Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
CFIF on Twitter CFIF on YouTube
More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

Liberty Update

CFIFs latest news, commentary and alerts delivered to your inbox.
Sign Up for ObamaCare, Become a Union Member? Print
By Ashton Ellis
Thursday, October 16 2014
If true, Anthony’s allegations reveal a brazen scheme to use federal taxpayer dollars to swell the ranks of a private labor union.

A federal lawsuit in Texas alleges that an ObamaCare contractor used taxpayer money to sign-up union members in addition to enrolling people in the controversial health insurance program.

Cedric Anthony, the plaintiff, alleges that he was initially hired by Southern United Neighborhoods (SUN) to work as an ObamaCare navigator.

Navigators are temporary employees who are trained to assist individuals in applying for health insurance on an ObamaCare exchange. Funding for their position comes from grants sent by the federal Department of Health and Human Services to private contractors.

Anthony claims that his work for SUN included ObamaCare navigation at community events in the greater Houston area.

However, Anthony alleges that his boss also directed him to visit public school cafeterias and attempt to recruit workers to join the United Labor Unions Local 100 (ULU). According to an attorney representing both SUN and ULU, the two entities share office space in five cities: Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Little Rock. In addition, ULU is listed as a subgrantee of SUN under navigator funding data.

The amount of money is significant. Public records show that SUN received $1.35 million to navigate people into ObamaCare.

If true, Anthony’s allegations reveal a brazen scheme to use federal taxpayer dollars to swell the ranks of a private labor union.

It gets worse.

Cedric Anthony currently works for Battleground Texas, a group organized in 2013 by liberal activists to help “Turn Texas Blue” by mobilizing large swaths of core constituencies of the Democratic Party. 

Publicly, Battleground Texas is focused on large-scale voter registration drives, but a Labor Union Report story from November 2013 shows that the group is also sharing data with supposedly non-partisan, pro-ObamaCare enrollment outfits like Enroll America.

For example, an organizer with Enroll America’s Texas chapter acknowledges sharing individuals’ health insurance data with Battleground Texas, which then merges it with its own voter registration data.

It is this kind of data-sharing that makes mobilization efforts far more effective. At most, voter registration cards reveal only names, addresses and party preferences. But adding other demographic details such as race, age, income, marital status, household size, medical history and the like gives operatives a much richer source of information to mine when putting together a campaign strategy.

Summarizing an investigative video by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, the blog highlights how freely liberal activists blur the lines between political recruitment and enrolling people into government programs. 

A Battleground Texas field director refers to her employer as a “Democratic organization.” Another person says it is a “political action committee.”

None of this seems to trouble the Enroll America organizer, who calls the data integration efforts an exercise in “cross-pollination.”

Speaking freely among themselves the discussants apparently see nothing wrong with exposing private information given during a health insurance enrollment meeting to political operatives who otherwise would have no way to access it. Lost is any notion of a duty of confidentiality to people who were never told their private health and financial records would be made available to a political action committee. 

Then again, it’s not clear that Cedric Anthony sees a problem with this cross-pollination arrangement either.

His lawsuit is about trying to recover overtime pay for work he did as an ObamaCare navigator and a union recruiter.

The irony of all this is that perhaps none of this renewed focus on Battleground Texas’ improper dealings would have come to light if the organizations responsible for paying Cedric Anthony for his work had simply followed normal wage-and-hour laws.

But this is precisely the point. Organizations that refuse to police themselves can’t be trusted to protect others. 

Notable Quote   
 
Happy Easter!…[more]
 
 
— From All of Us at CFIF
 
Liberty Poll   

Do you believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately reject the new Biden administration automobile emissions rule as beyond the scope of administrative agency authority?