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Anatomy of a Beat-Down Part 1: Why Kenneth Gladney Was Beaten, And by Whom
Nov 30th
Anatomy of a Beat-Down Part 1: Why Kenneth Gladney Was Beaten, And by Whom.
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Anatomy of a Beat-Down Part 1: Why Kenneth Gladney Was Beaten, And by Whom
by Stage Right
On August 6, 2009 two Service Employee International Union (SEIU) leaders and a volunteer for Organizing for America (OFA) assaulted Kenneth Gladney outside of Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town hall meeting on health care. The perpetrators were arrested at the scene of the crime, and three months later charges have finally been filed.
Much has been said in the past three months about this incident. Here at Big Government calls have been made for justice, for formal charges and mostly for the mass media to follow the story and delve into the government’s role in this violent attempt to intimidate and silence dissent. We can no longer wait for the establishment journalists to connect the dots and bring to light the insidious relationships between the SEIU, OFA, Russ Carnaham’s office and the Obama Administration.
Was this assault merely a flare up of tempers during a heated exchange of rival political camps? Or was it a coordinated attempt to silence the scores of protesters who had been so effective at swaying public opinion against the President’s health care scheme? Today, Big Government will bring to light documents that read like an instruction manual for the SEIU forces in St. Louis the evening of August 6th. We will also show that on the very same evening of the St. Louis assault, an almost identical scene played out in Tampa Bay, Florida. Also involving SEIU and OFA. Also resulting in hordes of union members shouting down and physically evicting protesters from a U.S. Representative’s Town hall meeting. Finally, we will introduce all of the various players in leadership roles at these organizations, what they said in instructing their members in how to fight back against the Town hall protesters, and how these individuals all connect to each other and to the Obama Administration. As I said, we’ve been waiting for the “Real” journalists to do this, we’ve waited long enough.
On June 1, 2009 President Obama enjoyed a 64% Job Approval rating with a disapproval rating of 30%. As Summer approached, the President began the plans for the roll out of his comprehensive plan to overhaul the entire distribution system for America’s health care services. As the messaging began, the talking points were clear: “If you like your current health plan, you can keep it”, “This plan will cover the 40 million Americans who have no insurance”, “This plan will not add to the deficit and not raise taxes”. It all seemed too good to be true. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce promptly passed the first version of a reform bill in June. President Obama planned multiple town hall meetings across the country including an unprecedented event televised live on ABC and everything seemed moving toward a major victory for the President and the Democratic Party.
In late June and through the month of July, members of congress held scattered town hall meetings in their districts to get their constituents’ feedback on the proposed health care bill. The clusters of semi-organized protesters who had rallied at “Tea Parties” earlier in the Spring took these meetings as opportunities to rejuvenate their energies with passionate opposition to these congressmen. YouTube videos began circulating showing outraged citizens challenging their representatives and showing those representatives completely unprepared for any legitimate questions about the proposed bill. It was clear in many cases that the representatives were not well versed on these bills beyond the boiler-plate talking points the administration had handed them. They were not used to being questioned.
By the beginning of August Sarah Palin had caught headlines by describing certain policy discussions that evaluate a patients “level of productivity in society” and how it relates to the level of prioritized care they would receive as ‘death panels’ , Rep. Michelle Bachmann had delivered a stinging speech on the House floor tearing apart the President’s advisors on health policy, Sen. Arlen Spector was caught flat-footed at a town hall meeting and protests began cropping up all around the country at various town hall meetings of Senators and Congressmen. President Obama’s job approval rating had now plummeted to 52% with a disapproval rating of 41% (an unbelievable 23% swing in approval loss and disapproval gain combined in 60 days). The White House had seen enough. It was time to take action and engage the opposition.
Somewhere between August 2nd and August 6th a strategy was devised that put all tools at the administrations disposal in line and firing at the protesters. August 4th seems to be an important day in the roll out of this strategy. The White House famously posted a new aggressive offensive on their blog calling out what they described as “mis-information” about the proposed bill and directed true-believers to report any sources of these “lies” to a special e-mail address: flag@whitehouse.gov. Also on the 4th, an organization called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) released a document that became a blueprint for intimidation and, ultimately, violence under the guise of confronting the tea party protesters at these town hall meetings.
