What is the Center for Responsible Lending?

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.

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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Tags: Center for American Progress, Center for Responsible Lending, Community Reinvestment Act, financial services regulation, George Soros
Posted Mar 12th 2010 at 11:57 am in Economics, Financial Services, Regulation | 8818661 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2010/03/12/what-is-the-center-for-responsible-lending/+What+is+the+Center+for+Responsible+Lending%3F2010-03-12+19%3A57%3A59Publius

Andrew Breitbart’s Address To CPAC 2010

Below is the full length speech Andrew Breitbart delivered to CPAC 2010. We have also taken the liberty of breaking out some of the best soundbites from the speech.

1. Mr. Podesta, we are watching you!
2. What I learned from Kurt Cobain
3. E Pluribis Unum
4. The Frankfort School roots of multiculturalism and political correctness
5. Big Education
6. MSM – You are not on the American team!
7. CPAC cuts Breitbart short

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Tags: Big Education, Columbia University, CPAC 2010, David Shuster, Frankfort School
Posted Feb 22nd 2010 at 5:41 pm in Culture, Featured Story, History, Media Criticism, News, Politics, Tea Party | 78850104 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/amarcus/2010/02/22/andrew-breitbarts-address-to-cpac-2010/Andrew+Breitbart%27s+Address+To+CPAC+20102010-02-23+01%3A41%3A32Andrew++Marcus

‘Independent’ ACORN Apologist Applauds ‘Independent’ Investigation Conclusion

Professor Peter Dreier, an ACORN apologist who portrays himself as an independent analyst, is really anything but.

As Andrew Breitbart articulated on BigGovernment November 25th, regarding a “study” Dreier produced critical of media coverage of ACORN:

At the end of the piece Professor Dreier offers the following biography: Peter Dreier, E.P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College.

Why did Professor Dreier choose to leave out the critical information regarding his advisory relationship to ACORN? Isn’t sitting on an advisory committee of ACORN the definition of a conflict of interest in writing a fair and balanced piece on the organization? In fact, Dreier has been shilling for ACORN at least since 2003.

So when Dreier proclaimed ACORN “Not Guilty” in one of his recent columns on TalkingPointsMemo, I must admit I threw up a bit in my mouth.  Some of Dreier’s most pathetic conclusions:

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN Investigation, acorn scandal, Alliance for Justice, Andy Stern
Posted Dec 11th 2009 at 12:07 pm in ACORN, Big Labor, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 4474253 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kolson/2009/12/11/independent-acorn-apologist-applauds-independent-investigation-conclusion/%27Independent%27+ACORN+Apologist+Applauds+%27Independent%27+Investigation+Conclusion2009-12-11+20%3A07%3A44Kyle+Olson

AP Whitewashes My Public Statement on Whitewashed ACORN Investigation

Pete Yost of the Associated Press asked for my comment regarding the findings of the ACORN “internal investigation.”  Here is what I emailed him:

ACORN is a corrupt and criminal organization, and anyone with open eyes can see this. Yet SEIU’s Andy Stern and left wing puppetmaster John Podesta, of the Soros-funded radical leftist think-tank, the Center for American Progress, chose to architect a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts, and have put immense efforts into launching a two-pronged propaganda  campaign and legal assault against the filmmakers of the ‘pimp and  prostitute’ exposé and the story’s publisher. BigGovernment.com  continues to expose ACORN’s illegal activity and has helped to  illuminate how corrupt organizations like ACORN, SEIU and HCAN are coordinating the efforts to shove radical health care reform down an unwilling  majority of Americans throats.

Here is the sole excerpt from the above statement chosen for the article:

The report is “a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts,” said conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart, who is being sued by ACORN along with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who played the prostitute and her boyfriend in the videos. Breitbart posted the videos on his Web site.

I wanted the BigGovernment.com readers to see that’s it’s not just the internal investigators who are whitewashing the magnitude of the ACORN scandal, it’s the mainstream media writ large.

