The Iranian-owned skyscraper, The Piaget Building in midtown Manhattan, along with mosques, schools and Islamic centers around the country, had a Federal civil “complaint” filed today, leading to their seizure by the U.S.

The Piaget Building is managed by the Alavi Foundation and owned by the Iranian government. An amended complaint “seeking the Foundation’s “majority stake” in the building located at  650 Park Avenue, New York, New York.

[Alavi] working with a front company known as Assa Corp., illegally funneled millions in rental income to Iran’s state-owned Bank Melli. Bank Melli has been accused by a U.S. Treasury official of providing support for Iran’s nuclear program, and it is illegal in the United States to do business with the bank

Bank Melli Iran is reported to have $48 billion in Shariah-compliant assets, with Iran holding more Islamic assets than all other countries. Iranian banks account for 6 of the top 10 Islamic Institutions worldwide.

In their amended complaint, U.S. prosecutors alleged Alavi has been providing numerous services to Iran’s government, including managing the building, running a charitable organization for the Iranian government and transferring funds from the building’s management company to Bank Melli.

While all of the properties under forfeiture may remain open as proceedings go forward, and no Iranian spokesman or mosque leader would speak of the action, neither would they open their doors:

At the Islamic Institute of New York, a mosque and school in Queens, two U.S. marshals came to the door and rang the bell repeatedly. The marshals taped a forfeiture notice to the window and left a large document sitting on the ground. After they left a group of men came out of the building and took the document.

Mosques are located in Queens, NY, and schools in Huston and Rockville, Maryland and an Islamic center in Carmichael, California. In Virginia, a 100-acre property.

This minute on FOX, Alavi is denying any part of their operation is owned by the Iranian government. While one earlier report said no action was taken today at the properties, FOX News’ Eric Shawn just reported that boxes were removed from the Piaget Building today.

Assets are believed to total more than $500 million, with mosques, schools and Islamic centers in Maryland, California, Houston and New York, including a 36-story office building in New York, and more than 100 acres in Virginia.

The receipts from the Piaget Building funds mosques, Islamic Centers and schools.

Confiscating the properties would be a sharp blow against Iran, which has been accused by the U.S. government of bankrolling terrorism and trying to build a nuclear bomb.

The sleek, modern building, last valued at $570 million to $650 million in 2007, has served as an important source of income for the foundation over the past 36 years. The most recent tax records show the foundation earned $4.5 million from rents in 2007.

Rents collected from the building help fund the centers and other ventures, such as sending educational literature to imprisoned Muslims in the U.S. The foundation has also invested in dozens of mosques around the country and supported Iranian academics at prominent universities.

If federal prosecutors seize the skyscraper, the Alavi Foundation would have almost no way to continue supporting the Islamic centers, which house schools and mosques. That could leave a major void in Shiite communities, and hard feelings toward the FBI.

It’s about time radical Islam has a problem with the FBI. The article says Alavi Foundation has been suspected of terrorist ties for THREE DECADES. This is not good news for the three young Americans held hostage in Iran for crossing the border from Iraq. Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal were charged this week with espionage and will be tried in Iran. We’ll see if the Iranian mosques and schools become bargaining chips for the release of Shourd, Bauer and Fattal.

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But that was then…

On October 22 Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, Calif) was sadly successful in getting an amendment passed in the House Financial Services Committee that would allow ACORN to become an official government actor in setting regulations for financial institutions.

You read that right. Rep. Waters thought it would be a great idea to give federal power to an organization that has repeatedly broken multiple state election laws in nearly every state in the union and an organization that has been guilty of covering up the embezzlement of nearly five million dollars of its own funds by one of its highest ranking members.

Republican Representative Spencer Bachus (R, Alabama) ranking Republican of the Financial Services Committee reported of Rep. Waters’ amendment to H.. 3126.

The Waters amendment adds to the CFPA Oversight Board 5 representatives from the fields of “consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgages” to join Federal banking regulators in advising the Director on the consistency of proposed regulations, and strategies and policies that the Director should undertake to enforce its rules.

By making representatives of ACORN and other consumer activist organizations eligible to serve on the Oversight Board, the amendment creates a potentially enormous government sanctioned conflict of interest. ACORN-type organizations will have an advisory role on regulating the very financial institutions from which they receive millions of dollars annually in direct corporate contributions and benefit from other financial partnerships and arrangements. These are the same organizations that pressured banks to make subprime mortgage loans and thus bear a major responsibility for the collapse of the housing market.

