The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One's Talking About

At this point, much is being made about the failure of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare.

President Obama himself tacitly admitted as much by calling in what amounts to an emergency rescue squad from Silicon Valley to try and make sense of the dysfunctional website...paid for by the American taxpayers at a staggering cost of over $500 million. The website itself was granted to a company with connections to Obama backer George Soros, CGI Federal in a no bid contract, and the job they did was so amateurish and sloppy that they even opened the government to a lawsuit for violating the licensing agreement of a copyrighted web script used by the site.

The estimated cost to repair the system and get it up and running again may run as high as $2 billion, and it might take months to repair.

Meanwhile, Americans coast to coast are experiencing sticker shock over the huge increases to their existing healthcare policies, and the demographic ObamaCare targeted to pay the freight - largely uninsured healthy young adults - is steering clear as they discover what enrolling in ObamaCare actually entails.

For instance, here’s a typical deal that's being offered:

“One option available only to people under 30 is a so-called catastrophic policy that kicks in after a $6,350 annual deductible. In Monroe County, you can buy that policy on the New York State of Health exchange for as low as $131 a month for single coverage.”

Let's look at the math. They're offering coverage for $1,572.00 per year that only kicks in after you pay $6,350, not a sum the majority of under 30s still paying off student loans have laying around even if they happen to have full time jobs. Any wonder that healthy young adults aren't signing up, and opting to pay the tax instead? And without their participation, ObamaCare is doomed to failure.

And it gets worse. Even if the president's team ever gets the website fixed to allow people to enroll in one of the new exchanges, your insurance could turn out to be worthless. Most HMO and PPO plans today understand that if one of their insured is facing a catastrophic emergency like a car accident or a heart attack where immediate medical treatment is necessary, a locally available 'out of network' doctor or hospital might have to be used at times and they will cover that care. Because ObamaCare does not allow any payment at all to to out of network physicians or hospitals who do not accept ObamaCare, a steadily increasing group, a single medical emergency could end up costing a person with ObamaCare insurance thousands of dollars.

There are significant voices on the right end of the spectrum who are saying that the best policy is simply to allow this debacle to happen. The strategy they're touting assumes that when this happens, both President Obama and the Democrats will be blamed for the colossal and expensive failure and it will all end up collapsing and eventually being repealed anyway.

They're missing two important factors.

First, no federal entitlement has ever been repealed.They just morph into something different in the name of 'reform'.

And that brings us to the second factor, the dirty secret behind ObamaCare - it was always designed to fail.

President Obama and his minions always had the goal of Sovietizing the American health care system by making it single payer and having it controlled solely by the Federal government. ObamaCare was never anything more than a poorly constructed Potemkin village designed to fail so miserably that the American people would demand single payer just to get rid on the unwieldy mess ObamaCare would create.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admitted as much  when he was asked whether Obama Care was merely a step towards single payer answering, “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

Senator Reid's told PBS in his interview that he and other 'progressives' wanted single payer all along, but even with the Democrats having a veto proof majority in 2009, they didn't have the 60 votes needed to push it through.

“We had a real good run at the public option … don’t think we didn’t have a tremendous number of people who wanted a single-payer system,” Reid said.

But in the end, some Democrats weren't willing to go along - Reid named former Senator Joe Lieberman as a prominent obstacle - so they opted for the next best thing...a cumbersome train wreck in the making which, as an added benefit, provided plenty of pork and contracts for well connected donors as well as 'new revenues' the Democrat euphemism for increased taxes.

Not only that, but it provided funding and employment for President Obama's friends at ACORN as ObamaCare 'navigators', regardless of felony convictions and legal resident status.

That's where things stand now. The next target, especially if President Obama's union allies get the waiver they're screaming for will be an all out assault on employer-sponsored health care, with vast increases on co-pays and employee contributions...except, of course if you're lucky enough to work for someone who has a waiver or is subsidized, like members of congress and their staffers.

Repeal of ObamaCare is the only way to avoid this. 'Reform' just adds another facade to an already corrupt and crumbling structure. And repeal is going to involve electing enough members of Congress in 2014 with the spine to insist on repeal and stick to it, as well as holding their feet to the fire to make sure they don't weasel out in classic DC fashion.

And yes, those really are the only choices available.

Frightening ObamaCare Diktat - a Huge HHS Data Base For Federally Funded 'Community Organizers

 

President Obama does have plans for one kind of job creation - a huge army of 'community organizers' working for the Department of Health and Human Services who will assist people in enrolling in ObamaCare, applying for a myriad of federal benefits, and of course registering these recipients of government largess as Democrats.

And they'll be assisted by something the president and HHS chief Kathleen Sebelius are also creating, a huge consolidation of personal information known as the Federal Data Hub.

The new Federal Data Hub is designed to give these new “patient navigators” access to mountains of of personal information compiled by federal agencies, including the IRS, the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, and the Social Security Administration among others.

When you find out more about these "patient navigators" and how they're being hired and trained, it gets even worse.

In May, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were told by HHS that there will be no criminal background checks required for the these new patient navigators. They won’t even be required to have to have high-school diplomas, and at between $20 and $48 per hour, they're going to be some of the best paid dropouts in America.

The fact that convicted felons could be getting their hands on your tax returns, Social Security numbers and every bit of your personal data doesn't concern them.

According to the HHS, all the new navigators will have to do is to take a 20–30 hour online course about how the 1,200-page law works. If you thought things like fraud and identity theft were a problem before, just wait.

