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.”
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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.
Patrick Gaspard, Obama's behind-the-scenes clean up man in New York, warned a wavering Blue Dog Democrat to get in line during the health care debate.
Rep. Mike McMahon defied a high-level arm-twisting campaign to vote no on health care, leaving some White House aides furious with the Staten Island rookie.
The Daily News learned that President Obama's political director, Patrick Gaspard, dispatched a prominent New York donor last week to warn McMahon his campaign contributions would dry up if he sided with Republicans.
"The message was that a 'no' vote could cause you a problem in the fall, but the other side of it was we can help you raise money," said a knowledgeable source. The Tammany-style squeeze play was delivered at a Democratic Club lunch in Washington last Friday by Alfred E. Smith 4th, great-grandson of the former New York governor and 1928 Democratic presidential candidate.
McMahon later voted no, the only congressman from the New York delegation to do so. It was a rare loss for Gaspard who usually gets his way in the Empire State -- his fingerprints have been on everything from Kirsten Gillibrand's success to David Paterson's implosion. But in defying Gaspard, McMahon may have saved his political career. His Staten Island district is being targeted by Republicans this year.
The unions were also outraged at McMahon's decision. One unidentified union boss growled, "He's going to lose in November, and I'm going to enjoy helping make it happen."
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 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 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.
Last week, Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak claimed that the White House had offered him a top position in the government if he would drop out of his Senate race. Sestak is locked in a brutal primary against White House ally Arlen Specter, who Obama coaxed over from the Republican Party. Now two members of Congress have expressed concern that the White House may have committed a crime.
[Senator Arlen] Specter said [on MSNBC], “There is a specific federal statute, which makes it a bribe to make an offer for a public office. When I was district attorney, if somebody came and told me that, I would say, well, name names. Name dates. Name places. That’s a very serious charge. It’s a big black smear without specification. I’m telling you there is a federal crime, punishable by jail. Anybody who wants to say that ought to back it up.
Congressman Sestak has gotten a lot of political mileage out of that. It’s really an attack on the administration.”
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Meanwhile, Rep. [Darrell] Issa wrote a letter on Wednesday to White House Counsel Robert Bauer citing U.S. Code 18, Sections 211, 595, and 600 regarding the bribery of a public official. Section 595 says someone who “uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate of the District of Columbia or Resident Commissioner, shall be fined under the title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
Whoever made this bribe, likely someone high up in the administration, could go to prison for a year if convicted. The guilty party was likely one of the president's political advisors. Patrick Gaspard seems too clever and elusive to stick his neck out like this. Rahm Emanuel is the main suspect, but Valerie Jarrett and David Plouffe are also possibilities. It's also improbable that the briber was acting without the express permission of Obama, although the president will undoubtedly claim ignorance and let someone else take the fall.
Should we believe Sestak? The only denial of his claims by the administration thus far have been from a single anonymous official. Robert Gibbs has ducked the question three times. If no one is willing to attach their name to this, it's hard to believe they have nothing to hide. It's also hard to believe Sestak, a former Navy admiral, would want to make enemies at the White House before he even entered the Senate.
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.
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.
There's something strange going on in New York. Governor David Paterson announced that he won't be running for reelection today, besieged by scandals. This isn't bad news. Paterson was a staunch left-winger and a terrible governor. But celebrations aside, there may be something more twisted going on here, and it involves a head honcho at the White House.
Patrick Gaspard, Obama's ACORN-linked political director, is no fan of Paterson's. Last year Gaspard tried to convince Paterson not to run for reelection, supposedly because the governor was so unpopular. Paterson refused and hit back hard, telling the White House to stay out of the race. That wasn't going to happen -- Gaspard has deep roots in New York. He used to work for the SEIU, as well as the Working Families Party, a political arm of ACORN based in the Big Apple. During the contentious special election in New York's 23rd District last year, Gaspard was described as the "air traffic controller," maneuvering to make sure that Democrat Bill Owens won the race. Gaspard is no stranger to these assignments. He has been nicknamed the Glue Man for his ability to hold disparate leftist crackpots together.
Ever since Paterson refused Gaspard, he's faced one scandal after another. The most recent involves a New York Times report alleging that he covered up the abuse of a woman on his staff. Barely two weeks ago, Paterson was also under attack over rumors that he shacked up with women and did drugs in the governor's mansion. Paterson adamantly denied the rumors to the Associated Press.
"Paterson attributed the rumors to news outlets and blogs other than the Times. He said that three sources contacted reporters at the start of Sunday's Super Bowl to leak word that he was about to resign, which he said he never contemplated.
'It seems to be somewhat orchestrated,' Paterson said Tuesday of the rumors, on whose source he has declined to publicly speculate.
