ACORN's Louisiana Director Is Fired

Did you feel the bump of the bus when it went over something? It was just Beth Butler, director of ACORN for the state of Louisiana. She was fired by Bertha Lewis, ACORN's CEO.

"I took over as ACORN's CEO last summer, and I vowed accountability at every level of the organization," Lewis said in her statement. "The work of ACORN members everywhere -- especially in Louisiana where the members have fought heroically to bring the city back post-Katrina -- is too important to not have full accountability."

Butler said she was fired because she refused to fire members of a land trust board whom national ACORN leaders wanted ousted. She said ACORN national is "going out of business" and wanted the board gone to seize control of its funds and assets. She called the ordeal "all completely inappropriate and unethical."

I wonder if this could have anything to do with Louisiana's investigation into ACORN. ACORN says only $1 million was embezzled by Dale Rathke (brother of Butler's boyfriend) but the state's attorney general says it was closer to $5 million.

You can find the original article here.

ACORN Vote Fraud Case

The activist group, which has long worked with criminals as it preys on the weak and the troubled, is on the verge of yet another public relations catastrophe.

That’s because a cross-dressing Ohio male escort whom ACORN registered multiple times to vote was convicted of full-fledged vote fraud in addition to the lesser crime of voter registration fraud. A spokesman for Cleveland prosecutor Bill Mason (an elected Democrat) confirmed yesterday that a local investigation of ACORN remains wide open.

The conviction of Darnell Nash, apparently known by several aliases including Serina “Sexy Slay” Gibbs, is hugely significant for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that ACORN has long maintained that vote fraud, as opposed to the lesser crime of voter registration fraud, essentially never happens.

It appears to be another historic first for ACORN.

ACORN’s Ohio chapter had a run-in with another alleged prostitute last fall.

A woman named Shari Bell who was allegedly a crack cocaine user, prostitute, and ACORN worker, was arrested on drug and prostitution charges in October. Bell was arrested by Cincinnati police after she allegedly offered an undercover cop sex for money. Police found a crack pipe in the pocket of her coat.

You can find the article from Big Government here.

You can find the original article from the American Spectator here.

OMB Tells Executive Branch to Back Away from ACORN

While Congress wrestles with various ways to strip ACORN of any remaining federal funding, the White House has somewhat quietly begun to disconnect itself from the community-organizing group.

Keep your eyes peeled, folks. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) tells local station KTLK that the cut-off only runs through October, and that ACORN funding could be restored when Congress actually passes the FY2010 budget.

You can find the memo here in PDF.

You can find the original article here.

ACORN Gets Federal Money Despite Congress

Even though Congress voted to deny funding to ACORN, they're getting money from the Department of Homeland Security -- for firefighting, of all things.

It amounted to $1 million, almost 80% of the money to be given to the state of Louisiana. ACORN wins, firefighters lose. And this isn't the first time. In the 2007 fiscal year, ACORN received $450,484 out of Louisiana's $859,596 share.

But they haven't gotten the money yet. It was frozen following questions into the five hidden-camera videos released last month, a Department of Homeland Security official told FOX News.

When asked how the money would be spent, ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring issued this statement:

"Senator Vitter knows a lot more about prostitution rings than anyone here does, so we'll defer to him on any matters pertaining to the videos attacking ACORN," the statement read. It did not explain how the group plans to spend the Federal Emergency Management Agency grant.

Classy.

You can find the Washington Times article here.
You can find the Fox News article here.

ACORN Embezzlement Higher Than Previously Thought

An investigation by Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell shows that the embezzlement by ACORN's founder, Wade Rathke, is at $5 million, not the $1 million initially claimed. It is unclear if the money was taken from state, federal or private funds, according to the subpoena.

Caldwell issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to ACORN International then-President Wade Rathke and his brother, Dale Rathke, who kept the group's books. Those subpoenas targeted possible violations of state employee tax law, obstruction of justice and violations of the Employee Retirement Security Act.

The subpoena issued Monday puts a new emphasis on the embezzlement issue. It appears to be in reaction to documents gathered from ACORN's board as a result of the subpoenas issued in August.

"Current high ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million," the new subpoena says.

ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis said the new embezzlement allegation is "completely false." She said she would comment further after she and ACORN attorneys have a chance to review the subpoena.

