Obama’s Americorps scandal — and the First Lady’s meddling
President Obama is hoping you won’t notice his abrupt change of inspectors general over at Americorps, the government-run, taxpayer-subsidized “community service” boondoggle (which Republicans helped expand as part of the $6 billion GIVE/SERVE Act in March despite its wasteful track record. Thanks, Republicans).
With intervention from Michelle Obama, the Americorps inspector general was given the boot and replaced — for doing his job too well, it seems, and uncovering squandering of funds by favored contributors, educational institutions, and left-wing groups.
This Associated Press article only scratches the surface:
President Barack Obama plans to fire the inspector general who investigates AmeriCorps and other national service programs amid a controversy between the IG and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star.
The IG, Gerald Walpin, was criticized by the U.S. attorney in Sacramento for the way he handled an investigation of Johnson and his nonprofit group, St. HOPE Academy, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants from the Corporation for National Community Service. The corporation runs the AmeriCorps program.
On Thursday, Obama said in a letter to Congress that he had lost confidence in Walpin. Neither the president nor deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest would give details. The president must give Congress 30 days’ notice before removing Walpin, who is being suspended with pay for the 30 days. Earnest said, “The president will appoint a replacement in whom he has full confidence as the corporation carries out its important mission.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter to Obama, pointed to a law requiring that Congress be given the reasons an IG is fired. He cited a Senate report saying the requirement is designed to ensure that inspectors general are not removed for political reasons. Grassley said Walpin had identified millions of dollars in AmeriCorps funds that were wasted or misspent and “it appears he has been doing a good job.”
In fact, there’s much more.
This little-noticed story in Youth Today yesterday points to another example of Walpin blowing the whistle on fraud:
The inspector general (IG) of the Corporation for National and Community Service is being removed by President Barack Obama, a week after the IG questioned the eligibility of the largest and most expensive AmeriCorps program, and while the IG was contesting the “propriety” of a settlement made with a mayor for alleged misuse of AmeriCorps funds.
…Funding for the largest AmeriCorps program – the Teaching Fellows Program, run by the Research Foundation of the City University of New York – is in abeyance pending resolution of widespread problems identified in a recent audit. Although Walpin recommended that funding be curtailed and that previous funds (perhaps as much as $75 million) be repaid to the corporation, the corporation has said it will take no action on that matter.
Walpin concluded that nothing was being gained by the grants to CUNY and that the money was simply being used to subsidize an existing and funded program.
I highly recommend that you head over to the Americorps’ inspector general’s report site here. You can find the entire CUNY report here. Let me repeat what the IG found: Waste, duplication, ineffective spending, criminal background check lapses, and repeated violations of the grant rules. And they’re not doing anything about it. Just a snippet from the executive summary:
The Office of Inspector General (OIG), Corporation for National and Community Service (Corporation), contracted with Cotton & Company LLP to perform agreed-upon procedures to assist the OIG in grant cost and compliance testing of Corporation-funded Federal assistance provided to The Research Foundation of the City University of New York (RFCUNY). The Corporation awarded two Education Award Program grants to RFCUNY that were categorized as Professional Model grants.
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
As a result of applying our procedures, we questioned education awards of $16,152,414 and draw downs of $773,254. In general, we questioned the education awards for members whose eligibility was not established in accordance with grant requirements for criminal background checks. Draw downs were questioned mostly for fixed fees related to members whose eligibility we questioned and also for drawing down in excess of fees earned. In addition, our compliance findings when taken as a whole indicate pervasive problems of eligibility, timekeeping, and documentation. A questioned cost is an alleged violation of a provision of law, regulation, contract, grant, cooperative agreement, or other agreement or document governing the expenditure of funds or a finding that, at the time of testing,
includes costs not supported by adequate documentation.…Participants who successfully complete terms of service under AmeriCorps grants are eligible for education awards and, in some cases, accrued interest awards funded by the Corporation’s National Service Trust. These award amounts are not funded by Corporation grants and thus are not included in claimed grant costs. But at the time that a grant is awarded, and due to the grant award, these amounts become immediate obligations of the National Service Trust. Therefore, as part of our agreed-upon procedures, and using the same criteria used for the grantee’s claimed costs, we determined the effect of our findings on AmeriCorps members’ entitlement to education and accrued interest awards.
