Conservatives Monitoring The Liberal Left
Liberal Shakedown
SEIU behind anti-tea party website
Jan 31st
A White House Power Grab that Congress and America Doesn’t See
Dec 8th
A White House Power Grab that Congress and America Doesn’t See
To achieve the goal of a universal, single-payer health system, the White House must secure the power it needs by amending the Social Security Act to transfer pivotal controls from Congress to the executive branch. This transfer of power would ultimately give the President and the majority party, in this case the radical left Obama White House and Pelosi-Reid led progressive Democrats, the authority to frame and manipulate new policy, coverage options, and reimbursements, ultimately reshaping the future US health care system into a something unrecognizable in this country.
The deliberate setup for the White House power grab is built into the each of the health care bills and, if they fail, little-known twin bills called “MedPAC Reform of 2009” are waiting in the wings. The bills,S.B. 1110 and H.R. 2718, craftily amend the Social Security Act and transfer the Medicare guideline and rule setting processes, from the legislative branch to the executive branch. These bills offer cover to one another in case one doesn’t pass the House or Senate, respectively. Remember, Democrats need to gain executive branch authority by amending the Social Security Act over Medicare regulations and physician fee schedules to transform the health care system in a single-payer, socialized system.
More importantly, Medicare’s regulations and physician fee schedules are the keystone to developing payer systems and reimbursement models across the entire health care industry. And where Medicare goes, insurers follow.
To underscore the far-reaching power, a bulk of the states already reference or utilize the Medicare guidelines and fee schedules in determining policy, coverage, and payment, which impacts certain state-specific plans, including, but not limited to, self-funded plans, automobile insurance payers, and state workers’ compensation funds and plans – affecting even Big Labor. For the executive branch to have such authority over Medicare regulations with little oversight is alarming. This raises further issues of the powerful impact these federal mandates could potentially have on the states in stripping them of their own management of their respective insurance industries.
Specifically, the language in the Reid bill intentionally places unlimited power directly in the hands of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, including the ability to designate covered services, or rationing. The Pelosi bill creates a Health Choices Commission and its “commissioner” is empowered to make the same decisions. More alarming, both will have to take direction from the White House–and its unconfirmed czars–due to their executive branch affiliation.
In retrospect, Obama’s pick of Sebelius as HHS Secretary is obvious. Aside from being a governor, Sebelius is the former Kansas insurance commissioner and has the ability to identify the strongest and weakest links–navigating her way quite expeditiously throughout the health care system. And she’ll never disavow one of her first career choices — executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association. That explains the blatant omission of tort reform, in addition to the fact that the trial lawyers are the biggest Democrat donors.
Another disturbing Obama appointee is health care czar Nancy Ann DeParle, who remains unconfirmed, and was the administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In short, she “owns” Medicare. And if you put Sebelius and DeParle together in a room for a few hours, you’ll get a formula for a single-payer government-run health care system – with Obama’s wish list met.
These designed appointees make sense of the intentions at hand to frame a universal or single-payer health care system. Everything in this administration makes sense when you look at the overall agenda. Even the branding makes sense. The urgency, caring for the uninsured, taking advantage of the uninsurable, proclaiming it’s paid for, packaging it as deficit-neutral, and amplifying that people are ‘dying’ in the streets.
The aforementioned MedPAC Reform of 2009 bills give the executive branch power it so dearly covets to devise the single-payer system. Currently, MedPAC–the Medicare Payment and Advisory Committee (MedPAC)–is a Clinton-era independent Congressional agency established by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that advises the Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program, including payments to private health plans participating in Medicare and providers in Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service program. MedPAC also analyzes access to, quality of, and cost of health care.
The MedPAC bill designer, progressive Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV), has strategically branded the need for the bill by calling Congress “inefficient” and “inconsistent” –and who wouldn’t agree with that?
