ACORN

Leftist Prosecutor Tries to Censor Video Embarrassing to ACORN

by Hans Bader on September 12, 2009 · 5 comments

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Privacy, Sanctimony

ACORN, the group that helped launch Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer was recently caught in undercover stings advising about how to set up a brothel that would bring “minor girls into the country for purposes of prostitution,” reports the Washington Post. (ACORN receives taxpayer money despite a long history of financial fraud and vote fraud).

Now, Patricia Coats Jessamy, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney, is trying to silence those who have broadcast the video footage, relying on a Maryland law that violates the First Amendment. She is not interested in prosecuting the crimes recorded on the video. Instead, Jessamy, an ardent Obama supporter, wants to prosecute the makers of the undercover video — and those citizens, bloggers, and journalists who broadcast it or “use” or “disclose its content.”

In her public statement, she complains that the video may “possibly have been obtained in violation of Maryland Law . . . Article §10-402, which requires two party consent. If it is determined that the audio portion now being heard on YouTube was illegally obtained, it is also illegal under Maryland Law to willfully use or willfully disclose the content of said audio. The penalty for the unlawful interception, disclosure or use of it is a felony punishable up to 5 years.” (Similar laws in Massachusetts have been used to shield kidnappers calling in ransom demands, and police abusing motorists!).

It is obvious to me as an attorney that Patricia Jessamy is threatening a selective prosecution. The First Amendment generally overrides state privacy laws insofar as they would prevent disclosure of public corruption and discussion of matters of public concern, as the Supreme Court has made clear in cases like Florida Star v. B.J.F. (1989), Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001), and Time v. Hill (1969).

But as the Examiner notes, “Maryland is a one-party state,” where Democrats are in charge of all three branches of government. And it is conceivable that the Maryland courts will let Jessamy use an obscure technicality to harass the makers of the video for years, despite the First Amendment.

There is a legal doctrine called “Younger abstention,” under which federal judges, based on “federalism,” won’t issue injunctions against state-court prosecutions, even if they violate the First Amendment or other constitutional provisions, unless the prosecution is not only unconstitutional, but “patently” and “flagrantly” unconstitutional. That is an extraordinarily high standard to meet, which insulates many unconstitutional state prosecutions from being challenged in federal court.

If Jessamy prosecutes YouTube, which is hosting the video, or the bloggers and journalists who are broadcasting it, this standard will be met, and a federal judge will likely issue an injunction against her wrongdoing. (See In re Providence Journal Co., 820 F.2d 1342 (1st Cir. 1987) (issuing injunction); Jean v. Massachusetts State Police, 492 F.3d 24 (1st Cir. 2007) (disseminating audiotape that was banned by state “privacy” law was protected by First Amendment)).

But if she just prosecutes the makers of the undercover video, like filmmaker James O’Keefe, it is conceivable that federal judges will refuse to intervene, saying that her violation of the First Amendment, while proven, is insufficiently “patent” and “flagrant” to justify an injunction against her (although I would argue to the contrary).

If that happens, she may be able to harass the makers of the video for years, until state prosecutions or convictions are overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even after their convictions or prosecutions are overturned on First Amendment grounds, she will be immune from any personal consequences, since prosecutors have “absolute civil immunity” against damages for constitutional violations they commit in the course of their jobs.

“Younger abstention” doesn’t apply until the prosecutor actually brings charges. So the makers of the video could seek a federal court injunction against their impending prosecution, right now, if they had attorneys. But the makers of the video appear to be conservative activists, not liberals, so the ACLU likely won’t jump at the chance to represent them (although it may eventually file an amicus brief on their behalf if they end up being prosecuted).

Former ACORN Las Vegas Director to Testify against Organization

by Ivan Osorio on August 19, 2009 · 2 comments

in Labor, Politics as Usual

The former director of the Las Vegas chapter of the far-left advocacy group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has agreed to testify against the organization, in exchange for a plea to reduced charges: two counts of conspiracy to illegally pay canvassers registering voters.

