As Americans deal with an the fallout of having an ACORN community organizer running the country, the scattered ACORN alums continue to infiltrate into other trusted institutions. Including Fox News. Jehmu Greene, former National Director of Project Vote currently spends her days undermining Conservative principles from her position as a Fox News contributor. Greene’s tenure at Project Vote coincided with this reporter’s stint there. Curiously, Greene’s Huffington Post bio omits the position.

In 2006 ACORN was running a massive campaign across the country to raise the minimum wage. Their efforts were tied in with Project Vote’s voter registration drive and the subsequent take over of the House of Representatives by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. As a tax exempt nonprofit, Project Vote acquired funds to run “non partisan” voter registration drives but “contracted” with partisan ACORN. This 2004 Joint Effort Agreement attempts to provide legal cover for two organizations that, during my tenure, operated seamlessly as one.

Project Vote’s was started in 1982 by Sandy Newman, a friend of Barack Obama. As Ballotpedia states:

“Project Vote (or Voting for America, Inc.[1]) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization. According to its website, Project vote provides ‘professional training, management, evaluation and technical services on a broad continuum of key issues related to voter engagement and participation in low-income and minority communities.’ It was founded in 1982 by Sandy Newman and its current executive director is Michael Slater, who has worked for Project Vote since 2004.[2],[3],[4]

“Project Vote has three primary programs, the Voter Participation Program, the Election Administration Program, and the NVRA Implementation Program…

“One of Project Vote’s most successful voter registration drives was directed by U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama in Chicago during 1992. Sandy Newman, a friend of Barack Obama’s, recruited Obama to return to Chicago and head up a massive third-party voter registration effort on behalf of Project Vote. According to Barack Obama himself, the objective of the 1992 program was to organize and assist minority and other disenfranchised communities to ‘get out to vote.’[17]. “

As Project Vote National Director, Greene was responsible for fundraising which included grant applications and contracts. This application from the Tides Foundation (a known ACORN funder that even had ACORN founder, Wade Rathke on its board), shows that Greene was the responsible party for this grant.

In 2008 when the relationship between ACORN, Obama and Project Vote came to light, Project Vote tried to scrub its history and claim no real association with ACORN. Project Vote’s own website states that it has been around since 1982 and several of its grant application reference this year, but Project Vote and Obama both maintain that he worked for a different organization that was started around 1994. This organization, they claim, of course, was never affiliated with ACORN. The screen shot below was taken in 2009  of Project Vote’s website.

Here is the current website and a copy of their 990 tax return.

See Line "L"

The question becomes “What did Jehmu Greene know and when did she know it? Management meeting notes dated 8/11/2006 that were submitted into evidence in the Pennsylvania case Moyer vs. ACORN show that Greene was heavily involved with Sandy Newman and his Wellspring Advisors.

“Jehmu – EAC [Election Assistance Commission] grants for two cities to recruit poll workers for about $17K each. Marisla Foundation giving $50K for operating support. Other still pending with amounts TBD.

ZAP [Zach Polett] – Wellspring sponsored call with 55 funders and Jehmu is following up with them. On the two EAC contracts Jehmu will bottom-line the details.”

Was the newly minted Fox News contributor aware of the shenanigans going on with ACORN, Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI) and the various tax exempt ACORN entities?” As late as 2009,  Project Vote still claimed 1982 as when they were founded. Why the sudden change after Obama was elected? Was it to protect the lies of our new president?

Was Project Vote committing fraud by lying about its inception and connection to ACORN on grant applications to foundations and even the United State Election Assistance Committee? More importantly, did the former head of Rock the Vote knowingly work with an organization with one of the worst records regarding voter fraud/voter registration fraud?

A November 2006 email from  Sandy Newman congratulates Jehmu and others:

“Whatever the election outcomes, you guys have done one hell of a job! You have an enormous amount to be proud of. Way to go.”

ACORN’s Kevin Whelan responds back to Jehmu and others saying”

“Thanks. CNN says we won in OH and MO.” and “John Fund is on Headline News saying we are Satan.”

The emphasis is mine, but what stake does a tax exempt, non partisan voter registration organization have in the outcome of an election? Project Vote’s Michael Slater chimes in to interpret John Fund’s post-Election 2006 remarks on CNN.

“John’s just saying our felonious activities have helped exposed flaws in the system that can easily be fixed with common sense reforms like making people show picture ID, register to vote in person and prove their citizenship.”

Voting rights and voter registration fraud are no laughing matter and neither is Jehmu Greene’s relationship with Fox News.  In 2008 Greene’s name was given to several Congressional and Federal investigators as someone with knowledge of ACORN’s inner workings. When the opportunity to stand up presented itself, did Greene choose to protect the Democrat establishment?

Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and other Fox News personalities have been vilified in the mainstream media and threatened in their personal lives for exposing ACORN. It is an insult to them and average Americans to have a former ACORN insider using Fox News to espouse her liberal bias. From attacking Tim Tebow to smugly “representing” blacks during segments called “Has Obama Abandoned the African-American Community?”  one has to question the judgement of Fox when folks like Walter Williams, Star Parker, Alfonzo Rachel and a host of others like them exist in the Conservative movement.

In this time when honest Americans are taunted and threatened by the likes of James P. Hoffa and slandered by the VP, our only hope is to wake up and realize that radicals have assimilated into the very core of our society. The next time we see a split screen like the one below, one can only hope that Ms. Greene is finally answering the tough question that  Fox should have the courage to ask.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t be a progressive and honestly take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. The progressive agenda is completely, utterly at odds with America’s highest law.

And no one makes this more clear than ex-SEIU official Steve Lerner, who patiently explained a few days ago how the Democrats, the unions and the Soros globalists are helping to destroy the United States from within.

The headings are my “reader’s digest” version — but the words are those of the Leftists who are plotting to destroy you, your children and your way of life. But don’t listen to me: listen to them.

W: We’re going to hear from Steve Lerner next, of SEIU, the Architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign. Currently, he’s working on partnering with unions and groups in Europe and South America, it’s building campaigns to hold financial institutions accountable.

The Left’s Goal: to Destabilize the United States Financial System

S. Lerner: It seems to me that we’re in a moment where we need to figure out in a much more, through direct action, much more concrete way how we really are trying to disrupt and create uncertainty for capital, for how corporations operate. And it may sound like that’s a crazy thing that in a moment of weakness we could deal with it, but the thing about a boom and bust economy, it is actually incredibly fragile, because it’s not based on real way, well, it’s based on gambling and all of that. And so there are actually extraordinary things that we could do right now that would start to de, destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement…

Start by Collapsing the Banks

…And for example, 10% of homeowners, going back to where you started, who are under, a quarter of all people who own a home are under water. Right? Their home is under water, they’re paying more for it than it’s worth. Ten percent of those people are now in strategic default, meaning they’re refusing to pay but they’re staying in their homes. That’s totally spontaneous. Right? They figured out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because the mort, the foreclosure’s backed up. I’m going to say I won’t pay. It’s just what business does, it’s a good, a good business decision. If you could double that number, you would make banks, put banks on the edge of insolvency again.

How the Left Will Accomplish Collapse of the System

And so the question would be, what would happen if we organized homeowners in mass to do a mortgage strike. Just say if we get, and, and, if we get half a million people to agree, we’ll all not, we’ll agree we won’t pay our mortgages, it would literally cause a new financial crisis.

Let’s go after J.P. Morgan!

…So, a bunch of us around the country are thinking about who would be a really good company to hate? We decided that would be JP Morgan Chase. …. And so we’re going to roll out over the next couple of months what will hopefully be an exciting campaign about JP Morgan Chase that is really about challenge the power of Wall Street. And so what we’re looking at is in the first week of May, we get enough people together – we’re starting now – to really have a week of action in New York with the goal of … I don’t want to go into any details because I don’t know which police agents are in the room, but the goal would be that we would roll out in New York the first week in May—

We’re Going to Foment Civil Unrest and Break Down the Civil Society

[We] …connect three ideas – that we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money; they have the money, we need to get it back; and that they’re using Bloomberg and other people in government as the vehicle to try to destroy us. And so that we need to take on those folks at the same time and that will start here. We’re going to look at a week of civil disobedience, direct action all over the city, then we’ll roll into the JP Morgan shareholder meeting, which they moved out of New York because they were afraid, I guess, of Columbus, where there’s going to be a ten state mobilization to try to shut down that meeting. And then looking at bank shareholder meetings around the country and try to create some moments like Madison, except where we’re on offense instead of defense. Where we have brave and heroic battles challenging the power of the giant corporations, and we hope to sort of inspire a much bigger movement about redistributing wealth and power in the country.

‘Create Conditions of Ungovernability’ (Overthrow the Government)

W: You were talking about why unions are so invested because of their pension plans and why ungovernability, as Frances Fox Piven and Cloward taught us, you know, poor peoples’ movements are successful when they create conditions of ungovernability. And then you win victories…

If we had a real Attorney General, Lerner would be arrested on the spot for plotting to overthrow the United States government. For waging war against the American people and our Constitution.

I hear that used to be a crime. In fact, if memory serves, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt executed a few American citizens on that charge.

Hat tip: Protein Wisdom. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

I am scheduled to speak as a panelist at CPAC 2011 on Saturday, February 12, 2011, at 11:30 AM.

My topic is “What’s the Activist Left Up To?”

As always, the Activist Left is up to promoting its radical agenda in many ways.

The Activist Left wants President Obama re-elected, so he can appoint more liberal activists to the federal courts and more radicals like former SEIU lawyer and current NLRB member Craig Becker to the federal bureaucracy

It wants Obama’s political opponents ridiculed and discredited, especially those conservative females who will not shut up, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

It wants Obamacare implemented, notwithstanding its unconstitutionality and the will of the people, with waivers for Obama supporters, like SEIU..

It wants the Obama administration to impose by regulation what it cannot sign into law.

In other words, it’s up to promoting the stealth socialist agenda.

Norman Thomas, a socialist who ran for president of the United States six times, astutely asserted:

“”The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.”

Thomas also explained that he no longer needed “to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party” because “[t]he Democrat Party has adopted our platform.”

The Democrat Party is the party that the Activist Left uses primarily to pursue its radical agenda. A look at the ACORN “People’s Platform” from the 1970′s shows that Obama’s current agenda has roots in what I call ACORN’s socialist “wish list.”

Thomas died in 1968.

Two years later Wade Rathke founded ACORN.

The idea was for ACORN to grow from a tiny acorn into a great tree.

Originally, ACORN was an acronym for Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Rathke’s long-term goal was “fundamental transformation” and he had much more than Arkansas in mind. In 2009 article, I revealed the ACORN Community Organizing Manual which outlined Rathke’s methods for organizing communities.

Under Rathke’s leadership, ACORN became a national organization and changed its named to Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

In his biography at his website, Rathke described ACORN as follows:

“The ACORN family of organizations includes radio stations (KNON and KABF), publications, housing development and ownership (ACORN Housing), and a variety of other supports for direct organizing and issue campaigns, such as Project Vote and the Living Wage Resource Center.”

Project Vote is ACORN’s voter mobilization arm. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is supposed to carry out “non-partisan” voter registration drives, to counsel voters on their right, and to litigate on behalf of voting rights – focusing on the rights of the poor and the “disenfranchised.”

DiscovertheNetworks.org asserts that

“Project Vote’s actions suggest that its true agenda is more radical” and “aimed at overwhelming, paralyzing and discrediting the voting system through fraud, protests, propaganda and vexatious litigation.”

Discover the Networks understands.

People simultaneously worked for ACORN and Project Vote, and I was one of them.

My old boss, Zach Polett, helped found ACORN, then founded Project Vote in 1982 and led it while simultaneously serving as ACORN’s political director. He’s partisan.

On Election Day 2010 ACORN, then generally viewed as politically toxic, filed for bankruptcy.

Rathke began to provide cover for the group and posted that ACORN is dead. Rathke also used a tried and true ACORN tactic by warning Congressman Darrell Issa not to investigate ACORN if he wants to be re-elected.

Rathke also looked beyond the United States and created ACORN International. The exposure of an embezzlement scandal in 2008 led to Rathke’s replacement as ACORN’s Chief Organizer, but he remains the leader of ACORN International.

To say that ACORN is dead is to focus on form instead of substance.

ACORN has morphed, not disappeared.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich described President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address as “fundamentally dishonest.” Gingrich was right about that, and Obama has been “fundamentally dishonest” about much more than the State of the Union.

He’s been “fundamentally dishonest” about his relationship with ACORN, and he’s gotten away with it.

I know about it, because ACORN recruited me.

I went from Alabama to Washington, D.C. to work for ACORN in October 2005.

When I came to Washington, D.C., I was put on the Project Vote payroll and given an ACORN email address. For practical purposes, ACORN and Project Vote were one, sharing the same office. I worked simultaneously as a Project Vote development associate and an ACORN strategic writing, research and design consultant. I did fundraising work that supported Project Vote’s voter registration program as well as designed ACORN’s 2005, 2006 and 2007 Political Operations Year End PowerPoint presentations and three state-based PowerPoint presentations.

The people who ran ACORN were radicals and clever. Marcel Reid, a former ACORN national board member and head of ACORN’s DC chapter, told me that the word socialism was not to be used. ACORN was a stealth socialist operation and it has morphed and rebranded, not disappeared.

Wade Rathke resigned from ACORN when an embezzlement scandal involving his brother Dale finally was made public, but he remains a player.

For example, Wade’s January 26, 2011 post in his blog. chieforganizer.com not only begins with a description of his friend Frances Fox Piven as “a brilliant scholar and political theorist, still vitally engaged at the cutting edges of her work while still affiliated with CUNY’s Graduate Center, and someone [Wade]I count[s] as colleague and friend over our 40 years,” but discloses that Piven had turned to him for advice on dealing with Glenn Beck and others who had focused on her.

That’s not surprising. Piven is still a member of the editorial advisory group of the magazine Social Policy, published by Wade, and a board member of Project Vote.

I know what it was like inside ACORN’s DC national office and I was surprised to receive a call from the Obama presidential campaign in late 2007.asking if this was the same Project Vote that Obama worked for in the 90′s.

Zach Polett had mentioned that Obama had worked for us and that he even supervised him during a ACORN Political staff retreat in November 2007

With that staff retreat fresh in my mind, I answered yes and sent an email to Zach Polett, Karyn Gillette, Nathan Henderson James, and Kevin Whelan stating that the campaign wanted someone to call them back regarding some media questions that were being asked at the time.

Soon after, Karyn Gillette told me that she had direct contact with the Obama campaign and had obtained their donor lists. I was given an excel spreadsheet to work with for cultivation of new donors. When I had trouble because of the duplicates, Karyn stated that she would contact her person at the campaign and see if they had another one.

Karyn Gillette also provided lists obtained from the Kerry and Clinton campaigns, as well as the 2004 DNC donor lists, and that these lists were shared with the Political directors of roughly 12 ACORN battleground states in order to raise money for a $28 million dollar (number as of 11/2007) voter registration drive.

Bottom line: ACORN had been improperly coordinating with and operating as an arm of the Obama campaign, and “the Senator from ACORN”‘s involvement with ACORN has been much more than he claimed.

BUT…during the last presidential debate Obama said:

“…with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they’ve done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn’t really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.

“It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.”

Obama’s statement that his only involvement with ACORN was representing ACORN in the motor voter case is a lie, not a fact, or, in Speaker Gingrich’s words, “fundamentally dishonest.”

ACORN is the organization with which Obama has been associated throughout his adult life, as organizer, trainer, lawyer, funder and political beneficiary…and Obama’s Achilles heel.

Stanley Kurtz wrote about ACORN, but the alphabet networks and other liberal media did not report his findings.

For example, Mr. Kurtz, in “Planting Seeds of Disaster: ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Democratic party,” revealed:

“[In 1995], as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to ACORN, and sending still more money ACORN’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported ACORN. And ACORN, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.”

Mr. Kurtz traced Obama’s ties to ACORN and the current financial crisis:

“I’ve already told the story of Obama’s close ties to ACORN leader Madeline Talbott, who personally led Chicago ACORN’s campaign to intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to low-credit customers. Using provisions of a 1977 law called the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), Chicago ACORN was able to delay and halt the efforts of banks to merge or expand until they had agreed to lower their credit standards — and to fill ACORN’s coffers to finance ‘counseling’ operations…. This much we’ve known. Yet these local, CRA-based pressure-campaigns fit into a broader, more disturbing, and still under-appreciated national picture. Far more than we’ve recognized, ACORN’s local, CRA-enabled pressure tactics served to entangle the financial system as a whole in the subprime mess. ACORN was no side-show. On the contrary, using CRA and ties to sympathetic congressional Democrats, ACORN succeeded in drawing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the very policies that led to the current disaster.”

Ironically, Obama. “the Senator from ACORN,” benefited from the financial crisis that his kind of thinking created with his personal help as organizer, trainer. lawyer, funder and political supporter and win the Presidency.

That’s because the truth did not catch up to the lie.

It would have, if The New York Times had not killed the expose I was working with its reporter, Stephanie Strom, or ABC or CNN had been interested in the truth about Obama.

The Activist Left is comprised of long range planners, people who wait decades to implement their socialist agendas.  In the October 1978 issue of Just Economics, Zach Polett wrote an article entitled “Care & Feeding of the Press Made Easy,” which may explain why mainstream outlets like the Times and Huffington Post carry water for ACORN.

The left will continue to beat the supposed corpse of ACORN while its chapters reorganize and continue pushing the same agenda. According to Conservapedia, the following groups are all part of the thriving ACORN family:

Community Organizations International

Texans Together Education Fund

Health Care for America NOW!

Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment

Voting Is Power

Peace and Social Justice Center of South Central Kansas

Communities Voting Together

Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change

Affordable Housing Centers of America, Inc.

New England United For justice

A Community Voice

Communities United

Minnesota Neighborhood’s Organizing For Change

Missourians Organizing For Reform and Empowerment

New York Communities For Change

Working Families Party

Pennsylvania Neighborhoods For Social Justice

Texas Organizing Project

Organization United For Reform (Our) Washington

American Institute For Social Justice

The rising Conservative movement has only slowed the progression of these groups as they continue to push radical legislation. To reach critical mass, the entire country must be made aware of how a broken system of social programs fuels these groups, and Obama’s “fundamental dishonesty” regarding his connections to them.

Like its predecessor, NYCC claims to be dedicated to providing and preserving affordable housing for low-income New Yorkers. And, like its predecessor, NYCC is in bed with big labor. The New York Post cites NYCC documents showing that unions pumped about $300,000 into the group’s coffers last year. This year, NYCC is expecting the unions to pony up $473,915.

Randy Mastro, an attorney who battled leaders of the ACORN-tied Working Families Party in court over alleged campaign finance violations, is quoted by the Post as stating:

It takes more than a name change to avoid the stigma of ACORN. Nobody is going to be fooled.

No one is going to be taken in by their actions either.

NYCC’s cozy relationship with unions means that when there is a conflict between big labor and the community the group purportedly advocates for, it will come down on the side of the unions. When New York City attempted last year to replace 20 failing schools with new facilities staffed by new principals and teachers, NYCC took up the banner of the United Federation of Teachers, who opposed the changes. The fact that the UFT contributed $200,000 to NYCC may have been a mitigating factor.

A 2004 article from the UK’s The Independent noted the inevitable passing of the torch that occurs when businesses and large sums of money are at stake.

George Soros, the 74-year-old billionaire investor and philanthropist, has promoted his two sons, Robert and Jonathan, to senior positions within his fund management business, signalling his desire to put succession plans in place.

A memo sent to investors in the company, which has $12.8bn under management, said Robert Soros, 41, had been named chief investment officer, and Jonathan Soros, 34, had been appointed as co-deputy chairman of Soros Fund Management.

Before the Tea Party movement and Glenn Beck, students earning “liberal arts” degrees across the country would hear their professor joke that according to the Right, George Soros was behind every liberal conspiracy out there. However, most Americans have only recently become aware of the man that is Soros.

Glenn Beck’s expose on George Soros was met with horror and stinging attacks from the radical Left. Insiders understand that like most socialist plans, it’s best to fly below the radar. Glenn Beck’s big spotlight on Soros is troubling because of the powerful Washington political insiders that surround Soros and his ventures.

Essentially, the entire leftist wing of the Democrat party, including the President can be tied to George Soros in some way.

In 2004, at the height of the anti-Bush rhetoric being pushed by the Soros funded Move On.org, Soros transferred some power to his two sons Robert and Jonathan. The elder Soros, a Holocaust survivor, has always been careful to leave few fingerprints on his endless quests for power. Two vehicles for amassing power and “fundamentally transforming” America are his foundation, the Open Society Institute which funds a myriad of liberal causes, and the Democracy Alliance, which serves as a donor advised fund for all types of socialist endeavors.

However, the  younger, and less cautious Jonathan Soros seems eager to follow in his father’s footsteps and get his hands dirty along the way.

In 2004, Jonathan Soros was already serving as a board member of the highly controversial group, America Coming Together.

“America Coming Together (ACT) organized theDemocratic Party‘s Government Union wing, which is represented by such leftist labor unions as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFSCME.

ACT was one of the 33 “progressive” member organizations constituting the  America Votes coalition. It was also a member group of the so-called Democrat Shadow Party, a nationwide network of non-profit activist groups pursuing leftist agendas and campaigning aggressively for Democrat political candidates.”

As this reporter noted in December of 2008, evidence indicates that ACORN insiders and the Soros money machine had their own nefarious reasons for forming these groups.

America Votes Overview Notes 04/06/06

Started in 2003 by Rosenthal, EMILY’s list, SEIU, big money funders, etc. decided to do field work, a huge non-party political field operation designed to take back White House in 2004. Which failed. ACT was part of this grouping or money and organizations and perhaps the best known. Partially a product of McCain-Feingold….

Post 2004, ACT disbanded in summer 2005. AV [America Votes] was needed and valuable. SEIU, Soros, and Dem Alliance invested in AV as one key element of progressive electoral work. AV has more resources, still a table of 30 major progressive political orgs, including ACORN (choice, enviros, labor, community). ….

Political Money rules:

• We prefer that political money go to us in the form of a vendor, which would be CSI [Obama made payments to this group as well], our for-profit business, which doesn’t have to report the cash because it’s a business, like the phone company…

• Three questions: What are rules for raising and spending, what are coordination rules/affiliation rules, what are content rules.Hard money can say anything to anybody. Hard money is money that is raised under the state or federal campaign limits [Think Obama's small donors].

Discover the Networks goes on to note that:

“ACT used intrusive, high-pressure tactics to register and mobilize such voters, both by phone and by door-to-door canvassing. Not only did its canvassers register voters, but they compiled extensive personal dossiers on the latter — including such private information as their drivers’ license numbers and social security numbers — information which could be retrieved on demand through the canvassers’ hand-held Palm Pilots.

On June 23, 2004, the Associated Press revealed that an undetermined number of ACT’s full time canvassers were felons, convicted for crimes ranging from drug dealing to burglary, assault, and sex offenses.

In August 2007, Politico.com reported that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) was fining ACT some $775,000 for having used unregulated soft money to help John Kerry and other Democratic candidates in 2004. The FEC determined that most of the $137 million ACT had raised for its get-out-the-vote effort that year, was derived from contributions that violated federal limits. The settlement was the third largest enforcement penalty in the FEC’s 33-yearhistory.”

Typical ACORN shenanigans. However, instead of being a step removed as just another funder, Jonathan Soros was at the time not only a board member but a “colleague” and friend of ACORN’s  Zach Polett. Similar to ACORN playing dead to avoid prosecution, amazingly neither Polett or Soros were around when ACT headed towards trouble with federal investigators.

In June of 2005, then ACORN Political Director and Project Vote Executive Director, Zach Polett, released  the outline for a five year business planfor ACORN.

“Both to focus the strategic thinking of our political work and to put ourselves in position to attempt to raise the funds to support an ambitious, multi-year political program that grows out of ACORN’s base and strengths, I believe we need a serious, well-argued business plan.On the fundraising side, places we will want to share this business plan include ‘the millionaires club’ (Democracy Alliance),the billionaires (Sandlers’, Soros, etc.), friends and opinion leaders in the voter engagement world (e.g., Frank Smith, John Podesta), SEIU, the voter participation foundations, etc.”

One could infer that Polett was referring to George Soros and the Open Society Institute but unaltered evidence related to an internal ACORN meeting quotes ZachPolett as saying:

“Meeting with Jeff Robinson of N2N to see if he can work with us and Jonathan Soros for big cash regarding business plan.”

Given the advanced age of the elder Soros, it appears that America has much to worry about in dealing with his brazen and well financed sons. Jonathan Soros even went to far as to pen an op-ed for the New York Times, taking up one of the favorite issues of ACORN’s Project Vote. In typical Times fashion, they provided just enough cover to offer a sense of legitimacy. 

“On October 30, a column entitled ‘Vote Early, Count Often‘ was published on the Times op-ed page.  The author, Jonathan Soros, was identified to be, ‘…a lawyer and the president of an investment firm.’ Which is true, but misleadingly incomplete.

Mr. Soros is, of course, the son of antiwar, anti-Bush activist George Soros, and the president of his father’s investment firm.  And much more…

According to MoneyLine, Jonathan Soros gave $250,000 to America Votes in 2004 and the same amount again in 2007.  He has also contributed at least $55,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And then there’s his funding of MoveOn.org’s activities..

Given the Times’ not-so-proud history with MoveOn.org, shouldn’t it have added something to Soros’s byline to at least inform its readers of his close connection to the organization that created and paid for the “Petraeus-Betray Us” ad?  The fact that it did not indicates that the Times’ editors and publisher have learned nothing from that experience.”

What’s next for America with the Soros family on the loose? Well, according to the Roosevelt Institute, Jonathan Soros fully intends to follow in his father’s footsteps:

“Jonathan Soros is Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute where he explores the role of corporations in society…In addition, he is exploring the the emerging field of of social investment and the ways in which it mobilizes for-profit organziations for the production of public goods.Finally, Mr. Soros is working together with Bo Cutter on the Next American Economy project, which among other topics will test the role of the private sector as a deliberate agent of change in American economic life over the next twenty-five years.”

A part two is needed just to discuss the dangers of Jonathan Soros working with Bo Cutter (W. Bowman Cutter).  Cutter worked with President Carter and was a former senior economic policy advisor in the Clinton administration. Most recently, Cuter served as leader of the OMB transition team for President Obama.

Like many of Jonathan Soros’s friends, Cutter, of course, also has a connection with George Soros and even ACORN. Cutter works with the Podesta group, a group run by Tony Pedesta. Tony is the brother of Obama Transition team member John Podesta, who also runs the Soros funded Center for American Progress. And who is a current fellow at the Center for American Progress? None other than former ACORN national director, Steve Kest.

DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE APPEALING NAMES USED AS TOOLS IN THE PURSUIT OF POWER AND “FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION”! With Sorosfunding, so called media outlets like Media Matters paint criminal enterprises like ACORN as harmless activist groups, while the liberal elite sit back and plot the fundamental transformation of America into a socialist society in substance but not name.

On Election Day 2010 ACORN filed for liquidation in bankruptcy, apparently to discourage real investigation by a Republican-controlled House of Representatives when the next Congress convenes. But the truth has not changed or become less relevant and the key players who controlled radical organizations like ACORN and SEIU remain well positioned to pursue their stealth socialist agenda. The ACORN name effectively was retired, because it became politically toxic despite the liberal media establishment led by The New York Times. But the ACORN agenda remains the same and is being pursued under other names not yet deservedly toxic. And the man ACORN and SEIU wanted to put in the White House in 2009 is still there, working on being cleverly re-elected instead of carefully inspected and continuing to do all he can to effect the “fundamental transformation” as fast as he can, be it by appoinment, legislation, executive order or regulation, while trying not to seem too radical to be re-elected.

Cross-posted from Emerging Corruption. Illustrations courtesy of Randy Allamon of the Allamon Cartoon Blog. Follow him ow Twitter!

With exactly one week left before one of the most important mid-term elections in America’s history, a certain party has once again decided to throw out the rule of law.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier explains.

“Republicans don’t run fraudulent election operations. Democrats do. It’s systemic.

Entering this election cycle is a group, True The Vote, who decided to do what they could to keep Houston elections clean and fair. They are not looking to influence the outcome. They’re looking to influence the process. That is, they want an idealistic vision fulfilled: a lawful, clean, fair and fraud-free election.

