Obama's Ascent Heralded by Government-Funded Activists
By Steven Malanga
WashingtonExaminer.com
In vaulting from Chicago precinct and ward politics into the White
House, President Obama represented the first
appearance in a presidential race of a relatively
new political type: the community organizer.
Obama's ascendance was no anomaly, but testament to the rise of a
powerful political coalition in America made up of
those who benefit from expanding government,
including public-sector employees and their unions;
activists at organizations that survive on
government money; and recipients of government
benefits.
Obama's election in 2008 was merely the clearest indicator of the
extent to which this coalition has successfully
amassed power in the last 50 years.
President Lyndon Johnson's ambitious plan to end poverty through
massive federal spending fueled the creation of the
coalition. Starting in the mid-1960s, the federal
government directed billions of dollars to
neighborhood groups, convinced that they knew better
than Washington what their respective communities
needed.
The federal funds, eventually supplemented by state and local tax
dollars, helped conjure a universe of
government-funded community groups that ran
everything from job-training programs to
voter-registration drives to subsidized housing
programs to mortgage counseling efforts.
Leaders of these social-services groups became advocates,
unsurprisingly, for government-funded solutions to
social problems. To defend and expand their turf,
organizers began heading into the political arena,
wielding the influence they had accumulated in
neighborhoods to build bases of political support.
Soon, in cities from New York to Chicago to Cleveland to Los
Angeles, the road to electoral success increasingly
ran through the government-funded social-services
sector.
"The nonprofit service sector has never been richer, more
powerful," former welfare recipient Theresa
Funiciello wrote in her 1993 book "Tyranny of
Kindness". "Except to the poor, poverty is a
mega-business."
Over time, the advocates became expert at turning the machinery of
government in their favor. In 1977, Congress passed
the Community Reinvestment Act at the urging of
advocacy groups that claimed banks were redlining --
that is, refusing to do business in -- many
low-income neighborhoods.
To short-circuit such accusations from community groups, banks
shoveled money into programs administered by
community activists like the controversial
Association of Community Organizations for Reform
Now (ACORN). In 2000, a Senate subcommittee
estimated that CRA-related deals between banks and
community groups pumped nearly $10 billion into the
nonprofit sector.
Gradually, the advocacy groups aligned with another rising player
in the big-government coalition -- public employee
unions, whose path to power began slowly in the late
1950s.
The key moment occurred when the American Federation of State,
County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) persuaded
New York City mayor Robert Wagner, who saw the
federation's members as potential political allies,
to give municipal workers collective bargaining
rights. Other states and cities quickly followed, as
did the federal government in 1962.
These deals precipitated an era of turmoil resulting first in
strikes and later in a concentrated effort by unions
in state capitals and municipal council chambers,
and in grassroots efforts in local elections, to
select political leaders sympathetic to their aims.
These unions were almost invariably advocates of
bigger government and higher taxes, which swelled
their union rolls and increased their power, and
soon they joined forces with advocacy groups seeking
the same kind of expanding government.
For a long time the power that these groups were gathering in
cities and states was largely overlooked or
dismissed as 'local' politics. But by the dawn of
the 21st century it became clear that this coalition
is more than just a local political movement.
Politicians loyal to it had seized power in once-prosperous states
like California and New York. And then in 2008 this
coalition captured the ultimate prize when one of
its own won the White House.
Steven Malanga is
senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author
of "Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the
American Taxpayer."