Meet Lavelle Stewart.

Hat tip: Hot Air

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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 [New York], the Times Union has learned.

Many of the questionable ballots were filed under the names of students and people who live in government-subsidized housing and other downtown areas. Still others were submitted on behalf of voters who were alleged to have signed the ballots earlier this month, but those people have not lived in New York state for at least a year, records show.

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.

As the Times Union doesn’t bother to note:

The Working Families Party is not about working people or families and it isn’t really a party. The WFP is a wholly owned subsidiary of ACORN. Bertha Lewis co-chair of the Working Families Party is the Executive Director of New York ACORN. New York ACORN leader, Steven Kest was the moving force in forming the party and WFP headquarters are located at the same address as ACORN’s national and New York office at 88 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

WFP is essentially a money funnel which pays for an aggressive door to door canvas. Largely funded by unions, the WFP is ACORN’s “political arm” in New York State. Candidates supported by the Working Families Party and issues supported by ACORN are both advocated on the door steps of target voter homes as they share one major voter canvas.

This would be the same ACORN Obama surreptitiously paid $800,000 for election services during the 2008 campaign.

In the aftermath of the O’Keefe/Giles videos, the Senate voted 83-7 to limit the torrent of taxpayer money flooding into ACORN’s coffers. This means nothing. WFP is just one of literally hundreds of front groups ACORN hides behind.

Nothing short of a RICO investigation will rid the country of this rapidly metastasizing cancer. Good luck getting one past the Attorney General with the former Senator From ACORN residing in the White House. If our rulers would be brazen enough to kill an investigation into Black Panther goons intimidating voters at the polls, the odds of them digging up ACORN by the roots are nil. The same corrupt thugs indulging in the same crimes will continue to wallow in our money under different names.

Hat tip: Big Government, on a tip from Jay Guevara. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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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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A federal judge in Manhattan sentenced former President of the New York City Central Labor Council (CLC), Brian M. McLaughlin (who was also part of the AFL-CIO), to 10 years in prison for fraud, embezzlement and corruption charges this week.

The 57-year-old McLaughlin was also a low-level New York City Assemblyman from Queens whose power came from his close ties to the labor union. He “pleaded guilty in March 2008 to racketeering charges that included using embezzlement, fraud and bribes to take money from taxpayers, labor unions and contractors, even from a Little League team in Queens,” reported The New York Times.

Prosecutors charged that Mr. McLaughlin had misappropriated more than $330,000 from his own re-election committee; $185,000 from the New York City Central Labor Council, which he led; and more than $35,000 from the State Assembly. They said he had created fictitious jobs within the labor council and on his own legislative staff, and took kickbacks from the jobholders.

McLaughlin is a perfect example of what is wrong with an intimate connection between unions and government. Not only was he a seven-term Assemblyman, but he remained a union chief which left him able to game the system in both directions for personal gain.

It should be obvious to anyone that no politician should be permitted to remain a part of a union while supposedly serving as an elected official at the same time.

McLaughlin also assisted the courts to try and convict others involved in his criminal enterprise and had hoped to find a more lenient sentence from the effort. Fortunately he was disappointed.

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The New York City carpenters union has been in trouble with the law for many decades. Organized crime has been endemic with the union for a long time and union chief after union chief has gone to jail over the ties and other corruption. Even shop stewards have gotten into the corruption game with four recently convicted on charges of fraud, conspiracy or bribetaking.

It’s so bad that even the rank-and-file member doesn’t trust the union to legally carry out union business. That distrust was seen again recently with a dispute arising between union members and union leadership over a plan to withhold quarterly benefit checks from members that refuse to sign away greater power to union officials who want to fine members that refuse to fall into line.

The union has a convoluted scheme of taking workers’ vacation pay and placing it in a welfare fund to provide life insurance, hospitalization, medial care, pension and vacation benefits to members. Instead of receiving vacation pay upon returning from a vacation, members are disbursed a quarterly vacation fund check each year. It happened that union chiefs wanted members to sign authorization cards to allow the union to fine any members found not paying into the welfare fund by working jobs off the books.

Many union members, however, are refusing to sign the cards giving the union power to take unspecified and vague “fines” out of their pay.

“That card was a threat,” said a carpenter who agreed to be interviewed this month only on condition of anonymity because he said he feared retribution. “It was like signing a blank check to let them take out whatever they want, whenever they want.”

Since many union members were either reluctantly signing or refusing to sign the cards, the union leaders upped the ante by halting benefit payments to any member that wouldn’t sign the card.

The dispute escalated in March, when the union’s welfare fund trustees voted to stop sending vacation-pay disbursements to anyone who had not signed the authorization card, infuriating rank-and-file members.

The legal basis for withholding vacation-fund payments is unclear. The fund’s trustees, comprising five union officials and five employer representatives, voted to stop distributing vacation checks without seeking the consent of the fund’s lawyers, said Stuart GraBois, the welfare fund’s executive director.

Yet, these same leaders that have repeatedly been thrown in jail for cheating the union, stealing union funds, working with the Mob, and any manner of other corrupt practices are claiming the moral standing to fine members for working jobs off the books? It’s these thug union bigwigs that members fear giving the power to begin “fining” members without defined restrictions on what those fines are for. Many members rightly fear that the power once given to the union chiefs will later be misused for any and every reason that those union leaders can imagine.

But, this incident really does show what a union is made of. It proves pretty starkly that union “leaders” don’t care a whit about what the workers want. Even worse, if shows that the workers themselves are afraid of the union itself. These workers are afraid of “retribution” from the leader’s thug armies and from the union’s scorched earth practices.

What sort of “voluntary” organization is it where the members are afraid of the very organization that claims to be speaking for them? Unfortunately, this is the ultimately logical end of any powerful union effort. Eventually, given enough power, all unions end up treating friend and foe alike in an effort to increase its own power.

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The Association of Community Activists for Reform Now (ACORN) is still racking up indictments and convictions for voter fraud across the nation. ACORN is closely tied to President Obama, he having worked for them when he lived in Chicago and they having heavily supported his candidacy. Additionally, former ACORN members have flocked to the Obama administration since his win in November last.

For instance, in Obama’s old home state of Illinois, a woman that works for an ACORN offshoot group has been charged by Lake County officials (the County just north of Chicago’s Cook County) with filing fake voter registration cards.

Jannette Sims, 46, a resident of Chicago, is charged with mutilation of election materials and faces up to three years in prison.

Sims worked for a voter-registration drive sponsored by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The voter-registration group which was likely trained by ACORN. The Obama-tied community group has numerous associations with the SEIU through many such training programs.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto filed charges against ACORN alleging that the group was brazen enough about its voter fraud to institute policies requiring employees to sign up 20 new voters per day or face termination of employment. Such quotas are against Nevada election law.

Of these recent charges in Nevada, Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, says, “The Nevada raid marked the third time in weeks that the Chicago-based group got busted for falsifying voter registration forms during the 2008 presidential campaign. Weeks earlier ACORN submitted fraudulent voter registration cards in the key battleground state of Florida and in New Mexico’s most populous county (Bernalillo). “

ACORN has been in trouble for falsifying information to register new voters in numerous other states, including Milwaukee, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina and Colorado to name a few. In 2007 the group settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State after seven workers were caught submitting about 2,000 fake registration forms.

Along with the many shady financial misdeeds in which ACORN is involved, the community group shows no signs that it will any time soon cease its efforts to destroy the integrity of the democratic process through voter fraud.

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