True the Vote is getting results…

The problem, it seems, is that the Democrats don’t care that it’s their organizations responsible for this and then, the Justice Department, which turns out to be a highly politicized and racist organization these days won’t prosecute.

So systemic fraud goes unchecked, and tacitly approved. And what is particularly galling is that those who risk exposing the fraud are then accused of racism and then sued. The criminals, in a sense, count on not being examined because the charge of racism is so toxic–especially to conservatives.

But we know this fraud exists Democrat-wide and it’s not a black phenomenon. Blacks just happen to be overwhelmingly Democrat.”

Houston Votes has done much grandstanding since the accusations of fraud were leveled against them in a document released to the public.

“Houston Votes, which pays staff to collect voter registrations from citizens has turned in 25,640 registrations generating 7,193 new registered voters and resulting in 3,531 applications which were rejected because either Texas Drivers License numbers and/or Social Security numbers did not match. Houston Votes has also generated 129 felon rejection of applications and submitted 1,133 applications where the No ID box was checked and turned in 1,323 applications after the 5 day statutory deadline.”

While the group has been accused of ACORN-style voter registration fraud, it does not have any direct links to ACORN.  But State Representative Kirsten Thibaut does have strong ties to ACORN in her past and does sit on the advisory board of Texans Together Educational Fund, the parent organization of Houston Votes.

However, most will argue that Thibaut’s past associations have little do with her current position. Or do they? Meet Fred Lewis.

“The ethics reform lobbyist and campaign finance lawyer has launched a new nonpartisan voter registration drive that targets what he calculates are the 600,000 unregistered adult citizens there out of about 2.3 million who are eligible to vote. His team wants to sign up 100,000 of them — all in time for the November election. He sat down with the Tribune last week to talk about the project, Houston Votes 2010, which he hopes will get at least 50,000 new people to the polls.

Part of what makes Lewis believe he can meet that ambitious goal is the success of a similar effort administered in 2008 by the Texans Together Education Fund, a grassroots community outreach program that he founded. It registered 24,000 low-income residents, 65 percent of whom actually cast a ballot.”

Lewis has been described as a community organizer and has established a number of non-profits over the years. In the spirit of ACORN’s Wade Rathke, Lewis’s ventures appear to be all interrelated supporting organizations. One of those organizations is Campaigns for People. Lewis focused on campaign finance reform and used the same “corporate money” argument that Houston Votes has used against True the Vote.

“Our No. 1 enemy is cynicism,” said Fred Lewis of Campaigns for People Monday morning, as he unveiled a new TV ad designed by the CFP to “drive people to our Web site” – www.cleanuptexaspolitics.com – and encourage them to get involved in organizing for campaign finance reform. The 30-second ad features a cigar-smoking representative of the “big-money boys” delivering a contribution worth “a year’s worth of wages” for most of us, and a fleeting vision of headlines announcing “the indictments coming down.”

Who directly supported the work of Campaigns for People? Why Kristi Thibaut’s Texas ACORN. Click pictures to enlarge.

This is what the Campaigns for People’s site looks like today.

Someone went through a lot of trouble to hide their tracks and even the Clean Up Texas Politics site has been scrubbed.

Lewis is also an active board member with Texas Impact. A group that held Townhall meetings with ACORN as late as 2008.

Lewis and Texas Impact also worked directly with ACORN on health care.

As this reporter has stated in many speeches, the white liberals behind ACORN are all to willing to use blacks and other minorities as pawns in their political power games. It appears that the same groups from 2004, 2006, and 2008 are now registering voters under a different name and hiring their old friends as “advisors.”

The King Street Patriots and True the Vote have uncovered the covert actions of ACORN and the Democrats -with the backing of the Obama administration – are poised to destroy them.

All eyes should be on Houston. If Democrats succeed in a state like Texas, ACORN will be registering 10 year old’s next year in red states around the country. Tomorrow, a part two will examine the key players and their motivations in more detail.

What happens when citizens decide to stand up and ensure the integrity of elections? In the age of Obama, they are investigated by the Department of Justice.

From the  Washington Examiner:

“Obama’s Department of Justice has suddenly turned on a dime, becoming the great pro-active protector of voters’ rights:

‘Poll watchers in Harris County, Texas — where a Tea Party group launched an aggressive anti-voter fraud effort — were accused of “hovering over” voters, ‘getting into election workers’ faces’ and blocking or disrupting lines of voters who were waiting to cast their ballots as early voting got underway yesterday.

Now, TPMMuckraker has learned, the Justice Department has interviewed witnesses about the alleged intimidation and is gathering information about the so-called anti-voter fraud effort….

Terry O’Rourke, the first assistant in the Harris County Attorney’s office, told TPMMuckraker that there have been allegations of poll watchers talking to voters, which they are not allowed to do, as well as hovering over voters as they are waiting to vote. He said the complaints came from Kashmere Gardens, Moody Park, Sunnyside and other predominantly minority neighborhoods of the county.’

…Obama’s politicized Justice Department has already lost all credibility when it comes to even-handed administration of justice on this matter. They let the Black Panthers off with one wrist-slap and two complete dismissals after their flagrant voter intimidation was caught on tape. Now they’re worried about poll watchers “talking to voters,” at a time when local Texas officials are preventing people from voting if they are wearing Gadsden Flag pins?”

An interesting fact about this so-called investigation is that the group, True to Vote, had already contacted the DOJ regarding the extreme irregularities related to the voter registration drives in the state. Click to enlarge.

DOJ whistle blower J. Christian Adams writes:

“True the Vote has hundreds of volunteers committed to promoting electoral integrity. They are ready to assist the Department of Justice and Texas election officials by uncovering instances of fraud in registration and voting. True the Vote has undertaken a comprehensive electoral integrity campaign in Harris County, Texas. Their mission is to promote electoral integrity in both the registration process as well as during elections.

They recognize that government agencies like yours have limited resources and cannot always dedicate the requisite attention to investigations. Their hope is that if and when they discover problems with the integrity of the electoral process, government agencies with oversight will undertake an appropriate inquiry.

Because True the Vote has discovered a variety of violations of federal law in Harris County, Texas, within the Department’s jurisdiction, they are referring a number of the matters to the Department of Justice

Because the Department has civil oversight of the Help America Vote Act, and criminal oversight of non-citizen participation in federal elections, I presume that the results of this secondary inquiry will be of great interest. In the meantime, I believe there is sufficient evidence to open an investigation into whether or not non-citizens are being improperly registered to vote in Harris County. As you know, the Department has conducted extensive litigation throughout Texas to enforce Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. My client would urge you to consider tackling problems of registration fraud there with similar zeal.”

Adams includes a number of exhibits with the letter to illustrate possible voter fraud. Among the findings of True the Vote are:

Persons claiming to be noncitizens have been registered to vote in Harris County.

Voters Registered Multiple Times

Application 1

Application 2

The recurring theme of the Obama administration is corruption and instead of being lauded for being responsible citizens, True The Vote has been sued, harassed, and accused of voter intimidation.

“Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher reports voter intimidation in Harris County, Texas (Houston) by volunteer poll watchers trained by King Street Patriots, a local non-partisan group who started theTrue The Vote campaign. Tommy leads with this inflammatory paragraph saying:

‘In a story that’s sure to draw comparisons to the New Black Panther Party member who brandished a nightstick at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, a Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots has been accused of ’1960s style’ voter intimidation in primarily minority precincts on the first day of early voting in Texas. The group is being sued by the Texas Democratic Party, following the filing of 14 voter intimidation complaints with the county clerk, and another two dozen with the Texas Democratic Party chairman.’

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of King’s Street Patriots strongly denies the allegations and noted that it was absurd that ‘little old ladies’ would be intimidating anyone. She says that one 65 year old woman poll watcher came back from poll watching, after being kicked out for simply being present–itself a violation of the law–in tears…

In one instance, three poll watchers were yelled at by a Democrat Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee who said,’Why are you here? We have never had poll watchers here. Ya’ll need to get on out of here.’

Lee then demanded that the polling place judge give him information about the three poll watchers and the presiding judge complied–giving him their private information. The three poll watchers now fear for their safety and wonder what will be done with their personal information which included their phone numbers and home addresses.”

The actions described by the poll watchers indicate that the Democrats are desperate. Numerous articles by media outlets on the left claim voter intimidation because ordinary citizens decided to become active participants in our electoral process. In the tradition of ACORN-style intimidation tactics by the left, can those poor citizens expect to be targeted at their homes? Democrats only want poll workers who are trained by ACORN using tax dollars.

In 2006, the Election Assistance Commission gave a grant to ACORN’s Project Vote to recruit college students for poll worker training. Click Pictures to enlarge.

Not only does Project Vote have a history of engaging in election season shenanigans with ACORN involving thousands of duplicate registrations, but the group’s reporting on the grant is pure fiction. In a 2007 email, Nathan Henderson-James of ACORN Political Operations advises staff on how to “make it look good” regarding the money given to tax exempt Project Vote and used by ACORN. Click Pictures to enlarge.

It is equally disturbing that the grant in question is part of the Help America Vote College Program, administered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a federal agency established by Congress in 2002 to provide assistance to states in the administration of federal elections. According to its website, since 2004, the EAC has awarded 72 grants worth a total of $2.4 million to recruit and train college poll workers. How much of that 2.4 million went to ACORN?

To be clear, according to Democrats and folks at the DOJ, ordinary citizens who want to ensure fair elections are not welcome at polling places without being accused of voter intimidation but ACORN receives tax dollars to train college students. With ACORN’s history of partisan and aggressive activity, I wonder if they would have qualified without Project Vote’s tax status and reputation.

Will the DOJ silence the efforts of True the Vote or help them expose fraudulent voter registration drives? Will Democrats succeed in painting ordinary citizens as racists? As the election draws nearer, every American should be asking themselves these questions. If citizens are not allowed to expose corruption and fully participate in the electoral process our votes will be diluted by those with partisan political intentions. It’s up to all of us to stand with True the Vote and demand an investigation into the voter fraud in Texas.

“The first thing we started to do was look at houses with more than six voters in them” Engelbrecht said, because those houses were the most likely to have fraudulent registrations attached to them. “Most voting districts had 1,800 if they were Republican and 2,400 of these houses if they were Democratic… But we came across one with 24,000, and that was where we started looking.”

It was Houston’s poorest and predominantly black district, which has led some to accuse the group of targeting poor black areas. But Engelbrecht rejects that, saying, “It had nothing to do with politics. It was just the numbers.”

…“Vacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway house had more than 40 voters registered at its address,” Engelbrecht said. “We then decided to look at who was registering the voters.”

Their work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the Texas secretary of state’s office and the Harris County district attorney.

Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Steve Caddle, who also works for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures…

I find it almost stupefying to have discovered that some of my neighbors support the modern Democrat Party, seeing as how it’s mostly funded by public sector union bosses, illegal immigration front groups, trial lawyers, and George Soros-style America-haters.

 
Hat tip: Scott. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

Adding to the immigration debate is an organization that has caused outrage and controversy over its mission and programs. CASA de Maryland, also know as the Central American Solidarity Association deserves national attention for it’s programs that target day laborers in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The Background

From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

“CASA was founded in 1985 in the basement of the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church by concerned U.S. citizens and Central American immigrants. It has since expanded its scope. It is affiliate organization of the National Council of La Raza. It has received funding from a variety of sources, including a two-year grant funding operations in Baltimore from George Soros‘ Open Society Institute. CASA of Maryland is also a founding member of the National Capital Immigration Coalition (“NCIC”) which promotes “comprehensive immigration reform”.[5] Other funding sources include the Annie E. Casey Foundation and United Way. They are a member of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. CASA also has received $1.5 million from CITGO, the state-owned Venezuelan petroleum products corporation.

CASA operates five day labor centers throughout the state, with public and private funding, three in Montgomery County, where its efforts have been the center of controversy. There is both significant support, and significant opposition, to their efforts to provide central sites where contractors can pick up day-laborers….”

Judicial Watch has documents here on the day labor centers.

To be clear, a Soros, and Chavez funded organization with ties to the radical La Raza receives millions in taxpayer dollars while Maryland faces severe budget shortfalls,

“House Minority Leader Anthony J. O’Donnell, R-Calvert/St. Mary’s, offered an amendment Wednesday that would strip $200,000 allocated to Casa de Maryland Inc. from the state’s capital budget.

The amendment failed, 47-89.”

A Washington Examiner articles notes that Casa de Maryland recently formed a political organization called Casa in Action and currently receives a significant majority of its funding from the state.

“CASA will receive nearly $2.1 million this fiscal year from local governments, including $1.3 million from Montgomery County, and another $32,000 in federal money, according to Kim Propeack, the group’s director of community organizing and political action. CASA in Action has raised $45,000 thus far from members paying $9 annual dues, she added.”

While students languish in underfunded schools that are one step above a daycare or prison, Maryland’s Democrat Governor Martin O’Malley partnered with the group to open a multicultural center inside of a restored mansion.

“Governor Martin O’Malley recently joined CASA at the launching of a three-year $30 million campaign to restore the George Oakley Totten, Jr. designed historic Langley Park mansion in Langley Park, Maryland, to be converted into a multicultural center. The center will offer English lessons, legal assistance, job placement”

What other programs have suffered while Casa de Maryland enjoys the seemingly endless largess of state lawmakers? According to the Center for Budget and Policy:

In late 2007 and 2008, some ten states enacted tax increases, closed loopholes, restricted tax credits, or implemented other revenue-raising measures. Major packages were enacted in Maryland, Michigan,and New York.

Other states that have capped or reduced funding for programs that serve people who have disabilities or are elderly include California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia

Maryland cut professional development for principals and educators, as well as health clinics, gifted and talented summer centers, and math and science initiatives.

Some states, such as Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, have implemented cuts to localities, leading to local concerns about reductions in funding for policing, child care assistance, meals for the elderly, hospice care, services for veterans and seniors, and other services.

Other states cutting higher education operating funding and financial aid include Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland..

The Immigration debate

Casa de Maryland discourages local police enforcement of immigration laws and advocates for driver’s licenses for illegal aliens – contentious issues in the current political climate. Local point to the fact that crimes in Silver Spring, Maryland and gang activity are on the rise.

Wikipedia notes that tensions ran high in 2006 when “Gustavo Torres, the Executive Director of CASA, remarked to a reporter for the local Gazette newspaper that CASA was determined to track the leadership of a local unit of Minuteman Project, and take the following actions: ‘We are going to target the Minutemen in a specific way… we are going picket their houses, and the schools of their kids, and go to their work. If they are going to do this to us, we are going to respond in the same way, to let people know their neighbors are extremists, that they are anti-immigrant.”

The site Help Save Maryland warns citizens that Casa de Maryland encourages illegal immigration and provides links to a case study on the Langley Park mansion project and a disturbing pamphlet that instructs immigrants in what to do in case of immigration raids.

Did tax dollars pay for this document? The Department of Labor’s website shows that OSHA gave a grant of $200,000 to Casa de Maryland, and $225,000 to an affiliate group. The money was described as being for:

The grantee will provide training for high-risk Latino workers in the construction, building and grounds maintenance, agricultural, and warehouse industries in Maryland. Training will be offered through local community colleges and employment centers. Training will include a train-the-trainer module. The training and/or materials will be offered in English and Spanish. Click to enlarge.

The Obligatory ACORN Connection

Politics as Usual

Major players behind Casa de Maryland include Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Perez. Perez, a former member of Casa de Maryland’s board, worked on O’Malley’s 2006 campaign, Obama’s presidential campaign, and was a member of Obama’s transition team. Byron York describes Perez’s work with the DOJ:

“Of all the transformations that have taken place in the Obama administration, perhaps none is so radical as that within the Civil Rights Division. Under Perez, it is bigger, richer and more aggressive than ever, with a far more expansive view of its authority than at any time in recent history.

Perez is playing a leading role in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law. He is promising a huge increase in prosecution of alleged hate crimes.”

Readers may remember that Perez was also actively involved in the dismissal of charges in the DOJ case again the New Black Panther Party and has been accused of lying under oath about the case.

It appears that Casa de Maryland has friends in high places.

As Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley prepares to face off with former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. in the general election, one has to wonder what win for either side would mean for Casa de Maryland. If O’Malley is elected, the group should anticipate more funding but with two of Ehrlich’s former staff members on record supporting the group, one has to wonder if this will be yet another case of different party-same political corruption.

Cross-posted at Emerging Corruption.com.

“The Republican Party of Texas today unveiled a new website, kristiworksforacorn.com. The site documents Democrat state Rep. Kristi Thibaut’s sordid past and her involvement with the notorious leftwing organization ACORN. Thibaut is the incumbent in House District 133.”

House District 133 encompasses Harris County, Texas the site of massive ACORN-like voter registration fraud and where a mysterious fire destroyed most of the voting machines in the county last week.

“Another blow has been dealt to voters in Harris County, Texas just days after the Harris County Voter Registrar Leo Vasquez released a 72 page PowerPoint on voting irregularities from a local group similar to the infamous ACORN.

‘The integrity of the voting rolls in Harris County, Texas, appears to be under an organized and systematic attack by the group operating under the name Houston Votes,” Vasquez said at a 2 p.m. press conference at his office, where he also released copies of applications in some of the most egregious cases.’

[Friday], voters are waking up with the news that the Harris County Election Technology Center was the site of a massive three-alarm fire early this morning.”

As the site kristiworksforacorn.com points out, Thibaut, actively worked for ACORN for a number of years, and was even a paid lobbyist for the group. Screen shot below. Click to enlarge.

By the way, yes, there was money flowing back and forth between Thibaut and ACORN.

A meeting was held yesterday in Harris County regarding purchasing new voting machines or other options regarding the upcoming elections.

Considering the current political climate and the impending sense of doom that most Democrats are experiencing, a situation is emerging it Harris County Texas and it reeks of corruption. Will voters have a chance to have their voices heard or are political players stacking the deck?

Cross-posted at my new site Emerging Corruption

What really happened during the 2008 elections? Recent information regarding the primary caucuses paints the picture of a campaign that would stop at nothing to win. A campaign that was willing to strong arm candidates and volunteers in order to meet its goal. The documentary We Will Not Be Silenced delves into the Obama 2008 Campaign.

“We believe The Democratic National Committee (DNC) made a grave error by depriving American voters of their choice of Hillary Clinton as Democratic nominee. Senator Clinton, by all accounts, except caucuses, won the Primary Election and, therefore, should be the 2008 Democratic Nominee. That didn’t happen, due largely to illegitimate and illegal acts. We have interviews of many accounts from caucus states recounting threats, intimidation, lies, stolen documents, falsified documents, busing in voters in exchange for paying for “dinners,” etc. There are at least 2000 complaints, in Texas alone, of irregularities directed towards the Obama Campaign, that have lead to a very fractured and broken Democratic Party.”

In July, the 2007 2^nd Quarter Obama Donor List was revealed and tied back to Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and its sister organization Project Vote. On Friday, August 13^th a three-judge panel of the United States Court of appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a funding ban on ACORN stemming from Congressional action:

“Congress cut off ACORN’s federal funding last year in response to allegations the group engaged in voter registration fraud and embezzlement and violated the tax-exempt status of some of its affiliates by engaging in partisan political activities.”

A clear picture of Obama and his desire to win has emerged and the public is now aware of strong arm tactics and illicit coordination with groups like ACORN. Will an imminent FEC complaint reveal that ACORN/Project Vote used tax-exemept grants and funds to run a partisan voter registration drive to get Obama elected?

Project Vote’s 2007-2008 Development Plan lays out a plan to raise over $20 million dollars through a program that including targeting maxed-out presidential donors. The plan– unaltered since June of 2007 — can be found here.

What is particularly interesting about the plan is that Sandy Newman is mentioned several times including in a the section below.

“Establish a ‘Finance Committee’ who will serve as the financial voice of PV. Put together a small group of PV core funders and/or supporters who can solicit new donors and/or connect PV staff to donors or the appropriate contacts. Points: Sandy, Zach, Jeff, Slater, and Karyn”

As a Development Associate with Project Vote, I attended meetings with Sandy Newman, Zach Polett, and Karyn Gillette at Newman’s offices in downtown Washington, DC. As a founder of the organization, Newman was extremely involved in Project Vote’s finances despite having left the leadership staff in the early nineties. Newman is mentioned on Obama’s website as a friend, and mentor. Click to enlarge.

According to Ballotpedia:

“Project Vote (or Voting for America, Inc.[1]) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization. According to its website, Project Vote provides “professional training, management, evaluation and technical services on a broad continuum of key issues related to voter engagement and participation in low-income and minority communities.” It was founded in 1982 by Sandy Newman and its current executive director is Michael Slater, who has worked for Project Vote since 2004.”

The problem with lying is that it often becomes hard to keep those lies straight. Project Vote’s own website states that it has been around since 1982 and several of its grant application reference this year, but Project Vote and Obama both maintain that he worked for a different organization that was started around 1994. This organization, they claim, of course, was never affiliated with ACORN. The screen shot below was taken last year of Project Vote’s website.

Interestingly, Project Vote’s own tax returns repeat this lie as seen in the screen shot below:

Maybe Michael Slater of Project Vote can explain why their website says one thing but their tax returns say another.

Back to Sandy Newman. In 2007, Newman did reach out to potential funders and penned a memo to interested parties in the voter registration/participation community. Newman stressed the importance of the work that ACORN/Project Vote and how important the 2008 elections were.

“Together with the voters added to and remaining on the rolls because of the registration drives conducted over the last two cycles, voters galvanized by these three kinds of programs (even before counting voter turnout work) would exceed the 2004 presidential margin in nine states! They would also have an important impact (whomever they may choose to support) on other elections up and down the ballot, from US House and Senate races, Governor and Secretary of State through state legislature and races at the bottom of the ballot”

Newman also urged funders to give even if the reasons may have been to influence the outcome of the election. Newman gently suggested other ways of giving.

“They may also believe that reducing such distortions is likely to yield policies more in keeping with the interests of those whose representation in the electoral process has been inadequate. The fact that a donor may hold such a belief, or even that it may motivate giving decisions, does not cause a charitable contribution to be improper, provided that the donor intends that the actual work supported remain strictly non-partisan – that is, the work supported may not provide support or opposition to any candidate or party.”

As the chart below reveals, ACORN/Project Vote’s voter registration drive was not targeted at registering voters as it was at winning for Democrats. A number of their political plans and ACORN’s own endorsements of the likes of Obama and Donna Edwards made it clear whose side they were on.

In 2008, it was revealed that the Obama Campaign had given over $800,000 to an ACORN affiliate, Citizens Service Inc,

“The Ohio primary was March 4. According to FEC records, the Obama campaign paid Citizens Services Inc. $832,598.29, from Feb. 25 to May 17.

A Trib analysis of campaign finance reports showed Obama paid CSI for services that stood out as unusual. For example, CSI received payments of $63,000 and $75,000 for advance work. Excluding the large payments to CSI, the average amount the Obama campaign spent with other organizations was $558.82 per check on more than 1,200 entries classified as advance work.

Citizens Services Inc. is headquartered at the same address as ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans. Citizens Services was established in December 2004 to “assist persons and organizations who advance the interests of low- and moderate-income people,” according to paperwork filed in Louisiana. In a 2006 ACORN publication, Citizen Services Inc. is described as “ACORN’s campaign services entity.”

Project Vote’s own 2009 tax returns reveal that it gave a similar amount to CSI.

Here is the explanation:

Ballotpedia quotes from a New York Times article that references the Elizabeth Kingsley report gives insight into who Project Vote was paying at CSI.

“An example would be Zach Pollett, formerly Project Vote’s executive director and also ACORN’s political director, until July, when he relinquished the former title. Mr. Pollett continues to work as a consultant for Project Vote through another Acorn affiliate”

As evidence continues to mount against Obama and ACORN it remains to be seen how long Obama’s Teflon will last. While the public was distracted by ACORN’s antics like registering Mickey Mouse to vote, the group implemented a strategic plan in battleground states to produce the right margin of victory for Democrats. ACORN’s own 2008 Get Out the Vote plan illustrates how this was done. Click to enlarge.

ACORN’s impact in shaping American politics has become clearer since Obama took office. Considering the number of corrupt politicians holding office, that ACORN effect should not be surprising, nevertheless, the actual numbers are quite startling.

When you break those numbers down by battleground state, the true threat of ACORN and its friends becomes even clearer.

With his ineffective leadership, lies to the American people and an imploding economy, the commander-in-chief is starting to resemble yet another corrupt politician from ACORN- a usurper intent on making deals and passing agendas that push America closer to ACORN’s socialist utopia.

For a number of years traditional print media has been on life support, but after the revelations from  Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller, it looks like someone finally pulled the plug. The expose on Journolist, a now defunct, listserv that included hundreds of liberal journalists, detailed:

the Journolisters’ attempt, during the 2008 presidential campaign to kill and bury stories about Obama’s relationship with “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright;

their push to deliberately smear innocent conservative journalists and politicos as “racists” and “bigots”

their twisted passion to see Rush Limbaugh killed off and dead;

their intolerant desire to have the government censor and shut down Fox News; and

their baldly partisan effort to coordinate liberal talking points that would discredit Sarah Palin and John McCain, while helping to elect Barack Obama president.

Considering that Journolist included journalists from Washington Post, the New York Times, National Public Radio, New Republic, and Time, one has to wonder if the biggest story covered up in 2008 was the illegal coordination between ACORN and the Obama campaign.

Below is a screen shot from the newly released Obama 2nd quarter 2007 donor list. ACORN obtained this donor list from the Obama Campaign in 2007 to target maxed out presidential donors.

OBAMA DONOR FILE SCREEN SHOT

VIEW THE FULL OBAMA DONOR FILES

Revealed: Obama Donor File Part 1

As a confidential source for the New York Times, I turned this document over to reporter Stephanie Strom months before the 2008 presidential elections and though the list includes information more complete than what the Obama campaign turned over to the Federal Election Commission, the NYT decided to bury the story.

Strom and I used pseudonymous e-mail addresses while communicating and in 2008, Strom wrote:

“I’m calling a halt to my efforts. I just had two unpleasant calls with the Obama campaign, wherein the spokesman was screaming and yelling and cursing me, calling me a rightwing nut and a conspiracy theorist and everything else…”

After this weeks revelations about the efforts of the liberal media to cover-up or spike stories damaging to Obama, Strom’s next words are even more telling:

“What’s happened is that the campaign has answered some of my questions on the record — but when I sought on-the-record answers to my questions about the meeting and about the list, the campaign insisted on speaking only on background. When I asked why, I got the barrage I described earlier. Clearly, I’ve hit a nerve with what you’ve told me. The campaign knows that having the allegations of meeting attributed to ‘former employees’ — and there are more than one of you talking — and having an anonymous denial of the meeting makes it harder for me to get it into the paper.”

In 2008 the liberal media provided the cover needed for Obama to get elected, but two years later, questions remain about his relationship with ACORN and it has been clear that Obama has lied repeatedly to the American people. Its time to get Obama and ACORN on the record about what really happened with the donor lists in 2007 and 2008.

The release of the Obama donor list to the public will be followed by a formal complaint to the FEC, which both Obama and ACORN will have to respond to – on-the-record.

In 2009, the Democrat controlled Judiciary Committee heard testimony from attorney Heather Heidelbaugh, who read my 2008 testimony against ACORN into Congressional record. Evidence, and sworn testimony were among the facts ignored by the members of the committee:

“Based on the testimony, Project Vote, ACORN and other ACORN affiliated entities illegally coordinated activities with the Obama presidential campaign, converting the expenditures by Project Vote, ACORN and ACORN affiliated entities to illegal, excessive corporate contributions to the Obama presidential campaign, in violation of federal law.”

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity. – Wendell Phillips, speech in Boston, Massachusetts, January 28, 1852.”

Unfortunately for Media Matters, its arguments only work as long as its readers are content with ignoring key facts about ACORN and its role in politics, elections and government itself.

As stated in my previous article posted at many websites, including BigGovernment.com, there are several disturbing connections involving Jack McConnell, the lead paint litigation, and ACORN. Keeping in mind that this is the same “news organization” that still insists that ACORN’s alter ego Project Vote was totally separate from ACORN when Barack Obama worked for them, I will let ACORN’s own words explain its involvement in the Sherwin-Williams California case. The excerpt below is from page 59 of an ACORN report available here (click to enlarge).

Why would Media Matters ignore ACORN’s own words? For the same reason it tries to dismiss my article as a conservative attempt to use ACORN as the “boogeyman.” By omitting the fact that I worked for ACORN and testified against ACORN/Project Vote in 2008, Media Matters hopes to downplay the significance of my knowledge of ACORN’s inner workings and its relationships with others.

