Yet the face of the new ACORN will essentially remain the same as the old… only the name has changed.

The new group will have the same mission, will be staffed by many of the same employees who worked for ACORN, and will be funded by most of the same donors, said Amy Schur, the former head organizer for California ACORN.

Schur sits on the interim board of directors for the new group, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which was incorporated in California on Monday. ACCE is seeking federal nonprofit status.

~~~

Schur said ACCE plans changes, including outsourcing accounting and forming an advisory council of 22 community leaders, in order to avoid the problems with finances and management that made ACORN vulnerable to conservative attacks.

~~~

Schur said California members were looking for local control and were frustrated by a lack of transparency. In 2008, it was revealed that top ACORN leaders had tried to hide the embezzlement of nearly $1 million from the organization nine years ago by the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke.

~~~

Keith Rohman, president of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission and chairman of ACCE’s advisory council, said the new California group “is an opportunity to take what is best and leave behind what was not so good.”

It might have behooved the LA Times reporter to do a bit more background on the “new ACORN” vs the “old” ACORN before taking their “concerns” at face value. Amy Schur… [now former] head organizer for ACORN California… is the very same face behind the revised and less than convincing defense for ACORN worker, Tresa Kaelke in Sept 2009. Kaelke was, of course, the unwitting star of the California ACORN exposé. Ms. Schur’s PR answer was to suggest Ms. Kaelke was just “messing with” the intrepid duo behind the ACORN video scandals.

The woman, identified on the video as Tresa Kaelke, appears on posted footage to be interested in cooperating the plan. However, California ACORN head organizer Amy Schur said the video is a gross misrepresentation of what actually happened.

“In this video, there are two actors who come into our office and who were messing with us. And our employee was messing with them,” Schur said.

So much for the “new ACORN” entity’s chief…

Keith Rohman’s not alone in his praise for the old group, now masquerading as the new group. The Bay Area’s alternative/progressive blog, Beyond Chron, is celebrating the new entity if, for nothing else, “…dashing the hopes of Fox News and other right-wing media who hoped to weaken grassroots power by de-funding ACORN.” uh… think this has anything to do with money?? duh wuh

Mr. Rohman thinks this will be much better because the “new” ACORN will be putting an advisory council for financial oversight. A council headed, I might add, by Mr. Rohman.

Distinctively absent from the LA Times article is a factoid that Rohman is founder of Public Interest Investigations, Inc out of LA. This firm, self-described as …”a trusted ally of law firms, corporations, and governmental entities seeking to understand the truth”…. was the same firm hired by the families of the Iraqi victims in the Blackwater lawsuit. In light of that lawsuit’s recent dismissal, they may want to ask for a refund.

Now one has to wonder about the incestuous relationship between an investigative firm providing independent (and supposedly neutral) services, and that company’s founder chairing an “advisory council” for the new ACORN.

Another indication this is all about getting the money is the corporation’s SOS filer herself. The new entity’s registration on the California SOS site shows the application was filed by Marina Delgado out of San Diego. Per Ms. Delgado’s LinkedIn profile page, she’s been the ACORN California operations direct since June 2008. Her own job description show her function is all about the money….

- Researching possible funding sources
- Donor relationship management
- Writing major grant applications
- Developing internal fundraising strategies with local offices

Handy filing, since financial support for ACORN has been falling steadily with the three strikes of scandal… embezzlement, voter fraud and the latest videos hitting YouTube. Then, of course, there’s the the loss of the census contract for ACORN, and Congressional defunding.

John Atlas, a New Jersey writer who recently completed a history of ACORN, said that members with similar complaints in other states were considering following California’s lead. He and others said donor support has plummeted.

“The foundations that have been keeping ACORN going, they’ve cut ACORN off at the knees,” said Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College who teaches community organizing.

Last fall, after the House voted to bar ACORN from receiving federal funds, ACORN’s chief executive, Bertha Lewis, blamed the woes on “a multiyear political assault stemming variously from the Bush White House, Fox News and other conservative quarters” and vowed to not let the restrictions cripple her organization.

One has to appreciate the irony of the “blame Bush” factor here. It was, of course, their membership’s and leaders questionable actions that drew fire, and a supermajority Congress with Dem POTUS that “cut” them off “at the knees”.