HCAN is an organization funded by various unions, most significantly SEIU, whose main purpose is to promote and push the effort for government-provided, universal health care. (To understand the SEIU’s reasons for pushing for this government health care, read this post.) The National Field Director for HCAN is Margarida Jorge. Margarida Jorge used to work for the SEIU as an organizing director.
On August 4th Margarida Jorge released a four page memo instructing members of HCAN on how best to combat the mounting opposition on display at the town hall meetings. On the HCAN web site, the new tactics were filed on a post under the heading “Fight Back Against the Right”. A subsequent HCAN call to action on August 5th was under the benign headline “The Guns of August: A Call to Arms for Progressives and Obama Activists” likening the debate to World War I.
The entire memo can be seen here
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The memo features instructions and tactics for the left on how to dominate the meeting and marginalize the protesters from the right:
- Their side will be smaller but noisier. You must bring enough people to drown them out and to cover all our bases so as to marginalize their disruptive tactics.
- We need to stack our folks in the front to create a wall around the Member, and we need to stake out the best spots for visibility and signs. Reconnaissance on the venue and an understanding of the staging will be important here. Make sure you do your homework so you can position your folks most effectively.
It features ideas on how to manipulate the media:
- Make sure you have people holding signs in every place where a TV camera is likely to be and that next to every right wing sign, there’s one of your signs with your message.
- Don’t wait for the reporter to approach you. You must approach the reporters and be assertive in shaping the narrative that they write. Have someone assigned to greeting the media or checking in media as they arrive. That way you will know who they are and be able to work with them both during the event and afterwards.
It has ideas about how to dominate the conversation by asking the congressman prepared, rehearsed questions:
- Line up a number of people who feel comfortable interrupting and prepare them with statements like:
- Excuse me, I came today to listen to Representative XXX explain how this bill is going to make health care more affordable for me and my family. We’re being gouged by insurance companies that just want to make more profits while we struggle to keep up with premiums and co-pays. Representative, how are you going to fix that?”
- “I’m retired and can’t afford my prescription drugs because I’m on a fixed income. Representative, how is this bill going to affect me?”
- “I want to hear the Representative speak. He’s the one voting on the bill. Representative, how will this bill help people who already have insurance at work?”
- “What I’m worried about is how we’re going to keep the insurance companies from continuing to charge people more for being sick and keep them from taking away coverage when we need it most. What’s the plan for that?”
And, on page four of the memo written by Margarida Jorge of HCAN are instructions for hosting a town hall meeting. These instructions include:
- One advantage to organizing your own Town Hall or public event with Members of Congress is that you will have much more control over the event and limit the other side’s opportunities for disruption.
- Make sure you turn out a substantial number of people from your base and that everyone signs a sign in sheet upon entering the event. Give everyone name tags so they are easily identifiable. If you want to ensure greater control over turnout, you can ask attendees to rsvp or even issue tickets to the event and require presentation of the ticket at the entrance.
- Choose a venue that is difficult for the opposition to access without being noticed. Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
- Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security should any need arise to ask noisy or disruptive protesters to leave.
- Another way to limit protesters’ ability to hijack your event is to confiscate signs or leaflets that they may bring into the venue from outside. The best way to do this is to make a blanket rule that no one can bring signs or leaflets and to advertise this fact as you do turn out in the weeks preceding the event. You can distribute your own signs in the event and offer them one as they enter if you choose to allow them to enter.
- It’s important that you take away right-wingers opportunities to talk with reporters by making sure that your staff or leaders are in constant contact with the media who attend.
On August 5th the DNC released a video advertisement calling the protesters an “angry mob” and showing a photo of one alleged protester hanging a congressman in effigy. Also on August 5th we hadSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi derisively calling the protesters “Astro-turf” and claiming that they were carrying signs with swastikas.
