Brother O’s 2011 budget will reward ACORN and other left-wing cronies with up to $3.99 billion in taxpayer money. The funds would be disbursed by state and local governments through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant.

“ACORN gets lots of money from the CDBG program — but it is nearly impossible to track it because HUD doesn’t track all the money” once it reaches local and state governments, said Matthew Vadum, a senior editor at Capital Research Center. Nobody knows how much ACORN affiliates have received over the years in CDBG money, Vadum added.

Members of Congress appear to have forgotten why they banned funding for ACORN and its affiliates last September. Dementia must plague a goodly number of House members for they are unable to recall the charges of embezzlement, voter-registration-fraud, and corruption as revealed in the Breitbart videos showing ACORN employees advising two reporters, disguised as a prostitute and a pimp, on how to set up a child prostitution ring and evade paying taxes.

In December, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon, a Clinton-appointee, resurrected ACORN by ruling that the ban was unconstitutional because Congress singled out the group for punishment that affected its ability to continue to obtain federal funding.

Gershon’s ruling is complete nonsense; congressional grants are a gift, not a right. Neither ACORN nor any activist group is entitled to them. Congress has the right to cancel grant contracts for any reason, as it did in October 2008 when it cut funding for the spy satellite program.

God help America if she doesn’t end this travesty in the mid-term elections.

The Democrats have a plan to get reelected despite sinking poll numbers. It is called universal voter registration.

Have you been wondering why they are pushing so many unpopular bills all at once, as though they didn’t care what the voters wanted? Ruining our health care system, sacrificing our national sovereignty, pandering to terrorists, increasing our energy costs, plunging the nation into hopeless debt, and trampling on individual rights? Have you been wondering why the Democrats are so unconcerned that they lost two governorships in landslide votes in Virginia and New Jersey?

They plan to change the electoral landscape before voters can retaliate. Here’s how, as described by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, speaking at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend this past November:

Transcript:

Democrats were very rattled by the November 3rd election results. What do liberals do when they lose elections? They change the rules. In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration.

What is universal voter registration? It means all of the state laws on elections will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states, “Take everyone on every list of welfare recipients you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders, and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be.”

By the way, there’ll be felon reinfranchisement too. At that point, you have destroyed the integrity of the registration process.

Now they will sell this very cleverly. They will say, “Well, OK, ACORN did have some problems with voter registration. We shouldn’t have these third party rogue groups out there. So let’s put ACORN out of business. Let’s register everybody.”

Now the problem, of course, is there are a lot of duplicates. And there are a lot of people on those rolls who are illegal aliens. It’s not a clean list. They don’t care. So, this is the issue you haven’t heard about. There’s a reason you haven’t heard about it. They don’t want you to hear about it.

The path between the day this bill is introduced and the day it hits the House floor will probably be less than two weeks. Get ready for it. You can stop it. Don’t get me wrong. But this is their stealth bill that is even more sneaky than the health care bill.

From Democrats’ suicide strategy; do they know something we don’t? by Jim Simpson (12/29/09):

Much has been made about how Democrats are committing political suicide with the healthcare bill and all the other onerous legislation they have proposed and/or passed this year. There is no mistaking that these actions are extremely unpopular….

But those who believe in this “Democrat suicide” model implicitly assume next November’s elections will be free and fair….

From Dems positioning to rig November elections? by Allan Erickson (1/04/10):

Can falsified registrations become votes? If the feds push universal voter registration by overriding state elections procedures, you bet, says John Fund of the WSJ….

If you think ACORN voter registration and fraud threaten the integrity of the American electoral process, just wait until Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank get their way.

For many years, John Fund has been warning about Democrat efforts to redesign the electoral process. These ‘reforms’ are sold as ways of improving the process. Fund insists they are designed to manage favorable outcomes for Democrats, going so far as to say last November that the Democrats are working to subvert and corrupt the voter registration process….

We have always held to the tradition that individuals register themselves. This is a built-in system to maintain integrity. Allowing the federal government to jam universal voter registration opens the process to corruption, but that is the purpose.

Democrats know full well they’ll reap millions of votes in the process, once the process is corrupted in this way.

