ACORN Should Not Receive Taxpayers' Money

by Phyllis Schlafly: Several prominent non-Republicans and ex-Republicans have been all over the media giving advice to Republicans about how they should re-brand themselves and which issues they should talk about. Among this unsolicited advice is that Republicans should stop criticizing ACORN. Au contraire; Republicans should loudly demand that ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) be cut off from all further handouts of taxpayers' money. After all, didn't Barack Obama promise us an ethical administration and an end to the influence of lobbyists and special interests?

ACORN is one of the most successful lobbyists for taxpayers' money, which ACORN uses for very partisan special-interest activities. ACORN and its affiliated organizations (estimated at 270 related corporations and so-called non-profits) are under investigation in more than a dozen states for voter registration fraud, and there's no question about which party and which candidate ACORN supports.

Nevertheless, ACORN and its affiliated organizations (disguised as nongovernmental "neighborhood stabilization" organizations) could receive $3 billion (with a B) from Obama's stimulus package and another $5.5 billion from his 2010 federal budget. That is after receiving $53 million of taxpayers' money over the last 15 years.

• Nevada charged ACORN groups with submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms in 2008, and illegally setting quotas for its canvassers and paying them bonuses for signing up more than 21 new voters a day. The Las Vegas registrar of voters believes 48 percent of registrations turned in by ACORN were fraudulent.
• Nevada's Democratic Attorney General said that ACORN's training manuals "clearly detail, condone and ... require illegal acts" such as requiring workers to meet voter-registration targets in order to keep their jobs.
• Pennsylvania authorities charged seven ACORN workers with falsifying voter registration forms. The voter registrar said that ACORN submitted at least 1,500 fraudulent registrations during last year's presidential campaign.
• Washington State fined ACORN $25,000 after several employees were convicted of voter registration fraud in 2007.
• Last year, eight national ACORN board members demanded an audit of ACORN's books. The result was that the eight were removed.

ACORN's blatantly partisan activities with taxpayers' and other non-profit funds make it an appropriate target for a congressional hearing. After first agreeing to hold a hearing, the Democrats then reneged and refused to hold one.

Barack Obama has for years had a close working relationship with ACORN, as a community organizer, as the head of a registration effort for Project Vote (one of ACORN's partners), as attorney for a very important lawsuit, and for get-out-the-vote assistance in his 2008 presidential campaign. When he met with ACORN leaders last year, Obama bragged that he "ran the Project Vote voter registrations drive in Illinois."

In 1995, Obama represented ACORN in a case upholding the Motor Voter Act. That law authorized postcard registration, which proved so useful to ACORN workers in filing false registrations. In 2008, Obama's presidential campaign reported paying $832,000 to Citizens Consulting Inc., the umbrella group controlling ACORN, for get-out-the-vote efforts in key primary states. ACORN and its affiliated groups put thousands of get-out-the-vote workers in battleground states during the presidential campaign last year.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) successfully persuaded the House Financial Services Committee to unanimously pass an amendment to the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act prohibiting any organization indicted for voter fraud from receiving federal housing grants. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) then had a tantrum and got the Democrats to remove it. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) tried to prohibit ACORN from getting federal funds through the new Serve America Act. But Harry Reid's Senate killed that constructive idea.

It's not just taxpayers' money that ACORN has had at its disposal; ACORN also has received generous grants from top recipients of federal bailout money. Bank of America (almost $3 million), Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase made big grants to ACORN Housing Corp., one of ACORN's many affiliated organizations.

It is particularly important to expose ACORN's political activities because of its new relationship with the Census Bureau, the agency tasked with compiling the 2010 census. The count of the U.S. population will determine which states gain or lose votes in both the U.S. House and the Electoral College, and which districts get more federal handouts.

American constitutional government cannot survive if the population count is managed and manipulated by organizations with partisan bias. The importance of a fair and accurate count cannot be overestimated because the count can give one party an unfair advantage and control over America for the next decade. Yet the Obama Administration chose ACORN to recruit counters for the 2010 Census, and they are already canvassing neighborhoods. Rep. Patrick McHenry's (R-NC) effort to sever the Census Bureau-ACORN partnership should be supported by all who want honest elections.
Further reading:

ACORN To Play Role in Census

ACORN got $53 million in federal funds since 94, now eligible for up to $8 billion more

The Danger of Vote Fraud in the 2008 Election

Stop ACORN Now

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Tags: ACORN, Barack Obama, federal funding, grants, U.S. Census, U.S. Census Bureau, voter fraud, voter registration To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama, Voter Fraud, Mortgage Meltdown & ACORN

Obama worked as an ACORN community organizer and was a trainer for Project Vote. Obama provided legal representation for ACORN and for Tony Rezko. ACORN Results - Voter Fraud! Voter Fraud!! The home-parity concept of the radical left was mobilized by ACORN resulting in a purchase of a property without any credit, income, employment, and zero down payment. Result - the investment & mortgage crisis! Franklin Raines, former chair and CEO of Fannie Mae, was an advisor to Obama. Obama was the Senate’s second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. American taxpayers have already paid and suffered as a result of poor judgement and involvement of Barack Obama. Article by James H. Walsh, a former federal prosecuter: "I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work." — Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, Nov. 2007 . . . [H]ow many voters know that Obama, during his four-year tenure in Chicago as a community organizer, worked as a trainer for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform . . . the infamous ACORN, whose affiliate, Project Vote, is known for voter fraud — the same ACORN from which a mighty mortgage mess has grown. . . . after Harvard Law School, Obama provided legal representation for ACORN . . . Obama sat on the boards of the philanthropic Woods Foundation and the Joyce Foundation, both of whom funneled millions of dollars to ACORN. . . .

ACORN, Project Vote, and Voter Fraud - Although ACORN has pled to various charges of voter fraud, it continues today enrolling large numbers of voters, some legitimate and others not so much. ACORN tee shirts are visible at Obama rallies. According to the Consumer Rights League, ACORN has been involved in voter fraud, directly or indirectly, in Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia. ACORN’s Project Vote, for which Obama was a paid employee in Chicago, is the organization that appears to be most active in voter fraud. ACORN and Project Vote have a rap sheet of voter misconduct and voter registration fraud that extends across the nation . . .:
Colorado - . . . hundreds of voter registration forms appeared suspect, . . . found a woman forging the forms, for which she received $50 a piece. . . two ACORN employees were given community service for submitting false voter forms.
Florida - . . . ACORN issuing fraudulent voter registration cards, a former ACORN field director charged that ACORN submitted “thousands of invalid registration cards”.
Minnesota - . . . ACORN canvassers were selling voter registration cards for $1 a piece. . . .
Missouri - St. Louis . . . 1,492 of fraudulent voter address changes have been turned in by ACORN. Kansas City . . . had similar voter fraud attempts. Eight ACORN employees plead guilty to federal election fraud . . .
Ohio - . . . during the Ohio Democratic primary, the Obama presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to a subsidiary of ACORN, Citizens Services Inc. (CSI). . . . in 2004, a federal grand jury indicted four ACORN employees for submitting 19 fraudulent voter registration forms all with similar handwriting and false addresses. . . . Aug 28, 2008, . . . Cleveland . . . investigating 75,000 voter registration forms --many found to be fraudulent and submitted by ACORN.
Pennsylvania - In March 2008, ACORN was accused by Philadelphia Election officials of filing fraudulent voter registration forms prior to the Democratic primary.
Washington State - ACORN was fined $25,000 by the state of Washington in 2007 for voter fraud committed by Project Vote. Five ACORN workers pled guilty to filing phony voter registration forms.
Wisconsin - . . . 39 ACORN voter registration workers were referred to the DA for possible voter fraud.

