The property was also the home of Local 100 of the SEIU, the union that pushed the presidential candidacy of former ACORN lawyer, Barack Obama.
The IRS and the state filed tax liens of $548,000 and $26,026 against ACORN in New Orleans, Sweetness and Light reported. The asking price is $835,000. Rough estimate...at the asking price they'd clear approx 200k. Less what they owe on it, which I'll betcha is better than $200k...
2 units. 1 parking area. Remarks: "Investment/Development Package. Property runs from Elysian Fields thru Frenchmen and St. Claude.Property includes- 2 story (6,468sq/ft)office building. 1 story cottage (1,222 sq/ft). Vacant lots at 1017 Frenchmen, 2114 St. Claude, 2116-18 St. Claude." Check out the pix at the link. You'd think they would have made some effort to "stage" the place first...
#1
I blame BOOOSSSHHH!!!
Wait?....... What?......Oh!....uuhhh....
All that Katrina money went into property improvement. Should of seen what it looked like before.
Despite months of seeming ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead. Because the real objective isn't health care but the public option...
President Barack Obama has long advocated a so-called public option, while at the same time repeatedly expressing openness to other ways to offer consumers a potentially more affordable alternative to health plans sold by private insurers.
But now, senior administration officials are holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring to the Senate floor later this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides.
Among those regularly in the meetings are Obama's top health care adviser, Nancy-Ann DeParle, aides to Reid, and Senate finance and health committee staff, both of which developed health care bills.
At the same time, Obama has been reaching out personally to rank-and-file Senate Democrats, telephoning more than a dozen lawmakers in the last week to press the case for action.
Administration officials are also distributing talking points and employing other campaign-style devices to rally support for passing a bill this fall.
The White House initiative, unfolding largely out of public view, follows months in which the president appeared to defer to senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they labored to put together gargantuan health care bills.
It also marks a critical test of Obama's command of the inside game in Washington in which deals are struck behind closed doors and wavering lawmakers are cajoled and pressured into supporting major legislation.
"The challenge is to go to the (Senate) floor, hold the deal," said Steve Elmendorf, a lobbyist who was chief of staff to former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt. But "they are more involved than people think. They have a plan and a strategy, and they know what they want to get and they work with people to get it."
With the Senate Finance Committee wrapping up work on its legislation and moving toward a formal committee vote this week, senior Democrats in the House and Senate are furiously working on detailed compromises to ensure enough Democratic votes to pass health care bills out of the two chambers later this month.
While Democrats hold majorities in both houses on paper, nailing down those majorities has not been easy -- particularly in the Senate, where Democrats need a 60-vote supermajority to head off a Republican filibuster. The party commands a 60-40 majority, including two independents, but several centrist Democrats have expressed reservations about parts of Obama's health care agenda.
No issue has proved more divisive than the proposal to create a new national insurance plan operated by the federal government and offered to some consumers as an alternative to private insurance.
an alternative designed & intended to destroy the private sector insurance, gradually
Though favored by liberals as the best protection for consumers from high premiums charged by commercial insurers, a government plan is still viewed warily by many conservative Democrats and nearly all Republicans.
Just recently, two proposals to create a national government plan were defeated in the Finance Committee when Republicans and conservative Democrats voted against them.
While those votes were viewed by some as the death knell of the public option, the White House and its congressional allies are under heavy pressure from the Democratic Party's liberal base to breathe life back into it.
That has Democratic leaders looking for ways to insert some form of the concept into a Senate bill without jeopardizing centrist support.
To that end, Obama is lavishing attention on moderate lawmakers while he continues to talk up the public option.
#1
The national economy cannot provide top quality health care to everyone unless costs per unit care come down. It won't even be able to provide the current quality to the currently insured for long - aging baby boom is going to increase demand. I have seen little in the proposed Dem plans that addresses the real problem (unit cost) honestly. Rather, it looks like a way to ration care by bureaucracy (rather than the current method of rationing by ability to pay.) It will make health care more uniform, but poorer overall. And it will stifle advancements. The two proposals I have seen from outside the Dem plans that actually might address unit costs (tort reform and supply expansion) have been dismissed immediately.
#2
Oh, and those who say the insurance companies are inhumane - even inhuman - are right. But I expect the far more massive government replacement will be a lot more inhumane and inhuman. NOTHING that big can work well. Especially monopolies. Including government monopolies.
#3
This has nothing to do with insurance or health care and EVERYTHING to do with establishing huge bureaucratic agencies. It's Chicago style patronage at the national level.
#4
That has Democratic leaders looking for ways to insert some form of the concept into a Senate bill without jeopardizing centrist support.
Tie a public option clause into a bill to send more troops to Afghanistan. That way when Republicans oppose it, they can accuse them of not supporting the troops.
The Democratic National Committee is sending an additional $1 million to aid Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds's campaign, POLITICO has learned.