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, Andrew Breitbart, Associated Press, Center for American Progress
Posted Dec 7th 2009 at 1:19 pm in ACORN, Media Criticism | 4220670 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2009/12/07/ap-whitewashes-my-public-statement-on-whitewashed-acorn-investigation/AP+Whitewashes+My+Public+Statement+on+Whitewashed+ACORN+Investigation2009-12-07+20%3A19%3A03Andrew+Breitbart

The Complete ACORN Whitewash Report: Nothing to See Here Folks, Move Along…We Have to Pass ObamaCare

Well, ACORN retained a law firm to investigate its operations and, surprise, the law firm found that ACORN hadn’t done anything wrong in the undercover videos filmed by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. The review, overseen by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harschbarger, a long-time ally of ACORN, found that any problems within ACORN are, gosh darn it, simply because ACORN was too successful, i.e. grew too big and too fast. The problems are also mostly, conveniently, the result of people who are no longer employed by ACORN, i.e. Wade Rathke.

Full report below:

ACORN Report –

The entire report can be summed up: Wade Rathke really made a mess of things. The current management, i.e. Bertha Lewis, has been trying to reform the organization and she is really, really committed to it now. ACORN has a “roadmap” for reform that, while it may take a while to implement, will really fix everything you thought was wrong with ACORN. Just trust them.

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, Andy Stern, Bertha Lewis, Center for American Progress
Posted Dec 7th 2009 at 10:43 am in ACORN | 42122203 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mikeflynn/2009/12/07/the-complete-acorn-whitewash-report-nothing-to-see-here-folks-move-along-we-have-to-pass-obamacare/The+Complete+ACORN+Whitewash+Report%3A+Nothing+to+See+Here+Folks%2C+Move+Along...We+Have+to+Pass+ObamaCare2009-12-07+17%3A43%3A26Mike+Flynn

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

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.

Professor 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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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, Alvivon Hurd, Bon Bon Hurd, Christopher Martin
Posted Nov 25th 2009 at 11:15 am in ACORN, Featured Story, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 3689050 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2009/11/25/study-has-editor-publisher-falsely-framed-peter-dreier-as-an-objective-acorn-critic/Study%3A+Has+Editor+%26+Publisher+%27Falsely+Framed%27+Peter+Dreier+as+an+Objective+ACORN+Critic%3F2009-11-25+18%3A15%3A30Andrew+Breitbart

Calif. Attorney General Brown Will Face Independent Investigation for Secretly Recorded Conversations

A letter from California Attorney General Jerry Brown has surfaced that deals a tremendous blow to sham internal investigations everywhere.  Brown, also a California gubernatorial candidate, has requested the Alameda County district attorney look into secret tapings his office conducted with five different news reporters on six different occasions.  California is what’s known as a “two-party state,” that is, it is illegal to record someone without their consent.  Brown’s former communication director recorded the conversations and has since resigned; still the Attorney General’s office has asserted secretly recording news reporters is legal if it is for public use.

Brown’s office announced an internal investigation into the matter and was roundly condemned by the right for undertaking a case in which it has a vested interest.

Brown’s position on the recordings strikes the Big Government editorial panel as arrogant.  First, the Attorney General is in the process of investigating the ACORN filmmakers for violating laws about secret tape-recordings while conducting similar recordings himself… repeatedly.  Second, Brown conducted an internal investigation on himself (much like John Podesta of Media Matters and Andy Stern of the SEIU conducting the internal investigation of ACORN) for nearly three weeks before he solicited a third party.  And judging by the wording in the attached letter, Brown seems none too happy to pass that duty elsewhere.

Much like the internal investigations movement, Brown might be hurting right now.  Stay tuned…

A complete article on the controversy here.  Read the letter below:

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, Alameda Country, Andy Stern, California
Posted Nov 17th 2009 at 2:14 am in ACORN, Justice/Legal, Politics | 3213816 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/11/17/calif-d-a-brown-will-face-independent-investigation-for-secretly-recorded-conversations/Calif.+Attorney+General+Brown+Will+Face+Independent+Investigation+for+Secretly+Recorded+Conversations2009-11-17+09%3A14%3A58Publius

ACORN: The LA Story, Part I

Today I received a phone call from my friend, Gary H., who said that ACORN was staging a protest outside the Fox News studios in West Los Angeles. I called someone at the Fox News bureau to find out that there were no protesters there, but quickly realized ACORN had gotten that wrong too. They were protesting in front of FOX Television Center, the home of local affiliate KTTV.