Therefore, the MedPAC Reform bill creates a new MedPAC–the Medicare Payment and Access Commission–and gives the Obama White House and its advisors over-reaching control of several factors governing the economy of the health care system. The new MedPAC, which is exempted from judicial review, would have the authority to rewrite physician fee schedules, redefine medical necessity, evaluate coverage of treatment options, rewrite beneficiary definitions and coverage, and redesign diagnostic definitions and coverage.
The new MedPAC’s mission would also be to inform new research in health services to adequately address deficiencies in the evidence. However, in reality, this would apparently cripple new treatments and technologies by overshadowing progressive research and treatment algorithms by apparently emphasizing the deficiencies, not the benefits, equaling a denial of care and arresting development of burgeoning technologies.
Rockefeller also confirms that the new MedPAC will evaluate and test new and innovative payment models for provider reimbursement. The MedPAC reform is being packaged under the guise of efficiency; however, by maximizing the volume of care delivered at the lowest possible cost, it appears that the payment and utilization schedule is a mechanism to control the pressure that would build when the health care system is overloaded with millions of new patients.
Finally, Rockefeller highlights another intention of MedPAC, which is to expand the capacity to evaluate basic and health services research for reimbursement. This is the pinnacle power grab because this gives the new MedPAC and the executive branch the power to ration or deny care and decide what treatment options are available or acceptable as a whole.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, commented, “As a congressional support agency, MedPAC’s mission is to advise Congress on Medicare payment issues. If MedPAC were to become part of the executive branch as contemplated in the Rockefeller bill, then Congress would no longer have this support agency to provide technical support when making policy decisions.” Senator Grassley also confirmed that he is not willing to abdicate congressional responsibilities for Medicare payment policymaking to a body that does not hold certificates of election. He is correct that Congress wouldn’t have the support agency’s advice, but misses that it wouldn’t be Congress’s responsibility anymore—the policy decisions would be the responsibility of the new MedPAC—under the direction of the Obama White House.
What’s inherently disturbing is the fact that Rockefeller has been very outspoken in support of the public option and knows that this transfer of power must take place via the Social Security Act—in any form. He even confirms that health care reform will not be successful, unless all authority is shifted to the executive branch. He also rightly chooses his words–the “healthcare delivery system,” which is code for the public option.
Additionally, Rockefeller confirms the overall task at hand by stating, “Establishing MedPAC as an independent executive branch agency – which can only change through an act of Congress – is the cornerstone of improving our delivery system reform. Health care reform will only be successful if we craft transformative changes.” Transformative, as in a government-run health care system.
If there are any questions if the White House would flex its executive branch authority over an agency, just look the way of the EPA. Congress stalled on cap and trade and Climategate has proven to be a problem, so the White House and EPA took matters into their own hands to keep moving on the agenda—to intentionally put regulations in place that further strangle American businesses, create unemployment, and further destabilize the economy.
Furthermore, with most of the Obama administration graduates of the Saul Alinsky school of thought, of course the main goal of all legislation and policies would be to support the overall intention of Alinsky, which is for the “have-nots on how to take it away.”
In any of these legislative scenarios–Pelosi, Reid or MedPAC bills–the White House gets the power it seeks–and needs–in order to accomplish the task at hand–a single payer, government-run health system.
These bills must be defeated; the power grab thwarted because after the Social Security Act is amended in any form these bills present and the rule changes take effect, it is not likely for the Act to be reopened and amended again. The problem is Congress doesn’t even comprehend what’s at stake in either of the health care bills or MedPAC Reform–and you can’t stop something you don’t see.
Climategate: it’s all unravelling now
Dec 2nd
Climategate: it’s all unravelling now.
By JAMES DELINGPOLE
Telegraph.co.uk
So many new developments: which story do we pick? Maybe best to summarise, instead. After all, it’s not like you’re going to find much of this reported in the MSM.
