Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on September 21, 2009

Like I’ve opined a number of times, with the ACORN prostitution/tax fraud sting still fresh in our minds, that was just the tip of the iceberg with ACORN’s and its affiliates’ corruption and indoctrination in our government. This time, the poopy stuff is hitting the fan over the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA.

This is complicated, and there are a number of people involved that you may have never heard of before, so links and portions of a number of exposés are provided below. I recommend you pursue all links for a full understanding of what is being reported on this new exposé of lawlessness.

From Big Government, Explosive NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda

Also at Big Government, a video explaining this new revealed cover-up: ‘Hannity’: Breitbart, Courrielche Discuss NEA/Obama Connection

President Obama with the NEA’s Yosi Sergant | Photo credit BigGovernment.com

Ben Shapiro, Big Government, Demand Congressional Investigation: NEA Conference Broke Laws

In the aftermath of the Andrew Breitbart/James O’Keefe/Hannah Giles-broken ACORN scandal, President Obama and his allies in Congress have distanced themselves from the community organizing goliath. Congress has cut off funds, and Obama has refused to speak about the matter. End of story, right?

Wrong.

There’s only one problem: the ACORN mentality – pinpointing and mobilizing particular groups in support of a radical-left agenda – is no longer restricted to government-funded private non-profits like ACORN. The ACORN mentality now dominates the government itself. Taxpayer dollars are being used by elected officials to encourage the deification of President Obama and his agenda. And one of the chief organs of the government propaganda machine is the National Endowment for the Arts.

Let’s start from the beginning. On August 25, artist Patrick Courrielche told the story of a conference call he attended on August 10. That conference call was hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The goal of the conference call: “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.” The call would push “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!”…

Shapiro reveals lengthy, shocking information about our White House that had my jaw dropping, and concludes with this:

Violation of the Anti-Lobbying Act carries punishment: “Any person who makes an expenditure … shall be subject to a civil penalty of not less than $10,000 and not more than $100,000 for each such expenditure.” And that’s not all: “An imposition of a civil penalty under this subsection does not prevent the United States from seeking any other remedy that the United States may have for the same conduct that is the basis for the imposition of such civil penalty.” In other words, criminal prosecution is available here.

Every government employee involved in this conference call should be fined and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We need a full Congressional investigation – we already know that it infects members of the White House staff, including Buffy Wicks. The transformation of our government into a self-entrenched continuous campaigning machine must be stopped now.

From Rush Limbaugh, New Audio Shows White House Using NEA to Push Obama Agenda | EIB Broadcast, September 21, 2009:

Do you remember that NEA phone call? I think it was back in August, the 21st or the 25th, and it featured basically a coordination from the White House to the National Endowment for the Arts to promote Obama’s health care and parts of his domestic agenda. One of the artists on that call got hold of Breitbart and said they’re turning the National Endowment for the Arts and www.Serve.gov, the latest website out of the White House, into political instruments, and there are four pieces written on this at BigGovernment.com. But all it really exposes up ’til now is that the NEA was lying about their coordination with the Obama White House on spreading propaganda. This is the thing that George Will had a comment on This Week, said some laws were broken in this call. Then after some attention was focused on this they announced that the National Endowment for the Arts director of communications Yosi Sargent had been reassigned. They said he was fired, but he was actually just reassigned.

A week later George Will wrote a Washington Post column on this and understandably a lot of people are infuriated about the politicization of the NEA and turning it into an Obama campaign. I don’t know why anybody is surprised about this. Folks, the private sector of this country is being gobbled up like Pacman on steroids. The idea the Obama administration would be using some left-wing agency like the NEA to spread his domestic propaganda is not a shock. There hasn’t been any evidence up ’til now, though, of Obama being involved in it, just the NEA. But that is until today. Now, the BigGovernment.com website has the full audio and a full transcript. It’s 44 pages. There are 25 different audio sound bites. We’re putting together a couple of key elements of the sound bites from this page and we hope to have it in the next hour, but the transcript and the full audio at BigGovernment.com. Apparently the full transcript here shows the White House orchestrating this through a woman named Buffy Wicks with the White House Office of Public Engagement. Buffy Wicks works under Valerie Jarrett, who is at the right hand of Barack Obama, The Almighty.

Also in the call, orchestrating service in the name of Obama to the NEA — you gotta go out and serve, you gotta advance the agenda in service, the name of Obama, Nell Abernathy, director of outreach of the Corporation of National and Community Service, which is the independent agency that is the parent of the president’s United We Serve initiative. Now, they got rid of Yosi Sergant, they threw him under the bus, they reassigned him within but what happens is by getting rid of this guy they’re trying to cover up the fact the White House is involved in using the NEA to spread Obama propaganda and as George Will has speculated, there have to be laws being violated here. The White House and Valerie Jarrett admit that by reassigning Yosi that something was wrong, a tantamount admission by their action. But the White House it turns out, according to Breitbart’s website, is in charge of the call, has ties to ACORN, even. We know that www.Serve.gov, we mentioned last week, all it is is an end run now that ACORN is in trouble, Serve.gov simply, if you call in there, if you go to their website, they’ll redirect you to various front community organizations all tied to the White House designed to spread the Obama agenda.

