Obama uses taxpayer cash to back ACORN: Name changes used to dodge the law

I had an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Times.

It begins:

The Obama administration has showered its allies at ACORN Housing with $729,849 so far this year despite powerful, newly unveiled evidence of corruption and massive accounting irregularities at the longtime affiliate of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

Watchdog group Cause of Action recently pressured NeighborWorks America, a taxpayer-funded federal nonprofit that funneled more than $26.5 million in federal foreclosure-avoidance money to ACORN Housing, to disclose an internal audit furnished to then-Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, late last year.

The audit, provided to Cause of Action last month, found that although ACORN Housing and voter-fraud-prone ACORN are legally separate entities, there were numerous financial transactions and “evidence [of] extensive relationships between both organizations that may undermine claims of an ‘arm’s length relationship’ between them.” ACORN Housing, the audit states, worked closely with ACORN and even subcontracted some of the counseling work to “four ACORN local state chapters.”

It’s still the same old ACORN, the same old venal organization. But none of this seemed to bother the Obama administration when it started cutting new checks to its old community organizing friends earlier this year.

ACORN Housing was incapable of administering the federal funds properly, the audit suggests. “We have determined that [ACORN Housing] lacks the accounting capacity to manage the size and complexity of the [foreclosure-avoidance] program funds,” said the audit, dated Dec. 17, 2010. ACORN Housing had poorly trained staff, extraordinarily sloppy accounting procedures, and violated conflict-of-interest guidelines laid down by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the audit said.

ACORN Housing is the largest affiliate of ACORN, the notorious group brought down by undercover videos showing its employees facilitating child prostitution in 2009. ACORN Housing changed its name a year ago to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) to escape the stigma of being associated with ACORN, the famously corrupt former employer and legal client of President Obama. ACORN’s state chapters have restructured themselves and now go by names such as New York Communities for Change and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, both of which have been heavily involved in organizing and financing the Occupy Wall Street movement. [...]

Union Gangsters: Heather Booth

From yesterday's Front Page Magazine:

Union Gangsters: Heather Booth

By Matthew Vadum

When today’s labor leaders want to hone their gangster skills they call 1960s radical Heather Booth, a mentor to generations of the activist Left.


A disciple of Saul Alinsky, the socialist-feminist Booth co-founded the Chicago-based Midwest Academy, a training institute for community organizers. “Alinsky is to community organizing as Freud is to psychoanalysis,” she says. The Midwest Academy is funded in part by radical left-wing philanthropies such as George Soros’s Open Society Institute, Tides Foundation, and the Woods Fund of Chicago. (Barack Obama and Bill Ayers served together on the Woods Fund board.)


The Midwest Academy claims since 1973 to have “trained more than 30,000 activists in progressive organizations, unions, and faith-based groups” to help advance “the struggle for social, economic, and racial justice.” The school “teaches an organizing philosophy, methods and skills that enable ordinary people to actively participate in the democratic process.”


Early in her organizing career, Booth was more honest when discussing her beliefs. “Truly reaching socialism or feminism will likely take a revolution that is in fact violent, a rupture with the old ways in which the current ruling class and elites are wiped out,” she said in the 1970s.


Booth has been honored for her contributions to the American socialist movement. In 1987 the Chicago branch of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) bestowed the Eugene Debs Award on Booth. The honor is named after the five-time presidential candidate and labor organizer who founded the Socialist Party of America. Other radical labor leaders and community organizers to receive the award are AFSCME Council 31 political director John D. Cameron (2011), SEIU executive vice president Eliseo Medina (2004), and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka (1994).


But Booth long ago embraced using Alinskyite stealth and subterfuge to achieve a socialist transformation of America. She knew that political activists who openly self-identify as socialists are usually doomed to fail. So she decided to associate her views with values such as fair play and “democracy.”


Instead of confronting authorities directly, radicals should embrace incrementalism, she reasoned. They ought to push for issues that matter in people’s daily lives such as health care and urban redevelopment.


