New York Pols Pimp-Slap ACORN

Despite the antique media's best efforts at downplaying the mushrooming ACORN scandal, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and New York City Council President Christine Quinn, Democrats both, are moving quickly to freeze local funding to this criminal enterprise.

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo yesterday launched an investigation into pork-barrel grants given to ACORN by state lawmakers, as City Council Speaker Christine Quinn froze all city funding earmarked for the scandal-scared community-activism organization.

The actions by the Democratic officials followed release of a shocking undercover video that showed employees at a Brooklyn ACORN office giving illicit financial advice to activists posing as a pimp and prostitute who wanted to start a brothel.

The agency was among several ACORN affiliates, including offices in Baltimore, Washington and San Bernardino, Calif., exposed in the hidden-camera sting.

On Monday, the US Senate voted overwhelmingly to block federal funding to the community group, while Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes opened an investigation into the local office in response to a report in The Post.

A spokesman for Cuomo said the attorney general would seek to make sure pork-barrel grants directed to ACORN by state lawmakers were spent on tax-preparation and loan-counseling services, as intended.

"We are now closely monitoring that investigation to preserve the integrity of state funds," Cuomo spokesman Richard Bamberger said.

"We will be reviewing member-item contracts involving ACORN in light of the district attorney's investigation."

A source told The Post that Cuomo is considering freezing any funds set aside for ACORN until after Hynes completes his investigation.

A spokesman for state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said the state's financial watchdogs would also flag future payments to ACORN for extra scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Quinn went a step further, suspending all ACORN grants sponsored by City Council members until Hynes concludes his investigation, according to one city lawmaker Quinn told about the move.

Some ACORN spokesthing naturally offers a mealy-mouthed excuse but it's pretty clear the videotaped incidents at ACORN offices around the country are having an effect on this outlaw group so closely connected to Democrats. House and Senate Democrats will do their best to quash any investigation but if the states begin pursuing this independently there may be some hope this mob can finally be de-funded.

I love this comment from a Post reader:

Could Andrew Cuomo phone his brother Chris over at ABC (All Barack Channel) to tell him about this scandel? Curiously, no one over there seems to know anything about this.

In the Tank: NYC Council Puppets Reads Off Cue Cards Prepared By UFT

Not that it's any secret Democrats are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the teacher's unions, but man, this is ridiculous. It's not enough the deck is stacked against charter schools. It's not enough poor kids are mired in failing publics controlled by the UFT. But the union has to go and stage a hearing with scripted cue cards prepared for the Democrat-controlled city council. What a joke.

Chastened officials with the United Federation of Teachers yesterday promised never again to put words in the mouths of City Council members after the union's cheap stunt -- giving scripted questions to lawmakers at a hearing -- caused a furor.

"We certainly don't plan on it happening again," said a contrite Ron Davis, a spokesman for UFT president Randi Weingarten. "This is the first time, at least in our staff's memory, that this type of communication occurred during a hearing."

UFT reps were caught red-handed passing out the cue cards with leading questions for council members to ask Department of Education officials at a hearing on charter schools Tuesday.

Mayor Bloomberg decried the tactic yesterday, saying council members should have been clear about the origins of their queries.

"They probably should have disclosed that those questions were written for them by a party that has a vested interest," said Bloomberg, who is battling the union over mayoral control of the school system and an expanded charter-school program.

"The real issue here is supporting the schools that parents want to send their kids to," he added. "And we have a waiting list of 30 or 40 thousand kids who want to go to charter schools."

Although the union made the council look like puppets, council Speaker Christine Quinn defended her members' independence.

"Clearly what happened at the hearing was regrettable," she said. "Obviously, pre-printed questions are something that shouldn't have happened, but any belief that council members are puppets and not informed are as outrageous as those cards were."

Translation: We're puppets, but I'm outraged that you would call me a puppet.

Just pathetic.

More reaction here.

The questions for the Department of Education were sharp and confrontational.

The questions for the union were softballs.

UFT officials sat in the front row of the ornate council hearing room to insure their script was being followed.

If that wasn't outrageous enough, legislators were told which question to direct to which official.

It's not uncommon for lobbyists, advocates and even reporters to request that a specific question be posed at a City Hall hearing.

But no one had ever seen what the UFT pulled off.

"It crosses the line," said Felder. "It's not the actual questions. It's the directing. It's the atmosphere that was created."

He's right.

The union's ploy, observers said, went far beyond typical lobbying tactics of briefing council members before a hearing or providing position papers.

"I've had people suggest to me ask the commissioner this or ask this witness that. I've never had anybody type up cue cards for me," said Councilman James Oddo (R-SI).

A former council member, who's been in politics for decades, couldn't recall a similar incident in his career. "I've never heard of it being done on a mass basis," said the veteran pol.

Instapundit links. Thanks!

NYC Politics: Enough to Make You Puke

Some folks are just sick about violating the will of the people. But they go along if they know what's good for them.

Darlene Mealy - one of only two City Council members to switch sides in the tense term-limits vote - was under such intense pressure and threats that she vomited twice at City Hall before announcing her decision, sources said yesterday.

Mealy's "yes" vote drew gasps from the audience in the packed council chambers Thursday, since it was the first public signal that the opposition was headed to a slim defeat, 29-22.

Some council members insist Mealy, who was injured in a car crash just hours after the vote, was threatened.