Nine U.S. Senators led by Utah's Orrin Hatch wrote to Sebelius, “The standards proposed by your department could result in a convicted felon receiving federal dollars and gaining access to confidential taxpayer information. The same standards allow any individual who has registered with the exchange and completed two days of training to facilitate enrollment, as if the decision to purchase health insurance is similar to the decision of registering to vote.”

Ah, but that's a part of the goal here, to the point that this could almost be called the ACORN employment Act. Just like ACORN, the idea will be to register low information Democrats while discarding Republican registrations, and a number of politicians in Blue States have already begun working to facilitate it. In California, for instance, California’s Democrat Secretary of State Debra Bowen has already designated Covered California, the ObamaCare health exchange as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act. So Covered California will be incorporating voter registration into every transaction it has with consumers...assisted of course by those helpful "patient navigators" .

The secondary goal of this monstrosity ought to be self-evident by now. This Federal Data Hub will destroy any vestige of privacy for millions of Americans, putting all of your personal details in one place within easy reach of thousands of anonymous federal apparatchniks.

And as we've seen with IRS-Gate, the implications are fairly staggering.Need that kidney transplant? Oh, your tax returns show you donated to the wrong people, so you go to the back of the line. Registered Republican? Big GOP donor??? Let's cross reference and flag this file for an audit by our co-workers over at the IRS. Ex-military, got some counseling after a rough divorce? Let's flag this file so he's not allowed to own or buy a gun. Oh here's a registered Democrat who's never donated yet? Let's hit him with an e-mail barrage.

This is one of the parts of ObamaCare Nancy Pelosi famously told us that"we'd have to pass the bill to see what's in it."

Americans by and large have no clue about this. Congress needs to make this a lot more public than it is, scream bloody murder and get this repealed.

Soros Funded Group Forces States To Fund Special Voter Registration Drives For Welfare Recipients

The Takers vs. The Makers indeed. It's what this election is all about.

The left is pulling out all the stops to win this one. Their latest gambit is using lawfare to force states to make special and sustained efforts to register welfare recipients...at taxpayer expense.

The key group involved is the ACORN affiliated Demos foundation funded by George Soros. It still lists President Barack Obama on its masthead as part of its founding board of directors.

What they've done is to find a poster child on welfare in various states who claims they were not offered a voter registration form, per Bill Clinton's 'motor-voter' legislation from the 1990's. Then they've sued, and forced state governments to spend taxpayer dollars to go to extraordinary lengths to register welfare recipients.

As Bill Jacobsen relates, what's happened in Massachusetts is particularly egregious,because the Massachusetts state government is not only actively complying but enthusiastically behind these efforts:

The news broke today that Massachusetts has taken extraordinary efforts in response to a lawsuit by a former ACORN affiliated, Soros-funded group to register 500,000 welfare recipients to vote (who would have thought there were that many people on welfare considering Mass has only 6.5 million residents).

Republicans cried foul, as this was a transparent attempt to register Warren’s base, while no similar efforts were made to register voters who might be more favorably inclined towards Brown.

Rob Eno of Red Mass Group, however, took the story to an entirely new level by discovering that the group in question is run by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter:

Elizabeth Warren’s daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi is leaving nothing to chance in the 2012 election for her mother. Warren Tyagi, the chair of the George Soros funded Demos Foundation, has bankrolled, through Demos, former members of ACORN in their pursuit to have the Commonwealth’s welfare agency perform a voter registration drive. The Boston Herald has the story, although they missed the Warren familial connection….

The article goes on to show that NEU4J ( New England For Justice United) was aided financially in this effort by Warren Tyagi, who runs...wait for it..Demos.

The name demos, by the way is a cynical but entirely accurate inside joke. In Greek, it means 'the mob'.

NEU4J, along with the NAACP New England Area Conference, reached an agreement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on July 5 — just two months after the suit was filed, which means they essentially rolled over and gave NEU4J pretty much whatever they wanted..

The deal requires state officials to mail vote registration forms to the 477,944 welfare recipients who were on the books between June 1, 2011 and May 31, 2012. The mailings will cost the state $275,844.

Massachusetts also agreed to run public service announcements on TV and radio stations from mid-July through mid-October publicizing the registration push. And welfare office waiting rooms, which will soon be equipped with TVs, must make announcements explaining how to register to vote.

The office of Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, who was also named in the suit must take part in three voter outreach activities in communities with a high concentration of welfare recipients.

Let's chew this over for a minute..in a state with a close senate race at hand, the daughter and son-in-law of one of the candidates are in charge of spending tax payer dollars to register her base!

GOP incumbent Scott Brown had it exactly right:

“I want every legal vote to count, but it’s outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another,” Brown said in a statement this morning. “This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and it’s clearly designed to benefit her mother’s political campaign. It means that I’m going to have to work that much harder to get out my pro-jobs, pro-free enterprise message.”

Not only that, but the money and manpower the state of Massachusetts is spending could and should be considered campaign contributions.

Also, as Professor Jacobsen reveals: the claim was not that people were not offered registration forms, but that Mass officials should have take more steps after over 90% of welfare recipients said they already were registered to vote (far above the actual number). The Sec. of State attached to the Answer the steps which already had been taken to assure adherence with the so-called Motor-Voter law. Rather than defend the case, Mass just decided to agree to a mass mailing.

I'll just bet they did.

