Topic category:  Government/Politics

HotAir.com commenter JP1986UM on November 21, 2009 at 10:30 PM:

"Ummm, hate to break it to you guys, but trying to save a sinking ship is merely re-arranging the deck chairs while it sinks.

"After tonight, it[']s pretty much over. Everyone will go back to sleep, stop paying attention and learn to deal with perpetual high unemployment and confiscatory taxes over 50% or more.

"You’ve entered slavery because you kept electing stupid people left and right to congress and then wonder what happened when they ignored the USCON. Well, now you have whatever you can scrape together.

"It[']s over. The scumbags won. We lost. Time to move on. There are more important things to worry about….like Paris Hilton and whatever the Hildabeast is wearing."

Breitbart.com and Breitbarttv.com publisher and "Pimp and Pro" ACORN sting strategist Andrew Breitbart: "...the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes. There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost [its] link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape."

Surely the Far Left and the liberal media establishment are primarily to blame, but do Fox News, Breitbart and the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) bear some blame too?

On July 1, 2009, RNLA Chairman David Norcross appeared on Fox News' "Beck" and, in the words used at www.rnla.org, "discussed ACORN, its role in the Minnesota Senate Race, and RNLA's comprehensive efforts to expose the truth on the organization's activities." He confidently predicted ACORN's demise.

However, we've won the battle and lost the war if "ACORN's demise" is achieved without thwarting the implementation of ACORN's radical agenda.

Thwarting the implementation of ACORN's radical agenda required exposing the ugly political reality involving ACORN, not showing a propensity of ACORN employees to facilitate prostitution, child prostitution. child abuse, illegal immigration, bank fraud and tax fraud.

Tragically, a decision seems to have been made to put aside the inside story of (black) ACORN whistleblower and ex-radical Anita MonCrief and instead to pursue and to promote the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN sting," involving surreptitious videotaping made in five cities where recording private conversations without the consent of all parties is illegal (and two where's it's legal) and starring a beautiful, slender young (white) lady with a complexion that received Ann Coulter's full approval playing a scantily-clad prostitute and a bit older young (white) man who previously exposed racism at Planned Parenthood playing a pimp.

Was that smart or stupid?

Ms. MonCrief worked with The New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom and ACORN 8 head Marcel Reid in the summer and fall of 2008 to expose ACORN. Even though Ms. MonCrief then was a radical and went on to vote for Obama, she had proof that (1) Obama was lying about the extent of his relationship with ACORN and (2) the Obama presidential campaign had been illicitly coordinating with ACORN and she was willing to provide it.

But The New York Times, ABC and CNN chose not to do an Obama/ACORN expose.

Great for Obama and ACORN, gruesome for America and journalism.

On October 21, 2008, in 'ACORN WHISTLEBLOWER: OBAMA’S THIRD STRIKE?" (http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=081022), I reported: "Yesterday, Anita advised me, Ms. Strom apologetically canceled a meeting for today and explained that New York Times policy was not to publish what might be a game changing article this close to the election.

Some on the Hannity Forum took note, but, unfortunately, not Sean Hannity.

In the last 10 days of October 2008 Ms. MonCrief (1) voluntarily testified in the Pennsylvania ACORN case in which the Pennsylvania GOP was represented by Heather Heidelbaugh, Esq., first vice president of the RNLA, (2) was reported on by John Fund in The Wall Street Journal, (3) was lauded by Fox News senior legal analyst Peter Johnson, Esq. on "Fox & Friends" and (4) was invited to be a Fox News guest starting with the Friday before Election Day 2008.

THEN Fox News was willing to take on then presidential candidate Obama on his ACORN ties and corruption.

But Ms. MonCrief had been caused to believe that Fox News was evil and ardent Obama supporter Ms. Reid, head of the dissident group fighting for control of ACORN (and the person who gave Ms. MonCrief Ms. Heidelbaugh's telephone number), did NOT want Ms. MonCrief to hurt Obama's election chance by appearing on Fox News and answering questions that the Obama presidential campaign did not want addressed. For that and other reasons, Ms. MonCrief declined the invitation (include concern for her then two-year's safety as well as her own) and idealistically continued to hope that Obama would win and bring "good" change.

