Northwest Indiana Discussion

Acorn, the organization that has taken Chicago's corrupt politics nationwide has set up shop in Crown Point at what used to be the Wolohan Lumber Co. at U.S. 231 and 113th street.

The Wall Street Journal reported on May 9: "On May 4, Nevada officials charged Acorn, its regional director and its Las Vegas field director with submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms last year. Larry Lomax, the registrar of voters in Las Vegas, says he believes 48% of Acorn's forms "are clearly fraudulent." On Thursday, prosecutors in Pittsburgh, Pa., also charged seven Acorn employees with filing hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations before last year's general election."

They are here to sign up all the kin folk you got locked up in the county jail.

ACORN should have no place in Crown Point.

Boil the tar. Gather the feathers.

Keep East Chicago in East Chicago!

Killing A Story: How It's Done
Share Post PrintMay 17, 2009 Posted by John at 8:33 AM
In today's New York Times, Public Editor Clark Hoyt reveals the result of his investigation into the charge that the paper killed a story during the 2008 Presidential campaign in order to help Barack Obama. Hoyt concludes that the claim is "nonsense."

ON March 17, a Republican lawyer, quoting a confidential source for a Times reporter, testified to Congress that the newspaper killed a story last fall because it would have been "a game-changer" in the presidential election.

The charge, amplified by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News in April and reverberating around the conservative blogosphere, is about the most damning allegation that can be made against a news organization. If true, it would mean that Times editors, whose job is to report the facts without fear or favor, were so lacking in integrity that they withheld an important story in order to influence the election.

But the facts as related by Hoyt don't rebut the charge; they support it.

Times reporter Stephanie Strom was looking into ACORN, and she had a source, a former ACORN employee named Anita Moncrief. Moncrief told Strom that she had evidence of "constant contact" between ACORN's Project Vote and both the Obama and Clinton campaigns:

On Sept. 7, Moncrief wrote to Strom that she had donor lists from the campaigns of Obama and Hillary Clinton and that there had been "constant contact" between the campaigns and Project Vote, an Acorn affiliate whose tax-exempt status forbids it to engage in partisan politics. Moncrief said she had withheld that information earlier but was disclosing it now that the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin was "all over it."

"I am sorry," she wrote, "but I believe in Obama and did not want to help the Republicans."

A key part of Moncrief's story was that the Obama campaign had furnished ACORN with lists of maxed-out donors so that ACORN could mine them for contributions. In fact, Moncrief provided the Times reporter, Strom, with such a list that ACORN allegedly obtained from the Obama campaign. Hoyt does not dispute that this story, if true, was evidence of violation of the campaign finance laws.

So why did the Times pull the plug on Strom's ongoing investigation? The story became public because a Republican lawyer named Heather Heidelbaugh testified, apparently based on information she got from Anita Moncrief, that the Times had been working on an Obama-ACORN story but that "Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, 'it was a game-changer.'" Hoyt undertakes to show that this charge was false.

He admits, though, that Strom's editor, Suzanne Daley, "called a halt to Strom's pursuit of the Obama angle." So the Times did kill the investigation and any further reporting. The only question is why. Hoyt uncritically accepts Daley's explanation:

"We had worked on that story for a while and had come up empty-handed," Daley said. "You have to cut bait after a while." She said she never thought of the story as a game-changer and never used that term with Strom.

But wait! Hoyt also relates that shortly before Daley pulled the plug, "Moncrief finally agreed to go on the record" and Strom had scheduled a meeting with her. It was when she called Moncrief to cancel the meeting that Strom allegedly told her that her bosses had killed the investigation to protect Obama. Obviously, if Strom was about to hit pay-dirt with an on-the-record witness, Daley's assertion that she killed the story because Strom "had come up empty-handed" is false.

Hoyt doesn't appear to notice the contradiction. He does, however, labor manfully to defend the Times. He goes to great lengths to refute the claim that Strom told Moncrief the Times killed the story because it was a "game-changer," as though that particular phrase had some talismanic significance. Yet, if you read Hoyt's column to the end, you find that in an email to Hoyt Moncrief attributed exactly that statement to Strom:

She said Strom told her "it was their policy not to print a game-changer for either side that close to the election."

Hoyt also argues that the story about Obama and ACORN would not have been a "game-changer" in that it would not have swung the election to John McCain. I agree. But since when is that the standard? Is Hoyt telling us that the Times' policy is only to print stories that have the potential to change the result of a Presidential election? Of course, if the story did have the potential to change the outcome of the election, that, too, would have been offered as a reason not to print it.