In fact, while in the DC office of ACORN/Project Vote I worked on projects that allowed me to discover that among the donors to Project Vote was the private law firm involved in the California lead paint case.

Court documents show that the petitioners, California counties and cities, had not only hired Jack McConnell’s firm, Motley Rice, but also “Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy” (and others) to represent them against the paint companies (interestingly, the Santa Clara County counsel who initiated the lead paint case was appointed by the Obama administration to the Justice Department last year).

Not only did Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy give over $10,000 to ACORN’s Project Vote,  they were ACORN’s own attorneys. The connection between Motley Rice, ACORN and Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy is crystal clear in a reference here from page 31 of a 2006 report by ACORN.

“Amy Schur, directing this effort, was vigilant, and having dogged them all year, has constructed a legal strategy with ALERT and the Cachet firm [sic Cotchett] that has now brought the cities of San Diego and Los Angeles into the lawsuit.”

ACORN founder Wade Rathke mentions donor/attorney Naill McCarthy by name and also explains the lead paint litigation strategy in his book Citizen Wealth.

Wade goes on to explain how organizations like ACORN use litigation to gain power.

To recap for the Media Matters readers who may be used to having their news filtered:

1. ACORN staged a NATIONWIDE campaign against paint company Sherwin Williams.
2. ACORN turned down settlements to clean up the damage because it wanted money.
3. ACORN and its attorneys were in the final stages of given ACORN a seat in the negotiation process in the California case.
4. Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy represented ACORN in similar cases against Household Finance and Wells Fargo.

Don’t be fooled by the misspelling in the ACORN report, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy is the same law firm that successfully represented ACORN in the Wells Fargo case.

“Wells Fargo Financial, Inc., the consumer finance subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Company, and the law firms of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy (Burlingame, Calif.) and Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C. (Madison, Wisc.) said they have agreed to settle a class action lawsuit…..

In the proposed settlement, Wells Fargo Financial commits to continue for three years several improvements it had already put into practice, which have further strengthened its nonprime real estate-secured lending practices, and to implement other practices to benefit its customers. It also agrees to enact a default relief program, earmarking $2.4 million to provide relief to qualifying class members whose loans have become delinquent by more than 60 days. Qualifying class members who submit claims may also be entitled to cash payments, which will be determined using a formula to disburse up to $4.4 million.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a party to the lawsuit, had alleged that Wells Fargo Financial failed to adequately disclose points and prepayment penalties and had inaccurately reported loan balances on some of its California customers to credit reporting agencies.”

ACORN involvement in the lead paint issue was tremendous. Besides releasing reports and, staging protests (both national and international), ACORN even dedicated a separate website to the cause.

ACORN demonstrations included:

A reasonable person would say that given ACORN’s relationship with former Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse and current United States Senator (an enthusiastic supporter of Jack McConnell’s nomination), and its work with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy on settlements, does raise the question as whether Motley Rice’s agreement with DuPont paint deserves more scrutiny.

“It’s odd and I think unlawful that the Attorney General, in a sense, appropriated the DuPont settlement moneys for his own purposes. It’s curious part of the money went to his alma mater, another part w[ent] to pay off a pledge made by Motley Rice to a Boston hospital, then the rest of the money went to the Children’s Health Forum, which is not based in Rhode Island at all.”

The fact that ACORN Advisory Committee member and long time ACORN ally Henry Cisneros is on the board of the Children’s Health Forum could be considered a coincidence to the folks over at Media Matters, but what if I were to tell you that the Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa was on the advisory committee of the Children’s Health Forum?

In 2009 Cisneros was honored for his commitment to ACORN while Villaraigosa engaged in crisis PR for the group. Side note:  Villaraigosa is also board members of the Institute for America’s Future, a group that goes out of its way to protect ACORN interests.

Either Jack McConnell’s law firm Motley Rice was totally oblivious to the FACT that Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy were in the FINAL stages of securing ACORN a seat next to them  at the negotiating table or McConnell lied during his confirmation hearing (see transcript below)

SEN. KYL: I understand. My five minutes is up. It’s kind of hard to have continuity in questioning when we have this kind of limitation. I understood the point you were originally trying to make, but if I can — and I have a couple more minutes’ worth of questions just as a follow up to this.

My point really was not only, is it right to seek this as a movement, but whether you actually encourage these lawsuits in other states — you or your law firm — did you?

MR. MCCONNELL: No, Senator, we did not.

SEN. KYL: Are you aware of any role by the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now — that’s ACORN — in how those cases might have come to be filed?

MR. MCCONNELL: No, neither I nor my firm have had any relationship with ACORN.

President Clinton said that his answer depended upon what the meaning of the word is is. McConnell might say that it depends upon what a relationship is. Apparently McConnell did not want to acknowledge any kind of relationship to ACORN by the time his confirmation hearing was held. Still, McConnell, his firm and ACORN are all connected. McConnell’s key role in the lead paint litigation in Rhode Island, where ACORN had a significant presence, and his law firm’s subsequent participation in the California lead paint case on the side of ACORN and its California law firm contradict his unqualified assurance that neither he nor his firm “had any relationship with ACORN.”

To quote from ACORN Report shown in the screen shots above:

p. 38: “Luck would have it that the major CA lawsuit against the paint industry is being handled by the same law firm handling our Wells Fargo case [Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy]–and they want to work together on the lead case. Over the last month we have been able to convince several major CA cities and school districts to join the lawsuit. In a potentially important precedent for our role in these types of cases, we are in the final stages of negotiating a seat for ALERT (ACORN Law for Education, Representation & Training) on the legal team for the case, which puts us at the table–and in the settlement negotiations.”

P. 59: December 2006–”ACORN gets 2 cities and 2 school districts in CA to join a lawsuit against paint companies”

Despite ongoing investigations by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and voter fraud allegations in several states, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN continues to maintain its innocence regarding the undercover videos that led to the “dissolution” of the national group. Prominent politicians like Pelosi and Lee have been willing to lend their credibility to ACORN and other radical organizations by ignoring details like the FBI documents released last week by Judicial Watch.

The documents include handwritten notes from FBI investigators interviewing canvassers working with Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate. Among the highlights from the FBI handwritten notes:

• [ACORN] “Told employees not to talk to the FBI. ‘FBI trying to intimidate you.’”
• Fraudulent cards:
  • To cause confusion on election day to keep polls open longer
  • To allow people who can’t vote to vote.
  • To allow to vote multiple times.
• Project Vote will pay them whether cards fake or not – whatever they had to do to get the cards was attitude.
• Constantly threatened
• Staff restricted on what to say to FBI
• “Poverty pimpin” (sic) ACORN
• ACORN HQ is wkg for the Democratic Party.
• PV [Project Vote] pays ACORN $6.00 per card…Said “You treat the cards like (cash) $”
• Some [names] went right from the phone book and made up the rest.

Tom Fitton, president of Judaical Watch raised significant points when he stated:

“These documents show the need for a national criminal investigation by the Obama Justice Department into ACORN. Is Attorney General Holder doing nothing because of Obama’s close connections to ACORN and Project Vote? The information in these new documents has national implications that cry out for further investigation.”

Lawmakers like Representative Donna Edwards who attended the conference have never worried about their connections to ACORN in the past and (considering the speakers listed below) most are willing to turn a blind eye to its transgressions.

This may explain why, when most Americans were beginning their work week, ACORN leaders like Zach Polett were welcomed at a conference called America’s Future Now.

Amid numerous reports of its demise, ACORN sent various top leaders to Washington, DC last week. That statement may bring to mind ACORN’s CEO Bertha Lewis.

However, ACORN’s true leaders have always prided themselves on remaining behind the scenes. Zach Polett, pictured below, is the former Executive Director of Project Vote, former head of ACORN Political Operations and a founding member of ACORN. Polett in his own words, was also once the supervisor of Barack Obama when he worked at Project Vote in the 1990′s

Joining Polett last week were ACORN leader, Steve Kest (picture below) and Project Vote Executive Director Michael Slater. If one can imagine the America’s Future Now conference like a high school reunion, the ACORN leaders were obviously the football team.

Efforts were made to protect the already “victimized” ACORN from any unwanted scrutiny (more on that later) but it is interesting to note that facts mean little to radical liberals and their “progressive” friends. Hundreds of pages of notes, testimony and evidence exist that suggest that ACORN is a criminal organization set up in a manner that is subversive and harmful, but lawmakers, and apparently the FBI are content to ignore critical facts in fear of where a full investigation would lead.

The fact of the matter is Barack Obama is a liar who has used his position to cover up the very criminal activity that got him elected president. In May of 2009, Bill O’Reilly began to delve into the ACORN/Obama story but stopped short after my statement that ACORN operated as an “unofficial arm of the Democratic Party.” O’Reilly chose to form a truce with the White House after pressure from the administration about Fox’s anti-Obama stance and the mainstream media continue to ignore the true story.

Not surprisingly, my testimony in Pennsylvania in 2008 mirrors the FBI notes released last week, and it has been over a year since Heather Heidelbaugh presented testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Yet, instead of investigating, top House Democrats wait for more “credible evidence.” Among the evidence ignored by House Democrats are:

• Project Vote receives donor lists from other Democratic and labor union sources: John Kerry campaign, [Hilary] Clinton campaign, Barack Obama campaign, Democratic National Committee, America Coming Together (“ACT”) (p.3)
• Project Vote development plan was to ‘approach maxed out presidential donors’, and ‘allegedly use the funds for voter registration drives’ (pp.3-4)
• ACORN ‘employees’ were paid through Project Vote for partisan campaign activities telling voters … “don’t vote for Albert Win (sic) or vote for this person” (p. 4)
• There were no divisions between the staff of ACORN and Project Vote, and persons working for one entity actually perform work for either or both organizations (p. 4)
• The Obama campaign’s donor list was part of the evidence admitted into the hearing on the injunction in October 2008 (p. 5)

ACORN’s work has been critical to the Democrats to secure and maintain their majority in Congress. My blog posts have noted this repeatedly, but here is ACORN in its own words from page 46 of a 2006 report describing how they will leverage power with the new Democratic controlled Congress (available here). Click to enlarge.

After two full days of speakers and workshops, the attendees gathered for an awards ceremony on Tuesday night. Awardees included the leftist liberal donor Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance Company and this reporter arrived early to the event. After inquiring about a ticket for the dinner, I decided to give the VIPs a chance to gather their tickets while I walked around.

Judging from the amount of protection that ACORN received at the America’s Future Now conference, it is obvious that other liberal groups consider ACORN’s work to still be critical to passing the radical agenda.

What happened next can only be described as roaches reacting to sunlight. After smiling for the camera, a stunned Zach Polett of ACORN reacted by scurrying across the room to find Michael Slater of Project Vote while Steve Kest of ACORN attempted to duck into another room with a piano in it. The group chatting so animatedly just a few minutes ago closed ranks (probably to hide other radicals from the lens of my camera).

Inside the awards event Representative Donna Edwards and ACORN insiders discussed plans for America’s future, but in the hall I was denied entry to the event after words from Michael Slater to the event staff . Though it had been confirmed minutes early that there were seats available I was told that tables had just been removed. When I decided to wait in hopes of getting a seat, a staffer named Alex Lawson came rushing out with Tommy Christopher from Mediaite.

Apparently, an everyday American is no longer allowed to ask questions or attend conferences with names like America’s Future Now. The ACORN leaders inside had complained of pictures being taken and I was grilled (while Mediaite videotaped the incident). ACORN could no longer ignore my statements against them so Lawson was sent to remove me from the event. Lawson accused me of working for Andrew Breitbart (which has been revealed to be a Democrat talking point) and refused to sell me a ticket to an event at which public officials, progressive organizations and ACORN celebrated their success in taking America to the far left.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that ACORN has not disbanded but merely reformed. One has to wonder what else ACORN and its friends are hiding. SEIU, MoveOn, Media Matters and the Center for Community change have all jumped to ACORN’s defense and by discounting the mounting evidence against ACORN, it appears that ACORN is “to big to fail.” The implications of admitting that ACORN is a corruption, socialist organization could implicate dozens of funders, allies, partners and politicians.

Who else was hiding behind the liberal wall at the America’s Future Now conference? Could it have been Jeffrey Robinson of Citizen Services Inc, the ACORN affiliate that was contracted by the Obama campaign for “get out the vote” activities.

“U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat’s campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.

An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. — a subsidiary of ACORN — worked in “get-out-the-vote” projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.”

The same leaders who covered up an embezzlement scandal, ran a massive voter registration drive riddled with fraud and coordinated with the Obama campaign to violate Federal election law are still in place. A glance at Zach Polett’s friend list illustrates this point, from Heather Booth to Tom Matzzie of MoveOn, Polett’s friends have been instrumental in the Democrat party for decades.

The one lesson I took away from the America’s Future Now conference after being turned away is that America is in peril. The left is on a collision course with the Constitution and our freedoms. Among the handouts I picked out was a booklet that laid out the plan for a “Democratic and Socialist Future.” I will share more about this booklet later but it’s important to see that the past two years have shown Americans the political lives of ACORN and exposed the depth of deception Democrats will sink in order to protect their “vote making” machine.

Obama has lied repeatedly about his background,  and his ties to ACORN. It’s time to go after the leaders behind ACORN, and the politicians who are shredding the Constitution for them.

You can follow Anita on her blog or on Twitter.

]]> http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/06/14/key-acorn-leaders-gather-in-dc-to-help-plan-americas-future/feed/ 9 http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/06/02/ofa-and-the-dnc-acorn-2-0/ http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/06/02/ofa-and-the-dnc-acorn-2-0/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:04:23 +0000 Anita MonCrief http://hotair.com/greenroom/?p=19364 If elections were like football games, this would be your two minute warning.  All of the passion, energy and renewed interest in politics that propelled the tea party movement of 2009 opens the door to a new level of involvement. As patriot groups around the country prepare for the November 2010 elections, a quiet force has been building behind the scenes.

Investigative reporter Carol Greenberg’s work inside Obama’s Organizing for America has already helped expose the OFA’s connection to ACORN and its network of top Democrat party insiders. Greenberg’s latest article explains the OFA plan to deploy rapid response teams to Ohio ahead of the elections.

Any liberal discussion of Ohio includes the sentiment that “Ohio is ground zero for the left.” Long a playground for groups like ACORN, they conducted voter experiments, filed lawsuits against the state and their voter fraud shenanigans led to a civil RICO suit brought by the Buckeye Institute. ACORN’s settlement of the case required that it surrender its business license in the state.

Unfortunately for conservatives, the awareness of ACORN’s network of organizations and mob like behavior come at a time when he same political workeasily be done by Obama’s permanent campaign. A campaign that was absorbed into the Democratic National Committee after it ceased being Obama for America.

Obama’s ACORN cronies designed a system that could be substantial from any number of leftist organizations, including the DNC.

“Apparently, ACORN and Project Vote were ‘smack dab’ in the middle of another one of Obama’s voter registration drives. According to ACORN reports, ACORN was Catalist’s first client. Let me be clear, the ACORN VBASE, is the archetype of the Obama campaign. ACORN’s technology combined with union money elected a president.”

Draft slides of a 2006 Project Vote PowerPoint show that Project Vote’s method could produce the desired results to sway an election.

Critics of Project Vote and ACORN underestimate their effectiveness in contacting voters to move them on an issue or to the polls.

Other slides detail their plans to turn this Voter Mobilization Network over to the leftist friends (including the DNC).

The left may scoff at whether this connection exists, but Karyn Gillette, then development director of Project Vote, also gave me a copy of the 2004 DNC donor list to work from. Karyn Gillette came to Project Vote from Ohio where she was employed by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

“According to a court filing in Ohio alleging ACORN violated state Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, ‘Project Vote, regularly advises Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (hereinafter “Secretary Brunner”) on election strategy, and recently issuing a news release claiming credit for Secretary Brunner’s directive restricting challenges to suspected unlawful voter registrations.’

“Maurice Thompson, the attorney handling the Ohio RICO action, told me late yesterday, ‘Evidence of collusion amongst ACORN, Project Vote, the Obama Campaign and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner comes as no surprise to us — these supposedly separate entities appear to have been co-mingling funds, trading political tips, and helping each other gain power for years now.’”

Here is a screen shot of the email Gillette sent to ACORN.org email addresses containing the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Though a number of news outlets like the New York Times had copies of the DNC donor list,  it was never made public, until today.

Click here to view the DNC major donor list ACORN used to fundraise for its voter registration drives.

The OFA’s organizing machine can track millions of calls and mobilize countless volunteers and it would behoove the right to take notice. Twitter and Facebook may spread the message and connect folks but there is a serious need for some good old fashion grassroots door knocking. If conservatives are going to win in November there must be a combination of new and old organizing. In 2004 Ohio surprised the nation by going red for Bush. As many others have noted, there was initially a

…lack of outreach among African American communities. Karl Rove proved in 2004 with black voters in Ohio that persons should not assume that African Americans will consistently vote progressive.”

Organizing for America has stopped the game clock with the unveiling of Vote 2010. November is the goal and they have the ball. Kickoff events are scheduled around the country for June 5th. Inviting emails with subjects like “What are you doing Saturday?” are making the rounds.

Conservatives, what are you doing this Saturday? If you want to win in November, it should be attending one of those kickoff parties. OFA, it’s the new ACORN. Learn who they are and how they operate. Click here to find an event near you or to sign up for their updates. If the OFA can continue to organize to pass Obama’s agenda and maintain the Congressional majorities, and all of the momentum of the past year and a half will be lost.

“President Barack Obama nominated Jack McConnell in March for a spot on the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island. He was recommended by the state’s two senators, Democrats Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse.”

The Heritage Foundation explains McConnell’s background:

“Another of McConnell ‘s claims to fame is the lead paint litigation in Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In Rhode Island, McConnell’s law firm shopped a lawsuit against the former makers of lead paint to Whitehouse, when the latter was that state’s Attorney General. Whitehouse’s successor ratified a decision that Whitehouse made and contracted out the state’s power to sue in the public interest to McConnell’s law firm. In the lawsuit, which McConnell considers one of his most significant, the state sought an order directing the companies to abate lead pigment in all buildings in Rhode Island that were accessible to children on the ground that the buildings were a ‘public nuisance.’

The Rhode Island Supreme Court recognized that lead poisoning was a serious public health problem, but declined to play the role of the legislature and create a new cause of action to address it, as McConnell ‘s lawsuit wanted it to do.”

Have angry mob, will travel

Naturally, when there is an opportunity to exploit the situation, attack business, and make some money, ACORN is not far behind. As so called leaders in the ‘social justice’ movement, ACORN was active in lead paint initiative early on. Whether it was state and local grants or lucrative partnerships, ACORN was ready to sign on. In the case of Rhode Island, ACORN formed an alliance with an organization called the Childhood Lead Action Project (CLAP). CLAP was instrumental in pushing the litigation in Ohio and joined with ACORN to file an amicus brief on behalf of McConnell’s case.

A one time partnership on a case of mutual interest can be overlooked but ACORN and the Childhood Lead Action Project teamed up on a number of projects including

Rhode Island Diesel Pollution Initiative

The National Low Income Housing Coalition

The Fund for Community Progress

The Childhood Lead Action Project presented Jack McConnell with the Above and Beyond the Call of Duty Award and McConnell’s firm Motley & Rice LLC. donated funds to CLAP.

Steal from the rich and give to the liberal rich.

With ACORN organizing protests across the country against McConnell’s target Sherwin-Williams, the “advocacy group” was able to maintain leverage over negotiations and even described their motives to a gathering of staff in December of 2006:

“As an outgrowth of the neighborhood lead-based campaigns in recent years, the profile of our lead work leaped forward targeting giant paint manufacturer Sherwin-Williams. Legal settlements in Rhode Island most notably gave us encouragement that some level of victory was possible in finally winning remediation for the impacts of lead paint.

The initial gamut of the company and others was to attempt to force us to tread water with the trade association, but meetings won through early actions produced nothing. Amy Schur, directing this effort, was vigilant, and having dogged them all year, has constructed a legal strategy with ALERT and the Cachet firm that has now brought the cities of San Diego and Los Angeles into the lawsuit.”

Read more on page 31 of the ACORN 2006 YEYB Report.

ACORN insiders go on to describe how the organization is more concerned about using the lawsuits to force a monetary settlement for the organization than for removing lead paint (emphasis mine):

“We knew going into this campaign that we faced a particular challenge in the current environment. They can settle with ACORN, but still haven’t gotten rid of their biggest problem – the city and state lawsuits.

Over the last 6 months our primary strategy has been to demonstrate to Sherwin-Williams that ACORN has the capacity to compound their legal problems, primarily by getting more cities and states to sue. While right now there is a chance that the company’s legal problems will grow significantly, ACORN’s work could almost ensure that this would be the case. So, deal with ACORN to take out that factor, and they might hope to beat back the worst of what could come.

Sherwin-Williams hasn’t wanted to deal, so we now either give up or make good on our threat. The problem is, while we can get more state lawsuits moving, and these very well may lead to the homes in our neighborhoods being made lead safe, securing the final victory is in the hands of the AG’s and how do we benefit organizationally?

Luck would have it that the major CA lawsuit against the paint industry is being handled by the same law firm handling our Wells Fargo case – and they want to work together on the lead case. Over the last month we have been able to convince several major CA cities and school districts to join the lawsuit. In a potentially important precedent for our role in these types of cases, we are in the final stages of negotiating a seat for ALERT (ACORN Law for Education, Representation & Training) on the legal team for the case, which puts us at the table – and in the settlement negotiations.”

ACORN’s above statement raises questions as to whether McConnell was candid to Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas when Cornyn “a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked John McConnell Jr. if it was appropriate for a lawyer to solicit a school board as a client in a lead paint lawsuit even if the district is not sure its schools contain lead paint.”

Written Questions from Sen. John Cornyn and Written Answers from Nominee John McConnell Jr.

16. Attached as Exhibit A is an August 2, 2000 memorandum from a Texas plaintiffs’ law firm to Texas school board members lobbying the school board to join a lead based paint remediation lawsuit that was headed by Ness Motley, predecessor to Motley Rice LLC and your firm at the time.

a. Do you believe that it is appropriate for a lawyer to solicit a school board as a client in a lead-based paint remediation lawsuit if the district is not aware whether district school buildings have lead-based paint and is not aware of any past remediation costs?

Response: No.

b. Do you believe that it is appropriate for a lawyer, in soliciting a school board as a client in a lead-based paint remediation lawsuit, to assure the district that if it recovers funds for lead-based paint remediation, those funds do not have to be spent on lead-based paint remediation, but may be placed in the general maintenance and operations fund and used for any appropriate purpose?

Response: No.

c. Did you or any attorneys with your firm help prepare the attached memorandum or the resolution attached thereto? If so, please identify who helped in the preparation.

Response: I have never seen the memo that is Attachment A and know nothing about the circumstances of the preparation or distribution of this document. I made diligent inquiry of members of my firm and they advised that they also did not have any involvement with this memo.

Amazingly the ACORN idea of targeting school districts for potential clients in lead paint litigation was used by Motley Rice, though no one cal recall doing so. More interestingly, according to court documents, Motley Rice was also involved in the California lead paint case ACORN was working on.

How much is that AG in the window?

While its no secret that McConnell is a top donor to the Democrats, it should be noted that McConnell’s firm Motley Rice has given tens of thousands to Senator Whitehouse.

However, the question is whether he worked with ACORN on the lead paint lawsuit. In addition to the connection through CLAP, ACORN and McConnell’s share one powerful friend. United States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) recommended McConnell for the Rhode Island federal court vacancy and he and McConnell have a long friendship

In 1999 Sheldon Whitehouse was attorney general of Rhode Island when he first:

“ initiated a lawsuit against the lead paint industry that ended in a mistrial; the state later won a second lawsuit against former lead paint manufacturers Sherwin Williams Co., Millennium Holdings and NL Industries that found them responsible for creating a public nuisance.[4] However, this decision was unanimously overturned by the Rhode Island Supreme Court on July 1, 2008. The Court found that it is the responsibility of the property owners to abate and mitigate lead hazards (as specified by Rhode Island statute).”

ACORN and its coalition partners had tried a number of strategies before relying on the “all politics is local” mantra and employing the skills of politicians like Whitehouse who obviously had aspirations for higher office. ACORN’s strategy was clear and state attorney generals were a key component of the plan. ACORN stated it would:

Work to find a second large law firm willing to develop a partnership along the lines of the one being negotiated in CA and get several more state AG’s (or cities) to work with us on a lawsuit strategy.

On page 258 of the same report ACORN finished its tale of corporate shakedowns by declaring “we plan on nothing less than a Rhode-Island style win!”

Whitehouse and McConnell worked closely on the Rhode Island lead paint case while the attorney general continued to curry favor with ACORN. In March of 2007 Senator Whitehouse proudly attended an ACORN rally in Washington DC where an ACORN leader stated:

“We need things for the needy and not the greedy,’ said New York ACORN President Pat Boone at the rally. ‘Congress must act now to appropriate $450 billion and fully fund these vital domestic programs, rejecting outrageous and unnecessary tax breaks for wealthy individuals.”

Whitehouse was also instrumental in using the Alberto Gonzalez scandal to politically align the stars for ACORN affiliate Project Vote. A mere two months before Project Vote released – to much fanfare and finger pointing at the right – its report Caging Democracy: A 50-Year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters, Whitehouse paved the way with a provocative letter to the Department of Justice.

Reliable ACORN Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) “asked the Justice Department to investigate the alleged ‘caging’ of predominantly African American voters in Jacksonville, Florida by the RNC in 2004.” Rhode Island and Massachusetts are liberal testing grounds for what Project Vote called its “experiments.” Groups like ACORN pushed fusion voting, living wages and lead paint campaigns through areas filled with ACORN friendly politicians.

In 2008 Senator Whitehouse again delivered for ACORN by introducing a bill aimed at fulfilling Project Vote’s action items on voter caging:

Voter Participation – ACORN is committed to helping all citizens exercise their rights to participate in the electoral process by registering people to vote. This election year, ACORN is committed to ensuring that citizens be able to register and cast their votes without fear of harassment and intimidation from dirty political tricks such as voter caging. Prohibiting voter caging, which a New York Times editorial this week called “a little known but pernicious technique,” is the goal of bills introduced in the Senate by Sheldon Whitehouse (S. 2305) and in the House by John Conyers (H.R. 2305). ACORN members will be lobbying their representatives to sign on in support of the bills.

The recommendation of McConnell by Whitehouse, a notorious member of the ACORN 7, “Chicago style politics.” As James R. Copeland explained:

“But you’d have to be paying close attention to know about two of the president’s craziest choices for the federal district courts, Wisconsin’s Louis Butler and Rhode Island’s Jack McConnell.

President Obama nominated Butler last year, but the Senate returned Butler’s nomination without action after it passed through the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote; the president resubmitted the nomination on January 20 of this year.

…In 2005, Butler authored a split opinion for the court in Thomas v. Mallet, which permitted lawsuits against the manufacturers of paint that may have contained lead, even absent proof that any individual manufacturer’s paint had been used by the person or persons filing the lawsuit.

This expanded Wisconsin law to embrace the theory of “market-share liability,” a doctrine accepted in California regarding litigation against manufacturers of the anti-morning-sickness drug diethylstilbestrol but overwhelmingly rejected in other jurisdictions and contexts thereafter.”

Recently Obama’s Environmental Protection agency passed new restrictions modeled after the Rhode Island and Wisconsin cases:

A new federal rule aimed at reducing exposure to toxic lead-paint chips and dust requires renovators to be trained and certified in EPA-approved methods of containing and cleaning up work areas.

…The EPA estimates that its new rule will add $8 to $167 to the cost of the average interior remodeling job, but contractors say the expense to homeowners will be much greater. “The EPA has grossly underestimated the costs to comply on any job. I can see my labor costs go up by thousands of dollars.”

It appears as though ACORN and the “environmental justice” movement secured a major victory despite losing the court cases because the main goal was not a local victory. ACORN and other organizations wanted to impose national restrictions totaling billions and by using small states like Rhode Island ACORN was able to secure a temporary victory whose momentum could be used to enact national changes.

