Credit where credit is due: Wired Magazine's Noah Shachtman and Conde Nast have a scoop on their hands. In the course of researching his new and largely fair piece on Andrew Breitbart and the "Big" websites, during which he was given unprecedented access, Shachtman learned of a new project-in-progress by ACORN stingmeister James O'Keefe involving the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offices in Detroit and Chicago:
This time, there are no prostitutes involved, just a shady, and serious, tax-fraud scheme. The ploy involves the Obama administration's 10 percent tax credit to first-time home buyers. The law says that the credit maxes out at $8,000 for an $80,000 home. But at the Detroit office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the rule seems open to interpretation. O'Keefe asks a staffer, What if I bought a place for $50,000, but the seller and I agreed to write down $80,000 as the purchase price?
"Flip it any way you want," the staffer replies.
What if the place is worth much less - like only $6,000?
"Yup, you can do that."
O'Keefe and fellow activist Joe Basel ran the same sting at HUD's Chicago office and at several federally supported independent housing groups. Breitbart paces the parquet floor. The video is damning but not exactly Acorn-explosive.
Then O'Keefe stops the playback. "Oh yeah, I forgot," he says. "We went to the Detroit Free Press, to the managing editor. We told her the whole thing. She said she wasn't interested. Wanna see the tape?"
Breitbart starts to cackle. Of course he wants to see the tape. Sleazy HUD administrators are important, sure. But media covering up sleaze? That's entertainment. "Dude, that's the most important part!" he says. "I have seepage coming out of five parts of my body right now."
O'Keefe hits Play. A world-weary Freep editor listens to O'Keefe's kickback story and politely declines. There could be a thousand reasons why, but to O'Keefe and Breitbart, there's only one explanation: liberal bias. Breitbart slaps the walls like they were congo drums, grinning. "OK," he tells O'Keefe, "now I officially adore you."
Realizing that he had a major scoop on his hands, Shachtman then quickly posted an additional story today on the Wired blog:
Late last year, O'Keefe and fellow activist Joe Basel went into the Detroit and Chicago offices of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with a hidden camera. They pretended to be scam artists, asking employees there to participate in a complex kickback scheme involving federal incentives for first-time home buyers. In the excerpted footage shown to me by O'Keefe, the staffers seemed only to happy to comply.
The law says that the tax credit maxes out at $8,000 for an $80,000 home. On the tape, O'Keefe asked a staffer, "What if I bought a place for $50,000, but the seller and I agreed to write down $80,000 as the purchase price?"
"Flip it any way you want," the staffer replied.
What if the place is worth much less - like only $6,000?
"Yup, you can do that."
I wish I could provide more details - like the names of the staffers, or the exact dates of the recordings. But O'Keefe showed me the tapes just once, and quickly. O'Keefe did mention, however, that he was surprised he was able to avoid the federal buildings' security systems.
A HUD spokesman said he was unaware of the tapes - or of any ongoing investigations into fraud at the department's Chicago or Detroit offices. "First I've heard of it," said HUD's Jerry Brown.
So let's summarize: just as in the stories about ACORN - for which the news just keeps getting worse - we have HUD officials turning a blind, indolent apparatchik's eye to a proposal of blatant illegality involving a federally funded project: talk about "waste, fraud and abuse" -
And these are the same people to whom President Obama is proposing we turn over our heath-care system?
We also have an unnamed editor at the declining Detroit Free Press passing on O'Keefe's proffer and thus on Wired's scoop. As Shachtman notes, there could be "a thousand reasons" why the Freep decided to look the other way about possible abetting of criminal behavior at HUD - look! it's Monica Conyers, wife of one of the most powerful members of Congress, heading off to jail! -
As I was saying, there may be "a thousand reasons" why - look! it's U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, mother of the city's disgraced ex-mayor, answering a summons to appear before a federal grand jury!
As I was saying...
Stay tuned.
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