ACORN to merge with Working Families Party

ACORN isn't going away. That much has become clear as local ACORN chapters reorganize and change their names to avoid stigma. Today the corrupt community organization got another big boost as City Hall News reports that ACORN New York -- now New York Communities for Change -- will most likely merge with the Working Families Party.

Without the restrictions tied to government funding, according to [former ACORN president Bertha] Lewis and others, ACORN’s successor organizations will likely be even more politically aggressive than ACORN was. Already, supporters and board members of New York Communities for Change have begun to discuss whether the organization should join the Working Families Organization, an association of labor unions and community organizing outfits tied to the Working Families Party, a significant force in local elections. Lewis was a co-chair of the Working Families Party and co-founder of the Organization, and ACORN was among the largest and most influential members.

“They were such an integral part of the organization and everything we did,” said Dorothy Siegel, the treasurer of both the WFP and the WFO. “If we needed troops on the ground, there were two ways to get them: through ACORN and through an affiliate.”

...

Though WFP co-chair Bob Master and executive committee member Peter Colavito were on the host committee for the event, neither they nor other officials from the WFP attended, according to Siegel, and ACORN leaders were absent from a meeting of the WFP executive committee in Albany in March. But Siegel said there has already been preliminary discussion among WFP members about whether New York Communities for Change should join the coalition.

“I think they want to participate,” Siegel said of the new organization’s leaders. “These are people who are very, very involved in the work of the WFP.”

ACORN and the WFP had always been sister organizations. While ACORN organized and rallied in the streets, the WFP exerted political pressure on candidates and threw its weight around in Albany. WFP allies, incorporated under the WFO, include powerful labor unions like the SEIU. Now, with the collapse of ACORN and the coming merger between NYCC and the WFP, all these groups and organizers are about to be brought under the same umbrella.

The WFP is already one of the most powerful community organizations in the country, and its creep over what was once ACORN New York will only make it stronger. They already have sway over numerous councilmen in New York City Hall and several legislators at the state level. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who took Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, is gaga for the WFP and actively sought out their endorsement. Andrew Cuomo, attorney general of New York and White House favorite for governor, has repeatedly refused to investigate the WFP. And of course there's Patrick Gaspard, former SEIU lawyer, friend of Bertha Lewis', and strong WFP ally. Gaspard is the White House's elusive political director and wields substantial power over New York politics.

Again, ACORN isn't collapsing -- far from it. It's reorganizing, consolidating, and merging with other radical groups. Ultimately, the community organizer scene may become stronger in New York because of it.

ACORN: We're not dead yet!

Yesterday we reported on three ACORN chapters across the country that were reorganizing under other names. Today, two more have sprouted up.

Unsurprisingly, ACORN Chicago isn't going anywhere. The state chapter is now the Affordable Housing Centers of America. AHCA is located in the same office as ACORN Chicago and employs many of the same people. As we noted yesterday, the entire ACORN Housing apparatus seems to have reorganized under AHCA. Barack Obama used to work for ACORN Chicago during his community organizing days.

ACORN Missouri is now Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment. MORE doesn't have a website yet, but its Facebook page has been very active lately. (One posted item trumpets news of a new female condom.) MORE's founder, Jeff Ordower, is a former activist with ACORN Missouri.

Other regional ACORN front groups include New York Communities for Change, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New England United for Justice. It just goes to show that ACORN is restructuring rather than vanishing.

ACORN isn't really shutting down

Many conservatives have been trying to summon some hope after the health care reform debate by celebrating ACORN's demise. As of this morning, ACORN as a national organization is officially closing its doors.

The once mighty community activist group ACORN announced Monday it is folding amid falling revenues – six months after video footage emerged showing some of its workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute.

"It's really declining revenue in the face of a series of attacks from partisan operatives and right-wing activists that have taken away our ability to raise the resources we need," ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan said.

ACORN has taken a substantial hit from allegations of voter fraud and the sting videos that showed employees giving advice to a fake pimp and prostitute. But the largest community organization in the world isn't going away that easily, especially with powerful allies in the White House like Patrick Gaspard. ACORN is restructuring. Its members will probably lay low for a while, but its networks of activists will be back under different names. Some of them already are.

ACORN International is now Community Organizations International.