The Midwest Academy, which is only one of the training facilities she created, helps organizers con the masses into accepting socialism. The school’s website is littered with a smorgasbord of Alinskyite boilerplate. For example:

Oppressive social structures are maintained in part because authorities masquerade as benevolent, define inequalities as too complex for resolution, and hide real conflicts of interest in a fairy tale of paternal benevolence. An organizer, therefore, seeks out confrontations and conflict; for the organizer understands that only in conflict situations do issues become clear with real interests no longer camouflaged; only in conflict situations does the rhetoric of the powerful lie exposed and the mobilization of a movement become possible.

Prominent Midwest Academy alumni include former SEIU chief Andy Stern and Miles S. Rapport, president of the influential left-wing pressure group Demos. Lesser known radicals such as Carlos Jimenez, an organizer with the labor-backed Jobs with Justice, and Becky Wasserman, a lobbyist at the anti-Israel group J Street, are also alumni.

Occupiers to Terrorize Bargain Shoppers

From Friday's Front Page Magazine:

Occupiers to Terrorize Bargain Shoppers 

By Matthew Vadum

The nihilistic Occupy Wall Street movement is poised to blunder into what may be its greatest tactical mistake to date.

The thugs of the Occupy movement, which serves as a natural magnet for criminals, malingerers, and drifters, are planning to disrupt shopping on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest retail sales day of the year. Black Friday falls on the same day as Buy Nothing Day, which has long been promoted by the anti-capitalist magazine Adbusters.

“The idea is simple, hit the corporations that corrupt and control American politics where it hurts, their profits,” Occupy Black Friday said on its Facebook page. The economically illiterate spinoff group calls Black Friday the “one day where the mega-corporations blatantly dictate our actions,” as if Target and Best Buy drag consumers out of their homes at gunpoint and force them to buy products they don’t want. (Oh wait; that’s Obamacare.)

Protesters across America plan to annoy and harass consumers in a piece of political theater aimed at driving home the point that capitalism and markets are bad.

Activists in Boise, Idaho, plan to send “consumer zombies” to major retailers to silently protest what they deem to be frivolous spending. In Des Moines, Iowa, the plan is to have flash mobs lecture consumers on consumerism. In Eugene, Ore., activists intend to sing reworded Christmas carols reminding Americans how dumb they are for wanting to purchase products to improve their lives.

In Seattle, Wash., and nearby cities Occupy supporters are scheduled to do Big Labor’s bidding by demonstrating at Wal-Mart. The company has long been targeted by unions and groups like ACORN because it has been so successful in resisting unionization.

In a propaganda communiqué, Occupy Seattle declared, “With its long history of mistreating workers and suppliers, its recent announcement of significant cutbacks on employee health care, and its obscene profits, Wal-Mart is a prime example of how the 99% are suffering at the hands of the 1%.”

Of course, logic is perpetually in short supply on the Left. Preventing Americans from buying deep-discounted products for Christmas or mocking them for wanting to give gifts to the ones they love will not endear the movement to the people it seeks to reach.

Then there is the question of whether there will be leftist-initiated violence on Black Friday. It’s anyone guess. As John Nolte has documented Occupy supporters have defecated on police cars, committed rape, assault, arson, and hundreds of other crimes and acts of violence.

Error in Daily Caller article

(Note: The Daily Caller corrected the article the same day. -MV)

A new profile of ACORN founder Wade Rathke in the Daily Caller inaccurately describes a key passage in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (published by WND Books).

Here's the offending paragraph from the Daily Caller:

His book opens with the provocative question, “How many dead Republicans does it take to satisfy the bloodlust of ACORN founder Wade Rathke?” referring to his contention that ACORN leaders planned “to kill delegates and police” at the 2008 Republican national Convention in Minnesota, before a turncoat helped law-enforcement dismantle the plot.