Since I woke up to the news that ACORN had sued the U.S. government to get its federal funding back, it struck me as obvious that ACORN is in the process of trying to get its mojo back absent any real investigations by the Holder Justice Department, the Democratic-controlled Congress, and the Jerry Brown sham investigation in California – not to mention the  so-called “internal investigation” whose chief investigator was picked by number one ACORN defender, John Podesta, and SEIU head Andy Stern, whose union is deeply aligned with the troubled “community organizing” group.

Despite all the evidence we have published that exposes ACORN as both corrupt and criminal, no other mainstream media organization has shown any signs of investigating ACORN despite countless angles and document trails.  So I knew I had to go down to the protest on Bundy Drive to ask ACORN protesters a few questions.

With very little time I got in the car with Big Government Associate Editor Alex Marlow to meet Gary H. down at the protest. When we arrived, the protesters were fifty or so strong, monitored by a few police units standing to the side. Given that the police made me feel safe, I walked straight toward the chanting protesters while accepting an ACORN full-color single page handout entitled, “ACORN MEMBERS — MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN  THEIR COMMUNITIES,” which sung the praises of the organization. (more…)

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN internal investigation, Alex Marlow, Andrew Breitbart, Andy Stern
Posted Nov 12th 2009 at 7:17 pm in ACORN, Featured Story | 30082178 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2009/11/12/acorn-the-la-story-part-i/ACORN%3A+The+LA+Story%2C+Part+I2009-11-13+02%3A17%3A41Andrew+Breitbart

Citigroup Executive Pulls Out of Sham ACORN Audit Under Pressure

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.

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN 8, American Institute for Social Justice, Andrew Stern, Andy Stern
Posted Nov 5th 2009 at 6:01 pm in ACORN, News, Politics | 26186143 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mvadum/2009/11/05/citigroup-executive-pulls-out-of-sham-acorn-audit-under-pressure/Citigroup+Executive+Pulls+Out+of+Sham+ACORN+Audit+Under+Pressure2009-11-06+01%3A01%3A15Matthew+Vadum

ACORN Layoffs are Taxpayer Rip-offs

Allegations of continuing corruption continue to mount against the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). In the wake of tremendous negative publicity, much of which was featured here at Big Government, and adverse House and Senate votes ACORN has begun laying off dozens of low-level workers and staff across the country.

However, under conditions of strict anonymity, ACORN organizers and staff have complained to the ACORN 8 (www.acorn8.com) that senior management has ordered them to continue to work for ACORN as “volunteers” but for them to apply for unemployment insurance.

In order to legally collect unemployment insurance compensation, the applicant must attest that they are ready, willing and able to work elsewhere to qualify for benefits. This is unemployment insurance fraud. And fraudulently applying for unemployment insurance compensation is a crime.

When these allegations were first brought to the attention of the ACORN 8, we initially thought no way. This is unbelievable, no one in their right mind would ever agree to do this. But we kept hearing these same allegations, over and over again, from different people in different parts of the country. And this is ACORN – these are the same of workers who registered Mickey Mouse to vote and offered tax advice to a pimp and prostitute.

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN 8, Andy Stern, Bertha Lewis, Greg Hall
Posted Oct 22nd 2009 at 5:24 am in ACORN, Big Labor, Featured Story, Politics | 1862672 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mmccray/2009/10/22/acorn-layoffs-are-taxpayer-rip-offs/ACORN+Layoffs+are+Taxpayer+Rip-offs2009-10-22+12%3A24%3A54Michael+++McCray

From the Archives II: ACORN Corruption Runs Deep

In politics the media seems to have a tier system for how they report on scandals. Republicans who fall from grace are vilified. They are the butts of countless inappropriate jokes and cartoons and expected never to be heard from again. Recent right scandals (examples, Governor Mark Sanford and Mark Foley) dominated the news, but, besides Fox News, the media barely covered Obama adviser Van Jones or delved deeply into the dealings of Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson.

Unfortunately for America, the media has been filtering news for years and this practice has allowed some of the main figures in the Teamstergate scandal to assume top spots in the Democrat party. Part 1 of this series reviewed the history of the scandal and its strong ties to ACORN and President Obama.  In order to help readers fully appreciate the connections, I discuss below some of the major players in the Teamstergate saga who were named in indictments and a Congressional report on in a scheme that reached all the way into the White House.