And it isn't just Massachusetts. So far Demos has sued 9 states, including the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

The cases are still pending in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Louisiana but settlements have been reached in Ohio, Missouri, New Mexico, Indiana and Georgia. Meanwhile, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and Mississippi have all agreed to comply without being sued.

This, of course isn't the Democrat's normal tactic of voter fraud. This is just a way of attempting to maximize their base..at taxpayer expense.

It remains to be seen how successful this will end up being on election day.

Appeals Court Reverses Lower Court, Upholds ACORN Funding Ban

Yes, the ban on government funding for ACORN was reversed today:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued a stay on the December 2009 injunction by Clinton-appointed Judge Nina Gershon that declared the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) funding ban was unconstitutional.

The result of the stay is that the Congressional funding ban will go back into effect, and ACORN will not receive taxpayer dollars while the court reviews the case.

“I applaud the Court of Appeals for immediately addressing the effects of Judge Gershon’s attempt to legislate from the bench,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif), top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “Today’s action immediately restores the congressionally mandated ban on funding ACORN and its affiliates as a result of their criminal conduct and wasting of taxpayer dollars. Congress does have the constitutional right to deny an organization the benefit of taxpayer dollars.”

“With today’s action by the Appeals Court, the Obama Administration must take immediate steps to re-implement the funding ban for ACORN that Congress put in to law,” Issa added. “In recent months, ACORN has undergone a rebranding campaign to disguise itself and its affiliates. As a result, the White House and all federal agencies must be extremely vigilant to ensure that rebranded organizations who have continued to make deals and maintain connections to ACORN don’t receive taxpayer dollars.”

Interesting how this works when ACORN can't go judge shopping.

At any rate, the American taxpayer is no longer funding mortgage fraud and child prostitution...at least for awhile.

Note Rep. Issa's remarks on how ACORN has split into components and is changing its name while still maintaining ties to the original organization. The octopus is going to have to be chased down.But this is still an encouraging beginning.

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Stop Voter Fraud In California

My friend Bookworm has a great post detailing a new ballot initiative designed to try and curb voter fraud in the Golden State:

One of the things the last few elections has revealed is escalating voter fraud in America, fraud of the type that aligns us more closely with a banana republic than with a traditional Western nation. Thus, we know that groups such as ACORN have registered thousands of non-existent people. And because America has traditionally had an honor system at the ballot box (”If you say you’re Minnie Mouse, than I guess you’re Minnie Mouse. Please, go vote.”), little has been done to stem the impact at the ballot of those fraudulently registered voters.

There is now a ballot initiative circulating in California that officially concedes that the honor system no longer works. It will require all California voters to show photo ID at the polling place, and it mandates steps to protect against voter fraud in absentee ballots too. Lastly, as a little extra benefit, it allows an extra 15 days for votes sent in by overseas troops. In other words, the whole ballot is meant to slow down fraud and allow every vote to be counted.

I only heard about this ballot initiative today, but I can assure you that the Democrats will hate it. They’ll waffle on about the fact that poor people just can’t manage to obtain government ID, making this an impossible hurdle between themselves and democratic participation. That this argument is demeaning is obvious. It also makes no sense when one considers that these same people are able to handle the system with some level of skill when it comes to collecting government benefits. (And I speak with solid second hand knowledge about this, since someone close to me lives at that level, as do her friends. Whacked out on perpetual 60s head trips they may be, but they know how to get their welfare checks and food stamps.)

In California of course, ACORN's main fodder for voter fraud are illegal aliens. ACORN's willing allies in this are a number of 'immigrant's rights' groups, several of whom have actually been busted for conspiring to have illegal aliens vote.


If you are a registered California voter who wants this initiative on California’s ballot, go here, print-up the petition you’ll see, sign it, and mail it to:

Vote SAFE
925 University Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95825


Time is of the essence, since all petitions have to be received 131 days before the election. Second, each petition is written so that two people from the same county can sign it. Of those two (or even if there is only one signatory), though, one must not only sign it, but also fill out the “circulator” declaration.

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ACORN Gets Court Win; Taxpayers To Keep Funding Mortgage Fraud, Prostitution

Just as I predicted, Obama's old friends over at ACORN benefited from some nifty judge shopping and have scored an important court win that allows them to continue to be funded in their nefarious activities by your tax dollars:

NEW YORK — The U.S. government's move this fall to cut off funding to ACORN was unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Friday, handing the embattled group a legal victory.

U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon issued the preliminary injunction against the government, saying it's in the public's interest for the organization to continue receiving federal funding.

ACORN claimed in its lawsuit that Congress' decision to cut off its funding was unconstitutional because it punitively targeted an individual organization.

Gershon said in her ruling that ACORN had raised a "fundamental issue of separation of powers. They have been singled out by Congress for punishment that directly and immediately affects their ability to continue to obtain federal funding, in the absence of any judicial, or even administrative, process adjudicating guilt."

Bill Quigley, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of ACORN and two affiliates, said the decision sends a sharp message to Congress that it can't single out an individual or organization without due process.

"It's a resounding victory for ACORN," he said. "I'd be surprised if the government decides to appeal."

So would I. As Andrew Breitbart has repeatedly said, Obama's Justice Department has declined to even go through the motions of investigating ACORN's criminal activities, so of course there's been no judicial process whatsoever.

It was Congress who reacted to the revulsion felt by the American people after the Big Government videos surfaced by passing a bi-partisan bill calling for a block on ACORN's federal funding. That block expired as of December 18th, 2009 and this makes it official.