From little ACORN attorneys powerful politicians grow

If federal judgeships are for sale, “‘the massive campaign contributions…approaching $700,000 over the past two decades’—by McConnell and his wife to [Senator Jack] Reed, [Senator Sheldon] Whitehouse, and an array of other Democrats” might entitle him to one. But judgeships should not be for sale and it is apparent that McConnell would be a “liberal judicial activist” and rule based on his personal empathy and political views instead of follow the law.

McConnell’s involvement in lead paint cases in Ohio, Wisconsin and California without any overt mention of ACORN’s work raises several red flags. What is McConnell hiding and has he been truly honest about his connections to ACORN. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time an ACORN lawyer with powerful friends was able to get a job he wasn’t qualified for.

You can follow Anita on her blog or on Twitter.

National Journal rated Obama the most “liberal” United States Senator, even more “liberal” than avowed socialist Bernard Sanders of Vermont (for whom then Senator Obama campaigned), because he earned it.

In her sensational New York Times no. 1 bestseller, “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies,” published in 2009, intrepid Michelle Malkin generously gave me “special thanks” for daring to expose ACORN corruption and wrote about it and the New York Times cover up of the Obama/ACORN relationship in detail at pages 244-49. (Since that material was added after the manuscript had been sent to the printer, I did not make the index.)

Stealth socialism in vogue

It’s not surprising that on May 3, 2010 Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliot released “The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists” and on May 15, 2010 former Speaker Newt Gingrich released a book titled “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine.” Of course they are right about Obama’s radical ties and “secular socialist machine.” (I’m looking forward to Laura Ingraham’s “The Obama Diaries,” out on or about July 13, 2010, but I bet President Obama isn’t.)

Even though on October 21, 2008 The New York Times killed the Obama/ACORN expose on which I been reporter Stephanie Strom’s source and I decided to blow the whistle myself and appeared on Laura Ingraham’s radio show before the end of the month, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News apparently did not learn about it until March of 2009 (the month in which attorney Heather Heidelbaugh, for whom I voluntarily became a witness in the Pennsylvania ACORN, testified before a Congressional committee about ACORN voter registration fraud and the New York Times cover up), it was inevitable that the truth about Obama, ACORN and “stealth socialism” finally would become generally known as the socialist agenda was implemented. After all, the idea was for Obama to deliver as President on that “fundamental change” that he promised as a presidential hopeful.

After an appealing generality becomes an examinable specific and the cost calculations are done, putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t fool nearly as many people. For example, Obamacare is a massive wealth redistribution program and–no surprise–not long after it was enacted, an Obama Administration official acknowledged it and we learned that Obamacare would be much more expensive than it had been officially estimated before it was passed.

Defining stealth socialism

Graham L. Strachan explained the “stealth socialism” path this way:

“Why did the Western media persist in calling the social system in the Communist bloc ‘Communism’ instead of Socialism? They did it to manufacture a false reality: to protect the reputation of another form of Socialism which existed in the West….so-called ‘Democratic Socialism’, socialism by stealth, socialism achieved through the ‘permeation’ of existing political institutions by members of organisation such as the Fabian Society, in order to influence the policies adopted by those institutions towards socialism.

“Democratic Socialism itself was based on a lie: that Socialism could be implemented peacefully through the ballot box. The implication was that if the voters didn’t like it they could vote it out again. That was a hoax. Since Socialism does not permit private ownership of property, it cannot be ‘democratic’ in the sense of allowing a choice of political Parties. This is not a matter of ideology, but of logistics. It would be impossible to have a two Party system of genuine democracy, for example, under which the state nationalised all property including business when the Socialists were voted into power, then sold it all back to the people again when they were voted out. The intention of Democratic Socialism was (and still is) to be democratic just long enough to gain power. Then it will declare the ‘end of history’ and entrench itself forever, enforcing its politically correct speech and thought on everybody, and being just as tyrannical as its Marxist revolutionary counterparts.”

How to make a socialist the ACORN way

As an ACORN insider my indoctrination as a socialist was a slow but steady progression from radical liberalism to embracing the stealth socialist methods that had made ACORN a powerful force in American electoral politics. Two years ago, in the mist of a heated presidential election year, I noticed a Facebook page of Socialism 2008. The graffiti-like picture beckoned young Socialists to Chicago, Illinois on June 19th, 2008.  I RSVPed for the event on Facebook without fully understanding what had just taken place. The line between radical, liberal Democrat and socialist was almost invisible at this point.

Working for ACORN/Project Vote facilitated my crossing the “socialist”threshold and I had become what insiders termed “one of the true believers.” True believers were instrumental in the survival of ACORN and the process of making an employee a true believer began on the very first day.

Inside ACORN offices across the country, young, idealistic liberals were being ingrained with the Saul Alinsky style of Organizing. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals was never mentioned by name, but Alinsky’s tactics were used on employees and ACORN members.

ACORN’s strategy of stealth socialism was aimed at gaining power through duplicity and somewhat assimilating into society. Alinsky, the “father of community organizing,” taught that the path to power necessitated the use of people who would serve as pawns.

“Organizing for power was Alinsky’s political end, not political party influence. When he asked his new students why they wanted to organize, they would invariably respond with ‘selfless bromides about wanting to help others,’ according to Ryan Lizza writing in The New Republic. Alinsky would then “scream back at them that there was a one-word answer: “You want to organize for power!’”

Saul Alinsky almost single-handedly invented the modern art of community organizing…

He was a master teacher of others, and left a legion of trained disciples and organizations, including Obama and Clinton.”

Every ACORN employee was given a copy of the ACORN Organizing Model, bylaws and various information on running campaigns, but the real education was in how ACORN operated behind the scenes. Like Alinsky, ACORN openly organized to build power, but ACORN’s ace in the hole was the black community.

Community organizers became the “information police” for minorities in dozens of cities. As the official representative for its members, ACORN was able to frame the debate in ways that aligned with its People’s Platform.  The platform is based on the socialist idea of sharing the wealth. Members were asked, even coerced, to attend rallies and protests for issues ACORN had decided would lead to power.

As students exited schools with a “liberal arts” education and a desire to help, ACORN stood ready with the social justice flag in one hand and a cigarette lighter and American flag in the other. Attending such events like Socialism 2008 was the culmination of two years of looking the other way and accepting a little bad in order to save the “movement.” Some leave ACORN at this point but the ones who stay are trusted just a little more.

The Road from radical terrorists to professors and community organizers

With greater access comes greater understanding of the true subversive nature of ACORN. As stated last summer in my article “Liberal Fallout Zones“:

“Poverty is big business and a predicate for class warfare intended to perpetuate political power in the masters of that big business. In the current climate special interest groups are writing bills and influencing votes amid a huge liberal spending binge.”

That spending binge is more like a bender now because ACORN, recognizing the past mistakes of other radical groups like Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society decided the best way to gain power as was to pass unnoticed in mainstream America. Radicals like Frances Fox Piven and her husband Richard A. Cloward retreated into the world of Academia where they penned papers on Socialism peppered with Alinsky tactics and a new name:

The Cloward-Piven strategy

On May 2, 1966, Columbia’s Professor of Social Work Richard A. Cloward, and his then research associate Frances Fox Piven, wrote a pivotal article in The Nation, articulating “a strategy to end poverty.”

In what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, the article argued a revolutionary approach to mobilizing the poor in the form of class warfare against capitalist forces viewed as exploiting labor and oppressing the poor.

David Horowitz, a long-time student of leftist political movements in the United States, characterized the Cloward-Piven strategy as seeking “to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.”

Cloward and Piven argued a “guaranteed annual income” should be established as an entitlement for the poor, a right the poor could assert and demand to be paid.”

Other radicals like ACORN founder Wade Rathke and former Project Vote executive director, Zach Polett formed organizations and began implementing their socialist agenda while using the poor and minority communities as a defense if anyone dared question their actions. According to its website, ACORN planted its seed in American politics long ago and continues to play an “insider’s game” to maintain it.

“Finally, ACORN® began playing the insiders’ game in American politics. Congressional lobbying is practiced by ACORN® staff. Leaders and members became a central part of the insiders’ games, too. Members elected to office or serving on APACs acquired experience and skill applying power from the inside of the political process. Instead of confronting opponents in actions (something ACORN® will never stop doing), members could trade and negotiate from inside positions of power. ACORN®’s work on the savings and loan bailout provided effective means of developing and applying power for low- and moderate- income people. ACORN® members won appointment to the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to help determine the management of the billions of dollars of assets the government seized. The payoff to these activities came, and still comes, when substantial numbers of ACORN® members developed the ability to move inside the political sphere that has for so long been closed to low- and moderate-income people.”

Wade Rathke and Zach Polett learned the path to power quickly and utilized their influence to pass the 1996 National Voter Registration Act  (the “Motor Voter” bill). Polett, seated below to the far left in a dark suit and tie, had officially brought the Arkansas based ACORN to Washington.

Interestingly, on the same page with their tales of insider dealing,  ACORN discusses how the network of unions, non-profits and corporations were created for the express purpose of pushing ACORN’s socialist agenda.

“The national lobbying arm of ACORN® is only one example of the diversification within ACORN® that was basic to its success. The ACORN® Housing Corporation worked to create affordable housing in conjunction with banks and state and local government. The United Labor Unions, now Locals 100 and 880 of the Service Employees International Union, became labor organizing arms of ACORN® which organize people where they work. ACORN® Services, Inc. and the canvassing operations enhanced ACORN®’s ability to create the financial resources needed to grow. The Arkansas Institute for Social Justice became the means for developing leadership skills and political talents among the ACORN® members. What was once a relatively simple organization of community groups has became a diversified system of institutions capable of applying specialized skills to solving the kinds of problems ACORN® encounters in its work.”

Along came a socialist

In late 2006 the atmosphere in the office changed and it appeared that the senior staff were energized. Efforts to function as a real office were implemented. Project Vote began using a donor database instead of a box and attempts were made to reconcile the accounting records. In anticipation of what ACORN began calling a “once in a generation opportunity.” John Podesta from the Center for American Progress gave a speech called “Preparing for Power: The Next Cycle?” in December of that year.

After two years with ACORN I understood how they operated and took the close relationship with the Democrat party for granted. The relationship between Democrats and ACORN was that the party needed ACORN to retain their seats and ACORN needed them to pass their agenda items. ACORN’s belief that indeed, all politics is local, allowed them to place people strategically in positions that would allow a run for higher office.

In 2007 when Zach Polett bragged about supervising Barack Obama and that “ACORN produces leaders,” his purpose was to energize the employees so that we would go out there and deliver. ACORN’s voter registration goals and budget were unmatched and the stakes were high.

When Obama’s campaign called the Project Vote offices in late 2007, I could barely contain my excitement as I relayed the information to my supervisors. After receiving the Obama 2007 2nd quarter donor list from Karyn Gillette, I had another look away moment. Were we violating FEC rules by targeting Obama’s maxed out donors? Did I really want Obama to win this way? Believing that the bigger goal was helping people by implementing the ACORN agenda, I put my doubts aside and worked on pulling donors from the list (which included ALL Obama donors, not just the bigger donors required to be reported to the Federal Elections Commission).

From October 2005 until 2008, I did fundraising work with ACORN and used political donor lists. All Democrat: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Democratic National Committee. When I appeared as a guest on “The O’Reilly Factor” last year, I said that ACORN had served for years as an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party, but Bill O’Reilly didn’t discuss that with me. Ignoring it is exactly what the stealth socialists want.

I once asked Marcel Reid, former ACORN national board member and President of DC ACORN, how it was possible for ACORN to push its agenda and she replied “We never use the word Socialism.” ACORN’s appeal was to simply implement a Socialist agenda without ever saying the word. When Wade Rathke was interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News, Kelly asked Rathke whether he would describe himself as a socialist, and Wade answered no. Kelly proceeded to point out that the ACORN People’s Platform sounded socialism. Rathke weakly tried to defend ACORN against the Socialist label by pretending the “share the wealth” philosophy was not in the ACORN Platform. You can watch the video here.

Eventually Rathke conceded that the share the wealth language was indeed present, but cited some language about the right to be rich and free.

The People’s Platform (or ACORN’s socialist wish list)

ACORN People’s Platform can be found here and it defines what rich and free meant, and it certainly is not capitalism!

“Our riches shall be the blooming of our communities, the bounty of a sure livelihood, the beauty of homes for our families with sickness driven from the door, the benefit of our taxes rather than their burden, and the best of our energy, land, and natural resources for all people.

“Our freedom is the force of democracy, not the farce of federal fat and personal profit. In our freedom, only the people shall rule. Corporations shall have their role; producing jobs, providing products, paying taxes. No more, no less. They shall obey our wishes, respond to our needs, serve our communities. Our country shall be the citizens’ wealth and our wealth shall build our country.

“Government shall have its role: public servant to our good, fast follower to our sure steps. No more, no less. Our government shall shout with the public voice and no longer to a private whisper. In our government, the common concerns shall be the collective cause.”

Marcel Reid’s explanation described “stealth socialism.” Aggressive tactics like ACORN’s protests and rallies were to gain the credibility that would allow the acceptance of a radical socialist agenda. While Reid was president of DC ACORN they proposed a plan to redistribute wealth in the Washington, DC metro area. This plan was proudly presented to the organization at the 2006 ACORN Year End, Year Beginning meeting in New Orleans. The excerpt below is from page 191 of the 2006 ACORN YEYB Annual Report (click to enlarge).

DC ACORN readily admits that “this proposal would essentially be a redistribution of wealth across the board,” but stealth socialism is so effective that even conservative watchdogs have been fooled by the ever changing names of the ACORN empire.

Obama’s agenda mirrors the ACORN People’s Platform as evidenced by a review of the healthcare and energy sections of  the platform. On healthcare, the ACORN’s socialist people’s platform wants to “require the federal government to provide for the health care needs of recent immigrants. ACORN’s position on Energy shows shades of Cap and Trade with goals like:

Prevent any single corporation or conglomerate from owning major interest in more than one of the following resources: oil, natural gas, nuclear energy, solar energy, and coal; or more than one of the following categories: source, refinery, shipping, or outlet.”

Pay no attention to the white liberal behind the curtain

The “Liberals” who elected Obama President may have a “tower of Babel” moment as gay rights, civil rights, immigration rights, environmental extremists, pro-choicers and all the other special interests that supported the Obama presidential campaign strive to push America further to the left and shed all inhibitions. As with ACORN itself, it seems impossible that the coalition that put Obama in the White House and gave Democrats huge majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives will continue to work smoothly together now that Obama and the Congressional Democrats are in control and America is learning what Obama really meant by the seductive-sounding “hope and change.” ACORN needed the cloak of stealth socialism to maintain its hold on the poor. ACORN’s image is synonymous with blacks and other minorities and the race card has become the last bastion of its “hope.”

During its greatest crisis, ACORN replaced its white leader with a black woman in order to hide behind Bertha Lewis’s skin color. What they didn’t want the public to see were the white liberal leaders behind the scenes who have been staying in Executive suites and partying in the mountains.

ACORN Political Operations Retreat November 2007 (among the pictured are senior staff Patrick Winogrond, Jessica Angus, Nathan Henderson-James, Kimberly Olson, Amy Busefink and Johanna Sharrard)

Restoring the balance

Stealth socialism allowed ACORN to set the stage for Obama’s “regime” as they called it internally. Wade Rathke was willing to fall on his sword in 2008 to protect Obama, and to attain what nearly 40 years organizing the country towards socialism promised. After the embezzlement scandal, ACORN board members and staff assembled at meetings across the country and as insiders revealed, and I testified about, “fighting Capitalism” was listed as one of the things “great about ACORN.”

Obama has shown himself to be unrelenting in his quest to pass healthcare, take over American industries and weaken our national security. America can’t afford to be fooled by increasingly obvious tactics of the Far Left. It’s time for the great majority of Americans to turn the tables back on the Far Left by getting involved and organized and voting out incumbents who vote against the traditional American way. We need a morning in America, but it’s always darkest before the dawn.

You can follow Anita on her blog or on Twitter.

]]> http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/05/27/obama-acorn-and-stealth-socialism-dire-domestic-threat/feed/ 5 http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/04/14/democracy-alliance-and-acorn-affiliated-group-wins-pulitzer-prize-with-the-new-york-times/ http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/04/14/democracy-alliance-and-acorn-affiliated-group-wins-pulitzer-prize-with-the-new-york-times/#comments Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:53:18 +0000 Anita MonCrief http://hotair.com/greenroom/?p=17623

ProPublica, the brainchild of Herb and Marion Sandler, received journalism’s top honor this week in conjunction with the New York Times.

“ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative-journalism service, won one of two Pulitzers awarded for investigative reporting for a story on the life-and-death decisions made by doctors at a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina. The story was a collaboration with The New York Times Magazine.”

I explained last year in a four part series titled ACORN and The Sandler’s: A Four part Review of the Housing Crisis that:

“Ed Lasky’s article in the American Thinker illustrates the role of Herb and Marion Sandler in the subprime meltdown.

‘Herbert and Marion Sandler, a New York lawyer and Wall Street analyst respectively, bought a small California thrift in 1963 and built it into GDW — one of the largest thrifts in the nation. The company’s business was built on adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs. These were mortgages offered at low “teaser” rates that ratcheted upward as interest rates increased. They were often sold aggressively to unsophisticated home buyers who did not comprehend the vast financial risks they were taking, or who assumed that housing prices would rise high enough to provide a profit to them when they sold their houses. They were targets for lenders peddling mortgages that should have been stamped with a skull and crossbones, for these were among the most seductive and dangerous types of mortgage.’

“Lasky goes on to note that groups like ACORN “might also have played a role in the expansion of such mortgages to borrowers who may have lacked the ability to repay the loans.” According internal documents, ACORN Housing often used income that was considered “under the table” in order to qualify its applicants for loans. Lenders like World Savings and Bank of America were long time partners who seemed to also benefit (at the time) from these subprime loans.”

An October 4, 2008 sketch on Saturday Night Live described the Sandlers as “people who should be shot.”

The controversial sketch is available here.

The ever liberal New York Times describes Herb Sandler’s ProPublica as: “a non-profit group dedicated to “a new kind of investigative journalism,” and the Washington Post admits to freely accepting input from the organization regarding articles.”

“Jeff Leen, who heads The Post’s investigative reporting unit, said of ProPublica: “They bring us ideas and we choose from their menu.”

Given obvious lack of interest or real investigation into the background and connections of ProPublica it is obvious why failing newspapers like the New York Times would turn to them for help. A lack of resources for investigative journalists on staff and the inherent desire to push a liberal agenda have led to a marriage of convenience whose very existence threatens the integrity of the field.

Herb and Marion Sandler were named among Time magazine’s list of “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis.” for their risky and now toxic adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs). However, in true ACORN fashion, ProPublica points the finger at Wall Street and the banks. In a rather odd original song entitled “Bet Against the American Dream” ProPublica takes a jab at Wall Street. The video can be watched here.

The Times and other newspapers have been complicit in the partisan agenda of ProPublica as s one journalist noted in a must read article on ProPublica (emphasis mine):

“In October 2007 Slate magazine’s Jack Shafer wrote a report on the Sandlers’ political contributions and theorized that the decision by the husband-wife team to fund ProPublica signaled an attempt to use their money and influence “to return us to the days of the partisan press.”

The duo has spent “millions on politics,” Shafer wrote “The Federal Election Commission database shows the two of them giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party campaigns. In 2004, Herbert Sandler gave the MoveOn.org Voter Fund $2.5 million …

As Slate’s Shafer posits in his expose of the Sandlers: ‘If I were a newspaper editor considering ProPublica copy for a future issue, the first thing I’d want is proof of the firewall preventing the Sandlers and other funders from picking – or nixing – the targets of its probes‘ …”

It doesn’t seem that there is much restraint at Sandler’s ProPublica where they have attacked ACORN detractors and refused to investigate any story related to corruption in the Obama administration.

Interestingly, race-baiter and Obama friend Henry Louis Gates Jr. sits on the board of ProPublica while Sandler serves as the board’s chairman. This article sums up the creation of this perfect storm:

“Question: What’s a liberal to do? With the burgeoning popularity of Fox News, the Drudge Report website, the dominance of conservatives on talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin et al) and the rising tide of conservative political bloggers, it’s no wonder old-line left-liberal journalists are growing anxious about promoting their message to the media. As daily newspaper circulation plummets and the audience of ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN ages and shrinks, liberals are watching their authority fade. They can no longer set the public agenda without being challenged by conservative media voices.

Answer: Create a media outlet that will produce left-wing ‘investigative’ hit pieces that can be given to cash-strapped newspapers at no cost. “

Here is my question: Could a cash strapped newspaper like the New York Times kill a story related to the ACORN/Obama connection? Leading up to the election Strom’s editors at the Times spiked several stories in relation to ACORN. In particular, despite receiving copies of the loan papers, Strom never printed the a story about its business partner Forest City Ratner. Bruce Ratner and FCR own 48% of the Times building in New York and gave ACORN a 1.5 million dollar loan after the embezzlement scandal of 2008. ACORN, a partner in Ratner’s controversial Atlantic Yards deal, seemed to be protected within the Times.

In October of 2008, Strom left a voice mail informing me that her editors had told her to stand down and in a subsequent phone call revealed to me that the New York Times policy “was not to publish a game changing article for either side this close to the election .”

Congressional testimony by Heather Heidelbaugh, Esq. revealed this story to the public in March of 2009.

“The New York Times articles stopped when Ms. Moncrief, who is a Democrat and a supporter of the President, revealed that the Obama Presidential Campaign had sent its maxed out donor list to Karen Gillette of the Washington, DC ACORN office and asked Gillette and Ms. Moncrief to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN. Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama Campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at the New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, ‘it was a game changer.’”

Clark Hoyt, the ombudsman for the New York Times, has been working overtime apologizing for the paper’s inability to fully cover the ACORN story. After cries from the right for ignoring the ACORN Primp and Pro sting they were besieged on the left for seemingly misreporting the story.

Could their alliances with ACORN businesses partners, funders and an organization with Obama’s friend on the board have jeopardized their journalistic ethics? Did they deserve journalism’s highest honor? Sadly the answers appear to be yes and no.

The media has consistently failed to cover the ACORN/Obama connection and give it the investigation it deserves. As writer Kevin Mooney noted:

“ACORN’s questionable financial transactions and political activity were explored by the New York Times in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election. But this reporting was abruptly cut off. Now would be a good time to reactivate the investigation since the organization is supposedly disbanding…

The new affiliates operating without the ACORN name will persist in working for health care reform, immigration reform and affordable housing…

“The Times should activate the investigations that were underway in the months leading up the 2008 election and carefully examine how taxpayer funds were allocated between organizations that were precluded by law from participating in partisan policy activity.”

In a time when top awards like the Nobel Peace Prize and now the Pulitzer have been given for good intentions and agenda driven reasons, it appears that for now the Times will continue to coast along and ride out the ACORN/Obama storm.

The Center for Individual Rights issued the following press release this afternoon:

News release
For immediate release
Contact: Terry Pell (202) 833-8400
E-mail: <Pell@cir-usa.org>
April 6, 2010

Lawsuit against Anita MonCrief dismissed

Today an abrupt end came to a lawsuit that Project Vote, an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), had launched against Anita MonCrief, a vocal critic of both groups. The federal judge hearing the case ordered all claims dismissed based on a stipulation by the parties. Project Vote had sued MonCrief and an unidentified “John Doe” for $5 million in damages.

MonCrief worked for Project Vote for two years but became disillusioned by what she experienced there. In various venues, including testimony in court and before a congressional panel, on national television, and in her own blog, she detailed what she regarded as the corruption of both Project Vote and ACORN.

Project Vote’s lawsuit, filed last year in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, featured a slew of counts, including trademark infringement, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, and trespass to chattels. Represented by the Kansas City law firm of Graves, Bartle, Marcus & Garrett and the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), MonCrief countersued both Project Vote and ACORN for abuse of process, alleging that ACORN was Project Vote’s alter ego and that the two groups had brought the suit to punish her for exercising her right to free speech and to uncover her sources.

Late last year, the judge dismissed the trademark claims, among others, but the rest of Project Vote’s suit and MonCrief’s countersuit against it and ACORN continued into the pretrial discovery phase. Before that phase went very far, however, the parties agreed to a settlement. In return for MonCrief’s dropping her countersuit for abuse of process, Project Vote agreed to dismiss its claims against her in their entirety.

“This is a stunning victory for Ms. MonCrief,” said Terry Pell, CIR’s president. “By dismissing all of its claims, Project Vote has canceled its arrogant attempt to silence a critic using the courts. Ms. MonCrief now is completely free to continue blogging and speaking about Project Vote and ACORN without fear of this action.”

Pell added, “And the utter failure of Project Vote’s suit should encourage others who wish to speak out against corruption at ACORN or anywhere else.”

More information related to this case

As patriots from across America prepare to descend on Washington, DC to protest the government takeover of health care, the Obama administration is touting the impending vote in the House of Representatives as “historic.” Progressive organizations have been preparing for the moment for decades and not even the outcry of millions of Americans will stop them from pushing their radical agenda through.

Ironically, the past week has been filled with numerous stories of how ACORN is disbanding across the country. News outlets from Politico to the New York Times run stories detailing the demise of ACORN. Of course, some are skeptical about whether ACORN is truly going away:

“In an age of lawlessness, rules for some out of government favor, and special privileges for special classes, racketeers and criminals need only change their suit and their hat and live another day to rob, steal, cheat, and engage in human trafficking… “

Conveniently for the Obama administration the “demise” of ACORN could not have come at a better time. As pictures of empty ACORN offices fill the news, Obama pushes forward with an ACORN planned and approved agenda.

In July of last year ACORN honored the work of Senator Charles Schumer, Rep. Luis Gutierrez and Rep. Maxine Waters at their 39^th Anniversary celebration. The invitation email stated:

“P.S. ACORN’s grassroots leadership believes we are experiencing a once-in-a-generation opportunity and must not squander this moment. Your generosity is needed now more than ever. Thanks.”

ACORN’s socialist agenda has always included some form of universal health care and like many of its “campaigns” this is not the first time ACORN has pushed for national change. The group, which was founded in Arkansas 40 years ago, maintained friendly relations with Bill Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas and then President. The result of this relationship was HillaryCare. Americans fought back and ACORN was forced to back down. However, ACORN was not defeated and began to put a set of conditions in place that in the right political climate, would ensure victory. Michelle Malkin explains a 2008 ACORN memo on why Obamacare is so important:

“Why do they want Obamacare? An internal ACORN memo I obtained from August 2008 makes the motives clear. ‘Over our 38 years, health care organizing has never been a major focus either nationally or locally for ACORN,’ wrote ACORN Philadelphia region director Craig Robbins. ‘But increasingly, ACORN offices around the country are doing work on health care.’ The goal: ‘Building ACORN Power.’ The memo outlines the ACORN/HCAN partnership and strategy of opposing any programs that rely on “unregulated private insurance” – and then parlaying political victory on government-run health care ‘to move our ACORN agenda (or at least part of it) with key electeds that we might otherwise not be able to pull off.’

The objective, in other words, is to piggyback and exploit Obamacare to improve and protect their political health.”

ACORN’s famous liberal experiments were never outwardly dubbed as socialist action items but within the ranks of employees we knew that what made ACORN great was “fighting capitalism.” By never using certain words with members and outsiders, ACORN painted a picture of the poor rising out of poverty and demanding their fair share. In 2006 ACORN partnered with SEIU on several healthcare campaigns across the country

In California, home of Maxine Waters, ACORN’s healthcare campaign in San Francisco mirrors the same tactics used by Obama to pass Obamacare.

“Health: Last year (’05) we saved health clinics. This year we provided the field experience to win a form of universal healthcare. David Sharples staffed the leadership on the campaign with leader Gisselle Quesada. Using the tax program to survey people on health needs, we were able to build a quick base, identify members who could put a face on the problem, and move numerous members on multiple fronts to move the key supervisor and win the campaign.”

According to the 2006 report, ACORN has been working with hospitals to introduce “universal healthcare” at the local levels and that success was the precursor to Obamacare.

The excerpts above are from a 2006 report available here.

The report goes on to state that even ACORN’s non-profit affiliate Project Vote was somehow involved in healthcare

“Our issue-based GOTV program targeted some 686,796 people for an average of three contacts each. For example, Project Vote’s GOTV workers knocked on 396,273 doors in Ohio alone. Similar to our Voter Registration work, canvassers relate participation in the elections to salient issues in low- and moderate-income communities, such as healthcare…”

Critics on the left will state that it is a coincidence that ACORN and Obama’s old employer Project Vote are both advocating for government run healthcare, but all of the evidence suggests that Obama and Congress are settling debts with their old friends.

