<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Ben Johnson</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/author/ben-johnson/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 07:56:08 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Bill Gates vs. the Famine Lobby &#8211; by Ben Johnson</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/bill-gates-vs-the-famine-lobby-ben-johnson/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bill-gates-vs-the-famine-lobby-ben-johnson</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/bill-gates-vs-the-famine-lobby-ben-johnson/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:26:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Johnson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=33686</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The left-of-center philanthropist says starving Africans should be allowed to eat genetically modified foods.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-33687" title="gates" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/gates.jpg" alt="gates" width="450" height="450" /></p>
<p>The left-of-center philanthropist says starving Africans should be allowed to eat genetically modified foods.</p>
<p>Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the <a href="http://www.worldfoodprize.org/">World Food Prize Symposium </a>in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.</p>
<p>The opposition is significant, because Gates is left-of-center himself. The <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofile.asp?fndid=5299&amp;category=79">Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation</a>, with assets of $29 billion as of 2005, has focused on the “population” side of the “problem” in the past, sending billions of dollars in grants to such pro-abortion groups as <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7083">Planned Parenthood</a>; Population Action International, Population Services International, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and the Population Resource Center. Gates has also financed such organizations as the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/funderProfile.asp?fndid=5184">Tides Center</a>, the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/funderProfile.asp?fndid=5184">Tides Foundation</a>, the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=153">National Council of La Raza</a>, and has supported a <a href="http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/01/cov_29feature.html">gun control</a> initiative in Washington state.</p>
<p>However, Gates announced he will issue a $120 million grant to increase food productivity in sub-Saharan Africa through the planting of genetically modified seeds. In Des Moines, Gates cited a Stanford study from 2008 concluding African farmers will lose one-quarter of their productivity within 20 years if they continue to plant the same strains of corn. However, “If the seeds perform well, African farmers can expect to produce two-million more tons of maize in a year of moderate drought.” Radio Iowa <a href="http://www.radioiowa.com/2009/10/15/gates-talks-about-gentic-crops-at-world-food-prize-symposium/">reports</a> Gates has “committed more than a billion dollars” in all.</p>
<p><strong>Taking on the Green Left</strong></p>
<p>In proposing this initiative, he is standing up to the Green Left, which has long favored environmental “purity” to human well-being. Greenpeace cooked up <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/21/21greenwire-ghost-of-frankenfood-haunts-europe-55309.html?pagewanted=3">the term “Frankenfood”</a> to demonize genetically modified foods a decade ago. Jeremy Rifkin called GM foods, <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDU3Njc3NDJlOTJiZDc2MDc2MWNkYzcxNjA2NTQ0OGI=">“a form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust”</a> and compared their cultivation to <a href="http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:gLVKx1MirxcJ:frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp%3FID%3D8815+%22Jeremy+Rifkin%22+OR+%22Foundation+on+Economic+Trends%22+site:frontpagemag.com&amp;cd=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&amp;gl=us&amp;client=firefox-a">“Nazi eugenics.”</a> So successful was their campaign that many ecological groups have equated the agricultural corporation Monsanto, a leader in biotechnology, with <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/monsanto-is-hap/">the antichrist</a>.</p>
<p>Dire predictions aside, GM foods not only potentially increase food production but have replaced the need to spray crops with chemical pesticides, which <a href="http://97.74.65.51/Printable.aspx?ArtId=17424">sickened or killed</a> Africans. Those farmers who spray can now streamline the process, saving them much time and money. The modified crops are more resistant to <a href="http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php">cold, drought, herbicides, pests, and disease</a>. They also supplied nutritional gaps in the consumption patterns of the poor. For instance, so-called “golden rice” spliced Vitamin A into rice, which could <a href="http://97.74.65.51/Printable.aspx?ArtId=17060">stave off blindness</a> among the world’s poor who eat little more than rice. (Giving credit where credit’s due, golden rice was developed with <a href="http://www.rockfound.org/library/111400ght.pdf">aid from the Rockefeller Foundation</a>.)</p>
<p>The “Nazi” concerns floated by the Green Left have proven <a href="http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php">more theoretical than actual</a>. Greenpeace has long claimed GM foods <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/05/07/our_allergies_ourselves/">increase allergies</a>; however, the World Health Organization – hardly a corporate, capitalist shill – <a href="http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/">concluded</a>, “No allergic effects have been found relative to GM foods currently on the market.” Although six EU nations ban GM foods, Jaap Satter, a senior policy adviser at the Dutch Agriculture Ministry, has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/21/21greenwire-ghost-of-frankenfood-haunts-europe-55309.html">said</a>, “You cannot say anymore that there is a scientific reason to be against genetic modification.” <cite>The National Research Council </cite><a href="http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/15729/Scientific_Evidence_Puts_the_Lie_to_Concerns_Over_Genetically_Modified_Food.html">summed up</a><cite> the situation: “</cite>no conceptual distinction exists between generic modification of plants and microorganisms by classical methods or by molecular techniques that modify DNA and transfer genes.<cite>” </cite></p>
<p>Some environmentalists seem concerned the foods will be too successful at feeding the poor. Al Gore has <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/food-countries-prices-2023927-corn-price">worried</a>, “The most lasting impact of biotechnology on the food supply may come not from something going wrong, but from all going right…we’re far more likely to accidentally drown ourselves in a sea of excess grain.” Given the environmentalist movement’s hatred of population – best exemplified by <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34198">Obama Science Czar John Holdren’s justification of compulsory abortion</a> in the United   States – this may be the real locus of their disdain.</p>
<p>So deep is the Green Left’s hatred of GM foods that even an organizations Gates founded has given genetically modified food a chilly reception. “The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa was <a href="http://www.rockfound.org/initiatives/agra/agra.shtml">established</a> by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” and the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006 “with the objective of improving agriculture in Africa.” However, its leader, former UN secretary-general <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODkxYThmOWJhZTg5NjVjYzZmMDBiNGFhZjhjN2M0ODI=">Kofi Annan</a>, <a href="http://www.criticalopinion.org/articles/77">vowed</a> in 2007: “We in the alliance will not incorporate GMOs [genetically modified organisms] in our programmes. We shall work with farmers using traditional seeds.”</p>
<p>The scare tactics and shunning of American and Euro-socialist leftists is theoretical and faulty – but their mania has reaped a deadly harvest among the world’s most vulnerable people.</p>
<p><strong>Let Them Eat Twigs</strong></p>
<p>In 2002, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2233839.stm">refused to accept</a> tons of U.S. food aid for his starving nation, because the aid contained genetically modified food (maize, specifically). “Simply because my people are hungry, that is no justification to give them poison, to give them food that is intrinsically dangerous to their health,” he <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2233839.stm">said</a>. The deluded president <a href="http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol16no4/164food2.htm">continued,</a> “I will not allow Zambians to be turned into guinea pigs no matter the levels of hunger in the country.”</p>
<p>The levels of hunger were staggering. Nearly <a href="http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol16no4/164food2.htm%20Some">one-third of Zambia’s 10 million people</a> faced famine. Some <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2371675.stm">14 million Africans faced starvation</a> region-wide. Nonetheless, the president privately <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2412603.stm">upbraided</a> officials in the UN World Food Programme for distributing GM foods, which fed 125,000 people in five camps. The WFP <a href="http://www.wfp.or.jp/press/pdf/2005_wfp_annual_report.pdf">reported</a> some impoverished Zambians “resorted to eating little more than twigs and ash from the fire in a brown soupy concoction.” Desperate, rural villagers broke into the palace where the stockpiles were rotting and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2233839.stm">stole 2,000 bags of maize</a>.</p>
<p>In response, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in 2002, signed a <a href="http://practicalaction.org/?id=wssd_gm_statement">“statement of solidarity”</a> with Zambia. Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace went further, alleging <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/mar/31/gm.food1">the humanitarian aid constituted a sick capitalist ploy</a>. “There is a constant drip of pressure from the U.S. government and biotech industry to make sure Africa is softened up for GM,” he theorized. “Europe is closed to them and they need a market for it.”</p>
<p>Others offered more than ideological support. Zimbabwe joined the boycott, preventing GM grain’s importation. Angola <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/mar/31/gm.food1">followed suit</a> in 2004. Lesotho and Mozambique <a href="http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol16no4/164food2.htm%20Some">milled</a> all such grain so it would not be planted and “infect” other crops. <em> </em></p>
<p>Not all were limited to the EU and Africa. In 2004, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez <a href="http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/221/46944.html">passed</a> “possibly…the most sweeping restrictions on transgenic crops in the western hemisphere.”</p>
<p><strong>Organic Astroturf<cite></cite></strong></p>
<p><cite> </cite></p>
<p>At home, the opposition has been remarkably well-heeled. <em>National Review</em>’s<em> </em>Deroy Murdock <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDU3Njc3NDJlOTJiZDc2MDc2MWNkYzcxNjA2NTQ0OGI=">found</a>:<em> </em></p>
<blockquote><p>In 2001, the 30 leading anti-biotech groups…spent $341.4 million, including Greenpeace USA’s expenditure of $23,748,737, Environmental Defense&#8217;s $38,794,150 and the Natural Resources Defense Council&#8217;s $41,625,882. Between 1996 and 2001, this crusade&#8217;s lavish underwriters included the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($11,906,500), the Ford Foundation ($39,978,020) and the Pew Charitable Trusts ($130,996,900).</p></blockquote>
<p>It also included a large portion of the organic food market. Somehow, this story of an industry trying to spike a competitor did not make MSNBC or the pages of <em>Mother Jones</em>.</p>