The legal logic involved in calling this an unconstitutional bill of attainder is about what you'd expect from a reliably leftard Clinton appointee.

A bill of attainder can be loosely defined as legislation seizing property or taking away the civil rights of an entire group based on the actions of individuals belonging to that group.

To follow Judge Gershon's logic, the taxpayer funds given to ACORN somehow constitute their 'property'. And yes, I realize they look at it that way, but I can't exactly see it is something they 'own' legally.

According to Judge Gershon, Congress has no power to exercise its Constitutional mandate to raise and allocate taxpayer funding, and that some sort of judgment of guilt by a court is required before Congress can exercise its major power to pull the plug on taxpayer funding for voter fraud,prostitution, and mortgage fraud as well as all the other wonderful activities ACORN specializes in.

This is roughly the equivalent of Lockheed Martin/Boeing going to court and getting an injunction against the feds to stop them from cutting off funds for the F-22.

The case being filed in Brooklyn is interesting too, since ACORN is headquartered in DC and the Congressional legislation that's been dubbed 'unconstitutional' took place there as well.

However, Brooklyn just happens to be the Congressional district represented by ACORN apologist and ally Jerolld Nadler, as well as the home of ACORN's capo del tutti and CEO Bertha Lewis. It’s also the home base of the so-called Working Families Party, a far Left political party co-founded by ACORN. Nadler by an odd coincidence, runs on the Working Families ticket.

Once you know that Nadler contacted ACORN’s attorney Arthur Z. Schwartz to "discuss the group’s legal strategy" after Congress voted to defund ACORN back in October, it's not too hard to connect the dots.

And I'd be very surprised if the Obama White House wasn't into this neck deep as well. If you look at Zero's new 'austere' budget, guess what - ACORN is slated to possibly receive as much as $4 billion in federal dollars via a congressional slush fund known as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, part of HUD's $48.5 billion fiscal 2011 budget.

Since the budget was prepared in advance of the verdict, could it be, just maybe, that the Obama Administration knew where Judge Gershon was going with this in advance?

It's the Chicago way, know what I mean?

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Cat Called Up For Jury Duty

This is no joke:

Someone is getting called for jury duty...but it's no human.

A family is trying to figure out how their pet cat was summonsed for jury duty.

“I said, Sal, what’s this? You know, I don’t believe it I was shocked,” said Guy Esposito, Sal’s owner.

Sal’s owners, Guy and Anna Esposito, think they may know the source of the mix up: Sal really is a member of the family, so on the last Census form, Anna Esposito listed him under “pets”.

“I just wrote ‘Sal Esposito’, scratched out the ‘dog,’ and wrote, ‘cat,’” said Anna.

Anna filed for Sal’s disqualification of service. However, the jury commissioner was unmoved and denied the request.

Sal’s service date at Suffolk Superior Court{this is in Boston Massachusetts-rm} is set for March 23. Anna said that if the issue isn’t cleared up by then, she will simply have to bring the cat to court.

I bet my dollar to your dime ACORN filled out the census form for them, and the cat was listed as voting for Obama in '08.

ACORN Gets A Reprieve

It's amazing what a little judge shopping will do, if you have the right inside connections:

A federal judge blocked U.S. officials from enforcing a funding ban on Acorn, the beleaguered community organizer.

Congress cut off funding for Acorn -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- in September after Web sites and TV news outlets played secretly recorded videos in which employees of an affiliated organization offered advice on how to set up brothels and avoid paying taxes.

Acorn sued the federal government in November, arguing Congress had violated the Constitution by singling out the group. It says it has fired employees suspected of wrongdoing.

U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon in New York issued a temporary injunction late Friday. Her ruling is expected to stand until the current restrictions on Acorn expire next Friday as part of a temporary spending bill. A permanent ban, the Defund Acorn Act, has passed the House and is pending in the Senate.

Acorn's lawyers argued in part that Congress had violated the Constitution's ban on bills of attainder, legislation that punishes a specific person or group without the rights that courts provide. In making its argument, the Acorn lawyers included quotes from several Republicans accusing Acorn of being a criminal organization that deserved to be punished.

Here's the story behind the story. Judge Gershon is a reliable far Left activist as a quick glance of her decisions will show, appointed by President Clinton in 1996. The trial took place in Brooklyn, which in itself is interesting since ACORN is headquartered in DC and the Congressional legislation that's been dubbed 'unconstitutional' took place there as well.

Brooklyn is the Congressional district represented by ACORN apologist and ally Jerolld Nadler, as well as the home of ACORN's capo del tutti and chief organizer Bertha Lewis. It’s also the home base of the so-called Working Families Party, a far Left political party co-founded by ACORN. And wait for it - Nadler runs on the Working Families ticket and has been ACORN’s most vociferous defender in Congress.

After Congress voted to defund ACORN back in October, Nadler contacted ACORN’s attorney Arthur Z. Schwartz to "discuss the group’s legal strategy."

Anybody want to bet that Nadler didn't tip off Schwartz that Judge Gershon's court was a great place to file the suit and get ACORN's defunding overturned?

Judge Gerson's decision was based on Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution that forbids Bills of Attainder, which can be loosely defined as legislation seizing property or taking away the civil rights of an entire group based on the actions of individuals belonging to that group.

That's kind of odd in itself...

The 'property' issue seems a non-starter, unless you feel like the taxpayer funds given to ACORN somehow constitute their 'property'. And yes, I realize they look at it that way, but I can't exactly see it is something they 'own' legally.

