Free Republic

OK, here's what should be the nail in the coffin for conservative claims that ACORN is poised to steal the New Jersey governor's race through rampant voter fraud. Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, tells TPMmuckraker that the much-maligned group has conducted absolutely no political or voter registration activity in the state during the 2009 cycle. And Kettenring added that ACORN had done very little such work during the 2008 cycle. In a column published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, John Fund sounded the alarm about the threat from ACORN -- but a close look reveals that even here he...

Fearful that the party had almost no chance of winning the Nov. 3 New York special election after Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava abruptly announced Saturday that she was dropping out, high-ranking national Democrats immediately began working to secure her endorsement of Democrat Bill Owens, POLITICO has learned. On Sunday afternoon, their vigorous efforts paid off as Scozzafava bucked her own party and issued a statement supporting Owens over Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, a coup for Democrats who recognized that their best remaining chance of winning the Republican-leaning seat on Tuesday was to swing disaffected Scozzafava supporters their way. By...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Andrew Breitbart's Big Government will hold a press conference featuring James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the two daring young journalists who, posing as a "pimp" and "prostitute," exposed massive corruption within ACORN's offices throughout the country. The Press Conference will be held at the National Press Club of Washington, DC on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. After suing Breitbart.com, Mr. O'Keefe and Ms. Giles in Maryland over the release of the Baltimore tapes, ACORN has issued public statements denying any wrongdoing in its Philadelphia office and lying about what happened there. Mr. O'Keefe...

Many political observers saw the rise of the Working Families Party as the big story of this year’s primaries, which in New York City are effectively the general elections for most offices. That’s accurate, but only part of the story. It would be more meaningful to say that in New York’s left-and-lefter political environment, the once dominant Democratic Party fell victim to its own strategy of minimizing turnout to guarantee that their core constituencies carry the day. In the WFP, the electoral face of Gotham’s public-sector unions, the Democrats found that a party to their left could beat them at...

Founded in 1998 as a coalition of labor and community groups, the Working Families Party has combined old-fashioned, grassroots organizaing and strategic alliances with the Democrats to become an increasingly powerful force for progressive politics in New York City. The Indypendent recently spoke with the party’s Executive Director, Dan Cantor, about the WFP’s recent victories in the run-off elections for city comptroller and public advocate, mobilizing voters and taking on Bloomberg in November. ELIZABETH HENDERSON: Why has the WFP decided to take on Bloomberg this year when many democrats have given up the hope of defeating him? DAN CANTOR: Eight...

The Working Families Party was the big winner in this year's Democratic primary elections - having backed the winning candidates in both the public advocate's race and the contest for city controller. That's not good for mainstream Democrats, and it is not good for New Yorkers. As liberals, we recognize the value of left-wing advocates pushing against corporate interests. The WFP has played a useful role in helping to win an increase in the minimum wage and in rolling back tax breaks for luxury development. But as "liberals with sanity," we see danger when narrow agendas overwhelm the public good....

ISLAMABAD: The United Nations has temporarily closed all its offices across Pakistan after a suicide blast Monday killed four people at the World Food Programme compound in central Islamabad, a UN spokeswoman said. ‘All UN offices in Pakistan have been closed until further notice,’ spokeswoman Susan Manuel told AFP. Another UN spokeswoman, Ishrat Rizvi, told AFP that the offices would be shut ‘for security reasons.’ A suicide bomber walked into the WFP's heavily fortified offices in Islamabad early Monday afternoon, police say, with three Pakistanis and one Iraqi man killed in the blast.

Average of just $1,486 per month for offices, one check for rent written to “401 K PMTs”Edward-Isaac Dovere by Edward-Isaac Dovere eidovere@cityhallnews.comUPDATE:Harry Zlokower, spokesperson for ISJ Management, called to confirm that the company is indeed the owner of the property at 2 Nevins Street, with Flatbush Fulton Realty Associates its subsidiary.However, Zlokower said, “Working Families Party is not a tenant of ISJ Management,” adding, “ISJ management has no knowledge of the Working Families Party. They assume it’s a sub-lease.”Zlokower also confirmed that ACORN is a tenant of ISJ Management, paying money directly to the property owner.Responding from the Working Families...

The Working Families Party and local Democratic Party Officials are at the center of a massive voter fraud scandal in Troy, NY. According to the Times Union: Dozens of forged and fraudulent absentee ballots from people registered to vote on the Working Families Party line were filed in the Sept. 15 primary elections in Troy. Documents at the county Board of Elections show the fraudulent ballots were handled by or prepared on behalf of various elected officials and leaders and operatives for the Democratic and Working Families parties. There may be as many as 50 absentee ballots that were forged,...