<p>Whatever the dangers, the prohibition of GM foods is a moral issue. As Velasio De Paolis of the Pontifical Urban University <a href="http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=7254">has said</a>, it is “easy to say no to GM food if your stomach is full.”  However misled he is on other issues, Bill Gates deserves credit for standing up against the Green Left on this point.</p>
<p>The question remains, will he do so on the issue that seems closest to his heart: the eradication of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa? In a recent speech  on the topic Gates <a href="http://www.pesticideinformation.eu/2009/02/bill-gates-talks-about-malaria-ddt/">admitted</a>, “two tools helped to bring the death rate down: One was killing the mosquitoes with DDT.” Before <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=9913">Rachel Carson’s crusade</a> – based entirely on scientific theories that <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11333">never panned out</a> – DDT use had nearly eradicated malaria. Now, <a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168186.php">according to one report,</a> “there are approximately 350 to 500 millions cases of malaria, killing close to one million people” annually. “Every day, malaria takes the lives of 2,000 children in Africa alone.” Yet instead of backing DDT use, Gates has sought to find a vaccine.</p>
<p>If Gates truly wants to put the well-being of Africans above political correctness, DDT is the best place to start.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/bill-gates-vs-the-famine-lobby-ben-johnson/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>51</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Hold On, Big Labor &#8211; by Ben Johnson</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/hold-on-big-labor-by-ben-johnson/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hold-on-big-labor-by-ben-johnson</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/hold-on-big-labor-by-ben-johnson/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:49:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Johnson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=32150</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[John McCain places a hold on an Obama/SEIU appointee with ties to ACORN.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-32152" title="john-mccain" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/john-mccain.jpg" alt="john-mccain" width="450" height="282" /></p>
<p>As the Left barrels forward with its agenda to remake the United   States, Sen. John McCain has interrupted President Obama’s latest payoff to the Shadow Party. McCain announced Wednesday he would <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hJUX2JlS_4tPk3KpZvm-oLELHcUAD9BFMSJ00">place a hold</a> on Obama’s appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Becker is a longtime lawyer for the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6535">Service Employees International Union (SEIU)</a>, which donated <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/40959">$27.8 million</a> to Obama’s 2008 campaign. McCain described Becker as “probably the most controversial nominee that I have seen in a long time” – and that from an administration that has nominated <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34198">John Holdren</a>, <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36196">Van Jones</a>, and <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2364">Carol Browner</a>. Becker has never justified compulsory abortion, blamed a natural disaster on President Bush, or joined an international socialist organization. But he has written that “workers should not be able to choose against having a union”; that employers should have no right to contest fraudulent union elections; and that the NLRB could implement certain portions of Big Labor’s card check proposal even without Congressional approval. Becker took as his own the words of Robert Hoxie, that “unions are ‘formed to escape <a href="http://www.chamberpost.com/2009/07/craig-becker-card-checks-inside-man.html">the evils of individualism.’”</a> And, through a Chicagoland chapter of SEIU, Becker has ties to <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968">ACORN</a> and Rod Blagojevich that demand probing.</p>
<p>McCain took the action after Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin ignored his <a href="http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.PressReleases&amp;ContentRecord_id=73cf72b0-ec09-a9c9-9bb7-a163ad33b8c0&amp;Region_id=&amp;Issue_id=">letter</a> calling for Harkin’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee to investigate Becker. Obama tapped the former UCLA professor, AFL-CIO lawyer, and current assistant general counsel to SEIU for one of three empty seats on the NLRB, which Congressional Democrats <a href="http://enr.construction.com/news/work/archives/080320.asp">blocked</a> President Bush from filling the last <a href="http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/washington/index.ssf?/base/national-11/1256150589327150.xml&amp;storylist=washington">two years</a> of his term. The board is the federal overseer of all labor disputes and sets rules for the formation of unions. Becker would radically restructure these elections to favor organized labor, his employer, one of Obama’s chief source of political donations, and an invaluable constituency of the Democratic Party. And in true “progressive” spirit, he vows to do so for your own good.</p>
<p><strong>We Are the Labor Borg; You Will be Assimilated</strong></p>
<p>According to critics, Becker’s views are simple: no American employed anywhere should have the right to resist being part of a labor union. He <a href="http://www.nrtwc.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/bho-personnel-alert-becker1.pdf">has written</a>, “At first blush it might seem fair to give workers the choice to remain unrepresented.” But this is not so. “Just as U.S. citizens cannot opt against having a congressman, workers should not be able to choose against having a union as their monopoly-bargaining agent.” Becker approvingly quoted Sen. Robert F. Wagner’s belief that <a href="http://newsrealblog.com/2009/10/07/what-the-left-really-pledges-allegiance-to/">“industrial democracy”</a> is <a href="http://www.getliberty.org/files/NomineeAlert%20-%20Craig%20Becker%20-%20National%20Labor%20Relations%20Board%2008_05_09.pdf">“essential to the preservation of the republican form of government”</a>;  thus, a non-unionized employee is no different than a “non-voting member of a society.”</p>
<p>To end workers’ self-imposed disenfranchisement, Becker considered doing away with union elections altogether, or instituting a “reform” to “mandate employee representation, and the question posed on the ballot would simply be which representative.” In a 1993 <em>Minnesota Law Review </em>article he rejected both possibilities on the grounds that “each would require fundamental statutory revision unlikely in the foreseeable future.” Instead, he proposes to skew all elections toward the unions, taking a blasé attitude toward election fraud. Present law allows for unions to be formed after a secret ballot election held at the workplace, where both management and labor may appoint observers to guard against electoral abuses.</p>
<p>Becker wants to change this, from top to bottom. He believes the NLRB should strip companies of the right to speak out against unionization at work, bar them from preventing – or even <em>protesting</em> – voting fraud, and deny them nearly all right to petition the NLRB. Management should not be allowed to talk about the dangers of unionization on company grounds, as the law has allowed since the 1930s, because in his view employees constitute a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124226652880418035.html">“captive audience,”</a> yet he raises no objection to aggressive union organizers stalking workers from the parking lot to their homes. Becker is remarkably straightforward in his view that “employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives,” and that <a href="http://www.nam.org/%7E/media/PolicyIssueInformation/HumanResourcePolicy/EmploymentandLabor/BeckerNomination19Oct2009%20FINAL.ashx">“employers should have no right to raise questions concerning voter eligibility or campaign conduct.”</a></p>
<p>Under his proposed rules, ineligible voters – possibly full-time union employees who do not work for the company – could show up on election day, cast their proud ballots for SEIU, and if the firm ever found out, it would have no means of recourse. He argues entrepreneurs lack “the formal status either of candidates vying to represent employees or of voters”; they simply exist to pay the wages unions demand. Should they object, Becker advocates curtailing businesses’s right to contest NLRB rulings in federal circuit court.</p>
<p>Although Becker has proposed heavy-handed “reforms” that would force many anti-union workers to cough up union dues, he has argued these provisions could be accomplished <a href="http://www.shopfloor.org/wp-content/uploads/beckerupdate.pdf">“with almost no alteration of the statutory framework,”</a> as his views simply “give effect to existing guarantees.” He is now biding his time until confirmation. When Orrin Hatch asked, in writing, whether still held to these beliefs, Becker replied he would <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574471393545371128.html">“maintain an open mind”</a> about whether they “should be implemented in any manner.”</p>
<p>He also justifies unions’s more extreme protests. He would allow unions to call intermittent strikes, which some call <a href="http://www.uschamber.com/NR/rdonlyres/ettxevxhnekd3wkr3cqekv7c6frknxbzziu52m3jmw74itsnlttljywtuk4qflagvhz2ij4l2mh3fsozgka3xz44dzc/090724_becker.pdf">“grievance strikes”</a> – sudden, brief, and rolling work stoppages that momentarily paralyze a company. Federal law <a href="http://public.findlaw.com/abaflg/flg-12-4h-19.html">does not protect</a> such strikes, but Becker would. Critics similary <a href="http://www.chamberpost.com/2009/07/craig-becker-card-checks-inside-man.html">charge</a>, with the advent of the Employee Free Choice Act (“card-check”), Becker has become more radicalized. Former NLRB chair William Gould has expressed concern <a href="http://www.uschamber.com/NR/rdonlyres/ettxevxhnekd3wkr3cqekv7c6frknxbzziu52m3jmw74itsnlttljywtuk4qflagvhz2ij4l2mh3fsozgka3xz44dzc/090724_becker.pdf">Becker will implement card check provisions</a> even if the act is never becomes law (which it likely will not).</p>
<p><strong>ACORN’s Good Man</strong></p>
<p>Sometimes a man’s supporters and detractors tell you as much about him as his record. One Becker-backer <a href="http://chieforganizer.org/2009/04/30/becker-to-the-nlrb/">wrote</a> that he had “crossed paths with Craig for more than 20 years” and found Becker to be “a secret weapon for workers,” making his appointment “a big win no matter how you bake it.” That supporter was <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1773">Wade Rathke</a>, founder of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968">ACORN</a> and co-founder and chair of the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderProfile.asp?fndid=5184">Tides Center</a>. Coincidentally, Rather happens to be an international board member of SEIU. (An ecumenical leftist, he also has ties to the AFL-CIO.) Becker <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574471393545371128.html">worked with</a> Chicago SEIU local 880 and on the issue of organizing home health care workers in Illinois; six days after the union <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122973200003022963.html">donated $200,000 to then-Governor Rod Blagojevich</a>, he signed a law that nearly doubled the local’s membership and, according to one source, <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/Center_for_Union_Facts/CUF/prweb1753134.htm">tripled its income</a> (from $7 million to $21 million). At the same time, SEIU local 880 funneled <a href="http://laborpains.org/?p=140">hundreds of thousands of dollars in union dues to ACORN front groups</a>. Andrew Breitbart’s <a href="http://biggovernment.com/">BigGovernment.com</a> has <a href="http://biggovernment.com/2009/10/14/investigate-chicago-seiu-880s-acorn-rathke-connection/">discovered</a> that in 2000, SEIU 880’s accounting was handled by Dale Rather, who embezzled at least $1 million from ACORN. Accounting duties were later taken over by Wade Rathke.</p>
