NationalDogPress.com Headline News ©

Ron Paul: Obama ‘Goal’ Is Economic Collapse

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 3:08 PM

By: Rick Pedraza

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, says he was dismayed that Congress passed the war supplemental appropriations bill so easily last week. “An economic collapse seems to be the goal of Congress and this administration,” Paul said during his weekly radio address Monday. “Washington spends with impunity, domestically bailing and nationalizing basically everything they can get their hands on,”

Paul said. Mocking the idea that Obama was a “peace candidate,” Paul pointed out that his administration will be sending another $106 billion it doesn’t have “to continue the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq without a hint of a plan to bring American troops home.”

Paul noted that many of his congressional colleagues who previously voted with him in opposition to every war supplemental request under the Bush administration seem to have changed their tune. He maintains that a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. “Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives through the power of the purse,”

Paul said. “As long as Congress continues to enable these dangerous interventions abroad, there is no end in sight: that is until we face total economic collapse.”

Paul noted that, as Americans struggle through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the foreign aid and International Monetary Fund appropriations in the spending bill passed last week can be called an international bailout:

The emergency supplemental appropriations bill sends:

$660 million to Gaza

$555 million to Israel

$310 million to Egypt

$300 million to Jordan

$420 million to Mexico

$889 million to the United Nations for so-called “peace-keeping” missions

$1 billion overseas to address the global financial crisis outside U.S. borders

$8 billion to address a potential pandemic flu, which he said could result in mandatory vaccinations “for no discernable reason other than to enrich the pharmaceutical companies.”

Perhaps most outrageous, Paul said, is the $108 billion loan guarantee to the IMF.

“These new loan guarantees will allow that destructive organization to continue spending taxpayer money to prop up corrupt leaders and promote harmful economic policies overseas.

Not only does sending American taxpayer money to the IMF hurt citizens here, evidence shows that it even hurts those it pretends to help.”

Paul said that IMF loans require policy changes called “structural adjustment” programs, which amount to “forced Keynesianism.” “This is the very fantasy-infused economic model that has brought our own country to its knees,”

Paul said, “and IMF loans act as the Trojan horse to inflict it on others.” Leaders in recipient nations tend to become more concerned with the wishes of international needs than the needs of their own people, he said. “Argentina and Kenya are just two examples of countries that followed IMF mandates right off a cliff.

The IMF frequently recommends currency devaluations to poorer nations, which has wiped out the already impoverished over and over.”

Paul noted a long list of brutal dictators the IMF happily supported and propped up with loans that left their oppressed populaces with staggering amounts of debt with no economic progress to show for it.

The continued presence of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan does not make America safer at home but, in fact, undermines national security, he said.

“We are buying nothing but evil and global oppression by sending [our] taxpayer dollars to the IMF — not to mention there is no constitutional authority to do so.”

Dean A. Ayers, Director
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Animals C.L.U.B.- Freedom National Organization

Dean A. Ayers is a prior United States Air Force Special Agent for the AFOSI. His duties included that of law enforcement specialist, criminal, fraud, and counter-intelligence. He was assigned to felony crimes in federal government, fraud, waste and abuse investigations of the military branches of service, and counter-intelligence in overseas locations. Dean was also a former Texas State Commissioned Alamo State Park Armed Ranger.

Dean is currently Director, Animals C.L.U.B.- Freedom National Organization and Dean is also a Lead Investigative Reporter for the NationalDogPress.com Headline News ©, DogPress.org, and Animalid.biz news press services.

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NationalDogPress.com Headline News ©

ACORN: Who Funds the Weather Underground’s Little Brother?

Summary: The Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
has become America’s most prominent left-
wing community group. Little-known until
now, ACORN has played a major role in
the subprime mortgage mess that has undermined Americans’ support for free market problem-solving and set off a worldwide
chain of financial troubles. It is also implicated in vote fraud schemes from coast
to coast. ACORN aims to give America
change that socialists can believe in – by
any means necessary. It is deliberately organized to avoid scrutiny. But with an FBI
probe underway, millions of dollars in back
taxes owing, and a racketeering lawsuit
pending, it may finally have to answer for
its many misdeeds. (This is a companion
article to this month’s Labor Watch, which
looks at ACORN’s inconsistent approach to
labor issues.)

ACORN, the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now,
is a 38 year old radical left-wing
activist group that has taken in a minimum
of $126.4 million in donations and tax dollars
since 1993. ACORN calls itself the nation’s
largest community-based organization with
over 400,000 member families in 110 cities.
Its stated mission is “building community
organizations that are committed to social and
economic justice.” But like Jeremiah Wright,
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ACORN activists
build community solidarity by using the
corrosive rhetoric of class-warfare.

ACORN’s “People’s Platform,” ratifi ed in
1979 and updated in 1990, is a kind of Communist
Manifesto for America’s community
organizers:

By Matthew Vadum

Barack Obama, a former benefactor of and organizer for ACORN, meets with ACORN
activists in this undated photograph published in ACORN’s Social Policy magazine
in 2004. Obama has said that his days spent community organizing were the “best
education” he ever had. After organizing for ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate, Obama
lectured at ACORN on organizing techniques.
But we have nothing to show for the work
of our hand, the tax of our labor. Our
patience has been abused; our experience
misused. Our silence has been seen as
support. Our struggle has been ignored.

Enough is enough. We will wait no longer
for the crumbs at America’s door. We
will not be meek, but mighty. We will
not starve on past promises, but feast on
future dreams.

ACORN officials “bill themselves as nonpartisan
community organizers merely interested

CONTENTS
November 2008
ACORN
Page 1
Philanthropy Notes
Page 16

FoundationWatch

in giving a voice to minorities and the poor,”
notes the Wall Street Journal, but that façade
is fading fast. In reality, the organization is
“a union-backed, multimillion-dollar outfit
that uses intimidation and other tactics”
to advance a “highly partisan agenda.” Its
community organizers “are best understood
as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even
the Democratic Party.”

But what does this many-headed hydra
of an organization actually do? The now-
legendary, extensively documented electoral
fraud efforts of ACORN have been indelibly
imprinted in the public consciousness,
but that’s only a smidgen of what ACORN
actually does.

ACORN, with its members dressed in bright
red shirts, organizes crude protests against
businesspeople and public offi cials. Opposed
to the profit motive and capitalism
in general, it pushes for more government
control over citizens and the economy.
ACORN supports gun control, a government
monopoly in healthcare and an open door
immigration policy. It supports a big raise
in the federal minimum wage and so-called
“living–wage” laws enacted by states and
cities. ACORN wants more funding for urban
public schools, and wants federal and state
laws enacted guaranteeing paid sick leave
for all full-time workers. The group claims

Editor: Matthew Vadum

Publisher: Terrence Scanlon

Foundation Watch

is published by Capital ResearchCenter, a non-partisan education and
research organization, classifi ed by
the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

Address:

1513 16th Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036-1480

Phone: (202) 483-6900Long-Distance: (800) 459-3950

E-mail Address:

mvadum@capitalresearch.org

Web Site:

http://www.capitalresearch.org/

Organization Trends welcomes letters to the editor.

Reprints are available for $2.50 prepaid to Capital Research Center.

to fight for affordable housing and it rails
against foreclosures and so-called “predatory”
lending, even though it demands that
banks make loans destined to default. (See
Organization Trends, Oct. 2007.)

Next year it is likely that liberals in Congress
will try to enact into law the so-called
Fairness Doctrine in order to bludgeon
conservative-dominated talk radio. An
ACORN position paper argues that “[t]he
increasing concentration of ownership in
communication industries ensures that, unless
positive steps are taken, the concerns
of low- and moderate-income people will
continue to be ignored.” The group urges
reinstating the doctrine, which was rescinded
by the Reagan administration, “so that grass
roots community groups have equal time to
express their views.”

ACORN claims to have “delivered approximately
$15 billion in direct monetary benefits
to our membership and constituency over the
past 10 years.” It also has taken credit for
organizing community and labor coalitions
that enacted living wage laws in 41 cities. It
would be a mistake to dismiss these claims
as idle boasts.

ACORN even indoctrinates students in the
taxpayer-supported schools. In New York
City it runs the ACORN High School for
Social Justice and Bread and Roses High
School. ACORN schools have transported
students to the nation’s capital to protest
tax cuts.

And even though ACORN is an enthusiastic
supporter of government regulation of the
economy, it hates having to obey those same
regulations.

In 1995, ACORN sued the state of California
seeking an exemption from the law
that requires that it pay its own employees
a minimum wage. ACORN, which argued
that keeping its employees in poverty helps
to boost their zeal to help the poor, lost.

Even though it supports the continued imposition
of equal employment opportunity laws
on the rest of America, it argued it shouldn’t
have to comply with those same laws. The
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
had to sue ACORN to force it comply
with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,

the crown jewel of the civil rights movement’s
legislative accomplishments. (EEOC

v. ACORN, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2948; 67
Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 508)
Ironically, ACORN and its affi liates, all
reliable cheerleaders for higher taxes, are
longtime tax deadbeats. A search of public
records found more than 200 federal, state,
and local tax liens adding up to more than
$3.7 million that are associated with groups

ACORN supporter and unrepentant terrorist
William Ayers stands on the U.S. flag in this
2001 photo.
that share ACORN’s address on Elysian
Fields Avenue in New Orleans. The most
recent lien, in the amount of $23,383, was
filed by the IRS against an ACORN affiliate,
American Workers Associates Inc., on Sept.
9, 2008. The largest lien ($547,312) was filed
against ACORN by the IRS on March 10,
2008. (See table of liens at page 3.)