While any instance of ACORN being brought to account for breaking the law is welcome, this is only the tip of the iceberg. ACORN’s history of scandal goes back years. Jeremy Lott and Matthew Vadum of Capital Research Center provide a sample:

The Employment Policies Institute compiled ACORN cases for 2004 and 2005. Highlights include:
* “An ACORN employee in New Mexico registered a 13-year-old boy to vote. Citing this and other examples, state Representative Joe Thompson stated that ACORN was ‘manufacturing voters’ throughout New Mexico.”
* “In Ohio, a grand jury indicted an ACORN worker in Columbus for submitting a false signature and false voter registration form. In Franklin County, ACORN was forced to fi re two workers for submitting what the director of the board of election supervisors called ‘blatantly false’ forms.”
* “The Virginia State Board of Elections admonished Project Vote and ACORN [in 2005] for turning in a signifi cant number of faulty voter registrations. An audit revealed that 83% of sampled registrations that were rejected for carrying false or questionable information were submitted by Project Vote. Many of these registrations carried social security numbers that exist for other people, listed non-existent or commercial addresses, or were for convicted felons — in violation of state and federal election law.”
Before the 2006 midterm elections, the Wall Street Journal editorialized against ACORN’s efforts. The paper cited a string of cases:
* “[L]ess than a week before the midterm elections, four workers from ACORN… have been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board.”
* “Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.”
Washington’s secretary of state Sam Reed reported that in 2006 ACORN submitted 1,800 new voter registrations, and all but six were fake. This year in Washington state, seven ACORN workers were indicted on felony voter registration fraud charges, after the organization had entered into a consent decree to refrain from improper voting activities.
In Missouri, ACORN has had serious legal troubles that stretch back decades. Gov. Matt Blunt (R) recently told Human Events (Oct. 16) “This is not a Lion’s Club or a social club that tried to have a voter registration effort and made some mistakes. This is a group with a history of systematic fraud around election day.”
According to Gov. Blunt, only half of the 5,000 registrations that ACORN submitted in St. Louis before the 2000 election were valid, and at least 1,000 of the invalid registrations were clearly fraudulent. Similar shenanigans were observed in the state’s 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. That has lead to indictments or prosecutions of more than a dozen ACORN workers and to Blunt’s call for a far reaching federal investigation.
Scandals at ACORN don’t only concern badly-paid low-level workers. They are also swirling around ACORN founder and union boss Wade Rathke. Back in 2000 Rathke discovered that his brother Dale, who kept ACORN’s books, had embezzled nearly $1 million.
Rathke didn’t reveal this publicly or force his brother out. Instead, Dale was kept on the payroll and the theft was treated as a misappropriation for which the Rathke family made private restitution. The theft didn’t become public until this summer. According to the New York Times (July 9), Wade Rathke and “a small group of [ACORN] executives decided to keep the information from almost all of the group’s board members and not to alert law enforcement.”
It wasn’t until a whistleblower forced ACORN’s hand that the board was notified. Last June Dale was fi red and Wade resigned as ACORN’s chief organizer. But Wade kept his union job as chief organizer at SEIU local 100 and remains head of ACORN International, an overseas affiliate.

ACORN actually runs SEIU (Service Employees International Union) locals. SEIU President Andy Stern has emerged in recent years as the most vocal, and arguably most influential, union leader in America — President Obama called on him during a the “Fiscal Responsibility Summit,” held at the White House. It will be interesting to see what, if any, other ties emerge.

For more on ACORN, see here and here.

Fore more on SEIU, see here.

Obama Health-Care Plan Contains Affirmative-Action and Subsidies for Left-Wing Community Organizers Like ACORN

by Hans Bader on August 5, 2009 · 4 comments

in Healthcare, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The massively-costly health-care reform bills backed by Obama are riddled with provisions mandating “preference” for organizations that exhibit “cultural competency,” a politically-correct code word for a focus on minorities. So racial preferences, not cutting costs or expanding coverage, may end up being the top priority in some cases.