Could that orchestrated attack have come from the air traffic controller, the sinister Glue Man himself? All politicians have skeletons in their closets. But Paterson is the only one who watched all his dirty laundry aired in the New York press over the course of two weeks. It's just too much to be a coincidence.
But why is Paterson attacked? He may be unpopular, but he's still a slimy leftist like all of Obama's friends. The answer may lie in this article from the New York Daily News.
"As Gov. Paterson attempts a political comeback, there's one key constituency he so far isn't wooing: the Working Families Party.
Paterson hasn't met with the lefty, labor-backed party's leaders since he replaced Gov. Eliot Spitzer last year, a WFP source confirmed."
It looks like Gaspard is still using his influence on New York politics to play political puppeteer for the Working Families Party. Andrew Cuomo, the attorney general supported by the White House to replace Paterson, has refused to investigate the WFP's ethical problems. Kirsten Gillibrand, who replaced Hillary Clinton as New York's junior senator, is constantly sucking up to the WFP. One WFP hack even whined, "Kirsten Gillibrand is being more solicitous of us than the governor is."
Spurning WFP is unacceptable to the power-hungry Gaspard, who wants personal control over every political race in the Empire State. The White House has supported Cuomo and Gillibrand adamantly, but not Paterson. Did it orchestrate this vicious campaign against Paterson to destroy his political career?
While most people are worrying about finding a job or paying their taxes in April, Obama is worried about getting reelected. Two years out, the president is already planning his 2012 campaign strategy. The man he's put in charge is someone you've probably never heard of before.
His name is Jim Messina and he's one of the president's most trusted cronies. He's a cross between Rahm Emanuel and Patrick Gaspard. Like Emanuel, Messina is a profane, hard-hitting politico who tolerates no disloyalty or incompetence. He and Rahm are good friends. But like Gaspard, Messina keeps an extremely low profile. He rarely does press interviews and is never seen giving his opinion on cable news. He's known around the White House as one of Barack Obama's "fixers".
One of his sneakiest attempted "fixes" was for Obama's health care reform. Last April, Messina and his former boss Sen. Max Baucus convened a meeting with PhRMA, the lobbying arm of pharmaceutical companies. The doors were shut so no one really knows what went on. But by the end of the gathering, Messina had worked out a deal in which PhRMA would spend $24 million on advertising campaigns in support of reform.
But despite his behind-the-scenes work, Messina goes for the jugulars of his political opponents. In 2005, he was responsible for the Democratic campaign against President Bush's proposed Social Security reform. Messina's main message was that Bush's plan would cut benefits. It was an egregious lie, but it worked and the whole initiative went up in smoke. Today, thanks to Messina, Social Security is slated to go bankrupt in 2037.
Messina will run a dirty campaign in 2012, but he won't be alone. Anita Dunn, former White House communications director and Mao Tse-Tung enthusiast, will reportedly be "intimately involved." So will political director Patrick Gaspard, and all his ACORN and SEIU friends. David Axelrod will be dispatched to Chicago to mastermind the "Reform" campaign (you can't do Change when you're the sitting President) and Valerie Jarrett will head up Special Ops at the White House.
There's something very sinister going on with the arrest of James O'Keefe. Barack Obama's government seems to have served up a galling miscarriage of justice.
O'Keefe is the journalist who sneaked a hidden camera into ACORN offices while posing as a pimp. Along with partner Hannah Giles, who was dressed as a prostitute, he tried to obtain tax benefits for his supposed prostitution agency. In almost all of the videos, the fine folks at ACORN were more than willing to help the pair break the law. O'Keefe was later arrested in what seemed to be another sting gone horribly wrong in which he and three others, disguised as telephone repairmen, tried to gain access to Sen. Mary Landreiu's office.
O'Keefe's latest actions were dumb and possibly criminal...but nothing compared to the way Obama's government has treated the case. Here's what we know so far.
-- After his arrest, O'Keefe sat in prison for 28 hours without access to an attorney, which is against the law.
-- During that time, the FBI "accidentally leaked" an affadavit about the case to the press. This is despite the fact that FBI documents are rarely leaked like this. Investigators could never put a case together if the public was being constantly alerted to their actions.
-- Almost immediately, the press began reporting that O'Keefe was accused of trying to wiretap Landrieu's phones, even though the affadavit made no mention of wiretap charges. A few newsmen called it "Watergate Jr." Countless newspapers later had to issue corrections.
-- Shortly after the scandal broke, the head prosecutor for the case, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, suddenly recused himself for reasons unknown. Andrew Breitbart, who has sponsored much of O'Keefe's journalism in the past, accused Letten of leaking the affadavit.
