[Editor's note: This is the fourth in a series of articles exposing a massive shell game with taxpayer funds that while not new, is being perfected by the Obama administration as a means to deploy and reward non-profit co-laborers in an effort to fulfill the president's stated aim of radically transforming America. It's a system in which complexity serves as a useful tool to avoid drawing scrutiny. The series will offer a tour of the landscape and ultimately address the implications for every citizen. In the first story, WND exposed a wealthy, left-wing Silicon Valley charity supported by the administration that, among other "progressive" causes, channels funds to the notorious Media Matters, founded by staunch Hillary Clinton ally and Fox News nemesis David Brock. The second story shows how taxpayers are funding one of the nation's largest health-insurance brokers, which had a significant role in passing Obamacare and remains one of its chief cheerleaders. The third in the series shows how the Obama administration is channeling millions of dollars of taxpayer funds through a "propaganda machine" that finances organizations such as an educational advocacy group named for President Obama's Marxist law-school mentor, known for his promotion of the radical "critical race theory."
By Matthew Vadum
The Obama administration has given $16.8 million since 2010 to its allies at a left-wing nonprofit known as the Local Initiatives Support Corp.
LISC, in turn, has provided grants to many radical groups, including a Chicago-based nonprofit founded by the late Marxist activist Saul Alinsky.
Alinsky is often referred to as the father of left-wing "community organizing." His work inspired President Obama and Hillary Clinton, who had a friendship with Alinsky and wrote her college thesis on him.
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Alinsky was known for creating a blueprint for revolution, under the banner of "social change" and "organizing," that focused on penetrating existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.
In his 1946 handbook "Reveille for Radicals" he encouraged community organizers to "fan the latent hostilities" of the poor and "search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them." In "Rules for Radicals," published in 1971, he advised revolutionaries regarding their adversaries: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
In the Obama era, as WND has reported in this series, government distributes taxpayer funds to nonprofit organizations that share the ideology and political inclinations of the president who looks back warmly on his time as a community organizer in Chicago.
"Barack is not a politician first and foremost," first lady Michelle Obama has said. "He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change."
Commenting on the federal government's funding of radical activism, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., told WND the administration has shown it "will do anything and everything to advance their left-wing political agenda."
"Using nonprofit status to promote that agenda, while using the strong arm of the IRS to go after conservative groups, is beyond unacceptable," the congressman said. "But it doesn't surprise me that it is happening. I don't think that public money should go toward advancing a political agenda."
LSIC, which has also received tens of millions of dollars from HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, works with leftist philanthropies like the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, home of the MacArthur “Genius” awards, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
The $16.8 million has come out of the budget of the taxpayer-supported Corporation for National and Community Service's (CNCS) Social Innovation Fund (SIF), a community organizing slush fund that the Obama administration uses to benefit its left-wing friends in the nonprofit activist community. Such left-leaning organizations overwhelmingly lean Democratic.
In 2009, Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which reauthorized CNCS and its $1.1 billion budget and created the Social Innovation Fund. The SIF was established the year after the Democratic Party's campaign platform advocated the formation of a "Social Investment Fund Network" to provide government funding for "social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations (that) are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities."
CNCS boasts that SIF "and our private-sector partners have invested more than a half a billion dollars in compelling community solutions." SIF's portfolio "represents a $241 million investment in 35 intermediary grantees and 189 participating nonprofits working in 37 states and the District of Columbia."
Conflict of interest
A New York Times article in 2010 suggested that an Obama administration official was involved in a conflict of interest that involved LISC. It pointed out that Patrick Corvington, who had overseen CNCS, "previously worked for a foundation that financed a program operated by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, better known as LISC. The foundation won a $4.2 million grant."
The Social Innovation Fund awarded LISC $16.8 million spread out over 2010 through 2013.
The taxpayer money is earmarked for “improving the financial bottom line for low-to-moderate income families by helping people boost earnings, reduce expenses, and make appropriate financial decisions.” LISC takes the federal grants and sends money to subgrantee groups that provide financial counseling for the poor. Such services are of dubious effectiveness, but they do help to supplement the operating budgets of the largely left-leaning nonprofits that provide them.
Many of LISC's subgrantee groups are based in Chicago.
One is Instituto del Progreso Latino. The group rejects the traditional "melting pot" philosophy in which immigrants are assimilated into American society.
It describes its mission as contributing "to the fullest development of Latino immigrants and their families through education, training and employment that fosters full participation in the changing United States society while preserving cultural identity and dignity."
Another LISC subgrantee is the Safer Foundation. The foundation encourages people with criminal records to apply for welfare programs such as food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC.
Not all of the Windy City subgrantee groups are overtly ideological.
The subgrantee Jane Addams Resources Corp. provides financial counseling. The organization is named after Jane Addams (1860-1935), an influential leader in America's Progressive Era. In the late 1800s, Addams co-founded Hull House, a forerunner of modern community centers that provide services to the poor. Addams differs from social reformers of today in that she believed that private charity – not government-driven activism – was the best way to bring about change in society.
But many of the groups LISC funds are rabidly left-wing.
In 2008, LISC gave $234,534 to the Chicago-based Woodlawn Organization, a group founded by Alinsky.
LISC funds the Chicago-based Resurrection Project, a community organizing group founded by churches in 1990. LISC has given $2.7 million to the group since 2006.
LISC has given $2.5 million since 2006 to Albuquerque, New Mexico-based SouthWest Organizing Project, SWOP. The group states on its website that it "was founded in 1980 by young activists of color to empower our communities in the SouthWest to realize racial and gender equality and social and economic justice."
Last year SWOP sued Sidonie Squire, New Mexico's secretary of human services, for tightening rules for receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as the food stamps program.
LISC isn't funded by the government exclusively. It also is funded by left-wing philanthropies, including the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($67. 5 million since 1999), W.K. Kellogg Foundation ($11.9 million since 2000), Annie E. Casey Foundation ($8.2 million since 2001), Rockefeller Foundation ($5.5 million since 2000), Surdna Foundation ($3.6 million since 1999) and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ($2 million since 1999).