CoDA’s “Educate the Idiots” Members Biggest Funders of Protect Colorado’s Future’s Campaign of Deception

If you haven’t seen or heard it by now, Colorado’s “progressive” Democrat coalition got a little more behind-the-scenes exposure yesterday than they would like. A series of slowly leaked documents by Face The State are uncovering the inner workings of the coalition – known as the Colorado Democracy Alliance (CoDA). The light of the day has given us some useful insights.

We are starting to see what the Left’s agenda for Colorado is, why they have coordinated the spending of so much money to take over the state legislature, the governor’s office, and so much more. No document has received quite as much attention as this one:

In a confidential internal memorandum obtained by Face The State (PDF), the Colorado Democracy Alliance outlines a roster of “operatives” who worked for Democratic victory in the 2006 general election. The document outlines specific tasks for various members of the state’s liberal infrastructure, including a campaign to “educate the idiots,” assigned to the state’s AFL-CIO union. Among the operation’s intended targets: “minorities, GED’s, drop-outs.”

Individuals named in the document, marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” “for internal use only,” and “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE,” are high-level elected Democrats including House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, former Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, as well as Gov. Bill Ritter’s press aide and former campaign chief Evan Dreyer. All are specially marked as “off-the-record or covert.”

That’s right: Gov. Bill Ritter’s spokesman, and the two top Democrat leaders in the state legislature (at least at the time). What do they think about minorities being called “idiots”? Some intrepid member of the press will have to ask them. Or maybe they should ask the CoDA “strategy group” members who populate the media-manipulating organ ProgressNow, the phony watchdog Colorado Ethics Watch, and more?

Rocky Mountain News blogger Bridget Johnson takes interest in the fact that the so-called “Educate the Idiots” campaign was assigned to the AFL-CIO:

Let’s read between the lines of this fair campaign:

* Is it really for the welfare of the worker, as the union elite claim with every campaign, or “increasing CO union power”?
* How powerful is your campaign message if you feel the smart people just won’t vote for you?
* And — this is as obvious as pie — you’re calling minorities “idiots”?????????? Who, they apparently believe, can be hoodwinked to serve any cause just by appealing to said alleged idiocy????

YIKES!

Yikes, indeed. Or as Slapstick Politics wryly observes: “change we can believe in.”

But there’s more. As another leaked document shows us (H/T Okie Campaigns), CoDA leaders and Democrat campaign officials frequently met at the Colorado Education Association (CEA) headquarters. John Stocks, deputy executive director of the National Education Association – with which CEA is affiliated – is listed on CoDA’s exclusive invitation list.

What’s ironic is that NEA/CEA’s money overwhelmingly comes from the dues of teachers and other education employees. How many of them might not want their hard-earned money going to subsidize a condescending “educate the idiots” campaign? Do NEA/CEA leaders really represent their members who teach African-American, Hispanic, and Native American students when they play host to a coordinated backroom campaign that believes children of color are “idiots”?

What do AFL-CIO, NEA/CEA, and SEIU (Service Employees International Union) have in common that is of such relevance to Colorado voters? Well, first, they are all “institutional members” of CoDA. But this year they also happen to be the three biggest donors to the well-heeled issue committee Protect Colorado’s Culture of Corruption Future (PCF), which has ferociously attacked Colorado’s Amendment 47, Amendment 49, and Amendment 54.

PCF has raised $6.9 million to wage its campaign of perpetual deception. Of that $6.9 million, $1.3 million has come from NEA/CEA, $1.1 million has come from SEIU, and $935,000 has come from AFL-CIO. Nearly half the funds for PCF’s malicious and dishonest attacks on clean government reforms have come from these “institutional members” of the Colorado Democracy Alliance that are engaged in educating “the idiots”–their pet name for racial minorities.

One can only surmise that they imagine their current campaign of deception against Amendments 47, 49, and 54 is another attempt to “educate the idiots.” In other words, they don’t think very highly of you, Colorado voter, when they appropriate the images of police officers, firefighters, nurses, and teachers to scare you with lies, or when they falsely claim that “multinational corporations” are working against them.

Do the people of Colorado want agenda-driven special interest groups committed to “increasing CO union power,” groups that think many among us are “idiots,” forcing their lies down our throats? Maybe the shady backroom characters plotting the CoDA agenda are afraid of these amendments for the freedom, individual rights, and government ethics they promote. It sure looks that way.

For more on the Colorado Democracy Alliance and their agenda exposed in these documents, check out The Daily Blogster. And Rocky Mountain Right has posted the rightfully indignant response of state Republican Party leaders.