In fact I did not write in my book that ACORN leaders planned to kill delegates and police at the 2008 Republican national convention. The book makes it clear that anarchists Bradley Neil Crowder and David Guy McKay plotted to bomb the Republican convention. Crowder and McKay went to prison for their crimes. I have never claimed that Crowder and McKay were in any way associated with ACORN. (Actually, I wrote about Crowder and McKay in a Daily Caller article published January 13, 2010.)

Rathke had nothing to do with the bomb plot. He did, however, express disgust that a fellow community organizer had foiled the plot by alerting the FBI.

Here is the relevant passage from the book:

How many dead Republicans does it take to satisfy the bloodlust of ACORN founder Wade Rathke?

 We’ll never know, because the FBI thwarted the attack planned by his allies on the 2008 Republican national convention. It’s impossible to determine how many American lives were saved that September day in St. Paul, Minnesota, because Rathke’s progressive comrades-in arms were caught before they could incinerate innocent Americans who disagreed with them politically.

 This attempt by radical left-wing anarchists to kill delegates and police and to shut down the nation’s democratic process didn’t enrage Rathke, chief architect of President Barack Obama’s favorite community organizing group. On the contrary, five months later Rathke wrote a blog post without a single word of criticism for the perpetrators.

 The planned murder and mayhem didn’t interest him at all. What really drove ACORN’s patriarch nuts was that a fellow radical leftist, a member of his own political camp, had dared to work with the government to fight left-wing thuggery. On his Chief Organizer blog, Rathke denounced FBI informant Brandon Darby, formerly a fellow America-hating radical community organizer, for helping to disrupt the attack: “It seemed so, how should I say it, ’60s?”

“One thing to disagree, but it’s a whole different thing to rat on folks, or, even worse, as some now allege, to try and mousetrap people,” Rathke wrote. “Why in the age of Bush did we need to go back to the 60’s and the Darth Vader times again?” Rathke continued, nostalgically gazing into his navel. “I’m not sure exactly what may have happened. Darby is suddenly not talking, but this is all both sketchy and creepy, and I want there to be different rules of engagement in the Age of Obama.” (The entire blog post is available in Appendix C.)

Human life, pain and suffering, the possibility of civil disorder, the sanctity of the American electoral process—all were less important to Rathke than protecting terrorists who shared his vision for America. Rathke must also have been incensed that the attack came so soon after the Democrats’ national convention, which had highlighted community organizers and what they do to the communities they target. And it must have made his blood boil that the terrorist attack failed at a Republican convention whose star attractions subjected his chosen profession to pitiless ridicule.

I trust the Daily Caller will promptly correct the error.

Vadum on Fox Business at 10 p.m. Eastern tonight

I'll be on Fox Business tonight ("Follow the Money" with host Eric Bolling) at 10 o'clock Eastern time.

The topic?  Agenda 21, a kooky idea that liberals and environmentalists are enamored of.  To boil it down, it's about so-called smart growth, i.e. pressuring people to live in cities in order to supposedly help the environment, fight global warming, yada yada yada.

* * * * *

Americans need to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.


Buy my book Subversion Inc. at Amazon and in Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million bookstores. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

Ex-Dem Congressman: Voter Fraud Is Commonplace, Voter ID Is The Cure

A new article of mine from Big Government:

Ex-Dem Congressman: Voter Fraud Is Commonplace, Voter ID Is The Cure

By Matthew Vadum

Voter fraud is not a figment of your imagination, says former Congressman Artur Davis (D-Alabama).

The use of absentee ballots makes massive electoral fraud possible, Davis told the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro in a startling interview.  Davis’s comments came months after a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted local NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots.  Sowers received a five-year prison term.

“Most voter fraud doesn’t happen on Election Day,” Davis said.  “Very few folks are going to walk into a polling place and claim they’re somebody they’re not.  It happens with the absentee ballots and counties in my old congressional district.  Sometimes 50 percent of the votes cast in Democratic primaries were absentee ballots.”