That’s true even for the version of the health-care bill recently passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the least liberal of the 3 House committees responsible for fleshing out the details of ObamaCare. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) says that the health-care bill may become substantially more liberal by the time it passes the House in Autumn.

Mickey Kaus, a Democrat and long-time supporter of universal health-care coverage, calls these affirmative-action provisions special “interest group time bombs” that will turn off moderate voters and may spawn unforeseen problems. John Rosenberg, an expert on antidiscrimination laws, calls them “the ACORN enrichment provision,” saying they will funnel money to left-wing community organizers like ACORN.

ACORN, a beneficiary of the economy-shrinking $800 billion stimulus package, helped spawn the mortgage crisis by promoting “liar loans.” It has also engaged in extensive financial fraud and vote fraud. The Obama Administration has chosen ACORN to help conduct the 2010 census, which will be used to reallocate seats in Congress.

Obama once represented ACORN, which pressures banks to make risky low-income loans. Government pressure on banks to make low-income loans was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Obama’s recent financial-regulation proposals would create a new bureaucratic agency to pressure banks to make even more risky low-income loans.

One of Obama’s own advisers says the Obama Administration’s health-care plan will harm people with insurance while raising their taxes. CNN says Obamacare will take away 5 freedoms. It will also destroy many affordable health-care plans while breaking Obama’s campaign promises. And Obamacare will likely cost far more than predicted.

The health-care “reform” bills Obama backs wrongly exempt illegal aliens from the health-insurance taxes and obligations imposed on citizens, effectively giving them preferential treatment.

While America’s health-care system is very expensive, it is much better at treating and detecting common forms of cancer than most European health-care systems. The Administration’s health-care proposals put these successes in jeopardy, yet they would increase health-care costs even further, while failing to provide health-care coverage as cheap or as universal as in Europe.

Obama’s support for racial preferences isn’t limited to health care. The Administration is also winking at racist voter intimidation, by letting the racist, antisemitic New Black Panther Party get away with using racial epithets and physical intimidation to drive white voters away from the polls in Philadelphia.

A Bounty on Your 401(K)

by Hans Bader on April 6, 2009

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere

The Obama Administration’s mortgage bailout for irresponsible borrowers (including wealthy borrowers with modest mortgage payments) provides a bounty for reckless sub-prime mortgage lenders like Countrywide to rip off your retirement plan. Countrywide sold its junky mortgages on Wall Street, where they ended up being owned by mutual funds that probably are in your 401(K). But it continued to service the mortgages and make money doing so.

Now, the Obama Administration is offering Countrywide $1000 to cut each of those mortgages — which it doesn’t even own — and $1000 a year for subsequent years in which it continues to service those reduced mortgages. So Countrywide is busy modifying thousands of mortgages it services, which aren’t even its property anymore — even though binding contracts say it can’t do that. When investor Bill Frey stood up to Countrywide earlier and sued it, he was demonized by Congressman Barney Frank, who spawned the mortgage crisis by blocking needed reforms and promoting risky loans in the name of “affordable housing.” Now, a bill pending in Congress would abrogate those binding contracts to enrich Countrywide at the expense of America’s savers. (The bill is being pushed by liberal Congressional leaders with the support of the left-wing groups ACORN and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition).

You may also have been ripped off if your mutual funds bought shares of the mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which the Obama Administration forced to incur $30 billion in losses to cut the principal and interest on the mortgages of delinquent and at-risk borrowers. My retirement plan contained shares of the mutual fund Legg Mason Value Trust, which owned a ton of shares in Freddie Mac.

Bailed-out mortgage borrowers are now defaulting by the thousand on their new, taxpayer-subsidized loans, which isn’t surprising, given that many of them ran up so much non-mortgage-related debt that they can’t afford even the small, reduced mortgages they received courtesy of the taxpayer.