The “new” ACORN is taking the suggestions of the internal investigation report by Proskauer last month. While the report did not suggest they simply break off, it did suggest shaving down their diverse fingers in the pie into two 501s specializing in their area of expertise… “community organizing and citizen engagement empowerment”, plus related services.

Proskauer suggested this be structured in two 501(c) 3 and 4 entities… a 501(c)3 for charitable, non-profit fundraising and education, and a separate 501(c)4 to support “community organizing and political activity”. Or, more simply translated, a non-profit lobby division that can engage in political campaign activity, (so long as it’s consistent with the organization’s purpose, and is not the organization’s primary activity)

This “internal” investigation funded by ACORN itself came under fire by Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who sits on the committee, penned a scathing indictment of the report for Big Government, labeling it a “whitewash”, and an “audit it bought”.

Specific to the recommendations of the dual 501(c) setup, Rep. Issa said:

Either Mr. Harshbarger is suggesting that ACORN engage in illegal activities by using its 501(c) (4) to campaign for the election of Democratic candidates, or Mr. Harshbarger is expressing his profound ignorance and a lack of professional due diligence because the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (“ACORN”) has never been tax-exempt, but a taxable state-registered corporation filing IRS FORM 1120 for corporate income taxes.

The structure of the “new” ACORN has not been so explicitly detailed in any of these early PR announcements. But it will be curious to follow their sought non-profit status and whether they do indeed provide an arm for political campaign activity.

But from their choice of leadership, and the convenient timing of losing cash left and right, the new ACORN alliance is simply the same wilted rose by another name. And a very clever way to reclaim both the private and federal cash they are losing.

Rep. Darryl Issa:

On the same day that ACORN’s violation of Delaware state lobbying laws was revealed, a liberal, Clinton-appointed activist Judge has ruled to usurp the prerogatives and authority of the United States Congress. This left-wing activist Judge is setting a dangerous precedent that left-wing political organizations plagued by criminal accusations have a constitutional entitlement to taxpayer dollars. The Obama Administration should immediately move to appeal this injunction.

Just remember what Andrew Breitbart said:

Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes?

Breitbart: Oh my goodness there are! Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

The activist judges can stop this trainwreck for only long.

On October 1st, 2009 California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced that an investigation had been opened into ACORN’s activities in California, resulting from undercover videos showing employees seemingly offering to assist the undercover film makers with human smuggling, child prostitution and even tax advice to boot.

Although ACORN has denied any wrongdoing, some of the employees involved were terminated, and ACORN has publicly stated that they would fully cooperate with any investigations that followed.

Interestingly, the local head ACORN organizer in California, David Lagstein was caught on tape earlier this month speaking to an East County Democratic Club.

Mr. Lagstein stated: “…the attorney general is a political animal, but certainly every bit of the communication we have had with them has suggested that the fault will be found with the people that did the video and not the people with ACORN.”

Continuing, Mr. Lagstein stated: “…we are fully cooperating, some of the investigators visited our office this morning and I think they really understand what’s going on.”

Shockingly, we now learn that the ACORN office in National City (San Diego County) engaged in a massive document dump on the evening of October 9th, containing thousands upon thousands of sensitive documents, just days prior to the Attorney General’s visit.

BigGovernment.com has learned that not only did this document dump occur, but the documents in question were irresponsibly and brazenly dumped in a public dumpster, without considering laws and regulations as to how sensitive information should be treated.

And Andrew Breitbart has the evidence. All those documents were retrieved and they include personal information belonging to employees and clients of ACORN…..AND

ACORN’s political agenda is also exposed, with thousands upon thousands of documents revealing the depth of the political machine that is ACORN, and its disturbing ties to not only public employee labor unions but some of the most radical leftist organizations.

~~~

Over the weeks and months ahead, BigGovernment.com will continue to release information from this shocking document dump by ACORN, slowly revealing the ugly truth of ACORN: the fact that their stated mission of helping the poor and downtrodden is just a ruse and a cover for an organization that is highly partisan and highly political, and thus rotten to the core.

They will keep at this until something is done….my hats off to Andrew and his team. They have done a magnificent job of staying focused and letting ACORN hang themselves with their own stupidity.