“There is no reason that half the vote in a community ought to be absentee ballots when the number is 0.01 percent in most communities in the United States,” he said. “How do you get 50 percent of the Democratic primary electorate being absentee in the natural course of things?  You don’t get that.  That comes about when there’s a strategy of cooking the books at the polls, voting people named Donald Duck and manufacturing ballots.”

Davis can’t understand why those on the left oppose voter ID laws such as the law recently enacted in his home state of Alabama.

Vadum's work now cited in 32 books -- and counting!

I've been keeping a running tab of the books that reference my work and/or quote me.

Note that authors on the left, such as Arianna Huffington and Center for American Progress visiting fellow Shirley Sagawa, have given my work a vote of confidence by relying on it. And this is just a list of books that reference my work. :)

Here is the list as of November 19, 2011:

* asterisk indicates New York Times bestseller

In reverse chronological order:

32) Masters of Audacity and Deceit, by William E. Been, Tate Publishing, 2011, 343n522, 343n524-6, 344n527, 345n544, 353n672

31) Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America - and How to Stop Him, by Phil Kerpen, BenBella Books, 2011, 112

30) The Compromising of America: An American Tragedy, by Richard McKenzie Neal, AuthorHouse, 2011, 249

29) Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America, by Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, Threshold Editions, 2011, page citation unknown

28) The New Reagan Revolution: How Ronald Reagan's Principles Can Restore America's Greatness Today, by Michael Reagan with Jim Denney, Thomas Dunne Books, 2011, 340n17

27) Death by Liberalism: The Fatal Outcome of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies, by J.R. Dunn, Harper, 2011, 289

26) Breaking the System: The Obama Team’s Strategy for Changing America, by David Horowitz and Liz Blaine, David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2010, 24n51

25) The Marxist Goliath Among Us: The David We Need To Be, by Ronald J. Lawrence, Xulon Press, 2010, 316

*24) Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Destroying the American Dream, by Arianna Huffington, Crown, 2010, 259n141

23) Global Governance, Poverty and Inequality, by Rorden Wilkinson and Jennifer Clapp (editors), Routledge, 2010, 228, 233

22) Dissed Trust: America's Crisis of Truth, Faith, and Freedom, by William DeMersseman, WestBow Press, 2010, 58n192-3

21) Wake Up, America! We're Headed in the Wrong Direction, by Suzanne Vergotte, iUniverse.com, 2010, 17

20) Citizen-in-Chief: The Second Lives of the American Presidents, by Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss, Harper Paperbacks, reprint edition, 2010, 359n282

19) The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America, by Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer, Threshold Editions, 2010, 359n21-2

18) The American Way to Change: How National Service and Volunteers Are Transforming America, by Shirley Sagawa, Jossey-Bass, 2010, 195n22

*17) To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine, by Newt Gingrich and Joe DeSantis, Regnery Press, 2010, 113 (and 2011 revised updated edition in paperback,131)

*16) The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists, by Aaron Klein with Brenda J. Elliott, WND Books, 2010, 144, 146, 201, 303n78, 304n85, 313n36 and 38, 339

15) Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America, by Christopher C. Horner, Regnery Press, 2010, 224, 366n67, 370n36

14) The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care), by Rob Witwer and Adam Schrager, Speaker's Corner, 2010, xxv, 178, 180, 226

*13) Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack, by Marc Thiessen, Regnery Press, 2010, 250, 388 [250 recites research MV conducted]

12) I Can’t Believe You Said That!, by Fred Gielow, Accuracy In Media, 2009, 45

11) Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy And How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them, by Peter Schweizer, Harper, 2009, 192n42, 198n47

*10) Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, by Michelle Malkin, Regnery Press, first edition, 2009, 242, 292, 355n36, 356n48 (and 2010 reprint edition in paperback, 272, 280, 282, 334, 410n36, 412n55)

9) The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chávez and the War Against America, by Douglas E. Schoen and Michael Rowan, Free Press, 2009, 213n10

8) Stealing Elections, by John Fund, Encounter Books, 2008, second edition, 220n60 (references Foundation Watch, June 2008, of which MV is co-author)

7) Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, the Global New Left, and Radical Islam, by Robert Chandler, Regnery Press, 2008, 580n88, 585n89

6) The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama's War on American Values, by Brad O'Leary, WND Books, 2008, 200, 226n25

*5) The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate, by David Freddoso, Regnery Publishing, 2008, 266n52 and 57, 267n90

4) 100 Richest People in the World: Illustrated history of their life and wealth, by MobileReference, 2007, page citation unknown

3) Zoning and Planning Law Handbook, edited by Patricia E. Salkin, Clark Boardman Co., 2006, 613n1

2) Eminent Domain Use and Abuse: Kelo in Context, edited by Dwight H. Merriam and Mary Massaron Ross, American Bar Association, Section of State and Local Government Law, 2006, 45n27

1) The Money Making Guide to Bonds: Straightforward Strategies for Picking the Right Bonds and Bond Funds, by Hildy Richelson and Stan Richelson, Bloomberg Press, 2002, 261n5

Union-Backed Occupiers on the March

From today's Front Page Magazine:

Union-Backed Occupiers on the March

By Matthew Vadum

The sudden eviction of Occupy Wall Street squatters from lower Manhattan hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of organized labor for their increasingly violent anarchist and neo-communist brethren.


The occupiers now say they plan to shut down Wall Street on Nov. 17 and occupy the New York subway. One Occupy Wall Street supporter was captured on video saying radicals plan to “burn New York City to the ground.” The movement that has spread across America is what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke, a former SEIU boss, calls an “anti-banking jihad.”


After New York police unexpectedly swooped down on the occupants of Zuccotti Park early in the morning of Nov. 15, organized labor leaders formally reaffirmed their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement.


“You can draw a direct line from the Wisconsin protests in the winter to Occupy Wall Street to the overwhelming rejection of an anti-union ballot question in Ohio,” said Teamsters president James P. Hoffa. “Occupy Wall Street is bringing new energy to a fight that labor has been engaged in from the beginning: The fight for an economy that works for everybody, not just the 1 percent.”


The Teamsters union “wholly supports and endorses Occupy Wall Street and opposes any effort to unreasonably restrict, contain or stop this lawful protest,” the union’s general executive board said in an official resolution.


Art handlers who belong to the Teamsters joined with occupiers to protest Sotheby’s in New York a few weeks ago. “The Sotheby’s economy is destroying the lives of too many Americans,” said art handler and Teamsters Local 814 member Sim Jones. The auction house, which the Left now considers to be a playground of the decadent so-called 1 percent, had locked out some of the workers as part of a labor dispute.


Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been in the vanguard of the Left’s economic terrorism campaign. SEIU board member Stephen Lerner has been leading an effort to physically intimidate corporate executives in their homes.


Not surprisingly, SEIU is still a gung-ho supporter of the occupiers. After Zuccotti Park was cleared, president Mary Kay Henry regurgitated the Left’s talking points. Henry praised what she called the “brave students, unemployed Americans, families and others” participating in the various occupations that have spread to scores of large U.S. cities.


On Nov. 17 SEIU members plan to march “arm in arm with unemployed workers, community members, allied groups and Occupy protesters in support of a great American idea: our nation and our economy should work for everyone, not just the richest 1%.”


New protests will help promote Big Labor’s agenda. SEIU plans to join “a National Day of Action for the 99% protesting the failure of politicians in Congress to pass a jobs bill that would have put people back to work fixing thousands of bridges, roads and schools.”

Houston Chronicle sends no one to my speech, attacks me anyway

I spoke about my book Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, at two events sponsored by King Street Patriots in Houston, Texas, yesterday.

The local paper, the Houston Chronicle, sent no one to cover either event.

Yet lazy Chronicle writer Geoff Berg trashed me anyway. Apparently, having a clue what you're writing about isn't too important to the Chronicle.

It's always instructive to watch the dinosaur media at work.

