ACORN And The Ny Working Families Party Connection

Published in September 22nd, 2009 Posted by InsidePolitics in ACORN, Articles, Democratic Corruption, InsidePolitics, New York State, Working Families PartyThe scandal-ridden organization ACORN has direct ties to the Working Families Party here in New York.  From it’s leadership to sharing office space, it is now evident that the WFP political party is wedded to the corrupt group – something that should be immediately investigated by the Attorney General, reported on by the media and of grave concern to NY residents.
The following is a cross post from Roger Stone who has about as thorough a compilation of information proving this as any I’ve seen.  We at Monroerising tried diligently to pull this together ourselves but there just wasn’t enough time in the year to connect all of the dots.  That, plus I don’t think ACORN/WFO officials would have been very cooperative.  This will totally shock you and should make you furious, especially the part about WFP endorsed officals steering government (taxpayer) funding to the corrupt organization. 

Working Families Party = ACORN
What Will AG Cuomo Do?
By Roger J. Stone
Media coverage of ACORN and that organization’s illegal activities in New York, California and elsewhere has largely ignored one of ACORN’s most successful projects; New York’s Working Families Party (WFP).
Because of the unique nature of New York State election law, candidates are allowed to be endorsed and appear on the voting machine ballot as the candidate of multiple parties, winning the cumulative total of all votes cast for that candidate on multiple party lines. Minor parties such as the Conservative, Liberal and Right to Life Party have played significant roles in New York politics.
The Working Families Party is not about working people or families and it isn’t really a party. The WFP is a wholly owned subsidiary of ACORN. Bertha Lewis co-chair of the Working Families Party is the Executive Director of New York ACORN. New York ACORN leader, Steven Kest was the moving force in forming the party and WFP headquarters are located at the same address as ACORN’s national and New York office at 88 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.
WFP is essentially a money funnel which pays for an aggressive door to door canvas. Largely funded by unions, the WFP is ACORN’s “political arm” in New York State. Candidates supported by the Working Families Party and issues supported by ACORN are both advocated on the door steps of target voter homes as they share one major voter canvas.
The Working Families Party has no county organizations or county committee men or women and no local structure beyond its top leadership and an army of paid canvassers. Since the major parties no longer have the man power to organize an effective voter canvas, Democrats have turned to the WFP for their door to door campaign activities.
But more importantly, the Working Families Party is a criminal enterprise utilizing a for-profit political consulting firm, Data and Field Services (DFS) to skirt New York City election laws regarding public finance and campaign spending limits.
It’s the classic “pay to play” politics. Candidates like Democrat Bill de Blasio pay the Working Families Party and this shady “consulting firm” which operates from the same address as the WFP and New York ACORN. The city Campaign Finance Board recently said “there are no apparent firewalls between them.” The New York Daily News has called the relationship between candidates endorsed by the WFP and DFS an “election funding scam.”
Queens County Democratic Chairman Clarence Norman went to prison for trading his party endorsement and ballot position in return for political consulting contracts to favored vendors. The Working Families Party endorses candidates willing to pay DFS.
But the WFP-DFS scam is even more insidious than that. DFS provides the candidates a discounted rate on their canvassing, staff and get-out-the-vote services – thus allowing the candidate to cheat the public campaign finance system which enforces strict campaign spending limitation.
For example, a voter file like the one public advocate candidate Bill de Blasio purchased from Data and Field Services should have cost $40,000. Instead, he paid only $5,000.[i]
Why the sweet deal?
De Blasio, a Brooklyn Councilman, has been endorsed by the Working Families Party.
But the back-scratching goes both ways. De Blasio and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, both endorsed by the WFP in their respective races, were among the four Council members who steered $85,000 in government grants to another ACORN affiliate, New York Agency for Community Affairs.
City Hall reports that the non-profit NYACA “transfers most of those funds to the same ACORN account out of which many political expenses on behalf of favored candidates are drawn.” [ii] So, de Blasio delivers public cash to ACORN and gets their WFP endorsement and ballot position as well as discounted rates on the door-to-door canvassing for his campaign in return.
De Blasio and seven council candidates have reported sending a total $154,033.76 to DFS. As of mid-July, the WFP had transferred $554,629 to DFS from its general party account, which had received $345,000 from unions.
City Hall, a Manhattan media publication, conservatively estimates that DFS has spent at least $1 million in city races and that the disparity between DFS costs and payments made to the for-profit by city candidates is around $700,000.[iii]
Four WFP candidates including de Blasio have sent a total of $42,467.30 to New York Citizens Services, Inc., a company that shares its Brooklyn address with ACORN, the WFP, and DFS.
The ACORN-WFP canvas must be somewhat like “Springtime for Hitler,” the play produced on Broadway by Max Bialystock; over subscribed. Funded with a mix of public funds, party funds, union funds and candidate payments, the Working Families Party is free to charged favored candidates ridiculously discounted rates for campaign services through their for-profit arm DFS.
New York Executive Director and WFP co-chair Bertha Lewis once said, “Candidates know that when they’re on our line, they’re committed to certain things.” [iv] Participation in a conspiracy to evade campaign finance laws and cheat the taxpayer funded campaign finance system must be what Lewis had in mind.
Manhattan District Attorney candidate Richard Aborn has reported sending $55,000 to DFS. He was defeated in the Democratic Primary. In addition to Mark-Viverito, who’s running for re-election, the seven Council candidates with DFS contracts include: Danny Dromm, SJ Jung, Brad Lander, Jimmy Van Bramer, Debi Rose, Lynn Schulman, and Jumaane Williams.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has opened an investigation into the activities of NY ACORN. The Attorney General will soon realize that ACORN and the Working Families Party, which endorsed Cuomo for AG, are one in the same. Cuomo should recuse himself and ask Governor Paterson, also endorsed by the Working Families Party, to appoint a Special Counsel to conduct the investigation.
The Working Families Party should be prosecuted for their use of DFS to skirt campaign finance laws at a minimum. More likely is a RICO action against ACORN. Former Philadelphia U.S. Attorney, David Marston has written an excellent article on why ACORN is involved in racketeering and why they should be prosecuted under the RICO statutes.
 