By August 6th liberal web sites like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos were cheering HCAN’s instructions and the stance taken by Organizing For America (The left-wing volunteer web site evolved from the Obama Campaign) urging liberals to call congress (providing them instructions on how to do this) and then to register the call at the OFA web site. Huffington Post celebrated the new bold move with a post urging the unions to get more involved (an astounding 11,000 comments appear on this post in just 6 days, many of them from early in the day on August 6th show that the readers of HuffPo knew exactly what this union engagement meant and what the results would be).
Finally on August 6th, hours before the Carnahan town hall meeting where Kenneth Gladney was assaulted by members of the SEIU, David Axelrod and Jim Messina gave a pep talk to Senators on Capitol Hill prior to their leaving for the August recess. According to Politico:
They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said. And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.
”If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting
Two days after the instructions on how to manage and control protestors at town hall meetings were released by Margarida Jorge at HCAN, one day after the Speaker of the House likened protestors to Nazis and mere hours after President Obama’s top political advisors assured Congressional Democrats that “If you get hit, we will punch them back twice as hard”, Kenneth Gladney lay beaten and bloody on the ground outside Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town Hall meeting.
Tomorrow we will show how the people who are now charged with assaulting him are connected to SEIU and HCAN, how they followed HCAN’s instructions perfectly which inevitably led to the violence, and we will show how St. Louis was not the only meeting that followed HCAN’s template and ended in much the same way.
Best Buy Ditches ‘Christmas’ But Celebrates Muslim Holiday in Fliers
Nov 28th
Best Buy Ditches ‘Christmas’ But Celebrates Muslim Holiday in Fliers.
Christmas. Who needs it? Not Best Buy, that’s for sure. After all, Best Buy is loathe to use that hateful word in its advertising. It’s so “religious” and tinged with racism, America, and tradition. It makes Best Buy shudder to think of using that foul word, Christmas. But, advertising for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha? Heck, why not? What could be more welcoming and tolerant?
And so, Best Buy has issued a Thanksgiving sales flyer wishing all good multi-cultural, Muslim loving Americans a happy Eid al-Adha this year.
Don’t you feel your heart warming already? Isn’t your PC bone tingling with happiness? And aren’t you secretly gleeful that those rotten, evil, reactionary, hatemongering Christians are getting theirs… even if Christians do make up about 75 percent of the United States?
Well, let’s give Best Buy a hand for its politically correct sales flier excising that horrid Christmas nonsense and being enlightened enough to help us all convert to the “Religion of Peace.”
Thanks be it to Allah and Best Buy for helping us forget little things like the Khobar Tower bombing, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Towers, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, 9/11, or that silly little incident with Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood. It was but a trifle, after all.
In this happy Eid al-Adha season we can thank Best Buy for its sacrifice, too. For its sacrifice of America to its enemies, for the sacrifice of our traditions, religious principles, and culture to an alien, hostile ideology. We can thank Best Buy for helping organizations like CAIR to spread its message of cultural jihad.
Yes, thanks Best Buy for showing us how to be better “Americans.”
Now go ye forward and shop, America. Happy Eid al-Adha to everyone. And don’t let PETA stop you from buying that goat. And don’t mind us, folks. We are just committing cultural suicide is all.
Source: Big Government
Bet on it: ACORN will be back
Oct 18th
ACORN may be down, but don’t count it out.
The elaborate propaganda apparatus erected to support the Obama agenda is already at work spinning the downfall of the community organization into a vicious right-wing plot to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, who sprouted from ACORN.
The group was cut off from some of its taxpayer dollars after conservative bloggers duped ACORN staffers into offering advice on setting up a child prostitution ring. ACORN had no defense — it was caught on tape and posted on the Web.
But ACORN is too important to Democrats and Obama in particular to allow it to wither away. Much of the taxpayer money that funds ACORN’s activism ends up benefiting Democratic interests.