Vadum to speak in Houston on November 14

I'll be speaking about my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books), at two events in Houston, Texas, this Monday, November 14.

Both events are sponsored by King Street Patriots.

Details:

"Subversion Inc." author Matthew Vadum appears at a King Street Patriots luncheon in person to discuss his new book about ACORN and President Obama. Tickets may be purchased through King Street Patriots.

When: Monday, November 14, 2011, 11:30 AM

Where: Maggiano's Little Italy, 2019 Post Oak Blvd., Houston, Texas, United States 77056-4401

KING STREET LIVE! "Subversion Inc." author Matthew Vadum appears in person to discuss his new book about ACORN and President Obama. For more details visit the website of King Street Patriots.

When: Monday, November 14, 2011, 7:00 PM

Where: King St. Patriots, 7232 Wynnwood Lane, Houston, Texas, United States 77008

* * * * *

Americans need to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.

Buy my book Subversion Inc. at Amazon and in Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million bookstores. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

Union Gangsters: Leo Gerard

From yesterday's Front Page Magazine:

Union Gangsters: Leo Gerard

By Matthew Vadum

The United Steelworkers (USW) Marxist president Leo Gerard believes if Big Labor can’t get what it wants through the ballot box it’s time to start cracking skulls.

The Canadian-born Gerard loves a brawl. In 1999 he helped the violent anarchists protesting in Seattle block access to the World Trade Organization meetings. USW sent 1,400 goons to shut the talks down. Gerard’s agitation helped to push Algoma Steel of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, into bankruptcy in the 1990s.


USW president since 2001, Gerard wholeheartedly supports the labor-backed Occupy Wall Street movement – and wants it to become even more violent.


“You’re damn right Wall Street occupiers speak for us,” he recently told left-wing radio host Ed Schultz. “They do in Pittsburgh, they do in Chicago, they do in Oakland, they do in San Francisco, they do all across the country. And I think what we need is, we need more militancy.”


But occupying cities isn’t enough in the view of this man who began his career in labor activism at age 11 by handing out leaflets before a strike.


Gerard explained that the Left needs to start a “resistance” movement. “If Wall Street occupation doesn’t get the message, I think we’ve got to start blocking bridges and doing that kind of stuff,” he said.


“And no wonder people are occupying. We ought to be doing more than occupying parks. We ought to start occupying bridges. We ought to start occupying the banks, places themselves.”


Gerard is a member of the AFL-CIO’s executive committee and chairman of its public policy committee.


He takes pride in the fact that the New York Times called him the “No. 1 scourge of free traders.” No wonder: A few days after Gerard visited President George W. Bush’s cabinet in 2001 the Bush administration slapped tariffs on imported steel. To help advance the protectionist agenda, President Obama named Gerard to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations.


Like Karl Marx, Gerard has an interest in economics. He had planned to become an economics professor before taking a job in the labor movement. But interest doesn’t imply aptitude, and like Marx, he apparently has little understanding of economics.

Issa Demands ACORN Fraud Probe Over OWS

From today's Front Page Magazine:

Issa Demands ACORN Fraud Probe Over OWS

By Matthew Vadum

The House of Representatives’ top investigator has asked a federal prosecutor to look into fraudulent fundraising practices that ACORN’s New York front group allegedly used to raise money for Occupy Wall Street.


House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wants to know if New York Communities for Change (NYCC) “engaged in fraud through its participation in the Occupy Wall Street protests.” (Front Page Magazine reported a month ago that NYCC was raising money for Occupy Wall Street.)


In a letter Monday Issa asked Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch to initiate an investigation into claims that NYCC may have “solicited donations from union members under false pretenses and misappropriated those funds to support the protesters.”


NYCC staffers reportedly collected money door-to-door for the group’s campaign to test schools for dangerous toxins and then commingled those funds with cash raised for a teachers union and to support Occupy Wall Street. One NYCC source was quoted saying money raised to help schools “isn’t going to the campaign … it’s just going to the protests, and that’s just so terrible.”