From What the Dems know that we don’t by Jim Simpson (1/4/10):

Many are puzzled that Democrats persist in ramming unpopular and destructive legislation down our collective throats while seemingly unconcerned by their plummeting poll numbers. A widespread belief is that the Democrats are committing political suicide and will be swept from one or both houses of Congress with unprecedented electoral losses next November. But since Democrat politicians rarely do things that will not ultimately benefit themselves, this column asked two weeks ago: “what do they know that we don’t?”

We may have found out. It’s called universal voter registration….

The problems with universal voter registration are numerous and obvious. Many state lists include vast numbers of illegals, including some states which allow illegals to obtain driver’s licenses; because many homeowners have more than one home there will be duplicates; because so many people are on so many separate federal and state government agency lists, there will be duplicates, and because so many lists exist with little or no cross-checking capability these duplicates are likely to go uncorrected. Add to this the fact that Dems hope to extend voting rights to felons and the whole thing begins to look like a nationwide Democrat voter registration drive facilitated by taxpayers….

UPDATE, January 21, 2010: Jim Simpson reports a correction to the remarks made by John Fund last year:

The issue was John Fund’s naming of Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) as pushing universal voter registration legislation along with point man, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Fund said this in a recorded panel discussion at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend last November. I cited Fund’s remarks in an article published in early January. Now there is no dispute that universal voter registration legislation is being contemplated and that Chuck Schumer has been its main instigator, but when Frank subsequently objected to being identified with it, Fund corrected himself that he had meant to say “John Conyers.”

UPDATE, February 3, 2010: U.S. Rep. Barney Frank has posted a press release on his government website specifically denying this story:

…John Fund, a writer for the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, claimed that Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chuck Schumer had hatched a plan to game the election system by registering felons, illegal aliens and others to vote…. Congressman Frank has never worked on any such legislation and in fact heard about it for the first time after the story was launched in the conservative media….

Here is video of Barney Frank speaking about this subject on the floor of the House of Representatives:

ACORN co-founder Wade Rathke discussed the role of ACORN and SEIU in the government takeover of healthcare during a book signing in New Orleans.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have a symbiotic relationship. Rathke called SEIU “one of the pillars of the ACORN family of organizations.”

While serving as ACORN’s Chief Organizer, Rathke created SEIU Locals 100 (Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas) and 880 (Illinois, Indiana and Kansas). After establishing SEIU, Rathke held executive positions in labor unions while working as ACORN’s Chief Organizer.

ACORN whistle-blowers swore SEIU and a coalition of labor unions gave ACORN $1,729,462 for political activities and union organizing in 2008, mixing together taxpayer money and union funding. It would seem that the American taxpayer has been picking up the tab to promote Rathke’s political agenda and advance his unionizing activities.

While governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich signed an executive order allowing collective bargaining, which helped SEIU unionize health-care workers. The mega-union had been Blagojevich’s biggest supporter, donating more than $1.8 million over two campaigns for governor.

Now SEIU is in the process of building an empire to handle America’s healthcare needs, which explains its unrelenting fight for a public option. Obviously, the mega-union envisions greater demand for its services and plans to mine the mother load of new dues-paying members.

The candidacy of Dede Scozzafava has divided the GOP between its Reagan conservatives and the party establishment. 

Leftist progressive Republicans might not raise the eyebrow of your average Snowe-blind Maineiac, but the thought of adding another DIABLO (Democrat In All But Label Only) statist-minded representative to Washington has GOP conservatives and libertarians apoplectic.

Scozzafava is in a three-way race with Democrat candidate Bill Owens and Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman to fill the seat of departing Republican John McHugh in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

Scozzafava, who has been lauded by Newt Gingrich, supports abortion, homosexual marriage, Brother O’s stimulus spending, cap-and-trade, and Card Check; and is endorsed by Markos Moulitsas, founder of The Daily Kos; NYSUT (New York State United Teachers), the largest labor union in New York and affiliate of the National Education Association, and ACORN’s (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s) Working Families Party.

Hoffman, the Reagan conservative in the race, is supported by former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, former vice chairman of the 2008 Republican National Committee Platform Committee, Ken Blackwell, former Majority leader Dick Armey, Minnesota congresswomen Michele Bachmann, former Republican Senator and Republican presidential candidate, Fred Thompson, founder of the Campaign for Working Families, Gary Bauer; the Wall Street Journal and the conservative Club for Growth in Washington, D.C.

Right now Democrat Bill Owens is leading Hoffman Scozzafava, but Hoffman’s poll numbers have been steadily rising and have surpassed Scozzafava, which means that Scozzafava is now just a spoiler and could keep Republicans from holding  the seat that McHugh routinely won by 2-to-1 margins.