Obama, ACORN, and Mortgage Meltdown - In 1977, a Democrat Congress passed and President Jimmy Carter signed The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), and the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) was instrumental in its passage. The U.S. Congress through the CRA compelled banks and lending institutions to make loans to “communities of color” disregarding sound economic and risk guidelines. CRA encouraged the relaxing of “outdated” risk-management protocols and underwriting obligations by lending institutions. In the name of ending discrimination, no longer were “communities of color” required to provide verification of income, employment, credit history, ability to pay homeowner bills, or down payment. In response, many banks and mortgage groups bundled trillions of dollars of “subprime” loans and sold them to investors here and abroad. It is these bundled Community Reinvestment Act mortgages, doomed to fail, that are today causing financial strain in U.S. and global financial markets.

In short, a Democrat Congress and President demanded that banks change the rules of good banking and open the Pandora’s Box of mortgage defaults and foreclosures now coming to a head. This home-parity concept of the radical left was mobilized by ACORN. . . . resulting in a purchase of a property without any credit, income, employment, and zero down payment. . . .

In . . . 2003, Fannie Mae home-parity funding in Chicago reached $600 billion. When Franklin Raines, former chair and CEO of Fannie Mae, stepped down in 2004 but managed to take with him a multimillion-dollar parachute and a monthly pension of $114, 393 for life, and should he die, for his wife’s lifetime. Until recently, Raines was an advisor to Obama, who was the Senate’s second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. . . . [Full article] The U.S. cannot "afford" anymore of Obama. See also: [Carter More to Blame for Financial Crisis Than Bush or McCain ] & [Congress Lies Low To Avoid Bailout Blame]

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Tags: ACORN, Barack Obama, Election 2008, Fannie mae, Freddie Mac, mortgage default, the economy, voter fraud To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

ACORN Promoting Prostitution & Tax Evasion

Breaking Fox News (6:10 pm): Census Bureau Severs Ties With ACORN
Bill Smith, Editor: The following videos speak volumes about ACORN. But be sure to read the insights of James O'Keefe at BigGovernment.com where he describe his and Hannah Giles experience going in to a ACORN offices in Baltimore and posing as a pimp and a prostitute to ask for help which eventually opens to supporting a child prostitution ring. The "street wise" ACORN workers were more than willing to advise them on how to lie and defraud the U.S. taxpayers and to promote illegal child sex trafficking. See for yourself - Below are two videos of the event.

And while viewing the videos, consider a couple of points of interest relative to ACORN which are not mentioned in these videos or by the author. Consider who formerly trained ACORN workers (Barack Obama) and who was a former attorney for ACORN (Barack Obama) and who supports using ACORN provided workers in the U.S. Census (Barack Obama). Now Barack Obama is not the only supporter of ACORN, there are many others. ACORN receives millions of our tax dollars - some of which does go toward doing good things which mask the nefarious things done by ACORN. ACORN workers have been indicted for voter fraud. Other former ACORN workers have or are suing the National ACORN officials for ripping of ACORN money. ACORN has even made moves to change its name.

If I were counseling President Barack Obama, I be saying, you represent all the people of the Unites States and took an oath; you need to distance yourself from ACORN and call for an investigation. Your investigating the CIA when you should be investigating ACORN. But then again, maybe he cannot investigate ACORN. Maybe ACORN is a source for some of his ground troops needed to support his agenda. Or maybe ACORN has a proverbial "hidden record" of actions and transactions related to his association and activities with ACORN, its workers and its clients which, if made public, would bring an end to his time in office. He might even be getting a little nervous and showing anger toward those who do not trust him and see his actions as an infringement on their freedoms.

While getting angry at the actions displayed by the ACORN workers - who have already had their job rightly terminated - reflect on the creators of this web of corruption. These two ACORN women are not alone in their culpability; they are a product of ACORN's management and philosophy of operation.

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Tags: ACORN, Baltimore, big government, child sex, corruption, prostitution, sex, sex trafficking, Stop Acorn, videos, web of corruption To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

ACORN Puts Sensitive Documents in Dumpster

Fox News: A private investigator says he found tens of thousands of sensitive documents dumped outside a California ACORN office just days after the state attorney general announced an inquiry into the community organizing group.  Derrick Roach, a licensed investigator based in San Diego, told FoxNews.com he paid an impromptu visit to the city's ACORN branch on Oct. 9 and watched from his car as a man tossed bags of files into a Dumpster outside the building.

After ACORN staff left for the day, he says, he searched the trash bin and discovered more than 20,000 documents he believes point to illicit relationships between ACORN and a bank and a labor union — as well as confidential information that could put thousands at risk for identity theft. "We're talking people's driver's license numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, tax returns, credit reports" — all tossed in public view in the Dumpster, he said.

In one document shared with FoxNews.com, an ACORN employee's name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and driver's license number were revealed, and photocopies of the employee's license and Social Security card were also included. Another document showed bank account information for a woman paying an ACORN membership fee by check.  "It was just a careless disregard for the people that ACORN claimed to be helping," Roach told FoxNews.com. "They put these people at risk."  Roach said that data breach laws bar dumping like the kind he uncovered at ACORN's office. Tossing the documents into a Dumpster, he said, constitutes a crime in California. "So if someone wanted to, they could bring legal action against ACORN for doing this," he said. 

A top ACORN official in California apologized for the lapse Monday, saying that some confidential information might have been thrown away during a massive clean-up of their offices last month. "In early October, when our San Diego staff were doing an office clean-up in preparation for a major 10-station phone bank program being set up in our offices, it appears that included in the piles of garbage being thrown out may have been some documents containing private information," said Amy Schur, state head organizer for California ACORN, in an e-mailed statement.

Schur implied that "this guy" Roach, a former Republican candidate for statewide office, may have had political motivations for unearthing the documents. She said ACORN would seek the return of the documents "so that we may give proper notice of the compromising of the information as required by law."

Roach told FoxNews.com he has been going over the trove of ACORN files and has found connections to the California Teachers Association and to Citibank. "ACORN was acting as an agent" for Citibank, Roach charged. "They had mortgage information for homeowners ... who were in foreclosure, who were in default."
Roach says that the documents suggest that ACORN staffers would go out on "assignments" to take pictures of some residences or even to "go out and actually make contact" with people living in homes financed by Citibank loans. He said he believes Citibank will have to report to its customers that their information may have been at risk when ACORN threw it away. "They took information and they just dumped it in the garbage," he said.

