Posts Tagged ‘George Soros’

Central Illinois  9/12 Project

The Star Players in the ShoreBank Story

by Central Illinois 9/12 Project

The Shorebank story is quite complicated and filled with literally hundreds – if not thousands — of individuals who have been in some way involved in the unfolding of an intriguing saga. It has been difficult to narrow down the field of characters in order to focus on just a few. Some of the names are familiar, and some are relatively unknown (except, perhaps, within the context of their own circles of influence).

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The original founders of Shorebank probably didn’t dream that this bank would have the worldwide influence that it now has. They were all very active in their communities and had a desire to see the South Shore neighborhood re-built to its former state of safety and community life. The neighborhood had suffered economically and was becoming run-down and plagued by crime. Their hope was to re-invest and re-enliven this neighborhood of Chicago. They made loans towards the renovation of many of the buildings which were deteriorating and in disrepair. They also invested in new building projects to benefit the residents of South Shore.

For 30-plus years Shorebank has seen its founders’ dreams realized; and beyond those dreams, Shorebank has become the catalyst for international financing — especially that directed toward low-income people in many countries of the world. The Community Reinvestment Act, passed into law in 1977 during President Jimmy Carter’s term of office, encouraged financial institutions to make loans to low-income borrowers. Ron Grzywinski (one of the original founders of Shorebank) was the only banker to testify before Congress in support of the Community Reinvestment Act. Its passage was instrumental in paving the way for Shorebank’s success. The bank steadily grew financially and facilitated the renewal of poverty stricken areas through the rest of the 1970’s and early 80’s, catching the attention of then-Governor Bill and Hillary Clinton of Arkansas (in fact, according to the IFA, Bill is still advocating on behalf of ShoreBank).

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Publius

What is the Center for Responsible Lending?

by Publius

On Wednesday, we brought you the story of a little report from the Boston Fed and its role in creating the housing bubble. In that piece, we mentioned an organization you probably hadn’t heard of before, the Center for Responsible Lending. It is one of the more influential–in a bad way–organizations you don’t know. Over the coming weeks, we’ll lift the veil on this organization. Consider today’s installment a primer.

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The Center for Responsible Lending is the most influential liberal advocacy group dealing with the financial services industry in the nation’s capital. It is the policy arm of credit unions based in North Carolina and California. Yes, its parent organization has a vested interest in the outcome of CRL’s advocacy.

The Center performs both public policy research and lobbying. (Lots of lobbying, but that is for another day.) Despite its well known left wing prejudices, the media uncritically accepts the Center’s published papers, giving the group extra heft on Capitol Hill.

The Center aggressively criticizes lending discrimination and pushes lenders to increase their underwriting to poor neighborhood where borrowers are less likely to be able to pay back mortgages. The Center is keenly interested in the redistribution of wealth and cares little about the financial safety and soundness of the banks it targets.

Lenders who fail to cooperate with the Center are accused of “redlining,” i.e. illegally discriminating against borrowers in low-income neighborhoods.

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Ann Coulter

Subprime Mortgage Crisis Hits Whorehouses

by Ann Coulter

It looks like Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is on track to win another endorsement from ACORN!

This week, Hynes announced that “no criminality has been found” after his investigation of the videotapes made by investigative journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, which show ACORN employees counseling the pair on getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution.

(They got a choice of government loans: Phat Fannie Mae, Prince Freddie Mac or Barney Fresh Daddy Frank … aka “Sir Fix-A-Lot.”)

I’m just glad to know that Hynes conducted a thorough “investigation” first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?

If his investigators had actually watched the videotapes, they would have found ACORN employees apparently advising a pimp and prostitute on how to defraud mortgage lenders, deposit prostitution money in a bank, hide money from the government and avoid detection while running a whorehouse with teenage girls from El Salvador.

I’m not a lawyer — oh, wait, yes, I am — but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.

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John Berlau

Proxy Access: The Obama-Dodd-Alinsky Shareholder Jujitsu

by John Berlau

What would Saul Alinksy do?

In the wake of defeats for the Obama administration last month both with Scott Brown’s stunning Senate victory in the bluest of blue states and the Supreme Court Citizens United decision that will let thousands of groups speak more freely about candidates positions’ in the 2010 elections and beyond, that’s the question President Obama and his allies are probably asking. It’s also the question that proponents of limited, constitutional government and free enterprise must be asking in order to anticipate the organized Left’s next moves.

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Alinksy was the father of left-wing community organizing. He wrote the book Rules for Radicals and other primers, which explained to would-be leftist organizers how to “search out controversy” and “fan the latent hostilities.” Seeing the world as a never-ending conflict between the “haves and have-nots, Alinsky wrote In Rules for Radicals that “in war, the end justifies almost any means.”  One community organizer who took Alinsky’s words to heart was a young Barack Obama, who worked for an offshoot of Alinsky’s network of organizations in Chicago in the 1980s. Throughout his career, according to the Washington Post, Obama has “embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics.”

