Obama Illegally Funding ACORN
Judicial Watch
A Judicial Watch investigation has found that the Obama administration recently violated the ban on federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) by giving the famously corrupt group tens of thousands of dollars in grants to “combat housing and lending discrimination.”
Congress passed a law (Defund ACORN Act) in 2009 to stop the huge flow of taxpayer money that annually went to ACORN after a series of exposés about the left-wing group’s illegal activities. Judicial Watch has been a leader in investigating ACORN by requesting public records and taking legal action to uncover details of its fraudulent voter registration drives, involvement in the housing market meltdown and its close ties to President Obama. Read all about it here.
This week a JW probe uncovered that Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently awarded a $79,819 grant to an ACORN reincarnation called Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). Incredibly, the government’s federal expenditure website openly describes the recipient as ACORN Housing Corporation Inc. and lists the group’s New Orleans address at 1024 Elysian Fields.
HUD’s press release announcing the award is more discreet, however. It lists the recipient of the $79,819 grant as Florida-based Affordable Housing Centers of America, even though it’s the same ACORN offshoot. In all, HUD awarded 108 “fair housing organizations” more than $40 million to educate the public and combat discrimination. The allocation represents a $13.2 million increase over last year’s allotment to end housing discrimination against minorities.
In addition to disregarding the ACORN funding ban, the grant is astounding because federal investigators have previously exposed fraud by the same ACORN/AHCOA affiliate.
George Soros’ Money Could Tip Elections in All 50 States
Michael Oberndorf, FloydReports.com
A little-noticed story in The Washington Times last week should scare the heck out of real Americans. George Soros, whose name should now be pretty familiar to most conservatives, is involved in a far-Left scheme to elect Secretaries of State, gaining control of each state’s election machinery and thus, be in a position to influence the outcome of local, state, and national elections.
As many have learned, Soros is an unrepentant, apparently sociopathic fascist, who got his training from the Nazis during WWII, confiscating the property of fellow Jews who had been shipped off to the death camps. He is the man who made billions manipulating currencies and wrecking the Malaysian and British economies. Soros is a major source of money behind a number of radical leftist outfits, like MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, the now-defunct but reorganizing ACORN, Apollo Alliance, the National Council of La Raza, the Tides Foundation, The Huffington Post, Southern Poverty Law Center, Sojourners, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has participated in the Bilderberg Group.
The group in question here is the Secretaries of State Project (SSOP), formed in 2006, supposedly to “to stop Republicans from ‘manipulating’ election results.” Over the years, it has become clear that when the Left accuses conservatives or Republicans of something, it is a sleight of hand move to cover up the fact that it is the very thing it is doing.
They have been far too successful with this strategy, having won 11 of 18 elections, including….
ACORN Pleads Guilty, But Obama Won’t Investigate
Judicial Watch
ACORN, the criminal enterprise that Obama’s Justice Department refuses to investigate despite extensive evidence of fraud and corruption is guilty of a felony in yet another state…
Facing more than a dozen felony charges in Nevada, ACORN pleaded guilty to one count this week for illegally paying canvassers to register voters during the 2008 presidential campaign. The deal means that ACORN will avoid going to trial, which was scheduled for later this month in Las Vegas. A judge will determine the sentence on August 10, according to a spokeswoman for the Nevada Attorney General’s office, the prosecuting agency.
Since ACORN is a corporation, it will only be fined and there will be no prison term, the Attorney General’s spokeswoman told Judicial Watch. The fine is expected to be a maximum of $5,000. In November the ACORN supervisor overseeing the illicit Nevada voter registration scheme pleaded no contest to two counts of conspiracy…
Last fall a federal investigation revealed that the crime-infested community organization embezzled millions of taxpayer dollars for “housing counseling” and destroyed documents to hide the fraud. The probe, conducted by the inspector general for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) also determined that ACORN violated federal laws and policies by spending its “housing counseling” funds to pay the salaries of its employees, even after they were terminated.
Incredibly, the Obama Justice Department has failed to conduct a criminal probe of ACORN, which has assumed a new identity (“restructured” and “rebranded”) to shed its criminal history and keep its public funding. In fact, last spring Judicial Watch uncovered FBI records that reveal the Obama Justice Department actually killed a federal investigation of ACORN.