The original article can be found here.

Embattled ACORN Losing Private Funding

I have reported before how the government agencies like the Census Bureau are dropping ACORN like a hot potato. Congress voted to deny them any kind of funding, with seven holdouts. That hurts their funding some but not greatly because they get the majority -- 90% -- of their funding from private sources like foundations, membership dues and private donations.

The Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Bank of America have stopped funding the group and its affiliates over the past year and a half.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation gave an average of $270,000 a year to ACORN but stopped making grants to ACORN in early 2009, according to spokeswoman Sue Lin Chong. The foundation saw good results from the grants and believes the funding was used appropriately, according to Cho.

Yet the Ford Foundation, which has given nearly $2 million, suspended funding for ACORN and its affiliate organizations about a year ago because of concerns about inadequate financial controls and procedures, according to spokeswoman Fiona R. Guthrie.

And some organizations are increasing their support. They include the Needmor Fund, a family foundation based in Toledo that gave about $150,000 a year to local organizations affiliated with ACORN. The fund suspended grantmaking in June 2008 because of an alleged embezzlement. It resumed its funding in September after ACORN took corrective action, said Dave Beckwith, Needmor's executive director.

You can find the original article here.

FEMA Gives ACORN A Million Dollars

Senator David Vitter (R-LA) has an editorial on the site Big Government about a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to ACORN.

From his editorial:

"Earlier this month and despite the public scrutiny over the voter fraud and felony criminal activity associated with ACORN, the Department of Homeland Security went ahead and granted $997,402 to ACORN under the FY 2008 Fire Prevention and Safety Program.

"To most people, the timing and the amount of the grant would seem off base, but when you take into account the fact that DHS awarded ACORN–an organization with no clear expertise in fire safety and prevention–a fire prevention and safety grant, it’s just plain offensive.

He has written to Janet Napolitano and asked that the funding be rescinded but has gotten no answer. He has also introduced a bill to prohibit any company that received funds from TARP and still owes from giving any money to ACORN.


You can find the original article here.

An ACORN Plot in Oklahoma?

The Oklahoman has published an article about an alleged ACORN conspiracy in Oklahoma that it says proves ACORN is a political entity.

Mike Reynolds (R-Oklahoma City) said he was contacted in late summer 2008 by people who had leased office space near SW 25 and Robinson Avenue to ACORN. He was told the group had stopped paying the lease. Reynolds said he bought two computers for which passwords were found in desks.

Reynolds says he recovered documents that show the community-organizing group ACORN focused on helping Democrats in three legislative races in the November 2008 election and had developed a game plan to "take power" in Oklahoma within five years. The documents, which include legislative district maps and various forms, were recovered from computers abandoned by ACORN workers in Oklahoma City. Reynolds, who said he had been busy with legislative matters the past several months, said about 1,600 documents are on the computers. Some of them have nothing to do with Oklahoma and deal with other states.

Let's keep an eye on this to see if anything develops.

You can find the original article here.

ACORN Linked to Massive Voter Fraud in New York

As if ACORN didn't have enough headaches lately, now they are linked to massive voter fraud in New York.

Dozens of forged and fraudulent absentee ballots from people registered to vote on the Working Families Party line were filed in the Sept. 15 primary elections in Troy, the Times Union has learned.

Working Families Party, you ask? Yes, it is ACORN. The Working Families Party is not about working people or families and it isn’t really a party. The WFP is a wholly owned subsidiary of ACORN. Bertha Lewis co-chair of the Working Families Party is the Executive Director of New York ACORN. New York ACORN leader, Steven Kest was the moving force in forming the party and WFP headquarters are located at the same address as ACORN’s national and New York office at 88 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York (1).

Many of the questionable ballots were filed under the names of students and people who live in government-subsidized housing and other downtown areas. Still others were submitted on behalf of voters who were alleged to have signed the ballots earlier this month, but those people have not lived in New York state for at least a year, records show (2).

There may be as many as 50 absentee ballots that were forged, according to people close to the case. Countywide, there were 126 absentee ballots applied for on the Working Families Party line (3).

It’s the classic “pay to play” politics. Candidates like Democrat Bill de Blasio pay the Working Families Party and this shady “consulting firm” which operates from the same address as the WFP and New York ACORN. The city Campaign Finance Board recently said “there are no apparent firewalls between them.” The New York Daily News has called the relationship between candidates endorsed by the WFP and DFS an “election funding scam.”