To cover up the funding funny business, NYCC executive director Jon Kest has reportedly threatened and fired employees, destroyed documentary evidence, ordered staffers not to speak to the media, and ordered the installation of surveillance cameras and recording devices at NYCC headquarters in Brooklyn.


NYCC is also reportedly destroying items that reference ACORN in an effort to cover up NYCC’s intimate working relationship with the ACORN network. Kest is a longtime ACORN operative. So is his brother Steve who was executive director for the national ACORN organization.


Staten Island congressman Michael G. Grimm (R-N.Y.) supports Issa’s call for a probe.


“It is no surprise to hear that an ACORN-affiliated group may be connected to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Their track record of fraud and links to deceitful activity demand that these allegations be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” Grimm said.

ACORN Front Group Destroys Evidence of OWS Ties

From today's Front Page Magazine:

ACORN Front Group Destroys Evidence of OWS Ties

By Matthew Vadum

Even more convincing evidence linking the ACORN network to Occupy Wall Street has emerged. The protests, which have spread to dozens of other large U.S. cities, are part of what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke calls an “anti-banking jihad.”


After I reported a month ago that ACORN front group New York Communities for Change (NYCC) was raising money for Occupy Wall Street, NYCC is in turmoil.


FoxNews.com is reporting that NYCC executive director Jon Kest, a longtime ACORN activist and brother of former ACORN executive director Steve Kest, is in panic mode. “They’re doing serious damage control right now,” said a source inside NYCC.


Instead of responding to allegations, NYCC is spending its time demonizing Fox News. According to NYCC board member Jean Sassine the group is blameless:

New York Communities for Change participates in protests, direct action, social activism and campaigns that promote social and economic justice. We see FOX as the enemy to those efforts. For the record, this is consistent with Fox attacks on Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, George Soros, Citizen Action, Planned Parenthood and all those who stand for social justice. Once again, FOX entertainment poses as FOX News. Once again, FOX makes a series of false, unsubstantiated claims and accusations which have no basis in fact. Once again, through a series of sources FOX structures a story which is nothing but a series of lies.

Lying in order to misdirect its adversaries has long been ACORN’s public relations strategy. All throughout the pimp and prostitute video saga in 2009 ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis told blatant falsehoods about the unethical behavior of ACORN employees. The leaders of ACORN and its successor groups know they can lie and cover up because the mainstream media will never call them to account.


Meanwhile, Kest has threatened and fired employees, destroyed documents, ordered staffers not to speak to the media, and is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its headquarters in Brooklyn.


NYCC’s draconian crackdown on its own workers has a precedent: ACORN had a lousy employee relations track record too. It habitually stiffed workers, told workers to commit voter registration fraud, busted attempts to unionize the group, asked to be exempted from paying the minimum wage, and sent women to canvass alone at night in bad neighborhoods, as I documented in my new book, Subversion Inc.


NYCC officials “reminded us that we can get fired, sued, arrested for talking to the press,” said an NYCC insider.

Occupy Wall Street and Soros’ Fingerprints

From yesterday's Front Page Magazine:

Occupy Wall Street and Soros’ Fingerprints

By Matthew Vadum

The fingerprints of the preeminent funder of the activist Left today, George Soros, are all over the anti-American “Occupy Wall Street” movement.


The seventh-wealthiest person in America (net worth: $22 billion), Soros has publicly embraced Occupy Wall Street and financially supports a left-wing group that is funneling money to the movement.


As I note in my new book Subversion Inc., this Communist sympathizer co-founded the ultra-secretive Democracy Alliance, a billionaires’ club that wants to radically transform America. He has said that European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now” and favors American decline. Soros, a currency manipulator with an insider trading conviction, praises Red China effusively, saying the totalitarian nation has “a better functioning government than the United States.”


