Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Chet Edwards Has His Own Radical Ties

In keeping with the huckster phrase "But wait! There's more..." it appears that connections to '60's radicals abound in this current election cycle. Thanks to Kyle-Ann Shiver, American Thinker readers are familiar with Sen. Barak Obama’s links to Saul Alinksy and Bill Ayers. However, for me, in researching Big Labor's campaign donations to my own representative Chet Edwards (D-TX 17), radicals are popping up much closer to home--thanks to the work of 60's radical Wade Rathke.

In researching campaign donations for Chet Edwards, I noticed that for a congressman in a non-union district in the right-to-work State of Texas, Edwards received a huge amount of money from unions. In fact, Edwards is in the top 20 of House members receiving money ($246,100) from labor organizations. But my Democratic Party congressman is not alone. In this 2008 election, Big Labor has funded Democrats with $47,609,244, or 91%, of all their political campaign donations. Although the closest auto manufacturing plant is in San Antonio (a non-union Toyota plant), Edwards has received $8,000 from the United Auto Workers Union. Your first step in determining who is funding your congressman is the Federal Election Commission Campaign Finance Reports and Data page.

However, it was not until I researched a $5000 donation from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to Edwards that the big picture became abundantly clear: radicals have taken over labor organizations under the organizing direction of Wade Rathke. What makes this fact threatening to American capitalism is the Cloward/Pivens Strategy.

A Brief Introduction to Wade Rathke and the Cloward/Pivens Strategy

Wade Rathke is a former member of 60's radical group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). SDS, under the organizing leadership of Tom Hayden, perpetrated the Chicago Riots at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention, the Columbia University takeover, and anti-Vietnam War marches in Washington, D.C.. After a national convention of SDS members in Austin, Texas, a new manifesto was written, with contributor Bernadine Dohrn (Bill Ayers' wife). Eventually, SDS evolved (devolved?) into The Weather Underground.

Rathke is the founder of ACORN and the labor group SEIU. Rathke also serves as chairman of the organizing committee for the AFL-CIO, whose president, John Sweeney, was a former president of SEIU. The purpose of these organizations is to put into practice a strategy penned by two Columbia University sociologists, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who sought to destroy capitalism through managed crisis. According to DiscoverTheNetworks.Org, the Cloward/Piven Strategy "seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse." The method involves using:
"what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change."

Wade Rathke writes that he has been "a professional organizer for thirty-five years. (I have) worked for and founded a series of organizations dedicated to winning social justice, workers rights, and a democracy where 'the people shall rule.'" (In other words, according to Rathke, under America's current constitution the people do not rule.) Rathke's beliefs coupled with the amount of money coming from SEIU into Democratic campaign coffers should be startling enough. Is your congressman on this list?

However, Rathke's connection with the extraordinary breadth of the AFL-CIO with its many affiliated labor unions also making donations, makes it easy to see this is a real problem for the future of the nation as we know it today. How many AFL-CIO affiliated labor groups are listed as donors to your congressman at OpenSecrets.Org? Use this widget at Open Secrets to easily see the amount of cash flowing into Democratic Party campaigns and also your district campaigns from these interconnected unions. These are the facts of Rep. Chet Edwards:
  • Misc. Unions (Includes SEIU) - $18,250
  • Public Sector Unions - $47,250
  • Industrial Unions - $48,000
  • Real Estate (Includes Fannie Mae) - $70,000
  • Building Trade Unions - $66,500
  • Transportation Unions - $67,850
  • Civil Servants / Public Officials - $9,500
  • Education - $30,950

According to WSJ: "[SEIU] adopted a new amendment to its constitution at last month's SEIU convention, requiring that every local contribute an amount equal to $6 per member per year to the union's national political action committee. This is in addition to regular union dues. Unions that fail to meet the requirement must contribute an amount in "local union funds" equal to the "deficiency," plus a 50% penalty. According to an SEIU union representative, this has always been policy, but has now simply been formalized." This coercive method of fund raising may be unlawful. According to Dianna Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute: "Private sector union membership peaked in the 1950s at 36% of the workforce. Now, only 7.5% of private sector workers belong to unions. Yet the DNC will pay homage to the union agenda, including removing the right to a secret ballot for workers voting on whether or not to join unions, higher minimum wages, higher taxes, and extending mandated benefits, such as paid leave, to even the smallest employers."

The issues listed above are the reason why unions are funneling large amounts of cash into Democratic campaigns. SEIU has contributed more that $16,000,000 to Barak Obama. However, as an advocate of the Cloward/Piven Strategy, Rathke's purpose is not to lift up the downtrodden. The strategy is to destroy the capitalist system by pushing the entire workforce into union organizations. Individuals are then under control and are then used to increase demands from employers and government. When the union is unable to meet these demands, such as the current pension fund debacle for auto workers, the debt will be passed off to the American treasury. The long-term strategy is to destroy the American economy.

Radicals have been very busy since exploding onto the scene in the 60's. They have organized, recruited, and are now pouring incredible amounts of money into Democratic Party candidates' coffers. The question we must ask is what do they want in return. These are just a few of the issues of votes and government funding ACORN, SEIU, the AFL-CIO, and others want in return for their donation to my congressman's campaign to continue their war against America.

My representative, Chet Edwards (D-TX 17) has radical connections. The question is, does your representative have these same radical ties?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

seiu was founded almost 30 years before wade rathke was even born. maybe you should check your sources on all of this before you jump to conclusions