ACORN Housing is now Affordable Housing Centers of America. AHCA seems destined to continue advocating for the same disastrous housing policies as ACORN. Already on their nascent website, there's an entire section devoted to the Community Reinvestment Act, which many blame for the housing market collapse. According to AHCA, "Rather than being cut back, the CRA needs to be expanded to all financial services companies and modernized for the 21st Century." Not surprisingly, AHCA is based in Chicago.

ACORN New York is now New York Communities for Change.

ACORN California is now the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

ACORN Massachusetts is now New England United for Justice. NEUJ doesn't have a website yet, but they are reportedly headed up by Maud Hurd, ACORN's former national president who has credited herself with "saving the CRA."

As ACORN whistleblower Marcel Reid told journalist Matthew Vadum, "The folding of ACORN isn’t happening because it’s simply going to restructure. In the meantime they’ll give all of these new community organizations in the states an opportunity to flourish without ACORN’s legal baggage.” The new ACORN will also benefit heavily from its strong allies in the Working Families Party and the SEIU, who remain active and powerful.

Obama has thus far remained silent on ACORN's shuttering. The president is a former ACORN community organizer himself and his political aide Patrick Gaspard has long ties to the organization. Obama even tepidly supported ACORN's congressional defunding, although that decision was later ruled unconstitutional by a sympathetic New York judge. Most likely the president understands that ACORN is just playing a game of whack-a-mole: hit one organization and another will pop up somewhere else.

Obama pays back housing bubble creators

Barack Obama has a long history of rewarding failure. One of the most spectacular failures in our nation's history was the collapse of the housing market that triggered the current recession. As Pajamas Media reports, one of the architects of that recession is a close Obama ally: Andrew Cuomo.

But catching up with Cuomo is his relationship with the mortgage meltdown that nearly destroyed the American economy. Appointed by Bill Clinton as secretary of the U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Andrew Cuomo has been called “the father of the subprime crisis” for the policies he orchestrated.

It was Cuomo’s directives that mandated HUD to vastly increase the amount of risky home loans bought by quasi-governmental housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now, Cuomo may be haunted by his tenure as HUD secretary, where he planted the seeds for the nation’s housing collapse.

Though America’s financial fortunes suffered after Cuomo’s time at HUD, his own personal fortune soared. The bulk of this financial “windfall” came courtesy of Andrew Farkas, the billionaire real estate developer who helped Cuomo amass his wealth as a business partner and campaign fundraiser. Farkas — now Cuomo’s financial chairman as he circles the governorship — has personally given Cuomo at least $1.8 million in cash.

As New Yorkers are beginning to discover, Andrew Cuomo personifies the long reach of many at the top of the Democratic Party who built their fortunes on the mortgage bubble and the sub-prime collapse, but have yet to be tarred and feathered as architects of the nation’s worst housing crisis.

It was Cuomo's HUD that, in 1996, issued a directive that 42% of loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be to individuals with a lower income than the median in their area. This began pumping air into the housing bubble and it never stopped. As PJM points out, Cuomo also appointed another Obama friend, Rahm Emanuel, to the board of directors at Freddie Mac. Emanuel reportedly earned at least $320,000 during his disastrous tenure.

Cuomo is currently running for governor of New York and is the White House's undisputed choice for the position. Obama is such a fan of Cuomo that key Democrats have gone to great lengths to kneecap the current governor, David Paterson, in order to clear Cuomo's path.

It's not just Cuomo and Rahm. Shaun Donovan, the current Secretary of HUD, was a deputy assistant secretary at HUD under Clinton where he helped carry out Cuomo's catastrophic policies. Donovan later moved on to head up the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development during the Bush Administration. There he worked with Mayor Michael Bloomberg to open up an unprecedented amount of new cheap housing to low-income families -- the same housing being offered with HUD's subprime mortgages.

In New York, Donovan was closely tied to perhaps the biggest villain of the housing crisis: ACORN. From the New York Times:

A complex of 125 apartments had fallen into such disrepair that Bush administration housing officials had foreclosed on the building and transferred it to a group they and Mr. Donovan had come to trust: the New York Acorn Housing Company.

“These renovations will transform this once-troubled property into a remarkable asset,” Mr. Donovan declared in a city news release trumpeting the apartments’ “rescue” by Acorn and its development partners.