Citibank ran an outreach program through ACORN that utilized the group's local staff to encourage homeowners at risk of defaulting on their mortgages to contact the bank and work on avoiding defaults. That relationship has since been severed, a spokesman for Citigroup told FoxNews.com in an e-mail.

"Over time, Citi has worked with a variety of not-for-profit partners, including ACORN, to provide financial education, meet affordable lending needs, promote stable homeownership for low- to moderate- income consumers and help in foreclosure prevention," the spokesman said. "We are deeply concerned about the recent media reports regarding ACORN. We recently suspended our charitable financial support and program relationships with ACORN, and we are waiting for the results of the independent audit of ACORN's activities now underway."

Roach also charged that the California Teachers Association, the state's largest teachers' union, was "funneling information to ACORN for political activity" — a relationship that he said would not be illegal but would require ACORN and the CTA to disclose fully. "I've done some checking into the reports that have been filed for the CTA, for ACORN, and I'm not finding any of this information being disclosed," he said. He did not provide any documents illustrating the relationship to FoxNews.com.

CTA spokesman Mike Myslinksi said the union had no comment on documents it had not seen. "That's out of left field," he said.

Roach's accusation comes in the wake of a national scandal for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now Staffers were caught on tape this summer in six cities offering to help a pair of filmmakers posing as a pimp and prostitute to lie to the IRS and acquire illegal home loans. ACORN fired an employee in its San Diego office, Juan Carlos Vera, after video surfaced of him offering to help the "pimp" and "prostitute" smuggle in girls from Tijuana, Mexico, noting that he had many contacts in the city who could assist in smuggling them across the border.

The group is now under investigation by a number of city, state and federal agencies, and Congress has cut off funding for the group. On Oct. 1, California Attorney General Jerry Brown launched a state investigation of ACORN. It was just eight days later that Roach says he retrieved the sensitive files — timing he says he finds fishy. "I think if you look at the timeline [Sic] of events when the attorney general made the announcement, when the documents were dumped, I think that it's highly suspicious."

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StopAcorn.org

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, California, Fox News, San Diego To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

More ACORN Voter Fraud In Ohio - 9 State Investigation

Also See: Obama - ACORN Root Causes of Mortgage Crisis? & Comments
The Traditional Values Coalition: Hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms may have been submitted by ACORN – a group that works closely with the Obama campaign. Fox News ran a shocking story early this morning on a major voter fraud scandal in Ohio involving ACORN, the group that Barack Obama once represented as an attorney – and who trained ACORN activists in Illinois. TVC has reported for several years on ACORN fraud. It is a consistent pattern in every state where ACORN operates. (The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has a list of nine states where ACORN is currently being investigated. They are: Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.)
The report from Fox News reporter Bill Sammon describes a brewing voter fraud scandal and ACORN officials now admit they can’t determine what registration forms are valid and those that are fake. It may involve as many as 600,000 registration forms.

Another Fox reporter noted that the $700 billion bailout package also has money in it that could be directed toward ACORN activities. ACORN also apparently has at least 150 other front groups associated with its activities. TVC had been told that money for special interest groups had been stripped from the bill that was finally passed. Conservative lawmakers are now working to get this money blocked from going to ACORN or any other liberal interest group.
“If even half of these voter forms are fraudulent, it calls into question the whole election in Ohio,” said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. “It is time that state officials refuse to accept any ACORN registration forms. Their history of fraud should be reason enough to ban them from forever submitting another form to county clerks during an election cycle.”
An ACORN office was raided in Nevada earlier this week as part of a nationwide investigation of consistent fraud perpetrated by ACORN workers.

ACORN officials typically respond to reports of fraud that they can’t be held responsible for the fraud of their workers, but this fraudulent activity has gone on for decades. Election after election has been tainted by ACORN fraud.
See Also: Fox News Story On ACORN – October 9, 2008
ACORN's voter registrations questioned - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
$700 Billion Bailout Bill May Fund ACORN Radicals!
ACORN Sprouts Voter Fraud – Group Has Ties To Obama Campaign
Obama Continues To Woo Evangelicals With Faith Speeches
Leftwing ‘Change America Now’ Group Targets Congressional Districts
ACORN’s Hypocritical House Of Cards
ACORN Leftist Group Under Investigation For Voter Fraud
ACORN Commits Fraud In Michigan

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Tags: ACORN, Fox News, Ohio, TVC, voter fraud To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Corruption Continues - ACORN's American Institute for Social Justice - #stopacorn

Kevin Mooney, Big Government: Despite its recent setbacks, the renamed ACORN network remains well positioned to receive support from left-leaning foundations, corporations, unions and the federal government, according to a whistleblower group comprised of former board members. Moreover, the existing financial apparatus that made it possible to transfer public money away from their stated purpose and into partisan political efforts remains intact.

The American Institute of Social Justice (AISJ), one of four national affiliates, deserves greater scrutiny and attention in this area. Over $53 million was transferred between ACORN and AISJ from 2000-2004, according to a report from the House Oversight Committee.  ACORN was also on the receiving end of a $4,952,288 grant from AISJ, according to the Institute’s 990 tax form for 2006. This is instructive because AISJ itself received almost $4 million from ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC) between 2000 and 2006, tax documents show.

“The money flowing to AISJ from ACORN Housing should be a huge red flag for investigators because almost all the federal money that the ACORN network receives goes into its housing affiliate,” Matthew Vadum, a senior editor with the Capital Research Center (CRC) observes. “So it’s entirely possible that when money was being transferred to the national ACORN organization from AISJ, taxpayer money designated for nonpartisan purposes might have been used for blatantly partisan purposes. These transfers are extremely suspicious. This is the type of financial activity that we see with organized crime and it should be investigated.”

On April 1, ACORN’s leadership announced it was dissolving its national network, but in reality the national affiliates and their many state level counterparts are simply remarketing and rebranding themselves, former insiders have warned. ACORN Housing Corp., for example, the national affiliate at the epicenter of last year’s videotape scandal, has renamed itself Affordable Housing Centers of America. Several state entities have also followed suit reorganizing under generic sounding names that avoid the ACORN label.

ACORN 8, the whistleblower group named for the eight board members blocked from investigating an embezzlement scandal, cautions against media reports that suggest the national organization known in full as the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) has been permanently set back.  "Always note the date, April 1.” Marcel Reid, the ACORN 8 chairwoman, said in an interview. “ACORN is not dissolving, it may be morphing, but it is still is in business and it is still in a position to receive funding, although it may be done under different names.”

In fact, it may become easier over the long for donors to reactive their support for “community organizers” who are no longer burdened by the tarnished ACORN name, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has observed. “ACORN’s cover has been blown and its true identity has been revealed but it remains a viable entity beneath different names with the same patrons and same funding sources,” she explained in an interview. “I don’t see a tremendous change in the structure that called itself ACORN.”  . . .