On November 5, 2008, Ms. MonCrief explained on her blog (www.anitamoncrief.blogspot.com): "My daughter and I walked through the rain yesterday to vote, and though I knew that there are some who didn’t want my vote, who said that I was the enemy; I have never wavered in my support of Obama and wanted to give my vote to him. My connections to this campaign started in 1963 when my mother was born on the Southside of Chicago, and like some of Michelle Obama’s extended family, we to chose to migrate south, but maintained strong Chicago roots. To me, yesterday was more than making history as the first African-American president, it was a reaffirmation that like Obama has said, ‘it doesn’t matter where you come from’. The American dream is alive and well in its people who never stopped believing that anyone can start a new life and become something great."

Obama won, but Ms. MonCrief soon realized that he was NOT bringing "good" change. Instead, he was rewarding the likes of ACORN, SEIU and La Raza. (Even as a radical or "liberal," Ms. MonCrief independently supported the secret ballot in elections on whether or not to unionize and wanted "her side" to win "fair and square.)

As a supporter of Ms. Reid and her ACORN 8, Ms. MonCrief proceeded to write extensively about ACORN wrongdoing on her blog and trumpeted the "complaint" against ACORN filed by the ACORN 8 with the United States Justice Department on January 7, 2009.

Later in 2009 Ms. Heidelbaugh contacted Ms. MonCrief for help. Ms. Heidelbaugh had decided to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee on ACORN and this time Ms. Heidelbaugh would emphasize the fact that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose shortly before Election Day 2008. Ms. Heidelbaugh asked for and received from Ms. MonCrief the entire email exchange between Ms. MonCrief and New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom and organized it for submission to both Congress and Fox News (with some redaction at Ms. Reid's request). On March 19, 2009, Ms. Heidelbaugh testified, flanked by Ms. MonCrief and Ms. Reid, both present to lend support but not to testify. The transcript of Ms. Heidelbaugh's testimony is available at http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Heidelbaugh090319.pdf.

By the end of March, Ms. Heidelbaugh appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" to discuss the killing of the Obama/ACORN expose in particular and ACORN corruption and criminality in general. (Ms. MonCrief had been invited to appear also on March 31, 2009, but she was still Fox-shy.)

On April 1, 2009, O'Reilly played a redacted version of the voicemail that Ms. Strom had left for Ms. MonCrief on October 21, 2009. In that voicemail Ms. Strom memorialized that she had been told to "stand down" on the Obama/ACORN expose by "higher up." The redaction was minor, but the failure to disclose it was fodder for New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt, embarrassing for Bill O'Reilly and a needless distraction from what is critical" exposing ACORN's subversive nature and corruption of America's political process.

Later in April Ms. MonCrief finally agreed to appear on Fox News. She was originally scheduled to appear on Easter Sunday, but her appearance was postponed by Fox News. Instead she first appeared on Fox News to be interviewed by Eric Shawn on Mother's Day 2009 (May 10, 2009). That interview resulted in an invitation for Ms. MonCrief to be interviewed the next day by Megyn Kelly that Ms. MonCrief accepted. (Ms. Kelly, an attorney, later hosted the Fox ACORN special broadcast on October 2, 2009, a week after she gave birth, and interviewed ACORN founder Wade Rathke in late July 2009, a few days after the stings on ACORN's Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. offices, supposedly in connection with a Fox documentary featuring Rathke and his book, Citizen Wealth, released on July 1, 2009, and interviewed again after some of the sting videos had been released.)

Hoyt blasted O'Reilly in a Times op-ed (the first time that either Ms. MonCrief or Ms. Heidelbaugh was mentioned in The New York Times, so O'Reilly had both Ms. Heidelbaugh and Ms. MonCrief on his tv program the next day, May 18, 2009.

During that brief appearance, Ms. MonCrief stated twice that ACORN had functioned as "an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party."