Donovan has since disavowed his connections with ACORN, but his close work with them in the Bronx speaks volumes. Since its foundation, ACORN has spent its time shaking down mortgage companies and enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. The group, since revealed to be a criminal organization, enacted a spate of activism that pushed the CRA farther and farther down the mortgage industry's throat. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were particularly compliant. In 2001, Fannie Mae announced it had rushed to make over $10 billion in CRA loans, but that was just the beginning. The government mortgage lender wanted $500 billion in CRA loans by 2010, more than one-third of the total loans it made. Fannie Mae collapsed under the weight of those junk loans two years before its deadline.

And of course, Barack Obama himself fought with ACORN as a community activist in Chicago for fair housing. One of his closest political advisors, Valerie Jarrett, was a Chicago slumlord.

Nina Gershon, another slippery ACORN ally

Yesterday, Brooklyn federal judge Nina Gershon delivered a ruling that must have ACORN members dancing in the streets.

In a written ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon made permanent her conclusion last year that the cutoff of funding was unconstitutional. She ordered all federal agencies to put the word out about it.

The Brooklyn judge said ACORN was punished by Congress without the enactment of administrative processes to decide if money had been handled inappropriately. She said the harm to ACORN's reputation continues because the government never rescinded its advice to withhold funding after it was distributed to "hundreds, if not thousands, of recipients."

Despite the fact that Congress has the power of the purse under the Constitution, Gershon ruled that ACORN was entitled to taxpayer money. The corrupt community organizer group has received more than $53 million in federal funds since 1994.

Gershon, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, is leftward even of Barack Obama on the ACORN issue. After Gershon's initial ruling in December, the Obama Administration stepped in and asked her to reconsider, which she refused in a statement yesterday. Gershon has a history of meddling with taxpayer money in this way. In 1999, she ruled that New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani couldn't cut funding to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The museum had introduced an exhibit displaying a picture of the Virgin Mary covered with pictures of vaginas and smeared with elephant dung.

Gershon was born in Chicago and later moved to New York City to practice law, rising to the position of federal judge in Brooklyn. ACORN was encouraged to sue the government by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from Brooklyn. Nadler is an enthusiastic ACORN supporter and has run with the blessing of the Working Families Party, ACORN's kissing cousin.

Good news: ACORN cleared in New York by ACORN-supported district attorney

Well that was fast. After only four months, Brooklyn's DA has declared ACORN to be squeaky clean.

"Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.

While the video by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.

'They edited the tape to meet their agenda,' said the source."

You know Brooklyn's crack DA really did a bang-up job when his office is claiming O'Keefe and Giles edited their tapes. It took us about fifteen seconds to find the full audio and transcript on Andrew Breitbart's web site BigGovernment.com. Apparently Brooklyn's finest haven't figured out how to plug in a modem yet.

There's definitely something fishy going on here. Brooklyn's DA Charles J. Hynes was endorsed for reelection by the Working Families Party, ACORN's kissing cousin in the Big Apple. The WFP wields substantial power and isn't afraid to lean on politicians for favors, as we've seen repeatedly with Kirsten Gillibrand and Patrick Gaspard. Hynes is a Democrat who believes, among other things, that drug users should be rehabilitated rather than imprisoned. Just the kind of man that the WFP is looking for.

This is the second time ACORN has gotten off the hook thanks to a sham investigation. The last one was courtesy of ACORN ally and former Massachusetts attorney general Scott Harshbarger.

On the trail of the Glue Man in New York

Patrick Gaspard, aka the Glue Man and the president's ACORN-linked political director, just won another battle in New York. Harold Ford, the very bright moderate Democrat who was considering challenging White House fembot Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary, has dropped out.

"Many in the Democratic establishment backing Gillibrand, including the White House and New York Sen. Charles Schumer, sought to discourage Ford from running. In Ford's op-ed, he complained of the party's 'campaign to bully me out of the race,' claiming it showed Democrats are nervous.

Gillibrand, who was appointed to her seat last year when Hillary Rodham Clinton became U.S. secretary of state, ignored Ford when he first declared he was testing the waters. But after Ford began regularly challenging her, the race that was not yet a race quickly turned ugly.

Ford called Gillibrand various names, including a hypocrite, a liar, an unelected senator and a parakeet who takes positions based on whatever party leaders tell her to do."

Ford is right of course. Gillibrand is a lawyer who worked for tobacco companies who suddenly transformed into a strident leftist in the Senate at the behest of Obama.