It is unclear what kinds of taxes ACORN
and its affiliates failed to pay, but because
almost all ACORN affiliates are exempted
from paying most or all taxes, it seems likely
that the liens were issued for non-payment of
employees’ payroll taxes. If so, this would
be ironic because payroll taxes fund the
social and wealth-distribution programs that
ACORN so staunchly supports.

Manufacturing Consent at the Ballot
Box

In the past, low-level ACORN employees
have landed in hot water for registering “Jive
Turkey” and “Mary Poppins” to vote and
for reportedly paying for fraudulent voter

November 2008

FoundationWatch

ACORN & Co.: Community Organizers and Tax Cheats

This table, based on public records, reflects some of the largest of those active tax liens and now-released tax liens pertaining to ACORN and affiliates that list 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117 as their address. A
tax lien is issued only after other attempts to collect the tax debt have been made and the tax debt is seriously delinquent.
If the lien has been released, that means that after the debtor failed to pay the tax owing, it either paid the tax owing or
made arrangements to pay satisfactory to the creditor tax agency. There may be many, many more ACORN tax liens
pending that have been sent out to other ACORN addresses.

Debtor Amount Creditor Original Lien or Filing
Filing Date Release? #
ACORN $547,312 IRS 3/10/2008 lien 930254
ACORN $306,407 IRS 3/6/2008 lien 930015
Community Labor Organizing
Citizens Consulting Inc. $140,994 IRS 3/14/2007 release 893022
ACORN $132,997 IRS 3/14/2008 lien 930768
ACORN $132,109 IRS 3/7/2007 release 892311
ACORN Housing Corp Inc. $125,342 IRS 5/9/2007 release 899820
Citizens Consulting Inc. $118,758 IRS 8/1/2007 release 912881
Citizens Consulting Inc. $118,600 IRS 6/4/2008 release 940211
SEIU $50,000 IRS 8/2/2005 lien 830295
ACORN $33,978 California 6/7/2006 lien 2006221370

The Internal Revenue Service explains its policy regarding imposing and releasing liens:

“[A] Notice of Federal Tax Lien may be filed only after: We assess the liability; We send you a Notice and Demand for Payment - a bill that tells you how
much you owe in taxes; and You neglect or refuse to fully pay the debt within 10 days after we notify you about it.”

The IRS “will issue a Release of the Notice of Federal Tax Lien: Within 30 days after you satisfy the tax due (including interest and other additions) by
paying the debt or by having it adjusted, or Within 30 days after we accept a bond that you submit, guaranteeing payment of the debt.” (source: http://
www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=108339,00.html#release)

registrations with crack cocaine.

Current and former ACORN employees say
ACORN makes no effort to remove bogus
voter registrations. “There’s no quality control
on purpose, no checks and balances,”
said Nate Toler, who worked on an ACORN
voter effort in Missouri. “The internal motto
is ‘We don’t care if it’s a lie, just so long as
it stirs up the conversation,’” he said. (Wall
Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2006)

In this election cycle the group seems to have
gotten much more aggressive. ACORN is
currently under investigation for electoral
fraud in at least 12 states. Not surprisingly,
potential swing states, including Nevada and
Colorado, are ACORN targets. (See chart,
The ACORN Vote Fraud File.)

November 2008

John Fund, a vote fraud expert and Wall
Street Journal columnist, chalks up this
new militancy to desperation. The author of
Stealing Elections, Fund predicted that the
federal investigations and a nearly $1 million
embezzlement scandal will do serious
damage to ACORN. He argues that ACORN
had to join with unions and other left-wing
groups in an all-out push for an Obama victory
in the hope that the scandals would all
get swept under the rug.

Fund’s comments came before the New York
Times reported (Oct. 24, 2008) that ACORN
and its affiliate Project Vote acknowledged
that the figure of 1.3 million new voter registrations
that the groups claimed to have
processed in the 2008 election cycle was a
wild exaggeration.

Michael Slater, Project Vote’s executive
director, said the true total for both groups
was closer to 450,000. About 400,000 registrations
were tossed by election offi cials for
fraud and other reasons.

ACORN always resists accepting blame for
the systemic electoral fraud that is its forte.
It’s never their fault. Not surprisingly, the
group said last month that rogue operators
—not ACORN officials at the top— were
responsible for the invalid voter registrations.
ACORN said it had to fire 829 of the
10,000 canvassers it hired during the election
for problems such as falsifying registration
forms.

Despite its own problems with rampant electoral
fraud, Project Vote tries to get rid of the
problem of electoral fraud by defining it out

FoundationWatch

of existence. The group says voter fraud is
largely a myth. In a Project Vote report called
“The Politics of Voter Fraud,” by Lorraine

C. Minnite, assistant professor of political
science at Columbia University’s Barnard
College, Minnite writes, “The claim that
voter fraud threatens the integrity of American
elections is itself a fraud.” (The report is
available at http://www.capitalresearch.org/
blog/?p=1897.)
Fund disagrees. Going into the 2008 election,
he wrote that the Democrats alone
were poised to mobilize 10,000 lawyers to
monitor the elections, and not just in Florida.
He wrote that this year’s election would be
the first presidential election “where the
full impact of new federally-mandated provisional
ballots will be felt.” Opportunities
for recount anarchy are legion. “Any person
who is not on the voter registration lists this
November must be given a provisional ballot,
which will be set aside and counted if
found valid later.”

Fund warned that

“[a] tug of war over provisional ballots
may be inevitable in key states where
the margin of victory is no greater than
the number of provisional ballots cast.
Both campaigns would once again send
squadrons of lawyers to any closely contested
state to watch and argue as every
single provisional ballot in the state is
reviewed and a determination is made as
to whether it should be counted. Results
could once again be delayed for weeks
after Election Day.”

When ACORN’s Jerry Kellman was asked
months ago if the offi cially nonpartisan
ACORN had assisted the Obama presidential
campaign in any way, he replied that its
501(c)(3) status prevented ACORN from
helping as an organization, but that “lots of
grassroots members” were assisting. Kellman
hired Barack Obama in 1985 to run an
effort called the Developing Communities
Project. (Foundation Watch, June 2008)

How ACORN Acts in Public

For ACORN, the ends justify the means.
Anything goes, from rude protests to crude
intimidation and violence.

* Little attention was paid in 1991 when a
busload of ACORN activists from Baltimore
and Philadelphia jumped the queue and
muscled out lobbyists who had reserved
seats at a congressional committee hearing.
(American Banker, June 20, 1991) In 1992,
80 ACORN members occupied a Crossland
Savings Bank branch in Brooklyn “to demand
a vacant apartment building be turned into
housing for low and moderate income families.”
(Newsday, July 29, 1993)

* But in March 1995, ACORN attracted
lots of attention when about 500 ACORN
activists stormed the Washington Hilton,
forcing then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich
(R-Georgia) to cancel a speech he was to
up at the detention facility and threatened
to stay put until the demonstrators were
released. (“Spreading the Virus,” by Stanley
Kurtz, New York Post, Oct. 14, 2008)

* In Chicago and other cities, ACORN
activists have seized abandoned houses
and encouraged homeless people to squat
there, claiming these actions would convince
authorities to convert them into low-income
housing. “ACORN protests have turned
violent, at times as soon as the rallies began.
Some protests disrupted Federal Reserve
hearings and busted into closed city council
give to county commissioners. Demonstrators
chanting “Nuke Newt!” grabbed the
microphone in the hall and took over the
head table. When the speech was cancelled,
ACORN activists cheered.

* Later that year, ACORN mobilized when
a congressional panel began considering
reforms to the Community Reinvestment Act
(CRA). Led by ACORN national president
Maude Hurd, the activists disrupted a hearing
by chanting, “CRA has got to stay!” and
“Banks for greed, not for need!” When they
again tried to commandeer the microphone,
five demonstrators, including Hurd, were arrested.
Efforts to free them by ACORN allies
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and
Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) failed.
The U.S. Capitol Police let them go only when
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) showed
meetings,” wrote Sol Stern of the Manhattan
Institute. (“ACORN’s Nutty Regime for
Cities,” City Journal, Spring 2003)

* Drawing inspiration from New York’s
homeless “squeegee” people, community
organizers at ACORN harass motorists as part
of the group’s “toll roads” program. Activists
carry canisters and hit up trapped motorists
at intersections for donations. (ACORN v. St.
Louis County, Missouri, 1989, 726 F. Supp.
747; 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14638)
* ACORN is willing to put innocent people’s
lives on the line in order to get its message
out. When proselytizing in communities,
ACORN won’t take no for an answer, even
around hospital emergency rooms. Activists
created a furor when they distributed leaflets
in a busy hospital. (Dallas ACORN v. Dallas
November 2008

County Hospital District, U.S. 656 F.2d 1175;
1981 U.S. App. LEXIS 17382)

* In 2001, ACORN protests outside the
home of the chairman of San Diego Gas &
Electric were so disruptive (demonstrators
handed out fliers with a picture of the chairman
below the word “WANTED”) that the
company got a temporary restraining order
forbidding pickets and requiring demonstrators
to stay 1,000 yards away from the homes
of SDG&E employees. The company’s legal
complaint alleged that the protesters shouted
derogatory comments outside the chairman’s
home, banged on his windows, and pounded
on his front door. (San Diego Union-Tribune,
Dec. 20, 2001)
* In 2002, ACORN activists dumped garbage
in front of Baltimore’s City Hall and demonstrated
outside the home of then-mayor
Martin O’Malley, who had dismissed the
group as “professional protesters.” O’Malley
said, “They unloaded a busload of people
shouting pretty ugly things and scared the
daylights out of my wife and kids. I thought it
was a pretty cruddy thing to do.” (Baltimore
Sun, Oct. 7, 2002)

* In 2004, two Ohio women volunteers
told police that an ACORN protester forced
his way inside the Cuyahoga County GOP
headquarters and assaulted them during an
attempt to protest a Republican challenge
to voter registrations. The ACORN member
said the Republican women assaulted him.
No charges were filed. (AP, Oct. 29, 2004)
* Last year, as Congress was about to begin
hearings on predatory lending, ACORN
FoundationWatch

coordinated protests in cities that have a
Federal Reserve Bank district headquarters.
In Kansas City, the Fed invited protest organizers
inside to meet with a community
affairs offi cer.

