Fortunately, it wasn't a close election in New Jersey

ACORN seems to be up to their old bad habits.

A New Jersey hospital is denying accusations that ACORN workers have been inside collecting absentee ballots for the state's gubernatorial race.

East Orange General Hospital CEO Kevin Slavin said Tuesday that "all proper protocols" were followed as part of its program to allow patients to vote via absentee ballot, and that no third-party groups were signing up patients.

"Other than the specifically designated and trained staff to hand out and collect these ballots, no advocacy groups were authorized nor allowed access to the hospital to hand out absentee ballots to patients as has been recently reported in unsubstantiated blogs and on political talk shows," he said in a written statement.

Slavin was referring to reports that claimed people wearing ACORN shirts were spotted distributing and collecting absentee ballots at a hospital in the area. The Wall Street Journal reported this Monday, as did BigGovernment.com -- the Web site that publicized recent undercover operations in which ACORN workers were filmed giving tax advice to two activists posing as a pimp and prostitute. . . . .

White House Director of Political Affairs Close to ACORN

Of course, President Obama claims that he has no idea what is going on with ACORN. Well, even if Obama doesn't think about his ties with ACORN, it is harder to believe that some of his top political advisers can forget.

With the revelation that White House Director of Political Affairs, Patrick Gaspard, has close ties to Bertha Lewis and to ACORN, Matthew Vadum and Erick Erickson appear to be onto something significant. While the Gaspard matter needs further investigation before we form any hard conclusions, it certainly seems to confirm that President Obama’s ties to a whole series of ACORN-controlled organizations are neither minor nor by any means long-past. In fact, making use of what Erickson and Vadum have discovered about Gaspard, we can trace these links still further.

. . . . During the 2008 election, Obama’s close links to the far-left New Party were revealed and explored (although not by the mainstream press). Yet many seem to have forgotten that the New Party, particularly in Chicago, was dominated by ACORN (and by an ACORN-controlled SEIU union local). During the campaign, I detailed Obama’s New Party ties in two pieces, "Something New Here," and "Life of the New Party." Important evidence of Obama’s pursuit of the New Party endorsement can also be found in the September-October 1995 issue of "New Ground," newsletter of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Obama’s New Party ties matter because they show that his links to ACORN went far beyond shared on-the-ground organizing, legal representation, training, or even funding (although all of those ties existed and were important). By running for office with the New Party, Obama was effectively indicating that he shared ACORN’s radical political goals.

So it’s of interest that in late 1995, just as Obama was seeking New Party endorsement in Chicago, Patrick Gaspard was working as a New Party organizer in New Jersey. (This was reported in "Jersey Man Hopes to Create Third Political Party," NPR, "Morning Edition, " September 28, 1995). Then, in the July 2, 2001 issue of "The Nation," Gaspard and Bertha Lewis jointly published a reply to a June 4 Nation article by Doug Ireland which had been critical of the New York’s Working Families Party (a successor to the New Party, led by New Party co-founder Dan Cantor, and largely controlled by ACORN and the SEIU). In the course of their letter, Gaspard and Lewis describe their extensive joint involvement in Working Families Party activities. The letter is signed: "Bertha Lewis, ACORN, WFP; Patrick Gaspard, SEIU State Council, WFP." This does seem to confirm and extend the new evidence of a close political tie between Patrick Gaspard and ACORN’s Bertha Lewis. . . .

ACORN on Trial

Fox News has this.

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. . . . .

"Acorn Helping Illegal Aliens Get Home Loans"

White House ties to ACORN. Of course, President Obama denied that he knew much at all about ACORN over the weekend.

"Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely," Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn't even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to," he said.

Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group. . . .

One third of people registered by ACORN were rejected by election officials?

In an article generally defending ACORN against the recent five films released on biggovernment.com, there was this interesting fact.

Last year, ACORN was forced to acknowledge that election officials rejected 400,000 of the 1.3 million people the group had tried to register. . . .

The article does have some other interesting facts about problems with the ACORN sting.

75 Democratic Congressmen who voted to keeping Housing funding for ACORN

By a 345 to 75 vote, the House today voted to stop ACORN from getting federal housing funds. Here is the list:

Baldwin
Becerra
Brady (PA)
Brown, Corrine
Butterfield
Capuano
Carson (IN)
Castor (FL)
Cleaver
Clyburn
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (IL)
DeGette
Delahunt
Doyle
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Engel
Fattah
Filner
Fudge
Green, Al
Grijalva
Hinchey
Hirono
Holt
Honda
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson, E. B.
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kucinich
Larsen (WA)
Lee (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Lynch
Markey (MA)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Meeks (NY)
Mollohan
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Nadler (NY)
Neal (MA)
Olver
Pallone
Pascrell
Payne
Polis (CO)
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sánchez, Linda T.
Schakowsky
Scott (GA)
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sherman
Sires
Slaughter
Stark
Thompson (MS)
Towns
Tsongas
Velázquez
Waters
Watson
Waxman
Wexler
Woolsey

Why the media hasn't been covering the ACORN and Van Jones stories

Politico has this discussion in the media on why they haven't been covering the ACORN and Van Jones stories.