The Glue Man's sticky fingerprints are all over this one. As a senator, Gillibrand has courted many of Gaspard's old community organizer allies, including the radical Working Families Party. She was also one of a small handful of votes against cutting off congressional funding to ACORN. Ford, who is pro-life and supports the Iraq war, wouldn't be nearly as compliant with Gaspard and his cronies. The final blow to Ford likely came last week when White House campaign czar David Plouffe was asked about the primary challenge. Plouffe refused to comment on Ford but praised Gillibrand profusely. Point taken. No doubt Ford got a couple calls from Gaspard himself, often called the "air traffic controller" of New York politics.

Meanwhile Gov. David Paterson, another politician who crossed the Working Families Party, continues to watch his career crash and burn thanks to more mysterious leaks. Wonder where those could have possibly come from.

Gillibrand calls in a favor from Obama

ObamaWatchNews has been carefully following Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic senator from New York. As we've reported, she's transformed from a moderate Democrat to a progressive liberal in the mold of Obama. Gillibrand recently spoke on a panel with Van Jones, was one of a few votes against defunding ACORN, and sought out the endorsement of New York City's radical ACORN affiliate the Working Families Party. She's worked out a pretty sweet deal for herself. She defends the interests of the radical left to the hilt, and the radical left supports her with money and endorsements. This includes the ultimate radical ACORN leftist, Barack Obama.

Gillibrand is facing a potential primary threat from moderate Democrat Harold Ford this year. Enter Obama's political hack David Plouffe.

"Asked if there is a danger of a primary, especially with Ford, David Plouffe told NY1's Josh Robin, 'Well, we'll see. He'll let us know what he's gonna do. What we need to focus on is Sen. Gillibrand's, I think, record of accomplishment and her vision.'

Reverting back to elements of her political pedigree that were cited last year in why Paterson chose her, Plouffe added, 'I also happen to think she's a very, very strong candidate. She's run, and won, in a very very tough part of New York for Democrats.'

'I think she'd be a terrific candidate for us in the fall. So for two reasons. I think she is the best person to represent New York and help us build the strong economy we need for the future, and secondly, I think she'll be our strongest candidate.'"

Presidents usually stand above primary elections. But with an ACORN ally and Van Jones defender on the line, it looks like Obama has made his first political endorsement for 2010.

Just a reminder that Obama loves ACORN

Obama's wish is granted: Illinois Senate heir is long-time crony

Remember the Blagojevich scandal? Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, and Mr. Blago himself were all caught on tape plotting to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. As far as we know, Blagojevich wanted money while Jarrett, Rahm, and Obama wanted something else: a loyal crony to keep the seat warm in Obama's absence.

It looks like they'll get their wish. The Democratic nominee to run for the seat in 2010 is an old Democratic pol entangled in the slimy web of crooks and cronies that lurk in Barack Obama's Chicago.

His name is Alexi Giannoulias. So far, he's received the most flack for his boneheaded management of Bright Start, a state-run Illinois program that helps parents invest for their kids' college bills. The program ultimately lost $85 million. But as with any Obama Chicagoan, there's always cronyism in addition to incompetence. Giannoulias is a close friend of Obama's. The two of them both broke into major league Illinois politics in 2006, Giannoulias as the state treasurer and Obama as a senator. They were friends and played basketball together.

Giannoulias was Blago's treasurer, but the connections between Giannoulias and Bond villain Blagojevich run deep thanks to a familiar face: felonious Chicago developer Tony Rezko. At one point, Rezko's company, Rezmar Corp., needed financing to build a new 24-story condo building. The money was provided by Broadway Bank, which is owned by Giannoulias' family. Another Giannoulias, Alexi's brother Dimitri, was appointed to a state board position by Blago that ultimately lasted three years, from 2005 to 2008. Tony Rezko wanted Dimitri's star to rise even higher, pressing Blago to appoint him to the Illinois Finance Authority board. Meanwhile, Rezko was meeting frequently with Obama and getting him plum deals on his new homes.

Hell, in some cases Giannoulias associated with people even Obama wouldn't touch. He personally approved $12 million in loans from Broadway Bank to Michael Giorango, a notorious Chicago mobster.