ACORN: Is it “Nonpartisan”?

In February, ACORN Votes, which is
ACORN’s national political action committee,
endorsed Barack Obama for president.
ACORN’s senior offi cials lavished
praise on Obama. Maude Hurd, ACORN’s
national president, said the senator “is the
candidate who best understands and can
affect change on the issues ACORN cares
about like stopping foreclosures, enacting
fair and comprehensive immigration reform,
and building stronger and safer communities
across America.”

The Many Faces of ACORN

Among ACORN’s many affiliates and subsidiaries are:

385 Palmetto Street Housing Fund Corp.
4415 San Jacinto Street Corp.
ACORN
Acorn 2004 Housing Development Fund Corp.
Acorn 2005 Housing Development Fund Corp.
ACORN Associates
ACORN Benefi cial Association
ACORN BeverlyY LLC
ACORN Campaign Services
ACORN Campaign To Raise The Minimum Wage
ACORN Center for Housing, Inc.
ACORN Children’s Benefi cial Association
ACORN Community Land Association
ACORN Community Land Association of IL
ACORN Community Land Association of LA
ACORN Community Land Association of PA
ACORN Community Labor Organizing Center
ACORN Cultural Trust
ACORN Dumont-Snediker Housing Development
Fund Corp.
ACORN Fair Housing
ACORN Fund
ACORN Housing Corp.
ACORN Housing Corp. of IL
ACORN Housing Corp. of MO
ACORN Housing Corp. of PA
ACORN Institute
ACORN Law For Education, Representation,
And Training
ACORN Management Corp.
ACORN National Broadcasting Network
ACORN Services
ACORN Television In Action For Communities
ACORN Tenant Union Training And Organizing
Project
ACORN Tenants Union
Affiliated Media Foundation Movement
Agape Broadcasting Foundation Inc

American Environmental Justice Project Inc.
American Home Childcare Providers Association
American Institute for Social Justice
Arizona ACORN Housing Corp.
Arkansas Broadcasting Foundation
Association for the Rights of Citizens Inc.
Associated Regional Maintenance Systems
Austin Organizing and Support Center
Baltimore Organizing and Support Center
Boston Organizing and Support Center
Broad Street Corp.
California Community Network
Chicago Organizing and Support Center
Chief Organizer Fund
Child Care Providers for Action Franklin
Citizens Action Research Project
Citizens Campaign for Work, Living Wage &
Labor Peace
Citizens Consulting, Inc.
Citizens Campaign for Finance Reform
Citizens for Future Progress
Colorado ACORN Housing Corp.
Crescent City Broadcasting Corp.
Desert Rose Homes LLC
Dumont Avenue Housing Development Fund
Elysian Fields Corp., Inc
Elysian Fields Partnership
Fifteenth Street Corp.
Floridians For All PAC
Franklin ACORN Housing
Greenville Community Charter School Inc.
Greenwell Springs Corp.
Hospitality Hotel and Restaurant Organizing
Council (HOTROC)
Houston Organizing And Support Center
KABF Radio
KNON Radio
Labor Neighbor Research and Training Center Inc.

Living Wage Resource Center
Louisiana ACORN Fair Housing
Massachusetts ACORN Housing Corp.
Metro Technical Institute
Missouri Tax Justice Research Project
Montana Radio Network
Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp.
Mutual Housing Association of New York Inc.
National Center for Jobs & Justice
New Mexico Organizing and Support Center
New Orleans Community Housing Organization
New York ACORN Housing Company Inc.
New York Agency for Community Affairs Inc.
New York Organizing and Support Center
Organizers Forum
Pennsylvania Institute for Community Affairs
People’s Equipment Resource Corp.
Phoenix Organizing And Support Center
Project Vote
SEIU Local 100
SEIU Local 880
Service Workers Action Team
Shreveport Community Television
Site Fighters
Sixth Avenue Corp.
Social Policy
Southern Training Center
St. Louis Organizing And Support Center
St. Louis Tax Reform Group
Student Minimum Wage Action Campaign
Texas ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
Wal-Mart Workers Association
Wal-Mart Association for Reform Now
Working Families Association

source: Employment Policies Institute report, “Rotten
ACORN: America’s Bad Seed,” July 2006, see PDF fi le at
http://www.rottenacorn.com/downloads/060728_badSeed.
pdf.

November 2008

FoundationWatch

The ACORN Vote Fraud File

Commenting before the 2008 election, ACORN attorney Kathryn Simpson: “There’s no voter fraud. There has been no
election.” Not so fast, ACORN. “It is against the law to register someone to vote who does not fall within the parameters to
vote, or to put someone on there falsely,” said FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patterson.

This list provides an overview of ACORN’s electoral improprieties but is by no means exhaustive.

Arkansas

1998: Project Vote contractor arrested for
falsifying 400 voter registration cards

Colorado

2005: Perjury convictions for 2 ex-ACORN
employees for false voter registrations
2004: ACORN employee admits forging signatures, registering 3 friends 40 times

Connecticut

2008: ACORN registers 7 year old girl, claiming she’s 27 on voter form

Florida

2008: ACORN registers “Mickey Mouse” to
vote in rodent’s home city of Orlando

Indiana

2008: Lake County receives 5,000 ACORN
registrations, at least 2,100 fraudulent

Michigan

2008: municipal clerks accuse ACORN of filing
fraudulent, duplicative registrations

Minnesota

2004: ACORN ex-worker illegally carried 300+
voter registrations in his car’s trunk

Missouri

2007: Identify theft, false voter registration
indictments for 4 ACORN employees
2006: Federal election fraud indictments for 8
ACORN employees (forgery, registrations)
2003: ACORN files 5,379 registrations but
only 2,013 appear valid

Missouri (continued)
2000: At least least 1,000 invalid registrations
fi led by ACORN

Nevada

2008: (Democratic) Sec’y of State ordered
vote fraud raid on ACORN Las Vegas office
2008: Clark County reports “thousands” of
phony registrations from ACORN

North Carolina

2004: ACORN investigated for filing fake voter
registration cards

New Mexico

2008: ACORN hires registrars with criminal
records for forgery and identify theft
2005: ACORN files 3,000 potentially fraudulent signatures for ballot initiative
2004: ACORN registered a 13-year old boy
to vote

Ohio

2008: ACORN pays teenager cash and cigarettes to register 73 times
2008: ACORN registers homeless man 13
times
2008: Buckeye Institute sues ACORN/Project
Vote under state racketeering law
2007 : after ACORN registers him in 2 counties,
man indicted on two felony counts
2004: ACORN worker indicted for false signatures and voter forms

Pennsylvania

2008: ACORN employee sentenced to 23
months for identity theft and record tampering
2008: ACORN employee pleads not guilty to
identity theft and record tampering
2008: U.S. Attorney investigates after Philadelphia flags 1,500 registrations from ACORN
2008: Dauphin County officials say 100 registrations from ACORN are suspicious
2004: ACORN probed, Berks County official:
voter fraud “absolutely out of hand”

Texas

2004: voter accuses ACORN of fi ling false
registration form in his name

Virginia

2005: state audit finds 83% of registrations
filed by ACORN/Project Vote invalid

Washington

2008: Indictments on felony voter fraud handed
down against 7 ACORN workers
2007: guilty pleas by 3 ACORN workers after
2,000 fraudulent registrations filed
2007: vote fraud charges laid against 4
ACORN workers
2006: Sec’y of state says all but 6 of 1,800
registrations from ACORN were fake

Wisconsin

2004: A D.A. probes 7 registrations fi led by
Project Vote without voters’ permission

(Sources: Employment Policies Institute web-
site http://www.rottenacorn.com/, media reports)

Obama understands the issues facing low-
and moderate-income people, said Alicia
Russell, ACORN’s western regional representative.
“He’s on the same level as we
are, and sees our issues as we do.” Texas
ACORN president Toni McElroy lauded
Obama, embracing his call for “fundamental
change in our economy to protect homeowners
and neighborhoods from the scourge of
foreclosures that is sweeping communities
across Texas.”

To protect the 501(c)(3) tax status of some
of its affiliates ACORN often claims to be
community-oriented and offi cially nonpartisan.
But it celebrates the most left-wing urban

politicians and endorses Democratic Party
candidates. If it’s ever endorsed a Republican,
that endorsement is well-hidden.