Ron Sykes, a former treasurer with the Washington D.C. branch, and an ACORN 8 activist, has identified the Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI) affiliate as a major conduit for the comingling and misappropriation of funds. Tax documents do show links between CCI and other affiliates. “ACORN did not want its local people to have any control over the finances,” he has previously explained. “There were many accounts by CCI had control over all of it.”

Reid, the ACORN 8 chair, recalls how the funding schemes worked to the disadvantage of rank and file members who sought support for community initiatives.  “You could make a tax-deductible donation to ACORN if you were a foundation,” she explained. “You made it through AISJ, then the money was funneled through CSI (Citizens Consulting Inc.) and then the money was kicked back to ACORN – that’s the loop.”

The future of Citizens Consulting remains uncertain and it’s not clear that the affiliate remains in operation. Consequently, AISJ appears to be the main vehicle through which financial contributions can be diverted away from their stated purpose. The national affiliate has attracted little press attention and deserves greater attention and scrutiny as ACORN activists gear up for the 2010 elections.

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Tags: ACORN, American Institute of Social Justice, AISJ, corruption, Kevin Mooney, Big Government To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Defund ACORN Now

Americans for Liberty calls for Congress to defund ACORN: What could possibly be more revolting than a federally funded organization using a stream of tax dollars to promote voter fraud and encourage prostitution? Perhaps the seven U.S. Senators voting to keep that organization fully funded with those tax dollars.

In the aftermath of the highly publicized disclosure of multiple videos revealing ACORN workers offering assistance to an undercover “pimp and prostitute”, the Senate sprang into action and voted to prohibit the organization from receiving housing grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Although it was the damning prostitution videos—which explicitly showed ACORN workers giving advice on how to evade taxes, set up a brothel, and harbor underage immigrant girls as prostitutes—which prompted the quick vote, ACORN already had a long history of corrupt and vile behavior. In addition to pushing the very loose-lending policies which triggered the collapse of the housing market, ACORN is also under investigation for voter registration fraud all across the country. Among others, states like Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Missouri have each file charges.

Given the organization’s contemptible record of ill-repute, the vote to defund ACORN should have been a 100 percent unanimous vote. Even the U.S. Census has already revoked its partnership agreement with ACORN for the official 2010 Census count in light of the prostitution scandals. Seven U.S. Senators, however, voted against the bill and thus in favor of keeping ACORN fully funded. They are Roland Burris (D-IL), Robert Casey (D-PA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). In essence, these seven are giving their stamp of approval to the prostitution of underage children—not to mention tax evasion, voter fraud, and reckless lending.

Bill Wilson, President of Americans for Limited Government, labeled the unconscionable group of senators the “Sordid Seven”. As he said in a statement:

“These seven Senators have knowingly voted to keep sending taxpayer money to a highly corrupt organization of pushers and pimps. The constituents of these seven unconscionable Senators need to know that despite ACORN’s clear track record of bad lending practices, the ‘Sordid Seven’ have chosen to look the other way.”

In addition to the “No” votes of these seven Senators, the fact that ACORN will still receive any federal funding is reprehensible. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) echoed the sentiment of many—including Americans for Limited Government—by calling upon Barack Obama to sever ties with ACORN and end all federal funds to the organization (not solely those from the Department of Housing and Urban Development). As he said in his letter to Obama:

“It is evident that ACORN is incapable of using federal funds in a manner that is consistent with the law. Immediate action is necessary to ensure that no additional tax dollars are directed to ACORN. Simply put, ACORN should not receive another penny of American taxpayers’ money.”

Unfortunately, severing ties with ACORN will not be a simple task for Barack Obama. After all, the organization practically spawned the man now occupying the oval office and was pivotal in shaping his political philosophy, strategies, and tactics. As Barack Obama himself once said:

“I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school…this is something that I know personally, the work [ACORN does], the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it.”

And now Barack Obama and seven U.S. Senators are smack dab in the middle of an ACORN prostitution scandal. This cannot go unaddressed. As Rep. Boehner articulates, there is no excuse for a single penny of tax money to go to ACORN. The latest round of incidents proves it anew. The constituents of these “Sordid Seven” senators must hold them accountable for being complicit in prostitution, tax evasion, voter fraud, and the reckless lending that helped trigger the housing collapse. And the American people must hold their president accountable for being part and parcel of one of the nation’s most corrupt and contemptible organizations.

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Tags: ACORN, Americans for Limited Government, defund To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

ACORN Sues California To Allow More Illegals To Vote

. . . Bill Clinton’s Motor-Voter law has made massive voter fraud possible.

by Matthew Vadum: An ACORN offshoot and other left-wing pressure groups are suing California in federal court because the state hasn’t made it easy enough for Democrats to flood voter rolls with illegal aliens and foreign nationals who aren’t legally eligible to vote.

Throughout the years Mickey Mouse, Mary Poppins, and celebrities living and dead were registered to vote because now-defunct ACORN and its allied groups were allowed to pollute the voter rolls.

The ACORN successor group known as ACCE Institute, League of Women Voters of California, California Common Cause, and the National Council of La Raza want to compel the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to incorporate voter registration material into the forms needed to apply for or renew a driver’s license or state identification card, or submit a change of address. They claim the DMV is violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), popularly called “Motor-Voter,” by asking the more than a million California residents who renew by mail every year to fill out a separate voter registration form.

Other election fraud-promoting state policies already exist in the Golden State, which is a haven for illegal aliens and illegal voting.

In 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a law to register all eligible holders of driver’s licenses as voters unless they "opt out." The Los Angeles Times reports that law “was on hold until state elections officials completed testing of a statewide voter database. That process ended last year, and the automated process for registering voters is expected to be used before next year's elections.”

But that still doesn’t provide enough opportunities for non-citizens to vote in California to satisfy whiny so-called voting rights advocates in the already solidly Democrat state.

"Since we first alerted DMV to these problems, multiple local, state, and federal elections have passed, including the 2016 presidential election,” said ACCE Executive Director Christina Livingston. “Enough is enough. It’s time for California to make registration easier for every voter as the law requires and to get it done before another election passes us by.”

In court papers, ACCE Institute claims ACCE has 14,000 members, as well as offices in Los Angeles, Contra Costa, Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Diego. The group claims in 2016 that ACCE ran five programs that registered almost 10,000 Californians to vote. ACCE Institute describes itself as “a non-profit community organization that helps California citizens organize and take action to promote change that benefits social, economic, and racial justice.”

Because the state supposedly hasn’t been following federal law, ACCE claims it “has been forced to and continues to expend resources to promote voter registration in California that ACCE would otherwise have used to further other organizational goals.”

What might those “other organizational goals” be? The California branch of ACORN was adept at dumping garbage in the lobbies of banks, surrounding the homes of corporate executives and frightening their families, and providing rent-a-mobs for wealthy benefactors such as banking tycoons Herb and Marion Sandler.

