Crossposted from No Quarters with permission

If you are looking for a gift that will mean something to the brave warriors wounded while serving their country then I would like you to consider making a donation to Combat Soldier’s Recovery Fund. Combat Soldier’s Recovery is the brain child of a good friend of mine who, five years ago, went with her next door neighbor (who happened to be a Doctor at Walter Reed) to visit some of the wounded soldiers.

Garland is your typical soft hearted weepy woman (okay, she actually is a very caring soul). She was so moved and shocked by the devastation she saw during her first visit to Walter Reed that she returned to her office resolved to do something to help those wounded kids. As a bookkeeper she was attuned to the need these kids had for spending money to cover personal activities, such as phone calls, plane tickets for relatives or car repairs.

Garland made a decision. She would collect money and give it directly to the soldiers. Drawing on her professional expertise as a bookkeeper (my company uses her) she quickly set up a Not For Profit (one of her lawyer clients did the work for free) and resolved to pass on 100% of the contributions. There is no overhead. She absorbs the costs herself and handles the taxes. There is no professional staff. It is covered by volunteers.

Here’s the news report about Garland’s program (thanks to Chris for getting this on YouTube):

I have agreed to serve on the board of her Non Profit. All money raised goes directly to the soldiers, marines, sailors and air force personnel who are wounded in action and wind up at Walter Reed. If you are looking to do something this holiday season that will really mean the difference in the life of one of our nation’s warriors then I would like you to consider giving to Combat Soldier’s Recovery Fund. It is the real deal.

Barack Obama’s ties to ACORN (see Memeorandum) are not incidental nor are they casual. Bill O’Reilly displayed his fundamental ignorance on the matter last night when he pooh-poohed the notion of an Obama tie simply because “ACORN previously worked” for his campaign. O’Reilly acted like this was ancient history. Sorry Bill, but you do not know what the hell you are talking about. The latest saga of ACORN as an enabler of child prostitution, illegal immigration and tax fraud is not new.

The money given to ACORN through one of its front companies–CSI–was not a simple clerical error. The Obama Presidential campaign deliberately tried to hide its relationship to ACORN and funneling almost $1 million dollars to ACORN by using a group with no experience doing the task that it was ostensibly hired to do. The story is pretty simple–it is about Citizen Services Inc., a Nigerian director of CSI living in Minnesota and false campaign financing report.

I first wrote this story last August (see here). We passed this information first to David Brown, a reporter in Pittsburgh, who broke the story publicly in early August. So far the mainstream press has failed to investigate this matter. Here are the key details.

The Obama team gave Citizen Services Inc. more than $800,000 ostensibly for “staging and lighting.” We reported (our own intrepid Eastan MacNeal) the following:

According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) financial disclosure reports filed by the campaign earlier this year, between February 25th and May 17th Obama paid $832,598 to Citizens Services, Inc. (CSI), one of the nearly seventy Not-for-Profit companies registered at the ACORN New Orleans headquarters on 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue [SEE IMAGE OF THE NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS of CSI as well as 20 other businesses.]. CSI now also shares an office with ACORN in Chicago at 209 W. Jackson St., home of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). . . . According to the director (of CSI), and as found in various disclosure reports from other candidates, CSI specializes in field operations, specifically grass roots organizing for get out the vote efforts. The Obama expense reports list the following payments to CSI: $564,342 for Stage, Sound, Lighting, $138,000 for Advance Work, $18,417 for Polling and $98,451 for Travel/Lodging.

Only one itty, bitty problem. CSI had no track record of performing such services. When the Obama team was confronted with this uncomfortable fact they quickly pivoted and claimed, “Oh, we made a labeling mistake, it was just to get out the vote.” And the media and most of the public swallowed that horseshit without pause.