For instance, this year Minnesota ACORN
endorsed Democrat Al Franken in his 2008

U.S.Senate campaign against Republican incumbent
Norm Coleman. ACORN endorsed
Democrat Kweisi Mfume in his unsuccessful
2006 primary run for the U.S. Senate
against Ben Cardin, the eventual winner,
and ACORN’s PAC endorsed Rep. Chaka
Fattah (D-Pennsylvania) when he ran unsuccessfully
for mayor of Philadelphia against
Michael Nutter in 2007. (Philadelphia Daily
News, May 2, 2007) ACORN’s 2005 annual
report identifies as allies Los Angeles mayor
Antonio Villagairosa, a Democrat, and Rep.
Maxine Waters (D-California).

A recent video promoting ACORN didn’t
even bother to show a single Republican
lawmaker. The video called “ACORN
Grassroots Democracy Campaign,” available
on YouTube (http://www.youtube/.
com/watch?v=cLCSnbN1lRI), showcases
a parade of Capitol Hill Democrats as its
allies, including strategist Paul Begala,
Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and
Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pennsylvania), and
Representatives Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio),
Donna Edwards (D-Maryland), Barney

November 2008

Frank (D-Massachusetts), and Brad Miller
(D-North Carolina).

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a
lawyer who is a national co-chairman of
Obama’s presidential campaign, represented
the Clinton era Justice Department in support
of ACORN in ACORN v. Edgar, a 1995 ballot
access case in which Obama was ACORN’s
lead attorney. In April, the Democratic
governor steered a $33,000 grant through
the Massachusetts legislature for ACORN
Housing. (Boston Herald, Oct. 22, 2008)

Senator Hillary Clinton, who wrote her
Wellesley College senior thesis on Saul Alinsky,
the “father” of community organizing,
once gushed about ACORN in a speech at
the group’s national convention: “I thank you
for being part of that great movement, that
progressive tradition that has rolled across
our country” (July 10, 2006).

ACORN: No Ties to Obama?

Senator Barack Obama has tried to distance
himself from ACORN. That effort went into
high gear beginning in September when
ACORN began to receive a mountain of bad
publicity relating to nationwide allegations
of election fraud. Obama supporters tried to
confuse the issue by saying the senator was
never an ACORN community organizer, and
they say that Project Vote, the voter registration
drive that Obama ran in 1992, was never
a part of ACORN. (Project Vote itself is now
engaged in legalistic hairsplitting, conveniently
claiming that it didn’t become closely
aligned with ACORN until Obama left. Of
course, Project Vote has presented no legal
documentation to support its claim.)

At an ACORN-sponsored forum on Dec.
1, 2007, Senator Obama announced that he
would meet with ACORN in his fi rst 100
days as U.S. president. He said, “Before I
even get inaugurated, during the transition,
we’re going to be calling all of you in to
help us shape the agenda. We’re going to be
having meetings all across the country with
community organizations so that you have
input into the agenda for the next presidency
of the United States of America.”

The month before, Obama said: “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 drives in Illinois,
ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it,

and we appreciate your work.” And during
the primaries, the Obama presidential campaign
paid $832,598 to Citizens Services
Inc., an ACORN affiliate, for get-out-thevote
activities.

Obama’s ties to ACORN go back at least
to 1992. That’s the year he directed voter
registration for Project Vote, an ACORN
affiliate. Obama helped train ACORN lead

ers, and he represented ACORN in ACORN

v. Edgar.
The socialist New Party, which served as
ACORN’s electoral arm, endorsed Obama,
who was one of its members, when he ran
for the Illinois state senate in the mid-1990s.
As Stanley Kurtz noted (National Review
Online, Oct. 20, 2008), ACORN founder
Wade Rathke played a role in founding
the New Party, which embraced “fusion.”
Fusion parties, popular in the 19th century,
had a separate line on the ballot but often
endorsed major-party candidates. This
meant they didn’t function as “spoilers”
in tight elections, and were able to offer
their endorsements as an incentive to pull
a candidate in a specific political direction.
Obama used legal technicalities to have all
his opponents thrown off the ballot in the
1996 state election, but still he sought the
endorsement of the New Party.

Of course, ACORN values its close connection
to Obama, but when it recognized that
public recognition of its ties could hurt him
it tried to cover up the association.

In early October, as media coverage of

FoundationWatch

ACORN election fraud scandals intensified,
ACORN removed a smoking gun from one
of its websites. This was an article that linked
Obama to ACORN and to Project Vote and
made clear that the two entities were joined
at the hip.

The 2004 article was by Toni Foulkes, a
Chicago-based member of the ACORN national
board and now a Chicago alderman,

and it appeared in Social Policy, a publication
of ACORN’s American Institute for
Social Justice. Extolling Obama’s political
organizing abilities, Foulkes described the
close connections between ACORN and its
affiliate, Project Vote. She wrote that ACORN
“invited Obama to our leadership training
sessions to run the session on power every
year, and, as a result, many of our newly
developing leaders got to know him before
he ever ran for office.” So it was only “natural
for many of us to be active volunteers in his
first campaign for State Senate and then his
failed bid for U.S. Congress.” The upshot?
“By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were
old friends.”

ACORN hadn’t counted on resourceful
bloggers copying the Foulkes article, which
was titled “Case Study: Chicago-The Barack
Obama Campaign.” After weeks of unremitting
criticism, the article had been restored
to the Social Policy website as of Oct. 18.
(The article is available at http://www.capitalresearch/.
org/blog/?p=1701.)

Even now ACORN tries to claim that Project
Vote is a completely separate entity. But a job
posting at idealist.org, which lists an opening

There better be more than one bathroom: Amazingly, almost 300 ACORN-affiliated
groups officially live in this one house on Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans.
Photo: noquarterusa.net
November 2008

FoundationWatch

for a Project Vote finance director, notes that
the group is “[w]orking closely with its community
partner, ACORN.”(See http://www/.
capitalresearch.org/blog/?p=1646.)

Arianna Huffington’s liberal gossip website,
the Huffington Post, has egg on its face.
It published several articles in the weeks
leading up to Election Day that disputed
both Obama’s connection to ACORN and
ACORN ties to Project Vote. Writer Seth
Colter Walls has written that linking Obama
to ACORN was “a smash of a smear.” (For
more on Obama, see “Barack Obama: A
Radical Leftist’s Journey from Community
Organizing to Politics,” by Elias Crim and
Matthew Vadum, Foundation Watch, June
2008.)

ACORN: Structure and Affiliates
The acronym ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations
for Reform Now. Although most sources
say it was founded by 22-year-old Wade
Rathke in 1970, the group’s fi ling with
the Arkansas Secretary of State shows the
date of registration as 1977 (fi ling number
100004435). Perhaps in its early days it
didn’t bother to incorporate, but its tangled
legal status and welter of affiliations raises
many questions.

Today ACORN is a nonprofit corporation, but
it is not tax-exempt. Were ACORN to request
tax-exemption, it might have to abide by a
dizzying array of legal constraints and would
definitely have to make basic information
about its internal operations publicly available.
But such transparency would hinder
ACORN’s radical activities. ACORN community
organizers prefer to operate behind
closed doors. The Arkansas registration
doesn’t even list the group’s officers.

In 1977 ACORN also registered with the
Louisiana Secretary of State as a nonprofit
corporation (Charter/Organization
ID: 04700320X). That registration shows
ACORN’s mailing address, “principal
office,” and “principal business establishment
in Louisiana” as 1024 Elysian Fields
Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117. The
Louisiana document also discloses the top
three officers of ACORN. They are President
Maude Hurd of Dorchester, Massachusetts,
Vice President Maria Polanco of Brooklyn,
New York, and Secretary Maxine A. Nelson
of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Left-wing groups like ACORN often have
overlapping memberships and interlocking
directorates. They constantly align and
realign themselves in short- and long-term
strategic coalitions. Sometimes there are
formal mergers and sometimes “strategic
partnerships.” ACORN’s tangled family tree
includes a host of subsidiaries and affiliated
nonprofits that do not have to honor public
disclosure laws.

Blogger Larry Johnson (of “No Quarter”)
did a LexisNexis corporate fi lings search
for ACORN’s southern headquarters at
1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans,
Louisiana 70117. He found that there are
an incredible 294 ACORN-related entities
and nonprofits and businesses using
that address. (See http://noquarterusa.net/
blog/2008/10/14/obamas-campaign-liesabout-
acorn/ or http://tinyurl.com/6zkn5d.)
The Employment Policies Institute has
identified more than 100 business names
associated with ACORN. (See “The Many
Faces of ACORN” table at page 5.)

The ACORN empire includes the ACORN
Institute Inc. (leadership training for activists),
W*A*R*N (Wal-Mart Alliance for
Reform Now, which supports organizing
unions in Wal-Mart stores, ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. (arranges mortgages), Living Wage Resource Center (a website that
tracks efforts by cities and states to raise the

minimum wage above the federal standard),
ACORN Law on the Web (a web address
that automatically redirects to the main
ACORN website), two “social justice” radio
stations (KAFB 88.3 FM in Little Rock,
Arkansas, and KNON 89.3 FM in Dallas,
Texas), Project Vote (voter registration and
mobilization), Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) Locals 100 (Arkansas,
Louisiana, Texas) and 880 (Illinois, Indiana),

Site Fighters (fighting “big box” chains such
as Wal-Mart and Target), and the American
Institute for Social Justice Inc. (publishes
Social Policy magazine with ACORN Institute
Inc. and the Organizers’ Forum).