The plaintiff groups are being represented by the ACLU of Northern California, Demos, and the law firm of Morrison and Foerster. ACORN-affiliated Project Vote had also been providing legal representation but it recently closed its doors.

ACCE Institute is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm of ACCE, which stands for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. ACCE is the successor group to ACORN California, which, with 37,000 dues-paying members, was one of the largest state chapters in the ACORN network. ACCE was founded by ACORN officials in December 2009 before ACORN Inc., the parent nonprofit at the head of the network, filed for bankruptcy in November 2010. ACORN had been battered in 2008 by the revelation of a million-dollar embezzlement by the founder’s brother which management covered up, and by undercover videos shot in 2009 by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles showing ACORN intake workers helping to facilitate tax fraud and prostitution. Soon after, Congress cut off funding to ACORN.

ACCE paid $9,000 to purchase ACORN California computers and office equipment. It also bought the rights to ACORN’s donor databases. The office address of ACCE and ACCE Institute is 3655 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. That address was the address of ACORN California’s headquarters, too.

ACORN is congenitally corrupt.

As I documented in Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, at least 54 ACORN employees and individuals associated with ACORN have been convicted of voter fraud, a blanket term coined by lawyers referring to fraudulent voting, identify fraud, perjury, voter registration fraud, forgery, and other crimes related to the electoral process.

In August 2011, ACORN was fined the maximum of $5,000 in Las Vegas for its role in a massive voter fraud conspiracy. Judge Donald Mosley said he would have handed down a 10-year prison sentence if an individual rather than a corporation had been before him: “And I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.” Mosley criticized ACORN for making a “mockery” of America’s electoral process. “This isn’t a banana republic,” he said.

ACORN had pled guilty to felony-level unlawful compensation for registration of voters. With the full knowledge of upper management, ACORN illegally offered cash bonuses to its voter registration canvassers in a scheme called “Blackjack.” Canvassers received extra money if they registered 21 voters a day. Senior ACORN executives Amy Adele Busefink and Christopher Howell Edwards were also convicted for their roles in the scheme. ACORN cared so little about the conspiracy that Project Vote, its voter mobilization division, put Busefink in charge of the group’s national get-out-the-vote drive in 2010 while she was under indictment in Nevada. Project Vote announced it was shutting its doors on May 31 of this year.

The federal Motor-Voter statute so revered by the Left was the brainchild of Sixties radicals Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. It was enacted in 1993. President Clinton thanked the couple by name for their efforts and gave them prime seating at the bill-signing ceremony.

The idea behind the law was to make it ridiculously easy to register to vote in the hope that millions of people not legally eligible to vote would nevertheless find their way onto voter rolls. That law turned welfare offices and DMVs across the country into voter registration centers and encouraged nonprofit groups to conduct registration drives. It also opened the door to the massive voter fraud that is commonplace today.

Cloward and Piven explained their strategy in a 1983 article titled "Toward a Class-Based Realignment of American Politics: A Movement Strategy," which ran in ACORN's magazine, Social Policy.
[E]nlisting millions of new and politicized voters is the way to create an electoral environment hospitable to fundamental change in American society. An enlarged and politicized electorate will sustain and encourage the movements in American society that are already working for the rights of women and minorities, for the protection of the social programs, and for transformation of foreign policy. Equally important, an enlarged and politicized electorate will foster and protect future mass movements from the bottom that the ongoing economic crisis is likely to generate, thus opening American politics to solutions to the economic crisis that express the interests of the lower strata of the population ... The objective is to accelerate the dealigning forces already at work in American politics, and to promote party realignment along class lines.The goal behind Motor-Voter wasn’t to make America’s electoral processes function more smoothly. The goal was left-wing revolution.

The lawsuit filed by ACCE Institute and its allies is in keeping with that goal.
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Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, an author at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's FronPage Mag, an award-winning investigative reporter, and author of the book,Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

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Tags: ACORN, sues, California, allow more illegals to vote. Bill Clinton, Motor Voter, Matthew Vadum, FrontPage Mag To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

ACORN's Corporate Donors Backing Off

From the Washington Examiner: Corporations that have given ACORN millions of dollars over the years are now canceling their donations in the wake of videotape revelations of employees of the infamous community organization giving advice on mortgage fraud, tax evasion, prostitution, and child sex slavery.

Bank of America is reviewing its grant program, while CitiGroup is waiting for results of official investigations in the scandal. JP Morgan Chase had previously ended its relationship with ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Banks and other financial institutions have given millions of dollars and other forms of support to ACORN for decades in response to boycott threats from the organization, as well as accusations of racism and other forms of discrimination in granting personal loans and mortgages.

The ACORN campaigns followed passage of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which was designed to pressure financial institutions to loosen lending standards in order to increase home ownership among poor and minority communities. Legislation strengthening CRA during the Clinton administration greatly encouraged such ACORN activities.

Bank of America has given 28 grants totaling almost $3 million to ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) since 2005, financial records show. A company spokesman said the activity exposed on videotape prompted the present review. “We do not condone the actions of ACORN Housing employees exposed in recently released videotapes,” Bank of America spokesman Richard Simon told The Examiner. “We have begun a review of ACORN Housing’s governance to ensure if these were individual incidents rather than a systemic breakdown before we make decisions on future actions.”

JP Morgan Chase contributed over $5 million in grants to the housing affiliate, over a five-year period. But this program is no longer active, Jennifer Zuccarelli, a spokeswoman said. “JP Morgan Chase provided a five-year community development grant to fund affordable housing and foreclosure prevention initiatives across the country,” Zuccarelli said. “The commitment ended a year ago in 2008 and no further grants will be considered.”

Undercover videos made by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles posing as a pimp and prostitute, respectively, feature ACORN workers offering advice in Baltimore, Md. Brooklyn, N.Y. and San Bernardino, Calif. The ACORN staffers in Baltimore told O’Keefe and Giles how to falsify documents and obtain benefits for “very young girls” from El Salvador. ACORN is suing O’Keefe and Giles, as well as Andrew Breitbart, owner of the BigGovernment.com blog that published the videos, claiming the audio portion from Baltimore was obtained illegally under a Maryland law that bars tape recording individuals on the telephone without their consent.

Citigroup donated $5,000 to the Baltimore office in 2003. “We are deeply concerned about the recently released videos of frontline ACORN staff, and we look forward to the findings of the independent auditor and a timely conclusion to this matter,” said Citicorp's Andrea Hurst.

Dissident current and former officials of ACORN claim that donations made to AHC and other affiliates are often misappropriated. The organization’s finances are handled through the Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), according to the ACORN 8, a whistleblower group. “There’s no guarantee that any donations are going where they are supposed to be going,” said Ron Sykes, treasurer of the Washington D.C. ACORN and a member of the ACORN 8.

