A Judicial Watch investigation has revealed that taxpayer funding of the Latino group the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) more than doubled after President Obama gave one of their vice presidents a White House job.
Obama hired Cecilia Muñoz in 2009 to be his director of intergovernmental affairs, giving her an "ethics waiver" because bringing her on board violated the president's own rule against hiring lobbyists.
The former La Raza lobbyist wasted little time in tapping into the funding conduits of the federal government to benefit her former employer:
She also brought in a steady flow of government cash that's allowed the Washington D.C.-based group to expand nationwide and promote its leftist, open-borders agenda via a network of community organizations dedicated to serving Latinos.Among them are a variety of local groups that provide social services, housing counseling and farm worker assistance as well as publicly-funded charter schools that promote radical Chicano curriculums. Judicial Watch published a special report on this a few years ago.
This week a JW probe has uncovered details of the alarming increase in federal funding that these NCLR groups have received since Muñoz joined the Obama Administration. In fact, the government cash more than doubled the year Muñoz joined the White House, from $4.1 million to $11 million.
Not surprisingly, a big chunk of the money (60%) came from the Department of Labor, which is headed by a former California congresswoman (Hilda Solis) with close ties to the La Raza movement. Since Obama named her Labor Secretary, Solis has launched a nationwide campaign to protect illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. Just this week Solis penned declarations with Guatemala and Nicaragua to preserve the rights of their migrants.
The NCLR also received additional taxpayer dollars from other federal agencies in 2010, the JW probe found. The Department of Housing and Urban Development doled out $2.5 million for housing counseling, the Department of Education contributed nearly $800,000 and the Centers for Disease Control a quarter of a million.La Raza affiliates also made out like bandits with the taxpayer's coin:
Additionally, NCLR affiliates nationwide raked in tens of millions of government grant and recovery dollars last year thanks to the Muñoz factor. An offshoot called Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) saw its federal funding nearly double to $18.3 million following Muñoz' appointment."La Raza" means "The Race" or "The Community." That the federal government is supporting such blatantly racialist organizations is one reason that Obama's share of the Latino vote in 2012 will probably be close to what it was in 2008.
American Thinker
