close America's economic divide and address both income and wealth disparities. … The concentration of wealth is a problem because it distorts our democracy, destabilizes the economy and erodes our social and cultural fabric." Its funny that most of these individuals are quiet well off!
In order "to bring new life to the progressive voice in U.S. politics," the Progressive Caucus has worked closely with Progressive Challenge, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. Progressive Challenge is a coalition through which the activities and talking points of leftist groups are synchronized and harmonized with one another, producing coordinated, mutually-reinforcing propaganda from some 200 seemingly-unconnected groups.
In 2005 the Progressive Caucus crafted its "Progressive Promise" document, which advocates socialized medicine; radical environmentalism; the redistribution of wealth; higher taxes; the elimination of numerous provisions of the Patriot Act; dramatic reductions in the government's intelligence-gathering capabilities; debt relief for poor countries; and the quick withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. These measures, says the Progressive Caucus, would help "re-build U.S. alliances around the world, restore international respect for American power and influence, and reaffirm our nation's constructive engagement in the United Nations and other multilateral organizations."
Until 1999 the Progressive Caucus worked in open partnership with Democratic Socialists of America. After the press reported on this link, the connections suddenly vanished from both organizations' websites.
As of June 2006, the following Members of Congress belonged to the Progressive Caucus: Neil Abercrombie; Tammy Baldwin; Xavier Becerra; Madeleine Z. Bordallo; Corrine Brown; Sherrod Brown; Michael Capuano; Julia Carson; Donna Christensen; William "Lacy" Clay; Emanuel Cleaver; John Conyers; Elijah Cummings; Danny Davis; Peter DeFazio; Rosa DeLauro; Lane Evans; Sam Farr; Chaka Fattah; Bob Filner; Barney Frank; Raul Grijalva; Luis Gutierrez; Maurice Hinchey; Jesse Jackson, Jr.; Sheila Jackson-Lee; Stephanie Tubbs Jones; Marcy Kaptur; Carolyn Kilpatrick; Dennis Kucinich; Tom Lantos; Barbara Lee; John Lewis; Ed Markey; Jim McDermott; James P. McGovern; Cynthia McKinney; George Miller; Gwen Moore; Jerrold Nadler; Eleanor Holmes Norton; John Olver; Major Owens; Ed Pastor; Donald Payne; Nancy Pelosi; Charles Rangel; Bobby Rush; Bernie Sanders; Jan Schakowsky; Jose Serrano; Louise Slaughter; Hilda Solis; Pete Stark; Bennie Thompson; John Tierney; Tom Udall; Nydia Velazquez; Maxine Waters; Diane Watson; Mel Watt; Henry Waxman; and Lynn Woolsey.
Institute for Policy Studies
• America’s oldest leftwing think tank
• Has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) was founded in 1963 as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization with seed money (derived from a fortune made in cosmetics sales under the Faberge trade name) from the Samuel Rubin Foundation. Samuel Rubin (1901-1978) was a Russian Bolshevik and the father of Cora Weiss, who headed the Samuel Rubin Foundation from its inception and is currently the principal financier of IPS. Weiss' husband, Peter, is Chairman of the IPS Board of Trustees. He is also a member of the National Lawyers Guild and the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, both of which were created as Communist Party fronts. The Weisses selected Richard J. Barnet and Marcus Raskin to be the first Co-Directors of IPS, with the aim of transforming the United States by altering public attitudes, changing laws, and reversing foreign policy through an Academy that reached every nexus of the national nervous system.
Throughout its history, IPS has committed itself to the task of advancing leftist causes. It worked with agents of the Castro regime and championed environmentalist and anti-war positions in the 1960s and 1970s; it declared against the Reagan administration's efforts to roll back communism in the 1980s; it joined the vanguard of what IPS hails as the "anti-corporate globalization movement" in the 1990s; and, most recently, it has furnished policy research assailing the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The Center for Security Studies was a 1974 IPS spinoff and strove to compromise the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence agencies. The mastheads of two anti-FBI and anti-CIA publications, Counterspy and the Covert Action Information Bulletin, were heavy with IPS members. Also spawned by IPS were: (a) the North American Congress on Latin America, created in 1966 as a New Left intelligence-gathering agency; (b) the Holland-based Transnational Institute, a major source of anti-American, anti-capitalist literature; (c) the Institute for Food and Development Policy (a.k.a. Food First), which has spent years finding fault with the quality of America's food gifts to the Third World and helped to give rise to Medea Benjamin’s organization Global Exchange; (d) the Data Center in Oakland, a major database that cross-indexes the annual reports of more than 1,000 corporations to detect any signs of incipient monopoly; (e) the Institute for Southern Studies, which has compiled a similar database on more than 400 Southern corporations; (f) the Council on Economic Priorities, which received IPS money with a view to exposing corporate skullduggery and passing judgment on companies' social conscience; and (g) the Interfaith Council on Corporate Responsibility.