Queens County Democratic Chairman Clarence Norman went to prison for trading his party endorsement and ballot position in return for political consulting contracts to favored vendors. The Working Families Party endorses candidates willing to pay DFS (4).

But the WFP-DFS scam is even more insidious than that. DFS provides the candidates a discounted rate on their canvassing, staff and get-out-the-vote services – thus allowing the candidate to cheat the public campaign finance system which enforces strict campaign spending limitation (5).

For example, a voter file like the one public advocate candidate Bill de Blasio purchased from Data and Field Services should have cost $40,000. Instead, he paid only $5,000 (6).

But the back-scratching goes both ways. De Blasio and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, both endorsed by the WFP in their respective races, were among the four Council members who steered $85,000 in government grants to another ACORN affiliate, New York Agency for Community Affairs (7).

Supporting articles can be found here and here.
=================================
1. Stone, Roger. "Working Families Party = ACORN; What Will AG Cuomo Do?". BigGovernment.com.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from BigGovernment.com

2. Lyons, Brendan J. (2009, September 26). "Affidavits: Ballot abuse rampant". Times Union.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from Times Union

3. Lyons, Brendan J. (2009, September 26). "Affidavits: Ballot abuse rampant". Times Union.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from Times Union

4. Stone, Roger. "Working Families Party = ACORN; What Will AG Cuomo Do?". BigGovernment.com.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from BigGovernment.com

5. Stone, Roger. "Working Families Party = ACORN; What Will AG Cuomo Do?". BigGovernment.com.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from BigGovernment.com

6. "Questions for Data and Field" (2009, August 21). The New York Times.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from The New York Times

7. Stone, Roger. "Working Families Party = ACORN; What Will AG Cuomo Do?". BigGovernment.com.
Retrieved September 30, 2009, from BigGovernment.com

ACORN Itself on Trial in Las Vegas

While going to court is nothing new for ACORN workers, the organization itself is now going on trial in Las Vegas.

Authorities say ACORN was using the names casino games as a cover to illegally pay workers to sign up voters as part of an illegal quota system. When investigators from Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller's office raided the ACORN Las Vegas office, Ross says they found a paper trail that implicated the ACORN organization itself.

"We came across policy manuals that outline their policy of creating a quota system, which is against the law," Miller told FOX News in an interview. "This, in fact, was something that was widespread and something the organization itself knew about, and it's important to hold the organization criminally accountable as opposed to the individual field directors."

ACORN denies it had a quota for the number of voter registration forms that its workers were required to turn in every day. Instead, the organization says there were "performance standards" — an expectation that workers would find 20 new voters a day.

But prosecutors say ACORN paid a $5 bonus per day to workers who would sign up 21 or more voters per shift, hence the name "21" or "Blackjack," an alleged quota system that Ross says is the first step toward corrupting the democratic system.

"These charges strike at the heart of having integrity of the electoral process. That's something that is important in Nevada and the entire country," he told FOX News.

You can find the original article here.

ACORN Loses Bank of America Backing

Michael Shea is executive director of Acorn Housing, which is based in Chicago and has about 250 employees nationwide. He said Acorn Housing has worked with Bank of America since the 1990s. As part of that work, he said, the bank provided grants to pay for Acorn Housing to counsel first-time home buyers on how to handle mortgage debt. More recently, most of the work has been in representing borrowers seeking to avoid foreclosure.

Acorn Housing, created by Acorn in the mid-1980s, now has a separate board of directors and budget, though the two organizations share office space in some cities, representatives of the two groups say. The housing arm long has worked with some of the nation's largest banks, helping them reach out to distressed borrowers and potential customers in inner-city areas. Distressed borrowers often are more willing to work with familiar community groups like Acorn than they are to deal directly with their lenders.

In response to questions from The Wall Street Journal, a spokesman for the banking company said it has "suspended current commitments" to ACORN Housing, an affiliated group, and "will not enter into any further agreements with ACORN or any of its affiliates," pending assessments by the bank of the organization's operations.