Broadway Bank has become a huge liability for Giannoulias. Its fortunes plunged after the real estate bubble collapsed to the point that the FDIC ordered the Giannoulias family to pump $19 million in capital into Broadway. Why? The bank was straggling under "mounting delinquent loans." In other words, Broadway made loans to poor people who couldn't pay them back -- just as Chicago community organizers like Obama and the fine folks at ACORN were demanding.

It's no wonder ACORN's kissing cousin, the SEIU, enthusiastically endorsed Giannoulias. Giannoulias is following the footsteps of Blago, whose entire political career was bankrolled by the SEIU. The mega-union has even been named in Blagojevich's indictment...good company for Chicago slimeballs like Giannoulias and professed SEIU ally Barack Obama.

The best way to stop this Chicago machine is to elect the GOP challenger, Mark Kirk, to Obama's former Senate seat. Not only would it stop the advance of another corrupt crony, but imagine the look on Barack Obama's face if his old job goes to a Republican!

Ex-ACORN criminal coming to a university near you!

Brown University has long benefited from Barack Obama. He gave a key campaign speech there back in 2006. Brown's researchers received more than $31 million under the stimulus. And Barack Obama's half-brother, Craig Robinson, coaches basketball at Brown.

Radical leftist Obama worship is the norm at the Ivy League Brown. Now the university has announced that they're inviting Wade Rathke, co-founder of the Obama-associated criminal organization ACORN, to give a speech. Rathke is a die-hard left-wing nutcase who was a member of Students for a Democratic Society during college, the radical group that produced the violent Weathermen terrorists. He was ultimately too corrupt even for the slimy community organizers at ACORN and stepped down after it was revealed he helped his brother cover up $5 million he'd embezzled.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has strong ties to both Brown and Obama, was one of the few senators to vote against cutting off taxpayer funds to ACORN.

Things you won't hear during Obama's State of the Union tonight

Leave it to the Irish.

Paddy Power, an Irish on-line betting service, is offering odds on the length of Obama's speech, the color of his tie, and which political cliche he will utter first.

The favored cliche, at odds of 4-to-1, is "heath care reform." The longshot, 500-to-1, is "always bet on black." (Oddly, the phrase "I won't seek re-election" is a mere 250-to-1.)

In the same spirit as the good people at Paddy Power, here are some of the biggest longshots for tonight's address.

"I admit that my attempt at health care reform was a complete debacle and I take full responsibility."

"I believe the people at ACORN acted stupidly."

"Corruption and radicalism in our government cannot be tolerated. I'll be immediately firing Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, John Holdren, Cass Sunstein, Hillary Clinton, Ray LaHood, Lisa Jackson, Carol Browner, Kevin Jennings, Adolfo Carrion Jr., Ron Bloom, Patrick Gaspard, Ezekiel Emanuel, Mark Lloyd, Melanne Verveer, Farah Pandith, and Todd Stern."

"I believe special interest money and influence in Washington is a problem. And let me make it clear: That includes unions. Unions are part of the problem."

"This is in no way President Bush's fault."

"I have read and studied the Founding Fathers closely. I understand that our government is always to be a limited one. I know that our country was conceived in Lockean liberalism, which guarantees every man and woman personal liberty. I trust the American people enough to let them make their own decisions and not to intrude on them with government."

"So how about that special election up in Massachusetts last week, huh?"

"Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith. Thank you very much. God bless you, and God bless America."

The last line is from Ronald Reagan's 1984 State of the Union address. Don't hold your breath waiting for that one.

Welcome to Barack Obama's latest retread: Yet another sinister, liberal, ACORN-defending old crony.

The man who took an unheard of senator and catapulted him into the Oval Office has himself been summonsed to the White House. After Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts last week, the powerful and dangerous David Plouffe, who managed Obama's presidential campaign from soup to nuts (at the exclusion of traditional Democrat groups) was just called to Washington to help Obama and the Dems prepare for the upcoming midterm elections.

Plouffe cut his teeth campaigning for Democrats, including New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli who dropped out of his next campaign because he was found to have accepted illegal gifts, making him too corrupt even for the Senate.

Plouffe will come to Washington not just with dirty hands, but also with a powerful weapon: a list of 13 million email addresses of the grassroots followers of Obama's 2008 campaign. Ominously, after Obama moved into the White House, Plouffe kept the list. It will no doubt return to Washington with him -- and doubtless will be called into action as Plouffe mails out his syrupy exhortations to come to the aid of the party. Obama may be unpopular right now thanks to his radical policies, but a granular database of 13 million people will be a galvanizing tool for even the most lacklustre campaign. And Plouffe has pulled it off before. The Obama campaign started in one room and succeeded because Plouffe never, ever took his eye off the prize.