The Congressional report, on Teamstergate, reached a number of damning conclusions that implicated organizations like Project Vote  and Citizen Action. It also raised a number of questions about campaign finance and “soft money” donations. Something that ACORN seemed concerned with as detailed in a spring blog post here. Were these questions raised by ACORN political director Zach Polett a result of the following statement in the Congressional report:

The issue of soft money abuses is inevitably tied to the question of how access to political figures is obtained through large contributions of soft money. It is also tied to the question of how tax-exempt organizations have been used to hide the identities of soft money donors. A system that permits large contributions to be made for partisan purposes, without public disclosure, invites subversion of the intent of our election law limitations.

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, ACORN videos, Andy Stern, Barack Obama
Posted Oct 12th 2009 at 11:16 am in ACORN, Big Labor, Featured Story, History, Obama, Politics | 1563854 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/amoncrief/2009/10/12/from-the-archives-ii-acorn-corruption-runs-deep/From+the+Archives+II%3A+ACORN+Corruption+Runs+Deep2009-10-12+18%3A16%3A39Anita+MonCrief

Fool Me Hundreds of Times: Who Gets to Clean Up ACORN?

Imagine: In the days following the public revelations of the accounting scandal at Enron, then-CEO Ken Lay convened a news conference. He forcefully expressed his disgust with the actions of his subordinates and vowed to begin “cleaning house” at the company. Taking a few turns to slam the company’s critics and the reporters who had uncovered the scandal, he stressed that, this time, there would be a thorough revamp of the company. He even said that people would be fired! Reassured, reporters, lawmakers and regulators shrugged and went back to their daily lives.

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis and Former Enron CEO Ken Lay

Substitute Bertha Lewis for Ken Lay and ACORN for Enron, in this hypothetical situation, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what was asked of us at Lewis’ tour-de-force theatrical performance at the National Press Club earlier this week. She alternated between attacking her critics, expressing disgust with the actions of her employees caught on tape by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles and vowing to pursue a lawsuit against the filmmakers for capturing on film her employees’ misdeeds. Oh, and by the way, she really, really—she means it this time—intends to “clean house” at ACORN.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank captured the surreal tableau best:

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN Czar, ACORN embezzlement, acorn scandal, ACORN video scandal
Posted Oct 9th 2009 at 6:00 am in ACORN, Big Labor, Featured Story, Politics | 1467842 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mikeflynn/2009/10/09/who-gets-to-clean-up-acorn/Fool+Me+Hundreds+of+Times%3A+Who+Gets+to+Clean+Up+ACORN%3F+2009-10-09+13%3A00%3A26Mike+Flynn

Big, Green, Global Government

One learns a new language upon first wading into the world of ,what’s favorably called by the Al Gores and Jacques Chiracs of the world, “global governance”. That term, used in all seriousness and intended as a compliment, means the web of international agreements (typically in the name of the environment), committing the prosperous world to agree to  do things it would never enact via its own democratic processes. New words such as “subsidiarity” and “additionality” are forged and tossed around like Mardi Gras beads at earnest negotiating sessions and in deathless texts. It’s Esperanto for the bossy jet-setters racked with guilt over your lifestyle.

Another of my favorites is “capacity building”, which means wealth transfers to prepare a poor society to receive a larger wealth transfer in the future. You see, certain among those societies our green superiors are trying to hector into behaving in a certain way – which is all of them – are not yet able to deal with the financial windfall due them from the Kyoto Protocols of the world. These international agreements frankly are more about redistribution than anything else. For example, Kyoto is in no way about actually reducing “greenhouse gas emissions”, but instead it creates a Ponzi-like scheme of paying other countries to sell you pieces of paper saying that you reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

And a good thing, too, because those few countries who are covered by Kyoto have all – like the rest of the world – increased their actual emissions since agreeing to this “historic emissions reduction pact.” Still, as we approach the December deadline for agreeing to a successor, Kyoto will be nonetheless be hailed for its accomplishment. Maybe by this they mean the recent cooling.

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Tags: Al Gore, Alliance for Climate Protection, cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade, Center for American Progress
Posted Oct 8th 2009 at 11:10 am in Congress, Culture, Environment, Politics | 1438632 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/chorner/2009/10/08/big-green-global-government/Big%2C+Green%2C+Global+Government2009-10-08+18%3A10%3A19Christopher+C.+Horner

ACORN ‘Advisory’ Committee Has Huge Stake in Success of Group

As ACORN’s faux independent review gets under way, ACORN’s advisory committee, made of up key liberal allies, is watching it closely, as seen in a fresh media advisory issued by David Redlener of The Advance Group and obtained by ACORNcracked.com.  That’s because ACORN is a critical component to the Left’s agenda for America.