Judge Gershon also seems to feel that Congress has no power to exercise its Constitutional mandate to raise and allocate taxpayer funding, and that some sort of judgment of guilt by a court is required before Congress can exercise its major power to pull the plug on taxpayer funding for pimps, ho's and human trafficking, as well as all the other wonderful activities ACORN specializes in..

This is roughly the equivalent of Lockheed Martin/Boeing going to court and getting an injunction against the feds to stop them from cutting off funds for the F-22!

Like I said, ACORN and their allies picked the right judge.

Note that what Judge Gershon did was to issue an injunction, which simply stops a pending action. But as the article notes, her bogus ruling will likely hold until the temporary restrictions against ACORN expire - especially since the Obama Justice Department is unlikely to appeal anyjudgements favorable to ACORN, since ACORN is even higher on the food chain than the Black Panther Party when it comes to approval, grace and favor in this particular White House.

And given how the defunding bill is currently stuck in the Senate, that will probably never even get to the point where it passes and President Obama has to veto it.

The Dems Rally Around ACORN

Pimps? Thieves? Trafficking in underage illegal aliens? Who cares? Not our Attorney General!:

The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing funds to the group.

The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.

Holder, BTW, is still refusing to conduct a formal investigation of ACORN. Hardly surprising, considering that ACORN is the flipside of the SEIU ( they were both formed by radical activist Wade Rathke), who spent a mere $30 million or so that we know about to get Prez Zero elected.

Needless to say, I'm not the only one who notices this blatant conflict of interest..most transparent administration evah!

Nor is Holder alone here, as California Attorney General Jerry Brown also refuses to investigate ACORn and said they have 'a right to privacy'...even after Andrew Breitbart's people found a huge hoard of documents ACORN tried to dispose of in a dumpster, some of which were actually pertaining to what Ag brown was supposedly investigating... and which ACORN probably told the understanding Brown that they simply couldn't locate!

This isn't the first time Brown has been derelict in his duty to the people of California. He also refused to defend Proposition 8 in court, even though that was his mandated responsibility as Attorney General.

Of course, he's looking for a new job now - a reprise as California's governor.

Personally, the idea of the Obama Administration and other leftards going down with ACORN's sinking ship is not unappealing, but I'd like to think that people like Brown and Holder have a least some semblance of the idea of the justice they swore to uphold.

Cracking ACORN - Breitbart Has A New Video

This one's particularly juicy because it's in Philadelphia..and as part of this, we see Bertha and the other ACORN talking heads spouting off to the dinosaur media about how James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles were 'kicked out' as soon as they mentioned prostitution. In fact, they mentioned prostitution early on, were there thirty two minutes and left with a future appointment to come back.

It also intercuts what the ACORN employee involved told the Soros funded 'Media Matters' with the reality of what actually happened. And let's just say that somebody's lying, and it ain't Okeefe's video camera.

The master stroke is the sting at the end. Breitbart reveals that large parts of the audio are deliberately muted because of ACORN's ongoing lawsuit against Breitbart, Giles and O'Keefe:

**UPDATE 2:24 PM EST** We muted the audio of the ACORN employees on the video released today due to ACORN’s legal attack upon us. We call upon ACORN to state publicly now that it has no objection to the public release of any its employees oral statements to us. If they are interested in the truth, why wouldn’t they do so?

Heh! This is only Part 1...it's like watching a cat playing with a mouse.

BREAKING: La. Att'ny General Says ACORN embezzled $5M

This could be big.

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.{...}

"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.

The subpoena says, "It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal or private funds."

The subpoena requests documents from Citizens Consulting Inc., a financial arm of ACORN, and from various accounting and legal consultants in New Orleans.

The original amount the Rathkes embezzled was only thought to be a paltry $1 million.And you can absolutely bet that it was from public monies, since that's ACORN's primary source of funding.

Stay tuned...

hat tip to Big Government

ACORN Plans to Sue Over Prostitution SCAM

I have to applaud ACORN pulling this...because it has to be the absolutely stupidest thing they could do:

Community activist group ACORN is suing the makers of a hidden-camera video that showed employees of its Baltimore office giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman posing as a prostitute.

The liberal group contends that the audio portion of the video was obtained illegally because Maryland requires two-party consent to create sound recordings.

The two employees seen in the video were fired after it was posted online. The lawsuit says the employees, Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams, suffered "extreme emotional distress."

The multimillion-dollar lawsuit seeks damages from James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, who played the pimp and prostitute in the videos, and from conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart, who posted the videos on his Web site.

There are so many things legally and tactically bogus about this that the only explanation I can imagine for ACORN going this route is sheer hubris.

Congress has already voted to defund them, the IRS, HUD and the census bureau have already cut ties with them and they're the subject of a treasury department investigation. And there are calls in Congress for further investigation of ACORN's practices and maybe even a special prosecutor.

So far, their patron Obama has managed to sit on the legislation and Bertha Wright, ACORN's CEO has been making the rounds saying that this is just a few rogue employees and she plans on doing some housecleaning and her own review.Instead of allowing the story to smother, ACORN is putting more gasoline on the fire.

Legally, this is a swamp for ACORN.For one thing, ACORN was the one who actually made the decision to fire the employees and inflict 'severe emotional distress' on them.There's no legal way that ACORN can be a co-plaintiff here in suing someone else for actions done by ACORN!

