Thread: Economic Apocalypse topic

Jesus Jones' topics have inspired me to post my very own Economic Apocalypse topic.


Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.


In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

Weigh down the system. Throw ropes over it. Sounds kind of like Gulliver's Travels don't it. I'm telling you folks, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and their Democrat cohorts have been busy termites eating away at the foundation of our financial system. The Fanny Mae CRA loans have created a mess. The federal government is looking to takeover US banks. Their plan is coming to fruition. Commie termites. (we need a commie emoticon)




Somehow Obama is tied in to the present attempt to drag the system down. Damned if all them lines don't look like ropes strung over poor Gulliver.

Whats the point repeating this to a staunch Republican.

Right now, we are in a perilous near financial collapse caused by the incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration. The warning signs have been there for several years- but they did nothing. Using a real measure, instead of the ridiculous, manipulated figures that the US government releases, the US economy has been contracting for the last couple of years. Their response was to drive the US government and economy to record levels of debt, and furthermore spend their way to a record government deficit- to the generous benefit of several corporations senior figures of the Bush administration have substantial interests in, such as Halliburton and Carlyle Group.

But no, it's all the Fault of the Community Reinvestment Act (originally passed in 1977), or of Barney Frank- Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee since 2007. And now we are to believe the Dem's (who left the USA in extremely good shape when Bush took over eight years ago) are somehow in League with some obscure Radical, and trying to bring about the collapse of the US system. Just read todays newspaper, and you will see that the neo-cons have done a far better job of that than the "Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis" wingnuts could have dreamt about.


The failure is of a largely unregulated free market in the financial sector, and of a government that refused to do anything to rein in it's excesses, whilst running criminally irresponsible monetary and fiscal policies that actually encouraged them.

I might as well post a New York Times history of their version of events and players.


October 23, 1999


Agreement Reached on Overhaul of U.S. Financial System

Related ArticlesThe Lobbying: Behind the Banking Bill, Years of Intense Lobbying
The Impact: As an Era Ends, Finance Industry Enters Unknown Territory
News Analysis: Big Gains by Gramm in Diluting Lending Act Issue in Depth
Leading Up to the Decision on Banking Reform By STEPHEN LABATON


ASHINGTON -- The Clinton Administration and top Republican lawmakers reached an agreement early Friday to overhaul the financial system, repealing Depression-era laws that have restricted the banking, securities and insurance industries from expanding into one another's businesses.


The deal was announced about 2 A.M. after a compromise was reached over the measure's effect on lending rules for the disadvantaged, the source of months of partisan bickering between the White House and Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who heads the banking committee.


It concludes decades of attempts to rewrite banking laws to catch up with a marketplace that has already experienced broad consolidations and the rise of financial conglomerates offering bank and brokerage accounts as well as insurance.


While these conglomerates have found ways around the old rules, those rules had made it expensive and at times impossible to expand into new lines of financial services.


For instance, the nation's largest financial services company, Citigroup, would have been forced to sell some of its insurance operations as part of the $72 billion merger last year between Citibank and Travelers Group without either the legislation or a waiver from regulators.
With such situations in mind, the banking, insurance and securities industries spent more than $300 million in 1997 and 1998 alone on a combination of donations to political candidates, soft money contributions to political parties and lobbying.


The legislation will more easily enable financial companies to offer corporate clients a full range of services, from traditional loans to investment banking services, like public stock offerings. And for consumers, it paves the way for financial supermarkets, which will be able to offer one-stop shopping for an array of services, all under one roof. The measure is also expected to clear a path for a new and bigger wave of corporate deal-making as more companies consolidate.
White House officials withheld final approval of the agreement until aides could see the measure's language. But the officials indicated Friday night that, with broad support from Democrats in Congress, the measure was all but certain to be signed by President Clinton. As such, it will be one of the most significant pieces of legislation to be written by the White House and the 106th Congress, which began its term considering whether to remove Clinton and has had a bitter relationship ever since.


"When this potentially historic agreement is finalized," Clinton said in a statement, "it will strengthen the economy and help consumers, communities and businesses across America."


Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said in an interview, "At the end of the 20th century, we will at last be replacing an archaic set of restrictions with a legislative foundation for a 21st-century financial system." The measure, he added, "would provide significant benefits to the national economy."


Senator Gramm said the measure "is the most important banking legislation in 60 years."