And here is the point. Many Congressmen have been heard to say that ACORN should be defunded. But without the voices of the voters back home, this temporary lapse in Congressional largess to ACORN will be just that, temporary.

As we can see with Maxine Waters slipping yet another payoff to ACORN into congressional rules, government cannot be trusted to hold the line against criminal enterprises like ACORN. And it isn’t just Congress we have to worry about. Democrats all across the country are looking for ways to give ACORN payoffs in the dead of night when the voters aren’t looking. And some Republicans that get large campaign donations from ACORN are not much different.

It takes the continued pressure from voters to keep our government officials honest. Your voice is needed to tell our politicians both at the state level and the federal level to dump ACORN.

The nature of the intertwined association between government and ACORN is why we ask that you join us and Say NO to ACORN.

Sign the petition and tell Governor Quinn that you want a real investigation to end corruption for good.

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Not long after news leaked last month that Andrew Romanoff was determined to make a Democratic primary run against Sen. Michael Bennet, Romanoff received an unexpected communication from one of the most powerful men in Washington.
Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s deputy chief of staff and a storied fixer in the White House political shop, suggested a place for Romanoff might be found in the administration and offered specific suggestions, according to several sources who described the communication to The Denver Post.
Romanoff turned down the overture, which included mention of a job at USAID, the foreign aid agency, sources said.

Ed Morrissey:

Offering positions paid by taxpayer money to potential challengers to Democratic incumbents is political corruption of the worst kind. It involves interfering with the choices made by Coloradans, conversion of public funds for partisan purposes, and the appointment of officials for cheap politics rather than qualifications.
In fact, I seem to recall a presidential candidate who campaigned on changing that kind of Beltway politics. One candidate based his run on Hope and Change, on full transparency, on judgment and clean government. He promised a New Direction, not Chicago-on-the-Potomac. Who was that masked man, anyway?

Are You Freakin Stupid?

You can take the politician out of Chicago, but you can’t take the Chicago politics out of the politician.

Jim Geraghty:

We’ll never see prosecution of this, but this seems to be at least in the neighborhood of violating a federal bribery statute, no? That statute seems to be written pretty broadly, and an appointment would seem to be “something of value” under the section that defines the crime as anyone who “directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official.”

Jim is right. We won’t see prosecution on this. Mainly because no evidence has been provided. However, there seems to be a pattern of this kind of behavior at the White House. Karma usually catches up.

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With the state Legislature forced to make dramatic cuts in the prison budget and a three-judge federal panel having recently ordered California lawmakers to release as many as 40,000 inmates in response to the scandalous overcrowding of the California state prison system, it seems like an especially inauspicious time for the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office to be spending some of our few remaining tax dollars seeing if it can finally, after all these years, put Roman Polanski behind bars.

I vehemently disagree with the L.A. Times’s Patrick Goldstein, who gives his article the apologetic title “Roman Polanski still being hounded by L.A. County prosecutors,” on this one. This creepy coward escaped punishment by fleeing the country for decades. I definitely think child molestation, drugging, and rape are worth spending money on prosecution. If Goldstein doesn’t think so, I’d be interested to know what crimes he does think worth pursuing.

Update: More media apologists, and some with major conflicts of interest!

Update 2: Sadly, it’s looking like a slap on the wrist for this atrocious crime after all these years.

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I have finally tracked down what this number is. Apparently it is a left-wing group that uses this 1-800 number as a re-direct to the Capitol Hill switchboard. You call the number, hear the message, and then it re-directs you to the real switchboard. The message is not being hosted on the government service.

This is not the normal number of the Capitol Hill switchboard.

Well, we have gotten to the bottom of this Capitol Hill switchboard number business. It is really the work of a left-wing group called Families USA. They are trying to pass off this 1-800 number as that of the switchboard, but it is not. (Here is an ad from a few years ago where they feature the number.)

But isn’t it interesting how these lefty groups have to lie to their own people? I mean, they are selling this as the number to “contact your Reps and Senators” as if it IS the Hill switchboard. This lefty group is even misleading its own folks! Brazen, eh?

Original post appears below…

-By Warner Todd Huston

Well, this certainly can’t be legal… can it? If you call one of the numbers that leads you to the switchboard for Congress, the number you’d call to be put through to your Congressman or Senator’s office, you get a short message selling Obama’s healthcare snake-oil before being transferred to the switchboard operator.