ACORN: Its Money and Donors

To quote Sir Walter Scott, “Oh what a tangled
web we weave, when first we practice to
deceive.”

Lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley, who acts for
ACORN, alerted the group this summer that
its relationship to its affiliated groups may
violate federal law. Kingsley’s report spells
out “her concerns about potentially improper
use of charitable dollars for political purposes;
money transfers among the affiliates;
and potential conflicts created by employees
working for multiple affiliates, among other
things,” according to a New York Times story
by reporter Stephanie Strom (Oct. 22, 2008).
Strom reports that ACORN has 174 affili-

ACORN embezzler Dale Rathke (shown at left) enjoys the good life at the 18th An-
nual New Orleans Film Festival in 2007. Photo: http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/
November 2008

FoundationWatch

The Interlocking Directorates of the ACORN Network

Here are examples of senior ACORN activists who serve either as offi cers or on the boards of ACORN affiliates or both (according to the affiliates’ most recently filed 990 forms):

*ACORN national President Maude Hurd. She is secretary-treasurer of ACORN International Inc. and director of Affiliated Media Foundation Movement Inc.

*ACORN’s national Vice President Maria Polanco. She is the official contact person for the ACORN Dominican Republic Council. Polanco
is also a member of the ACORN affiliate, Working Families Party (WFP), a registered political party in New York. Along with ACORN and
WFP, Polanco was a plaintiff in the 2003 lawsuit Working Families Party v. New York City Board of Elections, in which the left-wing Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law challenged the use of voting machines in New York City.

*ACORN’s national Secretary Maxine Nelson. She is president and a director of Project Vote and secretary of Arkansas Broadcasting
Foundation Inc.

*ACORN’s currently embattled founder Wade Rathke. He remains chief organizer of SEIU Local 100, president of ACORN International
Inc., and president and a director of Affiliated Media Foundation Movement Inc.

*Donna Pharr is assistant treasurer and director of 385 Palmetto Street Housing Development Fund Corp. and ACORN Community Land
Association of Illinois.

Pharr is also assistant treasurer of ACORN 2004 Housing Development Fund Corp., ACORN Community Land Association of Pennsylvania Inc., ACORN Dumont-Snediker Housing Development Fund Corp., ACORN Law for Education Representation & Training, ACORN
Housing Corp. Inc., ACORN Housing Corp. of Pennsylvania Inc., ACORN Housing Corp. of Missouri Inc., ACORN Institute Inc., ACORN
International Inc., ACORN Tenant Union Training & Organizing Project Inc., Affiliated Media Foundation Movement Inc., American Institute
for Social Justice Inc., Arizona ACORN Housing Corp. Inc., Arkansas Community Housing Corp. Inc., Association for Rights of Citizens
Inc., California Community Network, MHANY 2003 HDFC, Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp., New York Agency for
Community Affairs Inc., and Project Vote. Pharr is also deputy treasurer of Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee and is listed
in a Michigan Bureau of Elections filing as the contact person for Communities Voting Together, a 527 organization (see http://tinyurl/.
com/5kjens).

*George Butts is president and a director of the Pennsylvania Institute for Community Affairs Inc. and vice president of the ACORN
Institute Inc.

*Mike Shea is executive director of both ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. and Texas ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.

*Dorothy Amadi is president of ACORN Dumont-Snediker Housing Development Fund Corp., ACORN 2004 Housing Development Fund
Corp., Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp., both president and director of 385 Palmetto Street Housing Development
Fund Corp., both vice president and director of New York ACORN Housing Co. Inc., and both vice president and trustee of New Jersey
ACORN Housing Inc.

*Vernon Bolden is vice president of ACORN International Inc. and president and a director of SEIU Local 100.

ates; Pablo Eisenberg, a veteran scholar and separate.” ACORN entities exchange millions of dol-
participant in community organizing, writes lars every year for goods and services. The
that there are 103 affiliates in 38 states. The report noted that, “AmeriCorps members scantfinancial documents available for public

of AHC raised funds for ACORN, performed inspection paint a picture of a spider web of
Federal lawmakers have known about voter registration activities, and gave partisan ACORN-run organizations that trade loans,
ACORN’s unorthodox finances for years. speeches. In one instance, an AmeriCorps leases, payments, and grants.”
ACORN has used government resources member was directed by ACORN staff to
to promote legislation and has long com-assist the [Clinton] White House in preparing One journalist estimates that ACORN had
mingled funds within its network of affili-a press conference in support of legislation.” a 2006 budget of $37.5 million excluding
ates. A congressional report noted that there (“Report on the Activities of the Committee “its spinoff research and housing organiwas
“apparent cross-over funding between on Economic and Educational Opportunities zations.” Of the $37.5 million, $3 million
ACORN, a political advocacy group and During the 104th Congress,” Report 104-875, came from membership dues and the rest
ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC), a non profit, Jan. 2, 1997) came from foundations, private donations,
AmeriCorp [sic] grantee.” The government-corporations, and other sources. “Onetime
funded AmeriCorps, which promotes public If ACORN’s affiliates are hard to count, it’s corporate targets, like the Household Fiservice,
suspended AHC’s funding “after it impossible to calculate the total revenue nancial Corporation, pay ACORN to run
was learned that AHC and ACORN shared of the ACORN network. The Employment programs, in this case to educate people
office space and equipment and failed to Policies Institute (EPI) writes: “Because it about mortgages and loan terms.” (New
assure that activities and funds were wholly operates a virtual self-contained economy, York Times, June 26, 2006). Even the $37.5

November 2008

FoundationWatch

million estimate “likely does not include the
vast resources of the ACORN-run unions
or reflect election-year resources given to
its ostensibly non-partisan get-out-the-vote
efforts,” concludes EPI.

By using philanthropy databases and nonprofit
tax returns (IRS Form 990) Capital
Research Center has gathered a wealth of
information on money that flows into and
out of ACORN network coffers.

Project Vote (Voting for America Inc.) discloses
on its 990s that it received $23,658,487
in donations from 1994 through 2005. The

American Institute for Social Justice
Inc. reports that it took in $32,497,575
in donations from 1993 through 2005.
ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. reports it
took in $48,666,179 in donations from
1993 through 2004. ACORN Institute Inc.
took in donations of $2,074,409 from 2001
through 2005.

This means the four ACORN affiliates
took in a total of at least $106,896,650 in
donations from foundations and individuals
since 1993.

Organized labor is both a client and ally of
ACORN. ACORN (including its affiliates)
took in almost $3 million last year from
unions to assist unions with anti-corporate
campaigns, provide strike support, and help
with research and staffing, among other
things. (See “In a Rotten Nutshell: Everything
You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about
ACORN,” by Matthew Vadum and Jeremy
Lott, Labor Watch, November 2008.)

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Without the assistance of forensic accountants,
it would be impossible to determine
how many taxpayer dollars have gone to
the ACORN network. This is partly because
government grants and contracts can be
reported in Part I of the 990 form or they
can be easily buried in other sections of the
form. Accounting tricks could also have
been used to conceal government grants. The
total figure for government contributions to
ACORN and its affiliates could easily run
into billions of dollars.

Here are the $19,502,273 in government
grants to the ACORN network that we found
in Part I of all 990s available in the guidestar.
org database of nonprofits for ACORN’s four
main (non-labor union) affiliates:

*Project Vote: none.

*American Institute for Social Justice
Inc.: $53,870 (2006), $107,488 (2005),
$132,000 (2004), $70,000 (2003), $170,000
(2002), $100,000 (2001), $17,665 (2000),
and $10,050 (1997, when the Institute was
apparently named Arkansas Institute for
Social Justice, Inc.).

*ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.:
$1,700,317 (2005), $3,020,045
(2004),$2,608,961 (2003),$1,710,203

ACORN national president Maude Hurd
(at right) with former President Bill Clinton
in 2006. Clinton was at a press event urg-
ing Hurricane Katrina survivors to claim
the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
(2002), $1,977,306 (2001),$1,296,085
(2000),$1,151,929 (1999), $1,124,989
(1998),and $1,365,349 (1997).

*ACORN Institute Inc.: $2,275,182 (2006),
$300,880 (2005), $130,494 (2004), and
$179,460 (2003).

Add the $19,502,273 in tax dollars to the
$106,896,650 in donations and it becomes
apparent that the ACORN network has
taken in a minimum of $126,398,923 since
1993. (House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-
Missouri, said last month that ACORN has
received at least $31 million from taxpayers
since 1998. If he’s right, it means ACORN has
received at least $137,896,650 in donations
and government money since 1993.)

Bear in mind that the fi gures shown for
ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. (AHC) are
well below the actual level of government
housing-related grants to the ACORN network.
ACORN has many state- and local-
level housing affiliates that have accepted
government money. AHC itself brags on its
website that from 1986 through 2006 it has

“counseled” 250,226 clients and “educated”
284,758 more, and “created” 79,539 mortgages
in the amount of $10,080,912,633. It
claims to have 37 offi ces nationwide.

