Teachers Unions Give Big $$ To ACORN

By now anyone not living under a rock--or getting their news solely from the NYT or MSNBC--has heard about the ACORN scandals in DC, Baltimore, New York, and Southern California. Those of us on the right aren't surprised, and there were plenty who were trying to shine some disinfecting sunlight on this organization during last year's presidential campaign. The truth finally wins out. (Click here to read posts I've written that mention this organization.)

Let's not forget what those undercover reporters found--an organization whose employees tried to help people they believed were going to import girls from Central America for a child prostitution ring.

Who, besides the US government, gives money to ACORN? Why, teachers unions, of course. From the Washington Examiner:

Teachers unions have contributed over $1.3 million to ACORN and its affiliates, since 2005, according to U.S. Labor Department financial disclosure forms.

But there is no guarantee that the $1,333,112 million in donations from the National Education Association (NEA) and Teachers AFL-CIO unions are actually being used for their stated purposes, according to present and former Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) officials...

Now that ACORN staffers have been caught on video helping a man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute acquire illegal home loans to set up a brothel it is imperative that these organizations reconsider their support, said Ron Sykes, treasurer for ACORN’s Washington D.C. branch.

Both the NEA and Teachers AFL-CIO advertise as strong advocates for children.

The hypocrisy shouldn't surprise anyone--the NEA also advertises as a strong advocate for public schools, yet gives a pass to (Democrat) politicians who send their children to private schools.

Update, 9/24/09: Here's the best information available specifically about the NEA and ACORN.

Press Bias and ACORN

Check out this exceedingly biased article from McClatchy:

An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group's Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.

First off, I do not support vandalism and death threats. Those are illegal acts and should be not only shunned by all Americans, but punished to the fullest extent of the law.

But the "tensions" mentioned in that paragraph aren't caused by ACORN's "role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month", they're caused by ACORN's fraudulently registering so many to vote.

Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have verbally attacked the group repeatedly in recent days, alleging a widespread vote-fraud scheme, although they've provided little proof. It was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is examining whether thousands of fraudulent voter-registration applications submitted by some ACORN workers were part of a systematic effort or isolated incidents.

Little proof? Then why is the FBI investigating such spurious allegations? We can start here.

"I would not say that Senator McCain is inciting violence," Kettenring said, "but I would say that his statements about the role of this manufactured scandal were totally outlandish. We would call on Senator McCain to tamp down the fringe elements in his party."

Manufactured scandal? Why does McClatchy not point out all, or any, of the examples of fraud I linked to above? It looks like McClatchy might be pushing an agenda here.

Update: Hey, look! The LA Times reports that some people have been tricked into registering as Republicans. I'm sure the press will be all over this type of voter fraud. I agree with Instapundit: this might be a good thing, as it would force the press (finally) to address the subject of voter fraud.

Update #2, 10/20/08: What a shock! ACORN workers were pressured with quotas. Wonderful people, these ACORN types. Know anyone who's friendly with them?

On A School Day?

A union of professionals, indeed:

(Monday) March 05, 2012

Occupy the Capitol

Location: Sacramento

Thousands of students, parents, teachers, and workers will flood into Sacramento. How long we stay will be up to you.
Join us to demand that Wall St. and the 1% pay to refund education, jobs, and essential services!

10 am - Mass March * Location TBA
11 am - Rally at the Capitol Building
12:30 pm - Lunch at the Capitol Building
1:30 pm - March on Wall St. lobbyists from the Capitol building
4 pm to ? - General Assembly and Speakout! at the Capitol Building

It's bad enough they're a day late and a dollar short, trying to "me too" a movement that's already died out, but to do this on a day when school is in session and teachers will have to take a day off? Such great role models. Disgusting.

CTA is an embarrassment. I couldn't be more proud not to be a member of that union.

Update, 2/13/12: Turns out ACORN is involved:

A re-branded ACORN branch in California is raising money to help fund an upcoming "Occupy" protest in Sacramento, FoxNews.com has learned.

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment sent out letters this month pleading for contributions of up to $20,000 for buses, food, printing, sound and other supplies for an upcoming event dubbed "Occupy the Capitol."

Now People Are Paying Attention?

For several years now, and most especially a year ago during the presidential campaign, conservatives were telling the country about how corrupt an organization ACORN was. Only now is that story gaining traction:

Evidence continues to accumulate from far and wide that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is lousy with corruption. The latest revelations come from Louisiana and Oklahoma...These revelations come hard on the heels of the sensational videotapes showing ACORN employees in Baltimore, New York and San Diego giving advice on concealing a brothel featuring 13-year-old girls smuggled here from Latin America.