Gramm's counterpart in the House, Representative James A. Leach of Iowa, said that he expected a final bill to be brought to the House and Senate floors later this month.


While the measure is likely to enjoy broad bipartisan support, it has also been criticized. Some lawmakers and privacy groups say the legislation does not adequately protect consumers and will allow financial companies to share and sell private information about customer accounts. Other critics worry about the further consolidation of the financial services industry.


The legislation repeals the Glass-Steagall Act, or, as it is formally known, the Banking Act of 1933, which broke up the powerful House of Morgan and divided Wall Street between investment banks and commercial banks. It also makes significant changes to the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, which had restricted what banks could do in the insurance business.


The Glass-Steagall Act was enacted after the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing banking crisis and Great Depression. On the day it was signed, along with the National Industrial Recovery Act and other measures, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the package "the most important and far-reaching legislation ever enacted by the American Congress."


The idea behind Glass-Steagall, named for the two lawmakers who wrote it, was that confidence in America's financial house could best be restored if bankers and brokers stayed in separate rooms. Such a separation, it was thought, achieved two purposes.


First, it would reduce the potential conflicts of interest between investment banking and commercial banking that were thought to have contributed to the speculative frenzy in the stock markets. Under the 1933 Banking Act, commercial banks could receive no more than 10 percent of their income from the securities markets, a limit so restrictive that most simply abandoned business on Wall Street.
Second, it would provide a safe harbor for the money of ordinary Americans by enabling them to put their money in accounts that were protected by deposit insurance and insulated from more speculative investments like stocks. (The 1933 act also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which now insures bank deposits up to $100,000.)


Over time, Federal judges and regulators chipped away at the Glass-Steagall Act and other restrictions on cross-ownership of banks, insurance companies and securities firms, enabling, for instance, Citibank to merge with Travelers last year to form Citigroup, the world's largest financial services company. But large hurdles remained that have discouraged the expansion by banks into new businesses.
The breakthrough in Friday's legislation came in a backroom meeting at the Capitol soon after midnight, when a group of moderate Senate Democrats -- led by Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Charles E. Schumer of New York -- forced a compromise between Gramm and the White House over the legislation's effect on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 anti-discrimination law intended to encourage lending to minorities and others historically denied access to credit.



Dodd, whose state is home to the nation's largest insurance companies, and Schumer, with strong ties to Wall Street, have long sought legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act. Both men said in interviews Friday that they moved to strike a compromise after it became apparent that the legislation might be killed, as it was last year by Gramm, over the debate about the Community Reinvestment Act.

Gramm had maintained that he did not want anything in the bill that would expand the application of the Community Reinvestment Act because it was, he said, unnecessarily burdensome to banks. He had sought a provision that would exempt thousands of smaller banks from the law. He also wanted a provision that would expose what he has described as the "extortion" committed by community groups against banks by requiring the groups to disclose any special financial deals the groups extract from the banks.


But the White House found that provision unacceptable and had its own ideas about community lending. It wanted the legislation to prevent any bank with an unsatisfactory record of making loans to the disadvantaged from expanding into new areas, like insurance or securities.


The (Clinton)White House had insisted that the President would veto any legislation that would scale back minority-lending requirements. Four days of intense negotiations between Summers, Gene Sperling, the President's top economic policy adviser, and Gramm, while moving the two sides closer, failed to resolve the differences.


Such was the state of play Thursday evening when Gramm decided to force the issue by having the House-Senate conference committee vote on his proposed compromise, which the White House had already rejected for failing to block banks with bad lending records from expanding to new businesses.


When Gramm's measure was defeated by one vote, it quickly became clear that there would be no law unless Gramm could get some Democrats to break from the White House.


But (Clinton) Administration officials had spent all day making sure that the Democrats remained solidly against the measure until their concerns about the Community Reinvestment Act could be worked out.

After receiving calls from executives of some of the nation's leading financial companies, Dodd and Schumer began trying to work out a compromise. An agreement was quickly reached on the issue of banks and expanded powers -- no institution would be allowed to move into any new lines of business without a satisfactory lending record.

The lawmakers bogged down on Gramm's insistence that all community organizations disclose to the regulators what benefits they get from banks. Some Democrats expressed the fear that Gramm's proposal would require the Boy Scouts to file reports with the regulators.
Ultimately, the following provisions were drawn up and both the White House and Gramm said they could accept them:


¶Banks will not be able to move into new lines of business unless they have satisfactory lending records.


