Thread: ALEC claims they’re victims of an ‘expertly coordinated intimidation campaign’ as mor

What's Color of Change hiding about itself?


byMark Tapscott Executive Editor

04/13/2012

Coca Cola executives who recently decided to stop supporting the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) did so in response to demands from an obscure left-wing activist group, Color of Change (COC). So were executives of giant candy-maker Mars, Inc. when they announced a similar decision earlier today.

That is why Color of Change may be the most powerful group in America you've never heard about.

The demand that Coke, Mars and other corporate donors stop making contributions to ALEC - a long-established conservative legislative group that researches and writes model legislation that is often adopted by state legislatures - is only the latest COC campaign to hit a nerve.

Previous COC successes include pushing advertisers on Glenn Beck's Fox News Show to withdraw their ads, a campaign that played a role in the cable news and opinion network'a decision to drop the controversial production in June 2011.

Others who have felt the wrath of COC include now-former MSNBC opinion analyst Patrick Buchanan, Fox Business News anchor Eric Bolling, Lou Dobbs when he was on CNN, and the late Andrew Breitbart.

On its web site, COC said ALEC should be boycotted because "the right wing has been trying to stop Black people, other people of color, young people, and the elderly from voting — and now some of America’s biggest companies are helping them do it. Demand that these companies stop funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)."

The conservative group's model Voter ID laws require those seeking to vote in state and local elections to present photo IDs, just as commercial airline passengers are required to do when going through security or when customers in a pharmacy buy certain prescription or over-the-counter drugs.
Rob Scheberle, ALEC's executive director, responded to COC's charges:

“Over the last 24 hours, ALEC has been inundated with letters of support from elected officials, community leaders and concerned citizens in response to the intimidation campaign launched by a coalition of extreme liberal activists committed to silencing anyone who disagrees with their agenda.

“I am thankful for the support and want to take this opportunity to remind people what we are facing:

“First, the people now attacking ALEC and its members are the same people who have always pushed for big-government solutions. Our support for free markets and limited government stands in stark contrast to their state-dependent utopia. This is not about one piece of legislation. This is an attempt to silence our organization and it has been going on for more than a year.

“Second, ALEC is one of America’s premier ideas laboratories when it comes to advocating free market reforms. We are a target because our opponents believe they have the opportunity to attack an effective, successful organization that promotes free-market, limited government policies that they disagree with.

Go here for the rest of the ALEC response to COC.

More recently, the group has sought to apply its influence to lobbying Congress against passage of anti-Internet piracy legislation and to prevent cuts in funding for student loans.
But for all of its successes in generating public pressure against conservative advocacy groups and media figures, COC remains something of a mysterious organization.

The organization was not forthcoming about details of its operation when approached earlier this week by The Washington Examiner. No response was received to two emails sent to one of the individuals indentified in a news release as spokesmen for COC.
Though it claims to have more than 81,000 "members," the group, which is registered with the IRS as a 501(C)(4) advocacy organization, has a small paid staff of four people and revenues of $515,219, according to its 2010 Form 990 tax return. Only $21,000 was listed for employee salary and benefits costs.

James Rucker is named by the 990 as executive director, but no compensation figures are included for him, even though he is listed as devoting 40 hours per week to the organization. Only one other officer is listed, Heidi Hess, who is named "director," but spends only two hours per week on COC business and receives no compensation, according to the 990.

Rucker is described by Huffington Post as "co-founder of ColorOfChange.org. Founded in the wake of Katrina, ColorOfChange.org is the leading online citizen lobby for African-Americans and their allies. Formerly, Rucker was director of grassroots mobilization at MoveOn.org."

Rucker and Hess are jointly listed on Key Wiki as having contributed $10,000-$14,999 to Dream Reborn, a project of Green for All, which is described as "a national organization that aims to build a green economy 'strong enough to lift people out of poverty.' Its goal is to secure $1 billion in funding for green-collar job training." Former Obama White House green jobs czar Van Jones was a founder of Green for All.

The group's largest single expense - for $197,486 - is listed as "Other," with no further details provided.