<p>Incidentally, this week Illinois home health care workers voted – in a secret election – and <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/19/victory-against-big-labor-home-health-providers-reject-seiu-afscme-power-grab/">defeated the attempted unionization</a> by a two-thirds vote.</p>
<p>Becker’s ties to a notorious embezzler, the head of a group some in Congress contend is <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Rep-Issas-report-claims-criminal-enterprises-within-ACORN-51524057.html">structured as a criminal enterprise</a>, and a disgraced governor demand a thorough investigation.</p>
<p><strong>Obama’s Big Labor for Big Labor</strong></p>
<p>The appointment is one of President Obama’s latest paybacks to Big Labor. SEIU President <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1830">Andrew Stern</a>, who now enjoys unprecedented access to the Obama administration, is a charter member of the Shadow Party, having sunk $5 million of SEIU’s money into the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7151">Democracy Alliance.</a> The alliance, a group of far-Left political investors led by <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977">George Soros</a>, made its home at SEIU headquarters in Washington, D.C. Stern also took a seat on the executive council of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6708">Americans Coming Together,</a> Soros’s get-out-the-vote organ.</p>
<p>Out of ideological kinship and electoral debt, Obama began paying the union back. He signed a series of executive orders – drafted by Becker, who was <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574471393545371128.html">still employed by SEIU and the AFL-CIO</a> at the time – to reserve federal funds for unionized contractors.<strong>[1]</strong> Obama <a href="http://www.seiu.org/2009/09/obama-dol-kill-bush-era-proposal-look-out-for-workers-health-and-safety.php.">repealed</a> a Bush-era proposal to slow the rate at which OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) draft fiat regulations. His MSHA head, a 20-year leader in the United Mine Workers, <a href="http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/02/11/msha-news-umw-endorses-main-over-mcateer">blamed</a> the 2006 Sago mine disaster on President George W. Bush. And Obama’s hostile takeover put the United Auto Workers in the driver’s seat of General Motors.</p>
<p><strong>Socialized Medicine: Look for the Union Label</strong></p>
<p>The unions, meanwhile, have become part of the president’s permanent army. SEIU, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/johnsweeneyandthepower.html">Change to Win</a>, UAW, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, Communication Workers of America, and the United Food and Commercial Workers union are the main players in the <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35838">Soros-funded Health Care for America Now! (HCAN)</a>, the national “grassroots” organization protesting for socialized medicine. Some 18,000 union members crowded common citizens out of town hall meetings late this summer. Labor leadership has pledged to keep up the pressure on weary Blue Dog Democrats <a href="http://newsrealblog.com/2009/09/22/socialized-medicine-look-for-the-union-label/">to include the “public option” in the final health care bill</a>, allowing Obama to socialize one-sixth of the U.S. economy without expending his own political capital in the process.</p>
<p><strong>The Alinskyite Backlash Begins</strong></p>
<p>Were it not for John McCain’s action this week, Becker would surely have coasted to Senate confirmation. The day McCain placed the hold, the Senate HELP committee <a href="http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/washington/index.ssf?/base/national-11/1256150589327150.xml&amp;storylist=washington">voted 15-8</a> to approve him. <em>Politico</em> notes the Obama White House has widened its smear campaign beyond talk radio and Fox News; it is now trying to <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28445_Page2.html">“neuter” the Chamber of Commerce</a>. (One method is by going to the Chamber’s constituent members, under the pretext of avoiding a meeting with “lobbyists.” This is rich, considering Obama let an SEIU lobbyist outline his executive orders on labor.) AP reporter Sam Hananel happily <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hJUX2JlS_4tPk3KpZvm-oLELHcUAD9BFMSJ00">picked up the White House talking points</a>, noting McCain’s “remarks echoed complaints by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens of business groups that claim Becker&#8217;s views are ‘out of the mainstream.’” Nowhere does Hananel reveal the depths of Becker’s radicalism. Look for the White House to paint McCain as an obstructionist doing the bidding of evil corporate tycoons. The reality is the reverse: virtually the only objective Obama has successfully carried out is implementing key portions of SEIU’s agenda.</p>
<p>For that kind of truth, you have to rely on talk radio, Fox News, and the Chamber of Commerce.</p>
<p><strong>ENDNOTES:</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>1. Michelle Malkin. <em>Culture of Corruption</em>,pp.  198-99.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/hold-on-big-labor-by-ben-johnson/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>21</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Valerie Jarrett’s Ministry of Culture &#8211; by Ben Johnson</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/valerie-jarrett%e2%80%99s-ministry-of-culture-by-ben-johnson/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=valerie-jarrett%25e2%2580%2599s-ministry-of-culture-by-ben-johnson</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/valerie-jarrett%e2%80%99s-ministry-of-culture-by-ben-johnson/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:20:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Johnson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=24494</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The office of Obama’s alter ego holds a troubling “cultural policy” summit.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-24496" title="56145316" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/610x.jpg" alt="56145316" width="488" height="421" /></p>
<p>Conservative journalists have exposed the Obama administration’s attempts to politicize the National Endowment for the Arts. <a href="http://www.biggovernment.com/">Andrew Breitbart’s website</a> has detailed two conference calls in August aimed at recruiting artists to shill for health care “reform” and environmental legislation. However, it has been overlooked that an NEA official and numerous employees in <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36289">Valerie Jarrett</a>’s office hosted an earlier meeting on May 12 to enroll “artists” in advancing its political agenda – and<em> </em>to get their input in shaping it. Both aspects are troubling, as the invited participants included several of Van Jones’s ideological fellow travelers, three people who claimed the CIA sells crack in minority neighborhoods, a Jewish lesbian who confessed to having “a little crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ,” representatives of the SEIU and the Tides Foundation, a publisher who dubbed 9/11 “a major piece of performance art conceived by” a jihadist with “an artist&#8217;s mind,” a director who wrote 9/11 was tied to Ronald Reagan’s withdrawal from UNESCO, and the “former International Spokeswoman for the Universal Zulu Nation.”</p>
<p>The evidence shows the heavy involvement of Valerie Jarrett’s office – and possibly Jarrett herself – the participants’ explicit understanding they were to promote Obama’s legislative agenda, and the administration’s acceptance of those whose beliefs are at least as radical as those of Van Jones.</p>
<p><strong>Sweeping the NEA’s Politicization Under the Rug</strong></p>
<p>The furor began when word leaked out then-National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) communications director Yosi Sergant invited Patrick Courrielche and <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTVjYzZhOTdlNWIwYjZkYjE2OWVkZDg5YjIwNTczNTg=">74 other artists</a> to <a href="http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/08/25/the-national-endowment-for-the-art-of-persuasion-patrick-courrielche/">participate</a> in an August 10<sup>th</sup> conference call supporting the United We Serve Program. Sergant invited his readers to “celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!” The call’s organizer, Michael Skolnick <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/after-inappropriate-nea-conference-call-white-house-pushes-new-guidelines.html">said</a> (as administration officials listened in) that artists who had worked to elect Obama must continue “to support some of the president’s initiatives…to push the president and push his administration.” Sergant then emphasized, “I would encourage you to pick something, whether it’s health care, education, the environment….” (Read the <a href="http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/09/21/full-nea-conference-call-transcript-and-audio/">full call transcript</a>.)</p>
<p>However, it was one of Valerie Jarrett’s employees, Deputy Director of the Office of Public Engagement Buffy Wicks, who was most explicit about the call’s partisan goals. She told the participants, “<strong>we&#8217;re going to come at you with some specific asks here</strong>.” She did this because, “We’re actually running the government. We need your guys’s help to promote this.” Wicks <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024559.php">asked</a> her audience to “focus on the four main areas: One is health care. Obviously, that&#8217;s a big issue&#8230;Second was energy and environment.” Wicks hoped this would steer the public toward left-wing ideological and political organizations: “We wanted folks to connect…with federal agencies, with labor unions, progressive groups, face groups [faith groups, perhaps?], women’s groups, you name it.” She helpfully suggested, on the environment, “we can partner with the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6907">League of Conservation Voters</a> or the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6930">Sierra Club</a> and on those efforts and really funnel people’s energies that way.” She praised the adulatory <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster">Obama “Hope” poster</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY">will.i.am’s propaganda video</a>. Only the fourth “main area,” community renewal, encompassed “traditional service activities – you know, food shelters, homeless shelters.” (Oddly, Buffy mentioned only the fourth area in her <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkpjx0Obw-s">YouTube message</a> introducing USAService.org.)</p>
<p>Confronted with the transcript, NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/sep/22/nea-chairman-rocco-landesman-responds-august-10-co/">wrote</a> the call “was not a means to promote any legislative agenda and any suggestions to that end are simply false.” But his protests don’t pass the smell test. Flush with <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-25/obama-stiffs-the-arts/?cid=tag:all1">$50 million from the stimulus bill</a>, the NEA began doling out grants, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/sep/10/arts-organizations-received-15-million-grants-prio/">awarding</a> $2 million this year to 16 participants in the August 10<sup>th</sup> conference call or their affiliates. The organizations on the call responded to the “asks” as though they were invited to support a legislative agenda. Within 48 hours of the first conference call, <a href="http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bshapiro/2009/09/21/demand-congressional-investigation-nea-conference-call-broke-laws/">21 arts organizations</a> endorsed ObamaCare. “Rock the Vote” initiated a “health care design contest” to pump the proposal.</p>
