Covering Up the Link Between Unions and ACORN

After years of battling big labor lawyers, the Bush Administration prevailed in court creating a LM-2 financial disclosure report that union members and researchers have found informative. They created a site called UnionReports.gov, which gives detailed union financial reports and is a primary source for many union members, reporters, columnists, bloggers, and researchers.

Even before U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was sworn in, though, Big Labor insiders like AFL-CIO lawyer and Obama appointee Deborah Greenfield were busily dismantling useful union financial disclosures produced by former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

The National Education Association's ties to ACORN can be found through these reports. In 2008, for example, they gave ACORN $100,000. That money, in case you weren't sure, is demanded by the union from the teachers/members.

The original article can be found here.

Why Obama Won't Support Medical Malpractice Reform

Mark Tapscott writes an editorial yesterday in The Washington Examiner, reviewing the book Architects of Ruin.

The book discusses how the financial crisis was caused by a weakening of common sense, not by deregulation. Banks were pushed to provide loans to people who couldn't afford them so that the numbers of home owners could be pushed up.

I have already recounted the role the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and ACORN had in this mess. Tapscott ties Obama into this as well.

He recalls a long-forgotten class-action lawsuit filed in 1994 by three young trial lawyers, one of whom just happens to be sitting in the Oval Office today as president. The case was Selma S. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank.

Obama and his colleagues claimed in the suit that Citibank had had rejected loan applications by the plaintiffs simply because they were black, or because they lived in predominantly black neighborhoods. In short, the suit was one of thousands filed during the 1990s claiming racial bigotry, not poor credit histories, explained high rejection rates among minorities applying for mortgages.

Tapscott continues:

Whatever you think on that issue, here's what struck me: After four years of haggling, Citibank settled with Buyck, a Chicago woman, out of court. She received $60,000. Obama and the other lawyers on the plaintiff side got $950,000.

Such outcomes help put in perspective why the class-action trial lawyers spend millions of dollars every year lobbying Congress and state governments either to protect the lucrative turf they already have, or to create profitable new lines of litigation.

You can find the editorial here.

ACORN Sues O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart

ACORN has been reeling since several videos of its employees have surfaced, showing all kinds of illegal behavior. It has caused them all kinds of headaches, like getting their federal funding yanked, getting investigated by the Justice Department, getting investigated by different states and more.

The IRS has announced they will no longer allow ACORN to help prepare tax returns for low income people.

Darrell Issa, R-Calif., issued a statement following the announcement, saying "ACORN's failure to institute firewalls between its charitable and political activities have raised significant questions surrounding its management of federal dollars. Cutting ties is the first step, but cannot be the last one."

"Self-investigation is not a sufficient substitute for action by the Congress, which is why I have written to the Chairman of the Oversight and Judiciary Committees to request that they convene immediate hearings into ACORN's activities."

And now, from the No Good Deeds Go Unpunished Department, we find that ACORN is suing James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and Breitbart.com, which published the videos. They are filing it in Maryland, saying two-party consent is required for recording conversations. The multimillion-dollar lawsuit cites "extreme emotional distress" on behalf of two workers who were fired after the video was posted online.

ACORN has named an investigator to look into their practices, but it will only look at practices, not money.

You can see the original article about the latest developments here.

I doubt this will get very far, but I may be wrong. Given Obama's many ties to ACORN, I think pressure will come from on high for the feds to go easy on them.

Obama's Ties to ACORN

Obama likes to play like he barely recognizes the name ACORN or that the controversy even interests him.

When asked Sunday by George Stephanopoulos at ABC News, he said, "You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money." When Stephanopoulos pressed harder, he said, "George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to." (1)

He should be paying attention, though. These are his homies. Consider (2):

• In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary. (3)


• He became a top trainer at Acorn's Chicago conferences. (4)


• In 1995, he became Acorn's attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names. (5)


• In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list).


• In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose overturn was a top Acorn priority. (6)


• In 2007, in a speech to Acorn's leaders prior to their political arm's endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was effusive: "I've been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work." (7)


• The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound, lighting," only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature. (8)

Another exhaustive timeline of Obama and ACORN can be found at World Net Daily.

The House and Senate have both offered amendments to bills to cut off funding from ACORN. What needs to happen is they need to be combined into a single bill and sent to Obama's desk, where he will be forced to sign it or veto it.

And I probably don't need to do this, but I'm going to ask anyway: where is the media on this? Hello, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, and all you other partisan hacks out there.

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1. Stephanopoulos, George (2009, September 20). "Obama on ACORN: 'Not Something I've Followed Closely' Won't Commit to Cut Federal Funds". ABC News.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from ABC News

2. Fund, John (2009, September 21). "Acorn Who?". The Wall Street Journal.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from The Wall Street Journal

3. Sweet, Lynn (2008, October 6). "ACORN/Project Vote voting drive targeted states Obama needs to win". Chicago Sun-Times.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Chicago Sun-Times

4. Malkin, Michelle (2008, June 25). "The ACORN Obama knows". Michelle Malkin.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Michelle Malkin

5. "AP, CNN report that Obama represented ACORN, but not that DOJ was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit" (2008, October 15). Media Matters.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Media Matters

6. Anburajan, Aswini (2008, April 28). "Obama calls voter ID ruling 'wrong'". MSNBC.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from MSNBC

7. Schilling, Chelsea (2009, September 18). "Unearthed! Obama's twisted ACORN roots". WorldNet Daily.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from WorldNet Daily

8. Brown, David (2008, August 28). "Obama to amend report on $800,000 in spending". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Pittsburgh Tribune-Review