Read the full story here. Fox News
“This report confirms that ACORN and its rebranded affiliates have used fiscal sponsorship in an illegal and abusive manner to launder taxpayer funds into its own coffers,” said Daniel Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, a Washington, D.C.-based independent, nonprofit government watchdog that has monitored the actions of ACORN over the years.”
Read the full story here. Politico
“The Institute for Liberty, Americans for Prosperity, Center for Rule of Law, Cause of Action and National Black Chamber of Commerce are also worried about the effect of EPA’s final utility MACT rule for mercury and air toxics, which is due out Dec. 16. In an amicus brief filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the groups say EPA needs another year to study the rule’s impacts on electric-grid reliability because the agency has rushed into a rulemaking without a clear understanding of how many power plants will close and what the effect will be on power generation.”
Cause of Action has just filed a brief before the FDA on behalf of Trent Arsenault, a Bay Area man who has been ordered by the federal government to “cease manufacture” of sperm. Over the last six years, Mr. Arsenault has helped thirteen couples conceive by donating his gametes to them at no cost. Many of these couples would otherwise have been forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars at a sperm bank without any guarantee of results. Trent does not take any compensation for his services and donates simply out of his desire to help those in his community having trouble conceiving.
Despite this, the FDA last year classified Trent as a “firm” which is a “manufacturer of human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue-based products.” As such, the FDA ordered Trent to cease “manufacture” of his gametes unless he complies with regulations that normally apply to sperm banks. Compliance with these regulations would cost tens of thousands of dollars and be practically impossible for Mr. Arsenault as he does not own, nor operate out of, a laboratory. Trent has asked for an opportunity to tell his side of the story at a hearing, but the government opposed his request.
Cause of Action has decided to represent Mr. Arsenault because we are outraged at the intrusion of the FDA into the private lives of Trent and the people he helps. The FDA admits that if Mr. Arsenault was a “sexually intimate partner” with the couples that he helps that he would be beyond their regulation, but they offer no definition of what that term means. The FDA should not be in the business of deciding who is, and is not, sexually intimate, especially when doing so interferes with private individuals’ ability to start a family.
“Cause of Action, a government accountability nonprofit, has obtained emails through a Freedom of Information Act request showing then-NLRB Chairwoman Wilma Liebman, NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon and NLRB Public Affairs Director Nancy Cleeland coordinating the board’s response to its own decision to sue Boeing for opening a factory in the right to work state of South Carolina. . . Cause of Action has obtained at least four emails sent to both Solomon and Liebman explicitly about the Boeing litigation. There is also a fifth email about the Boeing litigation, sent from Liebman herself, to Cleeland and Solomon. All of these communications appear to violate NLRB’s own rules.
Cause of Action has asked NLRB’s inspector general to investigate the apparently illegal coordination by Liebman, Cleeland and Solomon on the Boeing suit. But Congress must do more.”