Alinsky NTIC to pay $550K to settle Fed claim

A high-profile Chicago-based advocate for low-income communities has agreed to pay the federal government $550,000 to settle claims that it misused federal grant money.

The National Training and Information Center was accused by the U.S. attorney’s office in a 2006 federal lawsuit of violating the federal False Claims Act when it used some of the millions it received from a division of the U.S. Department of Justice to lobby members of Congress with hopes of securing more grants. Federal law prohibits the use of federal funds to curry favor with congressmen or congressional employees in connection with a grant.

NTIC, 810 N. Milwaukee Ave., did not admit liability as part of the settlement, which was reached on May 29 and announced Wednesday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago.

“We didn’t think we violated (federal) regulation,” said Tom Geoghegan, NTIC’s lawyer. “We just determined it was better to resolve the matter now and move on.”

The group, founded by the late legendary grass-roots activist Gale Cincotta, was instrumental in the creation of the Community Reinvestment Act (1977), which required banks to lend in disadvantaged neighborhoods. It still lobbies on behalf of those areas, but also promotes and supports the creation of grass-roots organizations throughout the country.

NTIC was given more than $3 million between 2000 and 2002 in federal grants that were to be used in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice’s community justice empowerment program. That program was to help community-based groups revitalize and redevelop neighborhoods by combating crime, violence and drug use.

The U.S. attorney’s office claimed in its civil lawsuit that NTIC spent $207,131 of that federal grant money for staff and others to attend mandatory training conferences in Washington, D.C. A March 2008 report from the Office of Inspector General on NTIC’s activities during those meetings claims that the group attempted to conceal that it was holding lobbying-related sessions instead of general training.

“Although the activities on the official agendas for these conferences appeared legitimate and reimbursable under the terms of the grant, our review of internal documentation, such as preliminary agendas, planning notes and post-event evaluations, revealed that these events focused on planning and conducting prohibited lobbying activities and that NTIC officials attempted to hide this from” the U.S. Department of Justice, the report said.

Ah ha .... typical organized community.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt only:

Vindication for a dearly departed housing advocate
Chicago Defender | June 1, 2004

###

Gail Cincotta was a community activist for whom the term fire-brand isn’t strong enough. The founder of the National Training & Information Center (NTIC) boldly named the organization with the intent to strike respect in the hearts of the nation’s bankers.

It did, and once during a demonstration at a Near North Side lending officer’s home she described bank executives at Citigroup, the New York holding company, as morons. That endeared her to thousands of volunteers and advocates.

Last week the Federal Reserve Board announced that it fined a Citigroup lending unit $70 million

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P3-657095101.html

~~~~~

New Plan to Keep Families in their Homes
Thursday, 19 February 2009

Each day more than 10,000 families face foreclosure in America.

And, after less than thirty days in office, President Barack Obama put forward a bold plan to help keep families in their homes and to restore some stability in our communities. The Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan has the potential to prevent 7 to 9 million families from losing their homes.

This plan is the first bold action we have seen from the federal government since the foreclosure crisis started nearly two years ago.

President Obama should be applauded for confronting the rising tide of foreclosures afflicting our communities. While National People’s Action supports this bold action, it could be strengthened with a requirement for the banks that caused this mess to do more. From million dollar bonuses to billion dollar bailouts, the events of the past year have buried the notion that an unchecked market is fair and rational.

The root of the current economic crisis can be found in the failure of the existing regulatory framework to manage risk, maintain transparency and ensure fairness in the financial services market.

The housing crisis continues to cripple our economy and is a symptom of a larger illness – massive deregulation. Made possible by deregulation, financial institutions have destabilized the marketplace by creating and pushing unsustainable and risky products such as subprime loans and mortgage-backed derivatives.

Once the bleeding wound of foreclosures has been addressed, a similarly bold package of regulatory reforms is needed like those put forward by the Congressional Oversight Panel led by Elizabeth Warren. National People’s Action spearheaded passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977.

The CRA was passed to eliminate discriminatory lending practices and to create a partnership between lending institutions and communities to ensure that local credit needs were met.

Over the years, lenders and Wall Street devised creative schemes to get around the law. In 1995 revisions to CRA cut community organizations out of the process, leaving community credit needs exclusively in the hands of the federal regulator and the lenders. As is evidenced by our current housing crisis, we know that does not work.

Most of this plan can be implemented by the Obama Administration, except for the bankruptcy protection provision. Congress must get to work and pass the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009 (HR.1106 and S.61) by March 4th to insure that the Obama plan is fully implemented.

Next on the American economic agenda should be a swift and equally bold effort to address the root cause of the financial crisis with smart regulatory reform and the modernization of the Community Reinvestment Act.

http://www.ntic-us.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=180&Itemid=1

~~~

What twisted people, huh? They threatened and shook down banks and politicians for “affordable housing” and the very subprime mortgages they now have the audacity to blame for their foreclosures !!

Rising from each organizing victory are the seeds of the next organizing fight - Alinsky paraphrased. (too lazy to look up the exact quote)

There are many branches on the Alinksky tree, the Buffalo-Jack Kemp branch and the NHS-Neighborhood Housing Services branch are a couple of the few that actually have “good intentions”.

ACORN and NTIC-NPA and the Bob Schakowsky types blatantly teach that organizers should not try to solve problems because if the problems are solved there will be no reason left to organize ... and furthermore it will be discovered that most problems are solved by individual effort and not by collective effort. Go to a “strategy meeting/staff meeting”. They are very clear about it.

And, BTW, Gail Cincotta did not start NTIC. Shel Trapp started it in the early 70s as a response from the older Alinsky groups to the new Alinsky kid on the block ... ACORN of LittleRock. Gail Cincotta was just a loudmouth Shel put in front of the cameras.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.