Breitbart's lawyers could actually countersue ACORN, claiming that any 'damages' the ACORN employees collect should in fact be paid by ACORN.

Another aspect of this has to do with ACORN as an employer. If they truly were rogue elements and departed from how they were trained, it's going to be very difficult for ACORN to maintain that they were unjustly fired and thus entitled to damages.

Finally, there's the whole basis of the suit itself, that the two ACORN underage prostitution abettors had their privacy rights violated.Except there's a whole carload of precedents showing that this right to privacy only applies when there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, which doesn't apply when dealing with the public because virtually all workplaces define themselves as places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.That's why your local market or bank can't be sued for videotaping its employees and why Eyewitness news types get away with those exposes of auto mechanics, fast food chains and the like.

In addition, ACORN might be targeted in a SLAPP suit. SLAPP stands for a strategic lawsuit against public participation an dhere's the statute directly out of the Maryland State Code:

§ 5-807. SLAPP suits. (a) "SLAPP suit" defined.- In this section, "SLAPP suit" means a strategic lawsuit against public participation. (b) Nature.- A lawsuit is a SLAPP suit if it is: (1) Brought in bad faith against a party who has communicated with a federal, State, or local government body or the public at large to report on, comment on, rule on, challenge, oppose, or in any other way exercise rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or Article 10, Article 13, or Article 40 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights regarding any matter within the authority of a government body; (2) Materially related to the defendant's communication; and (3) Intended to inhibit the exercise of rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or Article 10, Article 13, or Article 40 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. (c) Scope of immunity.- A defendant in a SLAPP suit is not civilly liable for communicating with a federal, State, or local government body or the public at large, if the defendant, without constitutional malice, reports on, comments on, rules on, challenges, opposes, or in any other way exercises rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or Article 10, Article 13, or Article 40 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights regarding any matter within the authority of a government body. (d) Remedies of defendant.- A defendant in an alleged SLAPP suit may move to: (1) Dismiss the alleged SLAPP suit, in which case the court shall hold a hearing on the motion to dismiss as soon as practicable; or (2) Stay all court proceedings until the matter about which the defendant communicated to the government body or the public at large is resolved. (e) Applicability.- This section: (1) Is applicable to SLAPP suits notwithstanding any other law or rule; and

(2) Does not diminish any equitable or legal right or remedy otherwise available to a defendant in a SLAPP suit.

(hat tip, Ace.)

Like I said, I think they're operating out of instinct or sheer hubris,unless they know something I don't know...like the location of a videotape of their own showing the judge they anticipate getting being intimate with a corpse or some livestock.

House Votes To Defund ACORN 345-75

This come right after the Senate's
83-7 vote to block ACORN from receiving federal housing grants.

FTR, here are the Congressmen who voted in favor a graft,corruption and child sex slavery on the taxpayer's dime.None of the names are a surprise to me with the exception of Dennis Kucinich, whom I disagree with on most things but whom I respect as being one of the more honest members of the House:

ACORN's defenders:

Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc.
Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.
Robert Brady D-Pa.
Corrine Brown, D-Fla.
G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C.
Mike Capuano, D-Mass.
Andre Carson, D-Ind.
Betty Castor, D-Fla.
Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.
James Clyburn, D-S.C.
Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y.
Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
Danny Davis, D-Ill.
Diane DeGette, D-Colo.
Bill Delahunt, D-Mass.
Mike Doyle, D-Pa.
Donna Edwards, D-Md.
Keith Ellison, D-Minn.
Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.
Chakka Fattah, D-Pa.
Bob Filner, D-Calif.
Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio
Al Green, D-Tex.
Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.
Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii
Rush Holt, D-N.J.
Mike Honda, D-Calif.
Jesse Jackson, Jr. D-Ill.
Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Tex.
Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Tex.
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich.
Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio
Rick Larsen, D-Wash.
Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
John Lewis, D-Ga.
Stephen Lynch, D-Mass.
Markey, D-Mass.
Betty McCollum, D-Minn.
McDermott, D-Wash.
McGovern, D-Mass.
Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.
Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va.
Gwen Moore, D-Wisc.
Jim Moran, D-Va.
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.
Richard Neal, D-Mass.
John Olver, D-Mass.
Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
Bill Pascrell, D-N.J.
Donald Payne, D-N.J.
Jared Polis, D-Colo.
David Price, D-N.C.
Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.
Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif.
Bobby Rush, D-Ill.
Linda Sánchez, D-Calif.
Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.
David Scott D-Ga.
Bobby Scott, D-Va.
Jose Serrano, D-N.Y.
Brad Sherman, D-Calif.
Albio Sires, D-N.J.
Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.
Pete Stark, D-Calif.
Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y.
Niki Tsongas, D-Mass.
Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y.
Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
Diane Watson, D-Calif.
Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Robert Wexler, D-Fla.
Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

Every one of these charlatans deserve to be voted out of office.

The Latest ACORN Prostitution Sting - San Diego

There's a new video on the ACORN prostitution/sex slave sting coming from the Dynamic Duo, Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe. I saw a short excerpt but wasn't able to link to it but it is supposed to be at Big Government at some point.

In the clip I saw, the ACORN sleaze offers to help them smuggle underage girls over the border...and then solicits Hannah for her 'services'!