Civility, Huh? Ed Sec Calls for “No Peace” 8 Days After Shooting
Dan Loos, BigGovernment.com
Apparently oblivious to recent calls for civility, Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and teacher union boss Randi Weingarten (who the union paid more than $600,000 in 2010) gave speeches in front of a “No Justice – No Peace” banner at Al Sharpton’s prayer breakfast.
Weingarten even closed her speech in solidarity with Sharpton’s group “fight.” Weingarten expressed her desire that the American Federation of Teachers union members become “foot soldiers” in the “fight.”
Again, a Big Labor official proved they are not in tuned with society but focused, to borrow a phrase from Weingarten, “like a laser” on making government bigger…
The “No Peace” campaigns of community organizers and union organizers often turn peaceful towns and jobsites into warzones when organizers use guerilla tactics, as witnessed in Indiana, Ohio and California by employees and residents.
Organizers have been using intimidation for years to bully communities, employees and others into submission. And, President Obama, who might be called the real Organizer-in-Chief, is very familiar with these Big Labor intimidation techniques. As a former ACORN community organizer, he is no doubt well-schooled in Saul Alinsky’s polarizing philosophy, which is also a primer for union organizers. In fact, President Obama and former-President Clinton have both used Al Sharpton’s “No Peace” forums in the past.
“Oops!” ACORN Shouldn’t Have Gotten Half-Million-Dollar Grant
Chuck Neubauer, The Washington Times
ACORN, the community activist organization Congress currently barred from getting federal funds, should not have been given a $450,000 grant for an affiliate to establish a fire prevention and safety program, Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said Tuesday.
The 2007 grant, awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), went to the ACORN Institute for the pilot program, although the Inspector General’s Office (OIG) said the institute claimed experience on its application it did not have and did not fully implement the program as approved.
OIG investigators also said the institute could not substantiate all its grant expenditures.
The ACORN Institute was supposed to develop a program for community groups to canvass high-risk neighborhoods and distribute and install fire safety equipment such as smoke detectors or fire extinguishers.
“The Federal Emergency Management Agency did not have sufficient oversight processes to prevent the award or to fully evaluate the use of the grant money,” OIG investigators said in a report made available Tuesday to members of Congress.
The report was requested by Rep. Darrell Issa of California, ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and….
ACORN Follows Obama to India
Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com
Your future under Obama's "Green Jobs" program
Guess what supposedly defunct organization greeted Barack Hussein Obama in India today?
The Christian Science Monitor announced even India is not free of the president’s longtime allies in community organization, corporate shakedowns, and voter fraud. India is one of nine nations to host a chapter of ACORN International, a “new” organization headed by Wade Rathke, the longtime head of ACORN. Which makes it look not so terribly new after all.
Rathke told the newspaper, “We’re trying to organize a vast base in order to push on all political parties” in India.
What is the focus of their work? Ragpickers in Dharavi, the decrepit area featured in Slumdog Millionaire. The Monitor notes, “Many of them are migrants or homeless who lack the proof of residence papers needed to vote, says Vinod Shetty, the Mumbai head of the ACORN India Foundation.” So, ACORN rushes to the rescue. “ACORN India issues the ragpickers identification cards.”
With ID cards, these workers “become eligible for city services.”
And, coincidentally, for voting.
The Cloward-Piven Strategy goes to Bombay.
ACORN International hopes to expand these services. Its website worries, “one of the last remnants of [India’s] socialist legacy is now in danger from the onslaught of the march of global corporatism.” To push back against this anti-socialist common sense, “ACORN India is also demanding that the Government of India agree to a Universal Health Plan to include the unorganized workers. We are proposing that our members can be covered by this policy using part of their membership dues as the premium.”
ACORN International is hoping to get the Indian government to allow the dregs of society to get government healthcare by joining…ACORN International.
Lest the reader believe this story is merely an overseas curiosity, it has a warning about America’s future.
More Evidence Ties Obama to Socialist Party
Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily
Yet more evidence has emerged tying President Obama to the New Party, a Marxist-led socialist party that sought to infiltrate the Democratic Party and push it so far leftward it ultimately would become a socialist organization.