¶Community groups will have to make disclosures to regulators about certain kinds of financial deals with banks that they have pressed to make loans under the Community Reinvestment Act.

¶Wholesale financial institutions, a new kind of business that takes large, uninsured bank deposits, cannot be affiliated with commercial banks.


¶Small banks with satisfactory or excellent track records of lending to the underserved would be reviewed less frequently under the Community Reinvestment Act. As a practical matter smaller banks are reviewed about every three years. The deal struck today allows all rural banks and banks with less than $250 million in assets to undergo examination once every five years if their last exam resulted in an "outstanding" grade and every four years if they last scored "satisfactory."


For more than 20 years, Congress has tried unsuccessfully to rewrite the nation's financial services laws and repeal Glass-Steagall, particularly as many other industrial nations had no similar restrictions on their banks. But until recently, the three main industries affected by the legislation -- banks, securities companies and insurers -- had competing interests and were able to lobby any legislation to a standstill.


That all changed in recent years as the lines between the industries began to blur and it became more broadly acknowledged that a deregulation of financial services could be beneficial to insurers, bankers and securities firms alike. Once the three industries rallied around the legislation, they became a formidable political force, raising millions of dollars for lawmakers and pressing both Republican leaders in Congress and the White House for new legislation.

Heres Chalmers Johnson, a few excerpts from an interview back in 2004-


L.A. WEEKLY: Your view of American policy has completely reversed itself since the 1960s. But what about your feelings about your country? Can you still be patriotic while being such a fierce critic?
CHALMERS JOHNSON: Of course! As Lord Byron said, “I would have saved them if I could.” I mean, I like living here. But I think we are trending like the Soviet Union was in 1985. If I had said then that the Soviets were five years away from extinction, you’d have said I had spent too much time inhaling exotic substances around Berkeley.
What provoked your political shift? After the Soviets, who I thought were a real threat, collapsed, I expected a much greater demobilization, a pullback of American troops, a real peace dividend, a re-orienting of federal expenditures to domestic needs. Instead, our government turned at once to find a replacement enemy: China, drugs, terrorism, instability. Anything to justify this huge apparatus of the Cold War structure.



You know from your study of history that when we traditionally speak of empire, we have in mind the model of European colonialism — the Brits in India, the French in Algeria and Indochina. Surely that’s not what you mean when you refer to an American empire. By an American empire I mean 725 military bases in 138 foreign countries circling the globe from Greenland to Asia, from Japan to Latin America. This is a sort of base world — a secret, enclosed, separate world where our half-million troops, contractors and spies live quite comfortably around the world. I think that’s an empire. Granted, the unit of European imperialism was the colony. The unit of American imperialism is the military base.



What are the costs of this empire to democracy and the republic?
There’s the literal cost. We are flirting with bankruptcy. We are not paying for what is now a $750 billion tab. The defense appropriation itself is about $420 billion. That doesn’t include another $125 billion, which is the cost of Afghanistan and Iraq. Then another $20 billion for nuclear weapons in the Department of Energy. Add in another $200 billion or so for military pensions and for health benefits for our veterans. Together, that’s three-quarters of a trillion dollars.
We are putting it on the tab, running up some of the most extraordinary budget and trade deficits in history. If the bankers of Asia and Japan should tire of financing this, if they notice the euro is now stronger than the dollar, then all this ends — whether or not they like the Boy Emperor from Crawford. We would face a terrible crisis. The greater cost is what the public will lose, if they haven’t already lost it: the republic, the structural defense of our liberties, the separation of powers to block the growth of a dictatorial presidency.

Dissing the Republic To Save It: A Conversation with Chalmers Johnson

Johnson basically speculates that the 'American Empire' is on the verge of collapse, just like the Romans, brits, russians and so on before them. The root cause is 'Imperial overreach'- the cost of maintaining and perpetuating an Imperial structure that far exceeds national security requirements, and the self perpetuating but ultimately destructive philosophies used to justify this.

Back in the late 90's when he was first espousing these views, it would have been easy to dismiss him as a Kook- and he mostly was. Given world events since, surely he should be taken much more seriously now. His resume' gives him considerable relevance too- "In the darkest days of the Cold War, UC Berkeley professor and sometimes consultant to the CIA Chalmers Johnson heartily denounced anti–Vietnam War protesters as misguided."

let's come back to this when the banks can figure out what they are owed .

conspiracy theories are a great way to cover up criminal incompetence .