Obama, ACORN, the (Socialist) New Party and the Working Family Party (an Acorn front group)   numerous sources

Posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 11:08:18 AM by ETL
Source: PDF File: apprx 417 KB
https://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1225222922.pdf
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“With the New Party’s rise and its entanglements with ACORN [Association of Community Organizers For Reform Now] came the rise of Barack Obama. According to Stanley Kurtz, “Acorn is the key modern successor of the radical 1960’s ‘New Left,’ with a ‘1960’s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism’ to match.” And Barack Obama was ACORN’s lawyer.”

https://archive.redstate.com/stories/elections/2008/barack_obama_sought_the_new_partys_endorsement_knowing_it_was_a_radical_left_organization
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From Obama’s official website:

When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, “I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That’s what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That’s the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, with over 350,000 member families organized into 800 neighborhood chapters in 104 cities across the country. Since 1970 ACORN has taken action and won victories on issues of concern to its members, including better housing for first time homebuyers and tenants, living wages for low-wage workers, more investment in our communities from banks and governments, and better public schools.

https://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGC7zm
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October 08, 2008
Archives prove Obama was a New Party member (updated)
Thomas Lifson

Another piece in the puzzle of Barack Obama has been revealed, greatly strengthening the picture of a man groomed by an older generation of radical leftists for insertion into the American political process, trading on good looks, brains, educational pedigree, and the desire of the vast majority of the voting public to right the historical racial wrongs of the land.

The New Party was a radical left organization, established in 1992, to amalgamate far left groups and push the United States into socialism by forcing the Democratic Party to the left. It was an attempt to regroup the forces on the left in a new strategy to take power, burrowing from within. The party only lasted until 1998, when its strategy of “fusion” failed to withstand a Supreme Court ruling. But dissolving the party didn’t stop the membership, including Barack Obama, from continuing to move the Democrats leftward with spectacular success.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/archives_prove_obama_was_a_new.html
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NOTE: As of today, Sept 11, 2009, DiscoverTheNetworks.org/FrontPageMag.com profile doesn’t (yet?) include the latest revelation that (President) Obama was actually a member of the New Party. HOWEVER, he does link to several articles on the left side of the page that apparently do go into it in detail.-ETL

PROFILE: NEW PARTY (NP)
* Marxist political coalition
* Was active from 1992-1998
* Endorsed Barack Obama for Illinois state senate seat in 1996

Co-founded in 1992 by Daniel Cantor (a former staffer for Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign) and Joel Rogers (a sociology and law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials — most often Democrats. The New Party’s short-term objective was to move the Democratic Party leftward, thereby setting the stage for the eventual rise of new Marxist third party.

Most New Party members hailed from the Democratic Socialists of America and the militant organization ACORN. The party’s Chicago chapter also included a large contingent from the Committees of Correspondence, a Marxist coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and Communist Party USA members.

The New Party’s modus operandi included the political strategy of “electoral fusion,” where it would nominate, for various political offices, candidates from other parties (usually Democrats), thereby enabling each of those candidates to occupy more than one ballot line in the voting booth. By so doing, the New Party often was able to influence candidates’ platforms. (Fusion of this type is permitted in seven states — Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, and Vermont — but is common only in New York.)