At Wells Fargo & Co., a spokeswoman said the bank doesn't have any specific arrangement with Acorn but "will work with any group if they are authorized by the borrower." A spokesman for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. said that company also doesn't have any regular working relationship with Acorn. One of the directors of Acorn Housing, Guilermo Loaiza, is a loan officer for J.P. Morgan Chase in Phoenix.

Last year, Acorn Housing was allocated federal funds that could total as much as about $25 million for counseling of distressed mortgage borrowers under a program known as National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling, created by Congress in late 2007. The share allotted to Acorn Housing was about 7.5% of the $333 million total. That made Acorn the fourth-largest recipient, trailing Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling and the Homeownership Preservation Foundation

Acorn Housing and Acorn also have been big recipients of funds from HUD, collecting a total of about $45 million in the past nine years, a HUD spokesman said. About $18 million of the funding was for housing-related counseling programs, including advice for renters and first-time home buyers. About $12 million was for development of affordable-housing projects. Some $5 million was for a program designed to make the public aware of lead-paint dangers, and $3.7 million was for programs that fight racial discrimination in housing.

You can find the Fox News article here. You can find the Wall Street Journal article here.

Covering Up the Link Between Unions and ACORN

After years of battling big labor lawyers, the Bush Administration prevailed in court creating a LM-2 financial disclosure report that union members and researchers have found informative. They created a site called UnionReports.gov, which gives detailed union financial reports and is a primary source for many union members, reporters, columnists, bloggers, and researchers.

Even before U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was sworn in, though, Big Labor insiders like AFL-CIO lawyer and Obama appointee Deborah Greenfield were busily dismantling useful union financial disclosures produced by former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

The National Education Association's ties to ACORN can be found through these reports. In 2008, for example, they gave ACORN $100,000. That money, in case you weren't sure, is demanded by the union from the teachers/members.

The original article can be found here.

Instead of Proving ACORN's Innocence, Attack the Conservatives

Eric Alterman at the liberal Center for American Progress weighs in on the ACORN controversy. Instead of trying to prove their innocence, he attacks everyone from James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles to the mainstream media.

He starts off talking about Jon Stewart's show, where Stewart mocked the press for missing the story. Alterman attacks Stewart: "The misdirected animosity toward the 'real reporters' in this instance was a rare misstep for the usually perspicacious press critic/comedian." Misdirected? ACORN endorses human trafficking, teenage sex slaves, tax evasion and more, and the animosity is 'misdirected' if it's pointing at ACORN?

Huh?

He attacks the filmmakers, Fox News, George Stephanopoulos, the Associated Press and ABC News.

But he praises Salon. Oh yeah, there's some objective reporting for you.

You can find his attack piece here.

Why Obama Won't Support Medical Malpractice Reform

Mark Tapscott writes an editorial yesterday in The Washington Examiner, reviewing the book Architects of Ruin.

The book discusses how the financial crisis was caused by a weakening of common sense, not by deregulation. Banks were pushed to provide loans to people who couldn't afford them so that the numbers of home owners could be pushed up.

I have already recounted the role the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and ACORN had in this mess. Tapscott ties Obama into this as well.

He recalls a long-forgotten class-action lawsuit filed in 1994 by three young trial lawyers, one of whom just happens to be sitting in the Oval Office today as president. The case was Selma S. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank.

Obama and his colleagues claimed in the suit that Citibank had had rejected loan applications by the plaintiffs simply because they were black, or because they lived in predominantly black neighborhoods. In short, the suit was one of thousands filed during the 1990s claiming racial bigotry, not poor credit histories, explained high rejection rates among minorities applying for mortgages.

Tapscott continues:

Whatever you think on that issue, here's what struck me: After four years of haggling, Citibank settled with Buyck, a Chicago woman, out of court. She received $60,000. Obama and the other lawyers on the plaintiff side got $950,000.

Such outcomes help put in perspective why the class-action trial lawyers spend millions of dollars every year lobbying Congress and state governments either to protect the lucrative turf they already have, or to create profitable new lines of litigation.

You can find the editorial here.

ACORN Sues O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart

ACORN has been reeling since several videos of its employees have surfaced, showing all kinds of illegal behavior. It has caused them all kinds of headaches, like getting their federal funding yanked, getting investigated by the Justice Department, getting investigated by different states and more.