On his radio show Tuesday, Scarborough debated the media’s coverage of ACORN and Van Jones with NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd, who said he believed these stories can be a “crutch” for conservatives looking to highlight instances of media bias.

“If the Christian Coalition, in 1995, had a sting operation carried on against it by a liberal group, I guarantee you it would have been front page, New York Times, the next day, “ Scarborough said, “and people like me would have been called out, people saying, ‘how could you ever, ever justify supporting a group that would teach people how to violate the tax code and promote prostitution.’”

Even Jon Stewart gets this:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Audacity of Hos
www.thedailyshow.com
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The Names of the Seven Democrats who voted against preventing ACORN from getting government housing funding

Dick Durbin - IL
Roland Burris - IL
Patrick Leahy - VT
Bernie Sanders - VT
Kristen Gillibrand - NY
Sheldon Whitehouse - RI
Robert Casey - PA

If these guys can't hold up some of the funding going to a group that is giving advice on child prostitution, tax evasion, and other activities, one wonders what they would find sufficiently objectionable. If they were instead calling for an investigation, that would be something valuable, but they are not doing that either.

Van Jones is now unimportant

Of course, "'over $80 million' in stimulus money was going to be under Jones’s control—given his innovative 'green jobs' approach that married civil rights with radical environmentalism."

As to tax dollars going to ACORN being a "Republican Obsession," see here.

New York Times completely ignores ACORN controversy

Every knows how the New York Times didn't cover the Van Jones controversy until the Monday after he resigned and even then the coverage was at best incomplete. As a rough first look, I did a Google News search to check about coverage. Now after five days of ACORN being caught in Baltimore advising people pretending to be engaged in child prostitution/slavery on how to break the law, there is still no coverage. This morning the NY Post even has a piece on ACORN doing this now in NYC. The ACORN problems in DC were revealed on 9/11.

Since these particular stories broke, the NY Times website has a very short AP story about the Census dropping ACORN, but there is NO MENTION about the videos and the advice that ACORN was giving out on breaking the law. What is even worse is that the NY TIMES CUT OUT THE PART OF THE AP ARTICLE THAT DISCUSSED THE ACTUAL BEHAVIOR OF ACORN.

Up to now, the Census Bureau had defended ACORN's involvement, explaining it was one of 80,000 unpaid volunteer groups that the bureau hoped would be able to raise local awareness. But in his letter, Groves said it no longer had confidence that ACORN was effectively managing the partnership.
ACORN fired two employees who were seen on hidden-camera video giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman who pretended to be a prostitute. Fox News Channel broadcast excerpts from the video on Thursday. On the video, a man and woman visiting ACORN's Baltimore office asked about buying a house and how to account on tax forms for the woman's income. An ACORN employee advised the woman to list her occupation as "performance artist."
In a statement, ACORN Maryland board member Margaret Williams said the video was an attempt to smear ACORN, and that undercover teams attempted similar setups in at least three other ACORN offices. Williams said no tax returns were filed and no assistance was provided.

While his numbers are over a longer time period, Glenn Beck has a useful breakdown of coverage here.



See the newest Pew Poll on media bias here.

IBD: "Al Franken — Democrat From Acorn"

IBD has this:

Incumbent Republican Norm Coleman conceded defeat in the mother of all recounts in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race after the state's Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit.
Arguably, his seat may have been lost the day in 2006 when Democrat Mark Ritchie defeated two-term incumbent Republican Mary Kiffmeyer to become Minnesota secretary of state.
It was Ritchie who orchestrated the recount that gave Democratic challenger Franken a lead some six weeks after Coleman appeared to win by 725 votes on Election Day. Ritchie has extensive ties to the Acorn organization now under federal investigation for vote fraud and was endorsed by the community activist group in 2006.
In 2006, the Minnesota Acorn Political Committee endorsed Ritchie and contributed to his campaign. Other contributors to his campaign included George Soros, along with the likes of Deborah Rappaport, a Saul Alinsky disciple who co-founded the Midwest Academy, a radical Acorn clone.
"Mark Ritchie as we all know is a hard-core liberal who was endorsed by Acorn and funded by Acorn," Matthew Vadum, senior editor of CapitolResearch.org, a nonprofit think tank, recently told NewsMax. "It is not surprising that he has a permissive attitude toward the recount process."
Also contributing to Ritchie was James Rucker, the former director of grass-roots mobilization at MoveOn.org and reportedly a co-founder of the Secretary of State Project that played a critical role in this and other elections and will do so in the future.
Ritchie gave partial credit for his 2006 election to the liberal 527 political organization, the stated goal of which is to replace conservative secretaries of state with liberal Democrats.

More ACORN workers to face vote fraud trials

Now in Pennsylvania:

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Four former ACORN workers in western Pennsylvania will face trial on charges that they forged, illegally solicited or illegally filled out voter registration cards before the November election.
That's after a court hearing in Pittsburgh on Friday.

Twenty-year-old Pittsburgh resident Eric Jones waved his preliminary hearing. Three others were held for trial: 23-year-old West Mifflin resident Alexis Givner and two Pittsburgh residents, 21-year-old Ashley Clarke and 28-year-old Mario Grisom.