Though Illinois was not one of the states that permitted electoral fusion, in 1995 Barack Obama nonetheless sought the New Party’s endorsement for his 1996 state senate run. He was successful in obtaining that endorsement, and he used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers.

In 1996, three of the four candidates endorsed by the New Party won their electoral primaries. The three victors included Barack Obama (in the 13th State Senate District), Danny Davis (in the 7th Congressional District), and Patricia Martin, who won the race for Judge in the 7th Subcircuit Court. All four candidates attended an April 11, 1996 New Party membership meeting to express their gratitude for the party’s support.

The New Party’s various chapters similarly helped to elect dozens of other political candidates in a host of American cities.

One of the more notable New Party members was Carl Davidson, a Chicago-based Marxist who became a political supporter of Barack Obama in the mid-1990s.

In 1997 the New Party’s influence declined precipitously after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that electoral fusion was not protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of association clause. By 1998 the party was essentially defunct. Daniel Canto and other key party members went on to establish a new organization with similar ideals, the Working Families Party of New York.

https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7434
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The Columbus Free Press
New Party Online News – Elections Update

In the end the outcome was predictable, and predictably depressing. Voting for Clinton while simultaneously supporting the local Republican Congressman was not contradictory. My personal favorite line: With these results, I’d better get some of that medicinal marijuana…

So we’re back where we were a few days ago. Gingrich sets the agenda, Clinton rotates it a few degrees to make it palatable. Our task, and there are no shortcuts, is to build enough power to produce better choices in the future.

A few more steps down that road were taken by local New Party chapters on Tuesday. Here are some highlights:

Overall: Campaign finance led the way, with overwhelming victories in Arkansas and Massachusetts. Not counting Washington, DC’s ANC races, NP members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, bringing our overall total to 110 victories in 163 races.

Arkansas: As local favorite Bill Clinton swept to victory under cloud of tainted contributions, an NP and ACORN-backed statewide initiative for real campaign finance reform won an overwhelming victory, outpolling Clinton and Perot combined. The measure lowers contribution limits to $300 for statewide candidates and $100 for state legislative and local candidates, grants a tax credit for small donors, and tightens reporting and disclosure requirements. It’ll be a big step in leveling the playing field for grassroots candidates against their corporate funded opponents. And in the first city-wide victory for a New Party candidate in Little Rock, member Paul Kelly won an at-large City Council seat. He’ll join NP members Gloria Wilson and Willie Hinton on the Council, with the potential for a strong progressive caucus. In a second at-large City Council race, NP member Genevieve Stewart made a strong showing. She finished third against 2 entrenched incumbents but built her name recognition and a base of support for a possible ward race for City Council next year. Finally, in a classic New Party vs. the Right Wing matchup, member Jayne Cia handily defeated the Arkansas state chair of Empower America (Bill Bennett’s organization) for a seat on the County Board.

Illinois: The first NP member heads to Congress, as Danny Davis wins an overwhelming 85% victory yesterday (he got a higher percentage of the vote in that district than the President). NP member and State Senate candidate Barack Obama won uncontested. Interestingly, it appears that the local Democratic machine is trying to distance itself from our folks. At a “Democratic Unity” march on Chicago’s West Side, a flyer invited community members to join with a host of local democratic candidates. The only two west-side Democrats not listed: NP members Danny Davis (U.S. House candidate) and Michael Chandler (Alderman and Ward Committeeman). …”

New Party
227 West 40th St. Suite 1303
New York, NY 10018
phone: 800-200-1294
fax: 212-302-5344
email: newparty@newparty.org
web site: https://www.newparty.org

https://www.freepress.org/Backup/UnixBackup/pubhtml/newparty/newpart5.html
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“Although the New Party has been effectively defunct since the late 1990s, a website still exists.”-wikipedia
https://www.newparty.org/
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Inside Obama’s Acorn:
By their fruits ye shall know them
Stanley Kurtz, May 29, 2008

“What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama.”
https://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI
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Guilty Party: ACORN, Obama, and the mortgage mess
Mona Charen, September 30, 2008
https://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mzk4MmVkNzA1NGQ2NGRkZjQ2YjNmYjdlODZkMmQ4N2I=
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An ACORN Falls from the Tree: A congressional outrage
Ken Blackwell, September 29, 2008
https://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2Y5MTc0ZTAyMmE1Mjk3NGE3OWRiY2FkMjZlN2YxYzc=
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From David Horowitz’s
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org
PROFILE: WADE RATHKE

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.”)