Remember during the bank bailouts the justification was because they were “too big to fail.”  Well, to the liberal Left, ACORN is too big to fail.  It has its hands in too many things and runs an effective ground operation through registering voters, turning them out on Election Day, as well as managing ballot initiative campaigns as a tool to boost Democratic turn-out.

Consider Professor Peter Dreier’s analysis of ACORN’s use of ballot initiatives, from a 2005 article he wrote:

ACORN’s strategy to inject this issue into state ballot measures is another important step. In early 2004, ACORN initiated a statewide ballot initiative in Florida to raise the state minimum wage, registered thousands of residents, mostly in low-income, minority neighborhoods in cities, to increase turnout on election day, and won a decisive victory the following November. On its own, this is an impressive accomplishment. Since its victory in Florida, ACORN and its labor allies have begun talking about grassroots minimum-wage initiatives in other states in 2006, particularly where Democrats have a chance to expand, or hold on to, key offices. Campaigns are already underway in Ohio, Michigan, and Arizona, and ACORN is exploring possibilities in six other states and several cities. The strategy is designed to increase voter turnout and to provide candidates with a clear economic-justice issue.

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, Andy Stern, ballot initiatives, Barack Obama
Posted Oct 1st 2009 at 11:20 am in ACORN, Big Labor, News, Politics, State Politics | 1099042 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kolson/2009/10/01/acorn-advisory-committee-has-huge-stake-in-success-of-group/ACORN+%27Advisory%27+Committee+Has+Huge+Stake+in+Success+of+Group2009-10-01+18%3A20%3A17Kyle+Olson

Podesta Spends Soros’ Money Stupidly

This week’s Washington Times column:

A telling event occurred on Sept. 15, Day 6 of the drip, drip, drip ACORN video rollout. President Obama met for lunch with former President Bill Clinton at trendy Il Mulino in New York City.

For the second consecutive day, the New York Post featured the ACORN scandal on its cover – complete with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in their outrageous “pimp and ho” costumes.

Does anyone think the president and the former president were unaware that the city in which they were dining was mesmerized by the ACORN scandal – especially since ACORN had bragged that its employees had kicked Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Giles out of their New York office?

The Sept. 15 edition of the New York Post explored the political angles and directed attention to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s investigation into why an ACORN office in its jurisdiction helped instruct a prospective brothel owner how to hide his prostitution proceeds in a tin in his backyard.

No one in the morally superior media world has asked, why did Mr. Obama have lunch with Mr. Clinton that day? So let me take a guess, and it seems like an obvious answer. Mr. Obama, under siege by a video-a-day expose that was exposing the Democratic Party to an avalanche of consequences (ACORN defunded in the House and Senate, ACORN delinked from the census, etc.), needed advice from the last president to navigate through a major political scandal.

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, ACORN videos, Bill Clinton, Brooklyn District Attorney
Posted Sep 27th 2009 at 5:44 pm in ACORN, Featured Story, Media Criticism, News, Obama, Politics | 9538155 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2009/09/27/podesta-spends-soros-money-stupidly/Podesta+Spends+Soros%E2%80%99+Money+Stupidly2009-09-28+00%3A44%3A32Andrew+Breitbart

Breitbart Uses Netroots Tricks to Take Down ACORN

From The Washington Independent:

On September 10, Andrew Breitbart launched his new site, BigGovernment, with hidden-video camera footage of two young conservative activists who’d gotten Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) employees to advise them on hiding prostitution profits from the IRS. Within hours, Breitbart was doing interviews with reporters who wanted to know how, exactly, the story had come about, and why Big Government was releasing the videos and the identity of the muckrackers — 25-year-old James O’Keefe III and 20-year-old Hannah Giles — so slowly.

“It was strategized,” Breitbart told TWI this week, so “that they would be deprived of the type of information that a defense attorney would try to gather in order to create a defense.”