Before the ACORN embezzlement scandal and the prostitution videos ACORN was more open about its influence on Capitol Hill. The aforementioned 2006 report has another tidbit about the ACORN political machine:

Immediately after the 2006 mid-term elections when the Democrats took control of Congress members were made aware of who put them there. ACORN used its organizing and voter registration arms to set the stage for Obamacare. Newbies like Democrats Sherrod Brown and Claire Mccaskill were just as beholden to ACORN as long standing members of Congress from ACORN districts. The excerpt and screen shot can also be found in the 2006 report:

“Furthermore, we are working to make sure that key leaders in Congress fully understand the role that ACORN played in the 2006 elections: we are working collaboratively with the political department to ensure that the impact of our political work is widely known and appreciated.”

According to insiders, before the 2008 election ACORN and SEIU were so confident that Obama would win that a meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico had an agenda that included a session entitled: Emerging Strategies III: Healthcare – Regime Change Priority with Richard Kirsch, Executive Director HCAN: Health Care for America Now

Regime Change?  A quick look at Wikipedia gives us an inkling as to what ACORN and SEIU are up to:

“In politics, a regime is the form of government: the set of rules, cultural or social norms, etc. that regulate the operation of government and its interactions with society. For instance, the United States has one of the oldest regimes still active in the world, dating to the ratification of its Constitution in 1789.

The term is also used to distinguish what is actually being enforced from what is considered legitimate. Enforcement of an unconstitutional statute would be a regime but not a law.“

IIf one follows the money, one name (not surprisingly) emerges: George Soros. The Soros backed Democracy Alliance has pumped untold millions into groups that include ACORN and the architect of Obama’s permanent campaign (Organizing for America), Harold Ickes’s Catalist. The Democracy Alliance vision includes changing America through initiatives like health care.

With leftist billionaires lining up to ensure a permanent majority, the march towards socialism has been a well funded one.

“…George Soros and other wealthy liberals formed a loose-knit group to consider how to fund a political comeback. Their answer: Create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups—a kind of ‘vast left-wing conspiracy’ to compete with the conservative movement. The group they created –called the Democracy Alliance (DA)…”

Though the fall of ACORN was not anticipated, ACORN like the DA is a taxable nonprofit and its structure allows for such restructuring. Taxable nonprofit?  Matthew Vadum explains:

“Rob Stein explained the group’s legal structure to the Hudson panel:

‘It is a taxable nonprofit. Think of it as a corporation that does not make a profit and doesn’t aspire to make a profit. We’re an association of individuals….’

“In other words, the DA has no interest in asking the IRS to register it as tax-exempt or to allow contributions to it to be tax-deductible. Were the DA to request tax-exemption as a 501(c)(4) lobby group or as a 527 political group, it would have to abide by a dizzying array of legal constraints. Members of the Democracy Alliance may want to impose Big Government bureaucracy and red tape on Americans, but the friends of George Soros are too rich to be bothered.”

Was ACORN willing to go underground to save Obamacare? Is the Pope Catholic? ACORN’s own 5 Year Political Plan describes a structure that is local in nature and prides itself on being that way.

ACORN’s temporary fall from grace will allow it to go underground with the tacit support of the White House and use Obamacare to rally its base for a 2012 victory unless the ACORN roots of Obama’s socialist agenda are exposed.

]]> http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/03/20/how-acorn-paved-the-way-for-the-obama-regime-and-socialized-health-care/feed/ 10 http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/03/04/why-the-acorn-8-protect-obama-and-lie-to-conservatives/ http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/03/04/why-the-acorn-8-protect-obama-and-lie-to-conservatives/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:46:20 +0000 Anita MonCrief http://hotair.com/greenroom/?p=16231 Last year ACORN alter ego Project Vote sued me for telling the people the ugly truth. Now the ACORN 8 are attacking me because I have acted on my belief that the people deserve truth, transparency and accountability. (The ACORN 8 slogan only calls for “truth, transparency and accountability within ACORN.”) ACORN 8 spokesman Michael McCray recently noted in a hit piece on me that “others have waged a war of rhetoric and words against ACORN and President Obama” while the ACORN 8 “focused on criminality within the association” and described my allegation of “illegal coordination between Project Vote and Obama Campaign” as not having been “publicly verified.”

Marcel Reid, as a former ACORN national board member and head of DC ACORN, understands the Obama/ACORN relationship AND the thuggish way ACORN pursues its goals.

Evidence exists that suggests that the ACORN 8′s denial of illicit coordination between the Obama campaign and ACORN has more to do with the fact that unlike me, Reid and the ACORN 8 are still radical Obama supporters and that’s why the ACORN 8 have avoided the subject of the Obama/ACORN relationship.

Fact: ACORN 8 leader Marcel Reid emailed me more than a year ago (before Heather Heidelbaugh, Esq.’s Congressional testimony based on my testimony in October 2008 in the Pennsylvania ACORN case, my appearances on Fox News and the sensational ACORN videos) that it is a “fact” that “ACORN isn’t sure that it has it’s fingers around Obama’s throat quite as tightly as they would like” and “might do a little street theater” to “cower him into submission the way they have everyone else with few exceptions.”

The Roots of Obama’s Radical Agenda

Obama’s poll numbers are sliding and his healthcare bill does not have public support, but he continues to push a radical agenda onto the American people. Could ACORN and its leftist allies like SEIU have Obama over a barrel? Someone like Reid, a former ACORN national board member, could have these answers.

Obama and Reid are both alums of the Marxist New Party, and Reid served as an officer of the party. The New Party is described this way:

“Co-founded in 1992 by Daniel Cantor (a former staffer for Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign) and Joel Rogers (a sociology and law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials — most often Democrats. The New Party’s short-term objective was to move the Democratic Party leftward, thereby setting the stage for the eventual rise of new Marxist third party.

Most New Party members hailed from the Democratic Socialists of America and the militant organization ACORN.“

If the ACORN 8 are misleading America about their knowledge of ACORN’s political activities and its relationship with Obama, what else are they lying about? Grab a cup of coffee and get comfy, we are going to dig into the accusations by McCray and the facts the ACORN 8 want to avoid. Note: Click on the pictures below to enlarge.

Fact checking the ACORN 8

Lie #1 “Mailroom MonCrief”

My article titled “For CPAC and Glenn Beck: the Truth About the ACORN 8” predictably produced a pained response from the ACORN 8: Michael McCray’s article titled “ACORN Whistleblower / Anita Mailroom MonCrief” posted days later by James Murtagh. Instead of addressing allegations of an internal ACORN power struggle, the ACORN 8 have decided to present a set of lies as fact.  McCray’s article is lacking in substance but high in rhetoric and misdirection, with even the title set up to misinform people and belittle the target, me.

Unsurprisingly, McCray was upset that I “refused [ACORN 8's] advice and pursued [my] own individual advocacy against ACORN and Project Vote.” Contrary to what is stated in his article, I always knew that the ACORN 8 would cover for Obama and I declined to be a part of the group.

What was surprising is that McCray tried to discredit me with a sexist strategy (“hell hath no fury,” he wrote) and a bogus description of me as a former ACORN mailroom employee.

“…perhaps the most damning revelation comes from court filed pleading by Anita MonCrief herself in her answer to Project Vote’s $5 Million lawsuit against her Case No. 09-cv-01109 (RWR).

ANSWER OF DEFENDANT ASHAWNITA MONCRIEF

Paragraph #22 which reads

’22. Defendant [Anita MonCrief] admits that a Pitney Bowes postage meter machine was installed at Project Vote’s Washington, D.C. office…

This is an incredible admission because it means that Anita MonCrief admits she worked in the mailroom at Project Vote….”

The ACORN/Project Vote Washington, D.C. office did not have a mailroom and, although I certainly don’t disparage mailroom employees, I have never been one. I am equally surprised that a lawyer such as McCray, who is affiliated with several legal non-profits and who appears to have helped draft the ACORN 8′s “civil RICO” complaint, would make such a demonstrably false claim.

In December of 2009 I appeared at a House Government Oversight and Reform Committee’s  GOP Forum on ACORN and submitted the followed description of my duties at ACORN/Project Vote. A copy of the testimony is available here.

While at ACORN/Project Vote, I worked in the Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD) within ACORN’s Political Operations (POLOPS). As part of the SWORD staff my title was Writer/Researcher. My salary was paid by Project Vote, with which I held the title of Development Associate, but I had an ACORN email address.

In addition, to combat more revisionist history from the ACORN 8, here is an unmodified copy of ACORN’s own 2006 Year End Year Beginning (YEYB) Report, the same one quoted recently at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government.

The ACORN 8 appear to be so comfortable with the fact that the lies they have told on national television about ACORN have largely gone unchallenged that McCray has decided to invent more.

Perhaps McCray did not check with other ACORN 8 people as to the access I had. And unfortunately for the ACORN 8 few of his outlandish accusations would pass muster at a middle school newspaper.  Using tactics honed through years of ACORN campaigns and organizing strategies, the ACORN 8 exhibit exactly the type of mentality that founder Wade Rathke encouraged in his ACORN Community Organizing Manual.

McCray strove to discredit me because the ACORN 8 could not disprove any number of facts stated in my previous article, so they resorted to common Alinsky tactics of ridiculing, polarizing and attacking the enemy. It is worth noting that ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote have taken legal action against its real threats, Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles, James O’Keefe and myself. All of us are victims of multimillion dollar lawsuits.

As this leaked internal ACORN email posted by National Review shows, ACORN talked to the lawyers about an employee because “he knows too much. He can hurt us.” Surprisingly, besides a cease and desist letter, ACORN has largely left the ACORN 8 to spread their revisionist history. A history that did not pose a threat to ACORN’s survival.

The other explanation could be that the leader of the ACORN 8 had signed a joint defense agreement (JDA) with ACORN that none of the other members were aware of. Did that include the other members of the ACORN 8?

In sharp contrast to McCray, the Republican National Lawyers Association expressed a different opinion of me in a blog post after I spoke at CPAC 2010.

“leading figure in the fight for fair elections” and the “ACORN whistleblower ACORN [who] had the CPAC crowd on its feet” by describing her experiences working with ACORN and how the organization engaged in a concerted effort to learn the provisional and absentee ballot laws in each of the 50 states in an effort to see where they could get away with mischief” and “achieved their ultimate goal of the Presidency with the election of Barack Obama”

Lie #2 Muscle of the Money?

Another excerpt from McCray’s poorly written diatribe states:

“Mailroom MonCrief made two powerful allegations which have never been publicly verified (1) illegal coordination between Project Vote and Obama Campaign / Donor List and (2) SEIU Muscle for Money program which are two of the rights favorite accusations.”

The funny thing about lies is that it is often hard to keep track of them. In October of 2008, as the ACORN 8 were struggling to gain attention with their lawsuit against Wade Rathke, I testified under oath about the Muscle for Money Program was the first mention of the program. ACORN 8 leaders Marcel Reid and Karen Inman feigned surprise and then recounted stories of reluctant participation.

“Muscle for Money has generated significant opposition within ACORN.

“‘I don’t mind being up on a soapbox to get someone’s attention but I would much rather talk an’ negotiate, said Karen Inman, a Minnesota resident and former ACORN national board member. “But I just refuse to go someone’s home, that’s a privacy issue and I think this ‘Muscle for Money’ program really went too far.”

“Inman and Marcel Reid, a former board member based in Washington D.C., formed ACORN 8 in October 2008 …The lack of financial transparency and the continued use of Muscle for Money techniques remain top concerns for the whistleblower organization, which has about 30 dues paying members in multiple states, Inman said.”

Reid also seems to have selective memory about her numerous press statements regarding Muscle for the Money and she apparently does not recognize the very evidence she provided. The following email provided by Reid, president of DC ACORN, is from Inga Skippings of the SEIU Equity Project regarding the Carlyle Group.

Reid also provided a similar email to CNN regarding SEIU/ACORN and bank bailouts.

The Fox News special titled “The Truth About ACORN” and broadcast on October 2, 2009 did not address the illegal coordination, but it certainly covered the second, with guest Marcel Reid claiming that she was shocked to learn what “Money for the Muscle” involved when she participated in it with National Paint and Coating as the target. The video can be accessed here and Marcel’s statement begins around minute 16.

Lie #3 The ACORN 8 exposed a one million dollar embezzlement scandal

Further proof of the ACORN 8′s self-serving revisionist history lies in the following statement from their “response article”:

Marcel Reid a former ACORN Board member (DC) who blew the whistle following the $1 Million Embezzlement and co-founder of ACORN 8;

Karen Inman a former ACORN Board member (MN) who blew the whistle following the $1 Million Embezzlement and co-founder of ACORN 8;

Michael McCray a former ACORN Board delegate (GA) who blew the whistle following the $1 Million Embezzlement and ACORN 8 spokesperson;

Nonsense. There is a whistleblower to credit. Neither Marcel Reid, nor Karen Inman, nor Michael McCray was that whistleblower. While working as a confidential source for the New York Times, I found out that not only is the real anonymous whistleblower known to the ACORN 8 but also New York Times Reporter Stephanie Strom. The ACORN embezzlement story was made public by The New York Times on July 9, 2008:

“A whistle-blower forced Acorn to disclose the embezzlement, which involved the brother of the organization’s founder, Wade Rathke. ‘We’ve told them that when the process is ended, we’ll have a look at it,’ said Dave Beckwith, executive director of the Needmor Fund, which has given money to some of Acorn’s charity affiliates for at least 10 years and was contacted by the whistle-blower in May.”

So here is the time-line:

May 2008- ACORN funder, the Needmor fund was contacted by a whistleblower in May.

July 2008- Bertha Lewis, Marcel Reid and Karen Innman all appointed to positions of power within ACORN. New York Times article appeared.

August 2008- After the proposed hand over to Kappa Alpha Psi Federal Credit Union was declined by ACORN and CCI, Marcel and Innman sued CCI and Rathke.

That time-line hints at the truth behind ACORN insider allegations that the plotters of a successful coup began to immediately fight amongst each for control. Court documents point to Reid’s relationship with KAPFCU and the question of whether she was really acting on behalf of ACORN:

So far it has been established that the ACORN 8 have a serious problem with the truth if it does not suit their needs and/or financial goals and we have learned that they are hesitant to debate the facts of my argument.

Over a once Mighty Oak, Tiny Nuts Fight for Control

ACORN insiders paint a tale of internal strife and power struggles that date back to at least 2006. On page 37 of the aforementioned ACORN YEYB report, ACORN Wade Rathke hinted at this struggle:

“Leadership Maude Hurd, as President, and her team continue to be somewhat embattled but opposition has become more specific and marginalized on many issues. It is easiest to understand the national board though these days as having two parties: the ruling party and the opposition party. Some progress was made in some ways in the October meeting in moving the opposition party to being more of a ‘loyal’ opposition, and that is a hopeful sign, if it continues to trend.”

Evidence exists to suggest the departure of Wade Rathke as a result of a whistleblower disclosing the embezzlement scandal permitted the opposition party to use the embezzlement to gain control. ACORN board meeting notes seem to suggest at the alliance between Marcel Reid, Karen Inman and Bertha Lewis that was exposed in my prior article

Bertha takes control:

Lie #4 KAPFCU

In addition, Michael McCray appears to be very upset that his connection to KAPFCU has been exposed and so he tried to rewrite history.

“KAPFCU was contracted by an ACORN management committee to investigate and perform due diligence following the $1 Million embezzlement….”

I told the real story in “For CPAC and Glenn Beck, The Truth About the ACORN 8,” backed with citations and screen shots but I do have additional research.

Apparently, Reid’s unsolicited proposal from Michael McCray’s Kappa Alpha Psi Federal Credit Union (KAPFCU) could be considered part of  the opposition party of the ACORN board strategy to control ACORN for their own gain.

The proposed agreement between ACORN and KAPFCU was an attempt to wrestle control of CCI’s ACORN business for the benefit of KAPFCU without disclosing a potential conflict of interest.. As a member of the associate board, McCray had significant financial interest in this deal. Fourth quarter reports show a net worth of just over $831,083.41 for KAPFCU, so one can assume that millions of dollars a year and control of ACORN’s vast financial network may have been incentive for the ACORN 8′s next actions.

When the proposal was not immediately accepted, Inman and Reid descended on New Orleans with an attorney ACORN insiders claim was hired and paid for by the KAPFCU. The ACORN 8 hired James Gray, the former law partner of William “Cold Cash” Jefferson.

What followed can only be described as misleading press pieces and self-serving statements such as the ones below. The ACORN 8′s lawsuit filed in Louisiana District Court (ACORN vs. Rathke, et al., case no. 08-8342,) was dismissed, but a number of misleading articles and statements made their way into the press.

ACORN insiders state that Reid manipulated the situation. When their deception was revealed to the board, a number of members voted to withdraw the lawsuit and then to remove Reid and Inman. According to ACORN Association board meeting notes dated June 20, 2008, Bertha Lewis and Steve Kest were tasked with hiring professional consultants, not Reid. Inman and Reid’s positions were temporary and the committee reported to the entire board. Reid was expected to  step down at the next board meeting in October of 2008.

The ACORN 8 paint a scenario of ACORN leadership throwing them out, but their peers voted for each action including one of their own ACORN 8 members. Coya Mobley initially voted to withdraw the lawsuit, but changed her mind three days later in a rambling email to the board:

“He is beating us down as if he was our Slave Master with a whip and still creeping into our homes to take what ever he can get. And, all we are going to do is say Master please don’t whip me any more, don’t rape me any more, don’t master don’t!!!!!!!!! WAKE UP PEOPLE……….SLAVERY IS OVER……….STOP THIS MADNESS AND GET OFF OF WADE RATHKE’S TRAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!. “

Mobley repeated the same sentiment on the 6/22/2009 episode Glenn Beck show in a video that has been yanked from the web.

As this is the only video of the ACORN 8 on Glenn Beck that has disappeared, one has to wonder if the removal of the video may have something to do with the embarrassing admission of active participation in the Muscle for Money program.

The Root of All Evil

Michael McCray’s KAPFCU is the nation’s first “virtual credit union” and as a small credit union, KAPFCU is constantly looking for opportunities to grow:

“In 2008, KAPFCU has applied for $100k in financial assistance and $500k in technical assistance.

…Vic also announced that there’s a $1.2B credit union in Baton Rouge that is designated as a low-income institution. This allows them to take in secondary capital, and not affect their net income ratio. KAPFCU is currently at 3.18%. The NCUA would like us to be at 7%. So, the low-income designation is one of the vehicles that KAPFCU plans to utilize to increase its net income ratio.”

In what appears to be a closely knit network of affiliated organizations with the same board members and suspect motives the ACORN 8 are really similar to ACORN. PRWeb searches show press releases where the related organizations laud each other (here, and here)  and in some cases bestow newly created awards on members of the group. My prior article touched on this network, but research has uncovered additional affiliates of the ACORN 8. The new list is as follows:

The Congress Against Racism and Corruption in Law Enforcement (CARCLE)

Power Over Poverty Under Laws of America Restored (POPULAR)

The ACORN 8

The International Association of Whistle-blowers (IAW)

National Judicial Conduct and Disability Law Project

The 3.5.7 Commission (appears to be inactive)

The E-Accountability Project

Focus on Indiana

National Forum On Judicial Accountability (NFOJA), the official network of Community Forums on Judicial Accountability (CFOJA)

As the KAPFCU Administrator of Community Development Financial Initiatives, McCray seems well placed to coordinate the activities of the organizations, including lending the KAPFCU name to rival ACORN projects:

By starting an organization in direct competition with ACORN and then “Whistle-blowing” on ACORN, the ACORN 8 appears to have deceived America into believing that their intentions were noble.

The biggest PR move involved the so-called Department of Justice complaint. The complaint to the DOJ addressed the embezzlement scandal and used a number of examples to support their “civil RICO” complaint. No disputing the facts here, ACORN is corrupt. However, what is missing from the complaint is intriguing and ties the ACORN 8 back to Obama. Reid appeared eager to file the complaint and was even ready to send it to the press without some exhibits being prepared by the lawyers (screenshot below).

At the last minute the complaint was amended to protect Obama’s mentor, former ACORN leader, Madeline Talbott and her husband, Keith Kelleher. Talbott, is also a fellow New Party alum of Reid and Obama. National Review Online provides the background:

“ACORN’s leading role in the New Party as the result of a conscious decision by the organization to move into electoral politics in a more substantial way than they had been able to solely through their political action committee. In addition to [Wade] Rathke and [Zach] Polett, a key early supporter of the New Party was Obama’s closest ACORN contact, Madeline Talbott.“

The startling fact about the “Department of Justice Complaint” is that when filed in District Court by an ACORN 8 member, it was dismissed. Despite the presence of lawyers McCray, and Zena Crenshaw Logal in the ACORN 8, the complaint was found to lack the basic requirement of a cause of action.

“In the law, a cause of action (sometimes called a claim) is a set of facts sufficient to justify a right to sue.”

The judge dismissed on the grounds that the complaint lacked standing and a cause of action, but it did generate the desired media attention the ACORN 8 needed after the Rathke case was dismissed. Click here to read the entire decision.

Dissecting McCray’s Final Lies

Lie #5 Disparaging other ACORN Whistleblowers

McCray, a co-chair of the International Association of Whistleblowers, used the “MGM” acronym for myself, Michael Gaynor and Michelle Malkin without crediting the originator, blogger Michael Volpe. McCray seems to adopt the same faulty logic as Volpe, who assumes that if someone I know writes a piece about a person or even mentions their names, that is disparagement. For the record, I have never attacked Greg Hall, Hannah James, James O’Keefe or any of the others named in McCray’s rant. Mentioning someone or pointing out facts in regards to the ACORN 8 is not meant to disparage (unless the truth is damaging for that individual).

“Mailroom MonCrief, offered one piece of information purporting to link Project Vote and the Obama campaign which has yet to be publicly proved. She studied the ACORN 8 website and presented our arguments and information as her own until the ACORN 8 cut her off. She became frustrated and resentful having no other contacts or access to inside information, and so she began to attack Marcel Reid, the ACORN 8 and any other noteworthy ACORN critic.”

Two quick things here;  first, besides some puff pieces about the embezzlement and a failed lawsuit against ACORN, the bulk of the ACORN 8′s accusations only involved actions related to the board and their financial rival in the KAPFCU deal, CCI. It was only after my October 2008 testimony, that the ACORN 8 started to acknowledge real ACORN criminality.

Second, if one were to apply McCray’s logic, then HE would be accused of attacking James Murtagh, the other co-chair of the International Association of Whistleblowers, or these statements by Volpe, who wrote at length about Murtagh,

“Dr. Murtagh was paid off to the tune of 1.6 million dollars and silenced at the exact same time that the NIH was investigating Grady Hospital…”

Volpe continued:

“Former Grady trustee Bill Loughrey tells me that the settlement with Dr. Murtagh was never approved or even accurately described to Grady’s board of trustees. He says that he was stunned to learn that tax dollars were paid to Dr. Murtagh, conditioned on his silence. He thinks the agreement is invalid and that the judicial process has been misused.”

Volpe is a minor character in the ACORN 8 story, but he offers an opening to explore a pattern of behavior by Marcel Reid of lying and manipulating bloggers and some media persons.

Volpe’s reward for writing hit pieces on Reid’s enemies was a recommendation of his Wade Rathke interview to Breitbart’s Big Government. Reid helped a so-so writer with a very small following gain access and attention he could not have gotten on his own . As the screen shot of a misdirected email below illustrates, Reid is quite content to pull the strings and let others do her dirty work. While she “lols”, her fingerprints are covered by so-called bloggers like Volpe.

Bloggers and journalists who have written favorable pieces on the ACORN 8 have been granted appearances on “Beck”. Including the late blogger Nancy Armstrong (MsPlaced Democrat).

Print journalists Kevin Mooney and his friend Matthew Vadum, associates of both myself and the ACORN 8, both made appearances during “ACORN 8 week.” Marcel and I worked on a number of pieces with both Vadum and Mooney, who have been responsible for a number of breaking pieces on ACORN. Vadum and I have also appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy Show.

Lie #5 “Rage Against the Beck”

In yet another ridiculous error-filled and sexist claim McCray states that:

“On March 13, 2009 [This should be May 13, 2009] U.S. Representative Michelle Bauchman [It's Michele Bachmann] (R-MN) appeared on the Glenn Beck show and announced a press conference she was having on Capital [This should be Capitol] Hill. Rep. Michelle Bauchman [Michele Bachmann] disclosed the topic was ACORN and she invited both Marcel Reid and Anita MonCrief to participate in the event. In response, Glenn Beck encouraged Michelle Bauchman [Michele Bachmann] to continue to put pressure on ACORN but he advised her to be careful with Anita MonCrief considering her checkered past. From that day forward Anita MonCrief has engaged in a personal vendetta against Beck, Reid and ACORN 8 for the slight she believes she received from Glenn Beck on March 13, 2009 [May 13, 2009] – hell hath no fury. “

What McCray does not state is that Marcel Reid had promised Beck’s producers that she would deliver me as she had promised other whistleblowers and ACORN experts to Beck. On May 10, 2009 while reviewing the Elizabeth Kingsley report with Marcel, I took a call from Susan Wertheim of the Beck show on Marcel’s phone. Here is the follow up email Susan sent.

I had begun working with a Eric Shawn of Fox’s America’s News Headquarters. I trusted Shawn’s work on ACORN and finally decided to go on TV and tell my story. On Mother’s Day, I appeared with Shawn and the Nevada Secretary of State.

This appearance had been in the works for sometime and Marcel was aware of this, so when I got the following email from Beck’s Producers, I assumed that Marcel had arranged it and gave her the back story.

Megyn Kelly interviewed me the next day, and Beck wanted me for that evening. Things went a little haywire because, as a novice, I did not know that by accepting Megyn’s invitation that I would upset Beck’s producer Susan, and what followed is a clear indication of how alliances can compromise the integrity of a story. Susan lectured me on the competition for guests at Fox and indicated that I had committed some type of faux paus by appearing on anything but Beck first.

Just two short months after the March show with the RNLA’s  Cleta Mitchell, on which I declined to be interviewed, but for which I provided important background on the AIG bus tour, Beck began warning others, including Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, to stay away from me in favor of the ACORN 8.

Michael McCray appeared in my place in what became “ACORN 8 Day.”

Despite Beck’s slight, even he can not deny that I have provided much evidence connecting ACORN/Project Vote and Obama. The problem with me seemed to lie in the fact that Reid could not control me and make me appear on “Beck” at her command, and it apparently became easier to spread lies than to deal with someone who would not compromise herself for Reid’s power grab. Just a month later,  Beck did not mind relying on my blog for information that would serve as the background for at least two of his shows.

Realizing that we can not let the Left silence us, I put my feelings about Beck’s comments to Bachmann aside, and supported Beck during a summer boycott of his advertisers by the Van Jones affiliated Color of Change.

McCray insinuated that I attacked Beck in my first piece, but instead I pointed out the same inconsistencies in his approach that many other conservatives like Mark Levin have pointed out. Did the ACORN 8 fool Beck? After all, McCray portrays himself and his ACORN 8 allies as friends of the conservative movement.

“MonCrief is featured favorably in the OGR committee report along with Karen Inman, Michael McCray, the ACORN 8 and Marcel Reid who also attended the conservative convention.”

Marcel Reid is about as conservative as Max Blumenthal, who also showed up for his own purposes at CPAC 2010.

Lie #6 The ACORN 8 are allies of the conservative movement

The ACORN 8 use conservatives for their own purposes and those conservatives either do not know the reality of the ACORN 8 or accept the ACORN 8 as an enemy of their enemy.

McCray went on to state:

“We have never professed to be anti-ACORN or anti-Obama. Although many other conservative activists want us to be; which brings us back to Anita MonCrief.”

“While others have waged a war of rhetoric and words against ACORN and President Obama we have focused on criminality within the association…. We have not criticized others for their activism and collaborate with those whom we share common interests; and we respectfully disengage from those who do not share our goals or approach.”

As one blogger put it at Hot Air in a post about Beck, “Its not conservative”

Lie #7 Anita MonCrief is a thief

Beck’s CPAC speech mentioned ‘redemption’ a number of times and like it or not, he did make some powerful points. By admitting that he is not perfect, he opens a door to himself and let’s people in. People love him for his boldness and the way he interacts. Redemption means acknowledging fault and being vulnerable in a public way. I’m not perfect, as I’ve explained repeatedly (here,  here,  here, and here ) but I admitted that I was on the wrong path.