But this is a liberal organization. I have to believe things would have been handled differently had the Heritage Foundation been caught in such shady dealings.

Another Op-Ed Regarding ACORN and the NEA

Most union members think their dues are spent on assisting children and enhancing the teaching profession. But ACORN is just one of many organizations that receive funding from the NEA that have little or no connection to supporting children or teachers.

It's a good op-ed, and there's even a plug for CTEN in there.

Teachers Unions are "Census Partners"

ACORN has fallen from the census tree, but there are still plenty of other left-wing organizations that will be contributing to the census, including the NEA and the AFT.

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

I'm curious if the Heritage Foundation was a "census partner" back in 1990 or 2000.

Voter Fraud Is Not A Myth

James O'Keefe shows how easy it is to commit voter fraud in Colorado, with the active help of liberal activists:

Many liberals are adamant there is no threat of voter fraud that justifies efforts to improve the integrity of elections. “There is no real concrete evidence of voter fraud,” tweeted Donna Brazile, former acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, this week. “It’s a big ass lie.”

James O’Keefe, the guerilla filmmaker who brought down the ACORN voter-registration fraudsters in 2010 and forced the resignation of NPR executives, politely disagrees. Today, he is releasing some new undercover footage that raises disturbing questions about ballot integrity in Colorado, the site of fiercely contested races for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, and the governorship. When he raised the issue of filling out some of the unused ballots that are mailed to every household in the state this month, he was told by Meredith Hicks, the director of Work for Progress, a liberal group funded by Democratic Super PACS.: “That is not even like lying or something, if someone throws out a ballot, like if you want to fill it out you should do it.” She then brazenly offered O’Keefe, disguised as a middle-aged college instructor, a job with her group.

The video of O’Keefe’s encounters with other operatives is equally disturbing.  He has a conversation with Greenpeace employee Christina Topping, and suggests he might have access to unused ballots from people who have recently moved out of college fraternity houses. “I mean it is putting the votes to good use,” she responds. “So really, truly, like yeah, that is awesome.”

Did you catch that? You don't have to believe me, but you can't deny the video.

What does it say about your beliefs, and your contempt for your fellow citizens, if you don't think you and your ideas can win legitimately so you actually cheat (*cough*, IRS, *cough*) in order to win elections?

Liberals are often despicable.  They can be nice enough individuals, but when it comes to their actions related to their politics, they're often despicable.

Update:  Probability says that this wouldn't happen absent outside forces:

For whatever reason, when statewide races are decided by less than 1 point, Democrats win almost three-quarters of the time. When the margin opens to 1-2 points, that advantage dissipates, and the Democrats win only half the races.

Works that way with recounts, too. They always seem to find a box of ballots in the trunk of a car somewhere....

They Lie, And Pat Themselves On The Back For Their Creativity

Do lefties "exaggerate", or do they just lie through their teeth?

Remember the old children’s story about Chicken Little? An acorn falls on Chicken Little’s head, and she surmises that “the sky is falling” and the world is coming to an end. As a result, Chicken Little creates mass hysteria among the barnyard animals.

Chicken Little whipped the other animals into a frenzy with her histrionics, which makes her the perfect metaphor for today’s leftists...

Democrats act as if every Republican proposal is an existential threat to life in one way or another. Fossil fuels will destroy the planet. Efforts to secure elections will prevent minorities from voting. Measures to keep young children from irreversibly damaging their bodies amount to erasing transgender people. You get the picture.

The Biden administration has turned progressive melodrama into an art form. We’re talking about the people who compare anyone who didn’t vote for Joe Biden to violent extremists and who promised a “winter of severe illness and death” to anyone who didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.

A Wall Street Journal editorial by Barton Swaim demonstrates how bad the left has gotten when it comes to histrionics.

“President Biden’s re-election announcement video warned that ‘MAGA extremists are lining up’ to repeal ‘bedrock freedoms,'” Swaim begins. “Uh oh—what freedoms? The extremists plan on ‘dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love, all by making it more difficult for you to be able to vote' "...

“The other threats on Mr. Biden’s list—’banning’ books, ‘telling people who they can love’ and voter suppression—are literally nonexistent,” Swaim points out. “Mr. Biden isn’t engaged in the time-honored political craft of exaggeration. He’s seeing things that aren’t there.”

I'm going with "lying to sway the low-information voter", of which there are unfortunately too many.  Remember the blatant lie Harry Reid told about Mitt Romney?  "Romney didn't win, did he" was Reid's reply when called out, so the ends justified the means.  It always does for lefties.

Voter Fraud

I only ever read about one side doing this.  Where are all the videos of Republicans and their ballot stuffing and cheating?