ACORN, a social justice organization with roots in [New Orleans], battles a string of scandals. The announcement stuck to a wall outside the entrance to ACORN's local office in the 2600 block of Canal Street quietly signals the trouble afoot. In English and Spanish, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now tells walk-up clients that ACORN's housing office has shut itself down for two weeks to immerse itself "in an intensive training program." The sign is a symptom of a tumultuous week in the history of a controversial poor people's social justice movement -- one founded by a New...

Eric N. Gioia, a city councilman from Queens and a candidate for public advocate, was in a great mood Tuesday as he walked to his car after voting in the Democratic primary. Until he spotted a lone young man who stood on the sidewalk, holding a stack of fliers. “See him?” said Mr. Gioia, his face darkening. “He’s from the Working Families Party.” Much to the chagrin of candidates like Mr. Gioia, the still relatively little-known 10-year-old party had dispatched a small army in the weeks before the primary, selling voters on its candidates in the mayoral, City Council, public...

Is North Korea's dictatorial regime quietly profiting from U.N. emergency food supplies delivered to its starving people, even as the regime squeezes those deliveries down to a trickle? Documents produced by the World Food Program, the U.N.'s flagship relief agency, outlining its current emergency operations in the insular communist state, raise a number of touchy questions about the financing and logistics of the effort, which was originally intended to feed some 6.2 million of North Korea's most vulnerable people, but which is currently providing limited rations only to 1.33 million. The $500 million program was meant to run from September,...

The Working Families Party that is organizing a bus tour protest this Saturday at the homes of AIG employees has deep ties to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, billionaire leftist financier George Soros and the radical group ACORN.A 2005 article by Richard Poe published at Discover the Networks details the connections:The Working Families Party (WFP) is a front group for the radical cult ACORN. It functions as a political party in New York State and Connecticut, promoting ACORN-friendly candidates. Unlike conventional political parties, WFP charges its members dues – about $60 per year – a policy characteristic of ACORN and...

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his top lieutenants on Monday are convening the first meeting of the U.N.’s Task Force on the Global Food Crisis. Ban says it will “study the root causes of the crisis,” and propose solutions for “coordinated global action” at a summit of world leaders in June. Ban might want to consider convincing the oil-rich nations of the Middle East to provide more than the near-invisible amount of money they currently give to the World Food Program (WFP), the U.N.’s food-giving arm, which is charged with alleviating the food crisis. WFP internal documents show that...

UNITED NATIONS - The World Food Program appealed for hundreds of millions of dollars to cope with rising food prices that have sparked protests and food riots and led to bans on food exports in dozens of countries. Josette Sheeran, the WFP's executive director, said the U.N. agency is facing a 40 percent increase in the cost of food and requests for food aid from countries unable to cope with the rising prices. It expects additional requests from nations like Haiti whose citizens are becoming part of "the new face of hunger," she told a video news conference from Rome...

World Bank president calls for action as food prices cause rioting Jenny Booth The president of the World Bank has called for immediate action to deal with rapidly rising food prices that have caused hunger and deadly violence and threatened the economic stability of the world's poorest countries. A doubling of food prices over the last two years was potentially pushing 100 million people deeper into long-term poverty, said Robert Zoellick. “We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that,” Mr Zoellick said...

Report: US in talks with UN food agency to give NKorea rice aid AP - Friday, March 28 SEOUL, South Korea - The United States is in talks with the U.N. food agency about providing North Korea with 500,000 tons of rice aid, news reports quoted South Korea's foreign minister as saying while visiting Washington. ADVERTISEMENT The proposal is being held up, however, by the North's refusal to grant appropriate monitoring aimed at ensuring that the rice would not be diverted for other purposes, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said without elaborating. "It's difficult to understand that an agreement cannot be...

The World Food Programme has launched an “extraordinary emergency appeal” to governments to donate at least $500m in the next four weeks to avoid rationing food aid in response to the spiralling cost of food. The WFP, the United Nations agency responsible for relieving hunger, said in a letter to donor countries that if fresh money did not arrive by May 1, it might cut “the rations for those who rely on the world to stand by them during times of abject need”. The letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times, was sent to donor...

One way the North Korean leadership has maintained control of the country, despite over a decade of famine and the world's harshest police state, is the large number of troops assigned to produce food for the armed forces. Having troops raise their own food is actually an ancient practice. But in the 20th century, the Russian and Chinese communists made food production (mainly farming, but also raising animals) a major part of military life. In this way, these communist dictatorships were able to keep their military budgets low, maintain larger peacetime armies, while keeping the troops busy (and out of...

The Bush administration has canceled a planned shipment of 25,000 tons of food aid to North Korea later this month, citing concerns that the food will not reach those who need it. "We still think there are serious humanitarian needs in North Korea, but we cannot continue to supply food if we cannot even minimally assure that it will reach its intended recipients," the State Department said yesterday. The U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which distributes foreign aid, has been ordered by the North Koreans to cut most of its staff there by the end of December, a move that...