New Orleans

Several conservative bloggers sent me the link to give me a heads up yesterday.  From the executive summary (which is as far as I’ve gotten) it appears that Issa has two issues:

• ACORN and its family of organizations involved way too many corporations to make Issa’s staff happy.  I’m not sure exactly what the issue there is or what might have been wrong with having a lot of different corporate entities to handle different kinds of business?  It’s actually pretty common practice with most large outfits to keep property holdings in separate corporations and to limit liabilities within various corporate missions.  I guess being in government and all, the Congressman and his staff find it unsettling, but…yawn…so what?
• The other issue he seems to have is that ACORN’s low and moderate income families wanted to use the organization to build power.  ACORN was a straight non-profit with no special tax status or privileges (the first Issa staff report got that wrong, so maybe they’ve learned something here).  ACORN was always very transparent about the fact that its members wanted to organize together to build enough power to actually solve some issues and make a difference in their communities, cities, states, and country.  Nothing to apologize for there as far as I can see, and with freedom of speech and freedom of association in the USA, I’m not sure what the beef might be?

The Washington Examiner tried to help me by laying out Issa’s real interest:

“The ranking Republican on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, who speaks at CPAC today, asserts that a judicial decision blocking Congress’s efforts to stop funding ACORN amounts to a new bailout, because ACORN is currently on the precipice financially. Meanwhile, even as it continues to draw down the taxpayer’s hard-earned dollar, ACORN’s affairs remain a shadowy mess of mixed private, non-profit and government money characterized by collusion between various organizations.”

For the life of me, I’ve read those sentences a couple of times, and I’m still not sure that I get it.  But, I’m guessing that Issa is arguing that because a federal judge ruled that the defunding of ACORN was illegal (thwarting the will of Congress for trying an illegal bill of attainder), he’s upset because some of his buddies and informants (the Louisiana Attorney General’s office seems to have a lot of loose lips) have told him that they think ACORN is on the edge of insolvency, and despite having been jammed up by a federal judge for illegal activity, Issa is disappointed because he may have been so close to his goal of putting ACORN out of business that now he’s upset that he may not have succeeded.  Is that the drift?

So while he waits to see if he and others have succeeded in the original smear and subterfuge, he thought he would go down to the CPAC meeting with the rest of the heavy breathing haters and throw out some more innuendos, allegations, unfounded asserts, mud and general garbage.  All in a day’s work for an esteemed member of Congress, eh?  And, they wonder why the public has nothing but contempt for Congress in every poll taken these days?

New Orleans

Now in a twist, and you just can’t make this stuff up, this yahoo and a couple of other dim lights from the right, were all caught redhanded by the FBI on Monday morning trying to scam their way into Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in the city.  Seems they were tricked out with fluorescent vests and tried to talk their way into the phone system.  O’Keefe in  clownish fashion seems to have been easily observed filming his buddies on this Watergate bumblers expedition with his cell phone, although I’m betting it was a flip camera, but we’ll soon see.  Once Landreiu’s office staff showed them the main GAO phone system, it seems like the secretary called the feds on their stupid butts.

Next stop St. Bernard Parish Prison, which is disappointing to hear, since the brothers at the Orleans Parish Prison might have showed them a little bit more of New Orleans life than they really wanted to explore.  I hope that I don’t have to read that they were shepherded over to St. Bernard because they were mainly white dudes and the FBI feared that hanging with real pimps might not have been pretty, especially since there were no doubt huge numbers of ACORN friendly folks in the OPP.

One of these boneheads was the son of William Flanagan who is the interim US Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, which includes Shreveport and Lake Charles.  Many will be watching whether or not they get any breaks from that.  For her part Senator Landrieu said in essence that she could hardly wait to find out what these boys were up to.  Their own lawyers described the whole affair as, well, stupid.

Why Landrieu for goodness sake?  What papers or blogs are they reading that argues that Mary is some kinda flaming, commie, liberal the likes of which they are supposed to attack and expose.  I can’t even imagine what they thought they might have heard by tapping into her district offices phones.  For the most part people complain that you can’t even get through on the lines or get a return call from Mary’s local office, so this would have been a hoot, if they had gotten farther.

