Alleged Corruption In Obama’s Working Families Party: ‘Inside The DFS Experience’

Recently, Michelle Malkin reported on a scandal brewing in President Obama’s other party, the Working Families Party.

The Working Families Party, an ACORN front group whose ballot line Newt Gingrich-endorsed radical leftist Dede Scozzafava has embraced on multiple occasions, is up to no good again.

And now, Big Government is reporting on the birth of a new website entitled Nutbusterz, devoted to aggregating all of the scandal coverage of the working Families Party.

Nutbusterz will serve serve as a clearinghouse for media coverage of the illegal activities of ACORN. Media reports on ACORN and the New York Working Families Party (WFP) will be updated daily. Candidates and causes that ally themselves with ACORN will be exposed and held to account.

We would like to point all interested parties toward a series of articles which warrant consideration for inclusion at Nutbusterz, written by a local NY publication called City Hall.

This is the kind of coverage lamestream media wishes it still knew how to do.

Some headlines and excerpts include:

CITY HALL SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

There have long been assumptions and rumors of the collaboration between the Working Families Party (WFP) and its favored candidates, but never before has the scope of or intricate processes behind its joint activity been exposed to the degree made possible by an extensive review of public documents and close to 50 interviews with a range of key players conducted by City Hall over the last few days….

…Money transferred to DFS from the WFP and political candidates can be tracked, however, since these all must report their own expenditures. Already during 2009, according to the latest available records showing their finances through mid-July, the WFP has transferred $554,629 (listed as “wages”) and nine campaigns together have transferred $253,855 (listed as “campaign spending”) to DFS, for a total of over $800,000. The money from WFP is out of the general party account, which is funded in part by union contributions totaling to $345,000 so far this year, with the biggest donors being RWDSU, TWU, UFT and CWA. According to WFP executive director Dan Cantor, the WFP paid full payroll taxes on these wages…..

…..“We set it up as a for-profit so that it could make money and then donate the money back, but at the rate we’re going, I’m not sure it ever will,” he said. “We basically want to break even.”

In other words, Cantor said that the WFP, as a non-profit entity, had established a for-profit entity in the hopes of turning money back to the non-profit.

And while he said WFP does not actively encourage its endorsed candidates to use DFS, he ruled out the idea of DFS being hired by candidates who had not been endorsed by the WFP. [MORE]

CFB Declares DFS An Arm Of WFP

“Based on information acquired by the Board to date, it is the Board’s understanding that DFS exists as an arm of the Working Families Party. Both organizations are located in the same space and share employees; DFS was created by Working Families Party staff; and there are no apparent firewalls between them. In light of the close affiliation, the Board presumes that any activity undertaken by the Working Families Party on behalf of campaigns using DFS as a vendor is non-independent. [MORE]

As ACORN Engaged In Political Work, Affiliate Received Taxpayer Money

A non-profit organization which has affiliates providing campaign-related services for political candidates has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money in recent years, allocated in many cases by some of the same lawmakers on whose campaigns the group worked.

The earmarks have been directed to the New York Agency for Community Affairs (NYACA), which is located at the same office as ACORN and its various political arms.

NYACA received $175,000 from eight state senators this year, $240,500 from 10 Assembly members and $85,000 from four Council members. [MORE]

Four Candidates Pour Cash Into Company With Apparent ACORN Ties

“NY Citizens Inc. is where we write the checks to for ACORN,” explained Griffith campaign spokesman Alan Smith. “ACORN who endorsed us, are also giving us some direct canvas support, and the other canvas support we’re paying for. So the $5,200 in both the filings are for the ground crew of ACORN shifts.” [MORE]

New CFB Filings Indicate Massive Disparity Between Estimated DFS Costs And Payments

Concerns Of “Sloppy Bookkeeping” Were Involved With McGuire’s WFP Departure

And do not miss: Inside The DFS Experience

For all the candidates the WFP backed and that its secretive private company, Data and Field Services, performed services for, though, party leaders never made a secret that de Blasio was their overwhelming priority, even as several other campaigns grumbled that they were being left without help.

And indeed, de Blasio was the candidate whose palm cards every worker coming out of the Working Families Party headquarters was loaded down with on Tuesday afternoon.

But when asked why they were working for de Blasio or the candidates on the other side of some palm cards, like Richard Aborn, the workers were largely stumped.

“He’ll get between black people and the police,” said one woman handing out palm cards for de Blasio in the morning on the Upper West Side, grasping for an answer, and proceeding, like many of her fellow workers to try answering the question by reading off the list of his endorsements on the paper she was holding.

But she was proud to be working for the Working Families Party, she said, recalling a day about 10 years ago when she went with her father into the voting booth and asked what Working Families meant on the ballot line and being told, “That’s us.”

She had been hired for the day, but was holding out hope that she might get an offer extended to come on long term with the Working Families Party (she said she had never heard of Data and Field Services). [MORE]