ABC, which had earlier dismissed this story as 'noise' finally started reporting on it. Obama spokeshole Robert Gibbs seems to have finally heard about the story:

"Obviously the conduct you see on those tapes is completely unacceptable," Gibbs said, raising the issue of videotapes posted online by BigGovernment.com and aired frequently by Fox News Channel that seem to show ACORN employees advising a faux prostitute and faux pimp on how to skirt housing and tax laws. "The administration takes accountability extremely seriously."

Gibbs said the Census Bureau decided that ACORN could not assist the group in meeting "the bureau's goal of achieving a fair and accurate count in 2010" and that some other agencies are evaluating their relationship with the group. "We constantly evaluate to ensure that any grantee is living up to what has to happen in order to fulfill that grant application."

He pointed out that "previous administrations" had awarded grants to ACORN either through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Yeah, It's All-Bush's-Fault. Any day now I expect it to be made compulsory White House attire for the entire administration, including the president to wear a sign around their necks with those words on it. No sense taking a risk of any of these people forgetting to include those all important lines on every occasion.

Jake Tapper is one of the handful of dinosaur media reporters left who is worth more than a cupful of warm spit, and it must have really burned him to have orders from the ABC brass to to hold off on this story until now.

Meanwhile, over at CNN, ACORN Director Bertha Lewis went to cry on that foul little weasel Wolfie Blitzer's shoulder on his 'Situation Room' show, saying that ACORN should be allowed to 'just fix ourselves':

"I will clean this house. It is being done now. And I -- and here's what I would like. I'll come back in three months and you can look at what we've done."

Apparently she's dropped her threats to sue FOX and the Dynamic Duo.

Uh-huh. Give us three months to let this all blow over so we can go back to doing what we do best...scamming taxpayer dollars out of the government.

And it's not just the government. Only 40% comes from the feds, while 60% comes from corporate shakedowns..like from JP Morgan, who's also now under pressure to turn off ACORN's cash spigot:

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is holding the line on any House cutoff of ACORN funds while Obama has yet to address the matter.

The strategy is delay and deny while they conduct their own internal 'housecleaning ' which will give thewm a chance to hide things. And because if a vote came up in the House now to cut their funds a lot of Democrats would be forced to vote for it, it would likely pass and ACORN's old Community Organizer Obama, would have to sign the bill into law.

Remember Alinksy's rules - freeze the target, personalize it, keep the pressure up.

Jon Stewart Busts ACORN's Chops!!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Audacity of Hos
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Absolutely hilarious!

Bow and a H/T to Ms. Bookworm

Another ACORN Prostitution Sting...San Bernardino, California

James Okeefe and Hannah Giles over at Big Government strike again.And yes, Hannah looks great in that sleazy miniskirt!

I absolutely love what these two courageous journalists pulled off. They're brave beyond belief.

(hat tip, Ace

Two Posts For Your Morning Reading At American Thinker

My latest is up at American Thinker, and by coincidence, so is an excellent piece by my friend and fellow Council member Ms. Bookworm.As a matter of fact, we're right next to each other.

Bookworm's fine piece entitled How much information can the government demand from us? deals with a question that's going to come increasingly to the fore as Barack Obama's unabashedly socialist big government administration starts following its natural inclinations. And being a crackerjack lawyer among her other accomplishments, what she has to say about it bears reading:

I first became aware of this problem in connection with jury questionnaires. I've never been a juror, but I've certainly prepared such questionnaires and I've reviewed those prepared by other council. If you've been on the receiving end of such a questionnaire, it's a true horror. In theory, their purpose is to ask questions closely tailored to the case, so as to screen out true bias. For example, in a murder case, the questionnaire could logically ask whether anyone in the juror's family has been murdered or whether anyone in the family was convicted for murder. A positive answer to either question could hint at a bone-deep bias that might interview with a juror's duty to review the facts impartially.


The problem, though, is that jury questionnaires don't stop there. Each lawyer, fancying himself an amateur psychologist, includes dozens of questions aimed at determining just who you are. The questionnaires ask about your upbringing, your education, your lifestyle, your hobbies, your interests, your religious beliefs, your political beliefs, and on and on.


Nor do you have the choice, as you do in a commercial transaction, to say no to answering these questions. If the questionnaire is in front of you, it means that the judge has already put his imprimatur on the questionnaire. You are required to answer the questions or risk being in contempt of court. In a "heads I win, tails you lose" formulation, there's no benefit to you in answering the questions, but you can go to jail if you refuse to do so. (Although to be honest, I haven't heard of jurors being jailed for contempt. Either, sheep-like, they all answer those intrusive questions or, if a few object, the judge hears the matter in camera and just makes it go away.)


Jury questionnaires are a rather narrow, arcane example of governments demanding that people give them private information. Under the Obama administration, however, two much more serious issues are arising that place the government in a position in which it is demanding deeply private information, and in which the punishment for withholding that information can be severe.


The first situation is Obama's health care plan. We know that, not only will it be unbelievably expensive, it will also destroy private medicine for all but the wealthiest. Because the government will be the largest pot of money, that's where the care will go. And once it's in charge of health care for all Americans, the government will also be in charge of health data for all Americans. It will know if you're sick or well, if you have an "embarrassing" illness, if you're fertile or infertile, if you're vain, if you're stoic or weak, and anything else that used to be between you and your doctor, or between you and the insurance provider of your choice.


Under ObamaCare, you name it an area of physical or mental privacy, and the government will have huge databases with that information. And you can't opt out because there's nowhere else to go. The marketplace is gone. Your choices are bad and worse: Either be treated and give up your privacy, or give up treatment entirely.