The money comes on top of $5 million the party committee has already committed to the Virginia race, one of two governors' races in the country this fall.
"We're thrilled with the additional commitment from Gov. [Tim] Kaine and the DNC," said Deeds senior adviser Mo Elleithee. "The fact that they are digging so deep shows that they're fully committed to Creigh and to this race, and we're appreciative of their continued support."
In addition to the cash, the DNC is also sending staffers, technology support and turnout-modeling assistance across the Potomac.
By Election Day next month, Democrats expect the national party's investment to rival that of the Republican National Committee, which has promised to pump $7 million into Virginia to help Bob McDonnell, the GOP nominee.
The infusion will help the Democrats become more competitive with the Republicans on the airwaves, where, thanks in part to his own national party assistance, McDonnell is outpacing Deeds.
The DNC's move comes with Deeds trailing in the polls and some prominent national Democrats fretting about his campaign. But with Kaine at the helm of the DNC, the party is emphatic about its commitment to keeping the governor's mansion in Richmond in Democratic hands.
Like any outgoing governor, Kaine, who is barred by law from seeking reelection, would like to see his own legacy bolstered by voters electing a fellow Democrat. But Deeds is making the contest even more of a referendum on the incumbent by running explicitly on the coattails of Kaine and former Democratic Gov. and now-Sen. Mark Warner, promising to continue governing in their centrist tradition.
Deeds has consistently lagged behind in the polls but received something of a lifeline at the end of the summer when McDonnell's graduate school thesis was disclosed. The document was filled with far-right views on women and sexuality and lent both fresh ammunition and a convenient peg to the Democratic effort to portray McDonnell as out of the state's moderate mainstream.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/05/2009 00:00 ||
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Today, New Jersey's economy is reeling, Goldman Sachs's luster has dulled and Mr. Corzine's greatest asset has become a political liability as he struggles to keep his job in November's election.
Goldman has been particularly vilified in the minds of many people as a Wall Street behemoth that leveraged the influence of its lobbyists and former executives to curry political favor and that used government bailout payments to boost its profits. A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine branded Goldman "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
"Goldman right now, to its detriment, is equated with Wall Street and Washington walking hand in hand, and there's a widespread suspicion that it's a conspiratorial relationship," said Charles Geisst, a Wall Street historian and the author of "Collateral Damaged." "There's a sense that because of its power and connections, when the economy finally clears up, Goldman will benefit from that before the rest of the country."
Mr. Corzine's Republican challenger, Christopher J. Christie, has used the governor's Goldman Sachs years to tie him to a variety of unsavory financial schemes, at one point releasing an Internet ad featuring a clip of Gordon Gekko, the villain in the film "Wall Street," who famously declared, "Greed is good."
And surveys show that voters' confidence in Mr. Corzine's ability to lead the economy, once his strong suit, has plummeted. So as he runs for re-election Mr. Corzine is far more eager to talk about the lawsuit his administration filed against Lehman Brothers or his work as a United States senator on a corporate ethics bill, than his years as chief executive and a chairman of a mighty investment house. His campaign advisers point out that it's been nine years -- an eternity in politics -- since he left Wall Street and four years since he sold the last of his stock in Goldman Sachs; they say they are confident that voters will judge him by his actions as an elected official rather than his past as a bond trader.
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#1
Rolling Stone magazine branded Goldman "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
Is this different than what Rolling Stoned usually says?
The data keep piling up and it ain't looking pretty ....
The link goes to Gateway Pundit. Jim Hoft has done a lot of work pulling together the threads of the ACORN/SEIU and now ACT issues. Check it out and give him the link.
Louisiana's attorney general has broadened the scope of an investigation of ACORN to include a possible embezzlement of $5 million a decade ago within the community organization, five times more than previously reported.
ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis said the new reported amount is "completely false."
Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has been conducting an investigation of ACORN since June. He issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to former ACORN International President Wade Rathke and his brother Dale Rathke, who kept the group's books. Those subpoenas were focused on possible ACORN violations for non-payment of employee withholding taxes, obstructing justice and violating the Employee Retirement Security Act. No charges have been made.
The attorney general had inquired in June into an alleged embezzlement within ACORN that happened 10 years ago. The group last year dealt with an internal dispute and a lawsuit involving accusations that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000. The brother and a donor repaid the money.
Caldwell said last month that the statute of limitations presented obstacles to prosecutors taking action on the embezzlement, and that his investigation was not focused on that issue. The subpoena issued Monday changed the tone of the investigation and put a new emphasis on the embezzlement issue.
"Current high-ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million, " the new subpoena says.
The subpoena says, "It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal or private funds."
The subpoena requests documents from Citizens Consulting Inc., a financial arm of ACORN, and from various accounting and legal consultants in New Orleans. Investigators are trying to verify the issues raised in the subpoena.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