The following is a summary of grant compliance testing results…
1. RFCUNY drew down more funds than it was due.
2. RFCUNY did not follow certain AmeriCorps Provisions.
3. The supervisory signature on members’ timesheets was not the members’ supervisor, or that of someone with direct knowledge of hours served by the members.
4. Members did not always record actual service hours on their timesheets.
5. Some members’ timesheet hours were not accurately recorded in the Corporation’s Web-Based Reporting System.
6. RFCUNY did not require its members to timely submit their member contracts, forms, and timesheets.
7. RFCUNY used preprinted member documentation and did not ensure that all member documentation was completed, signed, and dated.
8. RFCUNY did not maintain documentation to demonstrate that each member’s evaluation complied with AmeriCorps Regulations and the Member Agreement.
9. RFCUNY did not maintain documentation to demonstrate that members received criminal background checks and that any background checks conducted complied with AmeriCorps Provisions.
10. RFCUNY entered incorrect member start dates in Corporation systems and in member contracts.
11. Some members worked beyond their contract-end date.
Another recent IG report on Americorps waste by open-borders lobbying group, La Raza (“The Race”) spotlighted its failure to complete background checks and institute secure financial controls. And on and on and on.
And guess who’s meddling in these affairs? Yep, First Lady Michelle Obama:
Some decisions about CNCS are being made by First Lady Michelle Obama, according to service advocates (who asked not to be named). Last week, Mrs. Obama announced that her chief of staff, Jackie Norris, would move to CNCS as a senior adviser. Officials said yesterday that Norris is scheduled to arrive on June 22.
Who’s looking out for you now? Cronies, that’s who.
More on the First Lady’s role in installing Norris and intervening to help pick the next Americorps CEO:
First Lady Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, Jackie Norris, is being sent to the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) in what is both a White House shake-up and an indication of the first lady’s sway over the corporation that oversees AmeriCorps, Serve and Learn and the Senior Corps.
Observers believe Norris, whom Obama came to know early in the Iowa caucus campaign, was forced out of the White House so that long-time Obama friend Susan Sher could take over. But those same observers see her appointment as senior adviser to the corporation as an overall win for CNCS, believing that Norris still will have a straight line to the White House.
CNCS remains without a CEO after the withdrawal last month of Nike vice president Maria Eitel, even before her nomination went to the Senate. Although the corporation’s CEO must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, Michelle Obama reportedly has taken the lead in selecting the nominee.
This stinks. Shades of Travelgate, anyone?
The more things Change…
***
Ed Morrissey: “Will Congress stand up to the executive branch and protect the Inspectors General? Or will they roll over and allow Obama to accrue even more power to protect his buddies and to allow corruption to run rampant?”
***
Flashback on the Americorps/ACORN fraud history, circa 2004:
Although ACORN’s projects run a wide gamut, the group claims as its purpose helping low- and middle-income Americans — through initiatives ranging from improving urban public schools, to providing counseling on how to avoid “predatory lending,” to increasing the availability of “affordable housing.” Most of these programs are conducted locally, by state-level ACORN organizations — which are often set up as 501(c)3 nonprofit entities distinct from the national ACORN umbrella, a 501(c)4 lobbying organization. Sounds benign enough — except that, according to Bob Huberty, executive vice president of the Capital Research Center, these tax-exempt 501(c)3s “have no reason for existence other than to get grants from the government and foundations.” They are, essentially, an ACORN front for asking Uncle Sam to subsidize political activity.
Ask ACORN does — and it definitely receives. Take, for example, the most recent tax information from one of ACORN’s subsidiary nonprofits: the ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc., based out of the organization’s national headquarters in New Orleans. For the tax year beginning July 1, 2002, and ending June 30, 2003, ACORN Housing Corp.’s 990 Form shows a total of $1,710,203 received in government grants (the year before, the total was $1,977,306).