<p>The conference call <a href="http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/21/conference-call-transcript-implicates-fed-art-agency-in-government-co-opt-of-arts-community/">included</a> a representative of the L.A.-based PR firm Winner &amp; Associates, a group not generally thought to be part of the “arts community.” His name is Bim Ayandele, who co-chaired Generation Obama before he <a href="http://twitter.com/biggerb64/status/2213418191">helped</a> <a href="http://www.winnerandassociates.com/reflections2.aspx">establish</a> Jarrett’s Office of Public Engagement. The day after the 8/10 call, Ayandele began <a href="http://twitter.com/biggerb64">tweeting</a> in <a href="http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/198917.php">favor of the president’s health care plan and against the tea party protesters</a> – during work hours. As Andrew Breitbart’s <a href="http://www.biggovernment.com/">BigGovernment.com</a> has pointed out, many other participants <a href="http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/21/conference-call-transcript-implicates-fed-art-agency-in-government-co-opt-of-arts-community/">followed suit</a> – on the same day as Ayandele.</p>
<p>On August 27, the OPE invited artists to yet another conference call, led by Kalpen Modi. Modi, who formerly acted under the stage name “Kal Penn,” is now associate director of the Office of Public Engagement under Valerie Jarrett. He announced the NEA and NEH had backed out of the call, so it was apparently an all-OPE event. The announcement of this meeting has subsequently <a href="http://serve.artsusa.org/blog/entry/invitation-join-us-for-a-conference-call-with-the-white-house-this-thursday/">disappeared from the web.</a> Less is known of the call’s proceedings, but Lee Rosenbaum, one of its participants who supports the president’s agenda, admitted to being <a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2009/09/united_we_serve.html">“creeped out”</a> by being contacted to advance the administration’s goals.</p>
<p>After word of the calls leaked out, Obama’s counsel Greg Craig <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/WH_COUNSEL_MEMO_GUIDELINES_FOR_PUBLIC_OUTREACH_MEETINGS.pdf">drafted a memo</a> expressing “regrets” that“[s]ome comments made in the call” had been “misunderstood as seeking to inappropriately politicize activities of the NEA.” Sergant was demoted, then forced to <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/sep/24/nea-yosi-sergant-submits-resignation/">resign</a> for his part in the call, and no further action appears likely. However, the resignation ignores the greater role played by Buffy Wicks and other OPE officials, in the August calls and in the underreported May conference. The August calls followed upon a meeting between numerous White House officials (including Sergant and Wicks) and artists which could not be more clearly political, and who could not have been more radical.</p>
<p><strong>Jarrett’s Office Deeply Involved in May 12<sup>th</sup> NEA/Radicals Conference</strong></p>
<p><em>The Washington Post</em> has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051203327.html">reported</a> that on May 12, White House officials were present in the Eisenhower Executing Office Building next door to the White House for what one of its participants described as <a href="http://www.statevoices.org/artsdem">“a White House briefing on Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery.”</a> Some 60 artists were – in the words of one of the meeting’s organizers – <a href=".">“challenged to come up with promising and attractive ideas about how artists can work for the administration&#8217;s agenda.”</a> The meeting was a reciprocal gesture, seeking the artists’s input on the Obama agenda and asking their help in promoting its legislative aims. (Lest anyone be accused of bias, the <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/092309_meetingnotes.pdf">extensive summary</a> of the meeting was reportedly written by Meghan McDermott of <a href="http://www.global-action.org/" target="_blank">Global Action Project</a>, an Obama ally.)</p>
<p>The May meeting included an NEA official (Mario Garcia Durham), two representatives of the first lady (Joseph Reinstein and Trooper Sanders), White House <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/arts/14arts-CULTURALPOST_BRF.html?_r=1&amp;ref=arts">Arts Czar Kareem Dale</a> (who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/arts/14arts-CULTURALPOST_BRF.html">reports to Valerie Jarrett</a>), and three members of what was then known as the Office of Public Liason – now the Office of Public Engagement, headed by Valerie Jarrett: Buffy Wicks, her boss Tina Tchen, and Mike Strautmanis. Strautmanis had been a <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9903E3DA143AF935A15754C0A96F9C8B63&amp;sec=&amp;spon=&amp;pagewanted=8">paralegal at Michelle Obama’s law firm</a>. The <em>New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10politics-t.html?pagewanted=8">calls him</a> “Obama’s former chief counsel and de facto younger brother.”</p>
<p>The notes seem to suggest Valerie Jarrett was present at some point during the meeting, as well. The summary states: “Mike Strautmanis directed our attention to key people with whom to foster relationships: Kareem Dale, who was appointed to deal with the arts specifically; <strong>and Valerie Jarrett</strong>, a close confidante and advisor to the First Family, who connects directly to the Oval Office. He also introduced Yosi Sergant, who was instrumental in arranging the briefing. Yosi had just left the Office of Public Engagement to serve as Communications Director at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)…With Yosi and Anita Decker (Director of Government Affairs at the NEA) in place, he explained, people very close to the President are involved in the effort.” Kareem Dale was present and addressed the meeting twice; the summary notes do not record that Yosi Sergant was present – but he <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051203327.html">made clear to <em>The Washington Post</em></a> that he was. Was Valerie Jarrett also in attendance, even briefly? As head of OPE, so richly represented at the meeting, she was undoubtedly aware of its proceedings.</p>
<p>And that should give us pause.</p>
<p><strong>You Scratch My Back….</strong></p>
<p>The summary continues that Strautmanis “described two paths.” The first was “set pieces of work such as the healthcare debate, efforts to reduce energy costs and the commitment to community service. In these areas, the administration wants to bring people in informally <strong>to advise and offer perspectives</strong> and to receive updates on impact. The administration wants to know what’s missing or doesn’t make sense, and will reach out periodically as issues come up.” Second, he encouraged the group to think of “ways to communicate” this administration’s agenda “with people and how to motivate them culturally,” then to communicate directly with Kareem Dale.</p>
<p>Buffy Wicks followed and was, again, less coy. Wicks “asked briefing participants to think through how their networks and organizations can participate in areas such as the arts in education, healthcare and preventative care, energy and environment, or economic opportunity.” Tina Tchen added, “The administration wants to sustain energy from the election process and turn it toward the agenda.”</p>
<p>Curiously, the participants took this to mean they should advance a political agenda. Community organizer <a href="http://www.communitychange.org/who-we-are/our-staff/bios/sally-kohn">Sally Kohn</a> likened the artists’ efforts to “a movement to create a climate for change, banging down that door.” In subsequent “breakout sessions,” the artists came up with ways to promote the Obama agenda. But the politicization is less troubling than those invited to do the thinking.</p>
<p><strong>“I Have a Little Crush on Mahmoud Admadinejad”</strong></p>
<p>Sally Kohn is Senior Campaign Strategist at the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6434">Center for Community Change</a> and formerly worked at the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderProfile.asp?fndid=5176">Ford Foundation</a>. The CCC is an <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/saulalinsky2.html">Alinskyite</a> “community organizing” pressure group founded by <a href="http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1641">Heather and Paul Booth</a>, former SDS radicals who founded the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6725">Midwest Academy</a>. The Booths have <a href="http://www.undueinfluence.com/midwest_academy.htm">ties to Industrial Areas Foundation</a>, where Barack Obama got his community organizing training.</p>
<p>In September 2007, before his speech at Columbia University, Kohn wrote an entry at <em>DailyKos</em> entitled, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/23/388986/-Why-I-Have-A-Little-Crush-on-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad">“Why I Have a Little Crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”</a> She recognizes, “I&#8217;m a Jewish lesbian and he&#8217;d probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon.” True, “There are certainly many things about Ahmadinejad that I abhor — locking up dissidents, executing of gay folks, denying the fact of the Holocaust, potentially adding another dangerous nuclear power to the world and, in general, stifling democracy. Even still, I can’t help but be turned on by his frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of US foreign policy preceding.” She then details how the man who helped kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq “cares more about American troops than President Bush.”</p>
<p>Sadly, her views were the mainstream in this gathering addressed by NEA, OPE, and Michelle Obama’s office.</p>
<p><strong>The Van Jones Caucus</strong></p>
<p>Several of the invitees had ties to Valerie Jarrett’s prize recruit, Van Jones. <strong>Alli Chagi-Starr</strong> is Community Partnerships and Events Manager at Green For All, the group founded by <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2406">Van Jones</a>. She is also the Art and Events Director for Reclaim the Future at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, another of Jones’s organizations. Unfortunately, Jones may be her most moderate influence. Alli is a <a href="http://www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/speakers/92.html">guest speaker</a> for <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=626">Medea Benjamin</a>’s <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6151">Global Exchange</a>, an organization that takes credulous leftists on tours of repressive dictatorships like Cuba to demonstrate the glories of socialism. Starr is featured in <a href="http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=325">chapter 10</a> of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6149">Code Pink</a>’s book, <em>Stop the Next War Now </em>alongside <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1508">Rep. Cynthia McKinney</a>. She <a href="http://cdn2.libsyn.com/artheals/Interview_with_Alli_Chagi-Starr_of_Art_in_Action.mp3?nvb=20091001042048&amp;nva=20091002043048&amp;t=087b58a204551af52674f">co-founded</a> the Radical Performance Fest and “Art and Revolution,” a group of <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2001/5/11/art_and_revolution_puppets_and_protest">far-Left puppeteers</a>. In 2000, she <a href="http://colours.mahost.org/articles/martinez.html">helped bring protesters</a> to the violent anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle organized by Benjamin.</p>