Mortgage servicers have an incentive to modify mortgages at taxpayer expense to make them lower than necessary even if a responsible borrower could easily afford them. Why? because no borrower is going to refinance to get rid of a low mortgage. But many of them will refinance later on to pay off a high mortgage. So mortgage services will use taxpayer bailout money to cut interest and principal on mortgages that a responsible borrower could easily afford, in order to keep borrowers from paying off their mortgage.

The bill to allow mortgage servicers to abrogate the contractual rights of investors is backed by ACORN. ACORN, a beneficiary of the economy-shrinking $800 billion stimulus package, helped spawn the mortgage crisis by promoting “liar loans.” It has also engaged in extensive financial fraud and vote fraud. The Obama Administration has chosen ACORN to help conduct the 2010 census, which will be used to reallocate seats in Congress.

Obama’s $250 billion bailout for irresponsible borrowers is yet another breach of his campaign promise to enact a “net spending cut,” which seems to be just as forgotten as his broken promise not to raise taxes “in any form” on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

Losing talent in these perilous times

by Fran Smith on March 26, 2009

in Bailout Watch, Economy, International, Nanny State

We’re beginning to see the talent exodus from TARP-funded financial institutions. Yesterday in an op-ed Jake DeSantis of AIG-Financial Products wrote his “resignation letter” saying why he was leaving AIG. One major reason was the raging mob calling for the heads of those who received retention payments, now called bonuses, and the tepid defense that AIG’s $1-per-year chairman gave before Rep. Barney Frank’s rabid committee.

Today we learned from the Wall Street Journal that several top managers at Banque AIG in France are leaving, which experts say could cause defaults in $234 billion of derivative transactions. That’s because Banque AIG has to get French banking regulators to approve their replacements. If the regulators instead put in their own manager that could lead to defaults, since under the derivative contracts, such an appointment would mean a change in control and could null the contracts.

On top of that, two top Merrill Lynch strategists are leaving Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch research unit.

Retention payments to try to keep good managers in these trying times — to help resusitate ailing and failing financial firms — seem like a good idea, but not in the face of mob frenzy whipped up by policymakers and so-called community groups like ACORN, which has been leading protests and bus tours to point out “bonus” recipients’ homes.

An earlier post had speculated that London’s financial center could grow in power with U.S. financial talent being driven out. But that was before vandals attacked the Edinburgh home of the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, where they broke windows in his house and his car. Is London still safe from the anti-capitalist mobs that have threatened chaos at the G-20 meetings next week? Don’t bet on it. They too have been stoked up by policymakers’ — and world leaders’ — anti-capitalist rhetoric.

Bailouts for Liars, Illegal Aliens, and Undeserved Bonuses

by Hans Bader on March 15, 2009 · 3 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

Insurance giant AIG, bailed out by taxpayers for $170 billion, is using taxpayer money to pay executives in the division that brought it to the brink of collapse millions of dollars in bonuses! (AIG may have hoped its donations to liberal politicians, such as $103,100 to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) in 2008 alone, would shield it from scrutiny).

The Senate voted down an amendment by Jeff Sessions (R-AL) that would have kept federal stimulus money from hiring illegal aliens, resulting in up to 300,000 jobs being filled by illegal aliens rather than citizens.

In an unrecorded voice vote, the House of Representatives voted down a proposed amendment to keep people who lied on their loan applications from receiving federal bailout money. The vote was unrecorded so that liberal lawmakers in conservative districts (who camouflage themselves as supposedly-conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats) could hide their vote from their constituents. The stimulus package funds groups like ACORN, which helped spawn the mortgage crisis by promoting “liar loans,” and which has an extensive history of financial fraud and vote fraud.

