WEBCommentary Contributor

Author: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  October 20, 2008

Topic category:  Other/General

Does NYT Know MORE About Obama/ACORN?


It's time for a whistleblower to blow the whistle on ACORN and Obama.

Would The New York Times NOT report some things voters should know and instead spin for Obama, whitewash the Obama/Ayers relationship and run scurrilous stories about the McCains?

Is the Pope Catholic?

It's no surprise that The New York Times is backing the Obamas and battering the McCains.

It's no surprise that McCain's alliance with The New York Times on campaign finance reform has turned out to be a boon for The New York Times and a burden for McCain.

And it's no surprise that The New York Times has been handling the Obama/ACORN relationship the way it has.

Election Day 2008 is nearly upon us.

The New York Times obviously wants Obama to be elected President.

But timely voter appreciation of the Obama/ACORN relationship and the fact that Obama brazenly lied about it in the last presidential debate will thwart the will of The New York Times and put an end to Obama's presidential aspirations.

Obama during the last of the three presidential debates:

"...with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they've done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn't really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.

"It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.

That was NOT Obama's only involvement with ACORN, and he very well knows it.

ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is Obama's Achilles heel.

Capital Research Center began its report on a recent Obama campaign tactic to help ACORN ("Obama Demands Probe of Investigators Probing Criminal Group ACORN," October 18, 2008, by Matthew Vadum) with an old Communist saying, "Accuse your enemy of what you are doing."

It can be an effective tactic, especially when the self-described "newspaper of record" does not deem the whole truth "news fit to print."

Vadum:

"ACORN has friends in high places.

"Barack Obama’s campaign is –strangely enough– demanding that a special prosecutor look into the investigations of the massive vote fraud that is being perpetrated by the radical group ACORN to determine if the investigations are politically motivated."

Voter registration fraud is NOT voter fraud, but it sets the stage for voter fraud.

People familiar with ACORN's thuggish tactics (described in some of my previous articles)that contributed greatly to the current financial crisis are concerned with what ACORN may be planning for Election Day 2008.

The New York Times:

"Seeking to portray law enforcement investigations into reports of fraudulent voter registrations in several states as an extension of the controversial firings of United States attorneys, the Obama campaign on Friday called for a review by a special prosecutor.

"Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama campaign, sent a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and Special Prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy, who is investigating the attorney firings, requesting that Ms. Dannehy also look into the whether F.B.I. investigations of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, were politically motivated.

"In a conference call with reporters on Friday, Mr. Bauer suggested that there was 'an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics.'

"There is ample reason for us to be concerned about Republican involvement and we believe this ought to be included in the special prosecutor’s mandate,' Mr. Bauer said."

ACORN needs Obama to appoint the next Attorney General of the United States and the United States Attorneys and Team Obama is showing what an Obama administration would be like.

Vadum: "Given that Obama goes way back with ACORN, this attempt at misdirection is particularly audacious and clever. People who don’t track these issues closely may be fooled."

Exactly! (Especially younger voters whose education has been leftist indocxtrination and who did not experience the Cold War.)

Meanwhile, ACORN itself is calling on "the McCain Campaign to get out of the gutter"!

It's perfectly understandable that ACORN wants to control its turf.

ACORN: "Enough is enough of these Nixon-style gutter politics being perpetrated by the Bush Administration and McCain campaign. The two of them are continuing to abuse federal law enforcement to intimidate their political opponents and suppress the vote," said ACORN.

Suppressing voter registration fraud and voter fraud is A GOOD THING!

Most of the major media (including The New York Times is not exposing ACORN for what it really is...or reporting that it is in dire economic straits itself as a result of the exposure of embezzlement and cover up at ACORN.

So let's look inside "the Nut."

Notes from East Regional Meeting 8/15/08, Washington DC

REPORT ON THE STATUS OF THE ORGANIZATION – what happened, board response

943k embezzlement thru credit card and false reimbursements

Agreed to repay 30k a year in order to not be prosecuted

Decision by wade along with management council

Understanding that wade would inform EC of theft & decision to keep dale

Came out that mbrs of AB not informed of this

Was revealed after a nat’l funder found out

AB met at convention

At convention asked wade to step down from acorn & all affiliates

Dale asked to leave...