Hoffman is running as the Conservative Party’s candidate because New York’s local GOP establishment entered their “smoke-filled room” and chose Scozzafava behind closed doors, bypassing a primary and the party’s grass-roots voters.

Scozzafava’s leftist politics aren’t the only embarrassment for the Republican Party. She called the police on John McCormack, a Weekly Standard blogger, who questioned her about support for Card Check and then used the propagandist media to smear the journalist.

The call has gone out for Scozzafava to withdraw or be dumped from the race. More than a dozen conservative bloggers and organizations have called for her resignation and for the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) and the Republican National Committee (RNC) to withdraw their support and put their resources behind the real Republican in the race.

If Hoffman wins the big one, his campaign will become the template for grassroots conservative campaigns nationwide next year. The special election for New York’s 23rd Congressional District just might be the spark that ignites an internal revolution to regain the soul of the GOP and bring common sense and sanity back to the party of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater.

The Louisiana Attorney General is now saying that $5 Million was embezzled from ACORN while brothers Wade and Dale Rathke kept the organization’s books.  Earlier investigations had revealed that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000 (which were repaid by Rathke and a charitable donor to avoid legal trouble).  Now it appears that the sum was much greater.

Louisiana’s attorney general has broadened the scope of an investigation of ACORN to include a possible embezzlement of $5 million a decade ago within the community organization, five times more than previously reported….

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has been conducting an investigation of ACORN since June. He issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to former ACORN International President Wade Rathke and his brother Dale Rathke, who kept the group’s books. Those subpoenas were focused on possible ACORN violations for non-payment of employee withholding taxes, obstructing justice and violating the Employee Retirement Security Act….

The attorney general had inquired in June into an alleged embezzlement within ACORN that happened 10 years ago. The group last year dealt with an internal dispute and a lawsuit involving accusations that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000. The brother and a donor repaid the money….

“Current high-ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million,” the new subpoena says….

Can we just get this entire organization outlawed already? This isn’t just a few bad apples. The whole bunch is rotten. [From Stop the ACLU Blog.]

Gamaliel is actually a more dangerous group than its corrupt cousin ACORN for it actually embodies the dreaded union of church and state, and, if left unchecked, will emasculate individual liberty in the name of God and sacred community and will sacrifice religious freedom on the advocacy altar of social justice and the greater good.

Brietbart TV has recently unearthed a 2:00 minute video of a Gamaliel International Leadership Assembly “prayer meeting” held December 4, 2008, in Washington, DC, which has created a bit of a stir. 

In the video, people hurriedly enter a room while chanting, “Everybody in! Nobody out!” an apparent reference to universal health care. The group then gathers to offer a scripted prayer for “all of us who face health care without good health care insurance.”

In liturgical fashion, a woman leads a responsive reading, and the group purportedly responds at appropriate intervals “Hear our cry Obama” and “Deliver us Obama.” Whether the respondents clearly say “Obama” or “O God” is open to debate, but what is not debatable are the current and historical ties that Brother O has to the Gamaliel Foundation.

During the 1980s, Chicago served as the intellectual epicenter of Black Nationalism, Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, and Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns, and from 1985 to 1989, at the apex of black radical political thought, Brother O worked as a consultant, trainer, and leadership developer for the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, a group of community organizers trained in the political strategies and leftist principles of radical intellectual Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky’s organization was based in Chicago, and it trained a cadre of community organizers for such groups as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Gamaliel Foundation in the political strategies outlined in Rules for Radicals. To build left-wing political coalitions within inner city neighborhoods and black churches, Alinsky-style organizing specialized in ideological stealth, deception, and camouflage.

Like ACORN, the Gamaliel Foundation is a politically active organization with Marxist goals and differs only in its narrowly-focused outreach for infiltrating local church communities rather than entire neighborhoods. Once infiltrated, the Gamaliel Foundation hijacks the church leadership to combine a Marxist agenda with a smattering of Christian doctrine and push leftist political issues through methods of intimidation and agitation. Gamaliel organizers quietly share the same anti-American liberation theology brought to the limelight through the guttural discharges of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Gamaliel stands at the center of a well-coordinated, well-funded, and complex campaign to take back the debate and move Obamacare forward. Almost thirty denominations including mainstream Episcopal, Presbyterian USA, and United Methodist churches have joined Gamaliel and the Whitehouse to sell Obamacare through a nationwide TV ad with local clergy and lay leaders supporting reform, prayer rallies and in-district meetings, petition drives, and a call-in Webcast that featured Brother O and diverse faith leaders.