O’Keefe has gone from darling to dunderhead of the right, though most of his promoters were keeping buttoned up.   Keith Obermann seemed to be speculating on MSBN last night about whether or not O’Keefe’s funders might be targeted now to determine who was financing and pushing this crazy stuff, which may be why biggovernment.com and other O’Keefe backers were “mums the word” and waiting to see how much of the jig is up.

O’Keefe’s credibility is obviously gone, but seriously, did he really have any in the first place?

Marcala          

             We had started the day at eight in a makeshift meeting room in the hotel chapel with many of our union brothers as well as several new companeros from NGOs and the University.  For hours one after another listed the issues in and around San Pedro Sula that needed attention and organizational activity:  water, remittances, housing, public services.   It was a long list delivered in lengthy and passionate speeches listened to respectfully by all interrupted only by the appearance of a Channel 39 TV reporter who had heard the discussion was going on and that I was in town.  At noon we drove through some of the colonias including one fascinating development some of my union brothers showed me where the union had built the houses and the school.  This was only minutes away from a new highrise condo development abutting one piece of a small creek in San Pedro Sula.  Another sign down the road indicated the future would be filled with these luxury developments, the first in the city.  Another five minutes away and we were looking at a squatters development along a larger riverbank where families had been forced after Hurricane Mitch’s devastation in Honduras, as still remained.  Driving away we could see children swimming as their mothers washed their clothes in the calmer pools of the stream

            Next stop was a quick lunch and visit with a woman and her family who had graciously invited us over for pico gallo in the Honduran style with red beans.  The reason in the interconnected world of organizing:  her sister had been a member of ACORN in the Queens.  Anything she could do to help, just ask.

            Though there seemed to be no hurry to the drive, and it was a good thing since construction and 18-wheelers had us parking for long stretches as we crossed the mountains on the good highway from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, we parked in Marcala in one of the barrios and followed the noise and music into a giant structure just in time for a young political theater company to begin their presentation.  There were several hundred children and a score of adults in the crowd, as the moderator shouted, “Silencio!” over and over to gain attention.  Suyapa explained to me that this was part of a celebration for the women in the community, but the theater company brought much more to it.

            This was a well acted and rehearsed production by a half-dozen enthusiastic late teen or early 20’s actors.  In the beginning a “generalito” – small general – with his lieutenant wanted everything to be gray, gray, gray, and the three citizens, two women and one man, lived in gray huts in fear.  As the play developed to great humor and passion from the actors and increasingly the crowd as they warmed to the theme, the caricature soldiers in the face paint of Batman’s Joker gradually lost control.  Singing and dancing would erupt and pull the people off of their knees to find that they could walk and be happy again.  At the same time their huts turned from gray to white, pink, and green.  A giant bride dressed in white appeared on stilts and danced along as well.  A toy cannon exploded and led the soldier to defect to the people until the generalito was deflated with the air escaping from him like wind from a bag.  More singing ensued.  Children were pulled from the crowd.  Marching and dancing.  My summary doesn’t do the play or the skill and quality of the actors justice for this hour long presentation, but it was one of the few times where one had the feeling people were staying for the action and not the frijoles and tortillas passed out to all of us with plastic cups of weak coffee at the end of the show.

            There may have been a fake election in Honduras to try to rightsize the military coup, but the scars will wear deep among these people.  When the elected president announced on my first day in country that he was agreeing to go into exile in the Dominican Republic there was no celebration about his volunteering to take the first step to “reconciliation.”  It seemed hollow, and this children’s play with its well practiced themes and smooth presentation was hardly designed for this one show, but was traveling around the country.

            All of these things were on our minds as our eyes closed in the dark last night.  We were staying at the unfinished compound organized as a project to support the campesinos in this area. 

            It was an honor and a gift to have lived this day!