STATE OF FINANCES

Financial status of ACORN – over $2M in funds are being held by foundations because of the situation

Currently owe over $800k to IRS

Haven’t paid medical bills of over $300k

We are essentially “broke” nationally and lots of offices are struggling

$943k has been repaid (unclear where that money is now)

Making progress with funders

Biggest outstanding is CCHD I think he said 42 grants and $1.4M is being held up

One thing we may need to do for cchd:

May need to find a local allied org that is willing to act as a fiscal sponsor. Legal documentation

They would play the role that AISJ has played up till now with CChd grants

2nd group of ~30 funders making progress, they have met with leaders Ford, Needmor (helping convene group of 30 funders – hoping to have their 6 grants released in Sept)

Mott has stepped up and continued support. We think they‘ll renew stuff

Sandlers have committed $1M a year. We haven’t been able to spring that money for 08

They had other issues prior to this happening. Many with wade.

Money for recruitment and training. Big hole in nat’l budget

Voter reg and civic engagement work continues to flow to PV. Including from sandlers. Funders realize it of critical importance to the country

ACORN owes health fund roughly $500k to bail out health fund

If we don’t do this then we’ll have to pay more when the health fund runs out of money

Big ny ally forest city ratner agreed to loan us $1M at 2% and grant us $500k to pay back health fund and to use for other transition costs. Board will decide how much to allocate to IRS payment and how much to allocate to lawyers

Also trying to get money from Bloomberg and other NY and other wealthy allies for this

Also asking cabal of 30 funders for transition funds

We’ve started going out aggressively to a bunch of wealthy allies and some are excited to fund building a new acorn

Pension fund is in fairly good shape

Issues are more with Health fund. It is short of money and it needs to be bidded out to commercial insurance companies

LAWSUIT FILED BY REID & INMAN AGAINST ACORN ON 8/14

Marcel Reid & Karen Inman (2/3 of AB mbrs on IMC) filed a request for an injunction Thursday 8/14 late afternoon –. Filed a request for a TRO (temporary restraining order) asking that Wade, dale, bertha, and Mike Jones could not sign any contracts on behalf of ACORN. Claimed that they were acting on behalf of the board but rest of IMC and even rest of board appeared not to know about it.

It was done in bad faith.

Some question whether judge granted it. Beth kingsley is confident that is has no legal authority

It states that they are acting on authority of the IMC and board which they are not.

Karen also showed up on Monday 8/11 in NOLA with 3 fraternity mbrs trying (and failing) to get access to the books

The fact that the suit has been filed now opens things up to the public record and puts us to further vulnerability to the media

PRESS COVERAGE

NYT reporter is working on 2nd story. She asserts that we have lied concerning the restitution and we are working to show documentation to refute her assertion

So far NOLA media has ignored the whole story. If suit goes forward the court reporter will likely pick it up

Bertha is trying to convince marcel & Karen to cancel suit

We think whatever sources Stephanie has are no longer good sources. The questions she asks us about are things that no one in any level of management would think to be true. Think that she may be getting misinformation from funders who don’t like us. Good news that info has generally been wrong.

Once we start proving sources wrong then she stops believeing the source. That’s why we are trying so hard to find cancelled checks to prove this.

Some of people in funders group have long vendettas against acorn. So many of the things we hear from Stephanie strom are rumors and heresay so that leads us to think it comes from such funders

Frustration over lack of management in the national office in NOLA.

Solution hasn’t been figured out yet

Jon will set up conversation with Katy, Bertha, Beth, Bradberry, Tanya, & Liz to discuss local/national relations & national management in NOLA etc.

Seems that stephanie strom is more interested in a gotcha story not something informative

Stephanie strom told john atlas that she’s not sure what she’s looking for, she’s just looking for something

COUNCIL CORPORATIONS

Tricky question of how acorn board relates to all of the other boards on the COUNCIL (i.e. ACORN & ACORN International)

CCI Board had one board mbr and now has 4-5 board mbrs.

Over 146 corporations in COUNCIL (ACORN family)

Dale & Wade affiliated with over 100 of them

Legally removing Wade & Dale from this stuff is complicated & will take time to sort out

Request for List of corporations, active or inactive, who is on board, do we think we need them around

ACORN International

We are reaching out to Canada ACORN to have a leadership mtg

Also to other international offices.

EC’s goal is to try and resolve as many of these issues in a way that is amicable to the organization. These are balancing acts that are partly political and partly legal.

hope to bring

ACORN International is a 501c3 that was set up to raise $ for all of ACORN’s international operations

I think each international office is its own organization in its own country

Legally the acorn board can only deal with ACORN international the US 501c3

Canada board is meeting on 8/16. Hasn’t had as much time to deal with this as US board and is trying to catch up

New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom has done some ACORN reporting: "Head of Foundation Bailed Out Nonprofit Group After Its Funds Were Embezzled," August 17, 2008; "Lawsuit Adds to Turmoil for Community Group, September 10, 2008; "On Obama, Acorn and Voter Registration," October 11, 2008; "Acorn Working on Deal to Sever Ties With Founder," October 16, 2008.