<p>Also invited were <strong>Caron Atlas and Ryan Friedrichs</strong> of an organization called State Voices. The list of “projects” on its website includes <a href="http://www.statevoices.org/node/3251">The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights</a>, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2406">Van Jones</a>’ group. Other projects include <a href="http://www.statevoices.org/node/3299">This Brave Nation</a>, which <a href="http://bravenation.com/carl_pope_van_jones.php">honored</a> Van Jones, and <a href="http://www.statevoices.org/node/3271">League of Young Voters</a> (another conference attendee and Van Jones sycophant; see below). Others include the <a href="http://www.statevoices.org/node/3243">Adelante Alliance</a>, which believes “increasing the <em>Spanish</em>-language skills of [Brooklyn-area] Mexican primary school age children” is a “key to affecting long-term social change”; the <a href="http://www.statevoices.org/node/3256">far-Left</a> news organization <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7011">Free Speech TV</a>; <a href="http://www.statevoices.org/node/3227">ALLGO- Austin Latina/Latino Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual &amp; Transgender Organization</a>; and the <a href="http://www.statevoices.org/node/3228">Allied Media Conference</a>, which works on the “cutting edge of social justice-based independent film, radio, print, web, Hip Hop, and youth-based organizing.” This year’s AMC <a href="http://www.alliedmediaconference.org/">confab</a> featured a “<em>video chat between the Palestine Education Project Indigenous Youth Delegation and partner organizations in Palestine,” discussed “techniques for lobbying policy-makers,” and allowed “[n]</em>etworks of radical women and trans[-gender] people of color media makers” to “share skills and strategize.“<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Some attendees went out of their way to protect Van Jones. Among them is <strong>Robert “Biko” Baker</strong>, Executive Director of the League of Young Voters. The LYV website currently asks its visitors to “<a href="http://ilovevanjones.com/">Sign Our Petition to Support Van Jones</a>,” which LYV apparently posted on a website called <a href="http://www.ilovevanjones.com/">ILoveVanJones.com</a>. Below that, it asks surfers to donate funds to its Maine chapter, so it can hire an organizer to support the state’s <a href="https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/315/t/9834/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=5194">gay marriage</a> initiative. Baker <a href="http://theleague.com/biko-speaks-at-netroots-nation/">spoke</a> at the Netroots Nation, where <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud_yNFnfrSI">Valerie Jarrett praised Van Jones for his “creative ideas.”</a> Like Jones, Baker is obsessed with race. He <a href="http://99problems.org/2009/07/so-a-president-a-cop-and-a-professor-walk-into-a-bar/">wrote,</a> “Structural racism is embedded in America’s DNA” and <a href="http://99problems.org/2009/07/racism-or-male-ego-which-was-more-at-fault-in-the-skip-gates-case/">insisted</a> Henry Louis Gates was “being racially profiled.”</p>
<p>However, he is also ready to play political ball. The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYa-rc345KY&amp;feature=channel">video</a> announcing Baker’s elevation to the executive director features him giving a speech in which he says: “If we don’t, as young people – and I’m speaking to the young people in the room – if we don’t push the party, or progressives, to be progressive, are they gonna be progressive? And the only way that we can push people to be accountable is if we’re there on the first Tuesday in November pushin’ people to the polls.”    This conference seems to have pushed Baker to get moving on health care “reform.” Afterwards, Baker <a href="http://99problems.org/2009/08/i-dont-understand-the-health-care-plan/">informed</a> his readers there are “approximately 52 million Americans who have no health coverage,” <a href="http://99problems.org/2009/08/14-myths-about-health-care-reform/">posted</a> socialized medicine <a href="http://99problems.org/2009/08/health-care-explained-for-visual-learners/">propaganda</a> from Media Matters and Campus Progress, and commented on a clip of Bill Moyers’s appearance on Bill Maher’s program, writing that health care reform <a href="http://99problems.org/2009/09/the-only-message-that-works-health-care-reform/%20Its">“will save us googabs of money.”</a> The LYV also announced its “sister organization, the League of Young Voters Education Fund,” has “launched a hot new website for progressive community building.”</p>
<p>The LYV’s “extended family” of links to like-minded websites includes ColorOfChange.org (founded by Van Jones), Green for All, the Ella Baker Center, MoveOn.org, SEIU, Planned Parenthood, Campus Progress, and the Soros-funded <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6527">America Votes</a>. Its blogroll includes <em>Mother Jones</em>, Firedoglake, <em>DailyKos</em>, <em>Huffington Post</em>, Talking Points Memo, and MyDD.</p>
<p><strong>CIA Crack Conspiracy Theorists</strong></p>
<p>Others Jarrett’s office asked to help shape the administration’s agenda shared Van Jones’ conspiratorial outlook on the world. The OPE invited <strong>Judith F. Baca</strong>, who once <a href="http://www.judybaca.com/now/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=99:judy-baca-our-people-are-the-internal-exiles-by-diane-neumaier&amp;catid=34:publications&amp;Itemid=67">noted</a> some of her Los Angeles-area <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bSVvN5YlG4gC&amp;pg=PA214&amp;lpg=PA214&amp;dq=%22las+tres%22+narcotics+%22Los+angeles%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=LuphF3kIJC&amp;sig=VJIx1xMdMgHPcFh6ZePnoSlB2tg&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=fBzESprKGoaY8AbTqZU7&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=2#v=onepage&amp;q=%22las%">public murals</a> “were about drug abuse, including the government-supported influx of drugs into the communities, including the <em>Las Tres </em>issue in Los Angeles, where three people were imprisoned for shooting a narcotics agent who was bringing narcotics into the community.” She described another mural as “an alternate history to the U.S., a sort of ‘pre-Howard Zinn Howard Zinn’ giant-scale monument.” She seemed truly honored that <a href="http://theartspolitic.com/2009/07/01/judy-baca/">Buffy Wicks “mentioned our name. She knew us. She read the materials.”</a></p>
<p>Fellow Los Angelean <strong>John Malpeade</strong> (who founded the “Los Angeles Poverty Department”) went to Evo Morales’s <a href="http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2009/07/08/los-angeles-poverty-departments-take-agents-assets-to-bolivia/">Bolivia</a> this July to perform <em>Agents &amp; Assets</em>, a play that <a href="http://www.lapovertydept.org/agents-and-assets/agents-assets.html">focuses on</a> “CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking into the Los Angeles area in the 1980&#8242;s in order to support the Contra war in Nicaragua.” He once <a href="http://eipcp.net/transversal/0102/malpede/en">declared</a>, “The hoarding of wealth and power, results in the gross inability of American society to efficiently allocate its abundant resources to generate social capital or well-being for its citizenry” and that calling America the “richest, greatest, country” on the planet “would be laughable, (and much of the world is laughing), if it weren’t so tragic.”</p>
<p>Others had more expansive conspiracy theories. <strong>Ian Inaba</strong>, Co-Executive Director, Citizen Engagement Lab, produced <a href="http://gnn.tv/videos/12/">rapper Eminem’s videos</a> “Mosh” and “White America.” As a blogger for the Guerrilla News Network (GNN), he <a href="http://ian.gnn.tv/blogs/2336/Dark_Day_The_Gary_Webb_Story_pt_1">eulogized Gary Webb</a>, the man who popularized the false story of the government selling crack to inner city youth to finance the Iran-Contra scandal in a series of articles for the <em>San Jose Mercury News</em>. (GNN itself produces such films as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303342/"><em>Crack the CIA</em></a>, a short film “about the CIA&#8217;s involvement in drug trafficking during Iran Contra.”) Inaba also produced the film <em>American Blackout</em>, featuring Cynthia McKinney’s claims of voting irregularities in 2000 and 2004 presidential elections (due to perfidy from the corporation Diebold). Its <a href="http://www.alternet.org/movies/43872">screening</a> was hosted by the League of Young Voters and the SEIU.  Inaba’s contributions can be found in the GNN book <em>True Lies</em>, which <a href="http://www.gnn.tv/truelies">discusses</a> everything from “the turning over of our democratic process to shady corporations, to the unanswered questions of 9/11.” <em> </em></p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><strong>Far-Left Financiers</strong></p>
<p>Also present were Michelle Miller, Manager of Popular Media Organizing at <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6535">SEIU</a>, the union headed by<strong> </strong><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1830">Andrew Stern</a>, one of Barack Obama’s closest advisers. <strong>Michelle Coffey</strong> of the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofile.asp?fndid=5184">Tides Foundation</a> was there, as well.<strong> </strong></p>
<p>The meeting was “organized” by the Nathan Cummings Foundation. According to <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofile.asp?fndid=5311&amp;category=79">its profile at <em>DiscoverTheNetworks.org</em></a>,<em> </em>the foundation supports universal health care to “ameliorate the physical and psychological consequences of social and economic injustice” and seeks to finance “the roles that artists and cultural workers play in stimulating social change and championing economic justice in both traditional and non-traditional venues.” It had funded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Tides Foundation and <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6183">ACORN</a>, the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6145">ACLU</a>, the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6905">Earth Island Institute</a>, and dozens of leftist causes.</p>
<p><strong>God as “The Erotic Feminine” and Free Vibrators</strong></p>
<p><strong>Denise Brown</strong>, Executive Director of the Leeway Foundation was there, as well. With the NEA’s long history of financing offensive “art,” this is a poor omen. Leeway gave $2,500 to the <a href="http://www.leeway.org/grantee-info.html?action=granteeDetail&amp;GranteeID=80">Rev. Beverly Dale</a>,  an <a href="http://www.upennca.org/about/staff/beverly_dale/">ordained minister</a> in the liberal Disciples of Christ denomination to promote her “ministry,” PassionWorks. The promotional literature for her one-woman show, “<a href="http://passionworks.upennca.org/fileadmin/podgospels/An_Irreverent_Journey-Church___Sexuality.pdf"><em>An Irreverent Journey from Eggbeaters to Vibrators</em></a>,” claims “the very survival of the earth may be linked to our own individual spiritual and erotic well being and our ability to connect erotically with one another.” She describes herself as “outspoken advocate” for “peacemaking, worker rights, women’s concerns, race relations, civil rights for the sexual minority communities, and gender equity.” She also ponders, “could God be the erotic feminine?” An announcement on the Leeway Foundation’s blog invites those in the area where she was performing, at the University of Pennsylvania, to <a href="http://leewayfoundation.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/an-irreverent-journey-from-eggbeaters-to-vibrators">“<strong>Come get a vibrator!!!!</strong>”</a></p>
<p>Other Leeway grantees focused more directly on Buffy Wicks’s “asks.” In 2008, the Leeway Foundation gave $2,500 to Gage Johnston to produce a <a href="http://www.leeway.org/grantee-info.html?action=granteeDetail&amp;GranteeID=93">documentary</a> explaining “how the food industry, the medical industry and the federal government often make matters worse for the sick by placing concerns of profit and reputations above concerns about health.” It has also financed a <a href="http://www.leeway.org/grantee-info.html?action=granteeDetail&amp;GranteeID=101">documentary</a> “on the historical transgender sit-in that took place in 1965” and their continued “relevance to the movement for LGBT equality.” It has awarded $2,500 to <a href="http://www.leeway.org/grantee-info.html?action=granteeDetail&amp;GranteeID=79">craft a curriculum</a> about “how screen-printing and print shops have been and continue to be used in movements for social change.” And it underwrote a bilingual broadcast on Spanish radio discussing <a href="http://www.leeway.org/grantee-info.html?action=granteeDetail&amp;GranteeID=86">“labor struggles.”</a></p>