I might add that Chalmers Johnson is quite the brilliant man. Read all his books and have been fortunate to have listened to his lectures/talks, in person or videoed.

Agreed, I haven't read all his books but he makes compelling reading. 'Sorrows of Empire' I'm about to read again, given that since I read it US and world events have only supported his thesis.

Originally Posted by sabang

Right now, we are in a perilous near financial collapse caused by the incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration.

Au contraire there sabang. It wern't the "Bush Administration" but the Barney Franks, Freddie Macs, Fannie Mays who leant $ to folks that couldn't repay the loans.

anyhow, to put a more succinct light on the problem...to wit:

^
OK but what BO's doing is throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

^ Obama so far is just Bush with a tan. More of the same, change? yes we cant!

Interesting few weeks ahead, I wonder what folks will be saying when the S&P500 hits 645 late March?

Originally Posted by Spin

I wonder what folks will be saying when the S&P500 hits 645 late March?

Impeach the Messiah?

These Youtube videos should be added too.

Right now, we are in a perilous near financial collapse caused by the incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration. The warning signs have been there for several years- but they did nothing.

It's difficult to do when the black caucus has Fannie Mae staked out as their turf and anyone who messes with FM gets the race card pulled on them. People, especially politicians, back then still cringed at the thought of being called a racist. It's difficult to do when you don't have the support of the media to get your message out.

the ham-fisted attempts at revisionism which are on display in this thread only go to further illustrate how desperate the GOP and its apologists / lackeys are.

^
Heh...you are w/out a clue...

It seems to me (an outsider), that the only people who care passionately about American politics, are Americans who no longer live there. The disillusioned expat yanks?

Who else would have a bank named after your arse?

^
And what bank would that be K. chassamui?

^^^^It's not like we haven't seen the race card pulled before. Just recently look how quickly the mob was mobilized to intimidate the publishers of the 'Xanax chimp' cartoon.

From the NYT article posted in this topic:

Gramm had maintained that he did not want anything in the bill that would expand the application of the Community Reinvestment Act because it was, he said, unnecessarily burdensome to banks. He had sought a provision that would exempt thousands of smaller banks from the law. He also wanted a provision that would expose what he has described as the "extortion" committed by community groups against banks by requiring the groups to disclose any special financial deals the groups extract from the banks.

Phil Gramm had his concerns about the race card being used to intimidate bankers.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

^
And what bank would that be K. chassamui?

I believe that fanny is an amercan colloquialism for bottom, tusch or ass. Many of you will understand it's english meaning, and would best describe some of the septics that caused this crisis in the first place.

For those of you who poo-poo'd the Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis as nonsense dreamed up by right-wing conspiratists, well here's an example of it in action found in paragraph 2 of the article posted below. The rest of the article concerns a government employee who was threatened by her bosses.





Documents and a whistle-blower affidavit obtained by The Daily Caller charge that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., and Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., participated in an unethical — and possibly illegal — effort to force 76 employees of an Illinois state agency to engage in political activity on the taxpayers’ dime.

According to the whistle-blower, Rev. Jackson also encouraged the government employees to load first-generation and low-income college students up with student loan debt — because Democrats in Congress, he allegedly promised, would eventually pass laws to forgive that debt later. “[T]hose people will continue to vote Democratic,” Jackson Sr. said, according to the whistle-blower.

On March 3, Pelosi flew to Chicago to endorse Rep. Jackson Jr., 17 days ahead of a heated March 20 Democratic primary he later won. Pelosi was scheduled to make the endorsement at a press conference later in the day, after she participated in an hour-long “forum” hosted by the elder Jackson at the headquarters of his progressive Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Pelosi politicized that forum, jumping the gun and endorsing Jackson Jr. earlier than planned.

“One of the reasons I am here, and I will do this following this wonderful meeting, is to publicly state my endorsement of Jesse Jackson Jr. for re-election,” Pelosi said at the Rainbow PUSH forum. “I do so with great pride. I remember when he came to the Congress with a great name and a great tradition of his parents. But he came and he made his own mark in the Congress from his own generation.”

Adam Andrzejewski, chairman of the For The Good of Illinois PAC and a former 2010 GOP gubernatorial candidate endorsed by Polish Solidarity movement founder Lech Walesa, told TheDC that a state government agency forcing workers to go the event was likely illegal. Even if it failed to violate any specific law, he said, the activity was undoubtedly unethical.

