On Sunday morning, The Blaze
posted a story about the �return� of ACORN on the
world-wide scene. While reading through some of the
background material on that story, I noticed something
significant.
ACORN founder
Wade Rathke has been busy mocking
the story that broke on The Blaze earlier this week
about a multi-front plot to target JP Morgan Chase in an
attempt to crash the stock market. We�ll look at his
criticisms in a second. No need to bury the lede here.
Rathke seems to answer the question we�ve been asking
all week � does bank plotter Stephen Lerner still work
for SEIU?
Rathke says Lerner is still very much on the SEIU
payroll:
Lerner has not been �fired� by SEIU as they
report. He was placed on paid leave last fall to
think through his contribution to the union, but was
certainly present at the recent international
executive board meeting.
This is important for several reasons � not the least
of which is that this ties the plot to destroy the
American economy much more closely within the ranks of
the organization that time and time again President
Obama has declared to be most important to him
strategically and politically.
From the beginning, we have speculated about Lerner�s
work status. We knew early on that a
blog critical of SEIU had reported on the �apparent
firing� of Lerner last fall. But we also knew that
Lerner was introduced at the Left Forum conference as
�SEIU.� And we soon learned that Lerner had an active
voicemail account on his phone line at SEIU. Glenn Beck
speculated numerous times on radio and TV about Lerner�s
work status and noted that repeated calls to SEIU had
not been returned.
I�d wondered all along what it would really take to get
fired from SEIU. Is there a union of workers at the
union? Maybe Lerner filed a grievance!
Rathke�s post
not only claims that Lerner is on �paid leave,� he
affirms Lerner�s status as a revered strategist in the
labor movement:
Lerner has written a number of well circulated
papers over the last year expanding on his analysis
of the impact of the recession and the need to frame
larger campaigns around accountability of banks and
the financial system for working Americans. He is an
avowed advocate of developing campaigns to finally
bring them to account.
Rathke seems to find a logical contradiction in our
connections between some of Lerner�s key assertions:
While labeling Lerner an ex-SEIU official who was
signaling that unions and community organizations
were �dead,� also reported hook-line-and-sinker that
in May, according to Lerner, there would be days of
rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase signally
the beginning of the anti-banking jihad. Hmmm. An
ex-official issuing the call to �dead� troops to
storm the barricades? Does something not add up
here?
Does it add up? He doesn�t really deal with a counter
argument to Lerner�s contention about unions and
community organizations being �dead,� but it seems to me
that a desperate official, dealing with desperate
forces, backed by astounding fiscal resources, might be
able to reasonably storm a barricade or two.
While Lerner�s articulation of a well-orchestrated
plot to bring down the stock market may sound a little
hyperbolic, Rathke is intent on convincing us that
Lerner is actually known for his reasoned
understatement:
I�ve known and worked with Lerner for decades and
his long experience with union lawyers and what used
to be called �corporate campaigns,� has made him one
of the more careful commentators on his work that I
know. The rest of us are verifiable flap jawed loose
lips compared to Steve!
Yikes.
Lerner, meantime, has given his first comments about
our story. He talked to MSNBC�s
Dylan Ratigan on his podcast. On Saturday
we posted a side-by-side comparison of Lerner�s
current comments compared with the comments in our
original report:
Blaze assistant editor Meredith Jessup prepared this text
summary of the Ratigan podcast:
Is SEIU�s Stephen Lerner a terrorist� or a hero?
This is the question MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan pondered
Thursday when he invited the controversial labor organizer onto his
radio broadcast to defend his plans to purposefully crash the United
States economy.
As we reported this week, Lerner � a hero among
progressives � was caught on tape discussing a planned �mortgage strike�
against the country�s largest banking institutions, specifically including
JP Morgan Chase. In a recording uncovered from a leftist conference last
weekend in New York, Lerner describes how homeowners �strategically
defaulting� on home loans would force banks to negotiate in a redistribution
of wealth scheme with far-reaching economic consequences.
Conservative radio host Glenn Beck labeled Lerner�s plan
�economic terrorism� and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah,
asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the potential threat.