North Carolina election officials repeatedly offered ballots last week to an impostor who arrived at polling places with the names and addresses of 'inactive' voters who hadn't participated in elections for many years.

No fraudulent votes were actually cast: It was the latest undercover video sting from conservative activist James O'Keefe, whose filmmaking résumé reads like a target list of liberal causes.

He famously shuttered ACORN, the community organizing outfit once linked to Barack Obama. He dressed in an Osama bin Laden costume and waded across the Rio Grande from Mexico to America as a show of disdain for U.S. border policy. He videotaped people admitting they sold taxpayer-provided cellphones for drugs, shoes, handbags and spending cash.

Now O'Keefe has strolled into more than 20 voting precincts in Raleigh, Durham and Greensboro, N.C., proffering the names of people who seldom vote in order to test the integrity of the election process. It seems to have failed on a massive scale.

'I just sign this and then I can vote?' he asked one poll worker. 'Yep,' came the reply.

Last week O'Keefe's Project Veritas Action organization took its first deep-dive into North Carolina election politics, filming Democratic campaign workers saying they would help illegal immigrants vote for incumbent Senator Kay Hagan.

There's video at the link.

What does that say about a people who are so unsure of the strength of their message that they have to cheat?  Or is it that they don't care about its strength at all, they only want to win, by any means necessary?

Barack Obama, Prior Terrorist Bill Ayers, and Education

From the Wall Street Journal:

The CAC (Chicago Annenberg Challenge) was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools...

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto...

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

I think that's enough. You can read more at the link if you need to.

New Global Warming Post

I guess I'm in a big linking mood tonight. Not to worry, though--I'm working on a good self-written post, I'm just waiting for the big event to happen so I can blog about it.

Until then, though, let's go to a great Australian blog, and one of the newest on the blogroll at left, Ker-plunk. Why Ker-plunk for a title?

One day Chicken Little was walking in the woods when - KERPLUNK! - an acorn fell on her head. "Oh my goodness!" said Chicken Little. "The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king."

And so the blog begins.

Today we can read Ker-plunk's "10 Questions For Climate Fascists".

1. When did the debate end?
2. How is the science settled?
3. How do you explain this? (see picture at link)
4. What the heck has happened to the Hockey stick?
5. Why believe climate models?
6. Why is symbolism more important than effectiveness?
7. Why the IPCC censorship?
8. Why are all the predictions of only doom and gloom?
9. What caused the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age?
10. Why the hooey about sinking islands?


I'll add an 11th question: Why must you physically threaten and harass scientists who don't agree with you?

When Your Party Relies On Cheating At The Ballot Box...

Our entire system of government hinges on the consent of the governed, and election fraud throws that out the window:

It is an article of faith on the Left that voter fraud does not exist beyond the imaginations of racist right-wingers, hellbent on imposing "unconstitutional" voter ID laws fashioned to "suppress" minority turnout in elections. These objections are race-baiting nonsense; they're unsupported by both empirical evidence and Supreme Court precedent. The high court upheld Indiana's law in a 6-3 decision in 2008. The ruling was authored by uber-liberal Justice John Paul Stevens. And after Georgia implemented its own law in 2007 (which survived a legal challenge), minority voter participation increasedin the next two election cycles. ABC News has called voter fraud a "rare but real" phenomenon, evidenced by a number of relatively high-profile convictions in recent years. Congress defunded the left-wing group ACORN (for whom Barack Obama once organized) over widespread voter registration fraud and other outrages. The watchdog group True the Vote -- whose founder's businesses and family have been harassed by the IRS and other federal agencies -- documents voter fraud prosecutions in 46 states since 2000. Which brings us to a report that aired earlier this month on NBC's local affiliate in Ft. Myers, Florida. WBBH-TV reporter Andy Pierrotti managed to track down dozens of local residents who were (a) both non-US citizens and (b) registered to vote in the swing state. Many of them had illegally voted in recent elections. Here's the full report, followed by some analysis...

My guess is that these criminals are not voting Republican.

Pulling Out All The Stops

The September 2010 issue of California Educator magazine, mouthpiece rag of of the California Teachers Association, takes naked hypocrisy to dizzying new heights. One would think that after 5-1/2 years of blogging about education that I'd be inured to this verbal whiplash, but I must congratulate California Educator--they have stunned me yet again.

Let's start with page 4, and Ole Si Se Puede himself:

We currently have a federal administration that asks us to compete for education dollars; corporate foundations are increasingly meddling in the classroom, influencing policy that leads to dangerous, experimental reforms; and too many of our state's elected leaders are failing to do their jobs, leaving us - still at this late date - with no budget at all. And that's why the elections this year are so very important: to help fix this broken process.