1. Australia’s Senate rejects Emissions Trading Scheme for a second time. Or: so turkeys don’t vote Christmas. Expect to see a lot more of this: politicians starting to become aware their party’s position on AGW is completely out of kilter with the public mood and economic reality. Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme – what Andrew Bolt calls “a $114 billion green tax on everything” – would have wreaked havoc on the coal-dependent Australian economy. That’s why several opposition Liberal frontbenchers resigned rather than vote with the Government on ETS; why Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull lost his job; and why the Senate voted down the ETS.
2. Danes caught fiddling their carbon credits. (Hat tip: Philip Stott) Carbon trading is the Emperor’s New Clothes of international finance. It was invented by none other than Ken Lay, whose Enron would currently be one of the prime beneficiaries in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn’t been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW scam. It is a licence to fleece, cheat and rob. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world’s leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.
3. Hats off to The Daily Express – the first British newspaper to make the AGW scam its front page story.
The piece was inspired by another bravura performance by Professor Ian Plimer, the Aussie geologist who argues that climate change has been going on quite naturally, oblivious of human activity, for the last 4,567 million years.
4. BBC finally gets round to reporting – sort of – that Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia may have been up to no good. It’s true that this report on their website is so hedged with special pleading for the temporarily suspended director Phil Jones the man might have written it himself. But on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, I did hear the newsreader reporting it as more than just a routine theft story. Which is a start.
5. Legal actions ahoy! Over the next few weeks, one thing we can be absolutely certain of is concerted efforts by the rich, powerful and influential AGW lobby to squash the Climategate story. We’ve seen this already in the “nothing to see here” response of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the jet-setting, troll-impersonating railway engineer who runs the IPCC and wants to stop ice being served with water in restaurants. This is why those of us who oppose his scheme to carbon-tax the global economy back to the dark ages must do everything in our power to bring the scandal to a wider audience. One way to do this is law suits.
At Ian Plimer’s lunch talk yesterday, Viscount Monckton talked of at least two in the offing – both by scientists, one British, one Canadian, who intend to pursue the CRU for criminal fraud. Their case, quite simply, is that the scientists implicated in Climategate have gained funding and career advancement by twisting data, hiding evidence, and shutting out dissenters by corrupting the peer-review process. More news on this, as I hear it.
Lord Monckton has written an indispensible summary of the Climategate revelations so far.
6. Watch out Green Dave! The Independent reports on the growing backlash within the party to Cameron’s libtard-wooing greenery. Turning to the Independent for a balanced report on environmental matters is a bit like consulting Der Sturmer for a sensible, insightful view on the Jewish question. Still, for once, the house journal of eco-loonery seems to have got it right and the point made by Tory backbencher David Davis is well made:
“The ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies on the public – taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds – is bound to cause a reaction in any democratic country.”
Read More at : Telegraph.co.uk
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.
Now The White House Is Fighting With Car Website Edmunds.com
Oct 31st
George W. Bush experienced acrimony with the New York Times, but for the most part, other than general frustrations of a conservative administration, complaining about a liberal media, it was no big deal.
But in addition to Fox News, now The White House is going after highly-respected and influential car site Edmunds.com.
They’re actually using The White House blog to dispute the site’s analysis of Cash-For-Clunkers (viaDetroit News).
The post is snarkily titled: “Busy Covering Car Sales on Mars, Edmunds.com Gets It Wrong (Again) on Cash for Clunkers”
Harsh!
Here’s the full post:
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On the same day that we found out that motor vehicle output added 1.7% to economic growth in the third quarter – the largest contribution to quarterly growth in over a decade – Edmunds.com has released a faulty analysis suggesting that the Cash for Clunkers program had no meaningful impact on our economy or on overall auto sales. This is the latest of several critical “analyses” of the Cash for Clunkers program from Edmunds.com, which appear designed to grab headlines and get coverage on cable TV. Like many of their previous attempts, this latest claim doesn’t withstand even basic scrutiny.