The nominal purpose of those millions is to “provide low rent housing & loan counseling services to low income individuals.” But if the government is funding the actual, legitimate work of ACORN at the local 501(c)3 level, it means that the national lobbying organization can dedicate more of its unrestricted resources to electioneering. Furthermore, explains Craig Garthwaite, director of research at the Employment Policies Institute, “The funding is not only fungible in that if they receive money for X, they can spend more on Y.” He cites one particular example of money-rerouting malfeasance: the crooked dealings surrounding an AmeriCorps grant in 1996. According to an EPI study, when the ACORN Housing Corp. applied for the grant, they denied any connections to the main ACORN lobbying group (the grant is not for political advocacy). But the AmeriCorps inspector general discovered that “not only was AHC created by ACORN, engaged in numerous transactions with one another, and sharing staff and office space — but it utilized the AmeriCorps grant to increase ACORN membership, a violation of federal guidelines.” (ACORN charges membership dues, much as labor unions do; thus, by exploiting AmeriCorps funding to inflate its membership rolls, ACORN used government resources to bring in even more money — money with no restrictions on its political use.)
***
And another relevant flashback on Michelle Obama’s interest in government-directed “service,” via IBD last fall:
Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993. Obama plans to use the nonprofit group, which he features on his campaign Web site, as the model for a national service corps. He calls his Orwellian program, “Universal Voluntary Public Service.”
Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they’ll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of “social change.”
The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn’t seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year “community leadership” positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They’ll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats.
In exchange, they’ll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.
But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about “social change” through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation — the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul “The Red” Alinsky…
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someone tell me again..why doesn’t lgm believe any of this?
it would seem zero and the beast don’t want accountability, just more of the same, corruption, theft and criminal activity.
Simple. Lack of integrity, lack of trust, lack of Truth.
Excellent reporting here and at Hot Air. Excellent.
I’ll be calling my deadbeat democrap representative and senators; doubtful it will do much good but it’s all I can do at this time.
Looks to me as if the First Family is starting to get comfortable in their new power.
Look out.
Obama will just keep swapping out IG’s until he finds one that will consistently kiss his ahhh, I mean agree with his wise and knowledgeable direction.
I think it has something to do with the Obama-adopted variation of the proverbial principle to “see no evil of Obama, hear no evil of Obama, speak no evil of Obama”. I think that all followers of “The One” have to sign an oath to this effect in blood during the great ceremony of the “Taking of the sacred Kool Aide”.
Thank you so much Michelle, it ticks me off how this will probably not get hardly any coverage on the news. But if
it was a Republican president it would be non stop coverage. I am so tired of the double standard.
And therein lies the rub: Obama is arbitrarily sacking him, without an explanation, and explanation that is sorely needed in light of the revelations of the now former IG.
Does the “appearance of impropriety” mean anything to you? It sure doesn’t mean anything to “the one.”
You would thing that the man that was sold as a virtual genius would realize this. Maybe he does, but is convinced of his own divine power (read this: liberal media complicity), that he believes he can get away with it.
And if the media was as objective as the liberals would have you believe, there would be no market for FOX.
The liberal media monopoly created the need, and the eventual formation, of Fox News.
And judging by the viewership, the public agrees.
The cult of Obama is like any other: it all hinges on the infallibility of its leader.
My fondest dream is of the day when Obama and his ilk are all taken down and put on trial. I want them all exposed for every lie, threat, theft, abuse of power and destruction of our Constitution. I want them all to anwswer for their treason and then led away in cuffs to spend their lives in prison. I want to wipe that childish, Jr. High smirk off odumbo’s face and replace it with the look of panic he will feel when it all comes crumbing down around him. I too can dream!
Ditto. We’re having the same dream.
http://www.capoliticalnews.com/blog_post/show/2149?eid=906848ec5974e451577568e1e2ed59f1
Since it is telling that I am not considering that Walpin did anything wrong, lgm, you are just going to have to tell me. I can’t find it. I’m just not buying the “confidence” excuse, it reeks of BS.
Liberal translation:
“I only have the “fullest confidence” in appointees who think like me; therefore, I must replace anyone who doesn’t share my leftist agenda – but it’s not political!”
Obama promised changed and gave us change for the worse. Promise kept. Obama promised open and transparent government and is giving us open and transparently blatant cronyism and partisanship. Promise kept.
Not only did President Obama break the law in firing Inspector General Walpin, he broke a law that he cosponsored!
