AoD - The Real Problem With ACORN

By William Tucker of The American Spectator

Excerpt:

I found myself glued to the television last week as Fox broadcast its special investigation of ACORN. It was a terrific piece of journalism -- something worthy of 60 Minutes in its heyday.

But the real fascination for me was personal. Wade Rathke, the 61-year-old founder of ACORN, is exactly my age and vintage (he went to Williams, I went to Amherst). He even looks like me. Moreover, he started the organization after going South to work in the Welfare Rights Movement in 1970. I was working for Welfare Rights in Clark County, Alabama in 1970. (I remember noticing there were a lot of redheads in the movement at the time.)

But that's where the similarity ends. I ended up feeling a little ambivalent about "The Movement" and came back and started a newspaper career. Rathke says he liked community organizing so much he started his own group in Little Rock after Welfare Rights ran out of steam. He built the organization into an incredible, multi-million-dollar octopus with tentacles almost everywhere. He finally had to resign when it was discovered he covered up his brother's million-dollar embezzlement from the organization. The interview with Fox was the first he has ever granted.

Read the rest of his article at The American Spectator

ACORN Fires Beth Butler

Controversial activist group ACORN has fired the longtime companion of founder Wade Rathke over apparent concerns about a lack of "accountability" in her work leading the Louisiana chapter in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.Beth Butler was the director of that chapter and close to Rathke, whose brother Dale was accused of embezzling about $1 million from the group a decade ago. A statement by ACORN chief executive officer Bertha Lewis did not specify why she fired Butler. Read the rest at FoxNews

Bertha's Bolsheviks

This story comes from Matthew Vadum at The American Spectator. Why is ACORN's chief organizer friendly with the Marxist anti-American governments of two South American countries? Within ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis's storied rogues gallery of a rolodex may be found contact information for then-Bolivian ambassador Gustavo Guzman and for Sabine Kienzl, a professional propagandist employed by the Venezuelan embassy. The listing for Guzman contains what appears to have been a direct office telephone number. Read the rest at The American Spectator

Bank of America Pulls Back From ACORN Work

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.Read the rest FoxNews

They Still Ain't Gettin' It

In an article at the New York Daily News website, Errol Louis makes a feeble attempt at defending the actions of a few ACORN employees. Once again, I'll break it down.

"The videos shot and distributed by a pair of right-wing pranksters to discredit ACORN had all the elements of a good political hit job: sleaze, sensationalism, sleight-of-hand."

Pranksters? Ah, no, Mr. Louis. These two young Americans did something that 60 Minutes, 20/20 and other fringe news outlets, like MSNBC, CNN, et al refuse to do. By bringing to light the inner workings of taxpayer funded organizations, like ACORN, we see that our money is suborning tax fraud and child prostitution and in one video what appears to be slave trade.

James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles went from one ACORN community office to another posing as a pimp and his whore, pretending to seek help securing low-income housing and/or tax help to set up a brothel using underage illegal immigrants.

Not one ACORN outlet actually completed or filed illegal paperwork, but the video stunt worked like a charm anyway.

This one is too easy. Whether or not they actually filed the paperwork is irrelevant. What is of relevance is that ACORN employees showed a willingness to commit tax fraud and child prostitution. Nuff said.

Mr. Louis goes on:

Biased and/or naive news producers and editors rushed one-minute excerpts of O'Keefe and Giles' heavily edited videos onto national television without a thought, even when the pair refused to release the full tapes or answer questions on the air about how they were created.

In at least one case, O'Keefe simply lied about his stunt, claiming on Fox News Channel that every ACORN office he visited played along with his purported illegal schemes.

Not so. ACORN's Philadelphia office filed a police report about the bizarre questions posed by O'Keefe and Giles (a copy of the complaint is online).

In another instance, a California ACORN worker named Tresa Kaelke filled O'Keefe's hidden camera with a wild, dramatic tale about killing her husband and getting away with it, which O'Keefe and Giles claimed as yet another example of ACORN perfidy.

In reality, Kaelke invented the story because the fake hooker and her pal "were clearly playing with me." San Bernardino police investigated the claim and concluded that Ms. Kaelke's "known former husbands" appear to be "alive and well," although perhaps unamused.

These facts, and other holes in O'Keefe's selective storytelling, will become relevant when the national witch hunt subsides. A trip to court, in fact, may put the whole matter in a different light: in at least one state, O'Keefe's surreptitious taping may have violated privacy laws.

Biased and naive news producers rushed to get it? You mean bias news outlets like MSNBC? The bias news producers he is referring to is FoxNews and none of us would have known anything about it if it wasn't for FoxNews breaking the story that these "pranksters" exposed.

I certainly hope that ACORN does try to sue James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and FoxNews for their "lying". ACORN's problem with this approach would give Fox News a way to force ACORN to open all of their books. In other words, dirty laundry has a tendency to get aired out in court.

Let me explain, point by point, what the crux of the matter really is, Mr. Louis:

• ACORN has received $56 million in taxpayer money.