The Edmunds analysis is based on two implausible assumptions:
1. The Edmunds’ analysis rests on the assumption that the market for cars that didn’t qualify for Cash for Clunkers was completely unaffected by this program.
In other words, all the other cars were being sold on Mars, while the rest of the country was caught up in the excitement of the Cash for Clunkers program. This analysis ignores not only the price impacts that a program like Cash for Clunkers has on the rest of the vehicle market, but the reports from across the country that people were drawn into dealerships by the Cash for Clunkers program and ended up buying cars even though their old car was not eligible for the program.
This faulty assumption leads Edmunds to a conclusion that is at odds with many independent analyses: Edmunds assumption that more than 80% of the payback from Cash for Clunkers would occur in 2009 isn’t how many mainstream analyses, including Moody’s and IHS Global Insight approach the problem (see pages 5 and 15 of this CEA report [PDF]). In fact, Deutsche Bank recently concluded that “The important takeaway from recent sales trends is that it suggests that there has been minimal ‘payback’ for the U.S. government’s ‘cash for clunkers’ program.”
2. Edmunds also ignores the beneficial impact that the program will have on 4th Quarter GDP because automakers have ramped up their production to rebuild their depleted inventories.
Major automakers including GM, Ford, Honda and Chrysler all increased their production through the end of the year as a result of this program, which will help boost growth beyond the third quarter. The actions of private market participants, who would not increase production if they didn’t think demand for their product would be there through the end of the year, is a far better indicator of market dynamics – and one that Edmunds.com conveniently ignores.
Most importantly, this program is helping boost our economy and create jobs now when we need it most. In a comprehensive report, the Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the Cash for Clunkers will create 70,000 jobs in the second half of 2009. The strength of recent auto sales data suggest that, if anything, this projection underestimates the actual impact of the program. CEA’s analysis is transparent and comprehensive, laying out all of its assumptions for the public to understand. Edmunds.com, on the other hand, is promoting a bombastic press release without any public access to their underlying analysis.
So put on your space suit and compare the two approaches yourself:
Seriously, what’s the point of this? Clunkers is over. It just makes The White House look thin-skinned, though it’s great publicity for Edmunds. And yes, Clunkers massively distorted this morning’s GDP number, as we demonstrated here, but we’re with Edmunds that it was a giant waste with little long-term benefit.
Read imore at : http://www.businessinsider.com
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‘They Tried to Steal an Election,’ N.Y. Voter Fraud Case Heats Up
Oct 21st
Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out, according to records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y. Enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the November election to the Democrats.
By Eric Shawn
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Brian Suozzo voted with an absentee ballot in the Working Families Party primary on Sept. 15 because, as his application stated, he was “at home recovering from medical procedure.”
Jessica Boomhower’s application said she would be attending a “work conference in Boston.”
Michael Ward couldn’t vote in person because he was “taking care of elderly parent.”
Kimberlee Truell was on a “Bus trip to casino,” as was Miguel Vazques.
The only problem with these absentee ballot records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y., is that they’re phony, voters and investigators say — and they’ve prompted what’s being called an unprecedented investigation of suspected voter fraud.
Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out — enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the city council and county elections in November to the Democrats. Candidates would have been able to run both on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines in two weeks, and that could have given the Democrats the general election.
A special prosecutor is investigating the case and criminal charges are possible. New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Lynch ruled that there were “significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the election process.”
Among the reasons cited on the fraudulent forms for absentee voting: “traveling to Buffalo,” attending a “screen printing conference in Syracuse,” “working late shift,” “working construction,” and “home — ill.”
“Someone took my signature and voted with it and I felt extremely violated,” Suozzo told Fox News. He is a soft-spoken 28-year-old environmental engineer who says he never saw, let alone signed, the Working Families Party Absentee ballot application that carried his supposed signature. He was flabbergasted that someone would vote for him and submit it.