In February, AHC unveiled its non-profit
mortgage brokerage in 34 U.S. cities. The
brokerage, called Acorn Housing Affordable Loans LLC, partners with CitiMortgage, Bank of America, First American
Title Insurance Co., and Fannie Mae.
“The new mortgage brokerage will also help
homeowners faced with resetting adjustable
rates that may make their current home mortgage
payments unaffordable,” AHC said in
a statement. No financial data regarding the
new brokerage has turned up in philanthropy
databases yet.

The ACORN network is likely to get its
hands on even more taxpayer dollars in the
future. That’s because the housing bailout
bill enacted this summer contains language
creating a so-called affordable housing trust
fund that conservatives call a slush fund. This
unusual off-budget funding mechanism that
siphons off funds from the government’s two
Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs),
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provides
virtually no safeguards ensuring that the
money will actually be spent on affordable
housing.

The funding will go to left-wing housing
advocacy groups such as ACORN, National
Council of La Raza, and the Greenlining
Institute and “[t]here are no explicit requirements
for recipients of the grants to fi ll out
timesheets for housing activity, or restrictions
on groups using grant money to pay
employees who also happen to do other things

— such as lobbying and political campaigning,”
writes John Berlau of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute. “And there are really
no penalties other than being forced to give
the money back and being disqualifi ed for
a new grant.”
ACORN’s Capitol Hill supporters tried to
insert another affordable housing funding
mechanism in the $700 billion Wall Street
bailout package in September. However, the
legislative language supporting the funding
was removed after conservatives made it
clear that the slush fund provision was a
deal-breaker.

Foundation Support for ACORN

Although the four main ACORN affiliates

November 2008

took in least $106,896,650 in donations
since 1993, detailed grant data on the
ACORN network goes back only to 1998
on the foundationsearch.com philanthropy
database. The total figure is certainly higher
than $107 million.

Donors to ACORN, the lead entity registered
in Arkansas and Louisiana, include the
Marguerite Casey Foundation ($3 million),
Robin Hood Foundation ($821,000
– a board member is NBC newsman Tom
Brokaw), Beldon Fund ($750,000 to
“Florida ACORN”), Edna McConnell
Clark Foundation ($595,000 to “Bronx
ACORN”), Annie E. Casey Foundation
($65,000), George Soros’s Open Society
Institute ($25,000), Haymarket People’s
Fund ($15,000 consisting of an $8,000 grant
to “Massachusetts ACORN” and $7,000 to
“Rhode Island ACORN”), Barbra Streisand
Foundation ($15,000 consisting of a $7,500
grant to “Los Angeles ACORN” and $7,500
to ACORN)), Union Bank of California
Foundation ($15,000 consisting of a $5,000
grant to ACORN, and two $5,000 grants
to “San Diego ACORN”), and Provident
Bank Foundation Inc. ($5,000 to “New
Jersey ACORN”).

Donors to ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
include JPMorgan Chase Foundation
($5,007,500 plus at least $300,000 to separate
state-level ACORN-affi liated housing
nonprofits), Bank of America Charitable
Foundation Inc. ($1,405,000), Annie E.
Casey Foundation ($610,500 to ACORN
Housing Corp. of Illinois), US Bancorp
Foundation ($285,000, plus $470,000 to
ACORN Housing Corp. of Illinois), PNC
Foundation ($95,000), and Wachovia
Foundation ($5,000).

Donors to the ACORN Institute Inc. include
Roseanne Foundation, as in actress-comedienne
Roseanne Barr ($50,000), Annie E.
Casey Foundation ($50,000), Carnegie
Corp. of New York ($50,000), Lear Family
Foundation ($15,000), Starbucks Foundation ($13,563), the hard-left Arca Foundation ($10,000), and Wachovia Foundation
($5,000).

ACORN itself, as opposed to its affiliates,
received a $4,952,288 grant from its affiliate,
the American Institute for Social Justice Inc.
for “community reinvestment,” according to
the Institute’s 990 form from 2006.

ACORN’s voter mobilization arm, Project
Vote, has taken in more than $12 million in
foundation grants since 1999.

Project Vote donors include Rockefeller
Family Fund Inc. ($4,047,500), Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program ($2,643,100), Tides Foundation
($1,460,801), Bauman Family Foundation
($1,100,000), Omidyar Network Fund Inc.
($400,000), Beldon Fund ($383,000), Carnegie Corp. of New York ($300,000), HKH
Foundation ($200,000), Open Society Institute ($150,000), Stephen M. Silberstein
Foundation ($100,000), Barbra Streisand
Foundation ($60,000), and Ben & Jerry’s
Foundation ($15,000).

ACORN’s American Institute for Social
Justice Inc. has received at least $29,940,576
in foundation grants since 2000.

The Institute’s donors include Marguerite
Casey Foundation ($5,125,000), Rockefeller Family Fund Inc. ($4,130,000),
Sandler Family Supporting Foundation
($2,560,000), W.K. Kellogg Foundation
($829,285), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust ($500,000), Open Society Institute($350,000),Needmor Fund ($265,000),
McKay Foundation ($165,000),Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. ($150,000), Walter
and Elise Haas Fund ($120,000), Woods
Fund of Chicago ($145,000 — $75,000 in
2001 when Obama and William Ayers were
on its board, $70,000 in 2002), and Wachovia
Foundation ($5,000).

FoundationWatch

Other notable ACORN benefactors include
the Tides Foundation, which has given 24
grants totaling $603,375 to the ACORN
network, and Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr.
Trust, which has given four grants totaling
$275,000 to the ACORN network. The
Needmor Fund, which focuses on community
organizing, has given $189,500 to the
ACORN network. Citigroup Foundation
gave a $5,000 grant to “ACORN Baltimore”
and a $4,000 grant to ACORN Child Care
Providers for Action.

The Woods Fund of Chicago, which has
been in the news because Barack Obama
and ex-Weather Underground leader William
Ayers were fellow board members, has given

at least $190,000 to the ACORN network.
From at least 1999 through 2001 Obama and
Ayers were on the Woods Fund board. Two
of the three grants appearing in the foundationsearch.
com database were listed during
that period. A $45,000 grant for “community
development” went to “Chicago ACORN”
in 2000. The Woods Fund gave two grants
to “Chicago ACORN” as “fiscal agent” for
the American Institute for Social Justice Inc.
The first such grant for $75,000 for “social
and human services” was dated 2001 while
Obama and Ayers sat on the board, but the
second such grant ($70,000) was dated 2002,
after Obama had left the board. That grant
was also designated for “social and human
services.”

George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, an

Embattled ACORN founder Wade Rathke (at right) with former President Bill Clinton
in 2006.
November 2008

FoundationWatch

ambitious left-wing fi nancial clearinghouse
profiled in the January 2008 Foundation
Watch, directed a grant of unknown size to
ACORN in 2006. It is unclear if the grant was
directed at a specifi c ACORN affiliate.

Financial Transfers Within the ACORN
Empire

ACORN takes recycling seriously, at least
when it comes to money.

In the Employment Policies Institute’s
authoritative July 2006 report, “Rotten
ACORN: America’s Bad Seed,” July 2006,
the authors offer a glimpse of fi nancial transactions
within the ACORN network.

Among its findings:

*ACORN-affiliated SEIU Local 100
gave $58,654 of union members’ money
to another labor group, the Hospitality,
Hotel & Restaurant Organizing Council
(HOTROC), which was founded by
Wade Rathke

*Citizens Consulting, Inc., run at the
time by Rathke’s brother, Dale, took in
$520,000 from ACORN between 1998
and 2004 for lobbying

*Citizens Consulting, Inc. and ACORN
took in more than $1.7 million from
Project Vote from 2000 through 2003

*Since 1997 ACORN Housing Corp. paid
more than $5.1 million in fees or grants
to other entities in the network

Our own research has determined that
Project Vote (Voting for America Inc.) paid
ACORN $10,861,825 from 2000 through
2006, according to Project Vote’s 990 forms.
Project Vote also paid ACORN affiliate
Citizens Services Inc. $1,206,942 in 2005
and 2006, and paid $1,266,967 to ACORN
affiliate Citizens Consulting Inc. from 2000
through 2004.

Project Vote, ACORN, Citizens Services Inc.,
and Citizens Consulting Inc. all share the
same address, namely, 1024 Elysian Fields
Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117, according
to 990 forms filed with the IRS.

Other ACORN affiliates including the American
Institute for Social Justice, ACORN
Housing Corp. Inc., and ACORN Institute
Inc. also show the Elysian Fields Avenue
address as their headquarters.

Since 2000 ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
paid its roommates, Citizens Consulting,
Inc., and Peoples Equipment Resource
Center $1,566,228 and (at least) $58,003,
respectively. It also gave a $37,500 grant to
the American Institute for Social Justice Inc.
for “education” in 2005.

Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky
In the crowded house on Elysian Fields Avenue,
since 2002 ACORN Institute Inc. has
paid ACORN $861,783, Citizens Consulting,
Inc. $61,443, ACORN Services $117,261,
ACORN Associates, Inc. $61,451, and
ACORN International, Inc. $83,966.

Since 2000 the American Institute for Social
Justice, Inc. paid ACORN $1,926,831, Citizens
Consulting, Inc. $362,464, and ACORN
Associates, Inc. $258,593.