How can this even be legal? After all, this isn’t the Democrat Party hotline we are talking about here. It is the main phone number representing all of Congress, not just Obama and his nationalized healthcare policies. I repeat, this is the phone number for all of Congress, not an activist’s number to sell Democrats and their policies.

I just cannot see how this is legal, and even if it is legal it is gauche and not right. Can the message for the Congressional switchboard be used for partisan purposes? I just can’t see it being legal.

While it lasts, try it yourself and you’ll see. The number is 1-800-828-0498.

Here is the transcript of the message you’ll hear:

Thank you for calling your Representative and your Senators.

Please urge them to vote yes on health insurance reform. Because the American people can no longer wait for more choices, lower costs, and coverage we can count on.

After this little message the phone rings once again and is patched through to the switchboard operator.

Here is the audio that I recorded just in case the Obama administration does the “transparent” thing and makes this message disappear down the memory hole.

I have to say, this message is frightening. We can’t even call our representatives without being hit over the head by the socialized healthcare message. Not to mention the fact that the message is a bald-faced lie. Obama’s plan will not give us “more choices,” Obama’s plan will not “lower costs,” and Obamacare will not give us better coverage.

(H/T Lennie at Lake County Tea Party.)

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Glenn Beck:

If you didn’t think ACORN could get any worse after several of their employees (in multiple locations) tried to help a prostitute buy a house, lie to the IRS and run a brothel with underage hookers from El Salvador…you were wrong. It gets much worse. In today’s tapes, this ACORN employee gives away the farm — she names names of politicians she talks to each day, plus what bills they are lobbying heavily for (with taxpayer money). Oh, this Acorn employee is also a former hooker herself, who (in this audio tape) admits to killing her abusive husband. Your tax dollars hard at work!

Allahpundit:

Looks like we’ve got a confession to either murder or manslaughter in the very first minute here. Can’t wait for that House vote on whether to keep funding this syndicate.

Great roundup of reactions at the Anchoress and Atlas Shrugs!

Ace:

And we, as taxpayers, sure as hell shouldn’t be paying cold hard cash for the amazing advice “just don’t pay your taxes, put your money in a tin can and bury it.”

Amen!

Gateway Pundit reminds us:

One of Barack Obama’s first big “community organizer” jobs involved ACORN in 1992. Obama also trained ACORN employees. He represented ACORN in court. Obama worked with and protested with ACORN. His campaign donated $800,000 to ACORN in 2008 for voter registration efforts.
And, ACORN even canvassed for Obama last year.

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The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in several voter-registration fraud cases.

The 83-7 vote would deny housing and community grant funding to ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The action came as the group is suffering from bad publicity after a duo of conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp released hidden-camera videos in which ACORN employees in Baltimore gave advice on house-buying and how to account on tax forms for the woman’s income. Two other videos, aired frequently on media outlets such as the Fox News Channel, depict similar situations in ACORN offices in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C.

Good to see the Senate do important work involving the money take at the front of a jail cell. Compare that with the House, whose biggest interest is getting Joe Wilson to apologize on the Floor or be spanked.

Michelle Malkin has the list of the 7 who voted in favor of using public money to prop up the Mafia ACORN.

Meanwhile, ACORN is mulling a lawsuit against Fox News. Kinda like the fox suing the farmer because said fox stole chickens.

Also see Hot Air, Ed Driscoll, The Right Cup of Tea, instapundit, Uncle Meat, Protein Wisdom, Moe Lane, Snark and Boobs, Eternity Matters, and Ameripundit.

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The scandal surrounding the left-wing activist organization ACORN has spread to New York, with employees at its Brooklyn office caught on video helping supposed ladies of the night get loans for their dream houses of ill repute.

Rather than reminding the women that prostitution is dangerous and illegal and advising them to change their careers, counselors at the social-services group shockingly offer suggestions on how they can launder their earnings.

“Honesty is not going to get you the house,” a loan counselor at the offices told two activists posing as a mortgage-seeking pimp and prostitute.

Sean Hannity has said that American journalism died last year. But only the mainstream media is dying; real journalism went underground, where it is thriving as it has done for years thanks to heroes of the profession like O’Keefe and Giles — who have been threatened with prison for exposing ACORN corruption.

All we need now is an exposé on the true depths of Obama’s involvement with this vile organization.

On tips from Byron, Jo, and Chuck. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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One day after two ACORN officials in Baltimore were fired for offering to help a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute to engage in child prostitution and a series of tax crimes, another secretly shot videotape has surfaced that shows the same couple getting similar advice from ACORN officers in Washington.

