Monday, September 28, 2009

Patrick Gaspard: ACORN's Man in the White House

From Matthew Vadum, "ACORN's Man in the White House":

Newly discovered evidence shows the radical advocacy group ACORN has a man in the Obama White House.

This power behind the throne is longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard. He holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House.

Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis's political director in New York.

Lewis, the current "chief organizer" or CEO of ACORN, was head of New York ACORN from at least 1994 through 2008, when she took over as national leader of ACORN. With Gaspard at work in the White House, Lewis might as well be speaking to President Obama through an earpiece as he goes about his daily business ruining the country.

Erick Erickson of the website RedState recently did an excellent job explaining the relationship of Gaspard to Lewis and President Obama so I won't take up space here recalling all his valuable insights. Suffice it to say Erickson reported that Gaspard figures prominently in Lewis's rolodex, which Erickson has in his possession.

Skeptics among you may ask, How do we actually know the low-profile Gaspard, who prefers to work outside the public spotlight and who can hardly be found in Nexis searches at all, was Lewis's right hand man?

Because Gaspard's employment with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is acknowledged by no less an authority than ACORN founder Wade Rathke himself. Rathke writes at his blog:

Tell me that 1199's former political director, Patrick Gaspard (who was ACORN New York's political director before that) didn't reach out from the White House and help make that happen, and I'll tell you to take some remedial classes in "politics 101."

The "before that" time period Rathke is referring to is 2003 when Gaspard was executive vice president for political and legislative affairs for 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. According to publicly available disclosure documents, Gaspard registered as a federal lobbyist for SEIU on Oct. 22, 2007. The registration and subsequent disclosures indicate he lobbied Congress on SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Incidentally, the lines between ACORN and radical left-wing SEIU, whose acronym stands for Service Employees International Union, become fuzzy in places.

SEIU Locals 100 and 880 are part of the ACORN network of organizations. Local 100 in New Orleans is headed by Rathke. SEIU Local 880 in Chicago is headed by longtime ACORN insider Keith Kelleher.

You'd never know about the SEIU connection from visiting ACORN's website, www.acorn.org. That's because the website has been receiving a thorough scrubbing in recent months. On ACORN's affiliated organizations page, references to the two SEIU locals mysteriously disappeared.

It's worth noting that Gaspard's ties to ACORN, SEIU, and Lewis go way back.

Read the whole thing, at the link.

Also, at the Wall Street Journal, "
Bank Pulls Back From Acorn Work" (via Memeorandum).

5 comments:

Donald Borsch Jr. said...

Finally! I knew it would only be a matter of time until these weasels were discovered.

Best news I've read today, Mr. Douglas.

Citizen Commentators Unite!

Tapline said...

Well, this is a start!!!Now when does the real investigations begin in Ernest????and how far will they be spread???? We now have the tip of the iceburg and we all know that 2/3 of that Ice is hidden underwater......Great post DD....stay well....

Skye said...

You'd never know about the SEIU connection from visiting ACORN's website, www.acorn.org. That's because the website has been receiving a thorough scrubbing in recent months. On ACORN's affiliated organizations page, references to the two SEIU locals mysteriously disappeared.

Nothing that screen capping, Google cache and the Wayback Machine can't recover..

Dennis said...

As more of these connections to ACORN, SEIU, et al come to light we are probably going to hear "guilty by association" used by those who wish to deflect. We were told by Obama to judge him by who he associates so no one should be chagrined if we connect the dots.

Donald Borsch Jr. said...

Dennis,

You said: We were told by Obama to judge him by who he associates so no one should be chagrined if we connect the dots.
--------------------

Absolutely. Obama said it, we are doing it, and he has been nothing short of less than stellar in his associations along the way. Transperancy, indeed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the Bible is true in this: Bad company corrupts moral character. Not that I think Obama was moral to begin with, but you get the gist.