Who is Saul Alinsky?
Saul Alinsky campaigned to clean up the slums in Chicago and fought segregation and abuses by banks. Back in the early '80s, Barack Obama was trained by *gasp!* an Alinsky-style organizer.
So now it's 2012, and Republicans are demonizing Saul Alinsky, and doing their best to do the same to President Obama, who was but a child living in Hawaii when Alinsky died. They never met. Just as Sarah Palin and others attempted to do with their embarrassingly lame Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright fear tactics, the GOP loves to push the Alinsky link, which they hope will elicit similar Pavlovian responses from voters.
And recently, someone by the name John M. Howting tried to "Breitbart" a Harlem community organizer with a James O'Keefe-ish scheme... and someone by the name of John M. Howting also works for GOP Rep. Thad McCotter. Coincidence?
(Via. Click on image to enlarge)
Thad who, you ask? Thad McCotter, former presidential candidate.
Could there be two John M. Howtings? Did a staffer for Rep Thad McCotter try to pull an O'Keefe sting on Manhattan Together, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national organizing group founded by community organizer-- wait for it-- Saul Alinsky. Dun-dun-dunnn!
In New York, the Industrial Areas Foundation has organized for 30 years. With the help of Republican and Democratic mayors, it has built thousands of affordable single-family homes... It worked closely with the federal prosecutor Rudolph W. Giuliani to fight crime in East New York, Brownsville and East Harlem, and with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to construct a beautiful school campus in the South Bronx.
Rep. McCotter mourned the loss of Andrew Breitbart, so it's not a leap to think one of his staffers would feel likewise, and maybe even try to fill Breitbart's shoes. And try John M. Howting did. He walked into a community organizing office (again, Manhattan Together, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation) in East Harlem and started asking questions.
If he formed a union, could his fellow workers join with the employer to shake down politicians for more money?
At this point, Rhea Byer-Ettinger, an organizer for Manhattan Together, felt her internal baloney detector go on red alert. “Beep, beep, beep,” she said. “I said to him: ‘Well, that’s not how we work. Tell me, why are you asking me about that?’ ”
This is the anatomy of a political sting.
Nothing this fellow said was true. Public records reveal that his real name is John M. Howting. He is active in the conservative movement and does not want to organize a union. His company — for which he built an elaborate Web site — and its officials do not exist. Ms. Byer-Ettinger suspects that he secretly recorded their conversation.
So is this McCotter's guy? I report, you decide.
Much more here.
H/t: @Litzz11
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