Alinsky created partnerships among faith-based community organizations as a means to seize power to realize his utopian dream of equality, justice, and peace. In Chicago, Brother O learned how to use power at the feet of some of the most radical socialists in America and to advance the Alinsky agenda into the highest levels in government. 

Now that America is in the throes of an Alinsky dream, Americans may wish to examine what the Reverend John C. Welch and Gamaliel acolytes say about the man into whose hands the governance of this nation has been placed: 

“He is Gamaliel.  He is African American.  He is one of us.  He is the 44th President of the United States of America!”

ACORN has been exposed as a systemic tax cheat. The corruption is not, as the Obama White House would have you believe, a collection of isolated instances in local offices. No. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, an advocacy group intimately intertwined with the development of Obama’s career, is rotten to the core.

The story broke in the wee hours of this morning at the New York Post. From ACORN: Tax cheat — Group faces huge IRS liens:

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday that her group “absolutely pays its taxes.” Not true: The IRS and Louisiana’s taxmen have imposed nearly $2 million in liens against ACORN for failing to fork over taxes at its New Orleans national headquarters.

The IRS recently filed a $548,000 lien against the group, and Louisiana state tax officials have slapped $334,000 in liens on ACORN since last October.

Evidence that ACORN ignored its tax obligations may be less exciting than its branch offices’ eagerness to help a self-professed pimp break multiple laws, or the voter-registration fraud for which various of its workers have been convicted.

But the tax mess shows that the lawlessness starts at its headquarters. (ACORN actually has three national HQs — in the Big Easy, Washington, DC, and New York City.)….

In addition, the Louisiana State Attorney General is investigating ACORN’s records going back to 1998, amid indications that the group failed to pay its employees’ withholding taxes, or to pay for their Social Security and Medicare benefits. More from the NY Post:

American taxpayers have to struggle to pay their taxes in full and on time. Meanwhile, ACORN routinely has ignored its duty — even as it has continued to collect millions of taxpayer dollars from the government. Since 1989, at least $53 million has flowed from law-abiding taxpayers, via Washington, into the coffers of ACORN and its branches.

Barack Hussein Obama is an icon for ACORN. Its corruption is his corruption, Chicago style. Right now, ACORN is the Democrat Party!

ACORN is deliberately structured as a conglomerate of 361 tax-exempt and non-tax-exempt entities so that their money trails are difficult to trace. They are able to take taxpayer funds intended to provide services for the disadvantaged and launder them to be used for partisan political purposes, such as electing Obama. They have received over $53 million from the taxpayers so far, and were slated to get another $8.5 BILLION of stimulus pork, until a couple of twenty-somethings exposed their true nature.

A group of Democrats who are opposed to the current direction of their party, known as PUMAs (for Party Unity My Ass) have developed a terrific graphic. To see their flow chart showing Obama & Friends connections to ACORN, click on the big nut below:

Not only does the California office offer help setting up a brothel with illegal alien underage girls, murder is mentioned. Words fail me. Enjoy the video.

Sting #1 — Baltimore.

Sting #2 — Washington DC.

Sting #3 — Brooklyn.

Related — Partisan State’s Attorney Looks to Prosecute ACORN Sting Reporters.

An ACORN scandal in Baltimore, then Washington DC, and now New York City, with hints of still more to come. Plan to watch the Glenn Beck Program at 5PM Eastern Time today on FoxNews cable to find out what comes next. Rumor has it that today’s exposé is even worse than those already shown, although it is hard to imagine how that is possible.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has long been plagued by scandal for voter fraud. Despite their dubious reputation, they have received over $53 million in taxpayer funds over the last 15 years, and were slated to get another $8.5 BILLION of stimulus pork from the Obama administration. They have enjoyed protected status since Barack Hussein Obama’s career was inextricably intertwined with ACORN activities.

Two young conservative activists, filmmaker James O’Keefe, 25, and journalism student Hannah Giles, 20, captured clandestine audio/video at multiple urban ACORN offices. Posing as a pimp and a prostitute, they sought help in getting a housing grant to set up a brothel and to prepare tax returns for the illegal income. They created a story that was as egregious as possible, declaring that they were going to import underage girls illegally from El Salvadore to work in the brothel, and planned to use the income to fund a run for Congress by O’Keefe.