The group does have significant liabilities, including a debt of $110,084 owed to "GetEqual," and repayment of a loan by Rucker to the organization in the amount of $72,040 "to temp. fund operations." Other accounts payable and accrued expenses totalling $269,795, for total liabilities of $451,949.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner.
What's Color of Change hiding about itself? | Campaign 2012 | Washington Examiner

From:
Dicover the Networks, PLEASE NOTE THAT James Rucker IS COFOUNDER OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE PROJECT, SEE BELOW.

Directory Network	Date: 4/14/2012 7:44:24 AM
COLOR OF CHANGE (COC)
	URL :ColorOfChange | Changing the Color of Democracy
Founded by Van Jones and James Rucker, a former director of MoveOn.org Accuses the Republican Party and the Tea Party Movement of engaging in “fear-mongering and coded racism” Founded in 2005, Color of Change (COC) is a nonprofit corporation and an Internet-based grassroots activist group. Van Jones and James Rucker (former director of MoveOn.org Political Action and co-founder of the Secretary of State Project) created COC to combat what they viewed as the systemic racism pervading America generally and conservatism in particular. COC's mission is to "strengthen Black America’s political voice”; "make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans"; and "bring about positive political and social change for everyone." Toward these ends, the organization supports race- and gender-based preferences in government contracting, college admissions, and hiring/promotion policies. Further, COC favors the expansion of the welfare state and thus seeks to discredit initiatives that would restore limited government and rein in public expenditures. From its inception, COC has aimed its criticisms chiefly at prominent conservative and Republican figures. In 2005, for instance, the organization attacked political theorist William Bennett for uttering “racist lies” and pushed to have him dismissed from his broadcasting positions with the Salem Radio Network and CNN. That same year, COC depicted the federal government's allegedly sluggish mobilization of post-Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts as symptomatic of America's low regard for black people. "With no one to speak for them," COC lamented, "hundreds of thousands of people—largely Black, poor, and elderly—were left behind to die." To drive this point home, COC collaborated with MoveOn.org Civic Action to screen the Spike Lee film When the Levees Broke, which alleged that the federal government had dynamited Gulf-area levees in an effort to flood the black neighborhoods of New Orleans—a view popularized most famously by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Rap singer Kanye West, who cited the government's inept response to Katrina as evidence that President “Bush does not care about black people,” had a connection to COC at that time: A now defunct website entitled “KayneWasRight.org” was linked back to ColorOfChange.org. In January 2006, COC initiated a Senate letter-writing campaign to galvanize opposition to President Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito “has consistently demonstrated his hostility towards laws that ensure racial equality and protect the civil rights of Americans,” COC claimed. “If history is a guide, Alito’s presence on the Supreme Court will put some of our most basic civil rights protections in jeopardy.” During the 2008 presidential campaigns, COC was part of the progressive effort to associate the Republican ticket of McCain-Palin with racism. In an open letter which it disseminated widely, COC complained that the "hateful language" and "rhetoric" allegedly on display at Republican campaign events was taking on "an increasingly dangerous tone that seems to ignore the precarious state of our progress when it comes to race and ethnicity." The organization charged, for instance, that attendees at such events had called for "violence against Sen. Obama, yelling ‘kill him!,’ ‘off with his head!,’ and ‘bomb Obama.’” Subsequent investigations, however, showed no evidence that these racial slurs and threats had ever been uttered. In one of its longest-running initiatives, Color of Change has repeatedly smeared the Fox News Channel (FNC) as a disseminator of racism and bigotry. Beginning in March 2007, COC denounced the station for “consistently attack[ing] Black people, leaders, and cultural institutions.” The following year, COC tried to prevent Fox from co-hosting any of the presidential debates with the Congressional Black Caucus Institute. When Fox News’ Glenn Beck exposed the radical communist past of Van Jones in August 2009, eventually leading to Jones’ resignation from his White House post, COC began a letter-writing campaign to the CEOs of FNC advertisers, demanding that they pull their ads due to “Beck’s racially divisive rhetoric.” In September 2009, COC claimed victory, stating that its efforts had caused Beck to lose 50% of his advertising dollars. In March 2010, COC began an aggressive effort to discredit the Tea Party movement's "venomous rhetoric," "racially inflammatory and violent outbursts," "racially charged imagery," and "paranoid conspiracy theories." Said James Rucker: “Republican officials have contributed to this atmosphere with fear-mongering and coded racism, and they have actively courted this element of their party.” In the fall of 2011, COC helped launch a campaign threatening to boycott corporations that gave financial support to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an association that drafts pro-free-market, pro-limited-government legislation for state lawmakers across the U.S. Most notably, ALEC supports the enforcement of voter-ID laws, immigration laws, and Second Amendment rights. Joining COC in its crusade against ALEC were People for the American Way, the Center for Media and Democracy, the Arizona AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers, the Arizona Education Association, Progress Now, and Occupy Wall Street. The combined pressure of these organizations caused a number of companies to withdraw their support for ALEC. These included Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Intuit, Kraft Foods, McDonald's, Arby's, and Walgreens. Currently, COC and its allies are trying to exploit the racial overtones of the February 26, 2012 killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin, who was shot by a "white Hispanic" claiming to have acted in self-defense as permitted under Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. Charging (incorrectly) that ALEC drafted that particular law, COC now demands that AT&T—which is one of ALEC's corporate board members—abandon the Council or be permanently branded as a racist entity with Trayvon Martin's blood on its proverbial hands. Further, COC alleges that Florida police deliberately sought to suppress evidence against Martin's killer, and that law-enforcement's decision not to incarcerate the gunman reflects "a pattern of failing to prosecute when the victim is Black." COC's executive director is Rashad Robinson, who is also affiliated with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Right to Vote Campaign. The latter is a national collaboration of eight civil-rights organizations—including the NAACP, People for the American Way, and the ACLU—that seek to combat "voter disenfranchisement" by lobbying for laws that would permit convicted felons, who are disproportionately African Americans, to vote in political elections.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/p...asp?grpid=7555