Who were “these people?” They were not just the leaders or members of ACORN itself. “They” were the Democratic Party, the White House, the progressive Center for American Progress and its president John Podesta. The “Democrat-media complex” is Breitbart’s name for the whole apparatus. “We deprived them of information,” Breitbart explained, “so that they couldn’t come up with a vile, kill-the-messenger attack with the media doing the groundwork for them.”

The success of Breitbart’s strategy was immediate, stunning, and is still ricocheting around the political world. Five days after the story broke, the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to prevent ACORN from receiving any federal funding. Two days later, the House of Representatives did the same. Meanwhile, Breitbart was talking to more reporters, amused at how the “kill-the-messenger attack” was playing out. When one report from The Washington Post called him for a story about O’Keefe and Giles, Breitbart compared their tape to the photos of Abu Ghraib prison released in April 2004.

Read the whole article here.

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Tags: Abu Ghraib, ACORN, Andrew Breitbart, Center for American Progress, Hannah Giles
Posted Sep 24th 2009 at 9:21 am in ACORN, Culture, Media Criticism, News | 786243 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/09/24/breitbart-uses-netroots-tricks-to-take-down-acorn/Breitbart+Uses+Netroots+Tricks+to+Take+Down+ACORN2009-09-24+16%3A21%3A06Publius

Once Upon an ACORN: Why ACORN’s Internal Audit is a Sham

The announcement by ACORN that it is creating a panel of inquiry consisting of its corrupt friends is a fairy tale. ACORN did the same thing last year after an internal scandal but when the honest people on ACORN’s internal panel began asking uncomfortable questions, it cast them out.

Since it’s a fairy tale, let me tell the story the fairy tale way:

Once upon a time there was a group called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). It was run, and continues to be run today, by very bad people who do very bad things while they pretend to make America a better place.

They get very upset when people point out the bad things they do. They always lie about those things and call those people who speak against them nasty names like “racist” so those people will get scared and run away. Often it works.

They carry out voter registration drives strictly with a view to meeting predetermined quotas. They don’t give a farthing’s cuss if their canvassers register Mickey Mouse or the dead to vote; in fact, they encourage it. As long as the big fat checks keep coming in from billionaire leftist George Soros and Herb and Marion Sandler everything is OK in their eyes.

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN 8, Americans for Prosperity, Andrew Stern, Andy Stern
Posted Sep 17th 2009 at 2:42 pm in ACORN | 4210140 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mvadum/2009/09/17/once-upon-an-acorn-why-acorns-internal-audit-is-a-sham/Once+Upon+an+ACORN%3A+Why+ACORN%27s+Internal+Audit+is+a+Sham2009-09-17+21%3A42%3A29Matthew+Vadum

Sham Angelides Commission Will Protect ACORN

Congress’s official investigation into the financial crisis, the so-called Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, will convene its first meeting today.  Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked chairman of the commission Phil Angelides, has deep ties to radical left-wing politics, including the Van Jones-connected Apollo Alliance, which he chairs, and ACORN, which is an Apollo member and endorsed and actively supported his gubernatorial campaign.  His selection proves the commission will be a politicized attempt to advance a left-wing agenda through a revisionist history of the financial crisis.  It also assures that ACORN and other community organizers who forced banks to make reckless loans in the name of affordable housing will be let off the hook.

Angelides’s San Francisco-based Apollo Alliance describes itself as a “coalition of labor, business, environmental, and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution.”  Based on the radical past of some of its key figures, the use of the word revolution is appropriate.  Apollo was conceived of, and presently serves, as a clearing house to align the otherwise disparate interests of environmental groups, labor unions, social justice organizations, and rent-seeking corporations.

Disgraced former White House green jobs czar Van Jones was an Apollo board member, involved with the group from its founding, and was its model for a new type of leader.  Apollo board member John Podesta, who was chairman of Obama’s transition team, already brought Van Jones back to the Center for American Progress, Podesta’s influential think tank where Jones had previously been a senior fellow.  These are Angelides’s friends and ideological peers. (more…)

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Tags: AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Cathy Calfo, Center for American Progress, Ella Baker Center
Posted Sep 17th 2009 at 5:25 am in ACORN, Congress, Economics, Politics | 387836 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/pkerpen/2009/09/17/sham-angelides-commission-will-protect-acorn/Sham+Angelides+Commission+Will+Protect+ACORN2009-09-17+12%3A25%3A46Phil+Kerpen