Two Local Pro-Redline Bloggers Twist News of $800,000 Donation

In attempts to continue to channel a McCain campaign adviser's talking points designed to help John McCain claw his way back into the presidential race, Republican Party and long-time Bush supporters Bob Krumm and Bill Hobbs continue to spin information in misleading and partisan ways.

They repeat McCain adviser Rick Davis's absolute, unqualified claims about ACORN accepting $800,000 from the Obama campaign. Here is Davis's exchange with the New York Times et al., which divulges more facts that mitigate the partisan mudslinging of pro-redline gang:

Mr. Davis urged reporters to question Mr. Obama about training sessions he had done for Acorn. “What were you teaching them?” Mr. Davis asked. “Were you teaching them how to evade the law?”

Lewis Goldberg, a spokesman for Acorn, said Mr. Obama conducted two leadership training sessions of roughly an hour each for Acorn’s Chicago affiliate over a three-year period in the late 1990s. He was not paid for that work, Mr. Goldberg said.

Even before Friday’s conference call, Republicans had made much of an $832,598 payment made in February by the Obama campaign to Citizens Services Inc., a consulting firm affiliated with Acorn.

“This organization is not just related to but deeply ingrained in the Acorn organization, a front group for Acorn,” Mr. Davis said.

The Obama campaign initially reported that the payment was for “staging, sound, lighting” and other advance work when it reported its expenditures with the Federal Election Commission. It filed amended reports in August and September to reflect that those payments were for get-out-the-vote efforts.

Mr. Davis contended that the original filing was an effort to “hide the fact” that money was paid to Acorn. But F.E.C. officials have said such amended filings are common.

Citizens Services typically contracts with Acorn and its affiliates for work like that done for the Obama campaign. Mr. Goldberg, the Acorn spokesman, said that less than $80,000 of the Obama campaign’s payment to Citizens Services went to Acorn.

Rick Davis would like to draw attention to ACORN lest he stumble himself into the political limelight because of the awkward fact that he received nearly $2,000,000 in five years to defend the failed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage companies from federal regulation.

If Bob Krumm and Bill Hobbs are going to criticize ACORN and Obama, then they should at least get their facts about the $800,000 straight. And by no means should they be ignoring Republican financial connections to some players with corporate payrolls astronomically larger than that of a small-potatoes community-based organization.