Conservatives Monitoring The Liberal Left
Posts tagged Pimp My Acorn
REVEALED: ACORN, NBC Worked Together in ‘Undercover Video Sting’
Nov 30th
REVEALED: ACORN, NBC Worked Together in ‘Undercover Video Sting’
by Publius
Since the undercover ACORN videos from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles first broke, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism have gone into self-absorbed philosopher mode. Rather than report on the ACORN corruption playing out before our eyes, “journalists” have tsk-tsked their way through thousands of words and yards of column inches making certain that everyone understands that what James and Hannah did IS…NOT…JOURNALISM. (As if that is the existential question to make sense of the ACORN videos.) Undercover videos and assuming fake identities are things real journalists do not do…except when they do.
Read the rest of the article at : Big Government
State investigators taking dozens of computers from ACORN office on Canal Street
Nov 8th
State investigators taking dozens of computers from ACORN office on Canal Street, NEW ORLEANS
By Brendan McCarthy, The Times-Picayune
November 06, 2009, 1:00PM
Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has served a search warrant at the ACORNoffice at 2609 Canal Street, according to Tammi Arender Herring, a spokeswoman with the office.
Michael DeMocker / The Times-PicayuneInvestigators with the State Attorney General’s Office seize computers from the ACORN office at 2609 Canal Blvd. on Friday, November 6, 2009.Investigators in khaki pants and polo shirts loaded several dozen computers and other electronic items into an SUV. They are also carrying records out of the building on handcarts.
The large office building sits at the corner of Dorgenois and Canal. ACORN staffers were given no notice that a search would be conducted today, Herring said.
“They have been extremely cooperative,” she said.
Michael DeMocker / The Times-PicayuneStephen Bradbury, the agency’s temporary administer, collects cards from the media as investigators with the State Attorney General’s Office seize computers on Friday.Early last month, Caldwell’s office issued subpoenas for records from ACORN’s New Orleans office, where the organization — now moving its national headquarters to Washington — has long been based.
Today’s search is an outgrowth of those subpoenas, which stemmed from an investigation by Caldwell’s office into the embezellement of ACORN funds by Dale Rathke, a brother of the organization’s founder, Wade Rathke, Herring said.
In a statement, ACORN’s attorney Pamela Marple said the group was told the raid was ordered because of reports that workers loyal to Beth Butler, the recently fired head of ACORN’s Louisiana branch, had been taking computer data and other items out of the office.
“Over the last two months, ACORN has been cooperating with a variety of governmental entities across the country to provide requested information and documents,” Marple wrote. “We were told that the AG’s office has no criticisms of ACORN’s cooperative efforts, but rather that the warrant was issued because of concern that former local ACORN staff members had, and may intend in the future to remove or alter electronic documents.”
An ACORN official also said Caldwell’s investigators will copy the hard drives from ACORN’s computers and return them next week. The computers contain all payroll information for the national organization, the official said.
People inside and close to ACORN were angered by news last spring that Dale Rathke had taken close to $1 million from the organization, which is billed as an advocate for poor and working-class people.
But in the subpoenas, the state attorney general’s office suggested that the embezzlement may have been on the order of $5 million, and that ACORN’s current CEO, Bertha Lewis, acknowledged as much at an Oct. 17, 2008 board meeting, soon after she assumed the position.
But Lewis, reacting to the subpoenas, said that Caldwell apparently bought a misleading version of events that she said was being peddled by two dissident former board members for ACORN.
While it has drawn controversy for years because of its adocacy and voter registration work, ACORN recently faced a firestorm of criticism after two posing as a prostitute and pimp obtained advice from ACORN staffers in several cities on how to set up their operations.
Is ACORN DOA?: Blame The Board!
Oct 14th
A pimp, prostitute, underage human trafficking and now a self-professed murderer; what could be next for the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now?!?
Margaret Williams, Maryland ACORN board member and Sonja Merchant-Jones, Baltimore ACORN President both reported that the low level ACORN employees caught on tape in the Baltimore office were immediately terminated for behaving unprofessionally; but yet, senior staff members who assisted and concealed a million dollar Rathke embezzlement remain employed.