Stories are showing up about ACORN’s diligent efforts to purge itself of bad apples. News reports document how ACORN’s ability to help foreclosure victims has been hamstrung by the misdeeds of a few gullible staffers.
University of Northern Iowa professors substantiate the right-wing conspiracy by noting a flurry of negative stories about the group prior to the 2008 election. (It doesn’t occur to the profs that this was when ACORN was caught registering cartoon characters and dead people to vote, which tends to make news.)
Expect soon a major national publication to go in-depth on ACORN’s rehab. It’s the pattern the Obama machine follows to push his major issues and marginalize his critics.
It starts with a barrage of e-mails from local residents who coincidentally get worked up about the same thing on the same day — Rush Limbaugh is a racist, for example. Next comes op-ed pieces from left-wing opiners decrying Limbaugh’s divisiveness. Then Limbaugh’s face hits the cover of Newsweek as the personification of the right’s evil intent.
Obama’s conversion of his election team to a permanent network of campaign offices to advocate for his policies — the latest opened in Detroit on Saturday — is unprecedented.
The administration gets away with such ruthless manipulation of public opinion because the media are derelict in watch-dogging this White House and its backers.
Googling ACORN comes up with a lot of hits about how Republicans are trying to use the scandal to derail housing aid programs, and almost none about the inner workings of the group. ACORN’s foibles didn’t trigger anywhere near the frenzy of investigative reporting that Joe the Plumber did.
Similarly, you’ll find a ton of stories debunking claims that health care reform will lead to death panels and rationing. But there’s little critical analysis of Obama’s assertion that the bill will save money.
This is more than a honeymoon with a new president. It’s a torrid love affair that is eroding the media’s credibility.
So of course ACORN can come back. With the press cozily tucked into bed at the White House, what’s to stop it?
Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Reach him at nfinley@detnews.com.
Read More over at The Detroit News
Is ACORN DOA?: Blame The Board!
Oct 14th
A pimp, prostitute, underage human trafficking and now a self-professed murderer; what could be next for the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now?!?
Margaret Williams, Maryland ACORN board member and Sonja Merchant-Jones, Baltimore ACORN President both reported that the low level ACORN employees caught on tape in the Baltimore office were immediately terminated for behaving unprofessionally; but yet, senior staff members who assisted and concealed a million dollar Rathke embezzlement remain employed.
The ACORN 8 commends these board members’s decisive action, but find it extremely ironic since the board of directors do not actually control ACORN employees. According to ACORN’s by-laws that authority is exclusively exercised by the “Chief Organizer,” formerly Wade Rathke and now Bertha Lewis. This fundamental disconnect between an actual functioning board of directors and senior management is the true problem and real scandal within ACORN. It causes low-income members and staff to become mere pawns of senior management.
Ultimately, ACORN’s low-income workers are simply trying to meet and fulfill unreasonable membership quotas set by senior staff. This undue management pressure results in fraudulent voter registrations, tax assistance for “pimps and prostitutes” or worse. Poor governance and lack of accountability are the real problems. Voter fraud or rather voter registration fraud are just symptoms of a far greater problem. And that is the lack of meaningful control and accountability by the membership. So don’t fault poor workers – blame the board!
If ACORN hopes to survive then the know-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing board of directors must by replaced by individuals with the strength and capabilities to fulfill their fiduciary obligations and the courage to reign in corruption by ACORN’s senior management. If they fail, it is the low income communities which ACORN serves which will suffer the loss.
The damage to the ACORN brand and its overall effectiveness has been immeasurable due to poor governance, mismanagement and corruption within senior management. Consequently, the board of director’s missed the last best chance to save ACORN through reform. It seems apparent to all, except the most ardent and the culpable, that ACORN has been mortally wounded; and the only question now is who goes down with the ship?
But it may already be too late; ACORN had its chance to do the right thing following the million dollar Rathke embezzlement. There was a glimmer of hope when the board of directors appointed an interim management committee tasked to investigate the embezzlement and reorganize ACORN. But they were terminated for seeking a forensic audit.