• Bertha Lewis was put in place to "clean up" ACORN.

• They are currently under investigation in many states for voter registration fraud.

• They are slated to receive $8.5 billion in additional taxpayer money.

• Then there are the videos showing ACORN employees suborning tax fraud and child prostitution, as well as what appears to be slavery in one video.

ACORN has a history of ethics issues and campaigns for the left. I am of the opinion that ACORN and other like organizations exploits minorities, just look a the content of the videos! Black and Brown people, as Bertha Lewis puts it, assisting a white "pimp" and a white "prostitute" on how to defraud the government!

And you say it's a witch hunt?

In Defense of ACORN - Are You Kidding Me?

Salon.com's, Joe Conason opines that:

"Both the Senate and the House have voted over the past few days to curtail any federal funding of ACORN's activities. While that congressional action probably won't destroy the group, whose funding does not mainly depend on government largesse, the ban inflicts severe damage on its reputation."

You got to be kidding us, Joe. Inflicts severe damage on its reputation? How many ACORN offices are under investigation for voter registration fraud? And now we have these reprobates suborning tax fraud and child prostitution on the taxpayer's nickle and you talk about damaging their reputation. ACORN may not primarily depend on the government dole, but, seeing how they already received $56,000,000 and was slated for $8,500,000,000 in the "stimulus" package, they sure do get a large chunk of it.

Yeah, Joe, glad to see my tax dollars at work.

But, Joe doesn't stop there. He further bemones:

"Like so many conservative attacks, the crusade against ACORN has been highly exaggerated and even falsified to create a demonic image that bears little resemblance to the real organization. Working in the nation's poorest places, and hiring the people who live there, ACORN is not immune to the pathologies that can afflict institutions in those communities. As a large nonprofit handling many millions of dollars, it has suffered from mismanagement at the top as well -- although there is nothing unique in that, either."

Highly exaggerated and falsified? Have you seen the videos, Joe? Granted that there are only five of them, but the content speaks volumes of just how this outfit "helps" poor people; unless you consider suborning tax fraud and child prostitution as helping the poor. You say that ACORN is not immune to the pathologies that can afflict institutions. That may be true, however, you are failing to see the main issue. This organization is a 501(c), but, when any organization receives money from the taxpayer they must be scrutinized to keep them honest. I don't know what planet you're on, but maybe you have conveniently forgotten that ACORN has a history of questionable ethics.

Many are saying that ACORN should be dismantled. However, since you say that they don't primarily receive funding from the government, then they shouldn't have anything to worry about; after all George Soros has deep pockets and I'm sure Wade Rathke and his brother can help. Of course, you know that if the President signs the current bill into law, ACORN is doomed without the government's largesse.

Continuing on with Joe's defense:

"Among the most popular canards on the right, repeated constantly by conservative pundits and politicians, is that ACORN has been found guilty of engaging in deliberate voter fraud, using federal funds. In reality, ACORN has registered close to 2 million low-income citizens across the country over the past five years -- a laudable record with a very low incidence of fraud of any kind."

No, Joe we are saying that they are being investigated for deliberate voter registration fraud, using taxpayer money. When we see Mickey Mouse as being registered to vote, yeah, that causes sane people to raise an eyebrow. When are you going to get that right?

He goes on:

"If only the Republicans who have worked up a frenzy over ACORN's alleged crimes were so indignant about real and damaging voter fraud -- such as the amazing case of Young Political Majors, the firm that ran GOP registration efforts in California, Massachusetts, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere before the authorities in Orange County, Calif., busted its president, Mark Anthony Jacoby, and sent him to jail last year. He had built a lucrative partisan career by teaching his minions to deceive thousands of voters into registering as Republicans rather than Democrats, among other scams. Of course, the only on-air mention of the Young Political Majors scandal on Fox News was made by blogger Brad Friedman -- and the national media, mainstream and conservative, generally ignored it. They were too busy generating "controversy" over ACORN."

But, here's the major difference, Joe. Mark Jacoby was acting on his own WITHOUT government funding and he wasn't spreading like a cancer inside of the White House. ACORN, on the other hand, receives taxpayer money and is in bed with politicians. Of course, I am not going to defend the lack of reporting on his sleaziness and his arrest.

Joe goes on to say that Bertha Lewis will be "conducting" an internal audit of ACORN. Is that something like White House politicians investigating themselves? Yeah, we know how that goes. However, for Bertha Lewis to assert that the videos were doctored and then threaten to "go after" the people that made them, as well as FoxNews for airing them is a bit strange. Here we have two young people doing what the fringe media won't do and she has an issue with being secretly video taped?

Mr. Conason, you're pathetic.

Census Bureau Severs Ties With ACORN

The Census Director has sent a letter to the National Headquarters of ACORN notifying the group that it will no longer have a role in conducting the 2010 census. ACORN had previously been tapped to help with low level data gathering.

Read the rest at FoxNews