<p><strong>Reagan Caused 9/11?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Dudley Cocke</strong> of the Roadside Theater in Kentucky was impressed with the May 12<sup>th</sup> meeting, adding he <a href="http://theartspolitic.com/2009/07/01/dudley-cocke/">had long worked</a>, “with organizers with some training in the Saul Alinsky school – for example, the Industrial Areas Foundation.” Cocke shares their ideology.</p>
<p>As I wrote in my book <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11365"><em>57 Varieties of Radical Causes</em></a>, Teresa Heinz Kerry feted Cocke with the 2002 Heinz Award for Arts &amp; Humanities. Of 9/11, Cocke wrote: “A lot of this hatred is based on an ignorance that allows the hater to perceive the United States only in monolithic terms, as a heartless materialist and imperialist state…It is my contention that U.S. arts policy, beginning with the Reagan administration, has played a surprising role helping to create this misperception.” Specifically, “The Reagan administration’s withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1987 signaled to the international community that the U.S. no longer considered itself just one among many of the world’s cultures.” Cocke would have us believe al-Qaeda’s brand of Islamists – which forbids its adherents from enjoying any form of music whatever – hates the United States, not out of religious fanaticism nor even the shibboleths of “poverty and disease,” but based on <em>artistic rejection</em>.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, Cocke berated Reagan and other conservatives for daring to question the National Endowment for the Arts’ inalienable right to fund Robert Mapplethorpe and the “Piss Christ.” Dismissing their objections, he mused, “Ironically, those attacks were led by our own homegrown religious fundamentalists.” Al-Qaeda, the Southern Baptists; what’s the difference?</p>
<p><strong>Illegal Immigrants? <em>Si</em>! Military Recruiters? No!</strong></p>
<p>The conference note-taker, Meghan McDermott, is Executive Director of <a href="http://www.global-action.org/main.html">Global Action Project</a>, an NEA grant recipient also financed by the Ford and Rockefeller Brothers Foundations and George Soros’s Open Society Institute. This GAP produced the film <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pLzf3egWnU"><em>Aliens vs. Predators</em></a> – which is not a sci-fi film but an amateurish short protesting military recruitment of illegal aliens by promising college education. GAP prefers giving illegals in-state tuition rates.</p>
<p>The anti-military animus was shared by others at the May meeting. James Kass of Youth Speaks asked “if the NEA can support a program for young artists, creating pathways to college towards arts careers, and jobs for disconnected youth instead of enlistment. The military is fine if you have a choice, he said, but too many have had none.” Mario Garcia Durham replied, “now is the time to come forward with such ideas.”</p>
<p><strong>An International Zulu Radical</strong></p>
<p>Perhaps the most outrageous attendee was <strong>Rha Goddess</strong>, a female hip-hop artist who <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W344lPDi6rU&amp;NR=1%20She">declares</a>, “I use my art as a vehicle for liberation and social change.” Rha <a href="http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=501%20In">provided “rants”</a> at a Code Pink rally in D.C. alongside Medea Benjamin, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright, Jodie Evans, Gael Murphy, and Phyllis Bennis. In fact, Rha <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/codepink4peace.org/img/original/Retreat_06_28sm.jpg">appears</a> to have been a <a href="http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=500">fixture</a> at <a href="http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=4807">Code Pink events</a>. According to the bio on her book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=e_-a-4B_8j8C&amp;pg=PA273&amp;lpg=PA273&amp;dq=Rha+Goddess+code+pink&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=a0be1BgLQC&amp;sig=UC1BbUbGtMoXBJPudYJw5lmO1bs&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=4NDDSs3rJY-1lAeZhqnIBQ&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=3#v=onepage&amp;q=&amp;f=false"><em>We Got Issues!</em></a>, she co-founded the Sista II Sista Freedom School for Young Women of Color and is the “former International Spokeswoman for the Universal Zulu Nation.”</p>
<p>The Universal Zulu Nation’s <a href="http://www.zulunation.com/beliefs.html">beliefs</a> are expressed in a rambling, disjointed manifesto. The “Amazulus” declare, “The Bible has been tampered with,” and “all history books that contain falsehoods should be destroyed.” They echo the Nation of Islam’s “white devils” theology: “To put one race over the other because you feel your one race is better than the other race) is wrong and when you do this, you indeed have become a race of Devils, causing destruction to everything that is life or truth on this planet so-called Earth or in the Universe.” Their doctrinal statement contains numerous references to “this planet so-called Earth,” and to “bloodsuckers” in “secret societies.” A representative example states:</p>
<p>We, Amazulu, feel that no one should be in secret societies, because secret societies are Bloodsuckers of the poor or less fortunate people. Secret Societies do not wish to give knowledge to all in the Human Family, but wish to control Humans with truth and falseness mixed together, to rule countries, nations, cities and towns. These Humans everyday are bringing about a New World Order, under their rule of evil (SATAN). The Humans of Secret Societies wish to erase the memory of God, The Creator, and want to put themselves as the Lord of The World. Demons are what they are.</p>
<p>Luckily, it has a plan of action against the <em>demons</em>: “if we are attacked by an aggressor or oppressor (one or many who wish to do harm (PAIN) against Us), Amazulu then we believe and are taught that we should fight in The Name of Allah, Jah, Jehovah, Eloahim, The Creator, The Most High Supreme One, God.”</p>
<p>Luckily, Rha has moved on. Her book contains a blurb from Eve Ensler. She and her co-author did a show at the Apollo just before the 2004 elections entitled “Vaginas Rock, Chicks Vote,” produced by Ensler, Jane Fonda, and Ensler’s V-Day organization. Her book was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and others, and written in collaboration with Code Pink, the League of Young Voters, the Omega Institute, the Empowerment Institute, the Prison Moratorium Project, and the Center for Civic Participation.</p>
<p><strong>9/11 as “Performance Art&#8221;</strong></p>
<p>The editor and co-founder of PAPER Publishing Co., <strong>Kim Hastreiter,</strong> <a href="http://www.papermag.com/?section=article&amp;parid=3336">wrote</a> that during the meeting, “I kept thinking about how after September 11th, every artist I knew agreed that the horror we had witnessed was actually a major piece of performance art that could not possibly have been conceived by a lawyer or a politician, but more likely by a jihadist with a wild imagination and an artist&#8217;s mind.” During the “breakout sessions,” she and others offered to form a “Department of Alternative Thinking” to “formally integrate creative brain consultation (performed gratis as a national service) as a required aspect into every detail of governmental decision-making, whether about arts education, the economy, health care, energy and environmental policy, national security, the country&#8217;s infrastructure or international policy.”</p>
<p><strong>Various Pressure Groups</strong></p>
<p>Others at the meeting believed deeply in using the arts to push a left-wing agenda. <strong>William Cleveland</strong>, of the Center for the Study of Art &amp; Community, wrote some time ago America is undergoing an “inexorable” change away from “such core issues as: the loss of the nuclear family, the changing roles of men and women, the definition of right and wrong, our relationship to the earth, the distribution of wealth, freedom of expression, the importance of cultural identity and much more… As the grip of hierarchy, patrimony, and monoculture slowly fades, there is both jubilation and fear. Conflict is inevitable.” He ended by encouraging artists to “Join with those who are advocating positions that are in our long term self-interest” on such “national issues” as “<a href="http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/1999/12/bridges_transla.php">national health insurance, civil rights, immigration reform, education reform, AIDS and many others”</a> and “REWRITE THE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN CULTURE.” (Emphasis in original.)</p>
<p>Others were more generic leftists. Among them was <strong>Nick Behunin</strong> of the HOPE Campaign, which <a href="http://hopecampaign.org/about">credits</a> Shepherd Fairey, the artist behind the Obama “Hope” poster, as a key partner. So was <strong>Matthew Brady,</strong> Creative Director of the Global Inheritance, which <a href="http://www.globalinheritance.org/about-us/">wishes to use</a> “the power of creativity to create and push for progressive social change while rejecting conflict.”  Liz Manne of Work in Progress, formerly in charge of marketing for the Sundance Channel, worked with MoveOn.org’s <a href="http://pol.moveon.org/10weeks/bios.html">“10 Weeks” campaign</a> in 2004. Also present was <strong>Milly Hawk Daniel</strong>, Vice President for Communications, PolicyLink, which <a href="http://www.policylink.org/site/c.lkIXLbMNJrE/b.5136443/k.C7E4/About_Us.htm">describes itself</a> as “a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity.” Finally, Maria Teresa Petersen, Founding Executive Director, Voto Latino, was in attendance.</p>
<p><strong>An Explicitly Partisan Agenda</strong></p>
<p>According to Hastreiter, after the White House’s presentations, the group was “invited” to break into small sessions and “ideate” on what to do next. Their reaction show they believed they were to promote a politicized, left-wing agenda.</p>
<p>Michelle Miller of the SEIU was explicitly partisan in her discussion of artists and health care reform. She suggested she and her partners: “<strong>Create a counter narrative to the Luntz memo/Republican talking points designed to destroy health care reform</strong>. They can offer creative, humorous voices that can think outside of white papers or <em>New York Times</em> op-eds to communicate effectively about the importance of health care reform and diminish the increasing attacks on our movement for reform. For example, the satirical webisodes SEIU is producing with comedy writers with content from Lutz [sic.] memo.”</p>
<p>Sally Kohn’s panel focused on Immigration Reform. She lamented the failure of the 2007 amnesty bill but hoped, “<strong>Artists and cultural organizers can play a critical role this year on helping advance the legislation</strong>, as well as over the coming years helping bring the humanity and personal/family stories of the issue to light.”</p>
<p>This seems to put the lie to Greg Craig’s insistence the OPE meetings did not politicize the NEA and the arts community. This was a meeting of far-leftists, invited to help shape policy and encouraged to motivate their equally radical followers to support Barack Obama. How on “so-called planet earth” did government officials find this collection of conspiracy theorists, radical protesters, and “goddesses” an acceptable group of partners?</p>
<p><strong>Buffy Wicks, OPE Radical</strong></p>
