The group tapped to oversee a video contest aimed at promoting Obamacare among the masses is headed by none other than the disgraced ACORN’s former top lobbyist, a newspaper investigation found.
The Daily Mail reported that Deepak Bhargava, who once served as the leading government affairs chief at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is executive director of the Washington-based Center for Community Change. And that group’s youth outreach unit, the Young Invincibles, has just partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services to run a video contest for young people who create messages that promote Obamacare insurance exchanges. The winners of the video contest will earn cash prizes, the Daily Mail said.
ACORN fell from grace in 2010 following an undercover video from a conservative activist that showed workers instructed housing applicants they believed to be a pimp and a prostitute — but who really were posing in those roles — how to evade taxes and hide their criminal acts. Shortly after that video was released, Congress voted to defund the group.
Rep. Paul A. Gosar, Arizona Republican, said in MailOnline that the White House’s partnership with a former ACORN official was a public relations nightmare.
“The fact that the Obama administration is putting a senior staffer of the now defunct and notoriously corrupt ACORN in charge of giving away cash to bribe young Americans into accepting Obamacare is cause for grave concern,” he said. “This new effort goes to show that the Obama administration will go to questionable lengths to force the American people into government run health care.”
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• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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