“The whole thing seems dirty to me,” Suzzo said. “You wonder how often this happens and people don’t get caught.”
He says he did not have any type of medical procedure, adding “I haven’t been to the hospital in years.”
“I feel that I was gypped,” Boomhower said, ruefully. “I didn’t get to cast my vote on my own.”
Boomhower, a 28-year-old home health care worker, says three men came to her door asking her to sign a ballot application. It wasn’t until after the election that a private investigator brought her the news that an absentee ballot indeed showed she had voted, when she actually had not.
“I can’t believe they thought they would get away with this,” she says angrily, noting that the false claim that she was in Boston could have jeopardized her job. “I don’t want to see this get tossed aside,” she told Fox News.
Michael Ward, whose ballot said he was taking care of an elderly parent, said “I got one parent left, and he lives in Albany and takes care of himself.”
“They tried to steal an election,” says Bob Mirch, the majority leader of the Rensselaer County legislature who suspected voter fraud and started the investigation after being alerted to a large number of absentee ballot application requests that were noticed by the Republican Board of Elections commissioner .
“Not only does it undermine the system, but if these people were allowed to do this, we could never have a fair election… I’ve been doing this for 35 years, when I saw this, it sends a chill through my body right now.”
Mirch is a pugnacious veteran of the bruising county politics, a Conservative Party and Republican politician who is also Commissioner of Troy’s Department of Public Works, which is why he relishes his sobriquet, “Bob, the Garbage Man.” He brands local politics “a blood sport,” in a city that in the 19th Century was once one of the country’s wealthiest, has an abundance of elegant townhouses from that era, yet is often overshadowed by its neighbor Albany, the New York State capital. Campaign signs dot many front lawns, and it seems local political maneuvering is followed as closely as the Yankee playoffs. Mirch proudly admits he runs his own candidates in the left-leaning Working Families Party primaries to try and sap strength from the Democrats or gain the line for Republican candidates, but he insists he has never acted unlawfully, and blames his political opponents for doing just that.
“These Democrats and Working Families people couldn’t bear taking another defeat at the hands of the garbage man, as I’m known in Troy, so they went out and took the law in their own hands to claim victory,” he says.
“As soon as I heard it — I was mad, disappointed, frustrated,” says Troy Democratic Chairman Frank LaPosta. He blames what he calls “a rogue group of Democrats,” and says what happened “is beyond comprehension.”
LaPosta stood in his apron in his Italian salumeria, stocked with fresh delicacies and cuts of meat. He once ran for Mayor and appears genuinely wounded by the scandal.
“I believe we could have won without the Working Families Party line,” he says. “To have something like this darken the election, its just an outrage for true Democrats in the city of Troy. This is not what the Democratic party in the city of Troy stands for,” he said. “Some people think you have to have all the lines to win. I believe you have to have the issues to win.”
The Working Families Party has recently gained strength, and controversy, in New York. Republican and Democratic candidates in the Empire State can also run on third party lines, such as the Working Families Party, as well as the Liberal, Conservative, and Independence parties, among others. The extra line means extra votes that could bring victory.
Hillary Clinton garnered 2.7 percent of her total votes from the WFP line when she first ran for Senate in 2000, which increased to 5 percent of her total vote in 2006. In September, Clinton’s former campaign manager for her 2000 Senate run, New York City Councilman Bill DeBlasio, who has been endorsed by the WFP, beat two long-established politicians in the Democratic primary. Critics also accuse the Working Families Party of having a long association with the troubled activist group, ACORN. Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s CEO, is one of the party’s co-founders. The New York Times reported this month that “Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, worked with ACORN in New York to set up the Working Families political party and sat on the party’s board with Ms. Lewis.”
The WFP has also endorsed New York Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was one of only seven Senators who voted against cutting federal housing funds to ACORN in September.
But the jockeying for a candidate to win the Working Families Party line may have crossed the line in Troy.
