Sham Pelosi Investigation Will Absolve ACORN Of Any Wrongdoing

Biggovernment.com ^ | by Phil Kerpen

[MindBender26]

Congress’s official investigation into the financial crisis, the so-called Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, will convene its first meeting today.

Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked chairman of the commission Phil Angelides, has deep ties to radical left-wing politics, including the Van Jones-connected Apollo Alliance, which he chairs, and ACORN, which is an Apollo member and endorsed and actively supported his gubernatorial campaign. His selection proves the commission will be a politicized attempt to advance a left-wing agenda through a revisionist history of the financial crisis. It also assures that ACORN and other community organizers who forced banks to make reckless loans in the name of affordable housing will be let off the hook.

Angelides’s San Francisco-based Apollo Alliance describes itself as a “coalition of labor, business, environmental, and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution.” Based on the radical past of some of its key figures, the use of the word revolution is appropriate. Apollo was conceived of, and presently serves, as a clearing house to align the otherwise disparate interests of environmental groups, labor unions, social justice organizations, and rent-seeking corporations.

Disgraced former White House green jobs czar Van Jones was an Apollo board member, involved with the group from its founding, and was its model for a new type of leader. Apollo board member John Podesta, who was chairman of Obama’s transition team, already brought Van Jones back to the Center for American Progress, Podesta’s influential think tank where Jones had previously been a senior fellow. These are Angelides’s friends and ideological peers.

Apollo’s roster of endorsers includes the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the United Steelworkers, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, ACORN, the Ella Baker Center, and all the major wind and solar industry players. By uniting labor unions with environmentalists, Apollo seeks to repair the historical rift between those elements of the big-government coalition by tapping the U.S. Treasury to gain access to taxpayer dollars for a wide-variety of projects that fund their constituents. Not surprisingly, there is huge overlap between Apollo endorsers and Angelides’s endorsers in his 2006 run for governor of California, including ACORN, which actively campaigned for him.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) specifically credited Apollo for helping write and pass the stimulus, saying: “This legislation is the first step in building a clean energy economy — The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them.”

ACORN got a big piece of the stimulus pie, eligible to apply for as much as $4.19 billion of stimulus funding under the so-called “Neighborhood Stabilization Program” and likely eligible for other stimulus programs as well. David Vitter of Louisiana offered an amendment that would have blocked ACORN from receiving stimulus funds that failed on a 45-51 vote.

Angelides earned his position as chairman of the Apollo Alliance by loyally steering literally billions of dollars of the pension funds he controlled as California State Treasurer to the pockets of the renewable energy, organized labor, and community organizing interests that make up Apollo. His biography on the Apollo web site boasts:

“He directed $26 billion in state investments to promote smart growth. He put the weight of California’s $400 billion pension funds behind investment in clean energy and the fight against global warming.”

Angelides brought his top staffer, Cathy Calfo, with him from the California State Treasurer’s office to become Apollo’s new executive director. Apollo boasts that, while in the Treasurer’s office, Calfo steered an incredible $1.5 billion in state funds to “renewable energy, cutting edge environmental technologies, and environmentally responsible companies.”

So the man charged with investigating the financial crisis is the bagman for the union and ACORN influenced Apollo Alliance. Don’t expect much in the way of honest inquiry from the commission he chairs, and you can be sure that ACORN and its fellow so-called community organizations will be held blameless.

[MindBender26]

The inmates are guarding the institution.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Figures. The fix is in.

[US Navy Vet]

At this point the Reichstag fire sounds pretty good.

[Maverick68]

And the “fix” WILL be exposed.
I hope you guys understand:
They have the White House
They have the Congress
They have the media
They have their azzes handed to them on a daily basis.
We can’t get comfortable, but WE ARE BEATING AND EXPOSING them.

[stephenjohnbanker]

And the Republicans are hiding in the mens room, tapping their feet.