“Democrats in Illinois raised taxes by 67 percent and at the same time they are using taxpayer dollars and resources for blatantly political purposes,” Andrzejewski wrote in an email. “This is unethical, possibly illegal, and taxpayers, families, and seniors have a right to be outraged.”

Marcy Bailey, a 22-year-old who worked for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC) Corps on March 3, swore out an affidavit on August 9 describing what happened that day.

In the signed and notarized affidavit obtained by TheDC, Bailey said she “did not want to attend this event,” and charged that the Rainbow PUSH forum “was soon overflowing with negative political energy directed towards the Republican Party. The two [Pelosi and Jackson Sr.] discussed many adverse things about the Republican Party, using harsh, derogatory remarks, while they reminded their audience about what they called the wonderful things that the Democratic Party was doing for the people.”

“Although e-mails from an ISAC supervisor would lead one to believe that my attendance was optional, during phone calls from Sara Henschen, my regional coordinator, and from Kim Galvan, ISACorps manager, I was told that I ‘must attend,’” Bailey wrote in her affidavit. “Repeatedly, my supervisors told me that ‘without a prior conflicting commitment, your attendance is mandatory.’ I stated that I did not feel comfortable going, but my supervisors told me that I did have to go.”

Bailey explained how Galvan told her to report her travel hours to and from Chicago — “approximately five hours and 500 round trip miles” from her residence — on her time sheets so she would be paid for the time. The agency also reimbursed her and her fellow ISACorps employees for hotel rooms and meals. She also stated that her coworker, who drove to Chicago and back, “would have been reimbursed for mileage.”

She and her coworkers were told to arrive at Rainbow PUSH headquarters, according to her affidavit, by 9:30 a.m. that day even though the Pelosi event didn’t start until 10:00 a.m.

“When I arrived at the meeting location, our ISAC directors instructed us to go to the second floor and congregate in a side hallway outside of zwhere Jesse Jackson Sr. was speaking to a group of individuals, including candidates and other political figures that were being addressed as ‘judge’ and ‘senator,’” Bailey wrote. “With cameras flashing, Jesse Jackson Sr., candidates and politicians left the conference room, and we were staged to look like we were political supporters. In other words, we were used as props during a campaign season.”

The ISACorps workers then moved into the forum where Pelosi and Jackson Sr. were set to speak. Bailey wrote that the event began as a non-political gathering — a forum for Pelosi to see the ISACorps workers — but later became “largely a political rally, and there was no opportunity for those of us who were not there to participate in a political rally to leave without it being noticeable.”

“As the program continued, Nancy Pelosi endorsed Jesse Jackson Jr. for Congress,” Bailey continued. “No one from our state agency left the room or objected to our participation at a blatantly partisan political event, including my supervisor. I was fearful that any objection or other false move on my part would place my job in jeopardy. We were being videotaped and any disagreement would have left a record. I felt considerably isolated and intimidated by this. I felt sick to my stomach.”
In a phone interview with TheDC, ISAC spokesman John Samuels denied that the event was political. “You’re full of shit,” he said.

Samuels also objected to TheDC referring to House Minority Leader Pelosi as “House minority leader,” saying, “It really pains you to call her ‘Speaker Pelosi’ doesn’t it?

“Rep. Jackson apparently had a second event where Speaker Pelosi endorsed him,” Samuels added, ”Because I wasn’t present and no one from ISAC was present, nor were we asked to nor would we attend because it is a partisan event. That was covered by dozens of Chicago reporters, any one of whom would say ISAC was not there.”

After the Rainbow PUSH forum, however, Bailey and her coworkers were moved into a back room for a private meeting with Jackson Sr. and Rainbow PUSH organizer Rev. Janet Wilson, where Bailey said they received “job coaching.”

“Jesse Jackson Sr. said to work hard to help as many students as possible acquire student loans. Jackson Sr. encouraged us to network students, hold rallies and organize for ‘student loan forgiveness legislation,’” she wrote in her affidavit.

“Jesse Jackson Sr. also told us not to worry about loading students up with too much college debt, because Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will eventually forgive all student loan debt. On the promise of debt forgiveness, ‘those people will continue to vote Democratic.’”

Bailey added that Jackson Sr. “asked how many ISACorps workers would be able to come to future events because our massive support looked great both in-person and on television.”

“Several workers raised their hand in response,” Bailey wrote.