Who the hell is Plouffe?

Plouffe is a lot like White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard. He's very shy and avoids press interviews whenever possible, despite the fact that he'll be joining the self-proclaimed "most transparent administration in American history". He doesn't brag or flaunt his intelligence. But he's powerful, ruthless and should never be underestimated. "Elections are nothing about doing well," he said. "You win or lose, and I love to win, and it feels absolutely terrible when you lose." Barack Obama has said of Plouffe, "There is nobody I trust more."

Since he bailed on college in the final semester, Plouffe has been entangled in the same mess of radical community organizing groups as the other cronies, crooks and creeps in the Obama White House. The political consulting firm where he works, AKPD Message and Media (founded by David Axelrod), has worked with the Working Families Party, ACORN's political front in New York City. Plouffe even defended ACORN directly, calling the outrage over the group's voter fraud crimes a "smokescreen." AKPD has also advised left-wing unions like the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. And to add insult to injury, their clients include those bloodsucking liberal fans at the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.

A loss for Martha Coakley is a loss for Barack Obama

Barack Obama's Democratic Party is going into full swing, ready to spin today's likely Republican victory in Massachusetts. All the blame will be heaped upon Martha Coakley, the uninspiring Democrat Senate contender there, in order to deflect responsibility from Barack Obama. But here's the truth: A loss for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts is a loss for Barack Obama and his entire agenda.

-- Obama campaigned for Coakley. After polls showed Scott Brown likely winning the election, Obama started stumping hard for Coakley. First he recorded an online video encouraging supporters to "put on your walking shoes" and campaign for Coakley. Then he headed up to Boston yesterday to give a speech urging her election. The two of them are joined at the hip.

-- The race has become nationalized. The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are working on behalf of Coakley. Volunteers at the DNC in Washington, DC are making phone calls up to Massachusetts. Obama pal and DNC strategist Michael Meehan is in Massachusetts campaigning for Coakley (and assaulting reporters in his spare time). The national press is abuzz over the race.

-- Obama thugs from across America are in Massachusetts trying desperately to get Coakley elected. Union members are being paid to stand outside with Coakley signs. The SEIU alone is spending $700,000 on ads demeaning Brown. Meanwhile, Massachusetts is worried about ACORN, with a quarter of voters saying they believe the group could steal the election for Coakley.

-- Scott Brown is specifically campaigning against Obama. Brown has made his promise to be the 41st vote holding up Obama's health care bill the centerpiece of his campaign. He has condemned excessive spending and repeatedly said that Washington needs a change.

This election isn't an anomaly. It's a referendum on Obama's radical policies.

ACORN's designated whitewasher

An internal investigation of ACORN, the corrupt community organization previously represented by Barack Obama when he was an attorney, was concluded recently and found that not a single ACORN employee had broken the law. The probe, conducted of the entire ACORN organization, was somehow completed in a little over two months. Its outcome is patently absurd coming from an organization under investigation for voter fraud in 14 states, and whose former president helped his brother embezzle $5 million its coffers. It was a whitewash job carried out by Scott Harshbarger, the former Massachusetts attorney general and avowed leftist who headed up the "investigation."

Appointing Harshbarger to helm the ACORN investigation represents a total conflict of interest. Harshbarger has never been directly involved with ACORN, but as a radical liberal, he has drifted in and out of the organization's orbit. He served as president of Common Cause, a left-wing interest group worried about the influences of corporate money on government. He was instrumental in helping push through the campaign finance reform bill in 2002, which unconstitutionally limited everything from when candidates could air television commercials to how much money voters could donate to candidates. Common Cause is funded by George Soros, the billionaire socialist philanthropist. Unlike Obama, Soros isn't foolish enough to directly associate with ACORN. But his fingerprints are nevertheless all over their operations.

In 2004, Harshbarger spoke at a forum hosted by a liberal group called the Campaign Institute. Also scheduled to speak was Dan Cantor, the Executive Director of the Working Families Party, which is essentially a front group for ACORN. Five years later, as the media began slowly waking up to ACORN's corruption, a dozen or so left-wing groups attended a strategy session in Washington, DC to discuss how to proceed in light of ACORN's woes. Among the organizations there was Common Cause. ACORN president Bertha Lewis was the keynote speaker and the Soros-funded Center for American Progress hosted the event.