"She was very upset. She kept saying she has to deliver for her district, and she was tired of being on the losing side," said Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Brooklyn), one of the bill's leading adversaries.

Opponents said Mealy was told she would face trouble for trying to sponsor a $25,000 grant for a Brooklyn block association run by her sister in Fiscal Year 2007.

Mealy attempted to allocate her council discretionary funds for her sister's group, the Fulton-Atlantic-Ralph-Rochester Community Association (FARR), but the request was mysteriously pulled.

Jamie McShane, a spokesman for council Speaker Christine Quinn, denied Mealy was threatened in any way.

Of course Democrats would never threaten anyone.

Democrats Stealing From The Children

Only in New York, kids. Well actually, it isn't only in New York. Democrats who run large urban cities enjoy massive piggy-banks stuffed with taxpayer cash and dole it out in return for favors, reveling in their own little fiefdoms while the media largely ignores fiscal shenanigans.

The most recent example of fiscal perfidy involves (surprise!) the New York City Council, possibly the most useless political organization on the planet.

Recently the discovery of a massive slush funds used to dole out cash in returns for political favors has led to an ongoing investigation and has now bared the first fruit in the form of two City Council aides being busted for embezzling funds intended to provide tutoring for public-school kids.

Business as usual, in other words.

Two City Council aides were busted by the feds yesterday for embezzling $145,000 in taxpayers' money - and authorities indicated it's just the first fruit of an ongoing probe into corrupt use of the council's budget.

Asquith Reid, the chief of staff to City Councilman Kendall Stewart, and another Stewart aide, Joycinth Anderson, are charged with money laundering and fraud for allegedly siphoning cash from a pet nonprofit group purported to provide tutoring to public-school kids.

Reid is accused of abusing the city's poor oversight of "discretionary funds" - money controlled by individual council members and intended for charity - to pour money into the Donna Reid Memorial Education Fund, which he controlled.

The arrests came as the result of a year-long probe by the city's Department of Investigation and federal prosecutors into how millions of dollars are handed out each year.

To line his own pocket, Reid allegedly diverted $93,000 from the Donna Reid fund - a nonprofit named after his dead daughter - by arranging to have checks cashed by Anderson and two other unnamed co-conspirators. Anderson allegedly cashed $20,000 worth of checks.

Reid also brazenly wired $31,000 to family and friends in Jamaica and shelled out another $21,000 in looted cash for a private hall in Brooklyn for Stewart's political club and campaign literature, according to court papers.

In announcing the arrests, US Attorney Michael Garcia said Reid and Anderson's "loyalty should have been to New York City taxpayers. Instead, they were driven by greed."

Stealing money from a charity named after your dead daughter.

What a guy.

Read the rest of the story, then start counting the days before Council Speaker Christine Quinn plays the lesbian card.

Also check out Slush-Fund Shenanigans.

The New York Times reports the story, but naturally fails to note the word Democrat anywhere.

Shocking, isn't it?

Meanwhile, we didn't note it Wednesday, but another criminal Democrat across the river in Newark has been convicted. The Times actually notes he's a Democrat.

Progress.

A federal jury today convicted the former longtime mayor of Newark, Sharpe James, of fraud for conspiring to sell city-owned properties to a former girlfriend, who quickly flipped them and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.

On the sixth day of deliberations, the jury found Mr. James, 72, guilty on all five counts he faced. His former girlfriend, Tamika Riley, 39, was convicted on the same fraud and conspiracy charges as well as eight others for numerous tax violations in connection with what the authorities said was her failure to file income tax returns for her public relations firm.

Under federal guidelines, prosecutors say the two face up to about eight years in prison. For now, both are free on bail and will face sentencing on July 29. Mr. James’s lead attorney, Thomas Ashley, said he intended to appeal the verdict.

A Really Dumb Idea

You have to wonder why on earth a New York City Councilman would want to name a street after one of the worst human beings in the city's history. But sure enough, Councilman Al Vann thinks it's a good idea to honor racial arsonist Sonny Carson.

Kudos to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for blocking a bill that would have renamed a Brooklyn street after racist and urban terrorist Sonny Carson.

Councilman Al Vann, who introduced the bill, says he expects the council eventually to approve it, given that the renaming has the support of Community Board 3 and the council "routinely" approves such designations.

We hope that this time councilmembers show a little more common sense.

Since his death in 2002, many New Yorkers may have forgotten just who Sonny Carson was. But his record of hate dates back to the contentious 1968 school strike on Ocean Hill-Brownsville, where he stood out for his demagoguery.

A decade later, he was convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder and served a stretch in prison.

Carson's backers claim this is when he changed, devoting his life to fighting drugs and police brutality. But those who followed his career knew otherwise.

In 1990, Carson personally led the campaign of boycott and physical intimidation against Korean-owned delis in Brooklyn's black neighborhoods, marching with signs that read, "Don't Shop With People Who Don't Look Like Us."

Defy the boycott and you were spat upon and threatened: "In the future," he said, "there'll be funerals, not boycotts."

A year later, he hailed the Crown Heights lynch mob that killed Hasidic scholar Yankel Rosenbaum, saying he was "very proud" of what had happened.

Accused of anti-Semitism, he replied: "I'm anti-white - don't limit my anti's to one group of people."

Carson was among many thugs (does the name Al Sharpton ring any bells?) who ran amok during the disastrous David Dinkins administration and the notion he'd be given such an honor is nauseating.

This bill needs to be scuttled forthwith.