�I interviewed Lerner, to get his side of the story � his
first interview since being attacked by Beck,� Ratigan
wrote Friday. �Lerner talked about the mortgage strike idea, the big
banks, the Tea Party and Glenn Beck�s attack, and being accused of
terrorism.�
Here are some highlights � bold emphases
mine (click
here for .mp3 audio):
�In opposing his plan, Lerner claims both Beck and tea
partiers are �shilling for Wall Street.�
I mean, their kneejerk response seems to be to defend
the super elite, and I don�t how you have an economy that functions. I think
it�s up to 40% of corporate profits are generated by the casino on Wall
Street, and unless you somehow reduce the power of Wall Street, or
their economic or power, I don�t know how we have a productive economy where
there�s a future for our kids and where things work if everything�s
based � it�s ironic, I think it�s Warren Buffett who referred to derivatives
as financial weapons of mass destruction. These are the guys that destroyed
the economy. And I think the thing that is really sticking in people�s goat
more and more is they�re now using the disaster that they created to say we
should get rid of the minor laws that were passed to try to contain their
behavior. It�s like they haven�t learned a lesson � actually, I take that
back. They did learn a lesson. They learned that they could crash the
economy, get bailed out, and then become even bigger and more powerful.
That�s the lesson they learned, and that�s what they�re going to do unless
we have a plan to reduce their power.
�According to Lerner, an organized mortgage strike
specifically designed to crash the market is �exactly how business[es]
operate�:
It really shows that something is off when people
talking about doing something that�s completely legal that mirrors
exactly how business operate that people start throwing out words
like terrorism and trying to intimidate people into not speaking. The only
thing I can figure on this, you know you started off by talking about how
much money the banks have and their influence and their relationship with
government is that there is a whole set of people that just seem to say I
have to defend the banks and Wall St. no matter what happens. It�s
an attempt to sort of scare people and scare regular people and scare
homeowners and scare people who are trying to figure out how to put their
economic lives back together, to scare them out of standing up. I
don�t think it would work but it�s really a disappointment that people go
into that kind of sensationalism instead of saying let�s really fix the
problem here and keep people in their homes and get the economy working and
lets really say we need to address Too Big to Fail instead of trying to
intimidate folks that think the economy is a mess because of the banks.
�Ratigan and Lerner use the recent bank bailouts � an act
opposed by the majority of Americans � as justification to attack the
banking industry:
[Lerner] is the former director of the SEIU�s Banking
and Finance Campaign. He created the website WheresTheNote.com, and has been
so insane as to suggest that the banks themselves who have been funded with
your tax money, who have collected 100 cents on the dollar and in
no-strings-attached bank bailout that the Tea Party purports to object to
from a few years ago, and yet continued to collect mortgage payments in full
from folks whose houses frequently are worth far less than the mortgage that
exists.
�Lerner says his plans for mass mortgage strike just
makes good business sense and homeowners should be able to walk away from
their mortgage responsibilities:
Well, I would say it�s not even organizing.
It�s an early discussion of saying, �What if a bunch of people all
agreed to say to the banks ��. Maybe what people would say is, �We�re going
to put our money escrow, even.� But we�re saying we want you to negotiate
with us on principle, and we think a lot of us are all going to say at the
same time, �Listen, we�re going to sign up, we�re going to say, �You should
negotiate with us.� And when we get enough people who are signed on to
saying the banks should negotiate, we�d say, �Well now we�ve evened the
score a little bit. You�re the biggest, richest guys in the world,
but a lot of us have signed up and said we�re ready to potentially walk
away. Why don�t you negotiate on reducing the principle?� So what
we�re talking about is people making a commitment to each other saying if
enough other people agree to it, we�ll demand the banks negotiate
and then if they�re not willing to negotiate, then people can take
appropriate action and walk away if that�s what makes sense.