Both houses of Congress have been run by Democrats for almost 4 years now, and for almost 2 years we've had a Democratic president. Our state legislature has been run by Democrats for as long as I can remember, and our governor is a Republican in name only. Which party is Si Se Puede accusing of being the problem? Why, the Republicans, of course! Does Puede not know who's running the "federal administration that asks us to compete for education dollars"? Of course he does! He doesn't like Race To The Top, of course, but he'd have been quite happy if California had gotten a piece of that pie--because more money would flow into CTA's coffers. He can make bad sounds about RttT, but he'll still tell you to vote straight ticket Democratic.

Puede doesn't like corporate money going to schools, and this article on page 10 singles out the Broad, Gates, and Walton Family foundations as having undue influence on education policy. I've got to ask, Puede, has this situation gotten better or worse in the last 2-4 years? He's happy to point out US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's ties to corporate foundations, but will still tell you to vote a straight Democratic ticket. Interestingly enough, pages 28-29 of the magazine are devoted to grants given to schools by CTA and NEA; presumably, those are "good" grants.

We jump to page 20 for A Lesson Plan For Victory, how and why we should elect Jerry Brown to be our once and future governor. Is this the same Jerry Brown who worked such wonders in the schools as mayor of Oakland? The same Jerry Brown who went against the local school board and teachers union to create the Oakland Military Institute, and without whose support the school wouldn't even have been founded? (I laud Brown for this support, btw.) Is this the same Jerry Brown whose campaign commercials now brag that when he was governor in the 70's, he cut state (union) worker pay? Is this the same Jerry Brown who, as Attorney General, can investigate a private university foundation for paying Sarah Palin to speak, but couldn't be bothered to investigate ACORN offices that were filmed trying to assist people they believed were involved in child prostitution? That Jerry Brown? He's supposed to "put California back on track"? He would be "A governor with our values"? What, exactly, do we think he'll do for education, or for teachers?

"A governor with our values". What are those values? Perhaps we can get some idea what they are by looking on page 36 at the CTA-Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Legislation For 2010. I cannot find a link for that article on the main page, so if you want to see it yourself you'll have to click on the magazine's digital version (link is just under the cover picture) and turn to page 36. Here are the only 3 bills listed:
SB 810, Universal Health Care (Obamacare on steroids)
AB 1814, Retiree Health Benefits (go see what it does!)
AB 2320, Charter Schools (putting restrictions on them, of course)

Those are CTA's values right there. Nothing that's going to help Darren, that's for sure!

So let's recap. In an issue where we're told that everything is going to Hell in a handbasket and we need to vote for all the Democrats in a few weeks, we see that Democrats are a big part of the problem. But hey, we should vote for them anyway, because what's good for CTA is good for California, right?

Ri-i-i-i-i-i-iight.

Look For The Union Label

I'm going to lift this completely from the EIA (see blogroll at left), because a snip just won't do it justice. The link is here, the August 21st post.
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Save the Planet, But Don't Unionize. The world of left-wing advocacy is filled with idealistic young people and hard-working blue-collar folks, more concerned with advancing a cause than making big bucks. This, of course, makes them perfect targets for exploitation by deep-pocketed left-wing advocacy groups.

Yes, I can hear the cries of "Foul, foul!" all across the land, but this is hardly a new phenomenon. In 1997, while campaigning to raise the minimum wage (a project that continues today), ACORN sued to avoid paying California's minimum wage to its own workers.

Last year, Las Vegas Weekly found that the picketers protesting Wal-Mart's substandard wages and working conditions had been hired by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 711. They were non-union, with no benefits, and spent five hours a day in 104 degree temperatures. The workers inside the air-conditioned Wal-Mart make twice as much.

Earlier this year, we learned that several industrial unions were hiring the homeless to walk picket lines. "The fact that the people demonstrating were not members of the union doesn't make much difference," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "What matters is that the carpenters working on the building had no health care and no pension."

The latest entry comes from the left-wing monthly In These Times. The Fund for Public Interest Research raises money for a wide variety of liberal causes, from the Sierra Club to the Human Rights Campaign, mostly through the work of canvassers. These young workers either go door-to-door or phone in an effort to get people to donate to whichever liberal group is picking up the tab that day. The Fund boasts of having raised more than $350 million and gathered more than 20 million petition signatures in 20 years.

The canvassers have a high turnover rate, which is unsurprising since they often make less than minimum wage. In Los Angeles, the poor pay and working conditions prompted some canvassers to seek union representation. The response by The Fund was swift: the office was shut down and union supporters were fired. Read the whole story here.

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