The ACORN 8 commends these board members’s decisive action, but find it extremely ironic since the board of directors do not actually control ACORN employees. According to ACORN’s by-laws that authority is exclusively exercised by the “Chief Organizer,” formerly Wade Rathke and now Bertha Lewis. This fundamental disconnect between an actual functioning board of directors and senior management is the true problem and real scandal within ACORN. It causes low-income members and staff to become mere pawns of senior management.
Ultimately, ACORN’s low-income workers are simply trying to meet and fulfill unreasonable membership quotas set by senior staff. This undue management pressure results in fraudulent voter registrations, tax assistance for “pimps and prostitutes” or worse. Poor governance and lack of accountability are the real problems. Voter fraud or rather voter registration fraud are just symptoms of a far greater problem. And that is the lack of meaningful control and accountability by the membership. So don’t fault poor workers – blame the board!
If ACORN hopes to survive then the know-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing board of directors must by replaced by individuals with the strength and capabilities to fulfill their fiduciary obligations and the courage to reign in corruption by ACORN’s senior management. If they fail, it is the low income communities which ACORN serves which will suffer the loss.
The damage to the ACORN brand and its overall effectiveness has been immeasurable due to poor governance, mismanagement and corruption within senior management. Consequently, the board of director’s missed the last best chance to save ACORN through reform. It seems apparent to all, except the most ardent and the culpable, that ACORN has been mortally wounded; and the only question now is who goes down with the ship?
But it may already be too late; ACORN had its chance to do the right thing following the million dollar Rathke embezzlement. There was a glimmer of hope when the board of directors appointed an interim management committee tasked to investigate the embezzlement and reorganize ACORN. But they were terminated for seeking a forensic audit.
From the very beginning, the ACORN 8 have always sought to reform – not destroy – the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now. But now find it impossible to imagine that even this once venerable association can withstand the latest onslaught of negative publicity.
The Census Bureau and IRS recently severed ties with ACORN, and the U.S. Senate voted 83 to 7 to cut off funding for the embattled group. The House followed suit by a vote of 345 to 75. Unfortunately, this is yet another example of poor governance, mismanagement and corruption within the once venerable organization. ACORN cannot survive if it can’t raise any more money.
No More Charitable Donations: No tax exempt 501(c )(3) organization will donate money to ACORN under the present circumstances. Since they cannot prove that the 501(c )(3) funding was not commingled with partisan activities.
No More Federal Contracts: Likewise, the federal government has already begun to sever ties to ACORN and could not fund the association through CCI a registered lobbying organization.
No More Negotiated Settlements: ACORN no longer possesses the necessary moral authority to pressure corporations or any organization through public demonstrations or protests. Thus, even this revenue stream will be unavailable to ACORN.
ACORN has been hijacked by senior staff and executive leadership who are acting in their own personal interest and not the best interest of the association or its membership. Only one question remains. Is ACORN now dead on arrival?!?
ACORN has survived in the past as a surprisingly well funded, politically well connected, dictatorial operation which flew under the public’s radar. Ironically, the election of President Barack Obama was actually the worst thing that could happen to ACORN. The attention that the election of the first African-American and community organizer to the highest office in the land has made it impossible for ACORN to avoid real scrutiny as it has in the past. Ironically, President Obama’s ascent has turned into ACORN’s demise.
Rathke’s Reach: Critical ACORN Doc Found on Asian Website
Oct 11th
Rathke’s Reach: Critical ACORN Doc Found on Asian Website
by Kyle Olson
If one wonders or doubts Wade Rathke’s reach around the world, consider the following document found on a community organizing website in Asia and published on ACORNcracked.com.
It has been well-documented that last year Rathke “left” ACORN U.S. to head over to ACORN International and export ACORN’s brand of organizing and tactics. He has since changed the group’s name to Community Organizations International.
ACORN Community Organizing Model is not the type of document ACORN would wish to have on the Internet. For ACORN, is tantamount to Eisenhower’s plan for D-Day being printed on the front page of the Washington Post. Not a good thing for the ultra-secretive group.
