ACORN TO GET MORE MONEY….READ THESE COLUMNS
——————————————————————————————http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/11/republican_blas.html
Republican blasts ACORN reprieve
Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor November 27, 2009 04:34 PM
A top House Republican today blasted a ruling by the Justice Department that allows the Obama administration to pay ACORN for services provided under contracts signed before Congress passed a law banning the community advocacy group from receiving taxpayers money.
Republicans have been on the warpath against ACORN since its voter registration efforts came under scrutiny during the 2008 presidential campaign. After conservative activists, who posed as a prostitute and pimp, released videos appearing to show ACORN staffers advising them how to skirt the law, Democrats joined in the outrage, leading to the congressional funding ban that Obama signed on Oct. 1.
Since 1994, ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it in grants to help poor people obtain affordable housing. The Justice Department asked whether the funding ban applied to prior contracts. In a ruling first reported by the New York Times, a department lawyer said the payments under prior contracts should continue because the language of the law did not expressly wipe them out.
But Representative Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said “the bipartisan intent of Congress was clear — no more federal dollars should flow to ACORN.”
“It is telling that this administration continues to look for every excuse possible to circumvent the intent of Congress,” Issa said in a statement. “Taxpayers should not have to continue subsidizing a criminal enterprise that helped Barack Obama get elected president. The politicization of the Justice Department to payback one of the president’s political allies is shameful and amounts to nothing more than old-fashioned cronyism.”
Obama Administration Approves of ACORN Funding
Obama administration approves ACORN funding
Friday, November 27, 2009, 6:48 PM
Jim Hoft
ACORN is the largest radical leftist group in America today.
This radical group worked closely with the Obama camp during the election. But, the community organizing group was not open about this. The photo below was scrubbed from the ACORN website before the election:
One of Barack Obama’s first big “community organizer†jobs involved ACORN in 1992. He has been working along side ACORN since before he became an elected official. Obama also trained ACORN employees. He represented ACORN in court. Obama worked with and protested with ACORN. His campaign donated $800,000 to ACORN in 2008 for voter registration efforts.
And, ACORN even canvassed for Obama last year.
Earlier this year Obama promoted a top ACORN operative, Patrick Gaspard, who’s oranization was fined $775,000 for election violations, to a top post in the White House. Gespard is helping shape domestic policy.
Obama’s ACORN group was banned from receiving federal funds in September after the group was busted on tape promoting the child sex slave trade.
But, today it was announced that ACORN will be paid with taxpayer funds after all.
The New York Times reported:
The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing funds to the group.
The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.
Since 1994, Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for providing various services related to affordable housing.
But the group has become a prime target for conservative critics, and on Oct. 1, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that included a provision that said no taxpayer funds — including funds authorized by previous legislation — could be “provided to†the group or its affiliates.
Obviously, considering Obama’s history with ACORN, this latest news surprises no one.
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