-- Five days earlier, Sen. David Vitter, a Republican but an ally of Letten's, had met with Attorney General Eric Holder. Vitter had been concerned that the Justice Department would try to replace Letten. Vitter came out of the meeting saying he was satisfied that Letten would be allowed to keep his job.
Now today comes news that ACORN may be tied up in this twisted web. The criminal group has been circling a petition asking supporters to "chip-in $52 to help us keep the pressure on O’Keefe and his corporate paymasters." So ACORN is applying "pressure" in the O'Keefe case? We already know the group has a direct line to the White House through Political Director Patrick Gaspard, whose number is in Bertha Lewis' rolodex.
Meanwhile, Obama's Justice Department looms in the background, which has tripped over itself to hurt O'Keefe, but can't be bothered to look into ACORN or voter intimidation by the Black Panthers.
So what the hell is going on here? Was Letten allowed to keep his job after he leaked the affadavit? Did ACORN lean on the White House to persecute O'Keefe? And why was O'Keefe denied an attorney for more than a day? It all looks like an outrageous miscarriage of justice so Obama and company can get revenge on O'Keefe.
Of course the entire speech was a deceptive charade but here are the worst of the whoppers.
LIE: "But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. ... We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools."
FACTS: Obama doesn't give a damn about education beyond what the teachers unions want. One of his first acts as president was to destroy the Washington, DC school voucher program. Hundreds of students given the opportunity to succeed on a voucher were thrown back into DC's failing public school system.
LIE: "Because of the steps we took [meaning the stimulus], there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed."
FACTS: Last month, the administration reported that government stimulus had created 650,000 jobs. That number apparently jumped by 1,350,000 in the month of January alone. The truth is no one has any idea how many jobs, if any, have been created by Obama's alleged stimulus. The stimulus' error-filled website, Recovery.org, showed jobs created in congressional districts that didn't exist. At one point it claimed that the purchase of a single lawn mower had created 50 jobs.
LIE: "With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections."
FACTS: This lie caused Justice Sam Alito to shake his head in disbelief. The Supreme Court ruling involved whether or not corporations could advertise on TV promoting or attacking a candidate. It had nothing to do with the early 20th-century law, which stopped corporations from donating directly to candidates. That floodgate is still shut, and Obama knows it.
LIE: "That's why -- for the first time in history -- my administration posts our White House visitors online. And that's why we've excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions."
FACTS: It's true that Obama signed an executive limiting -- not banning -- the role of lobbyists in his administration. But he keeps waiving it over and over again for people he likes. Lobbyists or former lobbyists in the Obama administration include Eric Holder, Tom Vilsack, Patrick Gaspard, William Lynn, William Corr, David Hayes, Mark Patterson, Ron Klain, Mona Sutphen, Melody Barnes, Cecilia Munoz, and Michael Strautmanis.
LIE: At the beginning of the last decade, the year 2000, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door.
FACTS: There he goes with the Bush bashing again. That $3 trillion didn't just appear out of nowhere because of "the recession." It was caused by Obama's reckless bills like the spending omnibus and the stimulus. (The stimulus alone cost close to $1 trillion.) When will Obama man up and accept responsibility? This is his recession and his deficit.
LIE: "To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve."
FACTS: That credibility gap is owned by Obama, who meets in closed-door meetings with union bosses, invites health care lobbyists into the White House, makes back room deals with senators so they'll support ObamaCare, and refuses to allow C-SPAN cameras into the final health care negotiations.
LIE: "Now, the true engine of job creation in this country will always be America's businesses. But government can create the conditions necessary for businesses to expand and hire more workers."
FACTS: If that were true then businesses would have responded well to the omnibus spending bill, or the stimulus bill, or credit card reforms, or something Obama has done. But Barack Obama's government can't help businesses. It can only get in the way.
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.
It’s fun to laugh at Barack Obama’s blunders on his one-year anniversary, but remember that the president is a radical Chicago pol. He’s inexperienced of course, but he’s also gotten away with some pretty egregious things during his first year. Here are 25 of the worst, in no particular order.
1)Obama’s communications director, Anita Dunn, says that Fox News isn’t a real news network. Days later, Fox is denied an interview with Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg, even though Feinberg is made available to the other networks. The White House ultimately retreats from this sinister and anti-American activity.
2)Obama appoints John Holdren to be his Science Czar. Holdren is a eugenicist who believes overpopulation will destroy the planet and who has written that forced abortions or sterilizations could be justified under the Constitution.
3)Obama appoints Kevin Jennings to be his Safe Schools Czar. Jennings once headed up GLSEN, a radical gay group that promoted pornographic sex books for children. When asked by a young student what to do about a sexual encounter with an older man in a bus station, Jennings dismissively said, “I hope you used a condom.”