Breitbart: There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes. There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it’s link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape.

Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes?

Breitbart: Oh my goodness there are! Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

Video at the link….

This is in response to the latest video, this time from the LA office….the same one that the LA Times proclaimed would be vindicated.

Obama’s Election:

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner
Eating a Christmas Pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, What a good boy am I

Little Barack Obama
Cursed by his mama’s drama
Given the Affirmative Action pie
He admired himself and learned to lie
He won the election plum
I can win, no matter how dumb

A Wartime President’s Confusion:

I’m the king of the castle,
Get down you dirty rascal.
I don’t care if there is a war
I’m so busy, and generals are a boor
I’ve won a Nobel Peace Prize
What’s war to me, but excuses and lies

Yankee Doodle

Yankee Doodle came to town
Riding on a pony
He stuck a father in his cap
And called it macaroni

Before the American Revolution, the British troops ridiculed the American colonials for their country ways and dress. The Americans had a habit of wearing a feather in their hats and their hair was often unruly. The British troops were required to keep their hair tied at the back in a small pony tail, this pony tail was referred to as macaroni and thus the British regular considered it far superior to an American’s typical hairstyle. Thus the song was written by British troops to embarrass the colonials with their rustic hairstyle and appearance.

At the Cornwallis surrender, the American band played Yankee Doodle while the British soldiers surrendered their rifles, in an effort to add insult to injury.

Barack Obama came to DC town
Riding a train like a foolish clown
Pretending he was Lincoln
Right then, I stopped believe’n

Ring Around The Rosie

Ring-a-round the rosies
A pocketful of posies
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall down

This was a game devised by children to make light of people dieing of the Black Plague, in the early 17th century, during the time while Shakespeare was putting on his plays in the Globe Theater. People who contracted the disease would fall ill suddenly, the first indication was an appearance of red rings with pustules in the center, the person would then become dizzy and walk in a circle and fall over dead. To combat the disease, people carried posies and ashes, if these failed, death at least came very quickly. The streets of London were littered with so many dead that special wagons were hired to haul away the bodies. Children will be children and the game is still played today, but without the ghoulish knowledge of the past.

Ring Around Rosie

Obama leads us on a fool’s game
Trust in me, George, he was so lame
I’ve got him to lay all the blame
With lemmings and fools I play, tis all the same

It’s ring around the Marxist
And you be racist if you resist
now we hold hands and sing Obama’s creed
And if you want to be rich or have a need
You can now be a Socialist indeed

Ring around the rosie
Ashes, ashes and we all fall down

Queen of Hearts:

The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts
All on a summer’s day;
The knave of Hearts
He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.

Queen of Hearts, Revised:

Our Queen of Hearts
Came to DC to get a head start
Her husband so wily and dull
Can rewrite history in minute detail
Especially if Bill Ayers ain’t in jail
Stand aside, let a woman throw the bull

During consideration of H.R. 3126, legislation to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee voted to pass an amendment offered by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that will make ACORN eligible to play a role in setting regulations for financial institutions.

The Waters amendment adds to the CFPA Oversight Board 5 representatives from the fields of “consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgages” to join Federal banking regulators in advising the Director on the consistency of proposed regulations, and strategies and policies that the Director should undertake to enforce its rules.

By making representatives of ACORN and other consumer activist organizations eligible to serve on the Oversight Board, the amendment creates a potentially enormous government sanctioned conflict of interest. ACORN-type organizations will have an advisory role on regulating the very financial institutions from which they receive millions of dollars annually in direct corporate contributions and benefit from other financial partnerships and arrangements. These are the same organizations that pressured banks to make subprime mortgage loans and thus bear a major responsibility for the collapse of the housing market.

Oh, Maxine and Barney will argue that they didn’t specifically SAY members of ACORN could serve on the board but the fact remains that with this amendment it doesn’t exclude them either. It allows ACORN to jump aboard and give them power they should never have.

Of course this shouldn’t surprise me coming from Maxine or Barney…seeing as how they both directed TARP funds to banks they have financial ties in. Corrupt beyond belief and now they want another corrupt organization to be including in the process of deciding what kind of rules should be in place in the bank industry.