The “job coaching” meeting with Jackson Sr., she said, “horrified” her.

“I thought our mission was to try to help students navigate the complexities of college choices,” she wrote, “and to help them to make good choices (including financial choices) so that they can lead better, more productive lives. Instead, Jesse Jackson Sr. seems to want to push less well-off college aspirants into more debt. And he does this not to improve their lives, but so that he has more political pawns to gain political power, since, as he explained it, people with debt will have to vote for Democrats if they want to get out of their student loans.”

Samuels did not deny that meeting with Jackson Sr. took place, saying he “was present” for it.

“He [Jesse Jackson Sr.] said that he believes that what we’re doing is important work,” Samuels said, “that education is one of the most important issues facing the country right now and he offered to have his picture taken with the group. Period.”

When asked if any “job coaching” occurred in that back room, as Bailey alleges, Samuels replied, “No. None whatsoever.”

When presented with Bailey’s allegation that Jackson Sr. advocated ISACorps workers increase first-generation college students’ debts because Democrats would eventually forgive their loans in exchange for Democratic Party votes, Samuels said, “That’s not true.”

Samuels did, however, add that the Rev. Jackson Sr. “expressed concern over the levels of student debt. But that’s — anybody can do that.” And he conceded that the Rainbow Push leader ”expressed the interest that Operation PUSH people are pushing for debt forgiveness.”

Samuels also acknowledged another detail in Bailey’s account, repeating her recollection that Jackson Sr. asked the room, “Who here today has their own student loan debt?” Like Bailey, Samuels recalled many people raising their hands.

In addition to Bailey’s affidavit, an email chain the For The Good of Illinois PAC obtained from ISACorps indicates that on March 6, ISAC College Access Initiatives Managing Director Jacqueline Moreno tried to orchestrate a meeting with Rev. Janette Wilson of Rainbow PUSH. She planned to create at that meeting a “more structured relationship that feeds into a national framework.”

Moreno wanted to see Rainbow PUSH and ISACorps “work together in a more formal way.”

As additional confirmation of what happened in that room, Bailey cited a defensive email that ISAC Education Services Director of Post Secondary Education Services Aimee Melgar sent to the agency’s staff on Wednesday, March 14.

“Reverend Wilson from PUSH talked about rallying groups together on college campuses to address student loan forgiveness, etc,” Melgar wrote. “As a state agency, we cannot be involved in lobbying, signing petitions, having Facebook conversations on work Facebook accounts, or taking any stance around student loan debt on work time or on work accounts.”

“To clarify my point further, ISAC cannot be involved in helping PUSH with their student loan forgiveness efforts,” Melgar added.
Andrzejewski told TheDC that that March 14 email “first confirms the story of our whistle-blower and then repeats a problem probably far too common in the history of Illinois: a public denial with no teeth.”

“Two weeks later, ISACorps sent two members with Rainbow PUSH on a national tour of colleges,” he said.

On her way home from that Rainbow PUSH event in Chicago, Bailey said she “wrestled with what had just occurred.”

“How many others in that audience were like me, and effectively coerced into participating in what was really a political event?” she wrote. “Did the public know that this is what their money was paying for? … I personally felt used and just couldn’t continue to work at ISAC.”

Samuels did eventually confirm that the workers’ hotel and travel expenses were paid for with federal taxpayer money from a grant the agency receives annually.

“There were … a little bit less than $3,500 of reimbursements that I’ve seen, and I’ve seen the entire employee package,” Samuels said.

“Those were legitimate expenses that were paid for out of the federal [College Access Challenge] grant. … [M]ost of [the workers] were already attending other events in town. So, again, it’s not an incremental expense.”

Illinois law prohibits the use of “public funds” to “be used to urge any elector to vote for or against any candidate or proposition, or be appropriated for political or campaign purposes to any candidate or political organization.” ISAC may not have broken that law, though, as state law defines “public funds” as having been “appropriated by the Illinois General Assembly or by any political subdivision of the state of Illinois.” ISAC used federal taxpayer dollars for the March 3 event.

Using federal dollars, however, may violate the federal Hatch Act, which the U.S. Office of Special Counsel says requires that state and municipal workers “may not use official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election or nomination for office” when their “duties [are] in connection with an activity financed in whole or in part by federal funds.”

Samuels said he was unsure whether Jackson Jr., Jackson Sr., Pelosi, or their staffs were aware that the government workers were required to atend.

