With all of the talk about all of the reported misteps by Republicans there is one story that may be the under-reported story of the century. There is a fear of ‘Muscle for Obama’ occurrences that are driving people away. This has not just happened over the past 100 days. The American Thinker has A Letter of Amends from a Recovering Liberal in Berkley that provides some personal experience from Robin in this matter. From the letter some examples include:
In February of 2008, I saw a new client, a bright and sensitive young woman who came in looking like she just escaped a war zone. In some ways she had; she had innocently shared with others at her job that she voted for Hillary rather than Obama. Immediately she was being targeted for abuse that put her in fear for not only her job, but her life.
A woman in Berkeley had her front window broken because it displayed a poster of Hillary.
An acquaintance had her car broken into, and the only item stolen was a NoObama bumper sticker.
My local greeting card store sold very flattering cards about Obama, insulting ones about Hillary, and a Hillary "nutcracker." When I complained, the young male manager literally laughed in my face.
The final straw for me was when a close friend flew into a rage at me when she learned I wasn't supporting Obama. The political became personal when she began impugning my character. Worse yet, she tried to intimidate me into changing my mind by threatening to dump me.
Suddenly a light went on. The peace and love and flower power of the old left was dead and gone (if it even existed to begin with except in my imagination). The Democrats had morphed into a power hungry Thought Police, and I was done with them. My new motto in life: don't PC on me.
Glenn Beck recently has had guests Marcel Reid and Karen Inman who are part of a group called Acorn-8. They have been members of ACORN, and they want to clean up the corruption. They are not getting any support in their efforts from the Congress and White House. Some examples are the following conversation:
REID: The members of the board in D.C. have been stalwart in backing us, because we have asked for three years to have the books opened, for three solid years...
BECK: What kind of organization can't look — where the chair and the board can't look at their own books?
REID: Well, primarily it's because the boards aren't functional. They're ceremonial. And once they understood that they had a board formed that would not serve in that position, to be ceremonial, then there was a huge problem.
BECK: What is a ceremonial board? Why...
REID: A ceremonial board is a board that sits but has no actual authority.
BECK: Why would anyone do that? Why — I mean — maybe I'm coming as a cynic and I am, but maybe I'm coming — but that seems like a front organization.
REID: I don't think that people that sit on the board thought it was a front organization. I think everyone came to this organization with the purist of intentions.
BECK: No, no, no. I'm not saying that the people on the board or you felt that way. Do you feel that way now at all? Like, you're, "Wait a minute, am I just being used here?" What kind — Are you are providing cover?
INMAN: Yes. It's kind of a rubber stamp thing. We're going to tell you what to think and you're going to say "Yes, that's a good idea," and go along with it. And when the meetings are only half a day and you bring in 51 people, they're not doing the kinds of work that they should be doing.
BECK: Tell me, you had — you were sent to Capitol Hill in 2008. And you...
REID: There was a group of us that convened on Capitol Hill when the stimulus package was first introduced. This was under the Bush administration. I believe it was in September. And I can go back into my notes and give you the exact dates. And at that time, we were there to talk about the fact that we wanted the stimulus package to go forward, and I was just concerned about that, because at that time, Karen and I had served on the IMC, which was the Intra-Management Committee for ACORN.
But you know, there's just — what we want to say very quickly or what I want to say very quickly is: We wanted an audit — just an audit. And when we didn't have an audit or couldn't get an audit and asked for an audit, we were removed and we want to know why we were removed.
If everything is above board and we ask for an audit and we're members of the organization and supposedly directors of that organization, why would you remove us?
BECK: What's the answer they've given you?
INMAN: We haven't gotten an answer. We've asked for the reasons. We've asked for their minutes. We've asked for all of those things. You've asked for minutes for the last three years. We get nothing and we are stonewalled and not even responded to.
BECK: It started with the "ACORN 8." How many are there now?
REID: We have far more than eight. We — I don't know how many, because we gain people every day.
BECK: People in ACORN that say I want my organization back.
REID: Right.
BECK: So, what is it? I said to Marcel, I think I said to you earlier, that this is all about votes and you said, "No, this is all about the money." Explain that.
REID: This is all about the money. This isn't — well, you can do it, Karen.
INMAN: Right. Basically, what happens is the organization, I think, had a good message to begin with and then they looked to see how much money they generated and how much power they got. And so, instead of having it trickle down — trickle up from the membership, which is what it is supposed to be, they've looked and said, "Hmm, we can get X amount of dollars here. We'll convince our membership that this is what we should be working on."
BECK: It seems to me that they are using me, and people like me, by calling racists and everything else, to generate outrage to help raise money.
And then, also, they are using the lowest of our society, using them, and then throwing them to the lions and saying, "You know, well, it was a rogue employee," which also helps them, too, doesn't it? How?
REID: People who have always been entitled to things in life know very quickly when they're being used. People who have never experienced anything in life except being used don't know when to blow the whistle. And why should they? Who's ever listened to them before when they told the truth and blown the whistle?
BECK: This is why you guys, because when we talked this afternoon in my office, I mean, I just want the truth. I don't really care. It's great to help people, but it seems like everybody — this is dirty. This is really dirty. Is this why you guys are doing this and staying in, because somebody has to?