And one tactic in Alinsky’s arsenal dovetails almost perfectly with Obama’s new focus on so-called “financial reform” and his bashing of Wall Street to score political points. One of Alinsky’s most important rules for radicals was that “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” In this case, the “moral garment” is the supposed interest of shareholders.

Obama and Democrats are pushing legislation they claim would empower average investors against powerful corporate executives. They propose requiring a shareholder vote on everything from CEO pay to – in a move to limit the freedoms in the Citizens United decision — companies’ weighing in on political candidates.

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Kyle Olson

Join Me In Co-Sponsoring The Alan Grayson Is a Gasbag Act

by Kyle Olson

To the people of Orlando: your long Florida nightmare may soon be over.  Congressman Alan Grayson is up for re-election this year.

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But in the mean time, he’s continuing his gasbaggery.  He’s taking up President Obama’s mantle of intimidating the Supreme Court and has introduced several bills so political free speech can once again be squelched.

Grayson has introduced several pieces of legislation aimed at restricting political speech, according to the George Soros-funded Secretary of State Project.  But first, a bit about that group.

SOS was formed to elect Secretaries of State around the country that will be tolerant of ACORN-style voter registration and Election Day shenanigans.  The Minnesota recount debacle – and seating of Al Franken – came courtesy of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, an SOS Project recruit.

So now the Soros-funded SOS Project is pushing Grayson’s package of bills. The interpretations of them come courtesy of SOS, not me:

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Matthew Vadum

Ex-Moderate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) Embraces Communist Van Jones

by Matthew Vadum

Facing what could become a bruising primary battle, appointed U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is embracing one of President Obama’s best known communist appointees, former green jobs czar Van Jones.

The Hill reports Gillibrand will share the stage with Jones at a panel discussion sponsored by the Advocacy Project at the Harvard Club in New York. Jones, a self-described “communist,” was pushed out of the Obama administration five months ago following the embarrassing revelation that he was a 9/11 “truther” who had signed a petition accusing the U.S. government of orchestrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

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For a time, Jones had been politically radioactive to Democrats but Gillibrand’s decision to work alongside him appears to bring Jones’s political exile to an end.

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Christopher C. Horner

Greens Flip: Senate Cap-and-Trade Bill ‘Not a Serious Proposal’

by Christopher C. Horner

This story in E&EM News PM (subscription required), “Murkowski floats plan to force Senate vote on cap and trade next week”, is spectacular.

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Here are the money lines, all noting Sen. Murkowski’s clever plan to simply call the Left on their rhetoric and posing about the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill S. 1733, a bill that was marked up in the Environment and Public Works Committee in a somber yet urgent November affair, reporting it to the Senate floor and, oh yes, the Copenhagen conference:

“‘Boxer-Kerry is a non-starter, and the amendment — if that’s what it said — it would expose that,’ said Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon. ‘We obviously don’t want to pass the bill; we’re confident that it would fail.’ Holding a vote on the Kerry-Boxer bill would ’show the sense of the Senate, where it is,’ Dillon said….

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Matthew Vadum

Soros Wants IMF To Subsidize His Green Investments

by Matthew Vadum

Leftist troublemaker George Soros has already made it explicitly clear he wishes to destroy capitalism.

Maybe the Third World will help the hedge fund manager and currency manipulator do it.

The preeminent funder of the left in America wants the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to become a kind of globetrotting Bernard Madoff, offering low-interest loans to poor countries so they can invest in the doomed global warming industry.

George Soros, owner, Democratic Party

George Soros, owner, Democratic Party

According to Soros, the loans would allow developing countries to “jump-start forestry, land use, and agricultural projects – areas that offer the greatest scope for reducing or mitigating carbon emissions, and that could produce substantial returns from carbon markets.”

Soros, who personally wants to invest $1 billion in “clean” technology, wants the IMF to help stimulate demand for the technology he plans to underwrite.

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Matthew Vadum

ACORN’s Federal Lobbying Shenanigans

by Matthew Vadum

ACORN is no stranger to shady lobbying practices.

Months before GOP  investigators on the House Oversight and Government Committee revealed that ACORN appears to be lobbying illegally in Delaware, a former ACORN employee alleged ACORN violated federal lobbying laws.

The ex-ACORN employee, Ron Sykes, said that Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve center of the ACORN network, filed false lobbying disclosure reports with Congress.

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This is important because, as former ACORN national board member Charles Turner said earlier this year on “The Glenn Beck Program,” CCI “is where the shell game begins.”

“ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved around to – for this purpose to that purpose, this organization to that organization,” said Turner. “We believe the way the money has been moved around, they’ve been laundering money.”