From the very beginning, the ACORN 8 have always sought to reform – not destroy – the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now. But now find it impossible to imagine that even this once venerable association can withstand the latest onslaught of negative publicity.
The Census Bureau and IRS recently severed ties with ACORN, and the U.S. Senate voted 83 to 7 to cut off funding for the embattled group. The House followed suit by a vote of 345 to 75. Unfortunately, this is yet another example of poor governance, mismanagement and corruption within the once venerable organization. ACORN cannot survive if it can’t raise any more money.
No More Charitable Donations: No tax exempt 501(c )(3) organization will donate money to ACORN under the present circumstances. Since they cannot prove that the 501(c )(3) funding was not commingled with partisan activities.
No More Federal Contracts: Likewise, the federal government has already begun to sever ties to ACORN and could not fund the association through CCI a registered lobbying organization.
No More Negotiated Settlements: ACORN no longer possesses the necessary moral authority to pressure corporations or any organization through public demonstrations or protests. Thus, even this revenue stream will be unavailable to ACORN.
ACORN has been hijacked by senior staff and executive leadership who are acting in their own personal interest and not the best interest of the association or its membership. Only one question remains. Is ACORN now dead on arrival?!?
ACORN has survived in the past as a surprisingly well funded, politically well connected, dictatorial operation which flew under the public’s radar. Ironically, the election of President Barack Obama was actually the worst thing that could happen to ACORN. The attention that the election of the first African-American and community organizer to the highest office in the land has made it impossible for ACORN to avoid real scrutiny as it has in the past. Ironically, President Obama’s ascent has turned into ACORN’s demise.
Rathke’s Reach: Critical ACORN Doc Found on Asian Website
Oct 11th
Rathke’s Reach: Critical ACORN Doc Found on Asian Website
by Kyle Olson
If one wonders or doubts Wade Rathke’s reach around the world, consider the following document found on a community organizing website in Asia and published on ACORNcracked.com.
It has been well-documented that last year Rathke “left” ACORN U.S. to head over to ACORN International and export ACORN’s brand of organizing and tactics. He has since changed the group’s name to Community Organizations International.
ACORN Community Organizing Model is not the type of document ACORN would wish to have on the Internet. For ACORN, is tantamount to Eisenhower’s plan for D-Day being printed on the front page of the Washington Post. Not a good thing for the ultra-secretive group.
Consider this frank section of “SETTING UP THE ORGANIZING DRIVE:”
2. Contacts: The whole process of making contacts is built on a pyramid theory. Make one that leads to others. The purpose of contacts is to gather information and resources, and to build power. There are three types: hot, warm, cold. The hot contacts are people we have met before at some point in the organization’s history. Check the biographical file in the state office. Warm contacts are those we have not met but know something about in order to build an edge, i.e. we have an opener or a handle for the conversation – something they did, someone they know who we know, some reason to believe we can hit the core. The cold contacts are those people we must meet for some reason, yet we have no lead to them. The only edge there is simply an organizer’s skill in prying information and setting up his/her ego in order to loosen her/his tongue in person or on the phone. It’s a skill to be perfected, if you’re greasy, you are in the hole.
Groups such as Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations in Asia clearly didn’t nor don’t understand the pressure and scrutiny ACORN has faced over the last several months. But their foolishness or naivete is the ACORN’s researcher’s gain.
For whatever reason, the LOCOA site doesn’t create a direct link to the individual page. If you wish to see it for yourself on the LOCOA site, go here, then click on Program in the menu bar. Then, go to the second page of documents and click on ACORN Community Organizing Model. Or, to save yourself time (not to mention if and when the document disappears from the website), you can click here for a PDF.
ACORN Throws Out Republican Voter Registrations
Oct 8th
by Pamela Geller
ACORN wants people to register to vote – as long as they’re Democrats. Republican registrations go into the trash.
Here is a first-hand account of how it happens. In February 2008, Fathiyyah Muhammad of Jacksonville, Florida, heard that ACORN was paying people three dollars for each voter they could register. ACORN paid her three dollars for each voter she registered, but Fatiyyah Muhammad says that the group threw out her votes and fired her when she brought them registrations of Republican voters.
