The American Spectator : Wrathful Wade Rathke

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Wrathful Wade Rathke

By Matthew Vadum on 7.16.09 @ 6:07AM

The ACORN founder wants to use the Internet to overthrow the capitalist system.

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) founder Wade Rathke wants to use the Internet to overthrow the capitalist system.

He said so in his new book, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families, in which he serves up some community organizing war stories, and offers his thoughts on the future of organizing.

Rathke, a pioneer of the so-called welfare rights movement that aims to get Americans on welfare, devotes an entire chapter of his book to what he calls "The 'Maximum Eligible Participation' Solution." It is a strategy for orchestrated crisis that savvy leftist groups across America are likely to embrace.

"[I]t is hard to believe that we cannot assemble the troops to mount a campaign for maximum eligible participation that harvests the opportunities and dollars already available if we could achieve full utilization of existing programs," he writes.

Rathke acknowledges his support for the Cloward-Piven Strategy, an approach to radical social and political change articulated by Marxist university professors Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven in a 1966 Nation article, "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty." The two academics called for "a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls" in an effort to overwhelm the system. [Italics in original.]

The strategy helped to bankrupt New York City in 1975. Years later, the Big Apple's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, denounced the academic activists by name.

In the Nation article, Cloward and Piven made it clear that they were irritated that plenty of Americans legally eligible to receive forcibly redistributed wealth hadn't bothered to ask for handouts. "The discrepancy is not an accident stemming from bureaucratic inefficiency; rather, it is an integral feature of the welfare system which, if challenged, would precipitate a profound financial and political crisis."

In his book Rathke hails "Cloward and Piven's exciting call to arms." He notes that the activist group they created and that he organized for in the late 1960s, the now-defunct National Welfare Rights Organization, caused "a flood tide from its work that allowed many boats to rise, including the level of participation in government assistance programs."

In a new interview with DailyKos blogger Robert Ellman, Rathke complains bitterly that Americans are not getting all the government benefits to which they are legally entitled. (The podcast is available here.)

With one question, Ellman unwittingly lays bare the anti-social, profoundly un-American entitlement mentality that so many on the far left possess. The blogger asks if the "lack of participation" in food stamps, Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), all of which many eligible people are not claiming, is "a failure of government, political will, or a culture that demonizes poor people?"

The unctuous Rathke, whom some have called a cult leader, doesn't miss an opportunity to compliment his interviewer. "Once again you've hit the trifecta," he says. "It's really all three of those things."

Rathke quotes approvingly from a New York Times op-ed by his fellow progressive poverty pimp, Barbara Ehrenreich, in which he says she does

a devastating job of looking at the fact that we're still criminalizing poor people, requiring fingerprints in states like Florida and Texas and California. For even simple welfare applications and food stamp applications, we are going out of our way, and she quotes chapters and verse from various professors, to make it almost easier to do anything in the world other than get benefits that people are legally entitled to.

Incidentally, ACORN knows all about food stamps. Even though people on welfare shouldn't be trying to buy homes, ACORN cajoled banks into accepting food stamps as income on mortgage applications and then bragged about it.

Returning to the interview, soon Rathke's comments bring to mind the Will Rogers quip, "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for." Laying out a strategy for orchestrated crisis for the Information Age, Rathke says:

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topics:
ACORN, Voter Fraud, Welfare

About the Author

Matthew Vadum is an award-winning investigative journalist at a conservative watchdog group in Washington, D.C. Vadum is also author of Subversion Inc: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (21) | Leave a comment

Big J| 7.16.09 @ 8:02AM

Stay tuned: Rathke is soon to be named welfare czar.

