One of the key attorneys in the Pigford “black farmers” lawsuit has confirmed, on camera, what we at Big Government have argued for months: that the $2.7 billion Pigford settlement has been corrupted by fraud on a massive scale.

On September 23, 2011, at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., attorney Faya Rose Toure (a.k.a. Rose Sanders) described a conspiracy to defraud the federal government, involving claimants, attorneys, and members of the clergy.

The original Pigford plaintiffs were black farmers who sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for racial discrimination.

Sanders related how class-action lawyers later recruited claimants by sending representatives to black churches, where they allegedly told congregants that they were eligible for “reparations,” even if they had never farmed.

Sanders’s claims were at least partially corroborated at the press conference by Gary Grant, President of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, who indicated that he knew of the involvement of preachers in Pigford-related fraud.

What Sanders reveals in the clip below ought to be enough to cause the supervising judge, Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to suspend the settlement process.

It ought to be enough to prompt the FBI to re-open investigations into the lawyers and organizations involved.

It ought to be enough to encourage Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to fire up his magic investigation machine, and start issuing subpoenas–not just regarding the Pigford settlement, but also the Obama-created settlements for women, Native American, and Hispanic/Latino famers who are alleging discrimination.

Watch the clip, then I’ll take you through some of the points that Pigford attorney Sanders is making.

And so after all of that, they are now accusing the farmers of fraud. There is a problem. There are people who are out there hustling, and taking advantage of black farmers. And some of them are our people. They are the ones that are misleading the people, making them believe they are in the lawsuit, making them believe they are eligible. I actually went to a meeting in Alabama, where these white lawyers from Texas had hired–you were there [“Yes, maʼam. And they're still calling me and trying to get me to fraud.”]–hired black people, hired black people to go into all these black churches and they literally told black people: “Oh, you didn’t have to farm. It doesn’t matter if your grandfather never farmed. If you ever thought about farming, youʼre eligible for this lawsuit.” So these people are thinking this is more of a like reparations-type lawsuit. They donʼt know any better. So when they sign up, they just donʼt know. But the government is determined to prosecute [them], and to limit this process, and that is something I think we need to be outraged about. I think we need to somehow get to the NAACP, and I have talked to the NAACP–we’ve got to have a coalition. We–frankly speaking, we’ve got to get away from some of our differences, because our needs are greater than our differences…

Let’s start at the beginning. (more…)

At the National Press Club in Washington DC in September 2011, Ridgely Muhammad, Minister of Agriculture for the Nation of Islam, was a featured speaker on a panel discussing the Pigford black farmer settlement.
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Vivian Schiller to Discuss the Future of Public Radio in an Age of Budget Cuts, March 7

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller is leading an effort to persuade Congress not to slash funding for public broadcasting. She will make her case at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on March 7.

“The elimination of federal funding would be a significant blow to nearly 900 public radio stations that serve the needs of more than 38 million Americans with free over-the-air programming they can’t find anywhere else,” Ms. Schiller said. “It would diminish stations’ ability to bring high-quality local, national and international news to their communities, as well as local arts, music and cultural programming that other media don’t present. Rural and economically distressed communities could lose access to this programming altogether if their stations go dark.”

Schiller started her NPR career two years ago – a time when the U.S. economy was plunging. The media organization’s corporate underwriting was shriveling and its stock investments tumbling. Schiller was being introduced to the staff just as NPR was laying off workers, eliminating programs, reducing salaries and slashing travel budgets.

But even in those hard times, Schiller pushed for innovation and excellence, especially in the digital world. (more…)

JournoList scandal is back and prepare for it to be a driving force in the news for quite some time. The Daily Caller published an article tonight indicating they’ve obtained emails from the JournoList and the initial details are as damning as we expected when the list-serv, founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in 2007, surfaced with the Dave Weigel kerfuffle last month.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias. It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” (more…)

Just a few weeks after the first undercover ACORN videos were released, Big Government received a recording of a robocall from ACORN that ran in the Los Angeles area. Around this time, ACORN’s Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis went before the National Press Club to stress that the actions of her employees revealed in the videos “made her sick.” She reiterated that she fired the employees involved and promised a thorough internal review and reform of ACORN.

So, the robocalls were a mea culpa and promise that ACORN would do better in the future? Hardly. Away from the kleig lights of the national press, ACORN continued to deny wrongdoings and deflect attention to “extremists” attacking her. On the calls, ACORN even reiterates the lie that James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles were turned away in Los Angeles.

Listen for yourself (in English and Spanish):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Transcript and more after the jump.