New Orleans

Reports all over my Google alerts indicated that in some kind poll, conducted it seems by Public Policy Polling, there was huge fear of ACORN shenanigans.  Going to the source I found this posting:

Monday, January 18, 2010

ACORN in Massachusetts

Scott Brown may be leading in the race for Ted Kennedy’s seat in the US Senate, but his supporters are still feeling some trepidation about his chances. 39% of them on our poll said they thought ACORN would try to steal the election for Martha Coakley while 23% think it will not and 38% are unsure.

Overall 25% of voters in the state think ACORN will mess with the Senate election while 38% don’t and 37% are unsure.

I think to most sane people the thought that ACORN would or could steal an election is pretty goofball, but if Martha Coakley pulls out a small victory tomorrow after most of the polls have shown Brown in the lead you’d better believe you’re going to be hearing the ACORN card played quite a bit.

Posted by Tom Jensen at 12:24 PM

A quarter of the voters believing this is indicates a huge amount of drug abuse in the state, so fortunately there is a mandated health plan in the state so there’s hope for a cure, but, wow, how can people be sold such snake oil?

Michelle Maklin headlines today, “Expect ACORN to Lead Voter Fraud Effort.”

Jensen’s got it right despite the wildness in the blogosphere.  How could “sane people” believe that ACORN “would or could steal an election…?”  Scratch Maklin off the sane list, if she was even remotely still on it.

More dismaying is that in ACORN’s currently crippled state in Massachusetts and elsewhere how anyone could imagine that they can even mount an effort to protect some of their own members in the neighborhoods much less stand up and fight in an election.

The efforts to scapegoat ACORN has truly passed from the ridiculous to the absurd.  Does it really take the level of lies for the right to convince its adherents to vote for their candidates?

Quepos           

            Partially, it was simply the “one that got away.”  It’s footprint was smaller with a base in Santa Barbara that was too far away from our groups and members to do much damage.  They had gotten into this predatory business and done very well, but were impervious to the impacts.  What did it matter to their normal customer base  in Santa Barbara after all?

            Direct discussions with Jackson & Hewitt, when I was with ACORN, when round-and-round, with J&H always claiming they would not “unilaterally disarm,” but would do so as H&R Block did so and others like Liberty Tax Services.  H&R Block was going to move from HSBC to its own bank.  I’m not sure if that happened or not.  Liberty was also a big customer for Santa Barbara. 

            The actions of OCC and other banking regulators are key here, because the withdrawal of Santa Barbara from this line of lending could finally push RALs out of the market, which would be huge.

            This was the Christmas present report from Bloomberg News:

Regulators ordered Santa Barbara Bank & Trust to stop providing the loan money, which covered about 75 percent of Jackson Hewitt’s financial products program, according to a regulatory filing by Jackson Hewitt.

Shares of the company, the No. 2 tax preparer behind H&R Block, dropped $1.34 to $4.50 on Thursday.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency told Santa Barbara Bank & Trust on Dec. 18 that the lender would not receive regulatory approval to originate the refund anticipation loans in 2010, according to a statement from the bank’s parent, the Pacific Capital Bancorp.

A bank spokesman, Tony Rossi, said that “the tax refund loan business is a sort of niche business that falls outside of what would be considered core banking operations.”

The bank signed a nonbinding letter of intent with a private equity firm to sell the tax business, the statement said.

Tax preparers are locked in a battle for customers, with Jackson Hewitt vowing this month to regain market share from H&R Block. Firms can attract clients with refund anticipation loans, in which customers who need cash immediately can get a short-term loan, typically lasting a few weeks, that is based on the expected amount of their tax refund.

Jackson Hewitt, with 6,600 outlets and almost three million clients, has been losing customers to H&R Block and Intuit, which makes TurboTax software. It suspended its dividend in March and has hired Goldman Sachs to explore “strategic alternatives,” language that typically means a company may be sold.

            The next target for economic justice reformers and citizen wealth advocates will need to be the unknown “private equity” company that will be tarnishing its reputation and brand – if such a concept is possible in private equity – by buying the Santa Barbara RALs business.  The other target may end up being whomever buys Jackson & Hewitt if Goldman Sachs is able to do the offload.

            You sow what you reap.

