ACORN Crooks on the March for Obamacare

My article from today's issue of FrontPage Magazine:

ACORN Crooks on the March for Obamacare

By Matthew Vadum

A corrupt union ringleader who orchestrated massive campaigns involving identity fraud in furtherance of voter fraud and who covered up a million-dollar embezzlement involving pension funds will soon have unfettered access to confidential information on thousands of people seeking health insurance.

The union thug is disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke whose shady union will soon be helping people enroll in Obamacare exchanges.

Rathke’s labor vehicle, United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 in New Orleans, announced on its Facebook page Sept. 15 that it was gearing up “to do mass enrollment and help navigate people into the marketplaces in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas under the Affordable Care Act!”

“Local 100′s role as a Navigator, suggest[s] the program is less about health care and more about building a new progressive infrastructure,” says longtime ACORN-watcher Mike Flynn of Breitbart.com.

The fact that Wade Rathke, a disreputable, radical left-wing community organizer, is allowed anywhere near the enrollment process ought to give all Americans pause. The only reason Rathke hasn’t been federally investigated for racketeering is because his allies control the federal law enforcement apparatus. President Obama pretends he has no connection to ACORN and Attorney General Eric Holder doesn’t care what laws have been broken because he approves of ACORN’s goals.

Of course, ACORN and the labor movement go way back. In 1979, ACORN created the United Labor Unions, which it used to organize low-wage, fast-food, and home healthcare workers in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.

Yes, that’s President Obama’s former employer, ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

ACORN is the nonprofit group that knowingly hired felons convicted of identity theft to work on voter registration drives, giving them custody of sensitive voter information.

As I showed in my ACORN/Obama expose, Subversion Inc., ACORN is also infamous for hiring felons without bothering to do background checks, storming hospital emergency rooms and city council chambers, using voter fraud to turn graveyards across the nation into Democratic electoral strongholds, using mob violence against bank executives and other shakedown targets, and for ruthlessly exploiting its own employees and going to court to seek an exemption from minimum wage laws.

The 400,000-member organization, which filed for bankruptcy almost three years ago, was the nation’s preeminent Saul Alinsky-inspired street protest group — and the creepiest by far.

It Doesn't Matter If the Obamacare Defunding Gambit Fails

My article from the Sept. 27, 2013, issue of American Thinker:

Matthew Vadum with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Awesome)

It Doesn't Matter If the Obamacare Defunding Gambit Fails

By Matthew Vadum

The current campaign to deprive President Obama's health care leviathan of the life-sustaining tax dollars it needs for full bureaucratic metastasis is what left-wingers call a consciousness-raising exercise. 


It matters next to nothing if current Republican efforts succeed in immediately defunding Obamacare.  That's because this is just the opening round of what promises to be a protracted struggle to restore sanity to the American health care system.  A temporary defeat at one juncture on the road to repeal isn't really a defeat at all, provided that it serves a larger purpose.  Obamacare, after all, wasn't enacted in a day and it won't be repealed in a day.


Both the Ted Cruz talkathon and the brinksmanship over the stop-gap government funding measure (called a "continuing resolution") epitomize purposeful political theater. 


Ignore the blatherskite spewing from GOP establishment talking heads like Karl Rove:  there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing political things strictly for public consumption even when there is a less-than-direct or less-than-obvious relationship between the things done and the desired results.  It's not somehow dishonest or dishonorable to do this, contrary to the protestations of the pompous pundits who suck up air in the Washington echo chamber.


In this age of instant everything, we tend to forget that politics isn't always about concrete, instantaneous results.  It's about symbolism.  It's about focusing the attention of people in order to educate them.  It's about framing the issues properly, telling stories, and planting memes in public spaces, allowing them to spread like dandelion seeds on a passing breeze.  That's how Americans were brainwashed into believing that Republicans are the "party of the rich" and gazillionaire George Soros's Democrats are the caring party of compassion.


But intellect by itself doesn't always serve champions of limited government well.  Sometimes showmanship and connecting with people on an emotional level is required to make good things happen.  All good salespeople understand this.  

America’s Obamacare Crisis

My article from the Sept. 26, 2013, issue of FrontPage Magazine:

America's Obamacare Crisis

By Matthew Vadum

Sen. Ted Cruz’s talking filibuster against Obamacare has helped to draw attention to the endless problems the program’s implementation is causing in society.

The 21 hour, 19 minute-long speech by Cruz, the junior Republican senator from Texas, that ended midday yesterday, served as a highly informative infomercial that detailed how the incipient entitlement program is boosting health insurance premiums, unemployment, and misery across the nation.