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The Democratic majority objected to my appearing at a House hearing this morning addressing AstroTurfing in the global warming advocacy industry. The majority were not amused by the prospect of a discordant note being struck. As such, the Republicans will have no witnesses. They have agreed to this after being challenged. In Washington, we call times such as these “weekdays”.

The hearing actually has devolved into something of an effort to rehabilitate certain Members who are now imperiled by their vote for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, particularly Tom Periello of Central Virginia (my Congressman, who has been hoodwinked by someone into stating, in defense of his vote, that the reason we are losing jobs to India and China is because they’ve already passed Waxman-Markey-type laws. Really. I agree we need to find out who is spreading such scurrilous tales to our lawmakers).

So, Rep. Periello will open the proceedings with a statement. The hearing was already delayed once because he refused to let anyone see what he was going to say in advance. They might ask questions. I don’t think that’s much of a threat.

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The only way the fringe “news” outlets would ever report on ACORN in an antagonistic manner would be if Sarah Palin somehow supported this creepy cabal.  

Sarah, if you’re reading this column, maybe you should throw your name behind ACORN for a month or two just to get the White House/ACORN’s lap dogs to finally join with FOX and bark down the despicable ACORN clowns until they’re properly vilified, permanently defunded, and eternally ensconced in American history as nothing more than a bad, bad memory—a veritable proverb for corruption. 

After lending your name, Mrs. Palin, to ACORN for say, uh, 60 days or so, you could then say you were just BSing everyone to get the tools on the left to finally do the job these limp noodles are supposed to be doing: namely getting to the bottom of ACORN’s odious, braying deception.

This past Wednesday at the National Press Club, Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe once again released more ACORN footage that showed Bertha and her buddies to be lying through their taxpayer-funded, coffee-stained teeth.  They shot holes in Berth’s bunkum. I’m talking .50 cal BMG holes.

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1.  Fox News is not really a legitimate news source because it has a ‘point of view’ and

2.  We encourage all legitimate news networks to stop treating them as if they are legitimate.

The mainstream media were complicit in their coverage of the ACORN scandal. Their behavior was and continues to be an insult to democracy and journalistic responsibility as the Fourth Estate has ignored facts, engaged in one-sided sourcing, and avoided basic and inherently important journalistic questioning.

First, there was avoidance. Some media outlets simply ignored the story. On Sept. 15, five days after the Maryland tape was released, ABC’s Charlie Gibson said, “I don’t even know about it… so you’ve got me at a loss” and said that the story might be “just one you leave to the cables.” But, Gibson was not alone in his lack of knowledge. The New York Times did not cover the story for nearly a week. On Sept. 26, Clark Hoyt, The Times’ Public Editor, acknowledged the paper’s tardiness, but insinuated that the story was lacking in facts:

But for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still.  Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire…But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.

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Did ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis say anything that was true in her recent speech at the National Press Club?

The embattled ACORN CEO deserved an Academy Award nomination for her virtuoso performance in which she not only depicted ACORN as an innocent victim but also as a whistleblower that tried to nip the subprime mortgage crisis in the bud.

She blamed everyone but herself: “We’ve seen this play before, whether it was the civil rights movement or whatever, when you organize poor people to have real power, what you do is often turned against you.”

She blamed Republicans: “The RNC…because we’ve been inflated as the boogeyman, raises almost $2 million a day, every day, and this form of modern-day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop.”

Lewis’s statement about the Republican National Committee was immediately torpedoed by RNC chairman Michael Steele who defended ACORN.

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Jonathan Salant of Bloomberg News is the past president of the National Press Club.  A profile on him at WashingtonJewishWeek.com begins:  “I grew up during the protests for civil rights and the Vietnam War and I saw what journalists were doing,” he said, explaining that becoming a journalist was a “chance to make the world a better place.”  If there is a better admission of the mindset of today’s establishment journalists and their influence and belief in advocacy versus objectivity, I’m not sure one exists.

So, knowing this, let’s take a look at how Mr. Salant introduced ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis at the National Press Club last week.  Here are the first few minutes of the introduction.

“The Associated of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN, exploded onto national headlines with the recent release of a series of undercover video tapes.  Tapes recorded by two conservative activists, a 20-year-old woman and 25-year-old man posing as a prostitute and her pimp.  Hanna Giles and James O’Keefe secretly taped their visits to ACORN offices as they asked about housing assistance for their pretend prostitution ring.  Some ACORN workers turned them down, one even called the police.  “

Really?  Spoken as a FACT, Mr. Salant?  Is there any evidence of this claim?  Have you seen the evidence?  Is it not interesting that the first action cited by Mr. Salant of an ACORN worker is the one ACORN would like everyone to believe was the standard and overwhelmingly common response?  Also, why are they merely referred to as “Conservative Activists”?  Isn’t that meant to diminish them, categorize them?  When Michael Moore gives a speech, is he introduced as “Liberal Activist”?