On its 2002 tax form, the Institute disclosed
a $1,684,184 “community reinvestment”
grant to ACORN, along with a $9,637 loan
to SEIU Local 100. (On the same document,
the Institute also reported receiving a $50,000
interest-free loan from the Tides Foundation
for “purchase of equipment,” and a $4,000
interest-free loan from Open Society Institute’s
Progressive America Fund Inc.) In an
LM-2 (labor union disclosure) form last year,
SEIU Local 880 revealed that it gave $60,118
to ACORN for “membership services.”

On its 2006 tax form, the American Institute
for Social Justice, Inc. disclosed that it
provided a $4,952,288 “community reinvestment”
grant to ACORN, the non-tax-exempt
Arkansas nonprofit corporation that controls
the ACORN network.

ACORN’s Interlocking Directorates

Understanding how ACORN activists hold
key positions in the ACORN network is crucial
to understand how ACORN operates.

The term “interlocking directorates” describes
how individuals can serve as directors
on multiple corporate boards. This practice
is common in the ACORN family; it is
widespread and lawful. But it raises questions
about the quality and independence of
board decision-making.

ACORN’s interlocking directorates suggest
that even though each ACORN affi liate may
be legally separate, it is subject to centralized
control. The ACORN network claims to be
a “family” of organizations, embodying the
ethos of community organizing, which stresses
local action and decentralized authority. In
fact, ACORN is tightly controlled from the
top. (See table, The Interlocking Directorates
of the ACORN Network, at page 9.)

News of ACORN’s embezzlement scandal
has finally begun to stir debate over its structure
and organization. Until recently, it’s been
hard to find public debate about ACORN or
criticism of ACORN “chief organizer” Wade
Rathke. Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at
the Georgetown University Public Policy
Institute, has written that Rathke “sought to
put the national organization in control of
operations of the group’s affi liates.” ACORN
bylaws gave Rathke “the power to appoint
the head organizers of both local and state
affiliates.”

Eisenberg notes although local boards
“technically had the authority to overrule
his appointments, they rarely did, according
to senior staff members,” He added: “The
decision to keep so much control over the
affiliates seems at odds with Acorn’s mission
– its goal is to empower local people to
fight their own battles – but some organizers
agree with Mr. Rathke that it is important
to centralize operations. They say only a
unified network led by headquarters has the
power and speed needed to wage successful
national advocacy efforts.” (Chronicle of
Philanthropy op-ed, Oct. 2, 2008)

And centralize Rathke did.

Capital Research Center discovered that the
crowded house on Elysian Fields Avenue is
owned by ACORN affiliate Elysian Fields
Corp Inc. Afiling with the Louisiana secretary

November 2008

of state’s office reveals that Wade Rathke is
the corporation’s president and the ubiquitous
Donna Pharr is its treasurer.

ACORN lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley focused
on the current ties between ACORN and
Project Vote. As reported in the Oct. 22, 2008
New York Times story, Kingsley found:

[T]he tight relationship between Project
Vote and Acorn made it impossible to
document that Project Vote’s money
had been used in a strictly nonpartisan
manner. Until the embezzlement scandal
broke last summer, Project Vote’s board
was made up entirely of Acorn staff
members and Acorn members.

Ms. Kingsley’s report raised concerns
not only about a lack of documentation
to demonstrate that no charitable money
was used for political activities but also
about which organization controlled
strategic decisions.

She wrote that the same people appeared
to be deciding which regions to focus
on for increased voter engagement for
Acorn and Project Vote. Zach Pollett, for
instance, was Project Vote’s executive
director and Acorn’s political director,
until July, when he relinquished the former
title. Mr. Pollett continues to work
as a consultant for Project Vote through
another Acorn affiliate.

“As a result, we may not be able to prove
that 501(c)3 resources are not being
directed to specific regions based on
impermissible partisan considerations,”
Ms. Kingsley said, referring to the section
of the tax code concerning rules for
charities.

She also found problems with governance
of Acorn affiliates. “Board meetings are
not held, or if they are, minutes are not
kept, or if minutes are kept, they never
make it into the files,” she wrote.

Project Vote, for example, had only one
independent director since it received
a federal tax exemption in 1994, and
he was on the board for less than two
years, its tax forms show. Since then,
the board has consisted of Acorn staff
members and two Acorn members who
pay monthly dues.

The newspaper also interviewed George
Hampton and Cleo Mata, two former Project
Vote board members. Both denied serving on
the board and Hampton, who acknowledged
he had been an ACORN member, said he had
never heard of Project Vote. Go figure.

Scandal!

The truth about Wade Rathke’s management
style is starting to dribble out now that he’s
been forced out. But as early as the 1980s
some ACORN dissidents were beginning
to protest, saying Rathke had created a sti-

Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s interim chief
organizer, speaks at a rally.
fling “cult of personality.” Dorothy Perkins
of North Little Rock, a former Arkansas
ACORN chairman, complained at the time
that ACORN was “run like a Jim Jones cult.”
Rev. Daniel Perkins said funds raised by
ACORN were “never seen” by the low- to
moderate-income people the organization
was supposed to help. They somehow ended
up in the Big Easy, controlled by Rathke. (Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette, Sept. 2, 1987)

All of this was kept under wraps until this
summer when it was discovered that Wade
Rathke failed to notify police when he
discovered in 2000 that his brother Dale,
ACORN’s chief fi nancial officer, had embezzled
$948,000 from the group. Instead,
Wade Rathke engineered a cover-up for his
brother and allowed him to leave the payroll
of Citizens Consulting Inc., the ACORN affiliate
that handles its financial affairs, and go
to work as his $38,000 a year “assistant” at
ACORN headquarters. The missing money
was disguised as a loan to an offi cer on the
ledgers of Citizens Consulting.

For perhaps the first time in ACORN’s
history, its leaders embraced a libertarian
approach to dispute resolution. The Rathke
family signed a restitution agreement with
ACORN, promising to repay the amount

FoundationWatch

stolen at the rate of $30,000 per year. They
reportedly have repaid $210,000. In return,
ACORN promised to keep quiet about what
was called a “misappropriation.” To keep
the theft secret Wade Rathke made his arrangement
with colleagues who comprise
ACORN’s senior management. He did not
inform ACORN’s 51-member board of
trustees. Dale Rathke remained an ACORN
employee until May 2008 when a whistle-
blower caused the uproar that led to his firing
and his brother’s resignation.

Maude Hurd, ACORN’s national president,
has since rationalized this conduct, saying
it was best to “protect” ACORN and “to
deal with it in-house.” ACORN’s national
board has turned a blind eye and agrees. At
a mid-October meeting in New Orleans the
board voted to withdraw a lawsuit fi led by
two board members, Karen Inman and Marcel
Reid, on behalf of ACORN that sought
access to ACORN’s financial records. “The
board is moving in a positive manner for
a speedy resolution in the best interests of
the organization,” said spokesman Charles
Jackson.

Inman, Reid, and six other dissident board
members have dubbed themselves the
“ACORN 8.” In a press release Oct. 14,
Reid urged fellow board members to overcome
“the ACORN culture of quiescence to
Wade Rathke and his family so that ACORN
vindicates the poor and moderate income
people it represents.”

That ACORN filed suit against itself underlines
its complex, confusing web of relationships.
Bertha Lewis, who replaced Rathke as
ACORN’s interim chief organizer, has said
the two boards members lacked legal standing
to sue on the board’s behalf. Lewis also
said the civil suit had distracted the group
from answering “Republican right-wing attacks”
on ACORN voter registration.

The New York Times broke the story (Aug.
17, 2008) that Drummond Pike, founder and
CEO of the Tides Foundation and a personal
friend of Wade Rathke, secretly purchased
the promissory note wherein the Rathke
family agreed to repay the remaining stolen
money—$738,000—to ACORN.

Even though senior ACORN offi cials signed
confidentiality agreements forbidding them
from disclosing the identity of the buyer,
someone in the group leaked the information
to the media.

November 2008

FoundationWatch

Let’s get this straight: ACORN and Tides
covered up ACORN’s original cover-up of
the embezzlement?

Some ACORN funders such as Dave Beck-
with, executive director of the Needmor
Fund, are upset that the employees who
learned of the fraud in 2000 still work for
ACORN and its affiliates. Needmor has
been donating to ACORN affiliates for at
least a decade.

Wade Rathke is a director on the boards
of the far-left funders Tides Inc., Tides
Center, and Tides Foundation. However,
John A. Powell, board chairman of the Tides
Network, the umbrella organization for
Tides affiliates, said in August that Rathke
is taking a leave of absence from all Tides
boards. Powell added that no Tides money
was used in the cloak-and-dagger transaction
by Pike, who is also treasurer of George
Soros’s Democracy Alliance.

Although Wade Rathke resigned from
ACORN, he retains his position as “chief
organizer” at ACORN International LLC,
a private company with overseas offices.

ACORN’s Radical New Left Origins

ACORN’s origins lie in the 1962 Port Huron
Statement, a manifesto of radical students
disillusioned with America. The ponderous
statement was largely written by Tom Hayden
(Jane Fonda’s ex-husband). It claimed
America was hopelessly racist, militaristic,
and soulless: “America is without community,
impulse, without the inner momentum
necessary for an age when societies cannot
successfully perpetuate themselves by their
military weapons, when democracy must be
viable because of its quality of life, not its
quantity of rockets.”

The statement called for greater worker
control over the economy and so-called
participatory democracy. It asserted that
“[t]he allocation of resources must be based
on social needs,” and that “public utilities,
railroads, mines, and plantations, and other
basic economic institutions should be in the
control of national, not foreign, agencies.”