Fathiyyah Muhammad voted for Obama. “I’m a Republican,” she says, “and this was the first time that I voted for a Democrat since JFK…. I’m one of those rare birds, a black conservative Republican, and actually this is the black conservative capital of the country, Jacksonville, Florida.” She is an entrepreneur and a great American: she makes custom caps for her businesses Bilal’s Custom Caps and Only in America. She and her James have made custom caps for politicians, sports heroes, musicians, and others. “America,” she says, “is the place you can live your dreams if you work at it.” She’s a can-do woman with a great American spirit, and when she saw what was breaking in the news about ACORN, she came forward; I interviewed her Monday morning.
“This is my first experience” with ACORN, Muhammad said. “This was before Obama got the nomination, long before then….I heard about this group that was paying $3.00 per person, to go out and to get people to sign up to vote. So I went over, I thought that well this is a good way to make some money because I know everybody, you know. I went over there and this guy signed me up and everything, and gave me my little pad, all this stuff.”
Muhammad went to the ACORN office in Jacksonville. There she encountered a young man speaking to a room of about twenty people. “He was telling us, you know, about his experience, he was from Brooklyn, he wasn’t from this area. He was just here recruiting people to register people to vote. They had a big office here, and I would say maybe about ten or twelve people at there.”
She went to work: “Well, I went out and got a lot of people, homeless people, but of course I signed everybody up as a Republican, and I would have put people had they been Democrats.” She was not forcing people to sign up as Republicans: “You could put down anything you wanted.” But when she got back to ACORN, a group leader was not pleased: “So I showed what I had, and he said, “No, no, you a fraud, there can’t be any black Republicans,’ and oh, he just kind of hung me out to dry…. But of course their main aim was to register only Democrats. They’re not interested in registering Republicans.”
She saw ACORN officials in Jacksonville throw out the Republican registrations she made. “They just discarded those, they weren’t valid. All of the registrations… they just threw those out.” Yet she says that she is sure that the people she registered were actually going to vote: “Yes, they all were going to vote, I just didn’t want to get anybody just to get the three dollars, I wasn’t desperate for three dollars.”
ACORN did not honor its agreement to pay three dollars for each registered voter. “He took my papers,” says Muhammad, “didn’t pay me anything and I just left, I just figured that this is just another scam…. Everyone else got paid, all the other people got paid, but I didn’t. And I didn’t make a big deal about it, I just figured that it was another one of life’s experiences.”
Fatiyyah Muhammad didn’t know anything about ACORN at that time. She didn’t know that ACORN has been doing this for a long time. As far back as November 2006 the organization was indicted for some 40,000 illegal voter registrations, and that was before any of the recent revelations.
Now Fatiyyah Muhammad says: “I can’t believe that they got away with it for so long.” And she wants her story to be told: “How are you going to shine a light on the laundry if you don’t want to come out and say what happened?”
Fatiyyah Muhammad is unafraid to shine that light. And her testimony is another nail in the coffin of the community organizers of ACORN and their stealth agenda.
Source: Biggovernment.com
ACORN: Congress can’t hurt us
Oct 7th
Any successful efforts by Congress to cut off federal funding to scandal-plagued ACORN would have little effect on the community organizing group’s overall operations, its chief executive officer said on Tuesday.
“We didn’t have government funding for years,” said ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis. “We may not have government funding in the future.”
Lewis said ACORN typically receives about $2.5 million to $3 million annually from the federal government – roughly 10 percent of its $20 million to $25 million annual budget. Member dues and private sources make up a much larger chunk of the budget, she said.
After a series of undercover videos surfaced showing ACORN employees giving advice to conservative activists posing as a prostitute and a pimp, opponents in Congress have sought to cut the group’s sources of federal money. In recent weeks, both the U.S. Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service have also ended partnerships with ACORN.