Now, this Buffy Wicks babe, who works very closely with Valerie Jarrett, and there’s nothing she’s doing that Obama doesn’t know about, Buffy Wicks organized the Walmart boycotts over the years, which were shakedowns. Buffy Wicks used ACORN to help protest Walmart. The legal and political scrutiny here is going to be damning if people go look at this. I don’t expect the Drive-Bys in the State-Controlled Media to pick this up but it’s just the latest drop. Buffy Wicks, the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, she is key to all this because previously the only person identified was an NEA, National Endowment for the Arts underling but now there’s a key White House person in Valerie Jarrett’s office heard on the phone calls orchestrating artists to go out and do it for Obama. Now, this is a clear violation of the law, and the tapes of the calls are there, it’s a huge posting, 44 pages, 25 audio sound bites. This is just the latest in the videotapes with the pimp and the prostitute running in and exposing ACORN for what they are.

Now, the White House central to this call, the White House central to this operation, according to Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com. There’s also a bunch of pro-Obama art that was written for this, and drawn, and created and that came from the phone call from Buffy Wicks to all these artists who are being urged to go out and win one for Obama. It’s pretty damning, and it’s much too large and complicated here to expose it all on the radio show, but we are putting together some of the key audio of the phone call from Buffy Wicks who works right there with Valerie Jarrett. So in a nutshell, what you have here is the White House using the NEA to more or less demand that they publicly support Obama and his health care and his agenda. Now, the NEA gets all their grant money from the federal government. They were threatened here vaguely that money might stop. They were asked to produce some pro-Obama artwork. And I’m thinking, why wouldn’t they already be doing that? (laughing) That’s what they do. So go to BigGovernment.com and you’ll find everything…

…Say, folks, do you remember when it was revealed that the Bush Department of Education had paid Armstrong Williams something like $241,000 to help promote the No Child Left Behind Act? Remember that? Exactly what is happening with the Obama White House and the NEA. And when it was discovered that Armstrong Williams had taken 241 grand, Henry Waxman introduced H.R. 373 which would make such a thing completely against the law. Do you remember that? I do. That’s why I have the presence of mind to mention it to you now.

From John Nolte, Big Government: Propaganda, Health Care and ACORN: Full context of NEA Conference Call Reveals Disturbing Pattern

At first glance, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) conference call of August 10th, 2009 sounds innocent enough because it’s supposedly been organized by Michael Skolnik, political director for Russell Simmons and someone not officially associated with any government agency. Skolnik appears to be acting independently as a concerned citizen and to have taken it upon himself to gather together a group of artists and art organizations hoping to move them towards “national service.” And how nice of the White House, the federal government and the NEA to make the time to participate in the call and aid this group of American artists motivated to help their country and community.

But this is only how things appear.

All evidence points to the fact that the conference call was a ruse, a front for a White House using Skolnik as a kind of beard in order to put an innocent spin on their abuse of the NEA and two non-partisan volunteer organizations (United We Serve – an initiative overseen by The Corporation for National and Community Service – a federal agency, and the White House’ Office of Public Engagement).

Documentation gathered by Big Hollywood’s Patrick Courrielche and the Washington Times, coupled with a newly revealed audio recording of the full conference call, points to eight troubling facts that put the full context of the call in a very disturbing light.

1. The NEA did not want it known they had any part in organizing the call. When the Washington Times asked Yosi Sergant, the NEA’s then-Director of Communications (he was “reassigned” on Sept. 10th after the story broke) about the call, he claimed the NEA was only a participant and that Skolnik had set up the call.

2. We know Sergant lied to the Washington Times. The NEA did send the email invite for the conference call. Worse, Sergant himself sent it, letting this group of artists and art organizations know the call would focus on “core areas of recovery,” starting with “health care.”

3. We know that United We Serve (with the ACORN-related Serve.gov website) claims they were merely a participant in a conference call arranged by someone they referred to as an “individual interested” in their group. It seems obvious they mean Michael Skolnik.

4. Michael Skolnik was not merely an “individual interested” in United We Serve, but in fact was asked by the White House and the NEA to round up artists on their behalf. We know this because in the newly revealed audio of the call, Skolnik says so.

5. The conference call audio makes clear that everyone addressing the artists and art organizations are fully aware they’re speaking to pro-Obama partisans; the same artists who helped the president win the 2008 election.

