Just to repeat some of the things alluded to in this article (with some additions):

• We know that Patrick Gaspard is the White House political affairs director.
• We know that Patrick Gaspard enjoys the trust of the White House to perform sensitive tasks.
• We know that Patrick Gaspard is in fact one of the most quietly powerful people in this administration.
• We know that Patrick Gaspard was formerly an ACORN higher-up.
• We know that Patrick Gaspard was also formerly affiliated with SEIU.
• We know that Patrick Gaspard was seen by Big Labor as being a payoff for SEIU’s support.
• We know that Patrick Gaspard’s brother Michael represents ACORN (and that ACORN Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis kept contact information for Patrick Gaspard).
• And we know that links between ACORN & SEIU and ACORN & the White House have been minimized, downplayed, and outright sanitized recently.
• What we don’t know yet is whether the White House is going to do the same thing with the ties between SEIU and the White House.

Or whether this administration has ‘full confidence’ in Patrick Gaspard.  Which is Dizzy City-speak for ‘He’s cleaning out his desk right now.’

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Another win for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government. Jake Tapper has the details:

Embattled former National Endowment for the Arts communications director Yosi Sergant is out of a job.  Late this afternoon, the NEA released a short statement saying, “This afternoon Yosi Sergant submitted his resignation from the National Endowment for the Arts. His resignation has been accepted and is effective immediately.”  The agency provided no further details.

Sergant had been under scrutiny after leading a controversial conference call on August 10, where he encouraged artists to create work to promote the Obama administration’s agenda.  Sergant was initially removed from his post as communications director, but continued to work at the NEA.

See also here for more, including a link to new guidelines for the NEA.  The firing is not surprising, considering the way that Sergant was hung out to dry by his superiors. No word yet whether ACORN / Obama for America crony Buffy Wicks will suffer a similar sanction - or, indeed, any punishment at all for attempting to set up a shadow Ministry of Propaganda within the American governmental system.

It’s supposed to look ominous when written out like that. That’s because it is.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

There’s not much to say about the NEA propaganda scandal that hasn’t been said by others, but a link round-up will be hopefully useful for those getting up to speed.

• We begin here with the Big Government articles themselves.  Summary: transcripts and audio reveal that the conference call of August 10th involving the federal agencies NEA, United We Serve, and the Office of Public Engagement; and various artist groups‘ involved the explicit recruitment of said artists’ groups to assist in pushing the administration’s legislative agenda.
• This despite claims by the NEA that said call did not pursue any legislative agenda.
• Note also that OPE Deputy Director (and Valerie Jarrett crony) Buffy Wicks has long-standing ties with ACORN.
• Patterico points out the obvious: that both the NEA and the administration lied when they claimed that no legislative agenda was addressed.  Despite the fact that this call was ostensibly hosted by Michael Skolnik, Skolnik explicitly stated that he was working on the behest of the NEA and the White House - a claim that was not refuted either by Deputy Director Wicks or at-the-time NEA Director of Communications Yosi Sergant (both of whom were on the call).  For that matter, the primary interest of Nell Abernathy, director of outreach for United We Serve (also on the call) is to make clear that Skolnik is the cutout between the artists’ groups and the government.
• I should point out at this point that Sergant is, of course, linked with Shepard Fairey, who had his own representative on the call.
• Ace of Spades notes that Winner & Associates were on the conference call as well.  You may remember them; they were a Axelrod-affiliated PR group that got traced back as being behind some rather nasty anti-Palin fake grassroots astroturf during the election last year.  They were apparently on the call at the invitation of OPE Director Wicks.
• You can refresh your memory of the Winner Incident here at The Jawa Report.  How interesting that they were there, and invited by an administration official, no less.
• Ace of Spades, again, quotes Slublog on the Hatch Act.  As in, this is actually technically forbidden by federal statute (I personally note ‘technically’ because Hatch Act prosecutions are few and far between).
• Ed Morrissey has what is probably the line of the day (”We do not fund the NEA for it to produce Leni Riefenstahl-type art”), and notes that the Washington Times would like help tracking down some of the call participants.
• And finally, I would like to remind everybody reading this that groups involved in pushing the administration’s health care agenda had racked up roughly 2 million dollars in grants from the NEA prior to it.

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Because if you are, here is an advisory: as of this moment, if the Right catches you or your staff within 100 yards of an ACORN office or worker we will cheerfully crucify you with that organization.  And by ‘crucify’ I mean ‘take the metaphorical and rhetorical equivalent of long iron nails and permanently attach you to ACORN with them.”  As the above link to Jon Stewart’s appalled reaction to all of this shows, public perceptions of the group shifted, and not to the benefit of the people that like to use ACORN.  Now would be a good time for individual Democratic politicians to start publicly breaking with the group, in fact.

Seriously.  The San Diego video is out, and this one involves a guy talking about why Tijuana is the best place to smuggle underage El Salvadoran hookers across the border (because he has contacts there).

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(Via @JTlol)This time, it’s Brooklyn.  Which, as Big Government gleefully points out, is part of New York, which is one of the places that ACORN claims that the producers tried this sting and failed.

