“It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord. But, you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” – Bob Dylan
“Rule #7: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
For a presidential candidate to dispatch his agents of Change to recruit artists & entertainers into his campaign is one thing. He understandably wished to avoid becoming old news. Heck, even radical activists get bored. So, to maintain their excitement and involvement, professional community organizers must constantly devise new tactics. And, as so many enjoy smugly reminding us all, “the ‘One’ won!”
Poli-end-zone-dances notwithstanding, for the President of the United States of America to use the power of his Office and the lure of his NEA’s favor, potential grant funds and the ideological “yes, we-can-change-the-world” Hope & prestige for artists to create promotional propaganda for his Serve.gov & Corporation for National & Community Service partisan political agenda, produces an entirely different pattern and data set.
As George Will recently observed, “I don’t know how many laws that breaks but I’m sure there are some.”
Ben Shapiro cites The Anti-Lobbying Act (19 U.S. Code 1913) & 31 U.S. Code 1352.
The Hatch Amendment has also been cited elsewhere.
In any case, this story along with the ACORN scandal, the President’s close ties and history with ACORN, coupled with his lesson plan, disseminated by the federal Dept. of Education — with whom Ms. Wicks “worked closely” – that assigned schoolchildren to “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president” (IOW, ‘write letters to themselves about how they can become agents of change for the president’) raises many red flags and questions.
Is this Ms. Wicks ‘view’ towards “an onramp to a lifetime of service?”
I’m with this Marine: “Stay Away From My Kids!” My kids are here to serve an higher power than any current fashionable ‘One.’
Professional forensic investigative journalists are now connecting the dots and reporting on the nexus, stalls, pens and troughs of the President’s national change agent (Animal Farm) agenda as organized through Serve.gov & ‘the Corporation’:
Corporation for National & Community Service
White House Office of Public Engagement
Prior inconsistencies matter:
The NEA & White House responses assert:
NEA: “This call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda and any suggestions to that end are simply false. “
WH: “[T]he Aug. 10 teleconference ‘was not meant to promote any legislative agenda.'”
However,
Ms. Wicks stated on the call: “I’m actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda… we need you, and we’re going to need your help, and we’re going to come at you with some specific asks here… We’re actually running the government… We need your guys’ help to promote this.
I’m actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda… we need you, and we’re going to need your help, and we’re going to come at you with some specific asks here.”
If not to promote the President’s legislative agenda (e.g., healthcare reform, cap and trade, not to mention his Dept. of Education lesson plans), then for what specifically did Ms. Wicks ask this collective of artists — that she clearly assumed to be strictly partisan Obama-supporters — for their help in promoting?
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Other notable-quotables:
NELLIE ABERNATHY: we are really looking at reaching a new brand of people… We have 12 [do-it-yourself toolkits] that really allow people who are more self-directed who say I have a need in my community that I want to address, and it’s not necessarily attractive to me to go and serve soup at the existing soup kitchen with 80-year-old women… we are really looking at reaching a new brand of people.
YOSI SERGANT: whether it’s health care, education, the environment, you know… My ask would be to apply artistic, you know, your artistic creative communities’ utilities and bring them to the table.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” – George Orwell
“We have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.” – Hillary Clinton