Hoyt also volunteers that Moncrief had a "credibility problem" because she had been fired by ACORN for putting private expenses on an ACORN credit card. So she is that classic newspaper source, a disgruntled former employee. Is Hoyt telling us that the Times doesn't run stories on the basis of leads from disgruntled former employees? Hah! If the paper followed that policy, it would lose out on its best exposes. And it bears repeating that Moncrief was attesting to first-hand information, not just passing along a rumor she had heard at ACORN. By her account, "it was her job to identify" maxed-out Obama donors who might contribute to ACORN's Project Vote.

Hoyt interviewed Strom, of course, but--rather remarkably--he does not reveal what Strom told him about her conversation with Daley in which Daley killed Strom's ongoing investigation. That's a rather significant omission, isn't it? Instead, Hoyt merely quotes Strom's observation that she did write a story on ACORN that appeared on October 22:

[B]efore they were to meet, Strom said, another source gave her an internal report detailing concerns about impermissible political activity by Acorn and its tax-exempt affiliates. The resulting article was published on Oct. 22.

That story is here. It addresses another topic entirely, the lack of any real distinction between ACORN and Project Vote. It does, however, address the Obama controversy, very briefly:

Republicans have tried to make an issue of Senator Barack Obama's ties to the group, which he represented in a lawsuit in 1995. The Obama campaign has denied any connection with Acorn's voter registration drives.

There you have it. That's the last word the Times' readers got on Obama's very likely illegal relationship with ACORN.

If the Times didn't kill the story for the reason illogically asserted by Daley--it hadn't panned out--then why did they kill it? Perhaps Stephanie Strom's email reply to Anita Moncrief, quoted by Hoyt, suggests an answer:

Am also onto the Obama connection, sadly. Would love the donor lists. As for helping the Repubs, they're already onto this like white on rice. SIGH!

For the New York Times, Republicans are simply the enemy. By October 2008, it was time to circle the wagons.

Well, I can't wait to see how this pans out, Gunslinger!

Thanks for sharing this article.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

"More Acorn Voter Fraud Comes to Light

Congressional Democrats still want the group to be eligible for federal money

By JOHN FUND
Democrats are split on how to deal with Acorn, the liberal "community organizing" group that deployed thousands of get-out-the-vote workers last election. State and city Democratic officials -- who've been contending with its many scandals -- are moving against it. Washington Democrats are still sweeping Acorn abuses under a rug."

It appears that there are millions of dollars from hundreds of organizations flowing into ACORN in a small building in New Orleans which is the address of these organizations. A number of congressmen are looking into whether ACORN should be eligible for part of the $2 billion included in the government stimulus package for such organizations.

Places like Indianapolis - with Eli Lilly - and Bloomington - with Cook Group, medical device manufacturers - are weathering the recession well.

Cook Group, has poured $400 million into turning French Lick and West Baden in Southern Indiana creating beautiful, sold-out world-class resorts.

The politrical corruption in Northwest Indiana is crushing this area's economy. Acorn and it's beneficiaries must be driven out. All it produces is corrupt politicians and other walking compost

A spokesman on CNBC said that Obama's Green approach to the economy will make the U.S. the cleanest third world country.

Is there no end to Lake County Democrat Political Corruption?

Feds issue subpoenas to Visclosky's office
By Bowdeya Tweh

bowdeya.tweh@nwi.com, (219) 933-4183 | Friday, May 29, 2009

Democratic U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky's Congressional office, campaign committees and certain employees have been sent grand jury subpoenas requesting documents relating to The PMA Group, the congressman said Friday.

The PMA Group is a disbanded Arlington, Va., lobbying firm, and the FBI conducted a raid on the firm's offices in November.

Is there a single honest Democrat politician in Lake County - or just ones that haven't been caught yet?

Lawmaker (Visclosky) Subpoenaed in Lobby Probe

By NAFTALI BENDAVID and SUSAN DAVIS
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Peter Visclosky, a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, confirmed Friday he had received subpoenas related to the federal investigation of PMA Group, a defunct defense lobbying firm.

Rep. Peter Visclosky, left, listens to Rep. John Murtha during a Congressional Steel Caucus hearing in February.
Mr. Visclosky is the first member of Congress who has reported receiving a subpoena in the long-running investigation of PMA. The firm and its clients gave more than $2 million in campaign contributions to Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa.), a member of the Appropriations Committee and chair of its subcommittee on defense.

Mr. Visclosky (D., Ind.) said federal law-enforcement officials had issued grand jury subpoenas to his congressional office and campaign committees, as well to some of his employees, seeking documents related to PMA.

Mr. Visclosky said in a statement he would cooperate with the investigation, "consistent with my constitutional obligations to Congress and my duties and responsibilities to my constituents."

The Truth About ObamACORN
by Michelle Malkin

05/29/2009


Left-wing groups in Washington, D.C., are panicked. The New York Times and other Team Obama whitewashers are downplaying the connection between the Obama presidential campaign, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Obama's old employer Project Vote (ACORN's nonprofit canvassing arm). Alas, the truth keeps seeping out.