But Lewis, who spoke Tuesday at Washington’s National Press Club, called the congressional actions a case of “modern day ACORN McCarththyism,” and she dismissed a report by the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee alleging that ACORN used some charitable funding for political purposes.
Last month, the group suspended new intakes to its service programs throughout the country, pending the results of an independent review led by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger.
Lewis, who said her remarks were part of a “set-the-record-straight tour,” said the group would continue to pursue a lawsuit against the makers of the videos as well as the conservative Web site, Breitbart.com, where they first appeared.
“Just because we were embarrassed by these highly edited tapes,” Lewis said, “doesn’t mean that these people didn’t break the law in order to embarrass and attack the organization.”
Still, Lewis acknowledged that when she watched the clips, “it made my stomach turn over – it just made you sick.”
The Website’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, could not be reached for comment. But in appearance on Fox News last month he called the lawsuit “an attempt to stifle free speech and the First Amendment.”
Lewis also denied fresh allegations revealed in connection with an investigation of ACORN in Louisiana that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled as much as $5 million from the organization. The amount of missing money was just under $1 million, according to Lewis, who said the higher figure was “completely false and not based on any documentation or any audit other than two disgruntled former board members.”
On Tuesday, Lewis wistfully recalled her own years as community organizer and said that she planned to continue serving as CEO of ACORN for at least another year.
“I admit I’m not a graduate of the Wharton School of Business,” she said. “But you know something, I believed – and my board believed – that if you worked hard and if you got the proper people to do the job that we could make sure that ACORN was solid and stable going into the 21st century.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com
ACORN tactics revealed in discovered documents
Sep 30th
By Andrew W. Griffin
Oklahoma Watchdog
Posted: September 30, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY – Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, said Wednesday he combed through documents from an abandoned local ACORN office because of reports of impropriety at other organization chapters.
Oklahoma City-based news and investigative website Red Dirt Report discovered documents in an abandoned local office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in south Oklahoma City’s “Little Mexico” neighborhood.
Investigators found computers, hard drives, documents, registration forms, I-9 employment information and boxes with return addresses to ACORN’s New Orleans home office, as well as a regional IRS office last October.
Oklahoma Watchdog now has many of the documents and will reveal them here.
eynolds said, “The contents of the ACORN offices were offered to me late, last summer,” but he didn’t examine them in detail. “My other duties didn’t allow me to examine the tens of thousands of pages available until recently,” he said, adding that when he read national stories about video of ACORN appearing to advise illegal behavior, “I decided I’d more carefully examine it.”
The information has been made available to the appropriate federal authorities, this website has since learned.
Oklahoma Watchdog attempted to call ACORN offices in both Tulsa and New Orleans.
ACORN, which receives millions in federal dollars for voter registration, cannot legally support one party. However, internal documents show ACORN “targeted” state legislative districts in 2007 and 2008, leading up to the presidential election.
A “Power Plan” document begins: “Oklahoma ACORN has been virtually non-existent since its glory days in Tulsa, over 20 years ago. 2007 is Year Zero.”
It continues with a five-year plan to obtain “power”:
“Therefore, the route to power is twofold: First, build powerful city organizations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa that can control these municipalities. Second, become an influential organization by shaping a handful of strategic legislative districts that, by themselves, can change who controls the state legislature.”
“(W)e will be seen as the force that is making Oklahoma a progressive state in the way that it was 100 years ago.”
“By using this power to win significant changes for working people, by the end of our 5 years, we will have legitimized the progressive takeover of the statehouse and head into 2012 with a real possibility of changing what Oklahomans look for and expect out of their Congressional delegation.”
Read the rest at : oklahoma.watchdog.org
ACORN May Face Trial for First Time as Nevada Prosecutors Allege ‘Widespread’ Criminal Policies
Sep 29th
By Eric Shawn
LAS VEGAS — When ACORN took to Las Vegas and started playing “Blackjack” and “21,” the activist group was making a far bigger gamble than it ever guessed, according to Nevada prosecutors.
