Bloggers’ call on ACORN, fraud, and the Obama campaign
Following her testimony in front of the Judiciary committee, Pittsburgh lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh held a conference call.
Today The Hill Republicans charge campaign violations by ACORN and the Washington Times had the story.
Q. Right Wing Sparkle, How did witnesses Moncrief and Reid come to Heidelbaugh?
A. Moncrief came to Ms Heidelbaugh. Moncrief had been a confidential informer to the NYT to Stephanie Strom, but after the Oct. 21 article Strom told Moncrief that the editors turned down the information. Ms Moncrief had received a spreadsheet of maxed-out donors from the Obama campaign, which wanted the donors to donate to ACORN. The NYT killed the story.
Here’s Right Wing Sparkle’s post.
Melissa Clouthier asked about conflict withinin the ACORN leadership?
A. Announcement of the founder of ACORN that his brother had embezzled ACORN funds years earlier & many ACORN members wanted accounting records of all 175+ sister organizations, whose accounts go into CCI accounts in Louisiana.
Melissa then asked about Census going into ACORN?
A. Census bureau has signed an agreement with ACORN to be a “national partner” to assist in recruiting the staff.
As Melissa points out in today’s post,
The testimony elicited dismay from Representative John Conyers (D-MI), especially when the sub-committee chairman indicated that no further investigation would be forthcoming.
John Ruberry of Marathon Pundit was also at the call
ACORN voter registrars receive inadequate training, and the training they do have is “subterfuge,” Heidelbaugh said, and “they have training manuals but they don’t train their employees on the training manuals.”ACORN also encourages duplicate voter registration, she alleges, by having its registrars ask people not if they are registered to vote, but if they have voted.
Those voter registration drives “are principally designed to increase funds from their supporters’ foundations donors.” That’s because, Heidelbaugh explained, ACORN receives about $17 per completed registration card, its “Money for the Muscle” program.
ACORN had a goal of turning in 1.5 million registration cards for last year’s election. To give you some perspective, that’s roughly the population of Philadelphia. But ACORN, Heidelbaugh offered, was shooting for “forty percent accuracy (of those registered), and they may not have reached that.”
Again, ACORN is focused on raising money. Registrars have a quota, Heidelbaugh told us, of twenty completed registration cards per day. If they have fewer than that they are fired. Some registrars are paid in cash–which is illegal.
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, recommended today a full committee hearing on ACORN. Here is his statement.
Tags: ACORN