Prosecutors charged seven ACORN workers in May. One had already been ordered to stand trial and two others had their preliminary hearings postponed.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has also come under scrutiny for registration irregularities in other states.

ACORN and the census

I am not sure what the term "provide" means here. Presumably the individuals provided are not still working for the groups who provided them, but this article raises some interesting questions.

Criminal Charges Against ACORN Raise Concerns About Its Partnership With Census Bureau
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer


Seal of the U.S. Census Bureau
(CNSNews.com) – Criminal charges filed in Nevada against ACORN, a liberal activist group that is under investigation in several other states for alleged voter registration fraud in 2008, have sparked increased concerns about the organization’s partnership agreement with the U.S. Census Bureau to help recruit workers for the 2010 Census.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is among 281 non-profit groups and 111 corporations that have signed partnership agreements with the Census Bureau as of April 13. Those partners will help provide 1.4 million workers to conduct door-to-door operations. (See Partner List)

“The Bureau needs to reconsider ACORN’s involvement as a partner in light of these new charges in Nevada,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told CNSNews.com.

“I previously spoke about ACORN’s involvement in the Census,” said McHenry. “But in light of these charges, I think it makes clear that they should not be part of the partnership program with the Census.” . . . .

ACORN workers charged with voter fraud

The AP has this story here:

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Authorities in western Pennsylvania have accused seven people who worked for the community group ACORN of falsifying voter-registration forms.
The seven have been charged with either forging, illegally soliciting or illegally filling out voter-registration cards in the lead-up to the 2008 election.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. announced the charges at a news conference Thursday.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has come under scrutiny for registration irregularities in other states.

Authorities in Nevada filed charges Monday against ACORN and two former employees on charges they illegally paid canvassers to sign up voters. ACORN denied those accusations.

ACORN Partners with Government in conducting Census

The Washington Times has this:

First it was President Obama trying to break all precedent and run the 2010 census from within the White House. While the administration finally backed down from that politicization of the census, it clearly hasn't learned its lesson. Now it is having ACORN officially "partner" with the Census to help count the number of Americans in the country. It's like Santa trusting a child to tell him how many times he or she has been good in the past year. . . . . .

ACORN to help do US Census

Fox News has this unbelievable story:

The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year's count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States -- currently believed to be more than 306 million people.

A U.S. Census "sell sheet," an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN "play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful," including by "help[ing] recruit census workers." . . .

Obama's "being squirrelly" on ACORN

Given my piece at Fox yesterday, I thought that I would follow it up with this. Jake Tapper writes:

As reports pile up of voter registration fraud connected to ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, a group that advocates for low-income voters – the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has sought to downplay his past ties with the group.

But in their efforts to do, Obama campaign officials found themselves forced last week to correct an erroneous assertion made on the campaign’s “Fight the Smears” webpage that “Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.”

That wasn’t true.

In fact, ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg told the New York Times that Obama conducted two unpaid leadership training sessions for ACORN’s Chicago affiliate in the late 1990s.

The “Fight the Smears” website now asserts, "Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.”

Key word: hired.

Goldberg told the Times that Obama’s work for ACORN was unpaid.

You can see the old version HERE and the new version HERE.

Moreover, Obama also represented ACORN and other groups in the mid 1990s as an attorney suing the state of Illinois to uphold the federal Motor Voter law. The governor and other officials of the State of Illinois were refusing to comply with the law on the ground that it was unconstitutional. . . .

Obama and ACORN

IBD has this very useful article:

In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud.
A young lawyer, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and won. The young lawyer was Barack Obama. Acorn later invited Obama to train its staff.
When Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave Acorn grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.
Acorn has been in the lead in opposing voter ID laws and other efforts to ensure ballot integrity. Acorn has been implicated in voter fraud and bogus registration schemes in Ohio and at least 13 other states. Acorn staffers will presumably be out registering voters again this year.
Obama also opposes voter ID laws. He believes they disenfranchise voters. Last year, Obama put a hold on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. It seems von Spakovsky, as an official in the Justice Department, had supported a Georgia photo ID law. Acorn espouses the leftist view that voter ID laws are racist.
In addition to subverting American democracy to promote a leftist agenda, Acorn's radical agenda amounts to "undisguised authoritarian socialism." wrote Sol Stern in the 2003 City Journal article, "Acorn's Nutty Regime for Cities." . . .

Massive vote fraud by ACORN

How many votes do you think all this adds up to:

CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

"Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up," said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

"The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?' " he said.

Johnson used the same information on all of his registration cards, and officials say they usually catch and toss out duplicate registrations. But the practice sparks fear that some multiple registrants could provide different information and vote more than once by absentee ballot. . . .

UPDATE: Despite this massive evidence of vote fraud, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals set aside a lower court judge's order "that Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner institute the means to verify voter registration information and make it available to Ohio's 88 county election boards."

Obama's Dangerous Pals

The NY Post has this. I had hoped that this was already obvious to everyone, but I guess not.

WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA - and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN. . . .