As President Obama met with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, who apparently belong to real news stations who don’t push a point of view, U.S Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) delivered a message to the President of the United States and the White House, Wednesday morning on the Senate floor:

Based upon that experience and my 40 years since then in and out of public life, I want to make what I hope will be taken as a friendly suggestion to President Obama and his White House, and it is this: Don’t create an enemies list.

As I was leaving the White House in 1970, Mr. Harlow was heading out on the campaign plane with Vice President Spiro Agnew, whose job was to vilify Democrats and to help elect Republicans. The Vice President had the help of talented young speechwriters, the late Bill Safire and Pat Buchanan. In Memphis, he called Albert Gore, Sr., the “southern regional chairman of the eastern liberal establishment,” and then the Vice President labeled the increasingly negative news media as “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

These phrases have become part of our political lore. They began playfully enough, in the back and forth of political election combat. But after I had come home to Tennessee, they escalated into something more. They eventually emerged into the Nixon’s enemies list.

In 1971, Chuck Colson, who was then a member of President Nixon’s staff and today is admired for his decades of selfless work in prison reform, presented to John Dean, the White House Counsel, a list of what he Dean called “persons known to be active in their opposition to our administration.” Mr. Dean said he thought the administration should “maximize our incumbency…[or] to put it more bluntly” — and I am using his quotes — “use the available Federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

On Colson’s list of 20 people were CBS correspondent Dan Schorr, Washington Star columnist Mary McGrory, Leonard Woodcock, the head of the United Auto Workers, John Conyers, a Democratic Congressman from Michigan, Edwin Guthman, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, and several prominent businessmen, such as Howard Stein of the Dreyfus Corporation, Arnold Picker, vice president of United Artists. The New York Times and the Washington Post were made out to be enemies of the Republic.

Make no mistake, politics was not such a gentlemanly affair in those days either. After Barry Goldwater won the Presidential nomination in 1964, Daniel Schorr had told CBS viewers that Goldwater had “travel[led] to Germany to join up with the right wing there” and “visit[ed] Hitler’s old stomping ground.” Schorr later corrected that on the air. What was different about Colson and Dean’s effort, though, was the open declaration of war upon anyone who seemed to disagree with administration policies. Colson later expanded his list to include hundreds of people, including Joe Namath, John Lennon, Carol Channing, Gregory Peck, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Congressional Black Caucus, Alabama Governor George Wallace. All this came out during the Watergate hearings. You could see an administration spiraling downwards, and, of course, we all know where that led.

The only reason I mention this is because I have an uneasy feeling only 10 months into this new administration that we are beginning to see the symptoms of this same kind of animus developing in the Obama administration.

According to Politico, the White House plans to “neuter the United States Chamber of Commerce,” an organization with members in almost every major community in America. The chamber had supported the President’s stimulus package and defended some of his early appointments, but has problems with his health care and climate change proposals.

The Department of Health and Human Services imposed a gag order on a large health care company, Humana, that had warned its Medicare Advantage customers that their benefits might be reduced in Democratic health care proposals — a piece of information that is perfectly true. This gag order was lifted only after the Republican leader, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, said he would block any future nominees to the Department until the matter was righted.

The White House communications director recently announced that the administration would treat a major television network, FOX News, as “part of the opposition.” On Sunday, White House officials were all over talk shows urging other news organizations to boycott Fox and not pick up any of its stories. Those stories, for example, would include the video that two amateur filmmakers made of ACORN representatives explaining how to open a brothel. That is a story other media managed to ignore until almost a week after Congress decided to cut ACORN’s funding.

The President himself has not stopped blaming banks and investment houses for the financial meltdown, even as it has become clear that Congress played a huge role, too, by encouraging Americans to borrow money for houses they could not afford. The President was “taking names” of bondholders who resisted the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts. Insurance companies, once allies of the Obama health care proposal, have suddenly become the source of all of its problems because they pointed out — again correctly — that if Congress taxes insurance premiums and restricts coverage to those who are sicker and older, the cost of premiums for millions of Americans is likely to go up instead of down. Because of that insubordination, the President and his allies have threatened to take away the insurance companies’ antitrust exemption.