<p>One answer may be the radicalism of at least one OPE member. Prior to overseeing the Obama campaign in Missouri, Buffy Wicks worked for <a href="http://www.warnwalmart.org/" target="_blank">W*A*R*N*</a>: Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now, a project of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). <em>The Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/30/AR2005053001014.html">refers</a> to Wicks as “an antiwar activist” who served as WARN’s “political director.” WARN was funded exclusively by UFCW, which <em>Fortune </em>notes declared “war” on Wal-Mart after the corporation resisted unionization and put many of that union’s closed-shops out of business. UFCW is, with SEIU and other unions, a member of the 6-million-member <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1830">Change To Win Coalition</a>. In October 2005, UFCW <a href="http://www.ufcw.org/press_room/index.cfm?pressReleaseID=181&amp;bsuppresslayout=1%20Jobs%20with">announced</a> “an exciting new partnership” between its Wal-Mart campaign and “two of the largest grassroots organizations in the country – Jobs with Justice and ACORN.” Jobs with Justice is one of the <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=17512">key U.S. organizers</a> of the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6972">World Social Forum</a>. The history of WARN <a href="http://spectator.org/blog/2009/09/21/new-breitbart-bombshell-white">affiliate</a> ACORN is well-known. Despite its corruption (or because of it), the UFCW funded ACORN, giving it, SEIU and other unions <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Unions-gave-ACORN-nearly-10-million--50390017.html">$10 million</a> from 2005-2008. From WARN, Wicks became <a href="http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/person/gGxLW5">field director</a> of Obama’s primary campaign in California and deputy field director in Texas (for which a <em>Hufftington Post</em> blogger called her <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-galloway/buffy-the-hillary-slayer_b_83645.html">“Buffy the Hillary Slayer”</a>), then headed up his <a href="http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2008/06/09/daily77.html">general election campaign in Missouri</a>, where Obama narrowly lost.</p>
<p>Now she works for Valerie Jarrett.</p>
<p><strong>More Convergence with Jarrett</strong></p>
<p>Writer Jeff Chang, who was at the May 12<sup>th</sup> meeting, discussed the gathering with the arts community, saying he saw this as an opportunity to radically change society. “If we are to be talking about demonopolization and re-regulation” of the media, he said, a “discussion has to be happening at the FCC.” And such a discussion is underway at the FCC, headed by Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd, who was <a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/08/valerie-jarretts-show">reportedly recruited by Valerie Jarrett</a>.</p>
<p>Chang then talked about <a href="http://theartspolitic.com/2009/07/01/jeff-chang/">bringing this “cultural policy” to a schoolhouse near you</a>. “If we are serious about arts education and the Artist Corps notion of putting artists to work in the schools,” he said, “then the Department of Education needs to be involved, not to mention state departments of education.” Coincidentally, at the May 12 meeting, William Cleveland asked Joseph Reinstein, <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2009/01/more_michelle_obama_staff_appo.html">Michelle Obama’s deputy social secretary</a>, about such a convergence, and Reinstein assured him, “President Obama has asked for greater cohesion and collaboration between agency work and departments, such as the Department of State, Department of Education [and] the White House.”</p>
<p>This is shocking in a time when we see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zrsl8o4ZPo">videos</a> of schoolchildren singing the praises of Barack Hussein Obama to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/24/elementary-school-students-reportedly-taught-songs-praising-president-obama/">the strains</a> of <a href="http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/j/e/jesloves.htm">“Jesus Loves the Little Children.”</a></p>
<p><strong>Why Were They Invited?</strong></p>
<p>Who drew up the invitation list for the May meeting? Why did numerous officials connected to Valerie Jarrett – and perhaps Jarrett herself – invite this group of extremist radicals to help shape U.S. policy?</p>
<p>The Obama administration has dramatically increased funding for the NEA, then used its inside channel – Valerie Jarrett’s OPE and Michelle Obama’s office – to steer grant recipients toward promoting its legislative agenda. The three incidents prove the invaluable role Valerie Jarrett’s Office of Public Engagement played in this process and how comfortable that group, headed by Obama’s alter ego, is with Marxists, hatemongers, and the deranged Left. This is more troubling yet, as Jarrett has often said she and Barack Obama share <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36289">“a kind of mind meld.”</a> The president said Jarrett is <a href="http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/jul/27/health/chi-072708-jarrett">“always very insistent on me trusting my instincts.”</a> Now, Jarrett’s office appears to be the conduit of radical leftists into the White House.</p>
<p>Van Jones is no anomaly; he is a reflection of Jarrett and the Obamas’s most deeply held beliefs.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/valerie-jarrett%e2%80%99s-ministry-of-culture-by-ben-johnson/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>27</slash:comments>
<enclosure url="http://cdn2.libsyn.com/artheals/Interview_with_Alli_Chagi-Starr_of_Art_in_Action.mp3?nvb=20091001042048&amp;amp" length="31017400" type="audio/mpeg" />
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama&#8217;s Dangerous UN Agenda &#8211; by Ben Johnson</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/obamas-dangerous-un-agenda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-dangerous-un-agenda</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/obamas-dangerous-un-agenda/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:27:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Johnson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://204.232.167.218/?p=21384</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Much commentary about Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations Wednesday has focused on his description of pre-Obama America as a deadbeat, lawless, foot-dragging country that tortures innocent Muslims, or did until his glorious ascension to the right hand of power. The predictable emphasis on the speech’s most offensive aspects overlooks more dangerous points yet: the president placed [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-21387" title="obama_un" src="http://204.232.167.218/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/obama_un.jpg" alt="obama_un" width="495" height="382" /></p>
<p>Much commentary about Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations Wednesday has focused on his description of pre-Obama America as a deadbeat, lawless, foot-dragging country that tortures innocent Muslims, or did until his glorious ascension to the right hand of power. The predictable emphasis on the speech’s most offensive aspects overlooks more dangerous points yet: the president placed unilateral nuclear disarmament, the environmentalist agenda, and increased pressure on U.S. allies at the forefront of a globalist agenda, while relegating terrorism to a footnote – one that regards it as a “law enforcement” matter. (Yes, he used those words.)</p>
<p>The “I”s Have It</p>
<p>Obama has been accused of having a messianic view of his presidency. In 41 major presidential speeches<em>before</em> the UN address, Obama made reference to himself <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/09/23/dan-gainor-obama-speeches-ego/">nearly 1,200 times</a>, more than twice as often as every member of Congress combined. His UN address was similarly Obama-centric.</p>
<p>To highlight the glimmering hope his presidency embodies, he demonized America, B.B.O. (Before Barack Obama). He noted the international “belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally,” a belief he has made clear in other venues he shares; he said “America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy”;  and he declared the dark “days when America dragged its feet on [climate change] are over” – a less caustic version of his remark Tuesday at the Climate Change Summit that, under a certain unnamed predecessor, America suffered “too many years of inaction and denial.”<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>He then presented himself as the savior of international relations, touting “the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world.” He hastened to add these “expectations are not about me” but rather are “rooted in <em>hope</em> – the <em>hope</em> that real <em>change</em> is possible, and the<em> hope</em> that America will be a leader in bringing about such <em>change</em>.”</p>
<p>Obama then equated “the character and cause of my nation,” with “the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.” During this time, he boasted, he<strong> </strong>“prohibited… the use of torture by the United States of America,” ordered “the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed,” determined “combat extremism within the rule of law,” joined the UN Human Rights Council, and “paid our bill” to the United Nations.</p>
<p>This leaves the impression the United States was a cheapskate nation that had turned its back on global human rights, and implicitly admits torturing and otherwise conducting a lawless anti-terrorism program. In reality, Gitmo is not closed, as Obama has acknowledged it contains a number of prisoners who can neither be released nor transferred, and he <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=33822">has no plan</a> to deal with them. It is true that the Republican Congress voted to withhold a portion of UN dues twice B.B.O. (in <a href="http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4597136.html">2001</a> and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061700982.html">2005</a>) – over President Bush’s strenuous objections. Congress recognized the U.S. <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,551480,00.html">pays nearly a quarter of the UN’s budget</a>, while 128 of its 192 member nations pay one percent, and it demanded reforms. This demand was in part motivated by the fact that Cuba, China, and Saudi Arabia sit on the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35089">UN Human Rights Council</a>. Upon taking office, Obama paid nearly a billion dollars to the UN and rejoined the UNHRC – once again, <a href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/wm2623.cfm">without securing, or even asking for, anything in return</a>. In general, his administration’s view is best <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGFlOTlkMjdlZmI5MDUyYjk1ZTIwNjZjMzJkYjFlNDE=">elucidated</a> by Susan Rice, who <a href="http://www.state.gov/p/io/rls/rm/2009/127927.htm">said</a> “others will likely shoulder a greater share of the global burden if the United States leads by example, acknowledges mistakes…and treats others with respect.” Like generations of leftists, the Obama administration believes the U.S. is guilty of straining international relations for years, and our collective guilt explains the world&#8217;s “reflexive anti-Americanism,” which can now be put to an end because of…him. He does not believe, as did John Bolton, that the UN has been too accommodating to terrorism.</p>
<p>And his “counterterrorism” proposal reflects it.</p>
<p><strong>Fighting Terrorism: A “Law Enforcement” Matter</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>The anti-terrorism portion of his speech took exactly one, excessively fuzzy paragraph. Its most specific proposal declared, “America will forge lasting partnerships to target terrorists, share intelligence, and coordinate <strong><em>law enforcement</em></strong> and protect our people.” Obama let the cat out of the bag; he shares John Kerry’s view that counterterrorism is <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11989">“primarily<em> </em>an intelligence and law enforcement<em> </em>operation.”</a> This may account for his recent, public signs of faltering in Afghanistan. Although he campaigned on a promise to bomb Pakistan – if necessary, without Islamabad’s approval – in order to kill Osama bin Laden, he now speaks of returning to the law enforcement approach of the Clinton years that brought on the bombing of two U.S. embassies, the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, and finally 9/11.</p>
<p>Against the backdrop of his public vacillation on Afghanistan, he insisted he “will never waver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny.” Later that evening, he was followed at the podium by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35771">jailed, beat, and “tried” Iranian protesters</a>, even <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/672899">killing the nine-year-old son</a> of a political enemy, with little more than a belated whimper from Obama. And although Poland and the Czech Republic had determined they wanted missile defense, he abandoned a long-negotiated U.S. agreement granting their request.</p>