[Nathan Zachary]

Congress needs to launch an official investigation into Nancy Pelosi's "official investigation". The corruption is so thick and stinks so bad I just can't see how congress can think they can ignore it. Of course, there's always the race card. When "we the people" start making more noise over this stinking pile of corruption, they'll just call us racists.

[WayneS]

I, for one, will sleep MUCH better tonight knowing that Nancy Pelosi is taking charge of the investigation of ACORN.

;^)

[Nathan Zachary]

And the Republicans are hiding in the mens room, tapping their feet.

needs repeating.

[DemonDeac]

I think they will find them guilty of a minimal amount and blame that on a few individuals rather than the whole group. It’ll be a slap on the wrist aimed at appeasing the populace without doing any real harm to the group.

[maggief]

http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=9903

California ACORN Helps Stop Ballot Measures That Threatened Schools, Unions

State Treasurer Phil Angelides speaks next to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at a Get Out the Vote rally.

On November 8th, the hard work of California ACORN members and union members around the state paid off when four harmful propositions were defeated in the state's special election. The propositions would have placed crippling restrictions on school funding and teacher tenure, taken authority to redistrict from legislators, and curtailed the political voice of union members.

Two days before the election, Los Angeles ACORN helped lead a rally of over 350 people in attendance. ACORN leader Sara Araiza spoke to the crowd, assembled labor leaders, and elected officials about the devastating effect the propositions would have on our schools and urged the crowd to work hard to get out the vote.

In the campaign to defeat these propositions, 300-400 California ACORN organizers visited potential voters each day in the week before election day, and 670 ACORN election workers hit the streets on November 8th. California ACORN knocked on 191,689 doors to contact 84,208 voters in over 600 precincts. This Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort represented California ACORN’s largest voter mobilization in its 20-year history, and was ACORN’s contribution to the largest labor/community, grassroots GOTV field program ever conducted in the Golden State.

[jetson]

THATS RACIST! Ooops... wrong thread. Can’t keep up with what is and isn’t racist.

[ladyL]

If everyone reading this post today will call their Congressman and send out an email to their friends asking the same, we can turn the heat up. Go ahead call, and tell them Palosi is trying to pull this off but you want them to fight this.

[Always Right]

This is so transparently a conflict of interest, the GOP better raise high hell about this.

[maine-iac7]

WE need to jam Holder's email box and phones with demands to start a RICO investigation on ACORN and it's myriad affiliates.

NOW

and ditto to all our 'representatives' - and remind them that we are keeping tabs for Nov 2010

[freekitty]

Pelosi is in an article on Drudge today saying she is clueless about the defunding of Acorn.

You know this woman is just too dumb to be leader of anything. She never knows anything especially when she is somehow involved and if it’s crooked or sleazy; she’s right in the middle.

The people in CA that voted for her whether liberal or not should stop and really think about having someone that consistently lies and is always involved in one criminal activity or another. Seriously, do you really think she wouldn’t do to you what she does to others?

She not only needs to go; she needs to go to jail.

[American Constitutionalist]

How can they ever clean up corruption and fix the problem when they are the problem.
Accountability starts at the top, no wonder people don't trust authority.
In the recent video, Juan mentions 2 DAs involved.

[Nathan Zachary]

"If everyone reading this post today will call their Congressman and send out an email to their friends asking the same, we can turn the heat up. Go ahead call, and tell them Palosi is trying to pull this off but you want them to fight this."

I've been calling and emailing so much lately it's getting ridiculous! I would love to see just how much email and telephone messages they ignore.

[MHGinTN]

Pingaling ... here are more particulars.

[MHGinTN]

The saddest part is the unaddressed aspect, where scum like Pelosi and Franks and Hastings and Obama ... well, you get the gist, when scum cannot be unseated from office because their voting constituencies are as corrupted as them. America has truly been changed ... into a deeply divided nation of criminal endorsers and decent people in dwindling opposition to corruption.

[bert]

The legal system has bee co opted and is worthless. Extra legal methods on a very large and harsh scale are the only way to solve the problem

We are on our way to being Zimbabwe. The writing is on the wall.