Despite the way Beck speaks of redemption, he still used the fact that I put personal expenses on a Project Vote credit card to warn Bachmann away, a tactic used repeatedly by the ACORN 8. The ACORN 8 have joined ACORN in trying to discredit me now that I am exposing them. I testified under oath regarding the credit card matter and discussed it on “The Laura Ingraham Show” in October 2008. Contrary to what McCray would like you to believe, I did not try to pass my expenses off as company expenses and was paying the balance. I wrote about it extensively here.

Conclusions

I have addressed the allegations made by McCray in his piece without alliteration, slogans or lies.  On the other hand, the ACORN 8 have done everything to paint themselves in a favorable light while bullying and marginalizing anyone who dares to speak the truth about them

The irony is that as America fights back against Obama’s dictator-like attitude towards passing healthcare, we are continuing to make the same mistakes of the past. ACORN was funded during Republican administrations because we did not have our own infrastructures in the minority and low-income areas. Unfortunately for Republicans and conservatives is that what was most expedient was also most harmful. ACORN invaded our schools, toyed with our banks, wrecked havoc on the electoral system, and laid the groundwork for a permanent leftist majority. By aligning ourselves with radicals to solve one problem, we create others. The ACORN 8 have been conning conservatives and protecting Obama and his dangerous agenda.

ACORN employees caught on video apparently advising a couple posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend to lie about her profession and launder her earnings did not commit a crime, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said Monday.

The office began its investigation Sept. 15, the day after the video was released online by the conservative activists who posed as an outlaw couple seeking help buying a house. It was but one in a series of such videos filmed at ACORN offices around the country that sparked a national scandal and helped drive the organization to near ruin.

…is the admission that there is no law against telling people how to set up a brothel in Brooklyn. Which, to be fair, is probably also the (lack of) law in your county, too (Rent a building, get a no-interest loan from a city community development fund, get some hookers).

Will the left portray it as “ACORN did nothing wrong?”

“We are gratified that the district attorney, after a thorough investigation, found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by ACORN,” said a statement by Jean Sassine, a spokeswoman for the organization that has replaced ACORN’s Brooklyn operation.

Well, not there, anyway.

But give it time.

UPDATE:  But was the Brooklyn DA in the bag for ACORN?

Cross-posted at Shot In The Dark.

ACORN appears to have honed these tricks and has now decided to re-brand on a national scale. However, given its history, many are skeptical:

“If you want to see whether ACORN is really changing its ways, check to see whether the signatories to those local ACORN bank accounts are changing. When it comes to ACORN, the money is the organization, and the name is just the name.”

In order to operate effectively, ACORN requires little public scrutiny and a lot of lore and misdirection (think registering Mickey Mouse to vote). For 40 years ACORN’s organizing model has survived social revolutions and political upheavals and to understand ACORN a review of the 1970′s “manifesto” of ACORN founder Wade Rathke is essential.

ACORN Community Organizing Model

Acorn Organizing Model

Keeping up with the little nuts that have fallen off Rathke’s tree has begun and one has to wonder how long before another mighty “oak” is formed.

“In a message that resonates to this day, President Reagan proclaimed, ‘Our people look for a cause to believe in,’ and then asked: ‘Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors, which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?”

“The ACORN 8 is America’s last, best chance to empower low and moderate income members of society through Integrity in Community Organizing.

“If you love ACORN and its original mission; you should support the ACORN 8. If you hate ACORN and its corrupt practices; you should support the ACORN 8. If you are an ACORN member and tired of being ignored; you should support the ACORN 8. If you are an ACORN employee and tired of being sacrificed for senior management; you should support the ACORN 8. If you are an ACORN donor and want to be sure you were not a victim of funder fraud and that your contributions are not being used for illegal political activities; you MUST support the ACORN 8. If you are a taxpayer and want to be sure your tax dollars are not funding a corrupt organization; you MUST support the ACORN 8.”

“KAPFCU’s Administrator of Community Development Financial Initiatives Michael McCray says of his CU:

‘As a virtual institution, we’ve been an ugly duckling for nearly four years. Our balance sheet and profit/loss profile differs from most community based credit unions.

We don’t have a physical office, we operate through a 20 member advisory board and management team. KAPFCU provides service to the entire country – instead of a local geographic market. We just don’t look like the typical low income or community development credit union. Consequently, it has been very difficult for us to successfully receive financial support from credit union or philanthropic communities’

Independent columnist Michael Gaynor has done the legwork on this one:

“…McCray had opportunistically responded to the ACORN embezzlement scandal by pushing for Kappa Alpha Psi Federal Credit Union (KAPFCU) to replace Citizens Consulting, Inc. (CCI) as ACORN’s accountant and ACORN 8 leaders and former ACORN national board members Marcel Reid and Karen Inman quietly helped him.

The truth is that the ACORN embezzlement scandal presented a golden opportunity to take control and make lots of money and McCray recognized it and acted, with the assistance of ACORN 8 leaders and without disclosing McCray’s interest in KAPFCU (http://www.kapfcu.org).

KAPFCU’s bid to replace CCI and do ACORN’s accounting work failed, despite the best efforts of McCray, Ms. Reid and Ms. Innman.

As reported in ACORN’s Submission in Support of Its Petition for Writ of Quo Warranto in the now dismissed ACORN v. Rathke case filed in a Louisiana state court (available at http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/acorn-v-rathke1.pdf):

…”These two Board members, and their attorney, further attempted to coerce the Board by reporting that the Temporary Restraining Order had been granted, attaching a copy, instructing the Board, IMC, Senior Staff, and the Executive Committee to comply with its terms, and warning the Board that it may otherwise be participating in concealment of evidence and violations of federal law. In fact, at the time Mr. Gray wrote the Board, IMC, Senior Staff, Executive Committee and Corporate Counsel, he and his clients knew that the bond had not and would not be paid and that the TRO was not in effect. This pesky fact was not reported to the members of the ACORN Board, all of whom are non-lawyers or to ACORN’s Corporate Counsel.”

Even more significantly, the Submission continued: “ACORN is also concerned about the relationship between the two Board members who filed the suit, their attorney, and KAPFCU, an organization that the two Board member promoted to take over the financial responsibilities of ACORN from CCI, one of the named defendants in the Petition. Mr. Gray holds himself out as representing both ACORN and KAPFCU in this matter, which appears to present a conflict of interest. ACORN has not hired KAPFCU, the KAPFCU proposal is not responsive to the Board’s resolution for financial review, and KAPFCU has no legal interest in the litigation. KAPFCU’s only interest in this litigation is in taking over ACORN’s business from CCI. Mr. Gray has ignored ACORN’s request to explain the relationship, and ACORN specifically refuses to waive the conflict.”

“…’Moncrief finally agreed to go on the record’ and Strom had scheduled a meeting with her. It was when she called Moncrief to cancel the meeting that Strom allegedly told her that her bosses had killed the investigation to protect Obama. Obviously, if Strom was about to hit pay-dirt with an on-the-record witness, Daley’s assertion that she killed the story because Strom ‘had come up empty-handed’ is false.

Hoyt interviewed Strom, of course, but–rather remarkably–he does not reveal what Strom told him about her conversation with Daley in which Daley killed Strom’s ongoing investigation. That’s a rather significant omission, isn’t it? Instead, Hoyt merely quotes Strom’s observation that she did write a story on ACORN that appeared on October 22:

Before they were to meet, Strom said, another source gave her an internal report detailing concerns about impermissible political activity by Acorn and its tax-exempt affiliates. The resulting article was published on Oct. 22.”

After halting The Times Obama/ACORN investigation, Reid’s loyalty to the progressive cause may have led her to befriend a reluctant whistleblower who had the goods on Obama and ACORN. As noted in the recently released report by the the House Oversight Committee, Reid and I began as allies exposing ACORN wrongdoing. We were both radical Obama supporters and she urged me not to hurt Obama’s election prospects by accepting an invitation to do Fox News on the days before the election.

“IF the idea for ACORN to go after Wade is decided upon–the recommendation is to wait until after December–elections, ACORN needs to get their corporation in order, clean house in terms of getting paperwork in order, etc.”

Following O’Keefe’s arrest in Louisiana, ACORN has proceeded to do a number of victory laps, claiming vindication. A glowing Bertha Lewis appeared on the Ed Show to crow about this latest development, and today ACORN is pushing for prosecution in Maryland and California. Raw Story has the full story here.

The link within the email lands here.

Anita MonCrief

From a tiny acorn, a mighty oak can grow. With ACORN’s help, Barack Obama “grew” from an ACORN community organizer and instructor, to an ACORN lawyer and ACORN benefactor as a board member of donor organizations, to an ACORN-backed Illinois state senator, to ACORN’s favorite United States Senator, to ACORN’s candidate for President of the United States in 2008. This article shows how ACORN and its allies helped organize America to make Obama President in this, the computer age.

Barack Obama’s meteoric rise from rookie Senator to President had man marveling at the efficiency and breadth of his campaign. Obama’s ability to fund raise had seasoned experts playing catch up while his voter registration money machine operated in the background. In 2008, the New York Times explored a seemingly innocent tactic the Democrats were utilizing to elect Obama. The article stated several times that the Republicans had honed this technique and Democrats were just “borrowing the play.”

“For years, Republicans had the landscape to themselves. More recently, however, Democrats, along with such allies as trade unions and progressive groups, have poured millions of dollars into building two formidable databanks. One is managed by the Democratic National Committee and can be used by candidates up and down the ballot. The other is Catalist, a for-profit company headed by Harold M. Ickes, a Democratic political operative, that specializes in providing data for scores of liberal groups supporting the Democratic ticket as well as for the Obama campaign itself.”

Progressive organizations, trade unions and a for profit group run by someone who had been implicated in the radical Teamstergate saga of the 1990′s? The crack reporting of The Times glossed over this toxic mix, and the Obama machine kept running.

Harold Ickes‘ company, Catalist, has been credited with creating this machine:

“Catalist collects and stores millions of pieces of information from public records and commercial sources. In addition to voting rolls and tax information, it also has data about voters’ magazine subscriptions and their cars. Campaigns also contribute e-mails, cell-phone numbers and even times when people are likely to be home.

Ickes, 69, said that by using Catalist the Obama campaign is able to generate data as detailed as lists of swing voters who are home in the afternoon in a six-block neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. The list can even suggest which voters would be receptive to a pitch based on Obama’s ‘change’ theme, and which may be more interested in his health-care or energy policies.”

The origin of Catalist is intriguing and appears firmly rooted in the same community organizing spirit that has spread throughout the country.

“Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” -Barack Obama

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN spent a number of years perfecting an organizing model that resembled that of Catalist and the Obama Campaign. ACORN’s close “affiliate” Project Vote detailed their efforts in a 2007 report:

“The Pilot Technology Project carried out during the summer and fall of 2006 was a first attempt to integrate the potential of high quality enhanced data developed for voter participation programs with on-going grassroots community organizing programs. Building upon the work of Catalist (formerly Data Warehouse LLC), Project Vote deployed an updated version of our online voter management system (VBASE) to enable local community organizations to access a robust voter file with enhanced phone numbers, geographic and demographic information for use in voter mobilization, membership development and organizational capacity building.”

Apparently, ACORN and Project Vote were “smack dab” in the middle of another one of Obama’s voter registration drives. According to ACORN reports, ACORN was Catalist’s first client. Let me be clear, the ACORN VBASE, is the archetype of the Obama campaign. ACORN’s technology combined with union money elected a president.

To understand the importance of Catalist to the Obama Campaign and later Organizing for America I have included the educational screen shot below.

The writer of the article above sums up the relationship this way:

“Think of MyBo / Party Builder / VAN Votebuilders as being the tool sets and interface for volunteers, staff and field organizers, and Catalist as being the organizer and repository for the data as it flowed in and out of various OFA systems.”

A 2005 Year End ACORN Political Operations PowerPoint further illustrates ACORN’s involvement in the creation of the system that powers the President.

Matthew Vadum’s profile on the OFA offers some background on the major players but the hows and whys have largely gone unnoticed. In addition to a payment made from Obama for America directly to an ACORN affiliate, Project Vote managed to secure the Obama 2nd 2007 donor list. After all, this cross sharing among campaigns, non-profits and unions appears to have been the goal of the ACORN VBASE. A 2007 report the the Beldon Fund regarding a $75,000 grant lays the groundwork.

“The reason that VBASE, a customized database system has such value in the work of Project Vote’s field partners, such as ACORN, is because the model of groups like ACORN integrates year-round community organizing with heavy bursts of civic engagement work.”

ACORN insiders describe the Obama presidency as a “once in a generation opportunity” and ACORN was prepared to make it happen. Research uncovered details the concerted effort of a myriad of non-profit, 527′s LINK and union organizations skirting campaign finance and IRS codes. While ACORN is not directly involved with the Voter Activation Network, ACORN affiliates/partners are. America Votes, SEIU, State Voices and even the DNC’s owned VoteBuilder share information through this alliance.

In 2007, Project Vote was ready to launch their “beta” phase of the VBASE project and targeted a state that had been made friendly by the election of ACORN ally Ohioan Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner:

“The initial beta version of our 2006-07 database was piloted in Ohio by one of our local community partners. This pre-launch was a bug-testing period for the new system, addressing issues of file access, remote support, and appropriate server load.”

Brunner campaign consultant, Karyn Gillette was set to join Project Vote after successful work on the Brunner, Sherrod Brown and ACORN connected Ohioans for a Fair Minimum Wage campaigns. Meanwhile, Obama was running a massive campaign in Ohio and ACORN’s partnership with Catalist allowed a for profit business to market their state of the art organizing technology:

“The success of this program is such that Project Vote will be incorporating it into its 2007-08 Voter Participation Program. While we are still wrestling with the details, we are committed to rolling out this sophisticated and robust system to support the civic engagement efforts of our local partners as they pursue voter registration and voter education programs and as they integrate those efforts into their on-going community organizing programs”

The perfect marriage of ACORN and Catalist was made possible by the deep pockets of the unions:

“Michael Podhorzer, Deputy Political Director of the AFL-CIO, has said: ‘Catalist is an essential part of the foundation necessary for building progressive political power in our country. The labor movement relies on the state of the art political technology services provided by Catalist and we are proud to be an early subscriber.’

Discover the Networks goes on to explain the motivation behind Catalist:

“Reasoning from the premise that the United States is a nation rife with racism and injustice, Catalist notes its commitment “to using [its] talents and technology to nurture a vibrant, growing, progressive community, and to working with that community towards a more just, equitable and tolerant America.”

Obama has repeatedly denied any real ties to ACORN. If Obama is lying about organizing, could this mean that there is another purpose over at Organizing for America. Over the summer the nation witnessed the President call out this ready brigade to pass health care and stifle dissent. It’s time for the mainstream media to focus on what ACORN is really doing.

The “history making” Obama machine was directly engineered by ACORN’s voter database experiments. ACORN’s sister organization, Project Vote, received tax exempt money to fund a venture with the for-profit Catalist. Catalist, the Voter Activation Network, SEIU and America Votes provided the needed cover that allowed ACORN to operate in the background.

Without regard for tax codes or campaign laws; candidates and groups like America Votes, SEIU, Project Vote and other “progressive organizations” at times share staff, resources and donors. ACORN boasts over 440,000 member families and Obama benefited from the free flowing data between the campaign and ACORN provided by Catalist.  America is now facing a progressive agenda backed by a ready army of paid organizers trained in ACORN tactics, and the name Organizing for America seems to be missing a question mark.

I have invited Carol to guest blog at my sites this week for Part I. Carol’s courage in standing up for America and the information provided has allowed me to write the stunning Part II that will follow shortly.

Thank you,
Anita MonCrief

-By Carol Greenberg

Obama’s “permanent campaign” Organizing for America has managed to skirt campaign finance laws while continually providing the unprecedented “opportunity to help the president.” Countless emails fill boxes across America with the sender name President Barack Obama.

Organizing for America has kept a high profile and played a key role in the healthcare debate. Obama’s managed to turn his extraordinary campaign model into a post-election campaign/organizing website where OFA honed their method of using the internet to reach progressives to push through his increasingly unpopular agenda.

During Barack Obama’s campaign he used a similar tool and website called “Obama for America.” Utilizing the skills he learned at ACORN as a community organizer, Obama was able to acquire the “highest office in the land”. In an election night quote from November of 2008, Obama addresses a crowd who voted for “Hope” and “Change.”

“This victory alone is not the change we seek —
it is only the chance for us to make that change.”

— President Barack Obama, Election Night, 2008

And almost immediately after Mr. Obama was elected, the name of his campaign tool “Obama for America” was changed to “Organizing for America.” Here is a screen shot:

Interestingly, on Jan. 17, 2009, three days before Mr. Obama is sworn into the Presidency, he announced the switch-over from “Obama for America” to “Organizing for America.”

And here is a screen shot of Organizing for America, or OFA; in its present state. If you notice, it has Mr. Obama’s name on it:

The bottom half of the screen shot is not visible, but trust me: it says “Project of the DNC.” For those of you who wish to examine the site, the link is here.

Throughout the ensuing months between Mr. Obama’s roll-out of OFA and the present I have taken a peek at the site every once in awhile, out of curiosity to see what he was saying. Frankly I’m not sure if any other man in the Oval Office ever had a web page, but this one is asking visitors to “create an account.” Hmmmm… That’s really different. So I did. And I signed up for his e-mails. After all, shouldn’t we ALL want to be privy to the message our President has to say?

I watched the site, and received his e-mails. And many times was disconcerted, being a Conservative; about WHY he always seemed so successful at overturning any efforts, Congressional votes, etc. that Conservatives brought forward.

One day I received an e-mail alerting me to an “OFA Training Seminar.” It was to be a 4-hour session on community organizing, his way. And the seminar was not far from my home. I remember the saying “it is always good to learn the ways of one’s enemies” so I decided to attend. Undercover. As one of “them.” The opposite side of the table.

We had a ball. There was meet and greet time, we were fed pizza and all the trimmings; unfortunately no beer. There was a video. Papers were passed out, “cheat sheets” of how to approach prospective people to educate them about Mr. Obama’s policies and agenda. And also ways to entice them to vote for progressive candidates. We broke up into small groups. We made friends. We rehearsed with one another the spiel we would give in the “community organizing arena.” By the end of the evening we were one big happy family. I went home that evening without committing to anything. I figured I would get a follow-up phone call, tell them I wasn’t interested, and that would be the end of it. But all the while I kept thinking there just has to be more to this than what I experienced that evening. Mr. Obama was winning “big time” at everything he undertook.

Unexpectedly about a week later I received another “opportunity.” An e-mail from OFA inviting me to be part of one of their on-line “webinars” which would teach canvassers how to enter information into OFA website databases. I was intrigued, but vacillated. After all, this would be going deeper into the “belly of the beast.” But I ultimately decided I would probably never get another opportunity such as this, so being the brave woman that I am I RSVPed in the affirmative. This was based out of the home, a conference call with a trainer on-line, using one’s own computer only as an observation tool. There was no disclaimer ahead of time, I was invited; so I decided while the trainer was moving through the OFA/Votebuilder system I would get some screen shots. Which I did. But don’t get any ideas out there anyone. This is a highly secure and password-protected website. And because this was a demonstration, I do not have any access to the website.

The conference call training session was meant to give users an overview of the system, and I was surprised at its design and detail. For example, below is a database of persons contacted and the result of what is called “Member of Congress” commits. In other words, who has agreed or not agreed to contact their Congressperson.

When the “webinar” was over, and I had the time to take a good look at the screen shots, this is when I was stunned. I realized finally this is why the Conservative movement has been taking a hit all these months. I have to give 5 stars to their system. It is highly organized and every call, every contact, every encounter is logged. Every precinct in the country is in the website which allows for detailed study and analysis of canvassing and vote results.

I let it go for a few days. Undecided about the importance of what, if anything I had discovered. Probably just good for a teaching lesson to the Conservatives about how we need to become more organized, just like the premier “Community Organizer in Chief.”

I have done a couple of diaries for RedState. A few days later I encountered a diary by Moe Lane, and it was about OFA. Only his opinion was the complete opposite of mine. That post Correcting the Record on Organizing for America is linked here. It’s a short post, but all the while I was reading it, the more agitated I became. Moe Lane is a great and respected writer, but after all he had not experienced and seen first hand what I had.

I decided to do a “rebuttal” post. Sorry Moe, but I have to rebut your OFA assessment. That post can be found here. And a couple of weeks later, Moe Lane did another post on OFA. Revisiting Sifry and the OFA withering. This is when I decided that some action needed to be taken to inform others about the formidable group that OFA has become.

First I am going to post a few screen shots from the OFA/Votebuilder/DNC website. Any and all data that may be able to identify someone’s identity has been removed.

Here is a screen shot of canvassing results. Notice how all data is carefully logged.

Another shot, this one of one of their volunteers and his/her territory to be canvassed:

Mr. Obama also has a database of people who are “underinsured” that he can contact and trot out at a moment’s notice when he needs a sob story for his Healthcare Reform:

Next we have a screen shot of the dreaded “rapid response teams.” These are the people Obama’s OFA rolls out during a “crisis” to be door-knockers, set up phone banks; etc. These are the same “rapid response teams OFA rolled out for the Scott Brown Massachusetts senate race “crisis” and the Blanche Lincoln Arkansas “crisis”:

Have you ever wondered how Obama was able to “toss” Lincoln in October, to get her to “cave” on the Healthcare vote? Here is my final screen shot:

Notice that the “team” had 114% more “vote commits” than hoped for, for a total of over 7,000 phone calls, doors knocked on, and visits to Lincoln’s office. This my friends, is why Conservatives are losing in the organizing arena.

If you’ll notice at the top of each screen shot, it says “VoteBuilder” somewhere, so I decided to see what I could find out about “VoteBuilder.” And it wasn’t very difficult.

My research took me to February of 2007. Howard Dean, then Chairman of the DNC, announces the creation of a state-of-the-art voter-file interface. This will be called “Votebuilder.” I am including a couple of pertinent excerpts from the announcement below. The link to the full announcement is found here.

Today, the Democratic National Committee announced that it has signed a deal with Voter Activation Network (VAN) to create a nationwide voter file interface for the DNC’s national voter file. The new voter file, which has been renamed “VoteBuilder”, builds on both the significant enhancements and upgrades Chairman Dean made during the 2006 election cycle and the critical investment in the DNC’s voter file made by former Chairman Terry McAuliffe. The new, web-based tool will ensure that from the National Party to the state parties, Democratic candidates have access to the state-of-the-art tools needed to help win elections. VoteBuilder also represents the next step in Chairman Dean’s efforts to build and strengthen the infrastructure of the Democratic Party. [sic]

And this quote from Howard Dean specifically:

VoteBuilder will enable users to more easily and effectively sync data automatically, and facilitate the swapping of data between state parties and the DNC, thereby providing state parties and candidates with the most up-to-date and accurate voter data available. As an example, the DNC will be able to create an updated nationwide list of voter contacts on a daily basis.

My state, Ohio, was more than just a battleground state during Election 2008 because of Secretary of State Brunner and the ACORN debacle, so I decided to do some research on those “little nuts.”

Anita MonCrief’s blog gave me a wealth of information.

ACORN’s 501(c)(3) non-profit arm Project Vote needed an effective way of classifying and organizing all their “VR” or “voter registration” cards into a local database. At the time, all their cards were being sent to a central national database entry company to be compiled. According to insiders in ACORN Political Operations, ACORN had learned from the failures of the Clinton adminstrations and decided that a successful “Progressive” agenda required collaboration. ACORN relied heavily on Project Vote, whom often describe themselves as:

“the largest non-partisan voter participation organization in the United States and a leading provider of technical assistance and direct services to the larger civic participation community.“

Project Vote proposed the creation of a “List Acquisition and Enhancement Project” which would allow them to build a strategic plan to build and maintain statewide voter files in all states, particularly in states crucial to electing progressive candidates, Ohio being one.

The lists would include voter data, demographics, or “metrics,” and consumer data among other things.

Interestingly, Project Vote’s ambitions described above are similar to Howard Dean’s “pride and joy” VoteBuilder. VoteBuilder was designed by the Voter Activation Network who unsurprisingly list the “usual suspects” as clients.

Part II will reveal reveal the ACORN connection through a variety of “partner” and affiliate organizations created to deceive America about who is really pushing the Obama Agenda.

(Click to enlarge)

In a move that is oddly fitting for a President who failed to interrupt his Hawaiian vacation to respond to a terrorist attack, Barack Obama is heading to Massachusetts to assist his base of union and community organizers.

“Obama is headed to Massachusetts Sunday to campaign for Democrat Martha Coakley, whose race against Republican Scott Brown has narrowed to a toss-up as voters zero in on the cost of a massive health insurance bill in Congress.”

As the left struggles to maintain “Ted Kennedy’s Seat” the cracks are beginning to show in a radical agenda many believe was crafted by leaders at groups like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. As Brown supporters eye the state warily, ACORN has largely gone underground in Massachusetts. Beginning in the 1970′s ACORN has operated silently in states across the country conducting “progressive experiments” in liberal states like Massachusetts through the use of organizing around ballot initiatives.

Allamon of The Allamon Cartoon Blog

Lisa Ranghelli, a Massachusetts native, authored a report entitled ACORN Wins: The Monetary Impact of ACORN Campaigns, A Ten Year Retrospective, 1995-2004. Ranghelli’s report listed several ACORN legislative agenda items like predatory lending laws and minimum wage increases “tested” in Massachusetts shortly before a nationwide campaign:

“Categorized by issue area, these totals encompass the estimated monetary benefits of some of ACORN’s major campaigns between 1995 and 2004, including:

• Passage of 11 living wage ordinances, and minimum wage increases in Illinois, Massachusetts, Florida, New York, and the City of San Francisco.
• Legislation limiting predatory lending in Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, New York and New Jersey, and improvements in federal regulations.

…STATE EITC INCREASES

Finally, ACORN has successfully increased the earnings of low-wage workers by allowing them to keep more of what they make. In Massachusetts, ACORN led a coalition that won an increase in the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in 1999, from 10 percent of the federal credit to 15 percent, or a 50 percent increase. According to the State Department of Revenue, close to $21 million additional dollars went into the pockets of low-income taxpayers annually after the increase was implemented.”

After the disastrous defeat of HillaryCare in the 1990′s, liberals began to operate under the idea that “all politics are local” and both before and after Ted Kennedy facilitated ACORN’s leftist agendas that were precursors to ObamaCare. In a 2006 report ACORN details its next steps after assisting Democrats with “taking back Congress:

ACORN Legislative Agenda for 2007

Working Families Agenda

Minimum Wage – Soon after the new Congress gets to work in January, both the House and the Senate are expected to move bills to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 an hours in three steps by 2009. While almost everyone believes this will pass (and Bush has indicated he will sign an increase), the fight will be over getting a clean bill – without poison pill amendments such as small business tax breaks or “protection” of small business from health insurance costs (read: higher premiums and insurance cut offs for our members). ACORN will take a leadership role in both raising the profile of the issue with our friends in Congress in select Congressional Districts in Dec and Jan – AND targeting some moderate Republicans and weak Dems who are more likely to go along with the poison pills.

Soon after we get the $7.25, Sen. Kennedy will introduce a more ambitious bill to restore the value of the minimum wage to its historic levels (more like $9.00/hr.) AND index it to inflation. We’ll likely have to fight for this bill for many years, and it is not likely to be a very big priority in year one, 2007.

Paid Sick Days – ACORN intends to make the fight for paid sick day a big one in 2007. To supplement our city and state campaigns on this issue, we will push for the Healthy Families Act (introduced by Sen. Kennedy and Rep. DeLauro), which would require employers to provide 7 paid sick days a year.

Kennedy’s unequivocal support led to ACORN attempting to establish its now embattled Working Families Party in Massachusetts:

“The Working Families Party in New York and Connecticut continued to establish themselves shrewdly as political forces. The ballot project in Massachusetts to advance election opportunities (read fusion) made it to the ballot, which was never easy, but unfortunately could not overcome some of its negatives, so lost decidedly by a woeful margin, even in the trenches of liberalism. This will be something that we will have to answer in the future.”

As speculations of desperation regarding ObamaCare swarm around the Internet, see Hot Air, for example,  ACORN has continued working silently through partners like Emily’s List and America Votes. The ACORN agenda became the cornerstone of the Obama campaign and then presidency, with Obama and Democrats fiercely protecting ACORN along the way.