In 1970, Wiley sent Rathke to Little Rock, Arkansas to begin organizing NWRO chapters in the South. By that time, Wiley — who was African American — was coming under attack by black militants who opposed his policy of placing whites such as Rathke in NWRO leadership positions.

Rathke, perhaps sensing that he might soon be demoted or released entirely, in 1970 formed a new organization called Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). He enlisted civil rights workers and trained them in a program (at Syracuse University) patterned after Saul Alinsky’s activist tactics.

The group’s name was later changed to Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, but the acronym ACORN remained the same. …”

https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1773
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From David Horowitz’s
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org
PROFILE: WORKING FAMILY PARTY

* Front group for ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)

* Functions as a political party in New York State and Connecticut, running or cross-endorsing candidates for local, state, and federal office

* Works closely with Hillary Clinton

Currently composed of some 30,000 members, the Working Families Party (WFP) is a front group for ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). WFP functions as a political party in New York State and Connecticut, promoting ACORN-friendly candidates. Unlike conventional political parties, WFP charges its members dues — about $60 per year — a policy characteristic of ACORN and its affiliates.

According to the party’s website, WFP is a coalition founded jointly by ACORN, the Communications Workers of America, and the United Automobile Workers. However, ACORN clearly dominates the coalition. New York ACORN leader Steven Kest was the moving force in forming the party, and WFP headquarters are located at the same address as ACORN’s national office, at 88 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

An outgrowth of the socialist New Party, [Working Family Party] WFP was created in 1998. According to a 2000 article by the Associated Press, its objective was (and still is) to ”help push the Democratic Party toward the left.” In pursuit of this goal, WFP runs radical candidates in state and local elections. Generally, WFP candidates conceal their extremism beneath a veneer of populist rhetoric, promoting bread-and-butter issues designed to appeal to union workers and other blue-collar voters, Republican and Democrat alike.

The Working Families Party benefits from a quirk of New York State (and Connecticut) election law which allows parties to “cross-endorse” candidates of other parties. Thus when Hillary Clinton ran for the Senate in 2000, she ran both on the Democratic Party ticket and on the Working Families Party ticket. Of the 3.4 million popular votes Ms. Clinton received from New Yorkers, the Working Families Party delivered 103,000.

“Candidates know that when they’re on our line, they’re committed to certain things,” explains Bertha Lewis, who moonlights as WFP co-chair and New York ACORN Executive Director. Speaking days before Mrs. Clinton won her Senate seat in 2000, Lewis noted, “Hillary knows that if she wins, we’re going to be knockin’ on her door. She won’t be able to hide.” 

In the November 2000 election, WFP cross-endorsed Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. WFP won 80,000 votes for Gore and, as noted above, some 103,000 votes for Clinton.

During the campaign, Mrs. Clinton spoke at numerous WFP events, most memorably at the party’s debut convention, held March 26-27, 2000 at the Desmond Hotel in Albany — an event which the Communist newspaper People’s Weekly World approvingly called “a turning point in New York politics.” After receiving WFP’s endorsement, Clinton vowed to wage a “people’s grassroots campaign.” “[T]here have been few candidates in history more supportive of our issues than Al Gore and Hillary Clinton,” proclaimed WFP campaign literature.

In the 2004 election cycle, a new force entered New York politics: billionaire financier George Soros. The Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance — a drug legalization lobby through which Soros often funnels political contributions — gave $81,500 to the Albany County District Attorney campaign of Democrat David Soares. Instead of donating the money directly, however, the Drug Policy Alliance laundered Soros’ contribution through the Working Families Party — an illegal act according to New York State law.

WFP expanded into Connecticut in 2004, and promised that it would soon be active in all ten states where “fusion voting” — that is, cross-endorsement of candidates by multiple parties — is still legal. Those states include Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and Vermont.

In 2006, WFP exhorted voters to “help stop the Bush agenda and elect a Democratic majority to the House of Representatives” by supporting its “Take Back Congress” project.

In 2008, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were listed on the WFP presidential ticket as well as the Democratic Party ticket.

In 2009, WFP supported New York State’s newly increased “millionaire’s tax” on the income of individuals earning $500,000 or more per year. When New York billionaire Tom Golisano (whose tax liability rose to $13,000 per day as a result of the tax hike) announced that he would be moving to Florida (which has no state income tax), WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor Called Golisano’s move “selfish.” “It’s a disgrace,” said Cantor, “that this is how he pays back the state where he was presumably educated and that’s been so good to him. Taxes are the price you pay for civilization.”

https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6965

 (During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. ~ George Orwell)