The nonprofit organization that has taken Soros’s money is the Alliance for Global Justice. It is managing donations benefiting the anarchists, socialists, communists, empty-headed Naomi Klein followers, and hippies now occupying Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. As of Nov. 2, the Alliance reported $206,000 in donations earmarked for Occupy Wall Street. The Wall Street Journal estimates Occupy Wall Street has taken in a grand total of $500,000 so far but that doesn’t appear to take into account non-monetary donations such as food, power generators, clothing, shoes, camping gear, and sleeping bags.


Alliance for Global Justice is a “fiscal sponsor” which means that it serves as a financial clearinghouse for causes that haven’t incorporated themselves as nonprofit organizations. Donors write a check to the Alliance and are then able to deduct the donations from their income tax. Fiscal sponsors take a percentage of donations as administrative fees and then pass on the rest to the cause favored by the donor.


Alliance for Global Justice has accepted grants from Soros’s charity, the Open Society Institute ($100,000 since 2004) and from the radical Tides Foundation ($60,000 since 2004) which allows high-profile donors to give secretly to radical causes.


A hotbed of anti-American activity, the Alliance takes money from the most extreme left-wing philanthropies operating in America today. The Alliance has accepted grants from the (pro-Fidel Castro) Arca Foundation ($185,000 since 2001), General Service Foundation ($165,000 since 2001), and Foundation for Deep Ecology ($30,000 since 2000), a group of environmental fundamentalists who regard human beings as the number one threat to planet earth.


Founded in 1998, the Alliance has a long history of anti-American activism. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Alliance and its president Katherine Hoyt are longtime supporters of the Sandinista (Communist) movement in Nicaragua and the Zapatistas, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement in Mexico.
The Alliance also provides funds for the antiwar group World Can’t Wait (a spinoff of the Revolutionary Communist Party), and Courage to Resist, which encourages U.S. soldiers to desert and supports accused traitor Bradley Manning of WikiLeaks infamy.  The Alliance has funded anti-Israel groups including Israeli Anarchists Against the War and Bil’in Center for Joint Struggle.


Soros money provided to the Tides network of philanthropies may also have found its way to Occupy Wall Street.

Union Gangsters: Jimmy Hoffa Jr.

From today's Front Page Magazine:

Union Gangsters: Jimmy Hoffa Jr.

By Matthew Vadum

Few union gangsters have the exquisitely barbaric pedigree of International Brotherhood of Teamsters president James P. Hoffa.


And few labor unions can match the Teamsters, the million-plus member union of truckers and blue-collar workers, for its legendary connections to organized crime, corruption, and violence. For decades the word Teamster was essentially a synonym for gangster.


Hoffa is the son of James R. Hoffa, the relentlessly corrupt, larger-than-life Teamsters president who worked closely with figures from the crime underworld. In July 1975 the elder Hoffa disappeared mysteriously outside a suburban Detroit restaurant at which he was planning to meet with two mobsters. His body has never been found.


Historian Thaddeus Russell likened the elder Hoffa to General George S. Patton. “He exalted bravery and despised frailty, and presented himself as the toughest, strongest, and most ruthless fighter in the union,” Russell wrote. Hoffa also once proudly proclaimed his potential to be “the meanest bastard that God ever created.”


Like his foul-mouthed, publicity-loving father, the younger Hoffa doesn’t mince words.


Like most union leaders, Hoffa blames “Wall Street’s greed, stupidity and fraud” for the nation’s economic problems, ignoring the role that Big Government meddling in the economy played in inflating the mortgage market bubble. He supports Occupy Wall Street and acknowledges that Teamsters “all over the country are participating in Occupy Wall Street events.”


When introducing President Obama at a Labor Day rally this year, Hoffa launched an attack, bellowing, “We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party.”


Well-practiced in the art of Saul Alinsky-style vilification, Hoffa told the crowd, “Let’s take these son [sic] of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.” Not surprisingly, President Obama, who encourages his supporters to find opponents and “argue with them and get in their face,” never distanced himself from Hoffa’s demonization of a large chunk of the U.S. population.