No one seems to think Obamacare is ready for prime time, except perhaps for the Obama administration and Democratic Party officials. An ABC/Washington Post poll shows 9 of 10 Americans don’t believe that the federal government, their state governments, and the health insurance industry are fully prepared to implement Obamacare. It is worth noting that in 16 ABC/Post polls since August 2009 Obamacare has never received majority support.

Moreover, six in 10 Americans (60%) now believe the federal government already has too much power, according to Gallup polls. Only 7 percent of Americans –that’s roughly one out of 14– believe the government doesn’t have enough power.

Yet President Obama sides with the statists who comprise the 7 percent.

This is the same President Obama who promised voters, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Columnist and bestselling author Michelle Malkin laments that Obamacare has caused her family to get booted out of its health insurance plan.

CAIR's Money Laundering Scheme

My article from today's issue of FrontPage Magazine:

CAIR's Money Laundering Scheme

By Matthew Vadum

The Muslim Brotherhood’s front group in the United States conceals donations from Islamist governments overseas by maintaining a complex web of shell organizations, according to a new report.

Right under President Obama’s nose, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) engages in an ACORN-like game of corporate musical chairs with its convoluted corporate structure and head-spinning funding machinations, Charles C. Johnson reports in the Daily Caller. Among the bombshell allegations, previewed Friday in FrontPage, are that CAIR has been “washing” millions of dollars from oil-rich nations without disclosing the donations to the U.S. government, as the law appears to require.

CAIR, a social welfare and lobbying organization recognized under 501c4 of the federal tax code, is the Islamofascist group in the United States most favored by leftists, Islamist fellow-travelers, dupes, and useful idiots. While CAIR’s parent organization is the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, it also has ties to Hamas and al-Qaeda. CAIR is a de facto agent of hostile foreign powers, including those in the business of exporting terrorism to our shores.

Since its creation nearly 20 years ago, CAIR has posed as a civil rights organization in order to immunize itself from criticism and has enjoyed remarkable success in infiltrating the American political establishment. Indeed, the Obama administration has gone out of its way to aid CAIR over and over again.

Court documents indicate CAIR took in at least $2,792,203 in contributions, income and money from foreign principals, including “a $2,106,251 mortgage loan from a foreign principal for CAIR’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and at least $54,500,000 in pledges from foreign principals,” the Daily Caller reports.

The government of Qatar gave CAIR $405,000 over five years. CAIR’s lobbying arm gave CAIR a little over $1 million in the same period. It’s unclear where that money came from.

Revealed: The Obama FBI’s Illicit Partnership with CAIR

My article from the Sept. 20, 2013 issue FrontPage Magazine:

 Revealed: The Obama FBI's Illicit Partnership with CAIR

By Matthew Vadum

A government watchdog’s new report takes the FBI to task for violating its own policies by continuing to work with the Muslim Brotherhood’s front group in the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
 
The report came as CAIR issued a new report denouncing the so-called “Islamophobia” of the Fox News Channel, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, David the Horowitz Freedom Center, and others who dare to engage in an honest discussion of Islam and the politics surrounding it. Islamophobia is a concept invented to intimidate critics of Islam and Islamic jihad by implying that any and all criticism of the Muslim religion is animated by bigotry or ethnic animus. CAIR has urged Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI, which it characterizes as corrupt.

The report from the Justice Department’s inspector general faults FBI headquarters for repeatedly providing its field offices with conflicting information and pinpoints five examples in which FBI field office special agents-in-charge ignored or deliberately defied FBI policy.

Five years ago the FBI was directed to end its working partnership with CAIR that was part of the agency’s gooey, politically correct public relations effort in Muslim communities in the United States.

The ban on contact with CAIR applies only to outreach efforts. The FBI continues its normal investigatory work, looking into criminal and civil rights complaints involving Muslims and working with any organizations to which they may belong.

FBI field office resistance to the policy goes back to late 2008.

Clinton Muslim Brotherhood Operative Arrested in Egypt

My article from the Sept. 19, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

 Clinton Muslim Brotherhood Operative Arrested in Egypt

By Matthew Vadum

A fugitive Muslim Brotherhood leader and Clinton operative has been arrested by Egyptian authorities in an ongoing roundup of seditious Islamist militants.

The arrest of Gehad el-Haddad for inciting violence is a sobering reminder not just of how close Hillary Clinton’s network is to the brutal Muslim Brotherhood, the Left’s favorite Islamofascist cell, but also of the extent to which Islamist enemies of the United States have infiltrated the American political establishment.

And it is yet another vindication for Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) who has been viciously attacked by left-wingers and leaders of her own party for having the courage to sound the alarm about radical Islam’s penetration of the U.S. government.