Second part of the video at the site: your call if they failed or not.

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Take two for Big Government’s investigation into ACORN’s sideline in encouraging tax fraud and the illegal exploitation of women: this time, Washington DC.  Who the heck comes into these offices, to make illegal underage El Salvadoran brothel setup issues seem relatively normal?

Moe Lane

PS: There’s at least one more.  The hint is subtle, but…

PPS: Why are we giving these people federal money?

So, Andrew Breitbart’s new website Big Government wanted to start off with a splash - and they’ve certainly done so, thanks to the post Chaos to Glory. In it, James O’Keefe with an associate to ACORN’s Baltimore office, with the story that the associate is a prostitute who needs to set up her income - and the income of a baker’s dozen of underage El Salvadoran illegal immigrant prostitutes - to fund O’Keefe’s political campaigns. ACORN of course immediately informs them that they are depraved abusive monsters, throws them out, and calls the cops…

Yeah, right. What actually happens is that they get a crash course in Tax Fraud and How To Set Up A Brothel 101: links are to videos, in case the above doesn’t load (their servers must be getting hammered, for some reason).  Transcript here: you will find that your jaw steadily drops more and more as this goes on.  They didn’t blink at the prostitute bit (just reclassified it as entertainer, and walked through useful deductions): they didn’t blink at the underaged El Salvadoran prostitutes thing (just worked out how many could be claimed as dependents without things getting flagged); and they didn’t blink on the request for advice on avoiding a former pimp (they just gave some, which didn’t include “Call the cops” and “Stop being a prostitute”).

After a certain point, you will ask yourself if this can possibly be for real.  Breitbart did, himself.  This, in fact, pushes the very limit of the Too Good to Be True envelope - but the videos are simply too good to miss.  Plus, ACORN’s screams of outrage are diagnostic: they’re essentially claiming that when asked, other offices didn’t give out tax advice on running illegal underage brothels.

So there.

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Everyone complains about corruption, but . . . well . . . it’s not that no one does anything about it. Rather, it’s more that traditional anti-corruption efforts are so ineffective. We can pass laws until the cows come home, but all the laws in the world have done nothing to curb corruption.

Dan Mitchell makes these points and then offers an alternative anti-corruption plan–shrink the size of government. It’s a good plan, and it will most certainly work better than what we have tried thus far in terms of combating corruption. Take a look:

So President Barack Obama was in my fair city today.  No, I didn’t go hear him speak.  I have a cold that causes me to cough like I smoke 10 packs of unfiltered menthol cigarettes a day.  So instead, I figured I would do what all good bloggers do: criticize his remarks from the comfort of my desk.

In all seriousness, I do believe that the President’s remarks point to his fundamental worldview.  In talking about the stimulus he touts government action but fails to explain how this will actually grow the economy and provide jobs in the future.  Instead, it is about how one time funds will keep some workers in their current job providing mostly government services or how infrastructure projects will magically grow the economy.

Here is his defense of the stimulus:

Now there were those — there were those who argued that our recovery plan was unwise and unnecessary. They opposed the very notion that government has a role in ending the cycle of job loss at the heart of this recession. There are those who believe that all we can do is repeat the very same policies that led us here in the first place.

But I also know that this country has never responded to a crisis by sitting on the sidelines and hoping for the best. I know that throughout our history, we have met every great challenge with bold action and big ideas. That’s what’s fueled a shared and lasting prosperity. And I know that at this defining moment for America we have a responsibility to ourselves and to our children to do it once again. We have a responsibility to act, and that’s what I intend to do as President of the United States of America. (Applause.)

So for those who still doubt the wisdom of our recovery plan, I ask them to talk to the teachers who are still able to teach our children because we passed this plan. I ask them to talk to the nurses who are still able to care for our sick, and the firefighters and first responders who will still be able to keep our communities safe. I ask them to come to Ohio and meet the 25 men and women who will soon be protecting the streets of Columbus because we passed this plan. (Applause.) I look at these young men and women, I look into their eyes and I see their badges today and I know we did the right thing.

This speech is typical Obama in that it is disengenuious and deceptive but full of nice sounding rhetoric.

Keep reading to see why.

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The effrontery is utterly astonishing. Government, it now appears to be clear, is moving to take command of as many aspects of the economy as possible–all without any track record whatsoever that would give one confidence that government can, indeed, command the economy to anything resembling prosperity. In what parallel universe is it Congress’s business concerning what any company–let alone those that do not take federal bailout money–pay their executives?

I hope that this is a joke. If it is not, a comedy of errors–absent the comedy–will ensue quite soon. This entire enterprise is as insane as is asking a shoe cobbler to perform a quadruple bypass. The federal government is moving to meddle with things it does not understand.

Oh yeah. This will work out well:

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen:

- Senate Democrats publicly press Obama to make the economic recovery package far more robust.

- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly challenge Obama to be bolder on taxes.

- Congressional progressives challenge the Obama administration - against its wishes - to include bankruptcy reforms in the economic stimulus package.

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