The newly released videotape, shot on July 25, shows ACORN staffers explaining to the pair how they can hide the woman’s professed work — prostitution — and get a loan that will help them establish a brothel.

James O’Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as the pimp while visiting the ACORN office, accompanied by 20-year-old Hannah Giles, who posed as the prostitute. On a videotape provided to FOXNews.com, they are seen receiving guidance to establish the woman as the sole proprietor of a bogus company to mask the nature of her business.

“She’s not going to put on (the loan application) that she’s doing prostitution … she doesn’t have to,” the ACORN staffer says. “You don’t have to sit back and tell people what you do.”

The ACORN staffer is heard suggesting that O’Keefe can purchase a house, and as the landlord, if he is ever questioned by authorities, he can say he was unaware of the illegal business going on inside.

“[W]hen the police ask you, (tell them) you don’t know where (the money is) coming from,” the staffer said. “We are looking out for you.”

The ACORN employee later suggests that O’Keefe, who said he had a budding political career, not linger at the house in case people “put the dots together” and leave him “smeared and tarnished” by his association with his prostitute girlfriend. She should keep her business “low key,” the employee said.

Speaking of being tarnished, when is the media going to put the dots together regarding Obama’s extremely tight relationship with this scum? Not only is Chairman Zero a product of ACORN, he is funneling our money into its coffers by the $BILLIONS even now, in return for its help in implementing his agenda.

If future elections in this country are a farce worthy of a Third-World banana republic, it will be because of Dear Leader’s use of ACORN to subvert both the census and the vote.

The mainstream media’s failure to report on this, establishes that it has zero credibility as anything but a propaganda service. The alphabet networks and the major newspapers have revealed themselves to be as much a tool of the Obama Administration as Pravda was a tool of the Soviet regime.

On tips from J and Varla. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.

The videotape was made public Thursday on BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.

In the videotape, made on July 24, James O’Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named “Kenya” who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN’s office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business. …

On the videotape, “Kenya” can be seen telling an ACORN staffer that she earns roughly $8,000 a month. The ACORN employee then suggests to “Kenya” that ACORN could submit a tax return for 2008 showing that she made $9,600 for the entire year — instead of $96,000 — and that ACORN would charge “Kenya” $50 instead of the usual $150 fee for preparing her taxes.

ACORN offers tax preparation and benefits application services free of charge during tax season; it charges nominal fees during non-tax season.

The ACORN staffer can also be seen suggesting that the prostitute list her occupation as a freelance “performing artist.”

It gets worse…

The “pimp” later says that he and “Kenya” plan to bring up to 13 “very young” girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. Although an ACORN staffer points out their plans are illegal, she also suggests that the girls can be claimed as dependents.

“What if they are going to be making money because they are performing tricks too?” the pimp says.

“If they making money and they are underage, then you shouldn’t be letting anybody know anyway,” the ACORN staffer says, and laughs. “It’s illegal. So I am not hearing this, I am not hearing this. You talk too much. Don’t give up no information you’re not asked.”

ACORN thugs don’t just turn a blind eye to child prostitution. Here they offer to buy the brothel at taxpayer expense:

A second ACORN employee can be heard on the audiotape suggesting that the couple join the organization for an annual cost of $120 prior to attending one of its first-time homebuyer seminars, which are underwritten with taxpayer funds.

ACORN is best known for its industrial scale voter fraud operations, but also had a key role in causing the current financial mess by extorting banks into giving home loans to people unlikely to pay them back. It has been entrusted with collecting census data that will advance the Democrats’ political objectives.

American Thinker wonders “why Attorney General Holder hasn’t managed to institute a RICO investigation against this multi-state criminal enterprise.” The answer of course is that his boss is a product of ACORN. Comrade Obama trained ACORN thugs and provided legal assistance for their shakedown operations. His ties to this organization are so tight that he used to be known as the Senator From ACORN.

Obama’s campaign paid ACORN $800,000 for its voter fraud activities, then tried to cover it up. But that’s chump change compared to what he’s funneling ACORN’s way now that he has the keys to the treasury. The bloated spending bill the media helped him pass off as a “stimulus package” included $billions for ACORN.

Given Comrade Obama’s extremely close relationship with these goons, this story makes Watergate look like a parking violation. We’ll see if the mainstream media finds it worth mentioning.

On a tip from citizen222. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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