IS PRESIDENT OBAMA THE NEW "BOSS TWEED"?

IS PRESIDENT OBAMA THE NEW "BOSS" TWEED?

Dear reader , this blog will be a series of blogs due to the background information that I need to help refresh or inform the reader with. I will try to keep the blog down to about three different entries, so please bear with me, and I hope that this one will be informative as well as thought provoking.

I struggled initially with the question above, as I considered "what do community organizers do"? or" have we forgotten the lessons of Tammany Hall?" or closer " Is ACORN the new Tammany Hall?" as alternative question caps. They all are covered in this blog.

Tammany Hall turned out to be a community organization in New York City that was the focus of a series of major scandals over a period of close to one hundred years. The organization itself was a very powerful political machine that tried to present itself as a philanthropic group. This weak veil as a community organization never fooled anyone halfway familiar with its structure or leaders.

The organization itself started off innocently enough, and was founded in 1789.It was named loosely after a Native American leader. I suspect it was one of those many "mysterious" men's semi secret societies that our founders had such a penchant for. Aaron Burr eventually got control of it and it began to assume its political nature.The group eventually is credited with getting him elected Vice President and perhaps even for the defeat of John Adams for a re election bid.

Eventually over time ( trying to just get the highlights here), the group became an affiliate of the Democrat party. The zenith of power came in the late 1840's and 1850's with the huge influx of Irish Catholic Immigrants into New York. During this time a man by the name of William M "Boss " Tweed used its power to get elected to the New York Senate. He was the Grand Sachem and had his ward bosses exercise strick control over the New York City Burroughs and secure the Irish support. At this time NYC was broken down into wards and districts which were tightly regulated. According to Wikipedia, this community organization had three forms of patronage 1. " "to provide the means of of physical existence, in times of emergency: food, coal, rent money, or a job". 2. " it served as a powerful intermediary between the immigrants and an unfamiliar state"3. it "served as a social integrator for immigrants" ... this led to to the questionable practice of "special and accelerated naturalization" ( for voting purposes ). The Irish in exchange always voted ( early and often) in a huge block

Over time, the Irish immigrants ,who tended to be very involved with politics prior to arrival in America, had a "propensity to use violence to control the polls". I guess thuggery and voting irregularities are not a recent happenstance...

"Boss" Tweed exercised control over huge sums of money, contracts, and projects during his tenure.During a criminal investigation laborers were found to have been paid over $30,000 for a days work for example ($30k in those days was an astronomical sum). Needless to say these contracts were awarded to friends, associates and patrons. Boss Tweed of course skimmed off huge sums for real estate, building, transportation, etc contracts. It is estimated that he may have bilked New York for as much as $200 million ( more than a billion in today's money) He eventually was ousted by reformers but the organization continued on

Eventually FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt brought down this community organization to a point it virtually disappeared, by using their own political machines and the power of the Federal Gov't to grant or withhold federal aid to NY during troubled times. Remember the Roosevelt Family was a very powerful political force very similar to the Kennedy family.

Tammany Hall draped itself as a group dedicated to helping the poor, the disenfranchised, the homeless, the immigrant and the working class, and did in fact give large sums of money in doing so. It can be argued that they represented the first welfare organization and made New York the first welfare state in American history. Their leaders stressed how they helped the community and how they were bringing all people together into the American Dream. It can be also argued that they set up a belief system in an "entitlement system" for food, housing, jobs etc.

The catch: they did it not with their money, but with the public's. Moreover, they did so strictly as a power grab and without true regard as to whether the lot of their beneficiaries ever truly improved their lot or station in life. It was a medieval feudal system that the Irish surely would have recognised in Ireland. It was about making Tammany Hall the center of power and structure in New York, circumventing all normal channels and rules of law.


(will add more in the next couple of days)