President Obama with Yosi Sergant

Press release from Judicial Watch:

“(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it obtained more documents from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the NEA’s controversial August 10 conference call encouraging artists to create work that promotes the Obama agenda.  The documents consist of internal NEA emails indicating the idea for the NEA propaganda effort grew out the Obama campaign while also providing new details regarding White House involvement.  The Corporation for National and Community Service, which runs the AmeriCorps program, was represented during the call.  The agencies and the White House were supposedly promoting the administration’s United We Serve political initiative.  The emails include the actual conference call invitation, which details the controversial policy agenda that was being promoted.  (The controversial call was first uncovered by www.BigGovernment.com. Other documents about the call were first released last week by Judicial Watch.) 

“The following are email excerpts:  (more…)

Big Hollywood today reveals the extensive proof that shows the White House used the National Endowment for the Arts to push a political agenda favorable to President Obama. But it gets worse: the Administration lied about it, and tried to cover it up.

You already know the background: an NEA spokesman participated in a conference call designed to encourage artists to further Obama’s legislative agenda. This was revealed back in August at Big Hollywood. What is new today is the full transcript of the call — and how clearly the NEA was involved in urging artists to propagandize for Obama.

Naturally, the NEA and the Obama administration denied this. According to the Los Angeles Times (in a blog post, of course, and not an actual newsprint story), the NEA denied any purpose to further a legislative agenda:

The NEA issued a statement saying that it took part in the conference to help inform arts organizations about opportunities to sponsor volunteer service projects themselves, or have their members take part in other volunteer efforts. “This call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda, and any suggestions to that end are simply false,” the statement said. (more…)

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).

The goal: To motivate a group of hand-picked pro-Obama artists (grant recipients or those wanting grants) to push the President’s flagging agenda, especially health care — and to funnel this promotion through the ACORN related- Serve.gov website. 

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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. (more…)