There’s nothing wrong with playing the tables in Vegas, but authorities say ACORN was using the names of those casino games as a cover to illegally pay workers to sign up voters as part of an illegal quota system.
A preliminary hearing Tuesday in the downtown Clark County courthouse has put ACORN on trial for the first time as a criminal defendant.
Until now, prosecutions for voter registration fraud have focused on ACORN workers, and authorities have secured guilty pleas from several who admitted to falsifying voter registration forms.
But when investigators from Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller’s office raided the ACORN Las Vegas office, Ross says they found a paper trail that implicated the ACORN organization itself.
“We came across policy manuals that outline their policy of creating a quota system, which is against the law,” Miller told FOX News in an interview. “This, in fact, was something that was widespread and something the organization itself knew about, and it’s important to hold the organization criminally accountable as opposed to the individual field directors.”
ACORN denies it had a quota for the number of voter registration forms that its workers were required to turn in every day. Instead, the organization says there were “performance standards” — an expectation that workers would find 20 new voters a day.
But prosecutors say ACORN paid a $5 bonus per day to workers who would sign up 21 or more voters per shift, hence the name “21″ or “Blackjack,” an alleged quota system that Ross says is the first step toward corrupting the democratic system.
“These charges strike at the heart of having integrity of the electoral process. That’s something that is important in Nevada and the entire country,” he told FOX News.
“By filing these charges we are sending a clear message we are not going to tolerate these kinds of activities. We have seen voter registration abuse before and we are holding these people accountable.”
Pressure has been mounting on ACORN in recent weeks after videotapes surfaced showing staffers in multiple cities offering advice to a man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to commit tax fraud.
The IRS and Census Bureau have severed ties with the group, and the inspector general of the Department of Justice is reviewing the agency’s involvement with ACORN. More than a dozen state and local authorities are also scrutinizing ACORN, including Maryland’s attorney general.
ACORN lawyer Lisa Rasmussen told FOX News that the Nevada prosecution is “selective and has unfairly targeted ACORN.” She claims the case violates the right to petition to gather voters.
At the preliminary hearing Tuesday, prosecutors and defense lawyers sparred over the arcane regulations of voter registration. But the highlight of the proceedings was the testimony of Christopher Edwards, the 33-year-old former ACORN field director who has cut a deal with prosecutors to testify against the group.
Edwards has begun to provide a view inside ACORN’s operations, telling investigators about the Blackjack program in the Las Vegas office, which allegedly submitted the names of the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys as new voters.
“It’s Las Vegas, it’s blackjack,” Edwards testified, describing what he called the “Blackjack bonus,” saying ACORN set a quota of 20 cards per day for workers, and 1,000 a week for the group’s political organizers. Edwards described a huge sign in the ACORN office that read: “Blackjack Bonus, 21 cards, extra 5 dollars,” and said the program was instituted with the approval of higher-ups.
In fact, he said, other ACORN offices were jealous of the Blackjack program. Edwards said there were problems with payroll fraud at ACORN, noting that a Detroit voter registration director paid himself twice, falsely claiming he was also a canvasser.
Edwards told the court that he hired Nevada “non-violent offenders” from a prison transition facility as canvassers, and when asked if there was pressure from ACORN to increase voter registrations, he said, “every day.”
If the trial goes forward and ACORN is convicted, the Nevada operation could lose its tax-exempt status. That would have national implications for the organization — meaning ACORN could end up with a losing hand.
Source: Foxnews.com
IRS severs ties with ACORN over scandal
Sep 23rd
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON (AP) – The IRS says it is severing ties with ACORN, the community activist group involved in a scandal after employees were caught on video giving advice to a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp.
The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday it would no longer include ACORN in its volunteer tax assistance program. The program offered free tax advice to about 3 million low- and moderate-income tax filers this spring.
The IRS said ACORN, which is short for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, provided help on about 25,000 returns.
The House and Senate voted earlier this month to sever federal funding to ACORN. And the Census Bureau severed its ties with the group for the 2010 national head-count.
Read The Original Article Here: Breitbart.com