6. While addressing this group of Obama supporters, United We Serve, The Office of Public Engagement and the NEA repeatedly focus on four areas where “national service” is most needed … and health care always comes first.

7. We know that both Nell Abernathy of United We Serve and Buffy Wicks with The Office of Public Engagement heard and did not dispute Michael Skolnik’s opening statement asserting he had brought these artists together at the request of the White House and NEA, and that one of the goals of the call was to “push the president and push his administration.”

8. The remainder of this piece will prove a pattern shared by all three “guest” speakers: Sergant, Wicks and Abernathy:

* As mentioned above, all know this is a gathering of pro-Obama supporters.
* All make clear they want these pro-Obama artists and art organizations to funnel their activism through Serve.gov, which we now know filters activists to ACORN.
* When it comes to specific areas of activism, health care comes first.

Go to Big Government for much more information on this growing exposé… this could be Son of Watergate breaking, for those of you who remember that horrific debacle with Pres. Nixon.

Additional information:
Patterico, Big Hollywood: The NEA, The White House, The Lies and The Cover-Up
Big Hollywood: Fox News: Months Prior to NEA Conf. Call White House Met With 60 Artists ‘to promote the administration’s agenda’
The Washington Times: Revealed: Partial list of August 10 National Endowment for the Arts conference call participants and $2 million behind National Endowment for the Arts politics push
Rogers Rules, Pajamas Media: Breaking News! National Endowment for the Arts Renamed National Endowment for Propaganda. Stay Tuned. “This is Only the Beginning.”
Instapundit: ANOTHER BREITBART SCOOP: EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda.
Alvaro Alvillar, Big Hollywood: Are You Artists or Propagandists?
Jude, Big Hollywood: Buffy The Integrity Slayer
Radio Vice Online: BigGovernment.com’s next big investigative report – Update: NEA
GayPatriot: In re: NEA Scandal, What Wasn’t Recorded? (At NEA & other agencies)
Ben Shapiro, Big Government: White House Creates ACORN for the Arts
Dana Loesch, Big Government: Taxpayer Funded Serve.gov Filtering Activists to ACORN
Hans von Spakovsky and Elliot S. Berke, Big Government: Politicizing the Arts Community: What Did the White House Do Wrong?
The Lonely Conservative: Audio: White House and NEA Employees Illegally Push Partisan Agenda
Adam Baldwin, Big Hollywood: NEA Call Not Meant to ‘Promote Any Legislative Agenda’?
Patrick Courrielche, Big Hollywood: Statement on the Recording of the August 10 NEA Conference Call and EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda and The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?
Cogent Nirvana: ALARMING: EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda
UrbanGrounds: NEA: The Next ACORN to Fall?
Doug O’Brien, Big Government: NEA Conference Call: Get ‘em While They’re Young, Mr. President
Michelle Malkin: The White House, the National Endowment for the Arts, and more do-it-yourself vetting; Updated: NEA, you lie! and Speaking of Obam-ified “art”…
American Power: ACORN, NEA, and Andrew Breitbart’s PWNING of MSM
Andrew Klavan, City Journal: The Art of Corruption
Bucks Right: Well Endowed: Is The NEA Story Too Tedious?
Riehl World View: Connected: The NEA, ACORN And Obama’s Office Of Faith-Based Outreach
Brutally Honest: Is the NEA conference call scandal about to go wider? (UPDATED) (AGAIN)
Fire Andrea Mitchell!: National Endowment for the Arts caught promoting ObamaCARE
Publius, Big Government: Limbaugh: White House Using Fed Arts Agency to Push Agenda
Doug O’Brien, Big Government: Politics Aside, Propaganda Isn’t Pretty
Diary of a Mad Conservative: The secret party behind the Democrats and Some of the deepest roots to the great ACORN scam
Mike Flynn, Big Government: Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda: The ABC’s of the NEA Conference Call
The Powers That Be: Dolce & Obama: ‘Hope’ is the Latest Fashion Trend at the Emmys
Bret Jacobsen, Big Government: Will SEIU Take Care of Your Grandmother?
Hot Air: Did Obama use the NEA to stump for ObamaCare? and Media starting to notice ObamaCare’s false promises?

Categories: Entertainment, Celebrities, Law & Constitution, Media & Communication, Social and Political Climate
Tags: ACORN, ACORN scandal, Andrew Breitbart, Anti-Lobbying Act, Big Government, Breitbart scoop, Buffy Wicks, Congress, Michael Skolnik, National Endowment for the Arts, NEA, NEA scandal, Obama, ObamaCare, partisan agenda, Patrick Courrielche, political, politics, propaganda, Rush Limbaugh, Russell Simmons, United We Serve, Valerie Jarrett, White House, White House Office of Public Engagement, White House scandal, Yosi Sergant