Bud| 7.16.09 @ 8:43AM

I recommend taking a close look at the strategy Rathke and cohorts are employing to overload existing systems. If Obama and the democrat party has its way with us for much longer, we may find it necessary to act accordingly.

owyheewine| 7.16.09 @ 9:52AM

(With tongue in cheek)
Maybe there are some recently displaced CIA undercover operatives that can be called into action.

zopilote| 7.16.09 @ 10:26AM

Rathke wants us to be just like Cuba, where
"equality" means everyone makes 50 bucks
a month and every neighborhood has its
informer.

stephanie | 7.16.09 @ 1:25PM

Hey Bud,
When will you know when we have had enough?
Will it be after this monsterosity entitlement program called "healthcare reform" is enacted? Will it be after we have to "refit" our house before selling to meet the f __king "green standards"? Cap and Trade? When have we had enough?
On another note,
TERM LIMITS!!!! Get these leaches who have been in office for more that 2 terms OUT!
NO more using the system as a career. Go home and get a real job senator/congressman. A prime example:
How long has Ted Kennedy been in office?

sandyinohio| 7.16.09 @ 1:52PM

YAY STEPHANIE! You are right. I've seen a lot of people of both parties saying this is the problem; career politicians. IF we could all vote incumbents out (at once would be nest) what a difference it could make.

Bill| 7.16.09 @ 2:12PM

And We the People pay this socialist shiester $8 billion dollars of stimulus money!
And you notice he does not work for free, in fact was is not him and his brother, whi were indicted for embezzlement of funds?
Now, he is going global.
GREAT!

Marc Jeric| 7.16.09 @ 2:46PM

Abu Hussein's sole "working" experince was as community organizer and their lawyer. The principal inventor of communist revolution was Lenin with his soviets - translated this means community organization. All clear?

Sue| 7.16.09 @ 10:36PM

My sister-in-law teaches in a public school. When trying to teach early teenagers the lesson on personal responsibility and knowledge needed to get a job or career for self-sufficiency, she was told by one 14 year old that all she needed to know was how to sign up for her "rightful" check. She didn't need to learn anything else.

True, sad, and reflective of the "welfare" state. The next generation is on the "dole" already.

I wonder why they bother teaching birth control? One way to get the "rightful" check early is have a baby. Of course, we no longer call them "unwed" mothers, we call them "single" mothers. To me, they are "rightful-check welfare" mooochers.

Tootsie| 7.17.09 @ 1:15AM

What is it with these bone ugly leftists? Rathke is as stupefyingly homely as Henry Waxman! My eyes hurt.

jordan 6 rings| 7.17.09 @ 4:44AM

Maybe there are some recently displaced CIA undercover operatives that can be called into action.

Richard Baker| 7.17.09 @ 3:55PM

Rathke and his ilk are going to discover that mobs against Americans will be like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Stay tuned, sportsfans.

Marx| 7.17.09 @ 11:06PM

Haha, Richard Baker!. The only mobs against America will be spoilsports like you. The transition will be bloodless and peaceful. Socialism awaits you, with a kiss.

Tootsie| 7.18.09 @ 2:21AM

Don't bet on it, Marx. But go ahead, bring your butter knife to the fight--we'll be waiting for you, moron.

pjean| 7.18.09 @ 12:28PM

We have to back up our talk with real action. Marching on Washington in September, blocking intersections and entrances into government buildings. Most of us have become too comfortable with simply complaining. We must be about something more. Our detractors count on us being complacent and unlikely to cause a fuss or participate in civil disobedience. Perhaps this is the only way we change up this game.

GENE HAUBER| 7.19.09 @ 6:26PM

SERIOUSLY FOLKS,

CONSIDERING WHERE WE ARE, UNDER ATTACK BY EVERY LEFT-WING, UN-AMERICAN GROUP IN THIS COUNTRY...............WOULD IT BE UNKIND TO THINK OF MR. WADE RATHKE AS THE SUBJECT OF TERMINATION WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE?
only in his small mind does he think of himself as an american........i think most americans that work and pay taxes see him as a menace to their way of life and so do i
GO TO CUBA, RUSSIA, CHINA OR ANY OTHER WELFARE SHITHOLE IN THE WORLD....THEY'LL LOVE YOU THERE

Richard Baker| 7.22.09 @ 4:53PM

Tootsie:
Don't you love it? Americans wanting to be Free are spoilsports. Marx will probably bring his butter knife to the fight. I can hardly wait, how about you? Only in America do free people dream of tyranny and subjugation. Talk about an alternate reality.

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