From FoxNews:

Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York — operating as New York Communities for Change — have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.

NYCC also is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its Brooklyn offices, removing or packing away supplies bearing the name ACORN and handing out photos of Fox News staff with a stern warning not to talk to the media, the sources said.

“They’re doing serious damage control right now,” said an NYCC source.

(more…)

(continued from Part 2)

It should come as no surprise that on the campaign trail, President Obama refused to be interviewed about Saul Alinsky, the community organizing guru who wrote Rules for Radicals, a how-to guide for destroying American capitalism and democracy.

Presumably Obama, who taught courses on Alinsky’s brutal, sometimes violent organizing techniques, declined to speak to reporters about the late guru. He must have realized that such an interview would throw an unwanted spotlight on Alinsky’s radicalism, and by extension, his own. Such counterproductive publicity would also have undermined the candidate’s efforts to reinvent himself as a moderate. Alinsky’s adherents now dominate the modern Democratic Party establishment. Apart from President Obama himself, they include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, Federal Communications Commission diversity chief Mark Lloyd, Obama’s ex-green jobs czar Van Jones, former DNC trainer Heather Booth, Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to name just a few. “Who the hell isn’t [an Alinskyite] in this administration?” asks conservative author David Horowitz.

And President Obama hasn’t been the only longtime ACORN operative working in the White House. There’s also the low-profile Patrick Gaspard who, until recently, was White House political affairs director, one of the titles Karl Rove held in President Bush’s White House.

In a move that ought to disturb anyone who cares about the integrity of the democratic process, earlier this year Gaspard took over the reins of the Democratic National Committee as its executive director—just in time to begin initial preparations for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Gaspard hails from the same world of radical left-wing community organizing that made Barack Obama who he is today. Gaspard is an expert in the harsh, street-smart organizing tactics taught by Alinsky. He’s the hatchet man Obama sent to New York over a year ago to strong-arm then-Gov. David Paterson into dropping his reelection campaign. As executive director running the DNC’s day-to-day operations, Gaspard will oversee Organizing for America, a project of the DNC supposedly modeled on Alinskyite organizing principles.

(more…)

Political operatives connected with renamed ACORN affiliates are in position to help swing close, competitive races for left-leaning candidates in the 2012 elections, according to former insiders and policy analysts who are familiar with the network’s operations.

An ambitious rebranding scheme that began earlier this year has now accelerated to include affiliates in at least 12 states. The bankruptcy filing the organization slyly submitted on Election Day is properly viewed as “a head fake” and a “public relations gimmick” arranged to distract attention away from the partisan political activities of renamed affiliates, sources say.

It is worth recalling that the organization known in full as the Association of Community Activists for Reform Now had initially denied reports that it would be dropping its tarnished name in press statements released in the summer of 2009.  Wade Rathke, who founded ACORN in 1970, had announced on his blog that ACORN International, one of many affiliate organizations, had officially changed its name to “Community Organizations International.” Former board members who came together under the banner of ACORN 8 in response to an embezzlement scandal saw the move as a possible opener to a larger rebranding effort.

Scott Levenson, a spokesman for organization’s national leadership, issued a statement claiming that the name has not been dropped and that Rathke is no longer connected with ACORN.

“ACORN is not changing its name,” he declared. “ACORN International, is a five-year old organization from which ACORN withdrew a year ago as part of an overall restructuring process and requested that they stop using the ACORN name, which they have now done. Wade Rathke was fired as Chief Organizer of ACORN in June 2008.”

(more…)

A Staten Island Democrat is blaming her city council loss on ACORN.  Apparently she didn’t know her political consultant, Scott Levenson of the Advance Group, was the same Scott Levenson that has been relentlessly defending ACORN.

Levenson has served as ACORN’s crisis communications consultant and needless to say, he’s been a busy man.

Nevertheless, Janine Materna’s loss for the South Shores City Council is ACORN’s fault.  From the Staten Island Advance:

Democrat Janine Materna’s campaign is considering suing its consulting firm, the Advance Group, for $1 million, and claimed that consultant Scott Levenson’s position with the controversial ACORN group was among the reasons Ms. Materna lost the South Shore City Council race.

“It’s because of him that Janine lost the election,” said Jodi Materna, her sister’s campaign manager.

She said the campaign did not know of Levenson’s ACORN affiliation and if it had, “we never would have hired him.”

…

Levenson, ACORN’s national spokesman, said it was a “true sign of political immaturity to scapegoat anyone for Janine’s loss.”

(more…)

White House political director Patrick Gaspard met with ACORN spokesman and lobbyist Scott Levenson, a former co-worker, at the White House the Obama administration disclosed Friday.

Levenson’s inclusion in the newly released list of visitors to the Obama White House makes the president’s claim he’s clueless about his former employer ACORN — and its election fraud trials and tribulations — especially difficult to believe. That’s because Gaspard is President Obama’s right hand man. Some describe him as the new Karl Rove.

The purpose of the visit by Levenson (pictured below) who met with Gaspard in March was not disclosed.

The relentlessly combative Levenson, who is also a registered lobbyist for New York ACORN, was thrown out of Glenn Beck’s TV studio May 6 for suggesting during a commercial break that the TV host was racist for daring to challenge ACORN. Levenson’s been helping to coordinate ACORN’s public disinformation strategy which relies heavily on lies and misdirection.

(more…)

Apparently the partisan witch hunt that ACORN has been alleging has now spread to the Democratic Party, as the Democratic Attorney General of Nevada has successfully brought charges against ACORN, after an investigation by the Democratic Secretary of State.

ACORN’s explanation?  A regional representative told the New York Times that the two are just trying to make a name for themselves.  Has ACORN no shame?

Matthew Henderson, the regional representative, said this is the first time the organization has faced criminal prosecution.

From the Mercury News:

[Former ACORN employee Christopher Howell] Edwards told Las Vegas Justice of the Peace William Jansen on Tuesday that while he never sought written permission, his ACORN supervisors knew canvassers making $8 per hour were paid bonuses of $5 per shift for exceeding a quota of 20 voter registration cards last August and September.

His regional supervisor, Amy Busefink, initially wanted him to set the bonus mark at 26, he said, but agreed to his idea of 21.

“Hey, it’s Las Vegas. It’s blackjack,” Edwards said.

And according to Justice of the Peace Jansen, according to the Times:

“It appears to me,” he said, “that Amy approved this 21 blackjack program as an incentive to get more people registered so they can be in good standing to meet the national quota of Acorn.”

(more…)