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Jim Hoft

Media Matters Defends Kid Fisting Lectures and Children Sex Books as Non-Scandal

by Jim Hoft

The Soros-linked far left Media Matters today announced that the Kevin Jennings GLSEN scandal reported here on this blog and at Big Government is a non-scandal that was rightfully ignored by the state-run media.

Here’s a question: If it is such a non-scandal then why did Media Matters write 18 different articles on the non-scandal this week?

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Matthew Vadum

Eric Holder Won’t Investigate His Radical Friends at ACORN

by Matthew Vadum

Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.

Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18. He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that used to employ President Obama and White House political director Patrick Gaspard counts for nothing.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (center) with ACORN ally Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (left), and former California Gov. Gray Davis (right).

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (center) with ACORN ally Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (left), and former California Gov. Gray Davis (right).

But Americans really shouldn’t be surprised that Attorney General Holder is bending over backwards to help his radical friends at ACORN.

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Christopher C. Horner

ClimateGate: What are the Alarmists So Afraid of?

by Christopher C. Horner

The alarmists’ reaction to CEI’s Notice of Intent to Sue NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) for withholding data–now for nigh on two years–has been particularly shrill, as regards my inquiry into the clearance and other deliberations over the non-official activities for the nasty, deceptive, third-party advocacy blog RealClimate.org by one GISS spokesman Gavin Schmidt on official, taxpayer-funded time.

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When considering that apparently unacceptable Request for transparency as to what NASA was thinking in agreeing to spend my money that way, our Notice and the alarmists’ reaction in the current “ClimateGate” context, also consider the following relevant excerpt from “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed” (pp. 104-104). That nice red cover would look great under the tree this year, even if what’s inside the cover is burning the retinas of the global warming industry right about now:

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Andrew Breitbart

Study: Has Editor & Publisher ‘Falsely Framed’ Peter Dreier as an Objective ACORN Critic?

by Andrew Breitbart

Media criticism of our ongoing and still unfolding ACORN story has been as bad as it has been funny and sad. The racket that is the mainstream media is coming to an end and exposed reporters and journalists, no longer feigning neutrality, have chosen to drive off the cliff, a la Thelma and Louise, in a customized ACORN convertible.

Dreier dualProfessor and ACORN Adviser Peter Dreier

On Monday Christopher R. Martin and Peter Dreier wrote a commentary entitled “Have the Media ‘Falsely Framed’ ACORN?” for Editor & Publisher, “the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.“  E&P was once the bible of the newspaper and publishing business, but in recent years has moved hard left, hiding its ideological tilt under a patina of “scholarship.”

Martin and Dreier’s piece — while not framed as such — is an ideological defense of ACORN and an attack on those who have truthfully investigated and exposed the obviously troubled community organizing group. It’s basically, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men trying to put ACORN together again. But instead of attempting to rebuild the king, Martin and Dreier are trying to rebuild the media and the left elite, who use the poor and the downtrodden as their foot soldiers in order to maintain power in government, academia, the media and Hollywood.  For them, ACORN provides the perfect photo-op.

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Michael Volpe

The Future of Wade Rathke and ACORN, Part III: Wade Rathke Wants to Rule the World

by Michael Volpe

Yesterday, I finished the third part of my interview with Wade Rathke. I felt, correctly, or not that after spending several hours with Rathke, that I was starting to understand Rathke, his vision, and his goals. So, I tried to make these questions as pointed and interesting as possible.

1) What can the local, state, and federal government do right now to help the poor and middle class?

The answer that Rathke gave was both surprising and impressive. I expected him to rattle off several laws that could be implemented, maybe a moratorium on foreclosures, and other policy changes that he believed in. Instead, Rathke was practical and pithy.

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He said that all government programs: unemployment insurance, welfare, etc. should be streamlined on the internet so that all citizens would be given access to electronic files. By doing this, the government would cut all sorts of red tape and save those in need all sorts of time and energy in receiving these benefits. For the money the government would spend in implementing these systems, the benefit to the people would come back ten fold.

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Christopher C. Horner

2010: The Kyoto Election

by Christopher C. Horner

Mexico Al Gore

The New York Times reports this weekend that:

“SINGAPORE — President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future.”

Read down the article and note the several claims by participants offering the greatest exhibits imaginable at the running absurdity — now in its 18th year! — that is this movable feast of conferences in Rio, Barcelona, Bangkok, Bali, Buenos Aires, Bonn, and next month Copenhagen: We had to declare it a failure in advance in order to ensure its success. Mmm. Yes.

But here’s the far larger point, and Team Tea Party and simpatico coalescences should take note and begin organizing accordingly:

This also makes the Kyoto II, the proposed twenty five-year extension of a five-year plan that was the Kyoto treaty, an inescapable issue for the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections.

