ACORN

Catalist for Victory: How Nonprofits and Unions Have Struggled to Re-elect President Obama

By Neil Maghami, Organization Trends, November 2012 (PDF here)

Summary: Supposedly nonpartisan nonprofits on the Left and their union allies have exploited the latest “microtargeting” technology as they’ve worked feverishly to elect Democrats. The most powerful weapon in their arsenal is Catalist LLC, a state-of-the-art data firm that services both “nonpartisan” nonprofits and every would-be Democrat officeholder who can afford it. (Note: This study went to press shortly before the election.)

Winning in war, quipped a Southern leader in the Civil War, is all about getting to the battlefield “firstest with the mostest.” That’s a formula for victory in presidential politics, too. When it comes to mustering all possible support on Election Day 2012 for the Democratic Party, unions and tax-exempt left-wing groups have played a critical role in the party’s get-out-the-vote strategy. Since 2006 a high-tech operation called Catalist LLC has helped both unions and tax-exempt groups fine-tune their electoral influence to the point that they may well provide the Democrats the edge they need.

Catalist boasts it was vital to President Obama’s 2008 victory. By its own admission, “over 90 organizations, campaigns and committees” used the company’s services. “Based on data that was loaded into the Catalist databases and then standardized,” a Catalist analysis of the 2008 cycle says, “progressive organizations, the Obama campaign, and federal party committees attempted to contact more than 106 million people. This means that the progressive community attempted to contact over 46% of the U.S. adult population. Contacts were delivered in-person, over the phone, by mail and over the internet.”

Catalist says that “data stored by all progressive groups (over 90 organizations, campaigns and committees) working with [us] in the 2008 cycle shows that presidential [voter] ID activity alone reached 15,452,954 people—a difference of over 80% [compared to 2004]. Overall, Catalist customers were responsible for generating over 7 million voter registration applications. They completed over 127 million contacts to over 49 million unique individuals. Of these individuals, 28 million voted on Election Day, representing over 20% of all votes cast. Furthermore, 82% of progressive activities occurred in 16 highly contested states. Progressives contacted 37% of all the people who voted in the 16 battlegrounds.”

If this is what Catalist and its allies could achieve in 2008, imagine their goals for 2012, after four more years of refining their techniques. This edition of Organization Trends examines the who’s, why’s, and how’s of Catalist. We’ll also explore Catalist’s link to George Soros, the Left’s Daddy Warbucks. And we’ll look at some of Catalist’s known customers in the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt community and among labor unions.

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More confirmation comes of my previous reports (including my book) that the ACORN network is alive and well, albeit in a different form.

Watchdog group Cause of Action reports that there are 174 “Still-Active ACORN Entities, ACORN Allies, and Rebranded ACORN Organizations.”

“For some of these groups, all they did was legally change their name. Nothing else changed. The corporate structure, leadership and staff are the same,” said Karen Groen Olea, Cause of Action’s chief counsel.

I haven’t confirmed all 174 entities on Cause of Action’s list.

Apparently Cause of Action considers #16 and #17, Advancement Project and Advancement Project California, and #23 and #24, Alliance for Justice and Alliance for Justice Action Campaign, to be ACORN allies, as opposed to part of the ACORN network.

Another key ACORN ally is #41, Catalist LLC.  Catalist is a political consultancy that has close ties to George Soros and his billionaire leftists’ club, the Democracy Alliance. Catalist aggregates voter information for left-wing get-out-the-vote organizations such as ACORN, MoveOn, Sierra Club, EMILY’s List, Center for Community Change, Service Employees International Union, USAction, the League of Conservation Voters, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the AFL-CIO. Catalist specializes in “microtargeting,” a data-intensive system that political candidates use to track individual voters and identify potential supporters. Some say Catalist was instrumental in helping Democrats win back control of Congress six years ago. ACORN is (or was) a client of Catalist.

I have compiled my own lists of “old” ACORN entities and “new” ACORN entities.

Home Defenders League is a new ACORN front group formed around the time of the collapse of the lead entity in the ACORN network, ACORN Inc., in November 2010.

Many new groups have been founded by ACORN operatives. The typical new ACORN group will have the same employees as the old ACORN group. Often the new ACORN group will use the same office address that was used by the ACORN affiliate or state chapter it replaced. The new Saul Alinsky-inspired groups all have the same radical left-wing political objectives.

Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) is also a new ACORN offshoot created by longtime California ACORN leader Amy Schur. ACCE created Home Defenders League as a project. As of July 1, 2012, it was unclear if Home Defenders League has been formally incorporated or is a business name adopted by ACCE.

The Internet domain name, www.homedefendersleague.org, as this document shows, was registered by longtime California ACORN operative David Lagstein, now an ACCE employee.

New ACORN Front Group: Home Defenders League

Disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke is urging Catholics to quit their church:

In the fall from grace of one institution after another, religious bodies have been on a steady decline for a generation.  No institution claims more members and fills less pews now that the Catholic Church on any given Sunday, nor has any outfit taken more of a licking in the public perception.  The inability to effectively manage the staff at the boundary lines between practice and principle has led to some dioceses declaring bankruptcy, multi-million dollar damage settlements, and a general uneasiness about how faith and flock have been stewarded by priests.  Couple all of that with a rigid hierarchy that seems committed to resisting change, pushing back the clock, some verifiable degree of misogyny, and a hardening attack on the victims of priestly misconduct and venerable institutions like the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and anything that still carries the torch of the Church’s long historic leadership in the fight for social justice.
What’s to be done?  Finally, it has become crystal clear.  It’s time to leave the church and follow the nuns! [emphasis added above]

That’s rich.

