By Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily

 Obama is rewarding his friends

The White House is considering a new policy that would give an advantage in bids for billions in government contracts to companies that pay workers "living wages" and offer generous benefits.

WND has learned the "living wage" campaign has long been pushed by the radical Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, and was largely initiated on a local level in the 1990s with the help of a socialist party of which evidence suggests Barack Obama was a member.

Critics warn a living wage advantage for more than $500 billion in government contracts could harm small companies, with case studies showing cities that enacted similar policies in the 1990s faced major financial losses. Business groups who oppose the plan say also it would increase government procurement costs.

The Associated Press obtained documents outlining the White House plan. The documents reportedly show the government would examine the wages and benefits – such as health insurance, retirement benefits and paid leave – a firm pays its employees as a factor in the process of awarding government contracts. Another factor would be whether a contract bidder is a repeat violator of labor and employment laws.

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By Don Loos, Big Government

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is defiant and combative

On Friday, 20 November 2009, The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation (Foundation) decided enough was enough and filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court demanding that they compel the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to comply with the Foundation’s April 6th Freedom of information Act (FOIA) request.
The Foundation’s FOIA requested:

Records from communications and recorded events where specified Obama appointees and Big Labor official were present
Lists of lawsuits involving the Department of Labor and Deborah Greenfield within the past eight years.

List of any gifts received by Solis in the past 5 years from Big Labor or its officials

Specifically provide in detail (a) notes, (b) agreements, (c) communications, and (d) agendas related to the regulations related to the labor union and officer disclosure rules

Copies of phone logs

Copies of any notes or documents related to any enforcement of any labor laws and any outside groups such as labor unions, American Rights at Work, or ACORN

Obama’s Labor Department Ignores His Transparency Guidance
Remember January 21, 2009, when President Barack Obama proclaimed the new era of more open and transparent government began? This U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy memorandum is a good reminder:

On his first full day in office, January 21, 2009, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of all departments and agencies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The President directed that FOIA “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” Moreover, the President instructed agencies that information should not be withheld merely because “public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”

Agencies were directed to respond to requests “promptly and in a spirit of cooperation.”

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By Tony Romm, The Hill

 Obama’s new counsel is a highly partisan individual

Newly appointed White House counsel Bob Bauer is "perfectly positioned to be tasked with erasing the tracks between Obama and ACORN," one Republican lawmaker charged Friday.

The lawyer’s hiring, announced this morning shortly after Greg Craig officially resigned the post, was also an attempt by the White House to deflect any fallout that may arise from an ACORN investigation currently underway in Louisiana, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) added in a statement.

“Bob Bauer has a public record of defending Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN, the congressman told supporters. "Bauer’s hiring appears to be a tactical maneuver to strategically defend the White House exactly one week after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans and seized paper records and computer hard drives that may lead to the White House.”

However, the link between Bauer, the president and ACORN’s Louisiana office is long, winding and confusing, at best.

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Trading Markets

During consideration of H.R. 3126, legislation to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee voted to pass an amendment offered by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that will make ACORN eligible to play a role in setting regulations for financial institutions.

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.

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by  Bill O’Reilly, Human Events

You’ve got to love Michael Moore. He’s running around promoting his new film that says capitalism is a terrible system, a rotten to the core philosophy. But hold it. Didn’t Moore have to raise money to make the movie through capitalistic vehicles? Or did his dad give him the dough?
In one of his many interviews, Moore began lecturing President Obama: "You are one of us. … This is not the time to be the representative of the private health insurance industry. We need you to stand up. … And we want universal health care for every single American, and we want it controlled in a single payer system…"

Wow, anything else, Mike? I’d love to know how President Obama feels about being told what to do by the likes of Michael Moore, a man who admires the Cuban political system. I’d like to believe the president tunes out radical stuff, but there is growing evidence that he does not.

When asked about the ACORN scandal, Obama said he wasn’t paying much attention to it. Hard to believe, but possible. He also said he had more important things to worry about. True, but you can walk and chew gum at the same time. The president should have condemned the corruption at ACORN, a group that fervently supports him. But the president did not.

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By Matthew Vadum, American Spectator

Patrick Gaspard is longtime ACORN operative now in White House

Newly discovered evidence shows the radical advocacy group ACORN has a man in the Obama White House.

This power behind the throne is longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard. He holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush’s White House.

Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis’s political director in New York.

Lewis, the current "chief organizer" or CEO of ACORN, was head of New York ACORN from at least 1994 through 2008, when she took over as national leader of ACORN. With Gaspard at work in the White House, Lewis might as well be speaking to President Obama through an earpiece as he goes about his daily business ruining the country.

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By Sher Zieve, Canada Free Press

While the ObamaCamp and many Democrat (aka New Marxist) “leaders” continue to desperately search for hiding places from the latest outing of ACORN as an organizational nut that is rotten to the core, Obama continues to remain mum on the issue.  But, then Obama has been at least waist-deep in ACORN’s corruption for almost two decades.  And what might actually come from both the US Senate and House of Representatives calling for a real investigation of Obama’s ACORN?  Possibly nothing.  There is every indication that the Dictator-in-Chief may veto any and all requests for investigations.

After all, it was Obama who ordered the June 2009 investigation of ACORN stopped in its tracks.  Or, either the House or Senate could actually remove the investigation wording when the resolution goes to behind-closed-doors committee meetings.  This is how corrupt our Congress has become.

To reiterate previous columns, as well as the addition of new incriminating-to-Obama information, our Dictator-in-Chief has been involved with ACORN for years and even taught its members some of the same bullying and intimidation thug-tactics the organization uses today.  Despite continuing ObamaLies, Obama DID train ACORN in multiple aspects of community organizing.  Just watch the below video.

Obama taught the organization how to bully and intimidate banks into making very risky mortgage loans to people who could not afford to buy a house.

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By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Acorn is in trouble after their offices were caught on hidden camera

After Acorn workers were caught on tape in three cities allegedly abetting what they believed was a fraudulent-mortgage and sex-trafficking scheme, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to strip the group of funding in the Transportation/Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill.

The amendment, offered by Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, passed by an 83-to-7 margin and marked the third time this year that Republicans have tried to block the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now from feeding at the federal trough.

Seven Democrats refused to do the right thing. The magnificent seven are Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; both Vermont Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy, as well as both Illinois Democrats, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Roland Burris.

This vote comes after the release of three hidden-camera videos showing Acorn housing staff in its Baltimore, Washington and New York offices apparently helping a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute evade the IRS and apply for an illegal housing loan to set up a brothel. (Insert stimulus joke here.) The Census Bureau immediately severed ties with Acorn, unconcerned that prostitutes and tax evaders might be undercounted in the 2010 census.

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