CRC Senior Editor Matthew Vadum was on NPR’s “Morning Edition” today talking about why the National Rifle Association is so successful.
The story, by Peter Overby, is called “Single-Issue Solidarity Behind NRA’s Clout.”
Listen to it here, download it here, or read the transcript here.
The American Thinker blog ran a post today by Capital Research Center senior editor Matthew Vadum.
Read it here:
December 5, 2012
Matthew Vadum
The Left’s vicious all-out assault on electoral integrity this past election cycle was largely funded by the nation’s most radical labor union and the man who brought you Rice Krispies.
The Battle Creek, Michigan-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation funneled a staggering $5.2 million in grants to the Applied Research Center (ARC), which churned out a steady stream of propaganda aimed at convincing Americans it’s somehow racist to require photo ID from a voter, Media Trackers Ohio reports.
The multi-billion-dollar foundation was endowed by Will Keith Kellogg (1860-1951) whose company manufactures Rice Krispies, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, and a host of other breakfast cereals.
Capital Research Center’s Matthew Vadum has an eye-opening article in today’s American Thinker. Here is the text from it:
Voter Fraud Redefined
By Matthew Vadum
Voter fraud ain’t what it used to be.
Left-wingers have been deliberately dumbing down the definition for years.
In all my years as a journalist covering American politics, I have understood that voter fraud, a phrase coined by lawyers, was a blanket term that refers to a host of election-related offenses. Lawyers frequently make up terms for specialty areas — for example, elder law, environmental law, probate law, and wrongful dismissal law.
Voter fraud, also known as vote fraud, election fraud, and electoral fraud, refers to the specific offenses of fraudulent voting, impersonation, perjury, voter registration fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, bribery, destroying already cast ballots, and a multitude of crimes related to the electoral process.
A quick internet search reveals a comparable definition. One online reference site counsels:
Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud affect vote counts to bring about an election result, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates or both. Also called voter fraud, the mechanisms involved include illegal voter registration, intimidation at polls and improper vote counting.
Lawyers say that fraud is the most difficult crime to prove because showing that the act complained of actually happened is not enough. It must be proven that the perpetrator had intent to defraud. Like any fraud, voter fraud is by its nature generally very difficult to detect and prosecute.
Voter fraud in the form of actual fraudulent balloting is especially hard to demonstrate in court. A prosecutor must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person voted without having the right to vote, used fraud (deception) in the process, and intended to defraud the victim (in this case, the public). These facts can be hard to establish after the voter leaves the polling place.
For years now the left has been trying to muddy the waters by applying a far stricter definition of voter fraud, moving the semantic goalposts in order to define the problem out of existence.
Fraudulent registrations, of course, open the door to fraudulent voting, something the left vehemently denies. They deny it because the left depends on voter fraud in order to get left-wing candidates elected. This helps to explain why they bent over backwards in recent years to defend ACORN, the voter fraud empire that filed for bankruptcy on Election Day 2010.
Left-wing activists and think-tanks constantly churn out studies and reports financed by George Soros, purporting to prove that voter fraud is as unreal as Cookie Monster. They claim that those on the right want to crack down on voter fraud solely as a means of preventing the poor and minorities from voting.
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.
Documentary filmmaker Reuben Atlas and his crew shot footage of Capital Research Center senior editor Matthew Vadum during an interview on October 18. Atlas (wearing a hat) and Vadum are shown here in the CRC conference room.
Atlas said the working title of the movie is The Rise and Fall of ACORN.
Courtesy of CRC senior editor Steve Allen, here are two photos from that day:
Taking Down the Tea Party Ten: A Leftist Super PAC Smears Conservatives To Safeguard “Progressive Change” Tea
By Matthew Vadum and Charles Dickenson, Foundation Watch, October 2012 (PDF here)
Summary: Using its for-profit business to generate left-wing political donations, Credo/Working Assets has launched a new campaign aimed at unelecting 11 (not 10) Tea Party members of Congress. Even as the group protested super PACs, it formed a super PAC of its own to accomplish this goal.
Out-of-control government spending, a crushing national debt, oppressive anti-business regulations, a stagnant economy, the very existence of the country—none of these things are important to Credo Super PAC. The far-left political action committee is focused instead on defeating prominent Congressmen associated with the Tea Party, the grassroots movement that sprang up in opposition to Washington’s socialist juggernaut.
Community organizer Becky Bond, president of Credo Super PAC, described the committee’s mission:
For over 25 years Credo has been involved in progressive politics. We’ve been fighting former House Speaker Newt Gingrich since the mid ’90s, and we’ve been pushing for progressive change. And let me just tell you, in our history we have never seen extremism in the Congress like we’ve seen since the Tea Party wave in 2010 that was funded on just buckets of super PAC money from the Koch brothers and from people like Karl Rove. And we’ve seen a lot of history, and we know this is bad. And as good people of conscience, we’ve decided that we need to strike back, and it’s time to fight back, and we need to take down some of these Tea Party Republicans who are destroying our democracy.
The fact that the super PAC retained a corrupt Marxist in Chicago as a consultant says a lot about the organization. The committee paid $50,417 to Strategic Consulting Group, the firm of convicted swindler and tax cheat Robert Creamer. An admitted fan of radical godfather Saul Alinsky, Creamer has reportedly visited the Obama White House nearly 60 times since he was let out of the hoosegow. In prison he wrote a book widely hailed by leftists that later served as a blueprint for Obamacare. Creamer, who is married to far-left Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), also used to be a lobbyist for George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
At the beginning of this year Credo Super PAC added the initial eight Tea Party lawmakers (all Republicans) to its list. They were Allen West (Fla.), Steve King (Iowa), Dan Lungren (Calif.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Penn.), Joe Walsh (Ill.), Frank Guinta (N.H.), Sean Duffy (Wisc.), and Chip Cravaack (Minn.).
The Boston Globe‘s Leon Neyfakh quotes me in a feature article today, “Revealed: Obama’s secret agenda.”
In my view Obama’s agenda isn’t exactly secret but perhaps I’m quibbling.
Here’s the relevant passage:
Rebrand 9/11. One secret White House plot that has yet to be realized has to do with an attempt to change Sept. 11 from a day reserved for memorializing those who died in the terrorist attacks into a “celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.” This plan was first outlined in an August 2009 report published by The American Spectator under the headline “Obama’s Plan to Desecrate 9/11.” Written by Matthew Vadum, a conservative watchdog who investigates left-leaning advocacy groups, the article cited a source who had participated in a “White House-sponsored teleconference call” during which representatives of 60 “far-left, environmentalist, labor, and corporate shakedown groups” discussed the need to transform 9/11 from something that “helps Republicans” into something new. Vadum reported that the Obama administration was collaborating with a number of organizations, including the community activist group ACORN, on a “cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.”
Vadum described the plot last year in his book “Subversion, Inc.,” which outlined the numerous ways Obama was using ACORN as a secret army to enact his national goals. The group is now defunct, and in an interview last week, Vadum said he believes the 9/11 proposal has become less of a priority, as he has not come across any mention of it recently.
The bizarre plan to use 9/11 for left-wing purposes was indeed detailed in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.
I was on the (left-wing) Thom Hartmann Program two days ago talking about the strange attacks on Mitt Romney for his work at Bain Capital.
What it boils down to is this: liberals are criticizing Romney for committing acts of capitalism. How dare he!
Here is the clip:
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.
I discussed the exploits of left-wing terrorist bomber Brett Kimberlin on “The Source” with Ezra Levant yesterday on Sun News Network (Canada).
Here is the video clip of the interview: