Quick Fact: Beck falsely claims "SEIU" is "number-one visitor to the White House"
On January 7, Glenn Beck falsely suggested that Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andy Stern is the "number-one visitor to the White House." Politifact has rated Beck's prior claim that Stern was "the most frequent visitor at the White House" as "false."
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From the January 7 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program:
BECK: Don't you see how well-orchestrated this is to overwhelm the system. You can't tell me that organized labor, with as much as they control this country now, that the number-one visitor to the White House and meeting with President Obama is SEIU. And they're against this, and their case is "we will not be able to afford the Cadillac health tax. We'll not be able to afford the health plans for these pensions if you pass this." There shouldn't be anything else on the agenda. If he's meeting with President Obama -- SEIU and organized labor -- they shouldn't talk about anything else, every time. "You must not pass that. You must not pass that. You must not pass that."
Fact: SEIU's Stern is "not the number-one visitor to the White House"
Politifact rated as "false" Beck's previous claim that SEIU's Andy Stern was "the most frequent visitor at the White House. In a December 7, 2009, post, Politifact reported:
We found the source of Beck's claim. When the White House released its first batch of visitor logs on Oct. 30, 2009, as part of a pledge to bring more transparency to the White House, Stern's name did indeed appear 22 times, more than anyone else listed, including Clinton, who was listed three times.
But that's not the whole story.
Stern led the pack for the first data release, which covered visits from Jan. 20, 2009 to July 31, 2009. But he was surpassed by several other individuals in the second release, which updates the data through Aug. 31, 2009 (and which was made public more than a week before Beck aired his comment).
Among those who visited more frequently than Stern, according to the combination of the two logs, were Lewis (Lee) Sachs, counselor to Treasury Secetary Timothy Geithner, with 92 visits; associate attorney general Tom Perrelli, with 49; Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski with 47; Spencer Overton, principal deputy assistant attorney general, with 38; and Health and Human Services office of health reform director Jeanne Lambrew, with 27. (Stern visited twice more during the period covered by the second batch of data, giving him a total of 24 visits.) [Politifact, [12/7/09]
Stern appeared four times* in the visitor logs the White House subsequently released on December 30 for the period from September 16 through September 30.
Organized labor certainly has much of Obama's ear, that is undeniable. Why is MMfA wanting to keep that like quiet or downplay it somehow? It is what it is. Liberals love the isn't what it is.
It's called, you know, reality.
And as I said, all the others were staff in Obama's administration, so they should actually be classified differently for those who keep tabs on this sort of thing.
So what anyway, so this union guy visits the WH a lot, it's Obama's WH now, he can have anyone over for as many times as he wants.
Beck should try it some time. And you should listen to the truth some other time.
Why the quotes for "true"? And where did I say that?
Another complication is that the first batch of data -- covering the period from Jan. 20, 2009, to July 31, 2009, which found Stern in the lead -- is not a complete accounting of White House visits during that period. It only includes data for visitors whose names were first requested by the public. If no one requested a specific name, that name would not appear in the database. So there's no way of knowing whether Stern actually had the most visits for that period; he simply had the most of anyone whose name was requested by the public
So, while Beck did pass along a widely reported finding as he made his point about Stern, the data it was based on was incomplete and out of date by the time of his show, and ultimately the conclusion he drew was incorrect
You wrote,
And as I said, all the others were staff in Obama's administration, so they should actually be classified differently for those who keep tabs on this sort of thing.
If you had bothered to read the article you would realize that there is no way to verify your claim. I could have been to the White House 200 times but you would never know until someone asked for me by name. Beck's claim is untrue and indefensible.
Touchy.
All right, if you think a level playing field is silly, let's tilt the field in favor of the worker, for a change. Corporations have had the advantage long enough.
Wow, so what branch of government is Stern, looks to me that the above are employees of the government, where as Stern is a Visitor.
I trust you've been updating your dictionary w/ right ON's 're-definition-of-the-day' updates, Col. He gets mockery if you don't keep up with his new meanings for stuff.
PLEASE, please continue to focus on SEIU and ACORN, GOP. The country desperately needs the right to marginalize itself by harping on irrelevant issues.
Randy
Not trying to imply that they havent done anything....just asking for a clarification.
Would anyone be uncomfortable if Steve Ballmer had visited 0 as often as Stern AND the Feds made a new committment to Microsoft Office? How about the president of RIM (Research In Motion) and a sudden government interest in Blackberry's?
Stern is obviously being given very high level access to 0 because he took money from dues paying union members and gave it to 0's campaign -- a very large amount of money. Anyone who gives that much money gets paid back. Access and the Employee Forced Choice Act are the paybacks.
Is no one on this site concerned about the scale of in-your-face corruption going on? [Lousiana - $300M,Nebraska - free Medicaid forever,SEUI campaign contributions,8% increase in pork in revenue bills].
Honest open government seems to have been thrown under the bus.
I would say kudos to Obama, though, for making his visitors public. I haven't noticed Jeff Gannon's name on the list. Was he mentioned in Rove's divorce settlement?