Mark Polege
Keyboard Militia
In the onset of the 2010 midterm elections and the victories in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, we can most definitely count on the Progressives kicking up their level of dirty tricks in an effort to increase their power structure over the American people. In addition, the mirage of economic improvements, be it the current flux in the markets while unsustainable spending continues to increase or millions more unemployed Americans fall off the Administration’s radar in order to try to save posterity, it is becoming more obvious that the Administration & Congress are looking more like a carnival mirror. While we head toward what Rahm Emanuel would consider a major crisis worth taking advantage, this election season is by far the most critical time in our nation’s history. Not since this country’s Civil War has America been so at conflict with itself and never has this country been in greater conflict with the current Administration’s forcible direction until now.
Since the days of President Wilson and FDR the Progressive Movement has been working to bring the U.S. in line with a more global, Marxist style government by attempting to pass such policies as found in FDR’s “Second Bill of Rights.” Some of those rights include health care and housing, two very large and very unsustainable expenses that no government has been able to maintain for long or avoid economic self destruction. If that wasn’t enough, the country faces corrupt unions attempting to force their member’s expensive pensions onto the backs of the American people. The United States is currently worse than broke. Congress extended the debt ceiling in late 2009 which was predicted to last through the 2010 November elections. However, their rate of spending is so massive, they must extend it again another $1.7 Trillion before the end of February. It could not be more clear that more spending and bigger government are not the solutions that will save the Republic.
However, none of the numbers or facts have seemed to educate the Left, the Progressives, or President Obama enough to stop their policies and agendas. One of the biggest players in this fight to make the U.S. a more progressive nation is an organization called USAction. USAction, formerly Citizen Action, describes themselves as “the nation’s largest progressive activist organization.” [More on USAction at DiscovertheNetworks.org, SourceWatch, Muckety]. USAction, as Citizen Action, began as a national federation which brought together 5 state organizations in 1979; Oregon Fair Share, Massachusetts Fair Share, the Illinois Public Action Council, the Connecticut Citizen Action Coalition, and the Ohio Public Interest Campaign and was co-founded by Heather Booth. The group focuses on environmentalism and socialized medicine. Before its resurrection in 1999 as USAction, Citizen Action was shut down in 1997 for a
“money laundering scandal that involved the illegal juggling of funds between the AFL-CIO, the leaders and officials of individual unions (including the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters Union, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME), the Democratic Party, then-Clinton administration chief fundraiser Terry McAuliffe, and former Clinton White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes.
Heather Booth is an activist in civil rights, women’s rights, the anti-war movement and is closely involved with the NAACP and ACORN. Booth is also a discipline of Saul Alinsky and is quoted as saying “Alinsky is to community-organizing as Freud is to psychoanalysis.” She and her husband Paul were also co-founders of the radical training organization known as the Midwest Academy. The Midwest Academy prides itself as being “one of the nation’s oldest and best known schools for community organizations, citizen organizations and individuals committed to progressive social change.” More on the methods of the Midwest Academy:
The Midwest Academy’s methods were adopted by the AFL-CIO’s “Union Summer” training camp, which has imbued thousands of labor organizers with radical values and ideas. MA’s training sessions, typically five days long, teach techniques of “Direct Action,” i.e., of confrontation and intimidation. One such “high power tactic” is what it calls an “accountability session.” This involves singling out a “target,” e.g. an appointed government official who can make a desired decision, for what he or she is told will be an ordinary meeting to explain a government policy or plan. This official will then face a large number of activists directed by an experienced organizer who has analyzed the official’s personal and family life, political connections and career to find vulnerabilities where pressure can be applied.
Also worth noting, President Obama’s most popular visitor to the White House is none other than the president of SEIU, Andy Stern, a Midwest Academy graduate.
The president of USAction is William McNary, whom you may remember as Vice Chair of Consumer Affairs for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s transition team. McNary also was appointed by the Illinois Senate President to serve as the Consumer Representative to the Illinois Department on Aging’s Senior Pharmaceutical Review Committee. McNary also worked on “Get Out the Vote” campaigns for the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, a group merged by Jesse Jackson. The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is responsible for, as Discover the Networks describes as an “agenda through frivolous, unsubstantiated charges of institutional and corporate racism.”
William McNary has also known Barrack Obama for some time as described by Patti Villacorta from PajamasMedia.com:
In February 2004, William McNary endorsed Obama in the Communist Party (CPUSA) newspaper the Weekly World. “Obama will be a strong voice in Washington on behalf of working families,” wrote McNary. Obama had worked for McNary in the mid-1990s, registering 100,000 votes for Citizen Action/Illinois — the local branch of USAction, both of which William McNary headed.According to McNary, Obama also collaborated with United Power for Action and Justice) to expand children’s health insurance in Illinois. “Barrack was not just willing to meet with community-based groups, not only to be a good vote for us, but he also strategized with us to help move our position forward,” McNary told David Moberg in his 2007 piece “Obama’s Third Way.” McNary is also a member of the Radical Black Congress and was the keynote speaker for the CPUSA 2002 annual fundraiser.
Recently, USAction was responsible for disenfranchising voters during the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign, as reiterated by John Podesta and Mike Lux. In response to these tactics, here is what the Obama Campaign had to said about the tactics of USAction:
Bob Bauer, an attorney for Democratic presidential candidate Barrack Obama’s campaign, said the calls were “extremely disturbing” and fit “the classic model of voter suppression” by sowing confusion just before the May 6 primary.But he stopped short of saying the calls were designed to discourage voters.
“They have said it’s inadvertent, and I understand it will not happen again,” he said.
I would guess President Obama probably has a different opinion of USAction now.
Another co-founder of Citizen Action/USAction is Steve Max. Steve Max is also another Alinsky trained radical Progressive as the likes of Andy Stern, Rahm Emanuel, and our current President, Barrack Obama. Also, on the website for the Democratic Socialists of America, near the bottom of the page here on May 21, 2009, Steve Max, Vice-Chair of the DSA provided a narrative for a slideshow illustrating why the “single payer health care system” is a great idea:
USAction’s former entity, Citizen Action has been described as being defuncted however, it still operates in the state of Illinois. Also, many other branches of USAction, according to their website, operate in a number of other states including Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Tennessee just to name a few. USAction also contains a coalition arm used mainly for lobbying, boycotting, and protesting known as HCAN, Health Care for America Now. The members of the HCAN coalition are; SEIU, AFSCME, MoveOn, NAACP, National Council of La Raza, ACORN, AFL-CIO, and Campaign for America’s Future.
USAction boasts on their website of “out-organizing and outnumbering the right in plenty of events across the country.” That may have been true before but that is no longer the case. The wildly increasing numbers of the Tea Party movement, and the fact that it is a true ‘grassroots movement’ with new branches launching everyday in cities all across the country, means there are clearly more of us than there are of them. What that means is there are more citizens with a passion to save this country from controlling & limiting legislation, voter and union intimidation, and the demonization of the free market principles that made this country great.
It is true there are great lessons we must learn quickly from victories like in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia just like the loses of Tea Party supported candidates in Illinois’ recent primary election. We must win back the country from 100 years of Progressive policies, now being referred to as Populists policies, which have been infiltrating our government from Democrats AND Republicans. Every one of us must continue to stand on and for our Constitution and its founding principles and remain silent no more.