It may well NOT be Ms. Strom's fault that the Obama/ACORN relationship has not been thoroughly exposed. The editorial process may be wholly to blame for that.

The October 11 article stated:

“'Barack Obama has made very inconsistent remarks about what his relationship with this organization is,' Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, said in a conference call.

"Mr. Davis said Mr. Obama had worked as Acorn’s lawyer and conducted training events for its leaders. He also noted a payment the Obama campaign made in February to an Acorn affiliate, Citizens Services Inc."

With that reported, the article immediately went on to supposedly set the record straight, as follows:

"While Mr. Obama did represent Acorn in a lawsuit in 1995, Acorn was on the same side as the Justice Department. The training events involved two hours of work. And the payment to the Acorn affiliate was reported in campaign filings, although they had to be revised because of an error.

"The Obama campaign described the accusations as a spurious effort to tie Mr. Obama to potentially fraudulent voter registrations.

“'Barack Obama strongly condemns voter registration fraud or any other breach of election law by any party or group,' Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement.

"Acorn, whose political action committee has endorsed Mr. Obama, has said that the investigations into its voter registration work are politically motivated.

“'Rumors of Acorn’s voter fraud have been greatly exaggerated and to a large extent manufactured,' Bertha Lewis, the organization’s interim chief organizer, or chief executive, said Monday in a conference call to announce that the organization had registered 1.3 million people to vote.

"Ms. Lewis said it was Acorn itself that informed state officials about some questionable registrations collected by its employees that are now under investigation. Acorn said it had terminated the workers involved.

"In 1995, Mr. Obama was on a team of lawyers that represented Acorn in a lawsuit to compel Illinois to comply with federal laws intended to enhance access to the polls. The team also represented Equip for Equality, a group that promotes the rights of the disabled, and four individuals."

And, The New York Times failed to note, Obama received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995.

Even The New York Times acknowledged (albeit while minimizing) that Obama was not just a legal hired gun for ACORN.

October 10 article: "Lewis Goldberg, a spokesman for Acorn, said Mr. Obama conducted two leadership training sessions of roughly an hour each for Acorn’s Chicago affiliate over a three-year period in the late 1990s. He was not paid for that work, Mr. Goldberg said."

And the article conceded (while trying to minimize) that Obama sent some money to ACORN during the campaign this year and--SURPRISE!--misreported:

"Even before Friday’s conference call, Republicans had made much of an $832,598 payment made in February by the Obama campaign to Citizens Services Inc., a consulting firm affiliated with Acorn.

“'This organization is not just related to but deeply ingrained in the Acorn organization, a front group for Acorn,' Mr. Davis said.

"The Obama campaign initially reported that the payment was for 'staging, sound, lighting' and other advance work when it reported its expenditures with the Federal Election Commission. It filed amended reports in August and September to reflect that those payments were for get-out-the-vote efforts.

"Mr. Davis contended that the original filing was an effort to 'hide the fact' that money was paid to Acorn. But F.E.C. officials have said such amended filings are common."

The fact that amended filings are common is completely irrelevant to whether the original filing hide a fact and The Times offered nothing that supports its assurance that there had been an error, or innocent mistake, instead of an attempt to hide.

The New York Times also buried deep in the article that Obama and ACORN go way back.

October 10 article:

"In 1992, Mr. Obama was personally involved in voter registration efforts when he served as director of Project Vote in Chicago, helping to register 150,000 voters on the South Side. His success was widely written about at the time and credited with helping to elect Senator Carol Moseley Braun, the first African-American woman in the Senate.

"Mr. LaBolt emphasized that Project Vote and Acorn were not as intertwined at that time as they are today, when a significant part of Project Vote’s revenues flow to Acorn and various of its affiliates as payment for services.

"But according to Sam Graham-Felsen, who blogs on the Obama campaign’s Web site, Mr. Obama himself linked his 1992 work to Acorn in a meeting with Acorn’s leaders in November.

“'Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drives in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work,” Mr. Obama said, according to a post Mr. Graham-Felsen made in February."

It's time for a whistleblower to blow the whistle on ACORN and Obama.

May God bless 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.


Copyright © 2008 by Michael J. Gaynor
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