John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine, recalled speaking with Obama at New Party events in the 1990s.
“When we spoke together at New Party events in those days, he was blunt about his desire to move the Democratic Party off the cautious center where Bill Clinton had wedged it,” wrote Nichols in a January 2009 piece published at Progressive.org.
WND previously reported on newspaper evidence showing Obama was listed as a member of the New Party.
The New Party worked alongside the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
In his piece, Nichols referenced quotes from Obama at a 2008 town hall meeting in suburban Atlanta where the politician labeled himself a “progressive.”
Wrote Nichols: “Barack Obama knows exactly what it means to say he is a ‘progressive.’ When he does so, he is not merely avoiding the word ‘liberal,’ as the sillier of his rightwing critics like to claim. Obama actually understands the subtle nuances of the American left.
“This is a man who moved to Chicago to be part of the political moment that began with the 1983 election of leftie Congressman Harold Washington as the city’s first African American mayor, who studied the organizing techniques of Saul ‘Rules for Radicals’ Alinsky, who worked with proudly radical labor leaders to defend basic industries and avert layoffs, who used his Harvard-minted legal skills to fight for expanded voting rights, who was mentored by civil libertarian legislator and federal judge Abner Mikva, who discussed the intricacies of Middle East policy with Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, and who learned about single-payer health care from his old friend and neighbor Dr. Quentin Young, the longtime coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.
“And, famously, Obama did not just make anti-war sounds before Iraq was invaded, he appeared at an anti-war rally in downtown Chicago with a ‘War Is Not an Option’ sign waving at his side.”
Nichols authored a 2004 book with avowed Marxist Robert W. McChesney, founder of Free Press, a George Soros-funded organization with close ties to the White House that petitions for more government control of the news media.
Obama’s Next Vote Fraud Drive?
Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports
The organization that brought Barack Obama to Chicago as a “community organizer” is ready to launch a new voter registration drive. Voters have reason for concern, since the organization often hires ACORN members to perform its registrations, its activities have been investigated by the FBI, and its board members include one of the originators of the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Voting For America, “an affiliate of the voting rights nonprofit Project Vote,” plans to “help” more than 50,000 students in seven states register to vote. The Sierra Club has contracted VFA to perform the drive on its behalf.
The states targeted are such battlegrounds as Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Oregon. Each state high-profile elections looming in November.
Executive director Michael Slater said Project Vote created VFA this year “as a means of making the systems, strategies, and tools we’ve developed available to other organizations.”
Share the stealth.
Among the “services” VFA “will contribute” are “legal services,” presumably when its registration cards are challenged in court. Their history assures they will be.
Voter Fraud
The FBI investigated Project Vote and ACORN as part of its inquiry into the massive registration of non-existent voters. Judicial Watch obtained handwritten notes FBI officers took during interviews with the staff. (The two work in close tandem.)
One interviewee told the FBI, “Project Vote will pay” six dollars per voting card, “fake or not.” Why would the group want fraudulent cards? Thankfully, the interrogators literally spelled their reasons out, in longhand (and I quote):
Taxpayer Victory Over ACORN
Judicial Watch
In a story that not surprisingly got buried by the mainstream media, an appeals court has ruled that Congress can withhold federal funds from a crime-infested community organization famous for voter registration fraud and embezzlement.
The crucial decision, recently issued by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, allows federal lawmakers to stop giving the notoriously corrupt leftist group (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN) taxpayer money to fuel its criminal enterprise. ACORN, which has received tens of millions of taxpayer dollars over the years, sued the U.S. government in November after Congress slashed its public funding amid mounting corruption scandals.
In its lawsuit ACORN claimed that banning it from receiving federal aid violates a provision of the U.S. Constitution (known as the Bill of Attainder) because it unfairly singles the group out for punishment. Furthermore, ACORN’s complaint said, a congressional resolution cutting its funding constitutes legislation that illegally targets one group. Earlier this year a district court judge in Brooklyn sided with ACORN, ruling that Congress had indeed violated the group’s rights by punishing it without a trial.
In reversing that decision, the appellate court said….