“We welcome the investigation,” says former Working Families Party County Chair Pat Pafundi. WFP officials would either not return our calls or comment about the investigation, but Pafundi, a current party member, was clear. While she believes the political tactics engaged by Mirch to run candidates on the WFP line undermine the party, she admits “it looks like there has been some kind of fraud” regarding the questionable absentee ballots.
“For six years, we’ve gone door to door to work hard to do this the right way,” she told Fox News. “Good government includes elections held with integrity and that is the way we have conducted ourselves and we hope the Democrats and Republicans would do the same also.”
A lawsuit filed by Working Parties candidate Christian Lambersten, who ran in the primary, led to the suspected ballots being tossed. He is a lifelong friend of Mirch, who urged him to run in the WFP primary, along with five other Mirch-backed candidates.
“I always thought everything was done above board,” he told Fox News about the absentee ballots. “You hear stories about this or that but I really didn’t belive it until actually this happened,” he said. “These people were taken advantage of — whether they voted for me or not.”
Read More @ Foxnews.com
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
SEIU! SEIU! SEIU!: Obama Pledges to “Paint the Nation Purple”
Oct 12th
SEIU Local 880, based in Chicago, is one of the largest SEIU union locals. It was founded and has been long controlled by ACORN and Wade Rathke. This recently uncovered video shows presidential candidate Barack Obama discussing his long and close ties to SEIU. This is not your typical political pandering. This is someone who feels at home, talking to close friends and family.
ACORN CEO Doubts Congress Will Defund ACORN ‘Because We Actually Do The Right Thing’
Oct 9th
(CNSNews.com) – Bertha Lewis, CEO of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), said on Tuesday that she doubts Congress will ultimately defund her organization “because we actually do the right thing.”
The House of Representatives has already overwhelmingly approved an amendment to deny ACORN all federal funding and the Senate has overwhelmingly approved two amendments–one that would deny ACORN any funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development and another that would deny ACORN any funding through the Department of Interior.
“We didn’t have government funding for years,” Lewis said. “We may not have government funding in the future. I doubt it, because we actually do the right thing and perform. But if we don’t [have government funding], ACORN will still go on with its member and its donors.”
Lewis was answering a question submitted by CNSNews.com at an event held October 6 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.
The movement in Congress to prohibit funding of ACORN came after a series of hidden-camera videos were posted last month on www.biggovernment.com. The videos show James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles posing as a pimp and prostitute at various ACORN offices. In the videos, O’Keefe and Giles get advice from ACORN employees about how to prepare tax documents that hide prostitution proceeds and the employment of teenage Latin American girls as prostitutes.
After the videos appeared, the Senate voted 83-7 on Sept. 14 for an amendment that would prohibit ACORN from receiving grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Sept. 17, the Senate voted 85-11 for another amenmdent that would prohibit ACORN from receiving federal money through the Department of Interior. Also on Sept. 17, the House voted 345-75 for an amendment to deny all federal funding to ACORN.
For any of these amendments to become law, it would need to be approved by the other congressional chamber and signed by President Obama.
The New York Times reported on September 18 that ACORN had received $53 million in federal funding since 1994. Lewis said at the National Press Club on Tuesday that she estimated the group received about 10 percent of its $20-$25 million annual budget from the government.
“Our average budget may have been between 20 and 25 million dollars a year for everything, all of the offices combined,” said Lewis. “So you look at about 10 percent of our budget, yes, we would like to provide those services because we actually got results for tens of thousands of people, results from getting funded from competitive grants.
“But if we lose that money as long as there is one ACORN member who is willing to have a meeting in their house or one church that allows us to have a meeting in their basement, we will go on,” she said.
“We didn’t have government funding for years. We may not have government funding in the future,” she said. “I doubt it, because we actually do the right thing and perform. But if we don’t ACORN will still go on with its member and its donors.”
Read More at cnsnews.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