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Kevin Mooney

Commerce Department’s Rejection of ACORN Application Belies Alternative Funding Sources

by Kevin Mooney

An ACORN affiliate that submitted applications totaling over $6 million in federal grant money for broadband projects has been declared ineligible as a result of guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
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The ACORN Institute, a 501 (c) 3 group founded in 2000, submitted two separate applications to the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) earlier this year. One was in the amount of $3,172,042 and the other was for $2,999,903.

Funding for the grant program was included as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and was set up to “help bridge the technological divide and create jobs building Internet infrastructure,” according to the NTIA.

On its web site, the ACORN Institute (AI) describes itself as “a nationally respected provider of training and technical assistance in organizing principles and methods, a center for research and public policy development on issues of economic and social justice, and a provider of various services to low- to moderate-income individuals.” AI also includes an “experienced team” of “financial educators,” “tax preparers” and “benefits assistance specialists.”

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Matthew Vadum

Citigroup Executive Pulls Out of Sham ACORN Audit Under Pressure

by Matthew Vadum

Citigroup executive Eric Eve (pictured below) has resigned from ACORN’s phony, allegedly independent panel of inquiry, a move that removes one of the few people on the panel who could even remotely claim to actually be independent.

If you read between the lines, it also seems to mean Citigroup agrees the panel is a sham.

Eve, senior vice president of Global Consumer Group, Community Relations, at Citigroup, quit after the National Legal and Policy Center pressed Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit to cut ties with ACORN.

In a letter to NLPC president Peter Flaherty, Citigroup announced Eve’s resignation from the panel.

“We too are deeply concerned about the recent media reports regarding ACORN and, because of those reports, have suspended our charitable financial support and program relationships with ACORN, and we are awaiting the results of the independent audit of ACORN activities now underway,” wrote Natalie Abatemarco, Citigroup’s vice president, Global Community Relations.

“On a related topic, please be advised that Eric Eve has resigned his position on the ACORN Advisory Council,” she added.

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Matthew Vadum

The Soros Plan To Kill Capitalism

by Matthew Vadum

Having purchased, rented, or placed a down payment on all the political influence up for sale in America, leftist troublemaker George Soros now plans to ramp up his war on markets worldwide by creating an “Institute for New Economic Thinking” (INET).

“The system we have now has actually broken down, only we haven’t quite recognized it and so you need to create a new one and this is the time to do it,” Soros told the Financial Times last month.

Soros said he wants Communist China to run this new financial system. “You really need to bring China into the creation of a new world order, a financial world order,” Soros said.

If that doesn’t send a chill down the spines of freedom lovers in America and elsewhere, nothing will.

In an interview with Der Spiegel last year Soros said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful — but also very harmful to our society.”

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Kyle Olson

White House Visitor Logs: Pay No Attention to Socialized Medicine

by Kyle Olson

The White House appears to be continuing to throw red meat out to conservative audiences as a distraction from the real issue at hand: the proposed government takeover of health care.

It’s like a dog trainer pleading with a beagle sitting patiently, waiting to attack the target, while a big, fat steak is plopped by his paw.

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At 4:31pm this past Friday, typical fare for this crew, the White House sirens released a partial list of visitors to the West Wing.  Why not a full list?  Who knows?  But some of the names were ones that were in the conservative wheelhouse during the election and the first 10 months of this year: Bill Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright and George Soros.

But MSNBC claims the first three: Ayers, Moore and Wright aren’t the Ayers, Moore and Wright.  Then why release the names?  Not to mention: the White House staff and the president himself just happen to have other friends named Bill Ayers, Michael Moore and Jeremiah Wright?  That’s bizarre.

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Larry  O'Connor

Media Matters: Never Mind About All Those Facts… We Have a Police Report!

by Larry O'Connor
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The new ACORN video released today clearly disputes most of the claims made by Ms. Katherine Conway Russell in her September video that eerily resembles a hostage message. Russell is the ACORN employee featured in O’Keefe’s video.  The footage clearly disputes claims that they were not dressed in any strange way, that they never mentioned prostitution, etc. In the latest attack/defence from ACORN apologist and George Soros-funded Media Matters, none of these points are addressed in any way whatsoever.  They seem to simply fall back on the fact that the Philadelphia ACORN office had filed a police report and that the mere existence of that report proves all of their other claims:
“O’Keefe did not dispute the authenticity of the police report ACORN filed with Philadelphia police following their visit. The filing of the police report by ACORN — Russell can be seen holding a copy of it in O’Keefe’s video — indicates the Philadelphia ACORN office had no intention of helping O’Keefe and Giles conduct any illegal activities, and ACORN said the police report “proves our clear understanding of this scam that was being portrayed.
So, about that police report…