Given all these connections, it is improbable that Harshbarger's and ACORN's paths never crossed.

Additionally, Harshbarger is a diehard leftist. As Attorney General of Massachusetts, he banned Christmas decorations from his office. He established the most draconian gun laws in the United States, including mandated trigger locks for every handgun, despite the freedom of arms established in the Second Amendment. The radical ACORN is his natural ideological ally.

He also presided over one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in Massachusetts since the Salem Witch Trials. As a District Attorney, he crusaded against the Amirault family, which owned a daycare center in Malden, Mass., and had been accused of child sex abuse. Harshbarger paraded preschool children into the courtroom, accusing the Amiraults of bizarre behavior, including anally raping children with butcher knives, forcing their charges to drink urine, operating a child torture room presided over by an evil clown, and the murder of sixteen youngsters. Despite the absurdity of the charges, Gerald Amirault, his mother Violet, and his sister Cheryl were all convicted and sentenced to prison in 1986. Violet and Cheryl served nine years before their convictions were overturned; Gerald was released after 18 years. The Wall Street Journal wrote of the case subsequently, "Along the way, the law was stood on its head. The rules of evidence were changed to accommodate the prosecution; the burden of proof was put on the accused. Four- and five-year-olds were coached to say what adults wanted to hear. All this was done in the name of virtue, with the result being the kind of catastrophic miscarriage of justice we saw in Mr. Amirault's case."

Harshbarger, the driving force behind that miscarriage of justice, is the man ACORN considered impartial enough to conduct their internal investigation. Is it any wonder they were acquitted of any illegal wrongdoing? And with Barack Obama's attorney general Eric Holder refusing to open an investigation, ACORN may very well get away with it. It helps to have the right friends.

New White House counsel: Criticizing ACORN is illegal

After ordering former White House counsel Greg Craig to take legal actions to close Guantanamo Bay and then firing him for taking legal actions to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama Administration named Robert Bauer his replacement. Obama's new lawyer is known as a power player and a defender of ACORN. Bauer sent a letter to the Justice Department during the 2008 presidential campaign after John McCain began criticizing ACORN. The letter demanded an investigation into whether the McCain campaign had broken the law by attacking ACORN. The Bush administration Justice Department never took any action on it.

“I request Special Prosecutor Dannehy’s inquiry include a review of any involvement by Justice Department and White House officials in supporting the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee’s systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud,” Bauer's letter said.

“It is highly likely that the very sort of politically motivated conduct identified in the department’s investigation to date, necessitating the appointment of a special prosecutor, is repeating itself, and for the same reason: unwarranted and politically motivated intervention in the upcoming election,” it went on.

Obama paid ACORN

Meanwhile, ACORN was under investigation for voter fraud in 14 states by the FBI. Dozens of employees had been caught filling out ballots with fake names and addresses. In Philadelphia alone, 8,000 questionable ballots were submitted. Interestingly, the "nonpartisan" group received $800,000 from Barack Obama's presidential campaign through one of its subsidiaries, Citizens Services Inc., to register voters.

Bauer is married to former White House communications director Anita Dunn who launched the administration's war on Fox News and called Mao Tse-Tung one of her "favorite political philosophers.

Thanks to Obama, we now have a pro-ACORN attorney general in Eric Holder, who has refused to investigate the group, and a pro-ACORN White House counsel in Robert Bauer. The White House seems ready to defend ACORN against congressional Republicans.

As an ACORN apologist, Bauer joins Barack Obama, who legally represented the group during a 1995 lawsuit in Illinois.

Shocking Development: Another ACORN Employee Charged with Embezzlement

Well this is a real surprise.

"A former ACORN organizer and city Education Department worker scammed Verizon out of a half million dollars in goodies, including Mets and Yankees tickets, investigators charged Tuesday.

Donnett Davis allegedly signed up for the phone company's rewards program back in 2004, using 9,000 Education Department phone numbers, Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon found.

Davis pocketed gifts worth up to $10,000 on a single day and received scores of deliveries - some so heavy a neighbor who signed for several couldn't carry them, investigators reported.