Even those in Congress have found ourselves in the crosshairs. The assistant Republican leader, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, said to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the stimulus plan wasn’t working. The White House wrote the Governor of Arizona and said: If you don’t want the money, we won’t send it. Senator McCain said this could be perceived as a threat to the people of Arizona.

Senator Bennett of Utah, Senator Collins, Senator Hutchison and I, as well as Democratic Senators Byrd and Feingold, all have questioned the number and power of 18 new White House czars who are not confirmed by the Senate. We have suggested this is a threat to constitutional checks and balances. The White House refused to send anyone to testify at congressional hearings.

Senator Bennett and I found ourselves “called out,” as they say, on the White House blog by the President’s communications director.

Even the President, in his address to Congress on health care, threatened to “call out” Members of Congress who disagree with him.

This behavior is typical of street brawls and political campaign consultants. It is a mistake for the President of the United States and for the White House staff. If the President and his top aides treat people with different views as enemies instead of listening to what they have to say, they are likely to end up with a narrow view and a feeling that the whole world is out to get them. And, as those of us who served in the Nixon administration know, that can get you into a lot of trouble.

This administration is only 10 months old. It is not too late to take a different approach, both at the White House and in Congress. And here is one opportunity: At the beginning of the year, shortly after the President’s inauguration, the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, addressed the National Press Club. He proposed that he and the President work together to make Social Security solvent.

Senator McConnell said he would make sure the President got more support in that effort from Republicans than President George W. Bush got from Democrats when he tried to solve the same problem.

President Obama held a summit on the dangers of runaway costs of entitlements. I was invited and attended. Every expert there said making Social Security solvent is essential to our country’s fiscal stability. There is still time to get that done.

Or on clean energy, Republicans have put forward four ideas — build 100 nuclear plants in 20 years, electrify half our cars and trucks in 20 years, explore offshore for low-carbon natural gas and for oil, and double energy research and development for alternative fuels. The administration agrees with this on electric cars and on research and development. We may not be so far apart on offshore exploration. At his town meeting in New Orleans last week, the President said the United States would be, in his words, “stupid” not to use nuclear power. He is right since nuclear power produces 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity.

So why don’t we work together on this lower cost way to address clean energy and climate change instead of enacting a national energy tax?

On health care, the White House idea of bipartisanship has been akin to that of a marksman at a State fair shooting gallery: hit one target and you win the prize. With such big Democratic majorities, the White House figures all it needs to do is unify the Democrats and pick off one or two Republicans. That strategy may win the prize but lose the country.

Usually on complex issues, the President needs bipartisan support in Congress to reassure and achieve broad and lasting support in the country.

In 1968, I can remember when President Johnson, then with bigger majorities in Congress than President Obama has today, arranged for the civil rights bill to be written in open sessions over several weeks in the office of the Republican leader, Everett Dirksen. Dirksen got some of the credit; Johnson got the legislation he wanted; the country went along with it. Instead of comprehensive health care that raises premiums and increases the debt, why should the White House not work with Republicans step by step to reduce health care costs and then, as we can afford it, reduce the number of Americans who do not have access to health care?

The President and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been courageous — there is no better word for it — in advocating paying teachers more for teaching well and expanding the number of charter schools. These ideas are the Holy Grail for school reform. They are also ideas that are anathema to the labor unions who support the President. President Obama’s advocacy of master teachers and charter schools could be the domestic equivalent of President Nixon going to China. I, among others, admire that advocacy and have been doing all I can to help him.

Having once been there, I can understand how those in the White House feel oppressed by those with whom they disagree; how they feel besieged by some of the media. I hope the current White House occupants will understand that this is nothing new in American politics — all the way back to the days when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson exchanged insults. The only thing new is today there are multiple media outlets reporting and encouraging the insults 24 hours a day.

As any veteran of the Nixon White House can attest, we have been down this road before, and it will not end well. An enemies list only denigrates the Presidency and the Republic itself.

Forty years ago, Bryce Harlow would say to me: Now, Lamar, remember that our job here is to push all the merely important issues out of the White House so the President can deal with a handful of issues that are truly Presidential. Then he would slip off for a private meeting in the Capitol with Democratic leaders who controlled the Congress and usually found a way to enact the President’s proposals.