SECRETARY OF STATE PROJECT

• Receives funding from Democracy Alliance members George Soros and Rob Stein, among many others

See also: Democracy Alliance Mark Ritchie Al Franken


The Secretary of State Project (SoSP) was established in July 2006 as an independent “527” organization devoted to helping Democrats get elected to the office of secretary-of-state in selected swing, or battleground, states; these were states where the margin of victory in the 2004 presidential election (between George W. Bush and John Kerry) had been 120,000 votes or less.1 One of the principal duties of the secretary of state is to serve as the chief election officer who certifies candidates as well as election results in his or her state.2 The holder of this office, then, can potentially play a key role in determining the winner of a close election.

SoSP's co-founders were Democracy Alliance member Michael Kieschnick (who also founded Working Assets and serves as a board member of the leftist evangelical group Sojourners); Becky Bond (who also has affiliations with Working Assets and the New Organizing Institute); and James Rucker (who co-founded Color of Change and formerly served as director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and Moveon.org Civic Action).

The idea for SoSP germinated shortly after the 2004 election,3 when the Project's co-founders blamed then-Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, for presidential candidate John Kerry’s defeat. To their chagrin, Blackwell had ruled that Ohio (where George W. Bush won by a relatively slim 118,599-vote margin)4 would not count provisional ballots 5―even those submitted by properly registered voters―if they had been submitted at the wrong precincts. Though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ultimately upheld Blackwell’s decision, SoSP’s founding members nonetheless received Blackwell's ruling with the same bitterness they had felt regarding former Florida (Republican) secretary of state Katherine Harris’s handling of the infamous ballot recount in 2000, when Bush defeated Al Gore in the presidential election. According to political analyst Matthew Vadum, SoSP’s leaders and foot soldiers alike “religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 ... and in Ohio in 2004.”6