“In 2007, for the first time in 12 years, we will be working with a Democratic controlled Congress. Without being overly optimistic (after all, it takes 60 votes to pass anything controversial in the Senate, and Bush is still President), we are developing an ambitious agenda of programs and priorities that we will be pushing for. In particular, we will be paying attention to how our allies in Congress can assist us in our campaign work by holding hearings and otherwise shining a spotlight on our issues and targets – something that only the majority party can do.

Furthermore, we are working to make sure that key leaders in Congress fully understand the role that ACORN played in the 2006 elections: we are working collaboratively with the political department to ensure that the impact of our political work is widely known and appreciated.

Legislative priorities will include:

ACORN Working Families Agenda, including an increase in the minimum wage, paid sick days, expanded EITC, and Childcare assistance.

Immigration reform, which may actually move early next year.

Legislation outlawing predatory lending practices (as opposed to just stopping bad pre-emptive legislation).

Additional funding for housing counseling, and a separate pool of funding for delinquency/foreclosure counseling and outreach.

A housing trust fund – which will make funding available for our development program.

Possible legislation on RALs, payday lending, and other predatory financial practices, as well as support for our VITA and benefit access centers.

Election reform, on voting machines, voter registration issues, etc…

As Coakley continues to make mistakes that would cripple anyone on the right, her status as an empty suit for the “Kennedy Seat” has almost reached satirical proportions. What ACORN and the Democrats did not count on was the same qualities that first made Kennedy appealing to voters are being exhibited by Brown. Brown’s supporters see him as a wild card, someone who is going to shake things up and listen to the people. Hopefully Ted Kennedy would be proud.

ACORN’s defenders have repeatedly downplayed the crimes by highlighting the differences between registration fraud and vote fraud itself. But the registrations are only one element of the scam.

Bogus Voter Registration + Fraudulent Absentee Ballot = Democrat Victory

During the run-up to the 2008 New Jersey gubernatorial election, John Fund noted that state officials had received a startling 180,000 requests for absentee ballots. A “new loosely written vote-by-mail law” reportedly discourages county clerks from closely validating the signatures on absentee ballots, which is the only method of verification.

ACORN’s preferred method appears to combine a fraudulent voter registration with an equally bogus absentee ballot. For this reason, observers speculate, the last few election cycles have seen huge increases in the number of absentee ballots cast.

Big Government reports that this sort of fraud was endemic to the 2008 election cycle. In Troy, New York, “[d]ozens of forged and fraudulent absentee ballots from people registered to vote on the Working Families Party line were filed in the Sept. 15 primary elections… the fraudulent ballots were handled by or prepared on behalf of various elected officials and leaders and operatives for the Democratic and Working Families parties.” In fact, some ballots may have been cast with stolen identities.

A quick review of headlines helps illustrate the trend:

• WBOC, 2008: “Delaware Voters Complete Record Number of Absentee Ballots”.

• STLtoday, 2008: “Absentee ballots double in St. Louis, increase statewide”.

Seattle Times, 2008: “After King County Elections sends a batch of absentee ballots today, the office will have mailed a record 742,000 absentee ballots.”

• NOLA, 2008: “Record number of absentee ballots cast in Maine.”

• Fairfax County, 2006: Virginia absentee ballots numbered 110,000 in ’06, an increase of 65,000 compared to the last off-year election.

• Washington Post, 2006: “A record 166,000 Maryland voters… requested absentee ballots.”

Absentee ballots, in conjunction with fraudulent voter registrations, are the simplest method to steal elections. This appears to be ACORN’s strategy of choice.

Coleman vs. Franken

By far the most insidious tactic used by ACORN and related groups is the “found ballot”. Whenever election outcomes are razor thin, you can expect that ACORN’s thousands of voter registrations — along with absentee ballots — will be “discovered” to add new votes to the Democrat candidate’s total.

After initially leading failed radio host Al Franken by 725 votes, incumbent Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota ended up losing the race after a series of bizarre recounts.

• The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that “the state Canvassing Board approved the use of Election Day results for 133 Minneapolis ballots that can’t be found and also recommended that counties sort and count absentee ballots that were mistakenly rejected.” This decision gave Franken most of his winning margin.

• In Ramsey County, “the recount showed that there were 171 more ballots than recorded votes”, yet the ballots were counted, and Franken picked up nearly 40 more votes.

Washington Governor’s Race

In 2004 Dino Rossi, the Republican candidate, won the state of Washington’s governorship by a narrow margin. But that victory proved short-lived. Election officials:

• discovered uncounted ballots weeks and months after the election;

• counted votes from people without valid registrations;

• and permitted “felons without voting rights, as well as a few dead people, to cast ballots”.

After the recounts, Rossi lost by a mere 133 votes.

Undermining Democracy

Writing in The American Thinker last year, James Simpson called ACORN “the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear”. This assessment is accurate.

ACORN’s strategies are more than criminal; they are tantamount to an attempt to overthrow the government. By poisoning vote results, they are ruining the wellspring of Democracy.

The fact that mainstream Democrats support this outrageous group and its illegal behavior is sickening, but not unexpected from a party controlled by radical leftists who seek the destruction of the American form of government.

The lesson is clear for Republicans in 2010: much tighter oversight of absentee ballots is necessary in order for Democracy to survive in this country.

Hat tips: Leo Alberti (Obamacorn logo), Michelle Malkin and Larwyn. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

 

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Most Americans are outraged at the prospect, but considering the behavior of ACORN’s other funders, one should not be surprised. ACORN only receives a small amount of its annual operating budget from the government. The remaining amount consists of donations. The charitable organizations and persons that fund ACORN are a who’s who’s of progressive funders including Herb and Marion Sandler.

Other donors are among the top progressive funders in the nation and Fred Eychaner’s largesse is legendary.

“Low-profile? Not Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner. He has given away millions of dollars to the Democratic Party and to the Joffrey Ballet. But just try to snap his picture. In 1997, when his alma mater, Northwestern University, honored him along with 75 other graduates, Eychaner was the only one of the group who didn’t contribute a photograph. “We put out an all-points bulletin for a picture,” says Associate Dean Richard Roth. “There wasn’t one. We assume he exists.”

He does–but he’s visible only to a select few. That generally doesn’t include the press or other business tycoons. It does include folks like Al Gore, for whom Eychaner threw a fundraiser inside his Lincoln Park home–an 80-foot-long concrete creation by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. “I’ve covered him for 20 years, and he’s still an enigma,” says Chicago Sun-Times media reporter Robert Feder. “For all his wealth, he never shows up in the gossip columns and rarely shows up in the business pages.”

He did in June, when his company, Newsweb Corp., sold its Chicago television station–WPWR-Channel 50–to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $425 million in cash. That put Eychaner’s net worth at an estimated $500 million, given his virtually debt-free TV station in Denver, several radio stations in the Chicago area and well-timed investments in media companies like McClatchy and Stauffer Communications.”

According to reports, Eychaner “ranks fifth nationally as a lifetime donor to the Democratic National Committee and related committees between 1978 and January 2004.”

Like most progressive funders, Eychaner has a history with ACORN and its affiliated organizations. According to ACORN internal records, Eychaner gave $100,000 to ACORN affiliate Project Vote and contributed to America Votes. In order to ensure a permanent majority a number of nonprofits and 527 groups coalesced around a political strategy.

“This idea of an eternal, localized political structure is a hot one among Democrats and liberals. Similar organizations exist in several other states, and big donors are looking kindly on them. The umbrella group America Votes was organized in ’04, to coordinate voter mobilization against President Bush, and continues to operate.

America Votes 2006 (stay with us here; this is how a lot of American politics is financed) recently received $500,000 from both Rockefeller heir Alida Messinger and Chicago publisher Fred Eychaner, and a combined $250,000 from brother-and-sister billionaires Jon and Pat Stryker, heirs to the Stryker medical technology company.”

Enter the Obamas from stage left. Besides a long term relationship with ACORN, Obama also seems to know the same funder. In 2004 Eychaner gave $12,000 to Obama’s Senatorial campaign and in 2008 Michelle Obama hosted a fundraiser at Eychaner’s house:

“Happy anniversary!” a supporter shouted to Michelle Obama at a fund-raiser at Newsweb President Fred Eychaner’s Lakeview home Monday night.’Thank you! We had a good date too,’ Obama said with a smile as the crowd began to cheer. ‘We did, yeah… Enough said…’

‘He’s raised a whole lot of money thanks to you,’ she told 200 people at Eychaner’s home — a steel and glass marvel designed by Tadao Ando. ‘He has broken records with his fund-raising and that’s important because he has the resources that he needs to operate the kind of ground game that will be critical.’

Interestingly enough Eychaner attended the 2009 LGBT White House Event and was a co-chair of the Chicago 2016 Committee.  Also, despite the rampant media bias perpetrated by left- leaning newspapers, Eychaner was in talks to purchase the Chicago Sun Times. Luckily (insert irony here) the paper was acquired by another Obama donor instead. Mesirow Financial was also in talks to buy the paper around the same time it was providing internal audits for ACORN.

The Obama administration appears content to weather the storm regarding ACORN and private donors will continue to fund their activities. Unless ACORN and its corrupt funders are exposed, they will continue to manipulate electoral politics for years to come.

“Rathke stepped down from ACORN in 2008. Since his departure, ACORN’s been accused of voter registration fraud, embezzlement and worker misconduct. Hidden camera video made public earlier this year shows ACORN employees telling a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute how to get around tax laws to make money.

‘It’s very worrisome to me,’ says Rathke, ‘having spent 38 years there. The notion that within one and a half years since I left, the organization could almost evaporate is just stunning and startling to me.”

According to reports, Rathke is pessimistic about the future of ACORN:

“The organization has become the focal point of the Right,” Rathke said during an interview before his speech.

“I don’t know if it can survive another year,” he said….

‘ACORN, Rathke said, serves an important function in a democratic society, in that it ‘provides a vehicle for community residents, particularly lower and middle income, to have a voice in affairs.’

‘You are going to have some people who cut corners, and do things that are irregular. ACORN made mistakes,’ he said.

Rathke said he was glad to be in Canada when the Baltimore video surfaced. “

Unfortunately, Wade Rathke is still peddling the myth that ACORN actually works to help the poor. Grant applications to various foundations describe ACORN as:

“ACORN is one of the nation’s largest and most successful networks of community organizations, with over 230,000 low and moderate-income members organized into 1200+ neighborhood chapters in 104 cities across the country. Since 1970 ACORN has been building solidly rooted and powerful community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and have taken action and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy, and voter participation. Fundamentally, ACORN’s goal is to ensure that low and moderate income families have the power to act effectively on their own behalf in the struggle to build a more progressive America. ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful actors in our democratic system.”

Liberals cling to the myth of ACORN so they can claim that the “right” is trying to stop persons of color from getting ahead, or as it in known in an ACORN “rap,” “the man keeping a brotha down.”

Wade Rathke, a former member of the Students for A Democratic Society (SDS) and The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) never intended for ACORN to be an organization that really helped poor people. Rathke, from all indications, wanted to use ACORN as a vehicle for political power. It is very telling that ACORN International – now Community Organizations International (COI) – was started after the embezzlement scandal. It appears as if Rathke wanted to secure his future and keep the money rolling in. Screen shots of his international work illustrate that Rathke intends to use COI to corrupt foreign electoral systems in the same way that ACORN has worked domestically. COI may have been started using tax dollars and non-profit tax exempt funds, but the organization has become a critical addition the the political landscape of quite a few countries.

Not only are Rathke’s statements self serving, but he fails to admit that the initial cover-up of the embezzlement by his brother Dale Rathke may have contributed to ACORN’s current troubles.

Furthermore, it appears that the Interim Staff Management committee (ISM) – which included members like Maude Hurd, Marcel Reid and Karen Innman – acknowledged  the difficulties associated with dealing with COI and Rathke, but decided to wait until ACORN could “get its paperwork in order.”

ACORN may be on the ropes, but its not down for the count. Wade Rathke  is successfully meddling in international affairs and Holder’s Justice Department continued reluctance to investigate ACORN may offer them a reprieve. Rathke appears ready to shake things up and start ACORN all over again, one country at a time.

“U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan has formally asked Ohio’s secretary of state to look into allegations that ACORN had at least a preliminary plan to back Democrat candidates in key Ohio congressional races in 2008.”

The political plan was described in an October article as “having been scaled back,” and of course, ACORN denied any partisan activity.

“But to some, ACORN’s early 13-page plan for the 2008 election reinforces what critics always assumed: The group’s goal was never nonpartisan. The political plan and other ACORN documents show that the group was interested not just in helping presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom it urged its members to support, according to post-election Federal Election Commission reports. ACORN also was interested in Congress and the Ohio Statehouse.

“There’s no question that ACORN strategized to figure out how its election efforts could maximize the benefit for selected Democratic candidates in the most competitive races,” U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa of California told The Plain Dealer. “

An illuminating  fact not mentioned in either article is that ACORN prepared political plans for several key battleground states in 2006 and again during the 2007-08 election cycle. As evidenced by the draft plans developed in the Spring of 2006 by the Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD) of ACORN Political Operations, these plans were aimed at electing “progressives” and in some cases broke down the Congressional districts by race for maximum targeting. SWORD, which was staffed by Project Vote employees, including myself, worked with ACORN head organizers in FL, MD, MI, MN, OH, PA, and RI to create local documents for the ACORN field staff to implement and present to funders and/or various partner organizations.

A copy of the Maryland and Colorado draft plans from 2006 are available online. Key parts of the plans are the contact and Congressional district sections at the end. For example, in the Maryland plan, it calls for mailings and face to face contact. A screen shot of the type of mailing Marylanders received is shown below .

ACORN used Project Vote staff and computers to create the PowerPoint “Campaign for a New Congress.” This PowerPoint was aimed at swaying the Congressional election in Maryland from Albert Wynn to ACORN ally Donna Edwards. Using the final political plan, ACORN canvassed voters and mailed pieces through its affiliate Communities Voting Together.

Campaign for a New Congress

Communities Voting Together has the same address as the Project Vote office in DC and its address on the screen shot above is the same Elysian Fields address where hundreds of other ACORN entities “reside.

As a 527 group, Communities Voting Together paid over 150,000 to Citizen’s Services Inc, and contributed to Wade Rathke’s Chief Organizer Fund. Jeff Robinson is listed as the contact for Communities Voting Together and some may remembered Robinson from the 2008 elections (emphasis mine):

“In fact, the Obama campaign paid an ACORN-run organization more than $800,000. In Federal Election Commission required filings, the Obama campaign reported that this money was paid for polling, advance work and event staging. After watchdog scrutiny called this claim into question, the Obama campaign revised its filing and acknowledged that CSI was paid for “get-out-the-vote” projects.

CSI Executive Vice President Jeff Robinson last August told Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter David M. Brown that CSI is a ‘separate organization entirely’ from ACORN. But as Brown reported, CSI has the same office address as ACORN’s national headquarters, ACORN itself described CSI in 2006 as its ‘campaign services entity.’ Coincidentally, the widely identified “national deputy political director for campaigns and elections” for ACORN is…Jeff Robinson.”

ACORN’s shell corporations make it easy for a political plan to become a partisan voter registration drive facilitated by thin veiled “partnerships.” The filing reports of Communities Voting Together raise a number of questions, including whether the misspelling of the name on the filing was intentional. The payments to various ACORN entities should give any astute lawmaker pause.

ACORN has been able to claim that it never worked in some recent elections including NY-23, but as this screen shoot illustrates, Communities Voting together was mailing and passing out door knockers in 2006 for Corzine in New Jersey (without a mention of ACORN).

Will ACORN backed officials like Jennifer Brunner (who has her eye on a Senate seat) and officials in Maryland and Colorado take notices of these obvious attempts to elect Democrats, or will they continue to turn a blind eye to ACORN in order to save themselves?

Also, today another damning ACORN tape was released at Big Government. This time an ACORN member openly confessed to ACORN using non-partisan voter registration to secretly produce Obama votes:

Anyone paying attention knows accusations relating to voter registration fraud, illicit partisan activity and other chicanery often have been made against ACORN, with ACORN either denying all or any ACORN fault. In October of 2008, I testified in Pennsylvania regarding the illegal coordination between Barack Obama’s Campaign and ACORN:

“A former staffer for Project Vote, a sister organization of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, testified at a hearing in Pennsylvania on Wednesday that the Obama campaign provided the group with a campaign donor list in late 2007 for their fundraising efforts. The former D.C. staffer, Anita Moncrief, said she still has a copy of what she called the ‘development plan’ she used to help her identify the maxed-out Obama donors for solicitation. The hearing was part of a lawsuit brought by the GOP seeking information and an injunction against certain ACORN activities in Pennsylvania.

“McCain-Palin campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement, ‘We now know that Barack Obama’s campaign was working hand-in-glove with an organization reportedly under investigation by the F.B.I. and in more than a dozen states. In addition to funneling $832,000 to ACORN for get-out-the-vote efforts, the Obama campaign and ACORN have been sharing donor lists, encouraging maxed-out Obama donors to contribute to this unethical organization.’” (emphasis mine).”

The member caught on tape publicized by Big Government is another in a long line of “bad apples” for ACORN. As it becomes harder to hide behind poor minorities, ACORN appears to be on the run. Unfortunately, they are running to the White House. There Barack Obama, ACORN’s “inside man,” seems poised to protect ACORN and even strike down its enemies. Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) serves as a close confidant of the President with over 20 visits logged in at the White House (he tops the frequent visitor list). Stern has every reason to expect this sort of access, as he not only funneled many millions of dollars into the Obama campaign, but also aligned with SEIU’s sister organization, ACORN, to ensure that Obama was elected.

The screen shot is from an internal ACORN document from 2006. When combined with the admissions of the member, it provides additional proof that ACORN and SEIU – with the help of the Obama presidential campaign – intentionally took government and tax exempt donations through organizations like Project Vote to run a partisan voter registration drive aimed at electing Obama. Both the Federal Elections Commission and the media ignored the Obama donor list that was submitted as evidence in the Pennsylvania case and sworn testimony. But can they ignore the admission of someone saying: “I Am ACORN”?

As President ,Obama has paved the way for ACORN and SEIU to receive stimulus money and ACORN favorites to receive prime appointments to both executive and judicial positions.

Of course, Obama has admitted to limited ties with ACORN. But Americans have witnessed Obama run the country like one big ACORN office and trying to implement ACORN’s radical agenda. Apparently being a community organizer is something that – like ACORN – is hard for Obama to shake. In 2001, a group of ACORN protesters broke up a community tenant meeting by shouting the words, “Yes, We Can.” Eight years later, ACORN man Obama rode to victory using the same slogan of those angry protesters.

With so much to lose, lawmakers are concerned about the lengths to which Obama will go to in order to protect ACORN. Congressman Steve King of Iowa released a statement today suggesting that a cover-up may be being executed under the guise of an investigation:

“Bob Bauer has a public record of defending Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN. Bauer has acted as the agent between Obama and ACORN, and now he will be perfectly positioned to be tasked with erasing the tracks between Obama and ACORN. Bauer’s hiring appears to be a tactical maneuver to strategically defend the White House exactly one week after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans and seized paper records and computer hard drives that may lead to the White House.”

Congressman King has reason to worry. The Democrat-controlled Congress has given ACORN plenty of time and warning to prepare for these “investigations”. In March of this year Michigan Representative John Conyers backed down from a call to investigate ACORN after several witnesses testified about the 2008 elections and ACORN. Portions of my Pennsylvania testimony regarding ACORN’s illegal activities in 2008 were read into the record and hundreds of pages of evidence were submitted by GOP Attorney Heather Heidelbaugh. In explaining his flip flop, Conyers cited “the Powers that be.” As the “Age of Obama” unfolds, it’s not hard to guess who “the powers” are.

Obama is willing to make small, symbolic concessions like removing ACORN from the Census, but his Justice Department remains oddly complacent with ACORN. The bailout hungry media covered up the Obama/ACORN story  and continue to ignore damaging stories like the IRS dropping ACORN from its list of VITA sites.

Mainstream newspapers and online liberal “news” sources appear content to continue to play the “race card” and paint conservatives as obsessed about ACORN because ACORN purported to help the poor. ACORN may be Teflon as long as Obama is in the White House. Charges of tax evasion, child prostitution, voter registration fraud, illegal immigration, bank fraud, etc. may not stick to ACORN.

With 2010 rapidly approaching, a look at ACORN’s cookie cutter statements on its voter programs tells us what ACORN plans for America.

Fortunately, Big Government caught one of those “highly trained” ACORN organizers on tape. How many more “bad apples” does it take before it is generally realized that ACORN itself is rotten to the core?

Multiple sources on the ground in New York’s 23^rd Congressional district confirm that ACORN is expected to be actively protesting the election results in Clinton County, New York tomorrow. This move comes on the heels of a legal win for the Hoffman camp today as it was ruled that all poll watchers would have to be registered voters of NY 23.

Rob Ryan, spokesman for the Hoffman campaign, states that the legal decision is all about ballot security and that the move by ACORN is not a surprise.

“The Working Family Party is desperate, Today’s poll show that Doug Hoffman is drawing votes from all Demographics”.

While the focus tomorrow will be on securing a win for Hoffman, Ryan says there are still worries about:

“voter intimidation, absentee ballot fraud and groups like ACORN/Working Families Party and big labor stealing the election from the people of the 23^rd district.”

As voters prepare to go to the polls tomorrow, some may wonder why all the fuss over NY 23. Partisan politics and party infighting aside, MSNBC reports that :

“The New York governor’s office just released county-by-county data on stimulus spending. (Here, here, and here.) It breaks down where — and on what — money was spent.

A First Read analysis of the data shows that almost $1 billion was allocated to counties in — either wholly or partially — New York’s 23rd congressional district.”

One does not have to wonder what WFP/ACORN’s motivations are. They clearly appear to be related to money and power.

As the nation watches the events in New York’s 23rd Congressional district unfold, an appropriate title for this story would be “How to squander money and alienate your base.” After the Saturday withdrawal of Republican Dede Scozzfava, the GOP is reeling from a massive insurgency by its conservative base. Of course, the story got stranger as Erick Erickson of Redstate reports

“Dede Scozzafava is throwing her support to the Democrat, Bill Owens.

“She and her husband are working with union activists to drive the vote up for the Democrat.

“The Republican Party spent $900,000.00 to help her and this is how she repays them.

“And Pete Sessions, Chairman of the NRCC, and Guy Harrison, Executive Director of the NRCC, still have their jobs and are failing to take responsibility for this disaster, instead blaming conservatives.”

In the GOP there are still some are shaking their heads and wondering what went wrong. The GOP nominated a “moderate” and if she happened to have big labor and ACORN ties, then so be it. For once, the elephant in the room was not the GOP but this blatant, illogical and damaging alliance it had formed with Scozzafava. As the Wall Street journal reports, this relationship would eventually set off a national chain of events:

“Saturday’s decision by Republican Dede Scozzafava to drop out of tomorrow’s special Congressional election in upstate New York is a potentially big political moment that could help to return the GOP to first principles—or could lead to internecine ruin. Much will depend on how GOP leaders and conservative activists respond.

“Picked by GOP elites without a primary and with a voting record to the left of many Albany Democrats, Ms. Scozzafava faced a revolt by local and national conservatives in favor of businessman Doug Hoffman, who was nominated on the Conservative Party line. The longtime GOP assemblywoman saw herself falling in the polls and yesterday endorsed Democratic lawyer Bill Owens, who could still win the GOP-leaning seat with a plurality.”

Republican liaisons with far left Democrats have already been detrimental to the conservative movement and Scozzafava’s ties to ACORN and their “affiliated” Working Families Party was covered extensively in the blogosphere. Top Republicans chose to ignore the corruption right under their nose and to sell out their base by following the Left’s mantra to elect “moderates”. These “moderates” tend to be leftists in Republican clothing. Kirsten Gillibrand is an example of a local “moderate” who abandoned her principles and base after being promoted from Congressperson to United States Senator. Republicans like Darrell Issa (who released a damning report on ACORN last July) backed Scozzafava while still pursing ACORN corruption.

In any partnership, there is compromise. Some compromise is acceptable, but fundamental values should not be compromised. When conservatives align themselves with polar opposites, it always seems that they are doing so because of race considerations or political expediency. During a panel discussion in which I participated on October 23, 2009, Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media asked why Republicans in the Bush administration approved ACORN funding.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, replied that Republicans acquiesced with the pretense that these organizations are doing good work and that race is a major factor behind that acquiescence.

While partisanship should not play a role in exposing corruption, when that corruption is rooted in the pay for play politics that tip heavily to the Left, partisanship cannot be ignored. Nonprofit groups have been allowed to run rampant with charitable donations that somehow elect Democrats. To stop this trend, conservatives must become creative and steer clear of situations like the one in the NY 23 with Scozzafava. If such situations are allowed to continue, others will succeed in dividing the GOP from the grassroots conservatives, and thus strengthening the left.

ACORN is a Democrat scandal and it is hard to separate one from the other. Corruption is the overriding theme and it comes mostly from the left. Another particularly odd pairing continues to be the radical reformers of ACORN and top Conservatives and Republicans. The ACORN 8, a group of former ACORN board members, have formed a Scozzafava-like partnership with the Republicans. In attempting to expose ACORN, some appear to have ignored key facts and overlooked a pattern of withholding key information to coincide with opportunistic timing aimed at aiding Democrats. An example of this is the complete removal of two longtime Obama ACORN cronies from a complaint filed with the United States Justice Department last January by the ACORN 8. Madeline Talbott is described by Stanley Kurtz of the National Review Online as “the woman who first drew Obama into an alliance with ACORN.” And Keith Kelleher is Talbott’s husband, the Chief Organizer of SEIU Local 880 in Chicago.

Version 1 and Version 2 of the ACORN 8 Civil RICO complaint.

Another example of the GOP ignoring the evidence in front of it involves investigative reporting by the National Legal and Policy Center, a group that “promotes ethics in public life through research, investigation, education and legal action.” The NLPC uncovered more on ACORN’s relationship with Scozzafava. The GOP seems quick to support organizations and people with strong ties to ACORN as long as they technically are not ACORN. Unfortunately for conservatives, the credibility being bestowed on such groups receives little scrutiny beyond the blogosphere and Fox News . Key ACORN opponents have formed relationships of convenience with little thought to the outcome. As the NLPC reports, even the unions are involved:

“The powerful New York City-based health care workers union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1199, also has endorsed Owens. But common sense says that if Mrs. Scozzafava is elected, she effectively will have established a Republican congressional beachhead for ACORN, who would claim its ‘bipartisanship.’ It’s not as if her own party will be against her. Top GOP members sending her checks include House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Virginia), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (Texas), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (California), Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), and Rep. Peter King (N.Y.).

“How did leading Republicans, some of whom (like Boehner) have been ACORN’s toughest critics, come to endorse a candidate with a history of endorsements by its main political front, the Working Families Party?” (emphasis mine).

Good question. In NY 23, the GOP candidate selecters chose to ignore the evidence of Scozzafava’s ACORN tainted background. Just as the GOP and Fox have also ignored the clear statement on the ACORN 8′s website which does not call for not for full truth, transparency and accountability by ACORN to the American people. Rather, as stated on the ACORN 8 website, they call for “truth, transparency and accountability within ACORN.” Apparently in exposing ACORN it certainly does not hurt to have a black face to speak about ACORN corruption. The color of whistleblowers should not be important, but their message should be.

When groups like the ACORN 8 speak to conservatives and tell them that ACORN was a great organization that was “hijacked” by some who had sinister motives, it’s believable if no one checks the facts. How can an organization whose founder remained in place for almost 40 years become hijacked? How can ACORN be reformed if the same longtime insiders are the new control group? This fiction must be exposed. Fox has been leading the way on exposing ACORN while other so called respected media outlets like the New York Times, finally admitted to having been continually scooped by Fox. But Fox needs to report all the facts to its viewers instead of promoting the ACORN 8 and wishful thinking.

As TV/Radio host Glenn Beck continues to expose the true subversive nature of ACORN, and Obama’s radical roots, he contradicts many of the assertions made by this group of reformers. Though no one ever mentions the distortions on air, one has to wonder if Fox is doing its viewers a disservice by aligning themselves with groups who support Obama’ s policy initiatives. As the conservative base mobilizes online, there is a disconnect between then and the so called leaders. The base sprung into action as a subsequent Glenn Beck boycott of advertisers begun by Van Jones and his organization Color of Change attempted to silence Beck and that same base is ready to fight as ACORN attempts to DeFox America.