Ms. MonCrief knew what she was talking about and had proof. When Ms. MonCrief emailed me "out of the blue" on October 7, 2008, she emailed: "I worked at Project Vote and ACORN for years and can provide inside information on the connections with Obama and FEC violations, IRS 501 (c)3 violations and the threats and intimidation that ACORN has used to keep me quiet. I am willing to submit to a polygraph and turn over Obama's 2nd quarter donor list with was obtained by Project Vote Development Director Karyn Gillette directly from the Obama Campaign. I also have a DNC list that was forwarded to Project Vote along with donor lists for Kerry and Clinton.”

But neither O'Reilly nor Fox News pursued the matter of ACORN's status as an unofficial arm of the Democrat Party and Ms. MonCrief has not been back on Fox News since (not even when Hoyt presumed to take "the last word" in a follow up Times op-ed).

Fox News did continued to make use of some of Ms. MonCrief's valuable information. For example, Ms. MonCrief posted the notice of ACORN's 39th anniversary gala last July. Glenn Beck then showed the notice on his show and had the gala covered, but he credited HotAir.com (where Ms. MonCrief had posted the notice), not Ms. MonCrief, for the head's up.

Apparently Fox News wanted new faces. Beck picked longtime radical Ms. Reid after ACORN national spokesman Scott Levenson said to him (off air) that he was afraid of blacks and he angrily ordered Levenson out of his studio. On September 10, 2009, Beck showed the fresh young conservative faces of Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe.

The scurrilous claim promoted by the ACORN 8 and its blogger tools that Ms. MonCrief has not been back because Fox News suddenly discovered that Ms. MonCrief had put some personal expenses on a company credit card without permission is demonstrably false.

Ms. Heidelbaugh made sure that Ms. MonCrief testified all about it in direct examination in the Pennsylvania ACORN case and Ms. MonCrief discussed it at length on Laura Ingraham's radio show in October 2008. I can attest that Ms. MonCrief candidly told me about it when we first spoke in early October 2008.

In addition, Ms. MonCrief wrote all about it when she started her blog in November 2008.

November 1: "I tried contacting www.rottenacorn.org in June of 2007 before the credit card, before the termination. I was told that it could get ugly and that since I was a single mom and needed this job for my baby, that I should try to find somewhere else and then contact them again."

November 8:

"Many of you have seen the posts that I put on the March of Dimes website regarding my daughter, Addie. What most people do not realize is that I was employed at ACORN/Project Vote during this time. I was making so little that I was on WIC and Medical Assistance. The health plan that ACORN used as part of the cover up of the embezzlement of Dale Rathke did not cover some of the basic things I needed as a pregnant mom. In fact, I still have medical bills from that time that were not paid by ACORN and the Council (covered procedures). I was not only fighting for the poor, I was of one of them - the working poor - and I truly believed that I could make a difference and change things for the better.

"From the beginning ACORN has abused the trust of its people. ACORN pretends to fight for the interests of people but they are really for hire. It seems like their motto is 'have protesters, will travel.' I have seen ACORN members organized for protests at the behest of organizations like SEIU and often the interests served were not that of the members. I find it hard to understand how so little of the money collected after a series of protests from organizations like H&R Block actually trickles down to the community.

"During 2007, I made some bad choices; I moved to Baltimore to give my daughter a real home and encountered things there that still haunt me. In order to get myself and my daughter out of this situation, I began saving money to move and since I was not making enough to live, I did use their credit card for living expenses like pampers, gas, food, clothes, etc. At $1000 every two weeks, I paid $140 a week in daycare; $993 in rent, plus car note, insurance, food, gas, clothes, formula and utilities. I was desperate to move and did something stupid to have more cash on hand for the deposit. I take full responsibility for my actions and had even begun to pay it back. I have never claimed to be perfect..."