Bret Jacobson, president and founder of Maverick Strategies, said banks could risk legal action from unhappy shareholders if managers do not sever financial ties with ACORN. “It would be gross negligence for banks to continue paying public relations protection money to an organization that is so radioactive,” said Jacobson, whose firm specializes in political-public relations efforts. “ACORN has finally been exposed for its deep-seeded corruption and now bankers have to do a serious cost-benefit analysis of whether they want to be financially linked to a group willing to support child prostitution rings.”

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Source: NetRight Nation

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Tags: ACORN, Bank of America, Citigroup, Community Reinvestment Act, donors, Stop Acorn To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Congress ACORN Rolls the Public

Bill Smith, Editor: On Sept 14, we reported that the Senate Cuts Funding to ACORN after ever one learned of ACORN Promoting Prostitution & Tax Evasion. I commented at the time, "With people like Reid (D-NV), Boxer (D-CA), McCaskill (D-MO), and Kerry (D-MA) voting in favor of the amendment, a caution flag is still appropriate. This amendment could be removed in reconciliation with the House."

But then four days later on on Sept 18, we learned that the Senate approved 85-11 an amendment to the Interior appropriations bill to prohibit funding in that bill from going to ACORN. And, the House of Representatives voted 345-75 to pass the Defund ACORN Act.

At that time, we anticipated thought that the defunding of ACORN and the ACORN scandals would occupy the news for the weekend, but recall that other news took center stage when President Obama played into the hand of the Russians and announced that he was pulling the security rug out from under Poland and the European community. Well with all the ACORN lovers in Congress and the White House. we should have known this subject wasn't over.

Now we learn that last Thursday, Rep. Michelle Bachmann talked with radio host Chris Baker to discuss an ongoing investigation into ACORN. During the show, we now learn the truth about ACORN. They only lost funds for One (1) month:

She then further said that Congress hasn't cut off ACORN funding like you think. She says, "Congress did a CYA move, they defunded ACORN just for the month of October." (Read the Legislative Digest). She adds that on November 1, "the spigot of federal tax money will open wide open again." To add insult to injury, she informed us that while ACORN didn't get federal funding in October, "They received a million dollar grant from Homeland Security for fire safety. "Full Story. What does ACORN have to do with fire safety? In fact, "they received 80% of the money for fire safety that was supposed to go to Louisiana."

H/T to TexasFred for sharing the above video and KTLK story. Fred adds, "Social Security is going BROKE! Yet groups like ACORN are right back on the public dole! And ACORN, despite all their words, does nothing to help anyone other than ACORN. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget, they give great advice on how to tax shelter your whores and dope operations. That’s some valuable advice if you’re a pimp or a dope dealer!"

Well, now we know what was up with the Democrats when they voted - deception ACORN style. They were smoothing the public's feathers while they prepared to continue to pluck us clean. When the clock runs out on Halloween, the ACORN nightmare continues but once again it is funded with our Federal tax dollars!

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Tags: ACORN, federal funding, Michele Bachmann, US Congress To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

RICO Lawsuit Filed Against ACORN

Dan Spencer reports that in Ohio, a state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit was against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The lawsuit alleges ACORN has engaged in a pattern of corrupt activity that amounts to organized crime. It seeks ACORN's dissolution as a legal entity, the revocation of any licenses in Ohio, and an injunction against fraudulent voter registration and other illegal activities.

According to the press release, Plaintiffs Jennifer Miller of Mason, Ohio and Kimberly Grant of Loveland, allege that ACORN's actions deprive them of the right to participate in an honest and effective elections process:

They allege fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN dilute the votes of legally registered voters.

"The right to cast a vote that is not diluted by fraudulent votes is a fundamental individual right," Buckeye Institute President David Hansen said.

"ACORN appears to be recklessly disregarding Ohio laws and adding thousands of fraudulent voters to the state's roles in the process," Maurice Thompson, Director of the Buckeye Institute's 1851 Center for Constitutional Law said. "Such voter fraud erodes the value of legally cast votes," he added.

In the complaint, Thompson cites an accumulation of evidence showing numerous instances of admitted fraud by ACORN employees, as well as individuals solicited by ACORN.

"In light of its hiring, training and compensation practices, ACORN should have known its conduct would cause fraud," Thompson said. "It also should know that its conduct will cause fraud in the future."

In addition, the complaint cites conduct by ACORN in Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

TBlumer reports Obama’s name comes up at least three times in the complaint:

(Page 3) 18. Defendant is engaged in massive voter registration drives and political canvassing throughout the state of Ohio and the United States of America; some of this work is performed on behalf of current United States of America presidential candidate Barack Obama.
(Page 3) 19. ACORN’s political wing has endorsed Barack Obama for president, and during the primary season, the Obama camp paid Citizen Service Inc., $832,598 for various political services according to Federal Elections Commission filings. Citizen Services, Inc. and ACORN share the same board of directors.
(Page 9) 69. In Texas, where ACORN’s affiliate, Citizens Services Inc., has provided contract work on behalf of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the Houston Chronicle reported on August 17, 2008 that “About 40 percent of the 27,000 registration cards gathered by ACORN from January through July have been rejected or placed in limbo pending the gathering of more information, according to the county” while “about 6,600 were filled out by people already registered, and many others contained insufficient information.”
A full copy of the complaint is available here.

See also: ACORN Registers a 7 Year Old
Mickey Mouse Registers to Vote
Obama Invites ACORN To Shape Presidency
Stop ACORN Now

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Tags: ACORN, Election 2008, lawsuit, Ohio, RICO, stealing elections, Stealing votes, voter fraud, voter registration To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

ACORN & Taxpayer Funding | Cost of Selling Out

The lesson for policymakers is that pet groups of the left and right should never be subsidized with tax dollars. The lesson for welfare lobbies and their camp followers is that playing the insiders’ game also exacts a cost.

ACORN Historical Articles

Greg Kaza, Arkansas Policy Foundation: Three decades before Congress voted to defund ¹ a welfare lobby founded in Arkansas, congressional auditors found the group disregarded federal guidelines by using trainees in a taxpayer-funded program for political activity. The episode illustrates the peril of legislators creating bias in the policy arena by subsidizing pet groups with tax dollars.

Originally Relied on Private Funds
The irony is that Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) originally relied on private donations, while avoiding taxpayer funding after it was established in Pulaski County in 1970. Steven Wade Rathke, then a 21-year-old organizer for the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), arrived in Arkansas in 1970 to organize new chapters to aid welfare recipients. Rathke, a New Orleans native, decided to form ACORN, “an agency that would serve as a catalyst for the operation of all of the chapters.” ACORN “served as coordinating body” for NWRO chapters until April 1971,” when it severed ties with the group.²

ACORN originally relied on private funds. The Arkansas Gazette noted:

ACORN is funded almost solely from membership dues. A family is counted as one member, and pays $1 to join and $1 a month for dues. “We get a couple of dollars here and there from churches and individuals, but we don’t get any money from foundations and the government,” Rathke said. The (ACORN) Board refuses to accept federal funds. “They are 100 percent against it because it doesn’t want our flexibility curtailed,” Rathke said. “We have the right to do what we want.”³But the group’s approach to fundraising later devolved.