Easthampton, MA

I was wrong!  This was a tribal meeting of the faithful at the Log Cabin Restaurant where a sellout crowd that was surely 300 and perhaps 500 largely older and virtually all white folks crammed in to hear the gospel.  Barney gave them a good show starting with his joke about being there with his partner and not liking the fact that he was often pilloried as a member of a discriminated against group:  “partisan Democrats!”  They howled.  I jotted down a number of his one-liners in my program and then got out of Massachusetts without them, so I’ll save that for another day.

What interested me most as a barometer of the times was how he glossed over some issues and handled questions on others.  I was interested in how he was going to advance or defend the President to the faithful here.  All of this is particularly important because despite the relish he enjoys from his persona as an outside, Frank is right on the inside of all in dealing with all of the financial issues in the current meltdown.

He mentioned CRA several times and correctly argued that low and moderate income non-discriminatory lending was not a factor in the housing meltdown, which was especially interesting given yet another claim in the Wall Street Journal that day by a former government official.  In his discussion of his hopes for some financial reforms in the future he didn’t mention having left CRA out of the package even as the Administration had proposed including the measure under financial consumer protection, which still seems best.  In dealing with the limited and lame measures to solve the foreclosure crises, he mentioned the failure to amend the bankruptcy standards as a disappointment without any insight or confession for the faithful on how bank lobbyists had managed this unique trick in thwarting all stated Congressional intentions even while collecting a gazillion dollars in bailout monies.  There’s a story here and it probably isn’t pretty, but it didn’t fit in a one-liner, so he counted on the fact that no one much was following the trail on that problem.  The reforms he was proposing for the future were actually modest and drew only lukewarm applause.

When the question period finally arrived, almost all of the questions, some quite pointed were about the health care issue.  One fellow asked why we couldn’t get “Medicare for all,” and Frank saw that’s going to probably take “more years than you or I have left.”  Surprisingly, Frank was somewhat flatfooted on most of these questions, essentially saying that he was so busy on finance issues that he wasn’t as knowledgeable on these core concerns.

He was most unsettled when a well coifed woman asked a pointed question that implicitly insinuated that he and other Congressional representatives were getting a special deal on their insurance coverage.  First, he tried to interrupt her, but she stubbornly insisted on finishing her question for whatever reason and backed him down.  Then he answered that he was on Medicare and the federal government insurance identical to 3 million other federal employees, and though a great plan was not a special entitlement for the 500 odd elected representatives.  He took some shots at not believing what was on the internet, and then for some reason repeated the same answer again including the defense, hardly needed among this adoring crowd, of the emergency clinic that was on the grounds and that they all paid an extra $500 or so to support.  It was clear he was not used to these questions, didn’t like these questions, and for all his gruff and bluff, was as uncomfortable in the new polarized polity, as the rest of us are.  Clearly the Congressmen for all of his bluff and bluster has gotten accustomed to being a character and outsider among the Wall Street and Washington crowd that daily traipses into his office, but is still trying to get a better grip at what is really happening on the grassroots.

He was whisked from the podium to the press conference.  As he walked by us it was interesting to see how unlike the typical Boston area pol he seemed to be.  He wasn’t working the crowd.   He had given me a hello walking into the Log Cabin when we passed each other in the hallway, but watching him pass by here without shaking hands right and left was unusual.

Congressman Frank seemed an outsider here even among the faithful and an insider and defender of Washington, the Federal Reserve, and Wall Street.  You figure?

Springfield

Some group prior to my visit to Springfield had posted on a listserv connected to the Tea Party people that they wanted to recruit protestors for my talk in Springfield and Amherst.  The notice was forwarded and it made the case that they needed to be well dressed and restrained so that they could communicate with students and keep them from being brainwashed by whatever points I might make.  No matter, I thought.  Before the speech I went a couple of miles away and met with Caroline Murray, the director of ADP – the Alliance to Develop Power – in her offices so that I could check-in on the progress of community organizing in Springfield and adjoining counties.  Upon returning to campus I was handed emails that outlined their “security” plans and their media plans.  It seemed that Fox was going to cover the speech and the “protest” planned by what they called 9/12 or Glenn Beck people.  Huh?