"I mention this because my past is ACORN’s defense against me, my sins. I know that repentant sinners are always welcomed back into the fold, Jesus and the New Testament teaches us that. I came forward with full knowledge that I would have to face my actions and decisions; and I am ready to face any consequence for the truth to be exposed. To state this clearly, I have put my whole life, reputation, and future on the line and it was not for some petty grudge. Some claim that I have a vendetta, but I sacrificed my reputation and opened myself up to attacks. ACORN has attacked my credibility and my family. They have used my daughter in their smear campaigns and their mob-like intimidation tactics must cease. I came forward to expose the truth, and that meant exposing my sins. I am ready to fight ACORN for the truth to be revealed.

"ACORN is the modern day money changer in front of the temples. ACORN is the scourge of the poor; they have taken the trust of the poor and used it against them."

Fox News wisely used Ms. MonCrief when it suited its purposes and then went with a different "heroine," Ms. Giles, the svelte star of the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN videos, the first of which was made public on September 10, 2009. (In 2008, Ms. Giles, then 19, joined her dad as a Townhall columnist and wrote glowingly of O'Keefe's Planned Parenthood sting, duly noting that he had conducted it only in one-party consent states.)

Fox News friend, Townhall columnist and pastor Doug Giles, father of Ms. Giles, insisted that "[t]he truth of the [Pimp and Pro ACORN sting], from a timeline standpoint, is [Ms. Giles and James O'Keefe] hatched their plan in May of ’09, fine-tuned it from May 20th – July 23rd, and then launched July 24th, fully accomplishing their mission by the end of August. And that’s a fact to all those for whom facts still matter."

I believe that's the actual timeline.

This year Ms. Giles had a summer internship in Washington, D.C. with the National Journalism Center (which is part of Young America's Foundation) in NW Washington, D.C. The ACORN office in Washington, D.C. is in SE Washington, D.C., not far from the Natiuonal Capitol and Pennsylvania Avenue. (It is in "a safe neighborhood," not "the wrong part of town.")

Wikipedia memorialized the official story of the genesis of the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN sting: "While being interviewed by Sean Hannity of FoxNews, Giles said she conceived of this idea during a summer jog: 'Well, Sean, it's amazing what girls think about when they are jogging. And that was just something that popped into my head. I had never seen an ACORN office, I really didn't even know that they existed and I jogged into the wrong part of town, saw some homeless people and street ladies and I put two and two together when I turned around to get back into a safe neighborhood. And it's like — what if these people went into ACORN — a prostitute and what would come from that? No bills, no nothing — would they get a house? Could they start a business? So we put it to the test.'"

Put it to the test they did...and ACORN repeatedly failed.

But "the test" deflected attention away from ACORN's corruption of America's political process and Obama's blatant lies about his relationship to Obama and let Obama "look good" by cutting ACORN's ties to the census.

Instead of Fox News using Ms. MonCrief to expose, based on personal knowledge and documents, corrupt ties that would delegitimize Obama politically and thwart the implementation of the radio agenda, Fox News went with a sexy story that let the Obama administration and the bulk of Congressional Democrats appear to be responsible by cutting ties to ACORN upon "discovery" of criminality.

The "Pimp and Pro" ACORN story has been wonderful for opening Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, raising Fox News' ratings and making Ms. Giles, O'Keefe and Breitbart conservative "rock stars." It's even increased public disapproval of ACORN. But the radical ACORN political agenda has moved forward. Last Saturday the United States Senate voted to proceed with Obamacare and Obama/ACORN/SEIU/La Raza are looking forward to implementing Cap and Tax, automatic voter registration, card check, amnesty for illegals as they socialize America and ensure a permanent government-dependent Democrat majority and a Far Left federal judiciary.

It calls to mind the 2008 news stories of ACORN voter registration fraud involving registering Mickey Mouse and Dallas Cowboy football players. ACORN preferred that kind of adverse coverage, because it meant the focus was not on what was really important.