“I’m not sure if they [the Rainbow PUSH Coaliton] were aware,” Samuels said. “I know that when you send an Outlook in a calendar invite there’s a category called ‘required’ and anybody’s name who you put into that field comes out as required. But it was a required event. [ISA]Corps members have required events.”

Asked if Pelosi or Rep. Jackson Jr. were aware that state employees were required to attend, Samuels responded, “I have no idea.”

Representatives for Jackson Jr., Jackson Sr. and Pelosi have not responded to TheDC’s requests for comment.


So says one state worker, who has come forward and signed an affadavit to that effect. Marcy Bailey worked for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission in December of last year, and was instructed by her supervisors to attend a rally sponsored by Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition in support of spending on student loans being held in Chicago — hundreds of miles from her Clay County home. Sensing somehow that a Rainbow PUSH rally might be overtly political and overtly hostile to her own political beliefs, Bailey tried to demur — and was ordered to attend, and to charge the state for all her expenses.

And that’s just the start:

According to the whistle-blower, Rev. Jackson also encouraged the government employees to load first-generation and low-income college students up with student loan debt — because Democrats in Congress, he allegedly promised, would eventually pass laws to forgive that debt later. “[T]hose people will continue to vote Democratic,” Jackson Sr. said, according to the whistle-blower.

On March 3, Pelosi flew to Chicago to endorse Rep. Jackson Jr., 17 days ahead of a heated March 20 Democratic primary he later won. Pelosi was scheduled to make the endorsement at a press conference later in the day, after she participated in an hour-long “forum” hosted by the elder Jackson at the headquarters of his progressive Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Pelosi politicized that forum, jumping the gun and endorsing Jackson Jr. earlier than planned.

“One of the reasons I am here, and I will do this following this wonderful meeting, is to publicly state my endorsement of Jesse Jackson Jr. for re-election,” Pelosi said at the Rainbow PUSH forum. “I do so with great pride. I remember when he came to the Congress with a great name and a great tradition of his parents. But he came and he made his own mark in the Congress from his own generation.”

Why did her supervisors want her to attend?

“When I arrived at the meeting location, our ISAC directors instructed us to go to the second floor and congregate in a side hallway outside of zwhere Jesse Jackson Sr. was speaking to a group of individuals, including candidates and other political figures that were being addressed as ‘judge’ and ‘senator,’” Bailey wrote. “With cameras flashing, Jesse Jackson Sr., candidates and politicians left the conference room, and we were staged to look like we were political supporters. In other words, we were used as props during a campaign season.”

There is no indication at this time that Nancy Pelosi or either of the Jacksons knew that ISAC workers had been compelled to attend the event. However, for the ISAC supervisors who ordered the attendance of dozens of staffers for the rally, this could be a very big problem. The Daily Caller notes that state law prohibits the use of public funds for political activities. The ISAC uses federal funding, which may create an even bigger problem for the agency, as it would almost certainly violate the Hatch Act.

Be sure to read the entire article, especially for the reaction Matthew Boyle received from ISAC spokesman John Samuels, who clearly needs a lesson in public relations. In fact, his rude and hostile reaction calls into question how he got chosen for this particular job in the first place, and certainly doesn’t do anything to assuage concerns of politicization at ISAC.

Ill. state workers forced to attend Pelosi, Jackson event | The Daily Caller

Max is the man.

Originally Posted by attaboy

of course!

it's all coming into focus now...especially since i tightened the strap on my tinfoil hat.

CA might have nice weather but their economy sucks. And why does it suck you might ask? Unions. Plain & simple, unions have strangled the fok out of the Golden State. Texas, mostly a non-union state is doing far better:

Texas vs. California: 13% GDP Growth Over Past Five Years As Against Fool's Gold State's 0.3%

The most telling indictment of California’s performance? If you removed oil and gas from the Texas economy, the Lone Star state has still outpaced growth in California. Apologists for the Golden State shouldn’t forget that it is in possession of two-thirds of America’s proven shale reserves, a treasure trove that rivals many resource-rich sovereign countries. ...
Finally, and most disturbingly, the US Census Bureau found that between 2009 and 2011, California had the highest supplemental poverty measure in America, with 42 percent more people in poverty as a share of the population than Texas. This can’t all be chalked up to immigration either: illegal immigrants account for the same percentage of Texas’s population as they do California’s."


Economic growth: Texas, California and revisions - The Hill's Congress Blog