Seems 9/12 refers to 9 principles and 12 values articulated by Glenn Beck and some kind of organization has developed to embrace and promote these things.  Who knew?  Welcome to America, 2009!

Walking over to Marsh Hall there was a buzz of excitement as we hit the door to turn on the lights.  Seems that they had already moved a bunch of protestors off the campus and over to the public street running through Springfield College.  By the count of one of the professors (Rick Parr thanks and the pictures were taken by him as well), there were about 30 anti-Wade demonstrators and 6 or so pro-Wade demonstrators.  Whoa!

The room filled up amazingly to almost the full 250 capacity.  There were people from local community organizations:  ARISE, Springfield ACORN, and ADP.  There were 9/12ers sitting in the front row in motorcycle vests as well as some others sprinkled about the hall.  There were students galore and a number of older faculty and retired types.

I was introduced and as I walked to the lectern, the first of the Beckers jumped up from his seat to protest my speaking and rant about ACORN and its evil and prostitution and whatnot.  Department chair, Herb Zette, walked up to him and ushered him out.  Meanwhile Caroline Murray had jumped up and shouted for the guy to get down.  The ACORN people started yelling.  Then a second person jumped up from another part of the room, and Dr. Zettl was on him like white on rice.  By this point people on that side of the room were chanting, “The People United, Shall Never be Defeated!”  Bedlam!  By the 3^rd person I was bored with the 9/12 tactics and the strategy of containment, and simply held the mike and said I would be glad to take the guy’s question in the Q&A period, so hold your horses.  We were definitely giving the crowd all of the excitement for a Monday night that they could conceivably handle!

The questions on all sides were interesting.

My friend who had delayed his rage spoke eloquently as a working man worried about his two teenagers and their ability to find jobs and whether or not President Obama and people like me were changing the country.  But, there was a way to respond about jobs and what we were doing.

One of the final questions by the 9/12 folks was from a woman in the front row who was accompanied by her daughter.  She spoke in a low voice movingly about having been on welfare when she was divorced and how difficult it was.  She talked about having worked her way off of the aid, and thanked the government for the help, but then she also though she was the exception, and that there were lots of people coming on welfare and staying forever.  I listened to her carefully.  This was a woman conflicted.  She didn’t like welfare of course, but knew it was there when she needed it, but saw her circumstances as deserving and exceptional, rather than typical and mundane.  She didn’t want to believe the fact that the welfare rolls had steadily been reduced under TANF until the current economic crises.  She was no hater.  She was a woman that I had signed up as an ACORN member in a hundred neighborhoods…she reminded me of the great Elena Hanggi around her kitchen table in Little Rock or Barbara Rivera in the North End of Springfield, whose story I told last at Springfield as well.

There is anger, but mainly there is a lost, hurt sense of alienation and estrangement.  I was listening and learning, and perhaps others were as well.  These exchanges are at the heart of the current American dialogue

Many were groping to understand.  One man wanted desperately to blame the Community Reinvestment Act for the housing problems and didn’t want to believe that the default rate had ever been lower on such loan portfolios.  Another professor asked out loud why the anger was so misdirected and how in the world Wall Street was escaping the wrath and change was not coming.  A former leader from Springfield ACORN tried to understand how the hard work they had done and their victories, big and small, in the neighborhoods were being demonized and shunned in these current times, and what would happen now.

I posed the hard question:  like ACORN or not, what will fill the gap and take its place as a voice for low and moderate income people?  Who will register those voters?  Who will provide those services?  Who will speak their truths to power?  There were of course no answers, but the questions weighed heavy on the crowd.

Sometimes it’s the little things.  For Professor Dan Russell, the organizer of the event, a student came up to him and said that this was the best thing that had happened to him in four years at Springfield College.  For me it was a man who came at me on a beeline after my speech and without giving me his name, extended his hand in a firm handshake and said, “you converted me.”  He said that he had come in convinced one way, but he had moved the other.  I said I was moved by that, but what had made the difference.  His answer:  “the passion of your conviction.”

We all learned a lot at Springfield College last night.