Most successful leaders have eventually seen the wisdom of Lord Palmerston, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who said:

We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies.

The British writer Edward Dicey was once introduced to President Lincoln as “one of his enemies.” “I did not know I had any enemies,” Lincoln answered. And Dicey later wrote: “I can still feel, as I write, the grip of that great bony hand held out to me in token of friendship.”

In conclusion, here is my point. These are unusually difficult times, with plenty of forces encouraging us to disagree. Let’s not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list. Let’s push the street brawling out of the White House and work together on the truly Presidential issues — creating jobs, reducing health care costs, reducing the debt, creating clean energy.

Breitbart has been brilliant on this. Absolutely brilliant.

Release little pieces at a time. Give ACORN time to dash out and tell some lies, then expose those lies with more video. Then, after waiting for the media frenzy to die down, release some more tapes to stir things back up again.

Remember when ACORN was first exposed and they tried to tell us about the cities where this expose failed? They claimed that those cities included Philly.

Hmmmm….not so much it seems.

Roll the tape:

Courtesy of Breitbart.tv…

But what does our MSM do? They fact check…..FACT CHECK….a Saturday Night Live skit.

Un-freakin-believable.

Did they fact check the Palin skits?

Nope.

Have they fact checked ANY snl skits?

But when they attack their messiah they suddenly decide to fact check a comedy show.

Beck asks for our MSM to at least try to prove him wrong by reporting on these issues, instead we get crickets as they bask in the glow of Obama’s aura.

Also blogging:
Bookworm Room
The Anchoress

The money given to ACORN through one of its front companies–CSI–was not a simple clerical error. The Obama Presidential campaign deliberately tried to hide its relationship to ACORN and funneling almost $1 million dollars to ACORN by using a group with no experience doing the task that it was ostensibly hired to do. The story is pretty simple–it is about Citizen Services Inc., a Nigerian director of CSI living in Minnesota and false campaign financing report.

I first wrote this story last August (see here). We passed this information first to David Brown, a reporter in Pittsburgh, who broke the story publicly in early August. So far the mainstream press has failed to investigate this matter. Here are the key details.

The Obama team gave Citizen Services Inc. more than $800,000 ostensibly for “staging and lighting.” We reported (our own intrepid Eastan MacNeal) the following:

According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) financial disclosure reports filed by the campaign earlier this year, between February 25th and May 17th Obama paid $832,598 to Citizens Services, Inc. (CSI), one of the nearly seventy Not-for-Profit companies registered at the ACORN New Orleans headquarters on 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue [SEE IMAGE OF THE NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS of CSI as well as 20 other businesses.]. CSI now also shares an office with ACORN in Chicago at 209 W. Jackson St., home of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). . . . According to the director (of CSI), and as found in various disclosure reports from other candidates, CSI specializes in field operations, specifically grass roots organizing for get out the vote efforts. The Obama expense reports list the following payments to CSI: $564,342 for Stage, Sound, Lighting, $138,000 for Advance Work, $18,417 for Polling and $98,451 for Travel/Lodging.

Only one itty, bitty problem. CSI had no track record of performing such services. When the Obama team was confronted with this uncomfortable fact they quickly pivoted and claimed, “Oh, we made a labeling mistake, it was just to get out the vote.” And the media and most of the public swallowed that horseshit without pause.

But that was a lie. How do I know? Because I tracked down one of the Directors of CSI, one Mr. Sunday Oladimeji Alabi. According to one of the documents filed with the State of Louisiana the Directors in 2006 were:

Filing 3
Filed Date: 06/01/2006
Filing Number: 36196988
Comments: ANNUAL REPORT (06)

Officers – As Of – 04/20/2007
Name: ALIBI, SUNDAY
DIRECTOR
Contact Type: OFFICER
Address: 1201 E 22ND ST
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55404-2969

Name: DOMINGUEZ, TERESA
DIRECTOR
Contact Type: OFFICER
Address: 621 PROSPECT ST
EL PASO, TX 79902-3745

Name: LEON, ROSALIE
DIRECTOR
Contact Type: OFFICER
Address: 3990 DELTA ST
SAN DIEGO, CA 92113-4206

