BigGovernment.com’s next big investigative report – Update: NEA

Last week, we had a few BigGovernment.com videos dropped concerning the – let’s call them interesting – ACORN employee activities. Speculation is starting this Sunday afternoon about possible revelations from Andrew Breitbart concerning the National Endowment for the Arts, or Buffy Wicks, or the SEUI, or maybe something else this week.

My original post continues below, but here is the post from Mike Flynn and John Nolte posted at 6:43 p.m. – either 15 minutes or 3 hours and 15 minutes after my original post. The post is specific to the NEA and mentions Wicks. The last two paragraphs..

So what did happen on that call? Was the NEA coordinating with the White House to push their agenda on a group of artists eager for and reliant upon the NEA for grants, or is the NEA telling the truth that this call “was not a means to promote any legislative agenda”?

Tomorrow at noon ET, explosive new information will answer that question and raise many others.

Update: Malkin has more and AJ at Strata-Sphere also writing.

Original post continues…

So here’s a wrap-up of the scuttlebutt.

Patrick Courrielche over at BigHollywoood wrote about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) getting involved with promoting the Obama agenda on Aug. 25.

Some speculate it may be an NEA bombshell, but I don’t think corruption at the NEA is going to be a big story. Nobody will care all that much, unless it is super-revealing. My opinion on the NEA? They should not be funded with one dime from the federal government. From Courrielche’s piece…

… I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and art community luminaries “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.”

Now admittedly, I’m a skeptic of BIG government. In my view, power tends to overreach whenever given the opportunity. It’s a law of human nature that has very few exceptions. That said, it felt to me that by providing issues as a cynosure for inspiration to a handpicked arts group – a group that played a key role in the President’s election as mentioned throughout the conference call – the National Endowment for the Arts was steering the art community toward creating art on the very issues that are currently under contentious national debate; those being health care reform and cap-and-trade legislation. Could the National Endowment for the Arts be looking to the art community to create an environment amenable to the administration’s positions?

buffy-wicksFrom there, speculation surround Buffy Wicks, White House director of Public Engagement who also was one of the organizers of the conference call mentioned in Courrielche’s piece. A comment with the screen name iowahawk over at Ace of Spades (comment #12) states that he spoke with Breitbart and it was going to be really good, and then posted a link to a picture of Wicks.

Not sure if the commenter iowahawk is Iowahawk, but there is no denial yet on his site.

Wicks served as the Western regional director for the Obama campaign and she also seems to be big into the phrase community organizer and was not happy with the Democrat response to removing Saddam Hussein from Iraq.

Back to Courrielche…

The people running the conference call and rallying the group to get active on these issues were Yosi Sergant, the Director of Communications for the National Endowment for the Arts; Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement; Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for United We Serve; Thomas Bates, Vice President of Civic Engagement for Rock the Vote; and Michael Skolnik, Political Director for Russell Simmons.

Patterico’s Pontifications notes Breitbart called out the main stream media on Sept. 7 for failing to due their job. …

When the next big scandal hits – and it will, and it most certainly won’t come from traditional journalism – all eyes will be on “Pinch” Sulzberger to see if he does his job.

So, whatcha got for us this week Andrew?

Others mention SEIU, but who the heck knows?

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

13 Comments

  1. Dimsdale on September 21, 2009 at 5:47 am

    Like men wearing bowties, I find it difficult to trust alleged professional women named Buffy, Muffyor Missy (or any name better applied to pets and cheerleaders)….



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