Consider this frank section of “SETTING UP THE ORGANIZING DRIVE:”
2. Contacts: The whole process of making contacts is built on a pyramid theory. Make one that leads to others. The purpose of contacts is to gather information and resources, and to build power. There are three types: hot, warm, cold. The hot contacts are people we have met before at some point in the organization’s history. Check the biographical file in the state office. Warm contacts are those we have not met but know something about in order to build an edge, i.e. we have an opener or a handle for the conversation – something they did, someone they know who we know, some reason to believe we can hit the core. The cold contacts are those people we must meet for some reason, yet we have no lead to them. The only edge there is simply an organizer’s skill in prying information and setting up his/her ego in order to loosen her/his tongue in person or on the phone. It’s a skill to be perfected, if you’re greasy, you are in the hole.
Groups such as Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations in Asia clearly didn’t nor don’t understand the pressure and scrutiny ACORN has faced over the last several months. But their foolishness or naivete is the ACORN’s researcher’s gain.
For whatever reason, the LOCOA site doesn’t create a direct link to the individual page. If you wish to see it for yourself on the LOCOA site, go here, then click on Program in the menu bar. Then, go to the second page of documents and click on ACORN Community Organizing Model. Or, to save yourself time (not to mention if and when the document disappears from the website), you can click here for a PDF.
ACORN Throws Out Republican Voter Registrations
Oct 8th
by Pamela Geller
ACORN wants people to register to vote – as long as they’re Democrats. Republican registrations go into the trash.
Here is a first-hand account of how it happens. In February 2008, Fathiyyah Muhammad of Jacksonville, Florida, heard that ACORN was paying people three dollars for each voter they could register. ACORN paid her three dollars for each voter she registered, but Fatiyyah Muhammad says that the group threw out her votes and fired her when she brought them registrations of Republican voters.
Fathiyyah Muhammad voted for Obama. “I’m a Republican,” she says, “and this was the first time that I voted for a Democrat since JFK…. I’m one of those rare birds, a black conservative Republican, and actually this is the black conservative capital of the country, Jacksonville, Florida.” She is an entrepreneur and a great American: she makes custom caps for her businesses Bilal’s Custom Caps and Only in America. She and her James have made custom caps for politicians, sports heroes, musicians, and others. “America,” she says, “is the place you can live your dreams if you work at it.” She’s a can-do woman with a great American spirit, and when she saw what was breaking in the news about ACORN, she came forward; I interviewed her Monday morning.
“This is my first experience” with ACORN, Muhammad said. “This was before Obama got the nomination, long before then….I heard about this group that was paying $3.00 per person, to go out and to get people to sign up to vote. So I went over, I thought that well this is a good way to make some money because I know everybody, you know. I went over there and this guy signed me up and everything, and gave me my little pad, all this stuff.”
Muhammad went to the ACORN office in Jacksonville. There she encountered a young man speaking to a room of about twenty people. “He was telling us, you know, about his experience, he was from Brooklyn, he wasn’t from this area. He was just here recruiting people to register people to vote. They had a big office here, and I would say maybe about ten or twelve people at there.”
She went to work: “Well, I went out and got a lot of people, homeless people, but of course I signed everybody up as a Republican, and I would have put people had they been Democrats.” She was not forcing people to sign up as Republicans: “You could put down anything you wanted.” But when she got back to ACORN, a group leader was not pleased: “So I showed what I had, and he said, “No, no, you a fraud, there can’t be any black Republicans,’ and oh, he just kind of hung me out to dry…. But of course their main aim was to register only Democrats. They’re not interested in registering Republicans.”
She saw ACORN officials in Jacksonville throw out the Republican registrations she made. “They just discarded those, they weren’t valid. All of the registrations… they just threw those out.” Yet she says that she is sure that the people she registered were actually going to vote: “Yes, they all were going to vote, I just didn’t want to get anybody just to get the three dollars, I wasn’t desperate for three dollars.”
ACORN did not honor its agreement to pay three dollars for each registered voter. “He took my papers,” says Muhammad, “didn’t pay me anything and I just left, I just figured that this is just another scam…. Everyone else got paid, all the other people got paid, but I didn’t. And I didn’t make a big deal about it, I just figured that it was another one of life’s experiences.”
Fatiyyah Muhammad didn’t know anything about ACORN at that time. She didn’t know that ACORN has been doing this for a long time. As far back as November 2006 the organization was indicted for some 40,000 illegal voter registrations, and that was before any of the recent revelations.