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The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank weighs in on Bertha Lewis’ theatrical show at the National Press Club:

Bertha Lewis, the head of ACORN, is one tough nut.

She came to the National Press Club on Tuesday, ostensibly to report on the community group’s “internal probe” into the ACORN workers who were caught on tape advising people posing as a pimp and a prostitute. But Lewis made it clear that, far from apologizing, she was on a “set-the-record-straight tour” — and a tour de force it was.

The internal review by ACORN’s board, disclosed this week by the Louisiana attorney general, that $5 million had been embezzled from the group rather than the $1 million previously alleged? “This is speculation, completely false and not based on any documentation or any audit or anything other than two disgruntled former board members,” Lewis reported.

Accusations of voter fraud after ACORN workers filled out voter registrations for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys? “An utter fabrication and a work of fiction that was created by the people who wrote it.”

The report by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee that ACORN created a “shell game that funneled charitable funds to for-profit organizations”? “Another stretch of allegations of how to pound on ACORN. . . . It’s just false.”

And, of course, the secretly recorded videos of ACORN workers providing help to people claiming they wished to set up an underage-prostitution business? “These highly edited tapes,” Lewis said, “don’t tell the whole story.” ACORN’s accusers “have to stoop to break the law in order to create something sensational,” she added.

In creativity, the ACORN boss’s denials were matched only by her assignments of blame. She blamed her predecessor: “I don’t think it’s fair to judge me, as I’m cleaning up a previous administration.” She blamed the powerful: “We’ve seen this play before, whether it was the civil rights movement or whatever, when you organize poor people to have real power, what you do is often turned against you.” And most of all, she blamed Republicans: “The RNC . . . because we’ve been inflated as the boogeyman, raises almost $2 million a day, every day, and this form of modern-day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop.”

Assigned only a minor role in this orgy of blame were ACORN and Lewis herself. “My biggest weakness is a certain naivete about folks coming after you,” she said in a moment of self-interested introspection. “I guess maybe others might have known and could have set up some other barriers and could’ve been better with media and PR.”

Read the whole story here. But, first savor this quote. Perhaps one of the best Big Media comments during this breaking saga:

But Lewis, in playing the victim, is her own worst enemy. Forget the film of the pimp and prostitute: Watching a film of Lewis’s performance yesterday would probably be enough to cause lawmakers to cut off ACORN’s federal funding.

Issa Responds to Bertha Lewis Charge that ACORN the Victim of Republican McCarthyism

WASHINGTON. D.C. – House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) issued the following statement today in response to comments made by ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis at the National Press Club where she accused Republicans of ACORN McCarthyism:

“Was it Republicans who embezzled millions from within their own organization and have yet to report the embezzlement to the IRS or Labor Department?  Was it Republicans who conducted the internal review that highlighted the lack of firewalls between their charitable and political activities?  Was it Republicans who hired a man convicted of multiple counts of conspiracy and money laundering to raise funds and register voters in Oklahoma?  The fact that ACORN’s leadership refuses to even acknowledge and accept responsibility for the state of their organization is disturbing and brings into question the sincerity of ACORN’s pledge to reform their organization.”

While ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis addressed the National Press Club, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Republican Staff were reviewing new internal ACORN documents that shed further light on ACORN’s intent to capitalize on the opaque nature of their funding structure in order to fund its partisan political activities.  (more…)

From CBS News:

Bertha Lewis, the chief executive of embattled community group ACORN, told reporters at the National Press Club today that her critics are engaged in “modern-day ACORN McCarthyism” born in part from the group’s history of “going after the rich and the powerful,” the New York Times reports.

While defiant, Lewis did acknowledge that her group had its problems: She said videos showing ACORN employees advising conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute “made my stomach turn,” according to CNN. “It just made you sick,” she added. The group has appointed an investigator to examine why the behavior took place.

But Lewis refused to make apologies for her 40-year-old organization, which she said wasn’t going anywhere. Congress, she said, can’t destroy the group by withholding federal funding: “We didn’t have government funding for years,” she said to illustrate that point, according to Politico. “We may not have government funding in the future.” (more…)