A mere month after Haddad quit his Clinton Foundation job for full-time employment with the Brotherhood a year ago, now-deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi received an invitation to deliver a major address at the Clinton Global Initiative, a high-profile project of the foundation. Morsi calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Exploiting Tragedy

My article from the Sept. 17, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Exploiting Tragedy

By Matthew Vadum

After a gunman calmly murdered 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard yesterday, the Left began trying to exploit the Navy employees’ deaths to advance its never-ending campaign to disarm law-abiding citizens.

The FBI identified the shooter, who was killed in a gun battle with police, as Aaron Alexis, 34, of Fort Worth, Texas. A civilian military contractor who was reportedly a practicing Buddhist at one time, Alexis received a general discharge from the Navy Reserve in 2011 after a shooting incident in his home. A general discharge usually indicates a problem in a serviceman’s record. He was previously arrested in Seattle 2004 after shooting out the tires of a vehicle.

During the assault around Building 197 in the military installation near the Washington, D.C. Nationals ballpark, Alexis used a shotgun, handgun, and an AR-15, the same kind of rifle used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre in December.

As with elementary schools and other “gun-free” zones, perpetrators know they can carry out mass shootings at military bases because the personnel there have been disarmed.

Obama's Syria Spin

My article from the Sept. 16, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Obama's Syria Spin

By Matthew Vadum

Even with the assistance of his media minions, President Obama is failing to articulate any kind of a rational defense of the administration’s nonsensical, on-again, off-again policy toward Syria.

Yet somehow despite Obama’s bumbling on the domestic and world stages, Russia and the United States agreed Saturday to take custody of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons by the middle of next year. Syria is required to hand over an inventory of the illicit weapons within a week.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the pact will be backed up by a UN Security Council resolution. Noncompliance could lead to sanctions or other actions, he said. Kerry said the inspections could begin by November and that destruction of the weapons could get underway in 2014. Assad sent a letter Thursday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon promising that he will sign the international treaty that bans chemical weapons today.

One Year Since Benghazi

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

One Year Since Benghazi

By Matthew Vadum

Thanks to President Obama’s shameless obstructionism, a year after four Americans died in a terrorist attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, it remains unclear what Obama knew about the attack and when he knew it.

“When you look at the list of unanswered questions, it is startling how little progress has been made in this investigation over the past year,” said Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.).

Amidst White House stonewalling, intimidation of witnesses, and Republican gutlessness, little has been done to move the ball forward in the investigation surrounding the deaths on Sept. 11, 2012, of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods at U.S. facilities in eastern Libya.

The Islamofascist offensive took place a year ago today, a day of great symbolic importance to both America and the Islamic world because it was the eleventh anniversary of al-Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Perhaps more importantly, it also took place at the height of one of America’s nastiest presidential election cycles, just a few weeks before Election Day.

Since Sept. 11 of last year Obama has sent military aid to his terrorist friends in the Middle East. A spokesman for the Islamist-heavy coalition fighting the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad acknowledgedyesterday that the coalition has received both lethal and non-lethal aid from the Obama administration. The administration sent support to the government of Egypt’s Islamist president Mohammed Morsi until he was overthrown in July.

What’s happening now in Syria may be connected to what happened a year ago in Libya, according to Congressman Wolf.

The people’s representatives need answers about Benghazi, especially now that President Obama is seeking congressional authorization to intervene on behalf of the terrorist-dominated opposition in the Syrian civil war, Wolf said.

Whither the Anti-War Left?

My article from the Sept. 6, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Whither the Anti-War Left?

By Matthew Vadum

As America’s leftist president demands war against Syria, the anti-war Left is nowhere to be found.

Democratic lawmakers who reflexively oppose any military action proposed by a Republican president are for the most part missing in action now that a Democrat occupies the Oval Office.

Earlier this week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 10 to 7 to authorize the president to use U.S. forces to attack Syria. The resolution stipulates that military action is restricted to within Syria’s borders, forbids U.S. troops on Syrian soil, and limits hostilities to a maximum of 90 days. Newly elected Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) heroically emulated Obama in his earlier legislative career by voting “present.”

The White House lauded senators for “moving swiftly and for working across party lines on behalf of our national security.”

Democrat are coalescing behind Obama because they don’t want him to be a lame duck for the rest of his time in office after he foolishly threw down the gauntlet against Syria in his “red line” speech last year.

On MSNBC, former top congressional aide turned liberal logorrheic Chris Matthews put the situation bluntly:

I think the Democrats are going to be forced to sacrifice men and women who really, really don’t want to vote for this. They’re going to have to vote for it to save the president’s hide. That’s a bad position to put your party in.

Although Syrian authorities were accused of using chemical weapons around the beginning of this year, lawmakers didn’t care much about the issue until the White House starting breathing down their necks a few weeks ago.