4)Under the influence of Obama’s Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd, and following widespread attacks on the "The Fairness Doctrine", the FCC embraces “localism” and starts thinking of ways to take down large radio companies (most of which employ conservative personalities) and redistribute their money to smaller, minority-owned stations.
5)Obama appoints Ron Bloom to be his Car Czar, a union hack who once called the free market “nonsense.”
6)Obama tries to jam the Employee Free Choice Act through Congress, a union grab bag that would shift power to Big Labor and eliminate the secret ballot for workers voting on whether or not to unionize.
7)Obama gives the United Auto Workers labor union massive ownership stakes in General Motors and Chrysler after both businesses accepted government bailouts. Using the government to hand companies over to their workers? Classic Obama Marxism.
8)Obama’s Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office use Enron-style accounting tricks to disguise the negative consequences of their radical policies. Most recently, the OMB announced it would be counting jobs “funded” rather than actually “created” by its stimulus bill.
9)Obama’s Pay Czar, Kenneth Feinberg, is given truly tyrannical power. He can determine the salaries of corporate CEOs and mid-level employees, and “claw back” money already paid.
10)Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor has previously stated that empathy is a crucial factor in judging, and that her Hispanic upbringing somehow made her more qualified to sit on the highest court in the land.
11)Obama’s Justice Department sues the state of New Jersey because they administer an exam to aspiring police sergeants which more whites pass than minorities. The lawsuit is purely racial and resembles the Ricci case in Connecticut that got Sotomayor in so much trouble.
12)Hillary Clinton gives a speech celebrating the creation of the UN Population Fund, a group dedicated to providing women with “reproductive services” and that has been convincingly accused of working with China to enforce its one-child policy.
13)After Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona criticized Obama’s stimulus, the White House phones up Arizona’s governor and threatened to withhold stimulus funds to that state if Kyl kept up his criticisms.
14)Obama makes another sick deal with Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. In exchange for Nelson abandoning his concerns about abortion in the health care bill, Obama offers to have the federal government pay all of Nebraska’s Medicare costs…at the expense of taxpayer money from the other 49 states.
15)Obama is caught at the center of a scheme to sell his former Senate seat in Illinois. Most of the blame appropriately falls on Governor Rod Blagojevich, but some of the president’s chief advisers are implicated on tape as well, including Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett. Neither is fired nor disciplined in any way.
16)Obama pays off the AARP. With A. Barry Rand, a longtime Obama crony, helming the AARP, Obama bought off the organization by giving them an astonishing $18 million in stimulus money. In return, the AARP strongly supported the health care bill, even though it included massive Medicare cuts, which the group had criticized in the past.
17)Obama brings in Van Jones as his Green Jobs Czar. Jones was entrusted to coordinate the president’s strategy on so-called green jobs, despite his former membership in a group called STORM that advocated the overthrow of the government, and despite a long history of radical and inappropriate comments. Jones later resigns after it’s revealed he signed a petition questioning whether the government destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11.
18)Obama brings in Jeff Jones. This Jones is a former Weather Underground terrorist (along with Bill Ayers) who later established a group called the Apollo Alliance. The Apollo Alliance wrote the cap and trade bill that Obama later tried to ram through Congress.
19)Obama appoints Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, (Rahm’s brother), to be one of his budget advisors. Emanuel has previously written at length about the need to ration health care.
20)Obama appoints Patrick Gaspard to be his political director. Gaspard is all tied up in the network of corrupt community organizations that produced Obama himself, including the SEIU, ACORN, and the Working Families Party. He has observed that his greatest achievement is "raising two children of color in the U.S." Instead of, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was born?
21)Obama’s National Endowment of the Arts, under the leadership of Rocco Landesman, tries to coax artists into creating pieces that lionize Obama. In other words, taxpayer money is used to fund artistic propaganda.
22)Obama appoints Robert Bauer to be his White House counsel. Bauer is an ardent ACORN defender and wrote a memo to the Justice Department during the 2008 election asking them to investigate whether the McCain campaign broke the law by criticizing ACORN.
23)Obama gives a speech at the University of Cairo in which he constantly praises the Muslim world and attempts to whitewash its problems with terrorism. The speech is appeasing and useless, since a Muslim bomber would attempt to blow up a Detroit flight less than a year later.
24)Obama attempts to pass a health care bill that, among other egregious provisions, requires every American citizen to purchase health insurance. This tyranny is unprecedented in America’s history, as a requirement for citizenship has never before been in place.
25)Obama joins Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez in failing to accept the election results in Honduras, where a peaceful coup overthrew brutal Marxist Manuel Zelaya, who had refused to leave after being voted out of office. Zelaya is now hiding out in the Brazilian Embassy.
"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.
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."
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.
