The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Video Shows ACORN Founder Wade Rathke Plotting America's Downfall

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The Spectacle Blog

Video Shows ACORN Founder Wade Rathke Plotting America's Downfall

By Matthew Vadum on 7.29.09 @ 8:23PM

On his TV show today, Glenn Beck spotlighted a fascinating interview that ACORNcracked.com editor Kyle Olson conducted with disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke.

Olson visited Rathke's book signing in New Orleans to get the footage. The book is Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families, in which Rathke serves up some community organizing war stories, and offers his thoughts on the future of organizing.

As I wrote here at the American Spectator, Rathke is a pioneer of the so-called welfare rights movement that aims to get Americans on welfare. He 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.

Rathke confirms in Olson's footage (during what appears to be a book talk) that he is pursuing this strategy that calls for all Americans eligible for welfare payments to pursue every penny the law "entitles" them to. He urges people to "make sure that other people in the community" are actually getting their due from the government.

The Maximum Eligible Participation Solution is just the old Cloward-Piven Strategy in new clothes. The strategy aimed at radical social and political change was 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.]

Rathke writes in his book, "it 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."

As I noted previously, Rathke has also said that technology should be utilized to make it as easy as possible for people to claim welfare benefits.

Here is the segment from today's "Glenn Beck Program":

Here is Olson's interview with Rathke:

View all comments (22) | Leave a comment

Missy| 7.29.09 @ 8:50PM

Call Beck crazy, but I say he's crazy like a fox. He's doing Yeoman's work to help us save our country--I call him an authentic American Hero.

Thank you, Glenn Beck for your courage and steadfast defense of our Republic.

Michelle Malkin kicked Matt Lauer's butt this morning, too! She was awesome.

I salute the patriots who are waging the fight to keep our freedom, including those who write for TAS.

Nobama| 7.29.09 @ 9:09PM

Thanks, Matt, for focusing on this huge ACORN scandal. Don't let up!

VinceP1974| 7.29.09 @ 9:58PM

I reiterate the call I made in 2007 for a Military Coup , stat

Liberal Reader| 7.29.09 @ 10:37PM

Oh, Vadum. You're an absolute Sleuth!

What a feat of investigative reporting this is!

Roll over Woodward; roll over Bernstein!

You really dug up the awful truth by -- watching Beck!

Vadum, you are BOUND for journalist immortality.

Are you guys still "debunking" the concentration camp rumor, by the way?

JimE| 7.29.09 @ 10:42PM

Liberal Moron,
Your mom says to clean up the mess you left in her basement, forty years old and you still can't look after yourself.

KevlarKevin| 7.29.09 @ 10:55PM

I see an uninformed liberal troll didn't bother to click on the links in the above blog post. If Liberal Reader had done so he/she would have discovered that Vadum wrote about Rathke previously and has written about ACORN extensively and has been on Glenn Beck's show many times. Beck has based much of what he's reported about ACORN on Vadum's work.

NOBAMA| 7.29.09 @ 11:13PM

LibReader/Jeremiah--still hot for your beloved RED SEX? Check out this boob troll's Faux pas on Jeffrey Lord's thread on 7/28 @ 12:30 PM.

Dave| 7.30.09 @ 6:39AM

ACORN. Yeah, the same gang of community mobsters that B. Hussein wants to payoff to go around hassling the neighborhood Crackers and Honkies during the next intrusive *census count.

*Have you seen a sample of that sheet soon to be arriving to a "hood" near you? It's the stuff Orwell used to write books about.

Once the sleepy souls decide to pull their heads from the sand, my advice stands: "Be aware and .. be afraid - be very afraid. Especially as long as this current Nazi loving "changeling" is taking up living space at 1600. "

G. A. Kevis| 7.30.09 @ 9:16AM

OK BHO.

You took an oath:

" ... foreign and domestic ...."

That was in reference to enemies.

Play - tough in protecting the USA.

C'mon.

Deborah D| 7.30.09 @ 9:36AM

Way to go, Mr. Vadum. I think you've started something very important here. Keep up the good work. Let's make sure every American understands what ACORN+Obama+the Democratic Party are all about. This is tyranny.

Sue| 7.30.09 @ 9:56AM

I have watched the Glen Beck shows about ACORN and Rathke. I come away wondering though why it is an issue, i.e. signing up poor people for welfare (which they are entitled to).

For the past 200 years the Democrat and Republican parties have promised entitlements, but kept a pretty tight lid of how to go about getting those entitlements. Why does it take 2-4 years to get SS disability? If it were a private insurance, it wouldn't take but a few months.

The real endangerment comes from our elective officials and the programs they create to keep themselves in power.

The outcomes that politicians desire are really not desired at all. It's only the votes they are after.

I say that Rathke is doing all of us a HUGE favor for showing just how disingenuous are politicians are in taking care of the federal government responsibilities under the constitution.

Now, we find ourselves at a crossroads where what the politicians promised, i.e. Welfare, Medicaid, and Medicare, they cannot deliver and we're supposed to let them off the hook by buying into a huge government-run program of socialized medicine. If they can't support the above three programs with our tax dollars, how will they support coverage for 50 million more?

I say send Wade Rathke my way and I'll sign up for everything the politicians have promised. There's no better way to "go to hell in a hand-basket" than spending like Lucifer at the mall!

Bleeding| 7.30.09 @ 11:23AM

I didn't watch the Beck piece, but the interview with Rathke. You listen to him, and realize how deeply this looter mentality, this mooching, parasitical spirit, has become entrenched in our society. He talks about Unions as though they are families... he talked about SEIU never considering how much strength he is sucking from the economy.

He talks about income as though the world owes him a living. As though creating nothing merits you a life without risk.

Looter. "They've got it, we need it, let's take it."

Bob| 7.30.09 @ 12:22PM

We could overwhelm the system just as easily. Fill out your W-4 for 99 dependents and don't file to pay your taxes. The system would be overwhelmed instantly and the ones who owe there power to the taxpayers will be without power. What needs to be overwhelmed is not medicare or medicaid or social security but the IRS!!!

Jack Kinch(1uncle)| 7.30.09 @ 8:10PM

Getting their due is irritating. We are all due life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Anything else you earn. Get an education. Get a job OR Get out.

Jack Kinch(1uncle)| 7.30.09 @ 8:12PM

One other thing. Eliminate the IRS. Tax what you buy. Go to a bad jail for what you steal.

jj| 8.1.09 @ 12:04AM

glenn beck & fox news = putrid flatulence

Caroline| 8.5.09 @ 1:35PM

"Bleeding," I agree completely with your "He talks about income as though the world owes him a living. As though creating nothing merits you a life without risk." statement.
As Mark Twain once said, "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

Caroline| 8.5.09 @ 1:36PM

Captain Obvious| 8.28.09 @ 4:29PM

I saw with my own eyes the Cloward-Piven strategy on Wade Rathke's website last year. Unfortunately, no one would listen to me. All the signs were there about who Obama really is. It took me a few days of researching him to know, as a Democrat of 30 years, this was no longer the party I supported. These people are Marxists. None of this was an accident. George Soros vowed to destroy Bush...and he had the means to do it. That was the only way they could get an inexperienced, unknown into the White House. Unless the current President(Bush) was hated, this could have never happened. The people were too naive to realize that. We are now ALL paying for that naivete.