Post edited 4:04 pm – September 17, 2009 by TheGuru

Don Loos posted “SEIU: ‘One of the Pillars of the ACORN Family'” on BigGovernment.com today and you have got to read the whole post! Does it surprise you in anyway to learn that ACORN and SEIU are closely linked and in many cases are one and the same? Check this out:

Part of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s (ACORN) rotten core includes a very cozy relationship with Big Labor.  In fact, in many instances ACORN and Big Labor are one and the same.  In 2008, Big Labor funneled ACORN millions of dollars for so-called organizing activity.  But, that is only the tip of the Big Labor iceberg.

ACORN controls or significantly dominates several Big Labor unions and organizations.  ACORN created and controls SEIU 100 (Gulf Region) and SEIU 880 (a recently expanded SEIU mega-local that covers Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas).

ACORN founder S. Wade Rathke referred to mega-union SEIU 880 as “one of the pillars of the ACORN Family.”

[...]

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern hand picked ACORN’s Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.

In addition to Rathke’s and ACORN’s SEIU involvement, Rathke controlled Louisiana HERE Local 100, was Secretary-Treasurer of a New Orleans based AFL-CIO labor organization, and served on the board of a hotel employees union organizing committee.

A search of financial disclosure reports (UnionReports.gov) filed with the U.S. Department of Labor for the years 2000 and 2006 disclosed the following positions that Rathke held in labor unions while he concurrently served as ACORN’s Chief Organizer:

[...]

From the early days of Saul Alinsky-styled union organizing, ACORN and Big Labor learned that forced unionism provides the financial fuel to perpetuate their organizational schemes and political clout.  ACORN and Big Labor have turned organizing into a numbers game; it is no longer about improving working conditions, as Randy Schaber’s and David Bego’s stories clearly illustrate that SEIU was not escalating pressure to improve working conditions.  The tactics that SEIU used border on sadism.

[...]

Further, according to Washington Times reporter S. A. Miller, ACORN operates mob-styled protection rackets:

ACORN provided liberal causes with protest-for-hire services and coerced donations from the targets of demonstrations through a mob-style “protection” racket.  ACORN called it the “muscle for the money” program, according to prepared testimony…

The “unofficial” program collected payments to organize protests. For example, the Service Employees International Union [SEIU] hired ACORN to harass the Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm. Other paid protests targeted Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt and Money Mart, according to the testimony.

If you want first hand reports from the front lines of an SEIU ACORN-type campaign, listen to the National Right to Work Committee’s Interviews with two victims of separate multi-year card check unionization campaigns: Randy Schaber and David Bego.  They describe the “protection racket” in detail.

So here's my question of the day: Just who is Wade Rathke?

Here are some highlights from DiscoverTheNetworks.org:

Wade Rathke founded the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), for which he served as Chief Organizer from 1970 to 2008. He is also the co-founder and Chairman of the Tides Center; a Board member of the Tides Foundation; an Executive Board member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and Chairman of the AFL-CIO's Organizers Forum. Rathke describes himself as someone who is dedicated to “winning social justice, workers' rights, and a democracy where 'the people shall rule'”; i.e., socialism.

Rathke hails from a family of prosperous orange ranchers in Orange County, California. During the late 1960s he attended Williams College in Massachusetts but dropped out before graduating. He thereafter became a draft-resistance organizer for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and an organizer for George Wiley's National Welfare Reform Organization (NWRO). (For details on NWRO, see the separate entries for George Wiley and the “Cloward-Piven Strategy.”)

[...]

On June 2, 2008, Rathke stepped down from his role as ACORN's President. A month after his departure, the organization 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 known about Dale's activity but had kept it secret from almost all of their board members and from law-enforcement authorities.

According to journalist Stephanie Strom, Wade Rathke ”said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a 'weapon' into the hands of enemies of ACORN, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to its often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.”

Tides Foundation founder and president Drummond Pike personally repaid the embezzled amount to ACORN.

[...]

In July 2009, ACORNcracked.com editor Kyle Olson visited a Rathke book signing (for Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families), where he interviewed the ACORN founder. In the interview, Rathke confirmed that he was pursuing the so-called “Maximum Eligible Participation” Solution (MEPS), a strategy calling for all Americans eligible for welfare payments to demand every penny to which the law “entitles” them. He urged people to “make sure that other people in the community” are actually getting their due from the government.

The MEPS is essentially an updated incarnation of the old Cloward-Piven Strategy, aiming to orchestrate a crisis that will overwhelm the financial system and cause it to collapse. Rathke writes in his book, “it is hard to believe that we cannot assemble the troops to mount a campaign for maximum eligible participation that harvests the opportunities and dollars already available if we could achieve full utilization of existing programs.” Rathke has also said that technology should be utilized to make it as easy as possible for people to claim welfare benefits.

Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, Wade Rathke is the worm in the rotten core of ACORN, SEIU, and various other Soros supported endeavors.

This guy is now my focus and I will continue to post material that shines a light on him.

Check back soon for more.