At a closed-door powwow hosted Thursday at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, activists discussed how to combat a relentless stream of corruption charges from ACORN/Project Vote whistleblowers. But it's too late for a reputation bailout. Former Project Vote official and whistleblower Anita MonCrief has harnessed the Internet to crowd-source a massive cache of documents showing ties between Obama staff members and the supposedly "nonpartisan" ACORN operations.

Last fall, The New York Times abandoned an investigation into whether Obama had shared donor lists with Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization that is prohibited from engaging in political activity. Public editor Clark Hoyt earlier this month called it "the tip that didn't pan out." Critics suggested the donor lists could have been compiled through public records. But I have obtained the lists -- not only of Obama donors, but also lists of Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry contributors. The records include small donors to the Obama campaign, who are not disclosed in public campaign finance databases. It's information only a campaign could supply.


MonCrief testified under oath last fall that her then-boss, Karyn Gillette, gave her the Obama donor list and told her the campaign had furnished it. Moreover, e-mail messages between ACORN, Project Vote and other affiliates, including ACORN subsidiary Citizens Services, Inc. (CSI), make explicit references to working on "Obama campaign related projects." The "list of maxed out Obama donors" is specifically mentioned in staff e-mail. Another message from ACORN/Project Vote official Nathan Henderson-James warns ACORN and affiliated staff to prepare for "conservatives … gearing up a major oppo research project on Obama."

Henderson-James wrote, "Understand I'm not suggesting that we gear up to defend a candidate's campaign." But that, of course, is exactly what the ACORN enterprise did.

Why does this matter? Transparency, tax dollars and electoral integrity. ACORN's own lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley acknowledged last year that a vast web of tax-exempt ACORN affiliates were shuffling money around -- making it almost impossible to track whether campaign rules and tax regulations were being followed. ACORN receives 40 percent of its revenues from taxpayers. Americans deserve to know whether and how much commingling of public money with political projects has occurred over the last four decades -- and what role the Obama campaign played in this enterprise.

Remember: Last August, the Obama team admitted its failure to properly disclose $800,000 in payments to CSI -- which works hand in hand with Project Vote and the ACORN parent organization. Obama mysteriously reclassified the campaign advance work expenditures as "get-out-the-vote" activities. Nary a peep from electoral integrity watchdogs.

Despite heated denials from Team Obama, the links between ACORN, Project Vote and CSI are inextricable. As Obama himself reminded ACORN leaders after its political action committee endorsed his presidential candidacy in February 2008:

"I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."

As I've reported before, the Obama campaign's "Vote for Change" registration drive, run simultaneously with ACORN/Project Vote, was an all-out scramble to scrape up every last unregistered voter sympathetic to Obama's big-government vision.

In an e-mail message to whistleblower MonCrief last summer, New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom told the truth: "The real story to all this is how these myriad entities allow them to shuffle money around so much that no one really knows what's getting spent on what." By Oct. 6, 2008, Strom had thrown in the towel in the wake of blistering phone conversations with the Obama campaign. She wrote:

"I'm calling a halt to my efforts. I just had two unpleasant calls with the Obama campaign, wherein the spokesman was screaming and yelling and cursing me, calling me a right-wing nut and a conspiracy theorist and everything else. … I'd still like to get that file from you when you have a chance to send it. One of these days, the truth is going to come out."

It's only just begun.

Court enters judgment in East Chicago racketeering suit
State’s claims of liability acknowledged in Pastrick, Fife default

INDIANAPOLIS – In a first-in-the-nation legal development, a federal judge Monday signed a judgment finding former East Chicago Mayor Robert Pastrick operated the city government as a corrupt enterprise under federal and state racketeering laws.

The judgment comes after Pastrick and ex-mayoral aide James H. Fife III opted to not proceed to trial in the State’s lawsuit and legally acknowledged their liability on every racketeering claim the State brought. U.S. District Court Judge James Moody made formal findings Monday that the allegations in the State’s complaint are deemed true by virtue of the default by Pastrick and Fife, and so the state is entitled to relief.

“This is historic. Never before has a city government been adjudged a corrupt organization under RICO statute, according to our research,” Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said.

Next, the court will hear testimony June 9 on how much Pastrick and Fife must pay in damages in the $24 million fraud. The Office of the Indiana Attorney General will propose to the court additional legal remedies to restore public trust in East Chicago city government.

“This case is about more than just collecting monetary damages that may or may not be paid. It is about rehabilitating the city government of East Chicago of the historic legacy of corruption from the Pastrick era,” Zoeller said.

The first-of-its-kind lawsuit, filed under the federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations or RICO statute, named the city government of East Chicago itself as a corrupt enterprise.