Last Thursday, September 10, O’Keefe and Giles broke the story of their Baltimore sting. The next day, Friday, September 11, they released video of another sting in Washington DC. Dismayed by the worsening public perception of ACORN, the US Census Bureau dropped them from participation in the 2010 census. This created a jubilant mood among conservatives, who had seen ACORN’s influence as a way to rig the voting rolls to favor Democrats.

Saturday was completely dominated by the 9/12 March on Washington, and Sunday was devoted to analysis of the previous day’s accomplishments. Also on Sunday, O’Keefe and Giles released another video, this time of a sting in Brooklyn, New York. That was quickly followed on Monday by a Senate vote to block the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) from giving grants to ACORN.

The Baltimore videos are here — The Performing Arts.

The Washington DC videos are here — Can It Get Any Better?

Here are the Brooklyn videos released Sunday. Enjoy.

ACORN NYC Child Prostitution Investigation Part I

ACORN NYC Child Prostitution Investigation Part II

Related: New York Post — ‘Pimp & hooker’ catch B’klyn staff

Free Republic — Obama, ACORN, the (Socialist) New Party and the Working Family Party (an Acorn front group

Instead of filing charges against ACORN employees for criminal violations captured on tape by hidden camera, Baltimore City State’s Attorney is looking to prosecute two investigative reporters for violating Maryland’s wiretap laws in filming the group’s lawbreaking acts.

State’s Attorney Patricia Coats Jessamy, a Brother O supporter and contributor who worked on the Maryland Women for Obama Steering Committee, issued the following statement concerning the criminal acts committed by the Association of Community Organizations For Reform Now (ACORN) employees at its Baltimore office:

“The only information received in reference to this alleged criminal behavior was a YouTube video…. [T]he audio portion could possibly have been obtained in violation of Maryland Law, Annotated Code of Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article §10-402, which requires two party consent.

If it is determined that the audio portion now being heard on YouTube was illegally obtained, it is also illegal under Maryland Law to willfully use or willfully disclose the content of said audio. The penalty for the unlawful interception, disclosure or use of it is a felony punishable up to 5 years.” [emphasis mine]

Jessamy, who has held the office since 1995, is looking to prosecute 20 year-old journalist Hannah Giles and 25-year old film maker James O’Keefe for failing to acquire ACORN’s permission to expose its heinous underbelly to the world. A nonpartisan state’s attorney would be looking to prosecute ACORN as a criminal enterprise under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes.

In the video, O’Keefe and Giles show up on ACORN’s stoop seeking advice for purchasing a house to serve as a brothel. O’Keefe poses as a pimp with plans to run for Congress, and Giles is his prostitute girlfriend who intends to staff their brothel with smuggled teenage girls from El Salvador.

After making their intentions known to the ACORN workers, O’Keefe and Giles are given instructions on how to go about getting a loan to purchase the house, with further advice to list the girls as dependents on their tax returns and to train them to keep quiet about the prostitution activities.

Jessamy seems to be more interested in prosecuting violations of unauthorized taping than in prosecuting “child abuse, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, tax evasion,” and illegal immigration violations that may have been committed by the ACORN workers.

If Jessamy has an obsession with enforcing Maryland’s unauthorized taping law and prosecuting its violators, she fought her compulsion to selectively apply Maryland’s law on at least two occasions in 2006 and in 2000 when WMAR-TV in Baltimore used “undercover journalists with cameras to record people without their knowledge, and won awards for their efforts.”

But that was then, and 2009 is now, so when two young journalists with hidden cameras go undercover to expose a group of lawbreakers that support Brother O’s politics and policies, for Jessamy it’s more a matter of aligning with kindred spirits than with the rule of law.

Jessamy is obviously more interested in protecting fellow travelers and in enforcing the law against those who threaten Brother O’s power and policies than in carrying out her sworn duty and in upholding her oath of office.

If Jessamy presses to file charges down-the-road, will any fair-minded person look on her prosecution as anything but retaliation for uncovering the criminal activities of her president’s favorite group of community organizers? Will fair-minded people regard her authoritative actions as anything other than a tread-lightly warning for anyone who dares to uncover and expose the misdeeds of Brother O’s Obots?

I think not.