Government as Community Activist, Not Umpire
Legislators create bias in the public policy arena when they use tax dollars to subsidize pet groups whose policies they support. Government, in such circumstances, devolves from neutral umpire to partisan community activist.

ACORN is an example. The group evolved from Rathke’s 1973 proclamation of independence to a 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report illustrating the group’s state of dependence on government. The GAO found ACORN received more than $48 million in taxpayer-funding in fiscal years 2005 through 2009 alone. According to the report:

GAO identified awards to ACORN or potentially related organizations by 31 federal agencies and audits of such awards; documentation of related investigations and cases; and actions to implement funding restrictions by the 27 agencies in our review subject to them. Seventeen of the 31 agencies identified more than $48 million--$44.6 million in federal grants and at least $3.8 million in subawards (grants and contracts awarded by federal grantees)--to ACORN or potentially related organizations, primarily for housing-related purposes, during fiscal years 2005 through 2009. Agencies were not required to collect data on subawards; consequently, agencies were limited in their ability to identify all funding they provided to ACORN or potentially related organizations through subawards.”⁴

The GAO report was not the first to note taxpayer funding for ACORN. Government auditors told a 1979 House panel the group “violated federal guidelines for the Volunteers in Service to America contract by using VISTA trainees in political activity in 1977 and 1978.” Auditors said officials canceled the federal grant to ACORN after Rathke “refused to change political language in manuals used to train Vista workers.”⁵

Conclusion: The Cost of Selling Out
The lesson for policymakers is that pet groups of the left and right should never be subsidized with tax dollars. The lesson for welfare lobbies and their camp followers is that playing the insiders’ game also exacts a cost.⁶

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¹ Congress voted to eliminate federal funding to ACORN after undercover videos produced by youth activist James O’Keefe received widespread media coverage. O’Keefe’s 2013 book, Breakthrough (Threshold Editions) discusses the episode.
² Arkansas Gazette, July 22, 1973
³ Ibid.
⁴ GAO, “ACORN-Federal Funding and Monitoring,” June 17, 2011, http://gao.gov/products/GAO-11-484
⁵ Arkansas Gazette, June 22, 1979
⁶ ACORN filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in November 2010

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Tags: ACORN, lessons learned, taxpayer funding, cost of selling out, history, GAO, Arkansas Policy Foundation To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Acorn Corruption - Bigger Than Watergate

by Matthew Vadum, American Spectator: ACORN critic Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is mystified that both the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama administration aren't doing much about the tax-subsidized organized crime syndicate ACORN even as evidence of its wrongdoing continues to pile up. In an exclusive interview, the House Judiciary Committee member describes the ACORN saga as "the largest corruption crisis in the history of America."

"It's thousands of times bigger than Watergate because Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys," said King. "By the time we pull ACORN out by its roots America's going to understand just how big this is."

Unlike the Nixon-era Watergate scandal, the ACORN scandal reaches not only to the highest levels of government, but also to states and localities across America. The president himself and his political advisor Patrick Gaspard used to work for ACORN and the radical advocacy group has allies throughout congressional leadership who are bending over backwards to protect it. President Obama has also hired as White House counsel Bob Bauer, whom King described as "the number one defender of ACORN in the country."

ACORN has ties to unions such as SEIU and has business relationships with Wall Street. It has offices across the globe in places like Canada, Kenya, and India. . . . it stands accused of political corruption, election fraud, racketeering, money laundering, and countless other violations of the law. It is involved in major campaigns pushing for socialized medicine, green energy and cap-and-trade, enhanced welfare benefits, higher minimum wages, greater federal regulation of the financial services industry, and for a major expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act.

"The legislative branch will not investigate. [House Judiciary Committee chairman John] Conyers will not. [House Judiciary subcommittee chairman Jerrold] Nadler will not. It's not going to come out of [House Ways & Means Committee chairman Charles] Rangel's committee. It's not going to come out of [House Financial Services Committee chairman] Barney Frank's committee or from anybody in the Senate. They're going to protect ACORN."

Congress is deliberately dragging its heels on ACORN . . . In Congress Democrats "got out their arsenal and now they're using everything to protect ACORN because that's the machine that keeps them in office." . . . Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN. Holder's Justice Department released a legal opinion late last month that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress. He's also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN's systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

King said he doesn't hold out much hope that the Obama administration or Congress will decide to do the right thing and investigate ACORN. This is one-party gangster government and they know what they're doing," he said. . . . [Full Story] [H/T AR Vets Coalition]

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, corruption, DOJ, US Congress, Watergate To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

ACORN Iis Back - Re-Emerges In Obama's Job's Bill

ACORN re-emerges in Washington money game

By Kevin Mooney and Rick Manning: Tired of bipartisan Republicans who compromise the farm away on domestic policy? Frustrated with Republican presidents who allow far left Democrats to re-craft their legislation? If so, now would be an opportune moment to revisit conservative congressional Republican efforts to halt federal funding for ACORN.

Several months before the videotapes were released that showed workers offering financial advice to undercover investigators, ACORN came under fire in the House Financial Services Committee, then chaired by Barney Frank (D-Mass).  An amendment to the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act to stop the flow of federal dollars into the ACORN network was passed by a unanimous voice vote in the Committee.

The amendment would have prevented any organization indicted for voter registration or vote fraud from receiving housing counseling grants and legal assistance, making ACORN ineligible for one of its major sources of taxpayer money.

Sometime later, it became apparent to Chairman Frank that he had cut off ACORN and proceeded to reverse himself.

“I did not read it carefully, and it was in the last minute that the amendment was accepted,” he said at the time. “It is a deeply flawed amendment and I am opposed to it. Banning people from possible participation in government programs based on an indictment is a violation of the basic principles of due process.”
A clever argument from an agile mind.

But Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) had the better argument. “Congress,” she reminded colleagues, “has a fiduciary responsibility,” where groups competing for federal dollars are concerned. Put another way, why hold such low stands where the public’s money is concerned.

Later that year, the political terrain shifted against ACORN (known in full as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) thanks to the efforts of investigative journalists James O’Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles. Suddenly, Democrats who felt they needed to distance themselves from ACORN joined with Republicans to cut off funding; albeit temporarily.

Unfortunately, even with the Republicans now control of the House, it would seem that the federal sources for the renamed ACORN have been restored, according to a new report from Matthew Vadum, a senior editor with the Capital Research Center (CRC).

“President Obama has given ACORN $729,849 so far this year and billions more in federal cash may be in the pipeline,” Vadum wrote. “The president’s new economic stimulus package, the so-called ‘jobs bill,’ contains as much as $15 billion for radical left-wing groups such as ACORN (his former employer). Obama has been using his presidential bully pulpit to demand that Republicans in Congress ‘pass this bill,’ without hearings, without examination.”