As a New York ACORN organizer, Davis must be close to both ACORN president Bertha Lewis and White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard. (The White House denies that Gaspard was ever employed by ACORN, but he worked with Bertha Lewis and for ACORN's closest organizational cousins, the SEIU and the Working Families Party. His brother, Michael, works for the The Advance Group, a lobby group that lists ACORN as a client.) As an ACORN lawbreaker, Davis joins the likes of former ACORN president Wade Rathke, who helped his brother Dale cover up close to $1 million in embezzled money, and countless ACORN organizers who have committed voter fraud.

Ironically, the now discredited Davis once played a positive role in a New York community incident. She joined with other ACORN employees to fire Joseph Parker, the president of the ACORN High School for Social Justice in Brooklyn (yes, ACORN has a high school). The stated goal of the school was to "develop social awareness in students so that they become future leaders who will make a positive difference in our communities" -- in other words, train them to become community organizers. Academically, the school was failing miserably and received an "F" grade on its city report card. ACORN blamed this on Parker who was deemed to be incompetent and organizers like Davis pushed him aside."

Did ACORN Just Steal Another Election?

That’s what Doug Hoffman, Conservative Party contender of New York’s 23rd District, is claiming. Hoffman, who may still edge out Democratic challenger Bill Owens, even though Owens has already been sworn in, put up an open letter on his website asking for money and alleging he was the victim of yet more ACORN corruption.

As evidence surfaces, we find out that reported results from election night were far from accurate. ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway the results to Obamacare supporter Bill Owens...

That is why I am writing you today. Recent developments leave me to wonder who is scheming behind closed doors, twisting arms and stealing elections from the voters of NY-23.

I'm sure you are as dismayed as I am to learn of the mischief that took place in Oswego and neighboring counties. We know this would not be the first time for the ACORN faithful to tamper with democracy.

Hoffman claimed that ACORN, which has been besieged by voter fraud investigations, altered the vote counts on election night. It's thought that they filled ballots with falsified names and addresses. Once these sham ballots were weeded out, Hoffman came within striking distance of Owens -- thanks to the uncounted absentee votes. Hoffman has provided no evidence to support his allegations and no other sources have reported ACORN's presence in the 23rd District.

So did ACORN throw the election to Bill Owens? The shadowy presence of one figure suggests they might: White House Political Director, Patrick Gaspard.

Gaspard is intimately familiar with New York politics, having spent much of his career as an activist with the radical Working Families Party (and its spin-offs) in the Big Apple. Gaspard’s political experience comes not from whipping senators in line in Washington, DC, but from coordinating left-wing community organizer groups like ACORN and the SEIU. He earned the nickname “Glue Man” for his ability to hold these organizatons together to fight for a common cause.

Gaspard has worked for the SEIU and the Working Families Party, both of which were kissing cousins with ACORN, employing the same tactics and often the same personnel. He is also close to ACORN president Bertha Lewis. In 2001, the two wrote a joint letter to The Nation magazine defending the Working Families Party. When Bertha Lewis’ Rolodex was somehow leaked to conservative blogger Erick Erickson, it was reported that one of her most detailed contacts was Gaspard.

The White House (and ACORN itself) has hotly denied that Gaspard worked for ACORN. But regardless of whether the group wrote his paycheck, he traveled in the same circles of radical community organizers. (Interestingly, Michael Gaspard, Patrick's brother, works for ACORN's lobbyist, The Advance Group of New York.)

Which brings us to NY-23. According to an administration official, Gaspard was the “air traffic controller” for that district’s election. He convinced the so-called Republican, Dede Scozzafava, to endorse Owens, a move many analysts believe sank Hoffman’s ship. Although this is farther upstate than Gaspard's usual bailiwick, the Obama administration has already used Gaspard as their go-to guy when it comes to New York politics. He has lived most his life in the Bronx and is closely involved with grassroots leftist organizations there. When Obama needed someone to signal to New York Governor, David Paterson, that the White House wanted someone else on the Democrat ticket in 2010, Gaspard stepped in again.

If Gaspard was the air traffic controller in NY-23, was he guiding in ACORN’s plane as well? He reportedly left no stone unturned in "turning" Scozzafava, including setting up a personal phone call from Bill Clinton to get her to endorse the Dem in preference to a Republican. Did he also co-ordinate with ACORN?

We can’t be sure for now, but time will surely tell.