Elizabeth Crum

Don’t miss this story by John Fund in the WSJ. 

Former ACORN employee Anita MonCrief says ACORN has long been aware of the issues with bogus registration cards.  This morning on Lauara Ingraham she said ACORN considers a 40% validity rate acceptable.  So much for the claims that ACORN’s upper management team was/is either unaware of the quality control problems or that problems occur only rarely and locally.

“There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” says Nate Toler, who worked until 2006 as the head organizer of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in California. And Ms. MonCrief says it is longstanding practice to blame bogus registrations on lower-level employees who then often face criminal charges, a practice she says Acorn internally calls “throwing folks under the bus.”

On the subject of lining one’s own pockets under the pretense of helping needy kids:

The Las Vegas Sun reports that Willa Chaney, a candidate for the State Board of Education, owes the Nevada Education Department more than half a million bucks for funds she misused while running a program to provide aid to needy students.

The NV Education Dept. sued Willia Chaney’s company and in August a District Court judge ordered Chaney to pay back the money.  The Sun reports:

“From 1993 to 1999 Chaney operated a federally funded program to provide meals to poor children during summer vacations and other school breaks. The state shut down the Smart Start Summer Food Service Program in 1999 after the inspector general identified $1.01 million in questionable expenses.”

Apparently investigators found that Smart Start was serving far fewer children than it claimed in its reports of meals delivered to 13 apartment buildings in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.  Also among the investigator’s audit findings (quoted from the Sun):

• More than $250,000 in salaries was paid to 15 Smart Start employees, “even though they apparently did little or no work” and no time cards were maintained. Chaney’s husband, James, served as the program’s director and her son and daughter were on the payroll.

• Federal money was used to purchase five vehicles. The titles were in the Chaneys’ names rather than in the name of the Smart Start program.

• The program’s costs included $2,000 a month paid to Chaney’s day-care center, Smart Start Daycare, for use of its kitchen and parking spaces. Investigators determined the food program’s facility had ample parking, and the child-care center was paying $1 a year to lease its entire location.

Chaney is running for the District 3 seat on the State Board of Education, which sets policy for the Nevada Education Department and the state’s school districts.  She denies any wrongdoing.

Here’s a worthy cut-and-paste from The Muthster re: Nancy Allf, a Nevada Supreme Court candidate with a case of chronic deceitfulness:

Nancy Allf, Nevada Supreme Court candidate and wife to a prominent Democrat campaign consultant, has a commercial running on TV in which she claims to have tried a case before the Supreme Court. However, on Face-to-Face this week, host Jon Ralston called her on the claim and the former head of Planned Parenthood in Southern Nevada had to admit that she never tried any case before the Supreme Court. So what we have here is someone who didn’t tell the truth wanting to sit on the state’s highest bench where everyone coming before her will be required to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaking of Allf, an alert News & Views reader points out that the former head of Planned Parenthood, her law firm and her client were fined more than $50,000 for making statements in court that “are lacking any plausible legal or factual basis, are undoubtedly unmeritorious, do not abide by common sense, have been brought in bad faith, and have resulted in unreasonable, unnecessary and vexatious increases in litigation and other costs to the parties, together with a multiplicity of proceedings.” Don’t take my word for it, read all about it HERE

If you’re a Nevada voter, make sure you don’t punch the button for Alff in November!