Wade is one of the worst managers in the history of nonprofit activism. His brother Dale embezzled nearly $1 million from ACORN in 2000 and Wade covered it up for eight years until it became public in 2008. As I note in my book Subversion Inc. Wade’s actions laid the groundwork for the collapse of ACORN. All ACORN needed was a push — and that push was provided by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles the next year when they caught ACORN employees on undercover video offering helpful advice on setting up a brothel for pedophiles. The video sting caused Congress to cut off funding for ACORN and scared away remaining institutional funders. ACORN filed for bankruptcy on Election Day 2010.

Rallying the Catholic Left

By Patrick Reilly, Organization Trends, July 2012 (PDF)

Summary:  The 2012 race for the White House may depend heavily on the Catholic vote.  Catholics significantly contributed to President Barack Obama’s election in 2008, but neither Democrats nor Republicans can claim their loyalty.  If the embattled president again attracts Catholic support despite recent disputes with Catholic leaders, the cause will largely be a network of Catholic leftists, university faculty, union organizers, and Democratic Party strategists.  They are determined to prove the Left’s appeal to Catholics, especially after the embarrassing defeat of the liberal Catholic Sen. John Kerry in his 2004 presidential bid.

Two organizations—Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good—are the most powerful groups hoping to damage Republicans in 2012 by appealing to Catholics’ traditional concern for the poor while trying to defuse concern over abortion. The latter issue has been problematic for the groups, because they must convince pro-life Roman Catholics to support mostly pro-choice Democrats by making the dubious claim that expanded federal welfare programs will reduce abortions among the poor.

These groups enjoy the assistance of a host of activists with ties to financier George Soros, the Tides Foundation and its affiliated Tides Center, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Democratic Party. Behind the curtain, they have support from such influential Democratic-leaning groups as Faith in Public Life and John Podesta’s Center for American Progress.

These activists’ preferred battlegrounds are in the media and at highly secularized Catholic universities because liberal reporters and professors lean heavily in their favor.

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I have it on good authority that Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) is dead. Until the devastating “pimp and pro” videos surfaced in 2009 that showed ACORN employees offering helpful advice on setting up a brothel for pedophiles, AHCOA’s name was ACORN Housing Corp.

AHCOA’s website (ahcoa.org) is down. AHCOA’s Twitter feed hasn’t been updated since August of last year. View it here.

For years ACORN Housing was the largest branch of the corrupt ACORN empire of activism.

Developing…

Later today ACORN whistleblower Marcel Reid debates Bertha Lewis, the former squatter who presided over the collapse of the corrupt community organizing outfit ACORN in 2010.

The one-hour matchup takes place at 10 o’clock a.m. (Eastern) on WPFW 89.3 FM (Washington, D.C.).

Listen live online here.

Reid was forced out of ACORN in 2008 after she demanded the group explain massive financial irregularities. She then co-founded a watchdog group called ACORN 8 with other whistleblowers. Reid contributed to the new book Race, Power & Politics: Memoirs of an ACORN Whistleblower, by Michael McCray.

Lewis is now president of the Black Institute, an ACORN-like organization in New York that focuses on African-American issues.

Glenn Beck likened Reid to Rosa Parks for her courage in taking on the powers that be at ACORN.

Lewis, on the other hand, is a thoroughly corrupt radical activist leader who doesn’t hesitate to throw her supporters under the bus if the money’s right, as I show in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

The Left is going all-out to push the tired old meme that asking a voter for photo ID somehow discriminates against minorities, the poor, and other aggrieved groups.

Longtime fellow-traveler and ACORN apologist Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation magazine, is trying to raise money by promoting this ridiculous idea.

Not unexpected but still tedious.   Make that very tedious.

Here’s a copy of a fundraising letter I received today from her:

My article from today’s Front Page Magazine:

Obama Gives $446 Million to ACORN Veteran

A former senior ACORN official has been put in charge of close to half a billion taxpayer dollars in Illinois, one of the most corrupt states in the Union and the home state of America’s Community Organizer-in-Chief.

What could possibly go wrong?

In 2010 the Obama administration designated $7.6 billion for a foreclosure relief program. Of that total $445.6 million will be administered by ACORN alumnus Joe McGavin, now a director at the Illinois Housing Development Authority. As Judicial Watch discovered, McGavin was “Chicago Operations Manager” at Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) from November 2008 through January 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Until two years ago AHCOA was called ACORN Housing. The nonprofit corporation renamed itself Affordable Housing Centers for America after undercover activists caught ACORN employees offering helpful advice about starting a brothel for pedophiles and committing other crimes on video in 2009. Soon after, popular revulsion prompted Congress to ban funding of ACORN and groups related to it.

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Annie E. Casey Foundation: Helping Children Becomes Advocacy for the Welfare State

By David Hogberg, Foundation Watch, June 2012, (PDF)

Summary: With over $2.8 billion in assets the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation has become a major force in foundation philanthropy aimed at children and families. The Casey Foundation was established by United Parcel Service founder James E. Casey (1888-1983), who wanted to help children and families in need. In recent years, however, the Casey Foundation has moved in a new direction, one all too familiar to those who watch trends in charitable giving. In 2010 the Casey Foundation disbursed over $194 million in grants for “initiatives in the United States that have significant potential to demonstrate innovative policy, service delivery, and community supports for disadvantaged children and families.” What’s the difference? The groups receiving Casey grants all say they want to help families with children. But what they most have in common is the desire to advocate for more government-sponsored welfare entitlement programs.

While few people today recognize the name James E. Casey, most recognize the company he founded in 1913: United Parcel Service (UPS), whose brown trucks and brown-clothed employees deliver boxes and packages everywhere. Casey turned a small Seattle company into the world’s largest package delivery service at the time of his death in 1983. He attributed his great success to hard work, determination, and innovation.

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