Those outside of this boycott alliance spread the word on Twitter and Facebook about the Left’s attempt to silence Beck, while the ACORN 8 remained largely silent on these issues and others that concern the very people they fundraise and ask to support their efforts. Like the $990,000 the Republicans spent on Scozzafava, conservatives are being asked to foot the bill for a partnership that was never ideologically aligned with theirs. As stated, such partnerships are rarely mutually beneficial for long. While the Left exploits the fears of conservatives on the issues of race, conservatives must be willing to fight back and respond to the blows instead of merely trying to deflect them.

After watching the ACORN prostitution stings, Americans do not see ACORN as serving a noble purpose and one has to wonder what people were doing on the ACORN board for years. Marcel Reid was active in ACORN for nine years and her story that the ACORN board was “ceremonial” does not excuse any board member. She claims to have noticed ACORN corruption only after the embezzlement scandal was publicly reported. As a former employee who started in October of 2005, I was already calling the folks at www.rottenacorn.com by May of 2007.

The question now is whether the GOP can overcome its fear of being labeled “racist” by the left and learn to respond to these attacks. Fear of that seems to be the tipping point for their ultimately disastrous relationships with liberals who wish to keep Democrats in power.

Until and unless we conservatives form our own groups and become more involved in the communities of color, we will find ourselves aligned with every group that sprouts from the ACORN seed. ACORN 8 professes to love ACORN and does not want to see it dismantled, just “reformed. ” But ignoring the reality of the radical ACORN 8 potentially opens that door to other alliances with ACORN “insiders” who are willing to offer information in exchange for credibility and a chance to retaliate against the very control group that threw them out.

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

General George S. Patton, Jr.:

You must be single minded. Drive for the one thing on which you have decided. You will find that you will make some people miserable; those you love and very often yourself. And, if it looks like you are getting there, all kinds of people, including some whom you thought were loyal friends, will suddenly show up doing their damndest, hypocritical best to trip you up, blacken you, and break your spirit.

One almost never hears of paralyzing joy or happiness. The adjective “paralyzing” is usually combined with the word fear. Fear can take on many forms. In most cases, it is the driving force behind the decisions that follow. In 2008, the fear I encountered involved my family, our safety and loyalty to my race and political party. When others are aware of your fears, they can make the most of opportunities to capitalize on them; whether it is a fellow whistleblower warning you away from Fox News, or liberals throwing the word racist in the face of conservatives.

Often, it is the fear of being alone that paralyzes. To avoid being alone, women (and men) can make bad choices in mates or politics. A person will align with a group or organization that adds support or disproves a claim. In July of 2008, I aligned with both The New York Times and former board members of ACORN that had formed a group called the ACORN 8. On October 21, 2008, New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom, with whom I had been working on an ACORN expose, told me that her editors had told her to “stand down,” because the ACORN/Obama story was a “game changer” and it was their policy not to print a “game changer” that close to the election.

My sense of having a reliable system in place to help expose the truth disintegrated. I will always wonder about the timing of the release of the Kingsley report (a report by an ACORN lawyer that showed huge problems within the organization related to the connection between the ACORN entities) to Strom when she was hot on the story of ACORN and Obama campaign corruption and about to be made to “stand down” on it by “higher up.” I began to suspect that the same group who had decided to “wait until after the election to go after Wade Rathke, and whose representative had warned me about going on Fox the weekend before the election may have had an ulterior motive for releasing the report to Strom right before a potentially damaging expose on ACORN/Obama.

A screen shot of the July 29^th 2008 meeting by the ACORN Interim Staff Management Committee (ISM) details the efforts that ISM members including Karen Innman and Marcel Reid to protect Obama by not exposing Rathke before election day 2008.

As an ardent Democrat, I listened to Reid and continued to work with the ACORN 8 but the questions returned after I was shown a copy of the same Kingsley report by Reid of the ACORN 8 on the eve of my first interview on Fox News with Eric Shawn, on Mother’s Day morning. I was later interviewed by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly the following morning and about a month later by Bill O’Reilly on the Factor about how the New York Times killed an Obama/ACORN expose on October 21, 2008.

The current situation in Louisiana is eerily familiar to the struggle that I witnessed in early 2009 between the ACORN control group and the ACORN 8 and I expect more such situations as ACORN crumbles.

“A new battle is brewing at the controversial community group ACORN, as ousted and disgruntled leaders in Louisiana reportedly plan to form their own group with the same name…

“…ACORN fired [Beth] Butler over apparent concerns about a lack of ‘accountability’ in her work leading the Louisiana chapter in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Butler was close to ACORN founder Wade Rathke, whose brother Dale was accused of embezzling about $1 million from the group a decade ago.

“…Butler said she was fired because she refused to fire members of a land trust board whom national ACORN leaders wanted ousted. She said ACORN national is ‘going out of business’ and wanted the board gone to seize control of its funds and assets. She called the ordeal ‘all completely inappropriate and unethical.’

“Vanessa Gueringer, who sits on the Louisiana and national board of ACORN, told the Times-Picayune, that Stephen Bradberry, the employee installed as Butler’s replacement, is an ‘illegitimate interloper.’”

Screen shots of the ISM committee meeting notes and a legal memo by ACORN’s former lawyer Steve Bachmann appear to support Butler’s claims:

ISM committee meeting note July 29, 2008

Note: EFC stands for the Elysian Fields Corporation and WR is Wade Rathke

Like the new ACORN group forming in New Orleans, Louisiana, the ACORN 8 was made up of former board members and members of ACORN. Initially, I supported the ACORN 8 as an improvement over the current ACORN control group. But I eventually realized that, also like the Louisiana ACORN off-shoot group, ACORN 8 is engaged in a power struggle with ACORN National and not what is needed.

In March of 2009, the DC chapter of ACORN faced the same type of administrativeship that dissolved the New Orleans branch as this 3/6/2009 letter by Mary Spencer, acting president of the DC chapter to Bertha Lewis, CEO of ACORN illustrates:

• Why is the DC Chapter being penalized because several persons from this area were removed from membership by the National Board after asking that the ACORN’s financial records be made available, which has never been done? Is there a certain number of persons that warrant such actions be taken against a chapter or is this something that is once again made up to make the appearance of a reason for putting DC in administrativeship? (emphasis mine)

• Regarding confidential information being leaked, I can assure you that since no DC members have access to any of ACORN’s confidential information, we the DC chapter should not be the fall guy for such actions. May I ask what confidential information is being referred to in this statement?

I had already begun to wonder if I could really fight ACORN with ACORN, but after reading this letter forwarded by Marcel Reid of the ACORN 8, I knew that it was time to go at this alone. I believed that ACORN was a subversive organization committed to turning poverty into a profit and America into a socialist country. I also came to realize in the months leading up to March, my admitted fears had been used against me by others and I had become a prisoner of the those fears.

When TV/Radio host’s Glenn Beck’s producers invited me to appear on his show in March, I turned it down. The thought of appearing on TV was terrifying. I had declined previous interviews in great part because of that fear, especially after an attempted break-in of my home, out of concern for my family, as Beck mentioned on air. I had a long talk with Beck’s producers and Cleta Mitchell of the Republican National Lawyers Association, happily provided information and disclosed the circumstances of my termination from ACORN/Project Vote.

Fear and outside influences kept me off Fox the weekend before the election. Fear and a sense of loyalty to Strom kept me from immediately exposing the New York Times by releasing our email exchanges before March of 2009 and fear tied me to Marcel Reid, who used those fears to manipulate and control me. In the end, fear did not prevent me from realizing that I was no longer ideologically aligned with the ACORN 8. I was no longer the far left radical who wanted to change the system, and I no longer felt that I had to stand with my Democratic party.

Byron York has the story and here is the link from the email: DeFox America

A strange anomaly occurs whenever the phrase “voter registration fraud” is searched. Who’s responsible for that? Perhaps the players? Search the Internet and you will find dozens of stories on the Association of Community Organizations For Reform Now or ACORN on a never ending stream of Google results. However, Project Vote (Voting for America) is often only listed as an affiliate. Articles posted by the mainstream media tend to downplay Project Vote’s role or is it something else?

In the fall of 2005 I answered an ad posted on Idealist.org similar to the one provided by the Capital Research Center below. It was the beginning of my journey with ACORN. Throughout the interview process I never heard the words Project Vote, only ACORN. The goal was to make sure that I was ideologically aligned with the principles -and I use that term loosely – of ACORN.

When I came to Washington, D.C. to start working for ACORN, it quickly became evident to me that Project Vote did not have a lot of employees and was a part of ACORN. Often we employees wore many hats and worked weekends and late nights with the sense that we were doing it for the “movement.”

One of my first assignments at Project Vote was to research the voter registration fraud allegations from 2004. It was not hard to discern a pattern in how the accusations were processed: ACORN blamed an employee, the employee was fired, vilified, tried and sentenced. Case closed. Every time Project Vote remain unscathed while ACORN cried racism and attacked the “evil right-wingers.” What I then speculated is that Project Vote did not have the field capacity to run the voter registration drives without ACORN. Project Vote existed because of ACORN and did not seem like it could continue without it. Besides shared offices across the country; there were people like myself who held duel positions in both organizations. Senator Chuck Grassley requested information related to the tax status of ACORN entities and it was determined that:

“Per its 2006 Form 990, Project Vote received $8,688,580 in direct public support,and $250,759 in contractual fees. It then paid $4,649,037 to ACORN for contractual and campaign services and $779,016 to Citizens Consulting, Inc. Thus, $5,428,023, or over 60% of its revenues, was paid to two taxable, affiliated entities (emphasis mine).

“…In general, the flow of money among the ACORN family of organizations is a big shell came. Dollars raised for charitable activity appear to be used for impermissible lobbying and political activity. This is similar to the use of charities by Jack Abramoff. Similar to those organizations, charities are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or other organizations for purposes other than what a donor may have intended.”

On the ACORN side, I was part of political operations. POLOPS, as we called it during my tenure, had Zach Polett as its point person. Zach ran Project Vote, ACORN Political Operations, and sometimes, Citizens Services Inc. (CSI). Voter registration drives, lawsuits, youth voting, etc were all handled by this main ACORN nebulous, and I watched it run like a slightly inept machine. Over the years Project Vote has loudly protested that it is not a part of ACORN. Barack Obama’s Fight the Smears website also makes this absurd claim.

After the New York Times broke the ACORN embezzlement scandal in July of 2008 and subsequently released portions of the Elizabeth Kingsley report, recommendations were made about improving the overall operation of the affiliates. In particular the roles of the board members was discussed at length. According to information provided by former board members in July of 2008, not only was the board unaware of the embezzlement, but some of the affiliate board members were not even aware that they were on the board! Project Vote replaced a few of its board members, but somehow managed to still stock it with trusted ACORN insiders. A look at their website illustrates this point.

A quick search of the Internet yields tons of information on the active role the board members have played in ACORN and bloggers have reviewed these ACORN ties. What is most interesting is that now a year after ACORN pledged to clean up their ranks, these same board members continue an active role in supporting ACORN while it appears that they only represent Project Vote on paper. I have included a brief summary of some conflicting ACORN activities of “non partisan” Project Vote’s board members

Donna Massey, President – A New Party alum from ACORN’s home state of Arkansas, Massey, acts as co-chair of Arkansas ACORN and chairs the ACORN PAC, a political action committee that actively endorses Democrat candidates. After the “reforms” put in place after the embezzlement scandal, Massey has been active in the SEIU aligned Health Care for Reform Now (HCAN).

Maxine Nelson, Vice-President – Nelson was on the board of Project Vote for years as its president and is a longtime ACORN insider who also sits on the national board of ACORN. Nelson’s bio speaks for itself:

Organizations: ACORN member (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) since 1986.

Offices held: Chair of ACORN Political Action Committee; Secretary; Asst. State Chair; Chair, Jefferson County ACORN; Delegate to ACORN Associate Board since 1999, also served as Southern Regional Representative.

PROJECT VOTE President since 1998

After the ACORN prostitution scandal hit, Nelson could be found making the rounds on the “denial” tour for ACORN:“

‘It’s not going to affect what we do locally,’ she said after the rally on the state Capitol steps. ‘We work in the neighborhood, we work on issues that affect the every day citizen. We will continue to work on our issues like health care reform, which is not only a national issue but it’s a local issue.’

Sunday Alabi, Board Treasurer: Alabi’s name may sound familiar to some, in 2008 he was implicated in what appeared to be a cover up of the Obama presidential campaign’s payment to CSI. Like Nelson, Alabi seems to have spent much of the fall doing damage control for ACORN after the prostitution scandal broke:

“We’re shocked to see those things happen,” said Sunday Alabi, who sits on ACORN’s state and national boards. He said the people who made the video didn’t visit the Minnesota office.”

Not only has Alabi endorsed candidates through Minnesota’s ACORN PAC, but like many ACORN board members Alabi appears to have a political agenda that supports Democrats while attacking conservatives like Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota:

Minnesota ACORN Board Member Sunday Alabi:

“It is sad that Rep. Bachmann isn’t focusing on the very real issues facing the 6th Congressional District, which, for example, has the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota. ACORN is working hard every day in Minnesota to stop predatory lending, and is even helping Rep. Bachmann’s own constituents to save their homes. Meanwhile, Rep. Bachmann seems more interested in partisan witch hunts. We are concerned that she is trying to paper over the fact that she has once again sided with the predatory lenders and neglected the residents of the 6th Congressional District.”

As public scrutiny of ACORN reaches a fever pitch and ACORN scrambles to cover their tracks it appears that these efforts are only cosmetic. Like the plaster wall Project Vote added in the DC office to “separate” it from ACORN national and DC local in preparation for the 2008 elections, the changes have not touched the core of the ACORN empire.

]]> http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/10/22/project-vote-a-twisted-branch-of-the-acorn-tree/feed/ 5 http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/10/16/how-this-reluctant-whistleblower-decided-to-tell-all/ http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/10/16/how-this-reluctant-whistleblower-decided-to-tell-all/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:52:15 +0000 Anita MonCrief http://hotair.com/greenroom/?p=11216

In May of 2008 I was working at a respected non-profit and learning the ropes of the corporate nonprofit world. At ACORN you never knew what you would find. I once walked into a lobby and saw a man on his knees talking to DC local ACORN about the “man” and something about Bush. My new position was defiantly not grassroots. Everything was efficient, clean and well run. I was making a nice salary and loved the mission of the nonprofit. I had been there a few months and the only problem was that I felt that I was in the wrong place. As primaries raged on I felt a disquieting sense of something passing me by. At the time I was trying to reconcile myself with my choices in life but a part of me was still living in fear of who I had been and who I really was.

That May I decided to go back to my grassroots background and experience this monumental change that everyone predicted was on the horizon. I started out as a Hillary Clinton supporter as I have mentioned in radio interviews. I wanted to really delve into the feeling that seemed to permeate through the liberal community as the 2008 presidential election approached. Everyone sensed that we were on the cusp of something life changing. It became harder and harder for me to sit by, so I joined another grassroots, progressive organization with labor roots. I was sitting at my desk one July day I when got the email alert about the ACORN embezzlement scandal. I followed a myriad of nonprofit dailies and was surprised but not shocked to see the story. ACORN had tons of stories like these floating around, it was part of ACORN lore.

I often wonder if I would have contacted New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom if I had stayed at my previous post with the international nonprofit, but somehow I think that making the choice to leave made this one easier. I was a union member with great benefits, a salary in the mid-forties and what I felt was a front row seat to change. I debated with myself about contacting the reporter who wrote the story. Part of me wanted to let sleeping dogs lie and not talk about what I knew about ACORN. I remembered doing the research on voter fraud allegations from 2004 and knew what happened to ACORN employees who decided to speak out, and I felt that I would definitely be retaliated against and labeled disgruntled. I weighed all of these options and decided that if I stayed quiet that it would be for selfish reasons, and that is not why I came to DC.

Still, I asked myself “why throw away a promising future and speak out against ACORN?” But the part of me that came back to grassroots to help people knew that I had to finish what I had started in 2007 when I contacted the makers of the Rotten ACORN website, the Employment Policies Institute, because I had become disillusioned with ACORN and no longer wanted to turn a blind eye to what I had seen. At the time I had a baby who was less than a year old and had been born premature at 2lbs 2 ounces. I made that call in hushed tones without identifying myself, and the staffer to whom I spoke expressed concern over my personal situation. Instead of trying to use me to attack ACORN immediately and “mine me” for information, he advised me to seek other employment first and then call back. After a great deal of thought, I decided to contact Stephanie Strom at the New York Times using an alias. Stephanie responded immediately and we began a collaboration that would span a number of months. I came to trust her and told her my name.

In August of 2008, Marcel Reid, a board member who was selected to sit on the national board of ACORN and the president of the Local DC ACORN board, somehow learned that I was working with the NYT and got in touch with me. I began passing information and messages from Marcel to Stephanie. I emailed Stephanie at the time that it appeared that “…Wade [Rathke] is refusing to fully hand over the reigns there has even been talk of jail time. I think she may want to throw a few more nails in the coffin to ensure her leadership and direction are taken seriously.“

Some women who grew up in similar situations have “daddy issues” but I had resolved my feeling toward my father about five years after he died. I had “mommy issues” that led me to look to Marcel for guidance, reassurance and at times validation. To me she was an older black female who really seemed to care and to understand how hard this was turning out to be. I remembered her from my days at ACORN and she always struck me as authoritative and in control. I look back and see the perfect storm of coincidences that led to this relationship. My mother was working in Japan, my health had taken a near deadly turn and issues at work (I briefly described these in my testimony in PA) coupled with a speedy move to a place where ACORN could not find me, led me to look to Marcel for inspiration and advice.

Stephanie Strom and Marcel would eventually connect directly. By then I found myself moving away from trusting Stephanie or the Times. Several articles had appeared that seemed to be extremely watered down and almost PR pieces for ACORN. The running theme was to blame founder Wade Rathke and to extol the new ACORN leadership. While the Obama camp will not admit it, the campaign and his whole presidency has been about race (a trusty divisive technique) and I went against the inherent need as a black person to “stick together” and overcame my political instincts as a liberal and confirmed what Michelle Malkin has already uncovered about ACORN and Obama. Stephanie seemed hot on the trail of this story but as election day got closer and the stories weaker and weaker, I decided that I needed a back up plan and emailed Michael Gaynor and Michelle Malkin.

I had never heard of Gaynor but his writing on ACORN back in late September and early October of 2008 led me to believe that he, like Michelle, understood what was going on. Gaynor emailed back, Michelle did not. He became my backup plan after I agreed to identify myself to him so that he could check me out. In addition to being a confidential source of Stephanie, I became a confidential source of Gaynor.

Later in October of 2008 Stephanie told me that it would be better if she could identify me for this ACORN/Obama story. I preferred to be a confidential source, but reluctantly agreed to come forward. As of September 2008, I was no longer working for my union affiliated organization and a part of me felt that I had let my family down. I talked to my fiance, who was having a rough year because of me, and he agreed to support me no matter what. That was very important to me because I was never one of those people who lived the perfect life and being under a microscope would be hard for everyone. I was tired of living in fear, fear of the person I used to be, fear of other people, fear of ACORN and fear of what I was supposed to do.

With my mom in Japan with minimal phone contact with me, I leaned on Marcel and asked for advice when the New York Times decided to make Stephanie “stand down” and killed the ACORN/Obama story. I called Marcel after listening to the voice mail that Stephanie had left for me and then talking to Stephanie about what had happened and why. I told Marcel about Stephanie’s game-changer comment and she told me about a lawsuit brought in Pennsylvania by attorney Heather Heidelbaugh against ACORN and gave me the number to contact her.

I also contacted Gaynor that same day. He encouraged me to work with Heather and asked if he could write about it immediately, and write about it he did! See ACORN WHISTLEBLOWER: OBAMA’S THIRD STRIKE? (October 22, 2008). I was not expecting such detail but I had agreed to come forward and he had said he would do what he could to draw public attention to the whole truth about ACORN, including its Obama and Obama campaign connections.

After our conversation regarding her case, Heidelbaugh came to DC to interview me the next day and I immediately knew that I could work with her. She was smart, funny and comforting, and as I got to see her in action, I was awed by her legal skills. The night before I was to testify, I talked to Marcel and she told me that Karyn Gillette, my former mentor, would be there. This was a big blow to me, as I credit Karyn with helping me regain my confidence after working with ACORN/Project Vote for so long. Karyn really listened to me, she was not a “DC insider” and I loved her unapologetic take on life. Of all the people there for ACORN, she was the one that seeing was the hardest thing for me. I knew that I had to tell the truth, but I still didn’t want her to ever think that by telling it, I was rebuking her or what she had taught me. I learned another lesson from her that day when I was told that she never came back after the break to testify against me.

After my testimony in the Pennsylvania ACORN case (transcript available here), the Wall Street Journal article about it and an interview by Laura Ingraham on her radio show, I was invited by Fox News to come to New York and be on TV the weekend before election day. I talked to Marcel and Gaynor at length about this. I was afraid to appear on TV or become the black woman who tried to take down Obama. I would stay up all night and watch over my family. They had never signed up for this and there we were, hiding out, not knowing what would come next. I saw how Joe the Plumber was treated just for asking Obama a question and here I was , about to tell the world that the Obama campaign had given ACORN/Project Vote his donor list.

Former friends seemed to want to do physical harm to me and I was afraid to leave the house. Gaynor has always been an advocate for the full truth getting out there and tried to help me overcome my fear. I had been interviewed by Laura Ingraham and was surprised by how much I like her and begun to wonder if Fox News was really as evil as the left portrayed it. Granted, my only experience with Fox was from NewsHounds, a site whose slogan is “We watch Fox, so you don’t have to.” I was advised by an ACORN insider that Fox would use me and that it would be a hatchet job interview set up to make me the poster child for a last minute anti-Obama push. Being a liberal I believed this and tried CNN and ABC instead of Fox to get a “fair” story out but they were too busy covering for Obama.

If there is one thing that I learned during my time with ACORN, it is that they have friends in the media. I grew tired with the one-sided reporting that seemed to crop up every time ACORN’s name was mentioned. I started my own blog in response to the biased coverage on ACORN. My first few posts were hard for me as I felt like I had lost my voice for a number of years and it was kind of “raspy” as it came back to me. At ACORN I felt out of place and very cautious, as if I were walking on ground with land mines buried beneath it, and this led me to seek approval before posting. I would send Marcel copies of my posts before posting, knowing that she would tell me whether they were horrible or not. At times I would add in favorable mentions of her ACORN 8 as she requested or change language related to President Obama.

Throughout most of the winter my relationship with Marcel grew and I began to depend on this friendship to keep me focused when everything seemed so bleak. There were a few times when I wondered if we were really making a difference and questioned my judgment for taking my family down this road. I felt a glimmer of hope in February of 2009 when at Marcel’s request, I went to a meeting with the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. Marcel and I had spent the day taking copies of the ACORN 8′s RICO complaint against ACORN to members of Congress. Not a month later, Marcel and I attended a Congressional hearing at which Heather Heidelbaugh testified about my experience with the New York Times and my testimony in her Pennsylvania ACORN case. See the transcript here.

I began to see progress but at the same time, I felt that I was holding back. Since I was coordinating with Marcel, I listened to her on matters like exposing the bias at the New York Times. Often she would tell me that it was “not our fight” or convince me that it would distract from the goal at hand.

A part of me wanted to believe her and also protect Stephanie, someone whom I felt had tried to do her job as a reporter. However, eventually I started to gain strength and listen to my inner voice, the one that was telling me that covering up for people was the same thing as lying. As I began to drift from Marcel and the ACORN 8, I headed towards the conservative path as my thinking clarified. The first step was overcoming my fear; I had to learn to accept responsibility for whatever arose as a result of it and to be at peace with that. I was tired of being afraid and tired of running from myself, so I broke free and began to connect the dots between ACORN, the Democrats and Obama. The more that I exposed, the less afraid I became.

Exposing the New York Times spiked ACORN/Obama story was not something that I took lightly, and I think Marcel was one of the reasons I did it. I remember her telling me that I was “all right” because I was focused with her on the ACORN 8 complaint and that she knew from friends that “Obama was not worried about what I was doing.” Instead of comforting me, this troubled me because I had begun to see Obama as someone who was steadily making payoffs to his labor buddies like Andy Stern president of SEIU. I looked at his picks for Labor Secretary and Health and Human Services Secretary and knew that Hilda Solis and Kathleen Sebelius were put in place to help pass obvious labor enriching legislation. Exposing the media bias also exposed Obama and ACORN as a something so newsworthy that it had to be covered up. For me it was the beginning of a journey that was not meant to be easy or to lead to a happily ever after ending.

The more I spoke about Obama and the Democrats part in the ACORN scandal, the more I drifted away from the ACORN 8. I never thought that their mission was bad, but ACORN’s subversive nature is rooted in pay for play politics and if one is to clean house, it has to be across the board. I was proud when Marcel appeared on Glenn Beck but often dismayed at the picture she painted of ACORN. Yes, the members are great people, but they do not need an ACORN to help them. Local based initiatives run by people in their own communities seem to do more to really help the poor. As more ACORN corruption was exposed, it became evident that reform was really not an option, it was a band aid on the Titanic. By breaking free of someone else’s agenda and doing the right thing, I was able to take this story to another level by doing research and exposing even more corruption.

I used to think that my life would be one that would repeat a cycle of despair but I discovered that I was meant to do this. Living through a series of events beginning with me trying to forge my way without guidance and continuing to where I am now is nothing short of a miracle. Two years ago, if someone had told me my life would take this turn, I would have laughed hysterically, but along the way I learned that by exposing the truth about ACORN and the Democrats that I had a chance to really help the poor in a way that would really make a difference.

]]> http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/10/16/how-this-reluctant-whistleblower-decided-to-tell-all/feed/ 15 http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/10/05/acorns-latest-corruption-scandal-and-the-fallacy-of-the-bad-apples-argument/ http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/10/05/acorns-latest-corruption-scandal-and-the-fallacy-of-the-bad-apples-argument/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:53:08 +0000 Howard Portnoy http://hotair.com/greenroom/?p=10321 Over the weekend, FOX News aired an hour-long investigation into ACORN hosted by Megyn Kelly. The show included a lengthy and illuminating interview with ACORN founder Wade Rathke, as well as analysis from journalist Stanley Kurtz. The entire program can be viewed here.

As the documentary was airing, two new revelations of ACORN corruption in Louisiana and Oklahoma surfaced.

In the former, the local ACORN Housing Corp. office received contracts worth a combined $625,000 from the City of New Orleans for repairing existing low-income housing and developing new units in poor neighborhoods. The contracts were paid for with funds from federal Community Development Block Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. An investigation by the Pelican Institute think tank of New Orleans, however, found that no work was actually performed to fulfill the contracts. Worse, Pelican couldn’t talk to the ACORN official managing the contracts because he had left the organization months ago. One more thing: The office address listed on the contracts for ACORN turned out to be a vacant lot, although new plumbing connections indicated a trailer had recently been located on the site.

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma City, documents found in a recently vacated ACORN office included a detailed memo titled “Power Plan” for a five-year effort to elect supportive legislators and transform Oklahoma to a progressive state “in the way it was 100 years ago.” The man in charge of the office left town without paying back rent or utility bills, according to OklahmaWatchdog.org. Also found in the documents was a script for a Houston ACORN-directed recruiting campaign for “hiring Outreach Workers to remind people to get out and vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming election.” As a tax-exempt nonprofit, ACORN is barred from participating in partisan election activities, and its national spokesmen have insisted throughout the 2008 presidential race that their organization was not working to elect Obama.

As the pressure mounts for a government investigation of this group, including an examination of its books and its ties to Barack Obama, the leadership continues to deny any wrongdoing. This follows a pattern that goes back many months now and culminated recently with claims by CEO Bertha Lewis that the videotaped sting operations were “an unfair representation of ACORN practices.” She and others continue to insist that every organization has some bad apples.

That may well be true. But “bad apples” are usually people who fudge their hours or, in extreme cases, dip into the company till. What would have been the motivation for ACORN employees to aid individuals in setting up an alleged prostitution ring, especially one involving minors? These workers, moreover, seemed eager to help and to impart their wisdom on ways of circumventing the law. This does not fit standard “bad apple” behavior. Rather it sounds like people doing the job they were hired to do.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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