But even more than that, what we�re really talking
about is encouraging people to make a good business decision
because more and more business writers and other people have
written, and they�ve written time and time again, that if a business was in
the situation of most homeowners, they would walk away. And so what � we�re
saying two things. One, we want the banks to negotiate and we want to fix
it. But second, we�re saying people should be rational about their financial
life. And as you said, the amount of money that people wasting on a
home that they�re not going to be able to stay in because they�re stuck in a
bad mortgage versus that it may be a good business decision to say, �I�m
leaving and I�m going to rent an apartment.� So we�re trying to do
two things: help people make a good financial decision for themselves; and
second, do it in a way that�s together that maybe we can start fixing the
housing problem. And I�d take it a step farther; I don�t know how we fix the
economy unless we stabilize the housing market. And we�re not going to
stabilize the housing market if we don�t write down principle.
�Ratigan slams free-market capitalism as �false rhetoric�
and outlines five key areas of �madness� that need overhaul � energy, health
care, international trade, military and banks:
We see this over and over and over again, whether
it�s in American finance, American healthcare, American energy, American
trading, meaning with China and elsewhere, or the military. An
unholy alliance forms between those who make the most money from that
business, whether it�s the bank or the energy company or whoever, and the
politicians who they fund. In the process, ironically,
these people, like Glenn Beck and others, hide behind the false rhetoric of
the free market while desperately trying to avoid paying the actual
consequences of living in a free market, let alone being forced to exhibit
the adaptability and innovative spirit required of all of us at this point
in time, so that we can adapt to the marketplace, a marketplace in
which energy is actually very expensive, a marketplace in which lending can
be made very cheap, were it not controlled by the special interests that run
it. Same could be said for healthcare.
So the more we can all focus our attention on the
unholy alliance in this country that exists between business and
state, reward the businesses and encourage the businesses that compete for
your dollars through good service and real value, and punish the politicians
who cater to the weak and pathetic in the business world who cannot adapt or
innovate and so use their dollars to try to legislatively manipulate the
environment so that they can survive only to come back out barking and
claiming free markets. The sooner we can put an end of the madness that is
the trillion dollar problems that plague this country of energy, healthcare,
the multi-national trading pirates, military, and the bank system. Those
five problems, all in the trillions. You deal with those, and suddenly your
million and billion dollar problems seem much more approachable.
Lerner insists it was the banking industry which �crashed
the economy� and is keeping it from recovering:
I think a lot of people have been stunned, not just
that the banks crashed the economy, not just that they got rich doing it,
but how at this moment after we bailed them out, they�re using the very
crisis that they created to continue squeezing regular Americans. And it�s
just maddening I think to a lot of us to see them really holding the
country hostage saying, �Well, if you don�t give us tax breaks,
we�ll move our jobs abroad; if you don�t do what we want, then we�re going
to continue to put the screws to you.� So we started � we keep thinking
about these guys got trillions in bailouts, they got a new and better deal,
and the whole country is stuck in recession because they won�t write down
principle so folks can stay in their homes and we can fix the mortgage
market. They have cities trapped in exotic things like interest-rate swaps
so public services that cuts, they can create excess interest in it.
It�s really the big bang�s Wall Street that is stopping the economy from
recovering.
Ratigan asks Lerner � Isn�t what you�re doing technically
illegal?
RATIGAN: The one thing that strikes me that you could
run into in trying to organize a larger group of people around this, is
very explicit banking law, unique law that applies explicitly only
to banks that effectively makes it illegal to do any form of organizing or
work that could directly result, for instance, in a run on the banks.
And is there not a risk that a large collection of mortgage holders
refusing to pay could run a foul of that law?
LERNER: It would be a terrific irony because
since nobody�s been prosecuted in the massive run of the banks and all the
hedge funds and all the deals where people bet against and tripled down on
different bets, it would sure be ironic if people interpreted homeowners
exerting their right to be causing a run on the bank; that�s not
the goal at all. In fact, but going backwards, I think it would be great if
people investigated and prosecuted for all the things the banks did that
most normal people would consider a form of the run on the bank. I�m not
worried about that because what we�re talking about is perfectly
legal, it�s perfectly lawful.
In the end, Rathke is not worried about Lerner and his future
as a legendary labor organizer:
The right wingers need to leave Lerner alone rather than
erecting yet another statute in their wax gallery of threats to America.
Knowing Stephen, he�s having a hearty laugh at all of this. �