But that was a lie. How do I know? Because I tracked down one of the Directors of CSI, one Mr. Sunday Oladimeji Alabi. According to one of the documents filed with the State of Louisiana the Directors in 2006 were:

Filing 3
Filed Date: 06/01/2006
Filing Number: 36196988
Comments: ANNUAL REPORT (06)

Officers – As Of – 04/20/2007
Name: ALIBI, SUNDAY
DIRECTOR
Contact Type: OFFICER
Address: 1201 E 22ND ST
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55404-2969

Name: DOMINGUEZ, TERESA
DIRECTOR
Contact Type: OFFICER
Address: 621 PROSPECT ST
EL PASO, TX 79902-3745

Name: LEON, ROSALIE
DIRECTOR
Contact Type: OFFICER
Address: 3990 DELTA ST
SAN DIEGO, CA 92113-4206

I searched the internet and found Mr. Alabi’s phone number. Mr. Alabi answered the phone and I introduced myself using my real name. But I did tell a white lie–I said I got his name and number from Bob Shrum at the Democratic National Committee. He hesitated. When I repeated that I got his name and number from the DNC he brightened up and became quite chatty. Using the Obama FEC filing as my guide I told Mr. Alabi that I needed to hire Citizen Services to help my campaign with “Staging, Sound, and Lighting.” Without a moments hesitation Mr. Alabi told me, “we don’t do that.” He went on to identify ACORN as the organization that handles those matters and he told me to contact Marc Seiden (he gave me a cell phone number for Mr. Seiden, which is a District of Columbia cell phone). Are there any legit journalists interested in Mr. Seiden’s phone number? It is still working as I write this.

Note that Mr. Alabi did not take time to correct me and tell me that he and his group only did “get out the vote” work. He directed me to a person he says is affiliated with the ACORN office in Washington. So who is Eric Seiden? What was his role with the Obama campaign? Who did he talk to in order to ensure the “get out the vote” effort was effective.

Why did the Obama team select CSI/ACORN for a critical role in getting out the vote? Who on the Obama team recommended that CSI/ACORN had the requisite expertise? Let’s remember that Obama was in a longshot position of winning the election when they turned to CSI and sent them almost $1 million dollars. Given that Barack Obama and David Axelrod are so damn intelligent (Did you know that Barack is the smartest person ever to be President? I heard that on the radio.) are we to believe that they just made a blind choice completely devoid of any research or back up testimonial? I don’t think so.

If you want to understand why ACORN offices across the country are able to give crafty advice on avoiding taxes, fooling the police and setting up child prostitution businesses then you must first understand why the campaign of Barack Obama gave almost $1 million to an organization with no track record in doing the electioneering work they were hired to do.

Anyone out there willing to go get these answers?

Crossposted from No Quarter

Crossposted from No Quarter with permission

Just got back from lunch at a Capitol Hill watering hole–the 116 Club. Private place that caters to lobbyists and Senators. I spent most of lunch looking at Tom Daschle’s wife, Linda, who was sitting at a near by table. She’s an attractive lady. I was with a lobbyist who is well plugged in with Democrats and Republicans. So he asked me, “Do you know the nickname the lobbyists have for the stimulus bill?”

“No, what is it,” I replied.

“FYGK, which means we’re going to f&#k your grand kids.”

The irony of the stimulus bill is that it is bringing business to lobbyists who are being asked to paw thru the garbage and figure out how to get folks money. When you put this news with the fact the current spending bill is going thru ladened with earmarks you might be a bit leery of Obama’s promise to bring a new day to Washington.

A senior official for a very prominent Democrat stopped by our table and gave my friend an update on the spending bill. He noted that many Republicans will back the bill because they have hefty earmarks in it as well.

Let’s face it–we have a culture of political corruption in Washington that is continuing unabated and Obama is catering to it despite grandiose promises to the contrary.

One other thing is happening–very few lobbyists are willing to take spots in the Obama administration. Like it or not, many of these lobbyists are the genuine experts on the issues they cover. So who is Obama tapping to take the jobs lobbyists might have been given in the past? Hill staffers. Earnest thirty year olds who have spent most of the post-college careers acting as butt boys and girls for various senators and representatives. They may know the Hill but they know very little about the America outside the beltway. Great!! Just what we need. Youthful exuberance tempered by ignorance.

There is an irony here. The lack of experience by these people will ultimately hurt the Obama presidency. His seemingly noble efforts to exclude lobbyists to improve government and reduce corruption actually is having the opposite effect. Unreal.