The IRS has announced they will no longer allow ACORN to help prepare tax returns for low income people.

Darrell Issa, R-Calif., issued a statement following the announcement, saying "ACORN's failure to institute firewalls between its charitable and political activities have raised significant questions surrounding its management of federal dollars. Cutting ties is the first step, but cannot be the last one."

"Self-investigation is not a sufficient substitute for action by the Congress, which is why I have written to the Chairman of the Oversight and Judiciary Committees to request that they convene immediate hearings into ACORN's activities."

And now, from the No Good Deeds Go Unpunished Department, we find that ACORN is suing James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and Breitbart.com, which published the videos. They are filing it in Maryland, saying two-party consent is required for recording conversations. The multimillion-dollar lawsuit cites "extreme emotional distress" on behalf of two workers who were fired after the video was posted online.

ACORN has named an investigator to look into their practices, but it will only look at practices, not money.

You can see the original article about the latest developments here.

I doubt this will get very far, but I may be wrong. Given Obama's many ties to ACORN, I think pressure will come from on high for the feds to go easy on them.

Movie About ACORN and Bruce Ratner

I have written before about ACORN being involved in an eminent domain scandal in New York City with developer Bruce Ratner.

Yesterday, Damon Root at Reason Online wrote about a documentary that filmmakers Suki Hawley and Michael Galinksy have been working on for the past six years. It is called Battle of Brooklyn, and tells the story of a group of Brooklyn, New York, property owners who have been fighting state and local officials who want to seize their land on behalf of Ratner.

Root tells about their description of the movie:

"This scene comes about 40 minutes into the film. By this point the audience has witnessed the announcement of the project as well as growing community opposition to it. In addition, the vast majority of condo owners in the footprint of the proposed project have sold their apartments to the developer in order to avoid having them seized via eminent domain. The main character of the film, Daniel Goldstein, has refused to sell and has become one of the main organizers trying to stop it.

"In this scene, Daniel attends a press conference announcing an agreement reached between Acorn and Forest City Ratner--in which the developer has agreed to make half of the units in the proposed project "affordable". Further, it is agreed that Acorn will be involved in monitoring the project as well as marketing the "affordable" units. For this work they will be paid.

"At the press conference on May 19th, 2005 Bertha Lewis, the head of NY ACORN (currently the head of the national organization), declares that ACORN is working with the current tenants to make sure that they are not pushed out and treated fairly by the developer. Answering a question she further states that there will be apartments set aside for those displaced by the project.

"After the event, Daniel Goldstein confronts her with the fact that tenants are already being pushed out. She admits that ACORN hasn't actually talked to any of the tenants yet. She then argues that the developer has nothing to do with greedy landlords forcing out tenants before they buy the property."

You can find the original article here. It has the clip of their interview and a trailer for the movie.

Bill to Defund ACORN Could Catch Everyone Else

HR 3571, "Defund ACORN Act", is written so broadly that it covers "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.

The results can be found here. Defense contractors, Exxon and GE are at the top of the list. NOTE: The list is sortable and is initially sorted by federal contract dollars. If you click on the header for the number of violations, you see who has been the naughtiest. Clicking on the name of the company will take you to a page detailing the offenses.

You can find the text of HR 3571 here.

Obama's Ties to ACORN

Obama likes to play like he barely recognizes the name ACORN or that the controversy even interests him.

When asked Sunday by George Stephanopoulos at ABC News, he said, "You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money." When Stephanopoulos pressed harder, he said, "George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to." (1)

He should be paying attention, though. These are his homies. Consider (2):

• In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary. (3)


• He became a top trainer at Acorn's Chicago conferences. (4)


• In 1995, he became Acorn's attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names. (5)


• In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list).


• In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose overturn was a top Acorn priority. (6)


• In 2007, in a speech to Acorn's leaders prior to their political arm's endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was effusive: "I've been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work." (7)


• The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound, lighting," only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature. (8)

Another exhaustive timeline of Obama and ACORN can be found at World Net Daily.

The House and Senate have both offered amendments to bills to cut off funding from ACORN. What needs to happen is they need to be combined into a single bill and sent to Obama's desk, where he will be forced to sign it or veto it.

And I probably don't need to do this, but I'm going to ask anyway: where is the media on this? Hello, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, and all you other partisan hacks out there.

