New Stanek WND column, “What I know about ACORN, the SEIU, and Obama”
In the spring of 2004 we learned Advocate Health Care wanted to build a hospital in a southwest suburb of Chicago, my home turf.
Advocate owns nine Chicago-area hospitals, one of which is Christ Hospital, where I discovered as a labor and delivery nurse in 1999 that late-term babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die with no medical intervention….
Pro-lifers immediately opposed Advocate’s expansion….
We organized a protest of Advocate at a public hearing to consider its plan. It was there we first encountered the Service Employees International Union, also protesting Advocate.
Advocate, as “metropolitan Chicago’s leading private provider of health care and its third largest private employer,” according to an SEIU flyer, had 25,000 nonunionized workers….
Working with SEIU against Advocate was the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, only I didn’t realize it then….
So I introduced myself to SEIU organizer Joseph Geevarghese, saying I was glad we were on the same side.
Joseph said perhaps we could join forces. He was also working with a church organizer, he said….
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As the media started spending more time on ACORN last week, I realized it was connected to SEIU. I recognized some of its tactics.
I wondered if I had held on to that Advocate/SEIU file, now five years old. Reviewing it might be enlightening, I thought.
I did, and it was. I had kept pretty much everything – SEIU’s Hospital Accountability Project newsletters, my invoices, and letters…. one from then state Sen. Barack Obama….
Read my complete column today, “What I know about ACORN, the SEIU, and Obama,” at WorldNetDaily.com.
Wow! I am glad you keep your old files!
So how do Unions expect hospitals to meet unionized staffers’ demands AND provide the quantity of charity care THEY are demanding the hospitals do? I mean, I personally know two Union auto workers in Indiana who have been paid 1/2 to 3/4 their full salary over the last four years for sitting around at home and doing NOTHING because that’s what was part of some Union/corporate deal. My own mother HAD to pay 3/4 union dues to the NEA when she taught, even if she didn’t join the union, because they were apparently “entitled” to it because they “paved the way” for her benefits. Though I think unions were created to serve a purpose and if they work properly, they are a good thing, but man, the unions are really killing their own industries in the US, creating a culture of entitlement, and forcing the hand of businesses to go overseas.
From Wiki, The history of ACORN
“ACORN was founded by Wade Rathke when he was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas by the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in 1970 as an organizer.[31] Gary Delgado and George A. Wiley were also instrumental to its founding. ACORN’s first campaign was to help welfare recipients attain their basic needs, such as clothing and furniture. This drive, inspired by a clause in the Arkansas welfare laws, began the effort to create and sustain a movement that would grow to become the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, the beginnings of ACORN….”
….. By 1980, ACORN’s staff was stretched thin by the demands of meeting its expansion goals. Much of its resources and energy had been dedicated to the presidential primaries and national party conventions…
…. In addition to protesting, ACORN also developed and strengthened its political action committees and encouraged its members to run for office…..
Looks to me like they are a very important arm of the Democrat Party. It all began in Little Rock, the home of Bill Clinton, the first President seriously focused on the delivery of nationalized health care.
It’s hard to understand why Obama doesn’t pay much attention to them and didn’t realize how much federal funding was being diverted to them. Is national healthcare really more important than rooting out corruption within ACORN? WHY should federal dollars be spent by ACORN to prosecute those involved in the recently released videos? What will it ADD to the federal deficit?