INMAN: Yes. We want it corrected. We want it — for example, when the embezzlement happened, we asked for the books. We asked for that to be taken care of. If there is nothing to hide, why can't they open up the books?
BECK: Is it Conyers, Gresh, that said today that there is reason — did you hear this? He said that there was absolutely no reason that we're going to do an investigation. I mean, they'll do steroids on baseball but — we have a statement? Where is it? OK. Here it is: "Based on my review of the information regarding the complaints against ACORN, I have concluded that a hearing on this matter appears to be unwarranted at this time."
REID: Well, you know, I was actually sitting in Congress when I heard Representative Conyers really push Jerrold Nadler to have an investigation of ACORN. I heard him do it. It wasn't something that I think he was doing for the community.
BECK: Why this? Why now? Why is he backing off?
REID: Well, because Nadler was very resistant to there being an investigation of ACORN. He was very resistant. He showed it at that time, and I think what has happened — and I have no way of proving it — is that I think that there was just a lot of pressure put on Conyers not to have this investigation.
BECK: First Karen, let me go to you. There was an embezzlement. Two brothers worked for ACORN. There was almost $1 million embezzled. Nobody went to prison on that. Can you give me a little bit on this?
INMAN: Certainly. What happened is that Wade was the founder and his brother was working for ACORN and he worked for the financial agency. And he embezzled about a million dollars. It was found out. They covered it up, and he continued on the payroll for ACORN for the next almost eight years until it was divulged, and then he was forced to resign. But it was, like, what happened to the money? Where is the accountability? And not only that, but the people who knew about it, the management, staff, the head staff and the president, all knew about it and they're still there.
BECK: I said to you, guys, earlier in my office, while we're sitting on my office. I said, "You know what, forget about the listener here or the viewer, put your attention on to the one person that doesn't care about getting credit isn't trying to make a political point, isn't left, isn't right, just is, and is there to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States and its people." Which one of you guys is going to address that one person that might be watching in Congress or some place and just say help.
REID: Help.
INMAN: Help. We need — we need your support. We need you to help us figure out how to stop the abuse, how to empower people and to look at the situation as it is, and not look at it as a miniscule voter fraud thing. It's much larger than that.
BECK: Wow. Ladies, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And if you don't mind...
REID: And I would just like to say one thing.
BECK: Yes.
REID: I'm sorry. Excuse me. I would just like to say that ACORN doesn't need to be funded with any more taxpayer dollars until we find out what happened to the last taxpayer dollars that ACORN was funded with. That is what we're calling for. We want the organization to survive. We want the organization to flourish.
BECK: Has it ever — has it ever occurred to you that you're in danger for saying things like that? Do you realize how much money is at stake? I said to you earlier, they say — ACORN says we're not going to take any stimulus dollars. You two laughed. Why, Karen?
INMAN: Well, because there are more than 300 organizations under the ACORN umbrella and they might be getting it under another umbrella organization.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote an article, Ousted ACORN Members Seek Federal Criminal Investigation. From this article we learn the following additional details:
The splinter group, ACORN 8, released a 24-page document Wednesday that asks federal investigators to consider fraud, embezzlement and conspiracy charges, and criminal civil rights violations relating to the embezzlement of nearly $1 million from the nonprofit's accounts and an alleged cover-up of the theft for almost a decade.
"Moreover, due to the admission that a felony has been committed, other federal offenses may have also been committed ... ," states the document signed by 14 members of ACORN 8, including recently expelled members of ACORN's national board of directors.
Two members of ACORN's national board of directors, Washington ACORN President Marcel Reid and Minnesota Chair Karen Inman, inadvertently started the ACORN 8 movement after fellow board members elected them last summer to reorganize ACORN and recommend improvements to prevent embezzlement.
Reid, Inman and six other ACORN members filed a lawsuit in Louisiana seeking access to financial records kept by Citizens Consulting Inc., the ACORN affiliate Dale Rathke headed when he stole money.
Charles Turner, a member of ACORN in D.C. for 10 years and signer of the ACORN 8 complaint, said that everybody who knew about the embezzlement, or was in a position that they should have known about it, should be separated from ACORN. "I'd like to see somebody go to jail," Turner said.
The embezzlement resulted in ACORN's loss of one long-standing prominent benefactor -- the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which gave ACORN more than $7 million in the past decade. The charity canceled plans to donate $1.2 million to ACORN affiliates this fiscal year. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in November severed ties with ACORN.
ACORN and its affiliates received more than $31 million in federal grants between 1998 and this year, according to an analysis by the staff of House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio.
What this article did not report is that local chapters of ACORN get no money directly. All the money goes to Citizens Consulting Inc. in NOLA.
There was a Barney Frank amendment on May 7th that allowed ACORN to receive additional Federal funding to shakedown mortgage lenders, and the only Ds to vote nay to this amendment were Bobby Bright AL-2, Gabrielle Giffords AZ-8, Walt Minnick ID-1, and Harry Mitchell AZ-5. No Rs voted aye.
Of course it would be wonderful to have them become ex-Ds because of the merits of our conservative principles. However, I will settle for them fighting with us against the Ds for the reasons of fighting against a thugocracy.
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