Here are some excerpts from Grassley’s letter to the President:
Right on:
Harry Reid’s nickname when he was younger was Pinky.
I always thought that was funny, not just because of his political leanings but if you look at pictures of Pinky and Reid side by side, they bear a remarkable resemblance to each other.
Grounds for impeachment? Or just the norm for political sleaze these days?
Misscheryl said (#101):
I don’t “not believe any of this”. But I have doubts, because MM’s post is entirely one sided. A more balanced report would be more convincing.
One of my doubts comes from wondering who this IG is and what his/her agenda might be. Remember all those Bush appointed US Attorneys and IGs who brought all those bogus indictments.
Bottom line: it is indeed fishy, as MM says. But it would be wise to wait and see before being certain.
No, but I do remember deputy AG Eric Holder having a role in the Mark Rich pardon.
On June 13th, 2009 at 11:21 am, lgm said:
Amazing, really amazing! Read both the Malkin and the TPM posts in their entirety. Essentially all the same facts are present in both, though the Malkin post has more facts and detail. You see the TPM post as more balanced for the simple reason that in their opinion there is no wrong doing except that Walpin was a political zealot. Balanced my butt! And no, I do not recall bogus indictments brought by Bush’s US Attorneys and IGs, why don’t you refresh our memories with names and facts.
Hannibal said (#121):
Dynamic computer memory, DRAM, has to be refreshed every microsecond (a million times per second). Clearly you are not far behind. One refresh from me would not last long enough to be worthwhile.
And the chips are not falling in the direction of MM’s hasty conclusion.
Kos told him not to believe it.
“The White House should probably offer some more specific details about its reasons for firing”
That is a closing line in TPM’s report. Problem is of course as already noted it is the LAW to have to explain the firing and reasons for it.
The best you can do lgm is keep referring back to Bush? So Bush did it, so Obama can do it…. This is your argument?
I ran a non-profit. Did so for a couple of years. The idea that a non-profit can excuse itself because it did a poor job of keeping track of the books is absurd. In any normal circumstances the state and the federal tax folks would be firmly planted up inside your lower intenstinal track IF you could not provide accurate and current accounting information.
So IF its the case that book work was not done correctly, THAT is not an excuse. That is further evidence that something is amiss. IF accounting was sloppy, where are the appropriate state and federal regulators whose job it is to make sure non-profits are doing the appropriate accounting? So the excuse is a condemnation you see. It says something is in fact wrong here. Not sure what but at some point someone is dirty on this thing. Seems like the IG was just doing his job.
Amazing. A government employee does his job and gets punished. No wonder the government runs as it does.
The smell form Washington has already reached New Mexico!
Pickled brain.
Same reason little old people from the south countinue to vote Democrat… “It was good enough for my daddy, it’s good enough for me…”
I have to wear a clothes pin on my nose just to endure the Soetoro_Clingon stench.
When do we get to throw these two impostors under the bus?
Bear1909 out.
LittleGreenMutant in #122:
He links to ABC news. ROFLMAO.
The President gives the guy one hour to resign in order to meet some bogus Congressional deadline?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA
Okeee dokeee.
The IG was offending people in the AG’s office. ROFLMAO I bet he was. They have enough dirt on Americrap officials and some of Soetoro’s friends to nail these turds to the floor. I bet some people were offended.
Don’t ask and dont tell us what to do is what the Americrap crony system is all about.
Another stench coming from the White House. And now the Clingon is involved.
Senator Grassley is not a novice punk like Soetoro. Maybe we’ll see some blood spilled over this. This isnt about Americrap as much as it is Inspector Generals. Oversight.
Hmmmmm. Could get tasty. Despite ABC News and its ridiculous distortion of the facts. Unamed sources….hmmmm…why? When there are so many emails and statements already documented as this story broke.
What twisted webs we weave……
Soetoro’s foreign policy is going to eat his lunch. Domestic corruption will finish breakast and dinner.
Impeach is lying butt for dessert. And I hope Grassley gets Lt. Whorf under oath and nails her wide girth to the floor.
Bear1909 out.
Wow.
A Donk’s wife meddling in the White House.
Yeah, that’s news.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
And Michelle Obama had the Audacity to lecture others about character…