On June 9, 2009, Ms. MonCrief posted on her blog information embarrassing to Ms. Reid and her ACORN 8 as well as to Obama:

"At the ACORN meeting in Chicago on July 29, 2008 at which four national board members were present (Maud Hurd, Carol Hemingway and the leaders of the ACORN 8 who recently appeared on 'Beck,' Marcel Reid and Karen Inman), meeting notes reveal that (1) there were discussions as to why Sidley Austin (President Obama's old law firm) was chosen to work for ACORN, (2) Wade Rathke's liabilities and other liability matters 'are...not to be discussed with other board members, management staff UNLESS they have officially signed the joint defense agreement,' (3) the 14-page Elizabeth Kingsley report (co-authored by Bachmann and dated July 17, 2008) on ACORN's legal vulnerabilities was distributed, and (4) it was decided NOT to 'go after Wade' until AFTER the last presidential election: 'IF the idea for ACORN to go after Wade is decided upon--the recommendation is to wait until after December--elections, ACORN needs to get their corporation in order, clean house in terms of getting paperwork in order, etc.

"To date the ACORN 8 have not posted either the Kingsley report or that 'joint defense agreement' on their website, www.acorn-8.net.

"Why not?

"Truth and transparency!

The Kingsley report finally was made available (except one important page) and included in the Fox News ACORN special (without mention that a page was missing). Otherwise this information never made the Fox ACORN special, in which Ms. Reid was presented as a heroine bravely battling the current ACORN control group and not shown as an opportunistic and calculating radical ready, willing and able to promote and to protect Obama and the radical agenda instead of full truth, transparency and accountability.

Obama really does owe Fox News. Perhaps the sudden "detente" between the Obama Administration and Fox News is implicit recognition of that.

On September 11, 2009 (the day after the first of the ACORN sting tapes was released), Ms. Heidelbaugh joined father and daughter Giles as a Townhall columnist and posted "The ACORN Way: Change the Law After You Break It." Ironically, that's exactly what should be be done to the laws criminalizing recording without the consent of all parties to a conversation.

In that article, Ms. Heidelbaugh wrote: "ACORN receives approximately $17.00 per registration card it obtains from its funders. As a whistleblower testified, ACORN wanted 1.5 million registrations in 2008 because of the money it would receive from its funders. Therefore, ACORN didn’t particularly care about the huge number of fraudulent and/or duplicate registrations it turned in. ACORN principally was concerned with the total number of registrations received. The push for a huge number of registrations, without regard to their validity, led ACORN to establish quotas for registrations obtained per day. If the employee did not obtain those numbers, they were fired. The fear of being fired led these employees to create fraudulent and/or duplicate registrations. The fraudulent/duplicative registrations flooded County Election Divisions across Pennsylvania in the last weeks of the registration period causing a multitude of problems." (The whistleblower whom Ms. Heidelbaugh did not identify in her article is Ms. MonCrief, her star witness in the Pennsylvania ACORN case and ticket to "The O'Reilly Factor.")

Although the Philadelphia video was the sixth ACORN video released and least helpful in exposing ACORN wrongdoing and even though Pennsylvania law prohibiting surreptitious recording seems to be the broadest, ACORN's Philadelphia office was the first one targeted, on the morning of July 24, 2009, two days after, in Ms. Heidelbaugh's well-chosen words, "the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in Pittsburgh against the Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett (R), and the District Attorney for Allegheny County, Stephen A. Zappala, Jr. (D) to enjoin these officials from applying a law that makes it a crime for an organization or individual to 'give, solicit, or accept payment or financial incentive to obtain a voter registration if the payment or incentive is based upon the number of registrations or applications obtained.'"

Ms. Heidelbaugh's second Townhall article--"Huey Long, ACORN & Obama: Share The Wealth" (November 19, 2009)--concluded: "One year after we heard Candidate Obama tell Joe 'The Plumber' that spreading the wealth around is good for everybody, we have seen plans for a massive redistribution of wealth through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the stimulus plan, cash for clunkers, and the healthcare proposal which will soon be voted on in the Congress. Both ACORN and President Obama surely appreciated the political acumen of Senator Long. Never run on the Socialist ticket just advocate policies that are socialist."

Ms. Heidelbaugh's observation is astute, bold, insightful, sound and spot on.

But has the time that Obama and his radical agenda could be stopped...gone?

God help America.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.