<p>Similarly, when he turned to Iran and North Korea – all too briefly – he insisted the UN “demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise.” China has <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hDb6QE6dUOmI-OQUvxlCSPb5O8NQD9ATSB2O2">obstinately blocked him</a>, and Russia is <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=29604">actively aiding Tehran’s nuclear program</a>. Moreover, Obama became the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party precisely for counseling international law be disregarded when it came to enforcing more than a dozen resolutions about Saddam Hussein. But he showed a great deal more relish for other UN resolutions.</p>
<p><strong>Mideastern Pre-“Occupation”</strong></p>
<p>By far the biggest applause lines of his speech were his emphasis “that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” and a vow to end “the occupation that began in 1967.” (Conversely, he received <a href="http://newsrealblog.com/2009/09/23/obamas-applause-lines-tell-us-everything/">no applause</a> when he described U.S. actions to combat AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, polio, H1N1, and global economic squalor.) He insisted, “the time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent status issues:  security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem.”</p>
<p>Israeli President Binyamin Netanyahu has <a href="http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/285915,netanyahu-israel-wont-accept-full-withdrawal-to-1967-borders.html">made it known</a> returning to the pre-1967 borders is a non-starter.  <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25747">So did Ariel Sharon</a>. Even Ehud Olmert would not allow an <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1036118.html">unmitigated return</a> to the old territory, because the 1967 borders are regarded as<a href="http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=654"> indefensible</a>. Similarly, granting the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=33339">“right of return”</a> to all Palestinian refugees in UNRWA camps – most of whom never set foot in Israel – would end Israel’s history as a Jewish state and will never be accepted in Tel Aviv. Aside from Honduras, Israel is the lone nation the Obama administration has pressured; all others receive an &#8220;open hand&#8221; of friendship.</p>
<p>Obama believes Israel, like the United States, must “lead by example,” giving its enemies a little more each time, in the hopes of securing their approval. In the Left’s world, one’s enemies exist only because they feel frightened or endangered. This outlook is reflected in Obama&#8217;s anti-nuclear posture.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Nuclear-Arms-Demonstrations/dp/087100190X"><strong>“You Can’t Hug with Nuclear Arms”</strong></a><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>On Thursday, Obama chaired a meeting of UN Security Council, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/23/worst-foreign-policy-ever/">dedicated to nuclear disarmament</a>, which produced a new (and meaningless) <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9ATQQRO0&amp;show_article=1">resolution</a> to move toward a world without nuclear weapons. He reaffirmed Wednesday, “we must stop the spread of nuclear weapons, <em>and seek the goal of a world without them</em>.” To this end,<strong> </strong>he announced the ongoing U.S.-Russian missile reduction negotiations that began this week, hoped to end to the production of fissile nuclear material, and pledged to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), dispatching Hillary Clinton as a representative to its members’ conference.</p>
<p>Such a view is hardly new. In April, Obama <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/05/obama-prague-speech-on-nu_n_183219.html">told</a> an audience in Prague, “the United States will take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.” (One sentence later, he said, “Make no mistake: As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies – <em>including the Czech Republic</em>.”)</p>
<p>Although Obama may seek a “world” free of nuclear weapons – the Pollyanna hope of the Left and the self-interested hope of the Soviets since the 1960s – he can control policy only in the United States. As I<a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=363">noted last week</a>, his motivation behind scrapping the long-range missile defense system in Poland and theCzech Republic was likely to encourage Russia to make deep cuts in its nuclear arsenal. <em>The Guardian </em>has since <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/20/barack-obama-us-nuclear-weapons">reported</a>, “The abandonment of the US missile defence [sic.] already appears to have spurred arms control talks.” Russian “leader” Dmitry Medvedev said it was probable Russia<em> </em>and the United States would reduce their deployed warheads to 1,500 each by year’s end. To further “spur” negotiations, Obama rejected the Pentagon’s initial Nuclear Posture Review – its overview of how many warheads could be destroyed – on the grounds the Defense Department had not sufficiently decimated U.S. defenses. An administration official <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/The%20Guardian%20reported,%20">told</a> the media, “Obama is now driving this process. He is saying <em>these are the president&#8217;s weapons</em>, and he wants to look again at the doctrine and their role.” He and his advisers, most notably <a href="http://websat.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35055">Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher</a>, share the view that the United Statesmust demonstrate sincerity by exposing itself to increased danger.</p>
<p>The CTBT would further erode our national defense. Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/missiledefense/bg1332.cfm">wrote</a>, “Once the CTBT is in force, the United States will be unable to maintain a safe, reliable, and effective nuclear arsenal.” The “ban” on fissile nuclear material also produces problems. Obama has repeatedly affirmed the right of every rogue nation, including Iran, to possess “civilian” nuclear reactors; unfortunately, this is precisely the cover North Korea used to create multiple warheads. Henry Sokolski<a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDhiZjYzZmI2NGM3NzI1MTMyODQ2ZjNiZmRhNDlmN2I=&amp;w=MQ==">notes</a> another conundrum: “The French are now arguing that the only way to get such a ban going is to bribe China (which has not signed) by selling it a nuclear fuel plant capable of making 1,000 crude bombs’ worth of plutonium a year.”</p>
<p>Declaring a U.S. respite on nuclear production, ending nuclear testing with the attendant deterioration of existing warheads, and making a dramatic “goodwill” reduction of our weapons will entice other states to try to catch up to our diminishing levels. If they can come close to matching our lowered arsenal, they will become nuclear superpowers by default. The eradication of our stockpiles, which Obama and company seek, would leave America and the West vulnerable to nuclear blackmail by any state that can produce even one nuclear device – the more so if missile defense systems are abandoned.</p>
<p>This is the long-range security strategy at the heart of his foreign policy. But another policy guides him yet more strongly.</p>
<p><strong>The Environment: “The Top of our Diplomatic Agenda”</strong></p>
<p>Fighting terrorism is now passé. Global warming is seen as a much graver threat to the world’s survival. In recognition of this fact, Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-UN-Secretary-General-Ban-Ki-moons-Climate-Change-Summit/">told</a> the Climate Change Summit Tuesday, “<em>we have put climate at the top of our diplomatic agenda</em> when it comes to our relationships with countries as varied as China and Brazil;India and Mexico; from the continent of Africa to the continent of Europe.”</p>
<p>That he has. Upon taking office, Obama created the post Special Envoy for Climate Change within the State Department, appointing <a href="http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1874152,00.html">Todd Stern</a>, a key negotiator of the Kyoto Protocol and mostly recently a senior follow at the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977">Soros</a>-funded <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6709">Center for American Progress</a>. Kyoto would have <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/energyandenvironment/bg1437.cfm">crippled</a> the U.S.economy, costing an estimated $100-400 billion in productivity over ten years and increasing the cost of electricity by as much as 80 percent.</p>
<p>Obama’s shift in focus has been felt by every delegation visiting China. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi once had an outstanding record on Chinese human rights. When she <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35416">visited</a> Beijing this summer, she made token statements on human rights but said her “focus was on climate change,” <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34994">insisting</a>, “protecting the environment is a human rights issue.” Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Ed Markey noted Madam Speaker’s strong role in emphasizing the administration’s overriding concern.</p>
<p>Obama alluded to it himself in the most dire part of his speech – predictably, not about terrorism or the likelihood of Iran or North Korea obtaining a nuclear weapon. Obama gave a mini-apocalyptic sermon:</p>
<p>If we continue down our current course, every member of this Assembly will see irreversible changes within their borders.  Our efforts to end conflicts will be eclipsed by wars over refugees and resources.  Development will be devastated by drought and famine.  Land that human beings have lived on for millennia will disappear.  Future generations will look back and wonder why we refused to act; why we failed to pass on – why we failed to pass on an environment that was worthy of our inheritance.</p>
<p>The trouble, he believed, is that the UN “struggles <em>to enforce its will</em>,” another common statement of globalists. In Prague, he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/05/obama-prague-speech-on-nu_n_183219.html">announced</a>, “All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime.”</p>
<p><strong>Holdren’s Influence?</strong></p>
<p>Both his apocalypticism and his globalism echo <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34198">Science Czar John Holdren</a>. Holdren confirmed during his Senate confirmation hearings in February that <a href="http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=2794">“carbon dioxide-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020,”</a> and dire predictions about violent competition for resources are a longtime Holdren refrain. Other outlets that picked up my report on <em>Ecoscience </em>ignored another wrinkle in the story: Holdren has long called for planetary disarmament. As recently as January 2008, Holdren <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5862/424">told</a>the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) the world needs “a universal prohibition on nuclear weapons, coupled with <em>means to ensure confidence in compliance</em>.” In <em>Ecoscience</em>Holdren called for “a comprehensive Planetary Regime” to control all natural resources and determine appropriate population levels to bring this about. The United Nations was his intended agent.</p>
<p>Barack Obama’s UN speech advanced a doctrinaire left-wing foreign policy that will hamstring American defense, further sideline the economy, and leave the nation relying on “law enforcement” to chase down terrorists after the fact. His anti-American statements were offensive, but his substantive proposals could do far more damage.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/ben-johnson/obamas-dangerous-un-agenda/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 445/456 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 07:10:56 by W3 Total Cache -->