I searched the internet and found Mr. Alabi’s phone number. Mr. Alabi answered the phone and I introduced myself using my real name. But I did tell a white lie–I said I got his name and number from Bob Shrum at the Democratic National Committee. He hesitated. When I repeated that I got his name and number from the DNC he brightened up and became quite chatty. Using the Obama FEC filing as my guide I told Mr. Alabi that I needed to hire Citizen Services to help my campaign with “Staging, Sound, and Lighting.” Without a moments hesitation Mr. Alabi told me, “we don’t do that.” He went on to identify ACORN as the organization that handles those matters and he told me to contact Marc Seiden (he gave me a cell phone number for Mr. Seiden, which is a District of Columbia cell phone). Are there any legit journalists interested in Mr. Seiden’s phone number? It is still working as I write this.

Note that Mr. Alabi did not take time to correct me and tell me that he and his group only did “get out the vote” work. He directed me to a person he says is affiliated with the ACORN office in Washington. So who is Eric Seiden? What was his role with the Obama campaign? Who did he talk to in order to ensure the “get out the vote” effort was effective.

Why did the Obama team select CSI/ACORN for a critical role in getting out the vote? Who on the Obama team recommended that CSI/ACORN had the requisite expertise? Let’s remember that Obama was in a longshot position of winning the election when they turned to CSI and sent them almost $1 million dollars. Given that Barack Obama and David Axelrod are so damn intelligent (Did you know that Barack is the smartest person ever to be President? I heard that on the radio.) are we to believe that they just made a blind choice completely devoid of any research or back up testimonial? I don’t think so.

If you want to understand why ACORN offices across the country are able to give crafty advice on avoiding taxes, fooling the police and setting up child prostitution businesses then you must first understand why the campaign of Barack Obama gave almost $1 million to an organization with no track record in doing the electioneering work they were hired to do.

Anyone out there willing to go get these answers?

Crossposted from No Quarter

Former employees of the beleaguered community activist group ACORN are planning to file a criiminal complaint in Baltimore against the creators of the series of videos that have spurred outrage against the organization, knowledgable sources have told Investigative Voice.

The filing could come as soon as Friday afternoon, sources said.

The criminal complaint will allege that recordings of the group’s employees giving advice on how to evade taxes and house underage South American sex workers to journalists posing as a pimp and prostitute were obtained illegally.

The criminal complaint is expected to name both James O’Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, along with the owner of the website Breitbart, which initially released the videos.

ACORN is also contemplating a civil suit seeking an injunction aginst O’Keefe and Giles to prevent them from distributing the videos, according to an an email.

Keep going ACORN, your just making yourself look more retarded.

Probably too much to ask for John to run this video during his monologue but oh well….can’t ask for too much when it comes to liberals.

The Radio Patriot:

Glenn Beck just wrapped up what had to be the most compelling radio I’ve heard… and lately, most of his shows have been pretty compelling.

Whew, where to start? Well, how about this: you should make it a point to do two things today: watch his TV show at 5 ET this afternoon on Fox News, and hit the Big Government website an hour earlier at 4 ET.

Here’s what you’ll find – the latest video sting of ACORN. This one in a San Bernardino ACORN office where the employee can’t talk fast enough about the connections they have to politicians (naming them by name) and even an admission of murder.

Scott Baker of Breitbart TV’s The B-Cast was on during Glenn’s final segment, connecting the dots between POTUS advisor Valerie Jarrett and Obama’s past,

Monday evening, the Senate approved a measure sponsored by Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) that would block ACORN from receiving grants for mortgage counseling, Community Development Block Grants, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, and other programs.

Such a provision is not included in the House version of the housing bill, so it will not become law unless House negotiators approve of the change to the bill in conference.

With ACORN under fire for enabling child prostitution, tax cheating, voter registration fraud and embezzlement it’s about time Congress started to bar the group from collecting federal funds. ACORN has recieved $53 million in taxpayer funds. Under the similus bill ACORN is eligible for grants totaling billions of dollars.

What a shame that the U.S. Senate and House could not move forward with the same bipartisan spirit in other areas where strong agreement exists. Instead Democrats continue to try and force their radical plans like health care and cap and tax down our throats!