Vadum also reports that many of ACORN’s former leaders are coming out of the closet as leaders of the anti-Wall Street protests known as “Occupy Wall Street.” An ironic positioning given ACORN’s role in leading the political fight to have Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Authority force those very banks to provide mortgages to people who they knew could not afford them, under the umbrella of economic equality.

Vadum is the author of a new book on ACORN, its history and its impact on the electoral process entitled: Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

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Kevin Mooney is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government (ALG). Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for ALG.

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Tags: ACORN, Occupy Wall Street, money game, Washington, D.C., President Obama, Jobs Act, Americans for Limited Government, ALG To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

ACORN To Play Role in Census

by Cristina Corbin, Fox News: The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year's count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States -- currently believed to be more than 306 million people.

A U.S. Census "sell sheet," an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN "play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful," including by "help[ing] recruit census workers." The bureau is currently employing help from more than 250 national partners, including TARGET and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to assist in the hiring effort.

But ACORN's partnership with the 2010 Census is worrisome to lawmakers who say past allegations of fraud should raise concerns about the organization. "It's a concern, especially when you look at all the different charges of voter fraud. And it's not just the lawmakers' concern. It should be the concern of every citizen in the country," Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland, R-Ga., vice ranking member of the subcommittee for the U.S. Census, told FOXNews.com. "We want an enumeration. We don't want to have any false numbers."

ACORN, which claims to be a non-partisan grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people, came under fire in 2007 when Washington State filed felony charges against several paid ACORN employees and supervisors for more than 1,700 fraudulent voter registrations. In March 2008, an ACORN worker in Pennsylvania was sentenced for making 29 phony voter registration forms. The group's activities were frequently questioned in the 2008 presidential election.

ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson told FOXNews.com that "ACORN as an organization has not been charged with any crime." He added that fears that the organization will unfairly influence the census are unfounded. "It will be the Census Bureau that determines the role and scope of its 300 national partners. ACORN is committed to a fair and accurate count," Levenson said.

The census is an official count of the country's population mandated by the U.S. Constitution. It is used to determine distribution of taxpayer money through grants and appropriations and the apportionment of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Every U.S. household unit, including those occupied by non-citizens and illegal immigrants, must be counted.

Westmoreland and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House census subcommittee, said the panel has held hearings to make sure the penalties for census takers committing fraud are clearly defined. "I feel fairly confident that the penalties for an individual manipulating the count are pretty severe," Chaffetz said. The penalty for any fraudulent activity can be up to five years in jail.

Westmoreland said he hopes the Census Bureau will maintain its measures to ensure an accurate report. "I feel comfortable right now with the people at the census department that they're going to put forth their best effort to have a fair count," he said. The U.S. Census Bureau has refuted any suggestions that ACORN or any other groups will fraudulently and unduly influence the results of the census. "The Census (Bureau) is a nonpartisan, non-political agency and we're very dedicated to an accurate account," bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner told FOXNews.com. "We have a lot of quality controls in place to keep any kind of systemic error or fraudulent behavior to affect the counts."

Buckner said the bureau received an overwhelming number of qualified applicants -- more than 1 million -- for the 140,000 census taker jobs filled to complete the first phase of the effort. Each applicant, he said, must take a basic skills exam, which includes reading a map and entering data into a handheld computer. Applicants are also subject to an FBI background check, he said.

But Buckner acknowledged that it is difficult to track an applicant's political background. "I have no way of tracking any of that information," he said. "If somebody comes in to a position with a political agenda and their work exhibits that, there are rules against that," he said.

Buckner stressed the need for organizations like ACORN to assist in the effort, saying that "any group that has a grassroots organization that can help get the word out that we have jobs" is helpful. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau had 140,000 partnerships from "national organizations to local and community organizations to elected officials," he said. "The list is as broad as the phone book."
See Also: RICO Lawsuit Filed Against ACORN
ACORN Registers a 7 Year Old
Mickey Mouse Registers to Vote
Obama Invites ACORN To Shape Presidency
Stop ACORN Now

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Tags: ACORN, corruption, FBI, NAACP, Obama, Obama administration, Scott Levenson, U.S. Census, U.S. Census Bureau To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

ACORN = RICO

By Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski: Now that a third ACORN video has surfaced, a patter emerges of ACORN workers willing to help people engage in prostitution, tax fraud, housing fraud, and even human trafficking. Under federal law, a RICO investigation is now warranted. Three strikes and you’re out, ACORN.

Videos show ACORN employees offering to help two undercover reporters/filmmakers posing as a prostitute and pimp in falsifying tax returns and getting a federal loan to buy a house that they could use as a brothel for underage prostitutes smuggled in from El Salvador.

When the first video emerged from such a meeting in ACORN’s Baltimore office on Thursday, ACORN fired the two workers involved. When another video surfaced on Friday, this one from ACORN’s D.C. office, the two workers involved there were fired as well, and ACORN said that these two reporters had tried and failed to carry out this sting in other offices.

One such office where ACORN said these reporters tried and failed was New York City. Yet Monday, a third video surfaced from Brooklyn in New York City. Once again, the ACORN employees on the video advise the undercover duo on how to violate federal law by filing a false income tax return to qualify for a federal housing loan.

As one worker says on the video, “honesty is not going to get you the house.” Well, not if you’re engaged in a host of felonies.

ACORN has the audacity to say that the undercover reporters may have committed a crime in the videotaping process, alleging that they doctored the tapes and that the reality is not what every viewer can plainly see and hear on the tape. (Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?)

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. The reality is, there are at least a half-dozen state and federal laws that could have been broken here. Even though the undercover girl is not a prostitute and there are no El Salvadoran girls either, this could still meet the legal standard for conspiracy to commit these various crimes. At a bare minimum, depending on the state, it likely fulfills the elements for the crime of attempted conspiracy, which usually carries the exact same penalty as the underlying crimes themselves (prostitution, tax fraud, etc.).

What’s important about prostitution and human trafficking is that they are specific triggers for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO. The RICO law is designed to enable the Justice Department to go after criminal enterprises. It defines “racketeering activity” as including importing illegal aliens for immoral purposes, falsifying identification documents and immigration papers, mail and wire fraud, and the sexual exploitation of children, among others.

These are all implicated on the video tapes. The ACORN workers rattle off their how-to instructions on carrying out these crimes without needing to do more than skim a couple books that they have on hand. The clear implication is that these workers are seasoned pros on how to carry out these crimes, subsidized by federal taxpayer money.

Although everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, a RICO investigation is now warranted. There are already multiple state investigations of ACORN underway, and thirty ACORN workers have already pleaded guilty to committing crimes. Attorney General Eric Holder should immediately order a RICO investigation, while we all wait to see if more footage is forthcoming.
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Mr. Ken Blackwell is a conservative family values advocate. He submited this article to the ARRA News Service Editor which appeared first in BigGovernment.com.

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Tags: ACORN, human trafficking, Ken Blackwell, Ken Klukowski, prostitution, RICO, videos To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!