IPS is also linked to the phalanx of leftist anti-war groups, either through funding or leadership. Among these are the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE); Fellowship of Reconciliation; Promoting Enduring Peace; and Business Executives for National Security. Moreover, IPS is a member organization of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, and it endorsed a May 1, 2003 document titled "10 Reasons Environmentalists Oppose an Attack on Iraq," which was published by Environmentalists Against War. In 2003 it was reported that IPS, in conjunction with the National Organization for Women, made some of its Washington DC office space available (at no charge) to the feminist antiwar organization Code Pink, headed by the longtime communists Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans.
IPS has consistently tried to derail American efforts to combat Communism. In 1985, for instance, as President Reagan pressed Congress to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, IPS fellow Peter Kornbluh arranged for Senators John Kerry and Tom Harkin to fly to Managua to meet with Communist Sandinista leaders. Convinced by the Kerry-Harkin report on the allegedly happy atmosphere in Managua, Congress denied the funds, though it reversed itself a few weeks later when Sandinista President Daniel Ortega met with his Soviet friends in the Kremlin.
Central to the IPS worldview is the think tank's unyielding opposition to free markets particularly and capitalism broadly. Viewing capitalism as a breeding ground for “unrestrained greed,” IPS seeks, through its reports and programs, to provide a corrective to "unrestrained markets and individualism." One such initiative is the Global Economy Project, overseen by Sarah Anderson and IPS Director John Cavanagh, which seeks to: (a) undercut the Free Trade Area of the Americas; (b) foment grassroots resentment against the World Trade Organization; (c) incite opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement; and (d) promote "economic alternatives" to globalization.
IPS professes an unquestioning faith in the righteousness of the United Nations, as evidenced by its "New Internationalism" project, which was introduced in 1996 and is directed by Phyllis Bennis. Working in concert with the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus, this project seeks to hamstring American foreign policy and bring it under the control of the UN. In recent years, it has condemned NATO military intervention in the former Yugoslavia; denounced the "unilaterally imposed" U.S.-British no-fly-zones in Iraq; sought to spark public opposition to pre-war economic sanctions against Iraq; attempted to align U.S. policy toward Israel more closely with the ritually critical stance of the UN; and impugned unilateralism in combating terror, viewing it as hostile to the function of the United Nations.
Financial support for IPS comes from such foundations as the Ford Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Arca Foundation, the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, the Compton Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America, the Energy Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Turner Foundation, and many others.
In conclusion: As we have seen in our look into ACORN, SEIU, Apollo Alliance, Tides Foundation & Tides Center we see that George Soros, John Podesta, Wade Rathke, Weather underground members, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Bernie Sanders, many elected officials and the current President of the United States, Barack Obama are all working together to change this country. The funding is intertwined from group to group and to individuals through NON-PROFIT, NON-PARTISAN TAX Exempt groups.
We also see that the current Health Care Bill, Cap & Trade Bill, Stimulus Bill and current budget with all of its "PORK" are paybacks and are in the mission statements of these groups and the beliefs of George Soros, Wade Rathke, Senators Leahy and Sanders (did not vote to unfund ACORN), Nancy Pelosi and many of our current elected officials have been in the works for a long time.
What I have tried to show is the far reaching hand of George Soros and others, both groups and individuals, which now leads to my next question to you the reader is:
“Who is really running this country?”
This takes us back to the statement of Thomas Jefferson:
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
It is time for those who believe in this country, the vision of the founding fathers and the freedoms they gave us to get up and “TAKE BACK YOUR COUNTRY”. We the People are the only ones that can save this country!
Sergeant-rock
I would like to thank the following: GLEN BECK for the inspiration, discoverthenetworks.org that help to bring all of this together through their research & researchers and David Horowitz Freedom Center and last but not lease the web pages of ACORN, SEIU, APOLLO ALLIANCE for letting me see your true colors
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