Faith Board Member tied to SEIU

When I began to review the list of the Board Members added to the department run by Joshua DuBois, the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, I didn't get very far.

From the article providing a list the first name was Diane Baillargeon, President and CEO of SeedCo (in the center of the picture).

In my first, my very FIRST search, I find a connection between her work at SeedCo and SEIU.

From this article in 2008:

"Seedco’s outstanding reputation makes it an ideal organization to undertake this very worthwhile and important initiative," said Mr. Knuckles. "The Upper Manhattan Health Careers Initiative complements another health care employment and training partnership we announced almost exactly a year ago with the 1199 SEIU Training and Employment Funds to connect 118 Upper Manhattan residents to employment and career advancement opportunities in the health care industry. In both instances, our overall goal is to create opportunities for empowerment zone residents with skills deficits to obtain the highly valued training that is needed to qualify for employment and career advancement opportunities, while simultaneously providing employers with a pool of skilled and qualified labor."¹

SEIU.

Not just any office of SEIU, 1199 where Patrick Gaspard is from. My prior blog is here.

So, even in the Faith-Based & Community Initiative Office we find connections to the same groups... SEIU in this case. (which is connected to ACORN)

I'm not shocked or surprised, just frustrated.


1. http://www.umez.org/?itemCategory=34574&siteid=52&priorId=0

Another ACORN Falls from the Obama's Tree: Patrick Gaspard

President Obama's radical friendship tree is more convoluted that the typical family tree. When the concerns were addressed in an October debate with John McCain, Obama assured Americans that he was surrounding (and would continue to do so) himself with solid experience personnel and NOT the radicals from his past.


Then we had Van Jones being outted as a radical, self-proclaimed communist and many of the czars coming under fire for their radical ties and/or comments. Now there's Patrick Gaspard, Director of the Office of Political Affairs (Karl Rove's former position), who was former Exec. VP of SEIU, Chapter 1199 and its 300,000 members.

In 2004, Gaspard was the National Field Director for America Coming Together, working on Howard Dean's campaign and was the Director of the Obama transition team.

Well, there's been quite the debate on the internet between Matthew Vadum of the American Spectator and Politico's Ben Smith over Gaspard's ties to ACORN and other radicals. See there was some drama, heightened by ACORN'S former leader Wade Rathke, admitting then renouncing that Gaspard was tied up in all of this.

I'm no regular follower of either one, but linking their back and forth with a piece by Stanley Kurtz (go old fashioned, reliable journalism is hard to come by) there is this link:

http://www.chicagodsa.org/ngarchive/ng42.html


Now that is not light reading, even by my standards, so let's hit the high points.

• "New Ground" is the newsletter of the Democratic Socialists of America (Chicago chapter)


• Chicago New Party links to ACORN sharing on-the-ground organizing, legal representation, training, or even funding


• Obama was seeking New Party endorsement in Chicago, Patrick Gaspard was working as a New Party organizer in New Jersey.


• Working Families Party (a successor to the New Party, led by New Party co-founder Dan Cantor, and largely controlled by ACORN and the SEIU).


• Gaspard and ACORN'S Bertha Lewis supported Working Families Party in a joint response to criticisms from a local journalist.


• "ACORN members spearhead formation of the Working Families Party, the first community-labor party with official ballot status in New York state in more than 50 years." -- ACORN'S own website (see below for link if you don't trust me yet)

ACORN has been tied to its SEIU affiliates, ACORN founder Wade Rathke and Local 880 headed by ACORN bigwig Keith Kelleher who happens to the husband of Madeline Talbott. Talbott, if you don't know, is a radical agitator whose close personal ties to President Obama. The tenacles run very, VERY deep and Gaspard is wrap in them nearly as tightly as Van Jones.

Obama has surronunded himself with radicals, extremists, but always manages to escape scrutiny. I don't expect this to be any different, but that doesn't mean we don't know about it.

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/09/29/the-politico-gets-played-by-ac

http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12448