ACORN’s New York operations are looking forward to a potential new flow of federal dollars, thanks to the New York State Senate and New York Governor Paterson.
Together they applied the Van Jones’ Apollo doctrine to tap into federal stimulus money allocated to New York.
Governor Paterson recently signed into law something called the “Green Jobs – Green New York Act of 2009”. The new law provides for the creation of a massive slush fund of federal stimulus dollars to be set aside for “green jobs”.
Those green jobs include but will not be limited to “Energy Auditors”, certified green contractors, green financing services to help pay for property upgrades, and more.
There are a number of places in the legislation where ACORN, SEIU, and their affiliates stand to gain access to this new green slush fund. Below is but one excerpt which must make them very happy:
How much money are we talking about? Hundreds of millions of dollars. From the legislation:
*Provides $112 million of capital funding from the Regional Greenhouse
Gas Initiative (RGGI), $70 million of which will be for a Green
Jobs-Green New York revolving loan fund designed to commit resources
fully during this phase with no less than 50 percent of capital monies
going to residential retrofits.*Provides $2-4 million of RGGI funds to be used to establish green job
training throughout the state to establish a green workforce for the
2151 century and requires the NYS Department of Labor to work with
NYSERDA to development additional training resources.
Don’t worry, because the legislation calls for an advisory board to monitor all of the projects and how the cash is being distributed. That shouldn’t pose much of a threat to ACORN’s access to the cash though, because, almost every sponsor of the legislation just signed into law are card carrying members of President Obama’s Working Families Party, aka ACORN.
Their names are listed below, WFP members are in red:
Introduced by Sens. AUBERTINE, BRESLIN, FOLEY, HUNTLEY, C. JOHNSON, LAVALLE, MAZIARZ, MONSERRATE, MORAHAN, ONORATO, OPPENHEIMER, PARKER, PERKINS, SAMPSON, SAVINO, SCHNEIDERMAN, SERRANO, STACHOWSKI, STEWART-COUSINS, THOMPSON, VALESKY, VOLKER, WINNER
One concerned lawmaker tried to force the ACORN issue when the bill was being debated:
sIUH5ceGTOMA group calling itself Lawyers 4 Green Jobs authored the legislation with help from the following:
Lawyers for Green Jobs was formed in 2008 by a group of young environmental attorneys who met while attending the New York City Environmental Law Leadership Institute (NYCELLI) and shared a strong passion for the economic implications of environmental and social issues. Their idea to propose green jobs legislation for New York State grew in part from their coursework in NYCELLI and in part due to the fact that there currently exists no such law. Since that time, L4GJ has been engaging national and New York-based green jobs advocacy organizations, such as Green For All, the New York Apollo Alliance, and several environmental justice groups, to foster a statewide policy for green jobs in New York.
Green For All was founded by Van Jones. Now we all know what green he was talking about. Yours and mine.
Working Families Party Director Dan Cantor is crowing about this victory:
Together with Governor Paterson and legislative leaders (both Democrats and Republicans), that coalition helped put together innovative legislation that we hope will be a model for other states.
It’s funny to see Dan Cantor praising Governor Paterson, since it wasn’t that long ago the Working Families Party was slamming Governor Paterson, and his “Right-wing allies in the senate”
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