Moreover, in 2006 SoSP accused Blackwell and Republicans of conspiring to suppress Democratic voter turnout in Ohio.7 “We were tired of Republican manipulation of elections,” said Michael Kieschnick. “It seemed like lots of decisions were made by people who were pretty clearly political operatives.”8 “Any serious commitment to wrestling control of the country from the Republican Party must include removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count,” added Becky Bond.9

To establish “election protection” against similar disappointments in subsequent political races, SoSP in 2006 targeted its funding efforts on the secretary-of-state races in seven swing states―Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado, and Michigan.10 As USA Today reported at the time: “The political battle for control of the federal government has opened up a new front: the obscure but vital state offices that determine who votes and how those votes are counted.”11 Democrats emerged victorious in five of those seven elections―all except Colorado and Michigan. Politico.com would later characterize SoSP as “an administrative firewall” designed, “in anticipation of a photo-finish presidential election,” to protect Democrats' “electoral interests in … the most important battleground states.”12

Because few Americans recognize the importance of the secretary of state’s duties, candidates for that office tend to draw fewer (and smaller) donations than do most state-level campaigns. Consequently, even a modest injection of cash from just a handful of generous donors can make an enormous difference in the comparative financial resources of rival campaigns, and thereby tip the scales decidedly in favor of the better-funded candidate. Among the more notable contributors to SoSP are Democracy Alliance members George Soros, Rob Stein, Drummond Pike, Gail Furman, Michael Kieschnick, John R. Hunting, Paul Rudd, Pat Stryker, Nicholas Hanauer, Patricia Bauman, Megan Hull, Scott Wallace, Barbara Lee (not the congresswoman), Anne Bartley, Blair Hull, Rob McKay, Sanford Newman, William J. Roberts, Tim Gill, and Susie Tompkins Buell.13

In 2006, SoSP raised a total of $500,000 for the secretary-of-state candidates whom it supported14―a small sum by traditional political fundraising standards, but a weighty total in comparison to the sums that such candidates had typically garnered in the past.

One beneficiary of SoSP funding in 2006 was Democrat Jennifer Brunner, who defeated incumbent Republican Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio. Said Brunner, “I received significant support from the SoS Project, which helped me toward the election.” Brunner went on to make her influence felt in several significant ways two years later, during the 2008 election cycle:

• She ruled that Ohio residents should be permitted, during the designated early-voting period extending from late September to early October, to register and vote on the very same day.15
• In a separate matter, Brunner sought to effectively invalidate many of the approximately one million absentee-ballot applications that Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign had issued. Each of those forms had been printed with a checkbox next to a statement affirming that the voter was a qualified elector; Brunner maintained that if an applicant failed to check the box—even if he or she signed the form—the application could be rejected. But Republicans noted that state law did not require the box to be checked as long as the voter signed the ballot. The Ohio Supreme Court subsequently overturned Brunner's directive on grounds that it served “no vital purpose or public interest.”16
• In October 2008, Brunner refused to comply with county election-board requests that she turn over approximately 200,000 voter-registration forms in which the name did not match the driver's license or Social Security number.17

Another early beneficiary of SoSP support was Democrat Mark Ritchie, who, with SoSP help in 2006, defeated a two-term incumbent Republican in the race for Minnesota secretary of state. Ritchie acknowledged his debt to SoSP when he said, “I want to thank the Secretary of State Project and its thousands of grass-roots donors for helping to push my campaign over the top.”18
 Other contributors to Ritchie’s campaign included George Soros, Drummond Pike, Deborah Rappaport (wife of venture capitalist Andrew Rappaport), and Heather Booth.

A former community organizer with close ties to ACORN,19 Ritchie in the 1990s had been a member of the now-defunct socialist New Party.20 Moreover, he has ideological ties to the Communist Party USA and has been described by communist Tim Wheeler as a “friend” of the Party.21

Ritchie went on to play a major role in a crucial state election in 2008, when George Soros personally gave $10,000 to SoSP.22 In October of that year, a conservative watchdog group exhorted Ritchie to order “a thorough review and verification of all voter-registration records,” citing some 261,000 duplicative registrations and 63,000 voter listings with invalid or nonexistent addresses. But Ritchie dismissed those pleas as politically motivated attempts “to create a cloud over an election so people don't accept the outcome.”23