She goes on to explore another Obama- fostered tool to invade American's privacy, the upcoming ACORN run census. I urge you to read it all.

My piece, "Masquerade In Iran" expands ideas I've mentioned that will be familiar to memebers of Joshua's Army..that the label of "democratic reform," attached to Mousavi and many of his followers is just a masquerade, and a revolt against Khameinei and Ahmadinejad would just put a new and possibly worse group in power.

It's practically guaranteed to upset people espousing a lot of the conventional views on this subject:

Mousavi is not some democracy-minded reformer. All candidates for elective office in Iran are handpicked and only allowed to run for office by the express permission of the Supreme Council of Guardians and its leader Ayatollah Khamenei. All candidates agree to follow orders. On issues that matter to the West -- Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, threats of genocide aimed at Israel, interference in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for Islamist terrorism and any reasonable compromises with the West on these issues -- the two candidates were virtually the same.

Mousavi is a longtime proponent of Islamist triumphalism and terrorism, a hardliner on Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program and an anti-Semite who has called for Israel to be destroyed. He was a key aide to Ayatollah Khomeini during the Islamic revolution in 1979 and played a part in the decision to overrun our embassy and take American diplomats hostage. As Iran's prime minister between 1981-89, Mousavi was vociferously anti-Western and anti-American. He had a major hand in the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon. His handpicked interior minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashami, was Mousavi's liaison when the Iranian government formed and funded that terrorist group. One of Mohtashami's first major operations was the murder of 240 US Marines in Lebanon. {...}

There is nothing about Mousavi or his supporters that particularly merits being championed by Americans. We simply don't have a dog in this fight. And in any case, Ahmadinejad is in and he will stay in as long as he does what the mullahs tell him to.


If one looks at what actually passes for democracy in the Middle East, it usually consists of one election where tribalism and Islamism always wins. That's been true in the Palestinian territories, in Egypt (where Mubarak had to curtail the vote to stop the Muslim Brotherhood from winning), in Turkey, and everywhere else in the Muslim Middle East that has actually had an election. The exception was in Lebanon -- where Hezbollah was defeated primarily by Christian votes. And Islam still reigns in Iraq, although with some interesting differences I will get to shortly.

Enjoy!

ACORN - Busted For Voter Fraud - Again

My latest is up over at the Examiner.

Do me a favor, click over a few times and read it - they do pay me, you know!

How The Dinosaur Media is Covering Up The ACORN Voter Fraud Story

With Barack Obama's pals at ACORN getting busted across the country for fraudulent registrations, the dino media can't exactly ignore the story..but as Terry Trippany at Newsbusters reveals in his piece showing that ABC News Used Obama Contributor as ‘Expert’ in Defense of ACORN, how they cover it is something else:

"Justin Rood of ABC news came out with a tortured defense of ACORN today with the help of “experts” that claim there is no connection between invalid voter registrations and voter fraud. In order for Rood to make this claim he relies on the testimony of two “experts”, namely Civil Rights attorney David Becker and Lorraine Minnite, a political science professor at Barnard College in New York.

A further examination of these two experts however shows that Rood is downright deceitful in presenting this argument. Lorraine Minnite actually donated $250 to the Obama campaign in March of this year while David Becker is anything but the Republican that he is portrayed as in the article. In fact Mr. Becker is a former director at People for the American Way, a liberal activist group that monitors “right wing organizations” and is currently launching a campaign aimed at Fighting Back Against Right-Wing Smears of ACORN.

Just in case you were unconvinced of the objectivity of Becker’s former group note that they will be launching a full page ad in the the New York Times in defense of ACORN.

We can hardly call these experts objective yet they are the people that ABC News is relying on to gloss over the multi-state voter fraud activities of a group that is intricately tied to Barack Obama.

Read the whole thing...

Supreme Court Rules Against Ohio GOP

It's open season in the Buckeye State when it comes to voter fraud:

The Supreme Court is siding with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.
The justices on Friday overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.

Ohio Republicans contended the information for counties would help prevent fraud. Brunner said the GOP is trying to disenfranchise voters.

Stevens was smart and presented this to the full court rather than trying to runwith the ball himself. Essentially, their decision did not rule on merits but was based on the legal technicality that the Ohio GOP lacks standing (the right to sue)in this particular instance and so was not likely to prevail in a suit to enforce the temporary restraining order given to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals:

The state GOP had complained that the Ohio Secretary of State had violated her duty, under federal election procedures law, to share with county election boards the lists of voters whose names in a voter registration database do not match data in the state’s drivers’ license files. The GOP argued that the secretary of state had put a stop to required efforts to pass along the non-matching data so that local election officials could deal with it. Lack of matches could be the basis for challenges.

The Supreme Court said it was not expressing any opinion on whether the state official had violated any duty under federal law. But, it said, it was not persuaded that the federal law gives a private party — like the state GOP — a right to go to court to enforce those provisions in the Help America Vote Act. (...)

The Supreme Court, acting on the case after the Circuit Justice, Justice John Paul Stevens referred the matter to the full bench, not only granted the secretary of state’s plea to stay the federal judge’s temporary restraining order, but actually vacated it, thus removing any legal obligation spelled out in that order.

Which means Brunner and ACORN have essentially gotten away with this one, and she has no obligation to inform the County voting boards of `discrepancies' in the bogus registrations. As I said before, the Justice department could investigate this after the fact,but the odds on that if Obama wins and appoints his choice for Attorney General are nonexistant.