========================
1. Stephanopoulos, George (2009, September 20). "Obama on ACORN: 'Not Something I've Followed Closely' Won't Commit to Cut Federal Funds". ABC News.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from ABC News

2. Fund, John (2009, September 21). "Acorn Who?". The Wall Street Journal.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from The Wall Street Journal

3. Sweet, Lynn (2008, October 6). "ACORN/Project Vote voting drive targeted states Obama needs to win". Chicago Sun-Times.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Chicago Sun-Times

4. Malkin, Michelle (2008, June 25). "The ACORN Obama knows". Michelle Malkin.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Michelle Malkin

5. "AP, CNN report that Obama represented ACORN, but not that DOJ was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit" (2008, October 15). Media Matters.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Media Matters

6. Anburajan, Aswini (2008, April 28). "Obama calls voter ID ruling 'wrong'". MSNBC.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from MSNBC

7. Schilling, Chelsea (2009, September 18). "Unearthed! Obama's twisted ACORN roots". WorldNet Daily.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from WorldNet Daily

8. Brown, David (2008, August 28). "Obama to amend report on $800,000 in spending". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

ACORN Has Named Its Internal Auditor

Former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger will lead the internal investigation into ACORN's activities.

Harshbarger was Massachusetts attorney general in the 1990s, and served under former Gov. Mitt Romney before being recruited in 1998 to run for governor, an election he lost to Republican Paul Cellucci. He then became head of the government watchdog group Common Cause, where he pushed for tougher campaign finance laws.

He is currently an attorney in Boston with the law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, where his specialties include corporate governance and corporate defense and investigations.

Harshbarger, a Democrat, said in a written statement, "I have been asked by the leadership of ACORN to conduct an independent and comprehensive inquiry and review of the management of its service delivery to communities. The CEO and Board have also asked me to make a full report, including recommendations for restoring ACORN's full capacities to carry out its mission on behalf of low-and moderate-income families."

How independent can this guy be, getting paid by the organization? And a Democrat? These people are funnelign money all over the place so they need an accountant, not an attorney general. They need the FBI, which specializes in financial crimes.

To me, this is like ACORN saying, "We're innocent! If you don't believe us, just ask us!"

The original article is here.

ACORN Is Involved in Eminent Domain Corruption

ACORN, the friendly neighborhood community organization, offers more services than tax evasion and prostitution. It's a full service organization, yessiree. It's also involved in eminent domain issues in New York City.

Despite losing federal funding, ACORN still stands to make millions of dollars off its support for Brooklyn’s controversial Atlantic Yards project (1). It is a $4.9 billion NBA arena and residential- and office-tower project put together by Bruce Ratner.

So how does this figure in with eminent domain? Bruce Ratner, the owner of the New Jersey Nets, used eminent domain to get the land for the project. The Nets will move to New York City if he can get the stadium built. The Village of Port Chester started eminent domain proceedings after New York entrepreneur Bart Didden refused to pay $800,000 (or grant a 50 percent stake in his business) to a developer hired by the village (2). You can see the article on the eminent domain abuse here.

So, stick with me. Here's how ACORN ties in, other than getting money from the project. Last year, Ratner helped bail ACORN out of financial trouble last September with a $1 million loan and a $500,000 grant, according to memos (3).

In addition to that cash infusion, they will also be getting millions each year over several years. Neither Ratner nor ACORN will comment but Anita MonCrief, a former ACORN official-turned-whistleblower, estimates the anticipated deal could bring the group $5 million to $10 million annually over multiple years from the public and private sector based on other housing deals ACORN has nationwide (4).

Ratner, by the way, is a huge Democratic donor. He has contributed $219,600 in the last two years to. You can see the numbers here. Look for "Ratner, Bruce C."


=======================
1. Calder, Rich (2009, September 21). "Group can $core on Atl. Yards". New York Post.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from New York Post

2. Root, Damon W. (2009, June 25). "As Naked an Abuse of Government Power as Could be Imagined". Reason Online.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from Reason Online

3. Calder, Rich (2009, September 21). "Group can $core on Atl. Yards". New York Post.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from New York Post

4. Calder, Rich (2009, September 21). "Group can $core on Atl. Yards". New York Post.
Retrieved September 22, 2009, from New York Post