Then, in Minnesota’s November election for U.S. Senate, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman finished 725 votes ahead of Democratic challenger Al Franken; the thin margin of victory, however, triggered an automatic recount. With Mark Ritchie presiding over the recount process during the ensuing weeks, Coleman's lead gradually dwindled due to what journalist Matthew Vadum describes as a long series of “appalling irregularities” that invariably benefited Franken.
For example, during the recount process a number of ballots were found in an election judge's car; one Minnesota county suddenly discovered 100 new votes for Franken and claimed that a clerical error had caused them to previously go uncounted; another county tallied 177 more votes than it had recorded on Election Day; and yet another county reported 133 fewer votes than its voting machines had tabulated. “Almost every time new ballots materialized, or tallies were updated or corrected, Franken benefited,” writes Vadum. In addition, at least 393 convicted felons voted illegally in two particular Minnesota counties.
By the time the recount (and a court challenge by Coleman) ended in April 2009, Franken held a 312-vote lead. In June, Franken was officially declared the victor.24

In 2008, SoSP supported Democratic secretary-of-state candidates in Missouri, Montana, Oregon and West Virginia; all four Democrats won. These results represented yet another high return on a relatively small financial investment for SoSP. As of September of that year, SoSP had raised $280,000 for the campaigns it was targeting -- not a large sum by any means, but enough to have a profound effect on the lightly funded Secretary of State races.

In the midterm congressional elections of 2010, when Democrats suffered historic losses in the House of Representatives, five out of seven SoSP-backed candidates went down to defeat; only incumbents Mark Ritchie of Minnesota and Debra Bowen of California emerged victorious.25
NOTES:
1 http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1228145204.pdf
2 Duties of the Secretary of State
3 Secretary Of State Watch | American Courthouse; The American Spectator : Soros Vote Counters
4 CNN.com Election 2004
5 A provisional ballot is used to record a vote when a given voter's eligibility is in question. Whether a provisional ballot is counted is contingent upon the verification of that voter's eligibility. (See Provisional Ballots Issues.)
6 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
7 Hearings on Ohio Voting Put 2004 Election in Doubt
8 Secretaries of state give Dem firewall - Avi Zenilman - POLITICO.com
9 http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1228145204.pdf
10 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
11 USATODAY.com - Top vote counter becomes prize job
12 Secretaries of state give Dem firewall - Avi Zenilman - POLITICO.com
13 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
14 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
15 Ohio Battles Over Tuesday's Early Voting - CBS News
16 Brunner may toss signatures on payday-lending ballot issue | The Columbus Dispatch
17 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/wa.../18scotus.html
18 Could Senate recount referee's résumé color the result? | StarTribune.com
19 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
20 The New Zeal Blog has moved...
21 Mark Ritchie - KeyWiki
22 http://forms.irs.gov/politicalOrgsSe...7&formType=E72
23 The American Spectator : SOS in Minnesota
24 The American Spectator : Fighting Frankenstein ; Felons for Franken - WSJ.com
25 Soros-supported ‘Secretary of State Project’ dealt blow in midterm elections | The Daily Caller

Secretary of State Project (SOSP) - Discover the Networks




Also:
Secretaries of state give Dem firewall

Secretaries of state give Dem firewall - Avi Zenilman - POLITICO.com

Soros Vote Counters

By Matthew Vadum on 11.2.10 @ 6:08AM

One Democratic secretary of state, Nevada's Ross Miller, isn't playing along with George Soros' dirty election project.



George Soros said he was staying out of the 2010 elections. It appears he wasn't exactly telling the truth.
After helping Al Franken steal a U.S. Senate seat in 2008, Soros's ultra-wealthy buddies in the Democracy Alliance, a billionaires' club that funds left-wing political infrastructure, are spending money to level the playing field for vote fraudsters. (Soros is also funding an effort to take away democratic elections for state supreme courts, as John Gizzi notes in a new Capital Research Center paper.)

The American Spectator : Soros Vote Counters