Now Fatiyyah Muhammad says: “I can’t believe that they got away with it for so long.” And she wants her story to be told: “How are you going to shine a light on the laundry if you don’t want to come out and say what happened?”
Fatiyyah Muhammad is unafraid to shine that light. And her testimony is another nail in the coffin of the community organizers of ACORN and their stealth agenda.
Source: Biggovernment.com
ACORN Head Organizer In Missouri Admits Dual Roles
Sep 29th
I’m no lawyer, but if I worked for ACORN, the last thing I would do is publicly go out and say that I sometimes work for the nonprofit, community goodwill, and other times I’m out pushing for political change. And if I worked for ACORN in St Louis, whose ACORN Housing subsidiary was shut down precisely because of accusations that the federally funded subsidiary was paying for rent and employment for the political arm, I really wouldn’t be out admitting that it all comes out of the same pool.
But that’s exactly what Glenn Burleigh just did over at Show Me Progress in an interview with Hotflash, and it’s exactly why so many lawmakers are distancing themselves from the group.
The other damaging piece of press on Friday was this:
The embattled community activist group ACORN appears to be collecting charitable contributions through affiliate organizations that it then uses for impermissible lobbying and political activity,says the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee.
[italics mine]I asked Burleigh about this charge as well. He said that most non-profits can’t afford to hire separate people for the non-profit aspect of their work and the lobbying or political part of their work. He, for example, reports how many hours a week he spends on the work that’s paid for by charitable contributions and how many on political work. But he gets one pay check.
Read the full article at: www.24thstate.com
Bank of America Cuts Off Funds to ACORN
Sep 28th
By JAMES R. HAGERTY
Already facing the loss of federal government funding, the community-organizing group Acorn also has run afoul of one of its big corporate partners, Bank of America Corp.
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.
Acorn, officially the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been under fire since the recent release of secretly recorded videos that showed Acorn employees offering advice on evading taxes, setting up brothels and smuggling illegal immigrants.
The News Hub panel discusses Bank of America’s retreat from Acorn, the government’s newly-announced $35 billion aid package to homeowners and signs of life in the corporate profits.
Acorn has called the actions unacceptable and has fired the workers involved. Last week, Acorn said it has selected Scott Harshbarger, a former Massachusetts attorney general, to investigate any wrongdoing at the organization.
Acorn Housing for years has worked with Bank of America and some other big banks on foreclosure-prevention efforts.
“Bank of America takes recent allegations made against Acorn and Acorn Housing Corporation employees very seriously,” the bank said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Census Bureau dropped Acorn as a partner for the 2010 Census, and the House of Representatives voted to block the group from receiving federal funds.
“We’re not surprised that our lending partners like Bank of America want assurances that this won’t happen again,” said Michael Shea, executive director of Acorn Housing, which is based in Chicago and has about 250 employees nationwide.
Mr. Shea said Acorn Housing is arranging ethics training for its staff as part of an effort to ensure that such “abhorrent” behavior doesn’t happen again and that he hopes to be able to resume work with Bank of America once it can be assured that Acorn Housing has dealt properly with the issue.
Mr. Shea 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.
The Bank of America spokesman said Acorn Housing has been among various nonprofit groups that the bank works with in foreclosure-prevention efforts. A spokesman for Citigroup Inc. said it “has a program in its early stages with Acorn to help us reach distressed borrowers we have been unable to contact.”
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.
Acorn Housing is among more than 2,700 organizations approved by HUD as housing counseling agencies. That status is needed to qualify for HUD grants to housing counselors and for participation in some state housing-assistance programs.
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
These funds haven’t all been paid to the organizations. Instead, they get an unspecified amount of money up front and then bill NeighborWorks America, a group designated by Congress to manage this program, for counseling work as it is performed, a NeighborWorks spokesman said.
A spokesman for NeighborWorks said his organization doesn’t publicly comment on the performance of the groups that get these funds until the program is completed.
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.
A spokeswoman for Acorn Housing said it has made 18,626 proposals to lenders on behalf of distressed homeowners to help them avoid foreclosure in the past 12 months.
—Constance Mitchell-Ford contributed to this article.
Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com
ACORN’s troubles grow as it mounts counteroffensive
Sep 24th
By Tony Romm and Jared Allen – 09/23/09 08:27 PM ET
The troubles of a community group with close ties to the Democratic Party continued on multiple fronts on Wednesday, providing Republicans with fresh fodder and Democrats with new areas of discomfort.
Even as the community group mounted a defense, Republicans increased their attacks and an ally criticized the group.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who has supported the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on low-income housing issues, said he would have voted to strip federal funding for the group last week if he had been present. Frank was attending a White House Medal of Honor ceremony for a soldier from his state killed in action when the House approved the funding cuts.
“I am very disappointed in the actions that were taken by members of ACORN, and I do not believe that ACORN’s response has been adequate for an organization that has received public funding,” Frank said in a statement.
Frank in a lengthy memo said his support and Judiciary Chairman John Conyers’s (D-Mich.) backing of an inquiry by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) into ACORN did not constitute support for the group, and may have been shortsighted.
“A number of factors, one of which in particular is my own fault, have contributed to my position on ACORN being unclear,” Frank’s lengthy statement read. “My biggest error was to sign a letter to the Congressional Research Service which I had not thoroughly read and which does not accurately represent my own position in all aspects.”
Frank and Conyers on Tuesday asked CRS for a “careful and objective analysis of a number of issues concerning ACORN.” Among their questions was whether Congress’s votes to bar ACORN from federal money were themselves constitutional.
Frank explained that he “cosigned the letter because I do think it is important that we get accurate and complete information on ACORN funding.”
ACORN, which has received $53 million in federal dollars since 1994, has been a source of embarrassment for Democrats since the emergence last week of privately recorded videos allegedly showing ACORN employees providing advice on evading federal tax and housing laws. The videos featured two conservative activists portraying a pimp and a prostitute seeking assistance from ACORN employees.
Republicans continued their attack on Wednesday, as Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, criticized as inaccurate all other Democratic efforts to look into ACORN.
Issa and Judiciary Committee ranking member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether ACORN misused federal funds, writing GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro to look into whether taxpayer dollars “may have been used to support criminal efforts by the organization,” a reference to the video footage of ACORN employees at the center of the storm.
In the Senate, David Vitter (R-La.) called Democrats’ approach to the ACORN investigation lukewarm and “almost Orwellian.” He then requested that the Justice Department open a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) investigation into ACORN’s business practices.
A probe of that magnitude — potentially the most aggressive investigation requested by any ACORN critic to date — would permit investigators exceptional leverage in rooting out criminal wrongdoing.
Vitter and 27 of his GOP colleagues already had requested that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) instruct committee chairmen to investigate ACORN’s conduct. Reid dismissed the request on Tuesday and charged Vitter with “politicizing” the entire investigation process. Frank also criticized Republicans for playing partisan politics.
ACORN on Wednesday launched a vigorous defense, announcing an internal investigation and revealing its cooperation with criminal investigations by the FBI and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, both of which were spurred by the multiple hidden videos.
The group also filed a lawsuit against James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who posed as a pimp and a prostitute and video-recorded their experience at ACORN’s Baltimore office, as well as conservative pundit Andrew Breitbart, who posted the video on his website.
The lawsuit alleges that the videos caused “extreme emotional distress” to the ACORN employees on the video.
In a conference call late Wednesday afternoon, ACORN said it had tapped former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to conduct what Harshbarger called a “no holds barred” probe of the group.
“There’s no bigger critics of ACORN than its members and its board,” said CEO Bertha Lewis. “Poor people in this country deserve to have a strong organization. And it needs to be strong within and outside.”
But Lewis also opened up yet another rift, claiming in that same call that the termination of ACORN’s relationship with the IRS was her undertaking, not that of the IRS, as the agency had indicated in a Wednesday afternoon statement.
“Let me be very clear: The first thing I did was to terminate those employees,” Lewis said. “Second, I shut down all programs for all new intakes. Third, the board said we will do no more tax preparation services.”
Terry Lemons, an IRS spokesman, responded by saying: “Last Wednesday we announced we were conducting a thorough review, and today we issued the statement [of termination].”
Source: TheHill.com
Lewis vowed to sue the makers of the videos, and said the organization has been issued no subpoenas.