Federal spending commitments for bailouts now exceed $8 trillion, including a “stimulus” package that the Congressional Budget Office admits will actually shrink the economy “in the long run,” and that guts the 1996 welfare reform law (contradicting Obama’s claims in his 2008 campaign ads that he supported welfare reform — even though he had fought to undermine welfare reform while in the Illinois legislature).

Law professor Ronald Rotunda, co-author of a treatise on constitutional law, doubts the constitutionality of the stimulus package’s “bypass” provisions.

Meanwhile, healthy banks that sold shares to the federal government only under pressure from the Treasury Department (which argued that they should accept federal money so that unhealthy banks also taking federal money would not thereby be stigmatized as a result) are being harassed by liberal lawmakers like Barney Frank (D-Mass.) for spending much smaller sums than AIG on deserving managers and employees, and for failing to make risky mortgage loans to people with bad credit.

Money is pouring into the Washington, DC area, as up to 250,000 new bureaucrats will be hired as a result of the explosion in federal spending (Obama has pushed through more spending in his first 60 days in office than Bush spent on the entire Iraq War, and federal deficits are at unprecedented levels, something that not even the proposed massive tax increases will fix).

(By the way, Washington, D.C. now has the highest AIDS rate in America — a rate of more than 3%, higher even than most of Africa, qualifying as a “generalized and severe epidemic.” Congress has plenary power over the District, but neglects its most basic oversight functions, resulting in a thoroughly incompetent D.C. city government).

Meanwhile, the economy faces a “litigation tax” from an explosion in lawsuits, as a result of recent changes in employment law, trial-lawyer earmarks in the stimulus package (such as HIPAA lawsuits), and a proliferation of products liability lawsuits resulting from anticipated anti-preemption bills in Congress, and the Supreme Court’s newfound reluctance (perhaps in response to liberal victories in the 2008 election) to limit runaway lawsuits in state courts.

$8 Trillion in Bailouts; Undeserving Rich Benefit

by Hans Bader on March 8, 2009 · 8 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Employment, Labor, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere

Federal bailouts and related spending proposed by the Obama Administration now total 8 trillion dollars, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.

To pay for exploding federal spending, Obama’s Congressional allies are mulling huge tax increases. Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Cal.) wants a 90 percent tax rate. Obama has spent more in his first 50 days, by far, than George Bush spent on the entire Iraq War. That includes a pork-filled $800 billion stimulus package that deceptively repealed welfare reform, and that the Congressional Budget Office admits will cut the size of America’s economy in the long run by exploding the national debt.

The bailouts and new spending will benefit many undeserving people who are well-to-do. The Treasury Department’s recently announced mortgage bailout will bail out irresponsible mortgage borrowers with big homes, high incomes and normal mortgage payments, covering mortgages up to $729,750.

People are suffering across much of the country, but not here in Washington, D.C., where the White House is throwing lavish parties and well-to-do residents are being enriched at taxpayer expense by Obama’s expansion of government. The expected hiring of up to 250,000 new bureaucrats by the Obama Administration is helping to prop up home values in Washington’s inner suburbs, while siphoning money out of less fortunate regions of the country. The bureaucrats’ pay will likely be much better than that of the far-more-numerous private sector employees whose jobs are being lost as a result of Obama’s deficit spending, which will crowd out private investment. Expensive restaurants and sellers of luxury goods in Washington, D.C. still seem to have plenty of business. My spend-thrift liberal neighbors, who have a second mortgage, are spending as conspicuously and prodigiously as ever.

The $800 billion stimulus package also subsidizes groups that helped spawn the mortgage crisis, like ACORN, which promoted “liar loans” and engaged in financial fraud and vote fraud.

An ally of ACORN, the Congressman Barney Frank, (D-Massachusetts) helped spawn the mortgage crisis by blocking needed reforms of the bankrupt government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and backing “affordable housing” mandates that resulted in risky mortgage loans. But now this hypocrite wants a one-sided inquisition into who caused the crisis!