The authors of the Port Huron statement
created an organization to carry out their
vision. It was Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS), perhaps the preeminent group
of the New Left movement of the 1960s.
Inevitably, SDS failed to achieve its goals

and it broke into splinter factions. One bloc
of SDS members formed the violent group,
“Weatherman” (known colloquially as the
Weathermen). The group took its name from
Bob Dylan’s song “Subterranean Homesick
Blues,” whose lyrics include the line, “You
don’t need a weatherman to know which way
the wind blows.” The group embraced terror
as a tool of political change and morphed into
the revolutionary terrorist group, the Weather
Underground Organization (WUO). Two of
its leaders were the would-be mass murderers
William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who
would later become members of the faculties
of, respectively, the University of Illinois,
Chicago and the Northwestern University
School of Law.

Those who rejected terrorist violence included
Wade Rathke, who had worked as a
draft resistance organizer for SDS. He also
was an organizer for the National Welfare
Rights Organization (NWRO), a group
whose members physically occupied welfare
offices, intimidating social workers and insisting
that they be given every government
welfare dollar that the law “entitled” them to.
NWRO followed what has since been called
the Cloward-Piven Strategy after sociologists
Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward.
They defined a model of political and economic
subversion that called upon activists to
pack the welfare rolls to spread dependency,
bankrupt the government, and cause uprisings
against the capitalist system.

Rathke believed in “welfare rights” in the
1960s and he believes in them today, the

U.S. Constitution notwithstanding. In 1970
he founded ACORN to carry out the strategy
of upheaval and the agenda of welfare entitlement.
That agenda manifests itself today in
the ACORN Tax & Benefi t Access Center
and the ACORN Financial Justice Center.
ACORN partnered with the Marguerite
Casey Foundation, a left-wing funder, to
create a new kind of tax preparation service
based on the assumption that Americans have
a “right” to welfare. Think of it as H&R
Block for subversives. The group and its
allied entities help people claim the Earned
Income Tax Credit, a make-believe tax credit
that functions more as a welfare benefi t. The
goal is not primarily to help Americans in
need but to pack the welfare rolls in order
to expand the size and scope of government.
(See the foundation’s press release at http://
tinyurl.com/58efet.)
Although there is nothing wrong with registering
poor people, who have just as much of
a right to vote as other Americans, ACORN’s
focus on registering those dependent on government
programs seems consistent with the
Cloward-Piven Strategy. Its voter registration
drives in Louisiana, for example, focus on
registering people at “welfare waiting rooms,
unemployment offices, and on Food Stamp
lines.” (ACORN v. Fowler, 1999 178 F.3d
350; 1999 U.S. App. LEXIS 11937. )

ACORN and WUO, siblings who took different
paths to radical change, one through
violence and terror, the other through protest
and politics, draw their inspiration from a
second source, the Chicago activist Saul
Alinsky. He is the leftist who wrote Rules
for Radicals, the seminal how-to guide for
radical activists that elevated local-level
political agitation to an ugly art form.

As the father of community organizing
Alinsky urged activists to “rub raw the
sores of discontent.” In his book, Alinsky
praised the Devil as the “first radical” who
“rebelled against the establishment and did
it so effectively that he at least won his own
kingdom.”

Alinsky said his book was “a step toward a
science of revolution,” and acknowledged
its debt to the amoral Renaissance political
plotter Niccolo Machiavelli. “The Prince
was written by Machiavelli for the Haves
on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals
is written for the Have-nots on how to take
it away.”

Alinsky believed that in political combat
almost anything goes. “In war the end justifies
almost any means.” Alinsky wrote that “the
practical revolutionary will understand …
[that] in action, one does not always enjoy
the luxury of a decision that is consistent
both with one’s individual conscience and
the good of mankind.”

Marian Wright Edelman, head of the left-
wing Children’s Defense Fund, said of
Alinsky: “He was brilliant. He was working
for underdogs. He was trying to empower
communities, which we still need to do. He
spoke plainly. He had his outrageous side,
but he also had his pragmatic side.”

The Washington Post reported (March 25,
2007) that Edelman “knows Obama, worked
closely with Clinton and spoke at Alinsky’s

November 2008

funeral. It quoted her observation: “Both
Hillary and Barack reflect that understanding
of community-organizing strategy. Both
just know how to leverage power.” It’s worth
noting when she was First Lady, Clinton
pushed President Bill Clinton to prioritize
ACORN’s “Motor Voter” legislation, which
opened up new opportunities for electoral
fraud. It was the first bill President Clinton
signed into law.

In early 2008, ACORN’s political action
committee endorsed Democrat Barack
Obama for U.S. president as have former
Weather Underground members Ayers and
Dohrn, a married couple who helped launch
Obama’s political career by hosting a 1995
fundraiser for the then-Illinois state senate
candidate in their Hyde Park home. Former
SDS and WUO member Mark Rudd also
supports Obama.

Not surprisingly, Hayden, who served in
the California legislature for close to two
decades, endorsed Obama in January, arguing
that the Democratic candidate represents
“the spirit, excitement, energy and creativity
of a new generation bidding to displace the
old ways.”

Other former SDS members who endorsed
Obama included Michael and Susan Klonsky,
and Michael’s brother Fred Klonsky, who was
active in the Communist Party USA. Former
SDS member Carl Davidson, who is also a
leader in the Marxist group, United for Peace
and Justice, supports Obama.

Public relations executive Marilyn Katz,
a former SDS member, supports Obama
and is one of his “bundlers” (a fundraiser).
Former SDS president Todd Gitlin also supports
Obama.

Creating A Financial Crisis

Some writers have suggested the actions of
ACORN and other Alinsky-inspired organizers
who adhere to the Cloward-Piven Strategy
of manufactured crisis have helped cause the
meltdown on Wall Street. Certainly radical
activists have had their eyes on Wall Street
for a long time. A cheeky conservative might
even argue that the crisis on Wall Street is a
kind of Reichstag fire but that this time the
Communists really are the arsonists.

At an ACORN “banking summit” in New
York City in 1992, keynote speaker Jesse
Jackson explained why activists should go

after banks. “Get the money from where the
money went,” said Jackson. “Don’t make
things complicated. Why did Jesse James
rob banks? Because that’s where the money
was.” (ABA Banking Journal, Oct. 1, 1992,
available at http://tinyurl.com/6jjdgc)

One ACORN document, “To Each Their
Home: Success Stories from the ACORN
Housing Corporation.” makes its plans
explicit in boasting that successful ACORN
militancy can undermine bank underwriting
standards. It says ACORN Housing
developed “several innovative strategies”
to get around traditional lending guidelines,
which were unfair because they “were
geared to middle class borrowers.” Instead,
ACORN convinced lenders to adopt “more
flexible underwriting criteria that take into
account the realities of lower income communities.”
Henceforth banks would accept
“less traditional income sources such as
food stamps.”

Those ideas were ratified by the Carter-
era Community Reinvestment Act (CRA),
which opened up banking to ACORN-style
agitation. This 1977 law punishes lenders
for limiting loans to wealthier, more creditworthy
markets, a practice called “redlining.”
Banking regulators are given the power
to make trouble for banks that fail to lend
enough money to “underserved” minority
communities.

Since CRA went into effect, Alinsky-inspired
groups such as ACORN, the National
Council of La Raza (profi led in Foundation
Watch, Dec. 2007), and the Greenlining
Institute (profi led in Organization Trends,
Aug. 2008) have gone into the shakedown
business. It intensified when then-Treasury
Secretary Robert Rubin presided over the
Clinton administration’s effort to put the
CRA on steroids. Banks began to make
risky subprime loans and Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac aggregated them for sale as
mortgage-backed securities (MBSs). Those
practices made it easier for banks to give in
to ACORN’s demands because they knew
they could offload their high-risk debt on
Fannie and Freddie.

Was all of this a good idea? Not according to
University of Texas economist Stanley Liebowitz.
He writes that the current mortgage
market debacle is “a direct result of an intentional
loosening of underwriting standards

– done in the name of ending discrimination,
FoundationWatch

despite warnings that it could lead to wide-
scale defaults.” (See New York Post, Feb. 5,
2008, at http://tinyurl.com/2ahdkd.)

Liebowitz isn’t alone is pointing out that U.S.
financial markets are now being asphyxiated
by a terrible credit crunch that might have
been avoided if lenders had refrained from
making loans they should have known were
doomed to default.

Political activism drove the banks to make
irresponsible decisions, and it has put taxpayers
on the hook for bank and housing
bailout packages costing potentially trillions
of dollars.

As Stanley Kurtz has observed, “For years,
ACORN had combined manipulation of the
CRA with intimidation-protest tactics to force
banks to lower credit standards. Its crusade,
with help from Democrats in Congress, to
push these high-risk “subprime” loans on
banks is at the root of today’s economic
meltdown.”

That ACORN is costing all Americans their
long-term prosperity for the sake of a failed
political strategy to help the poor is perhaps
the fi nal irony.

Matthew Vadum is Editor of Foundation
Watch.

(Editor’s Note: This article draws on the
excellent research of discoverthenetworks.
org, John Fund’s book, Stealing Elections,
the Employment Policies Institute’s report,
“Rotten ACORN,” and Vadum’s many blog
posts about ACORN that are available at
http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/.)

FW

Please remember
Capital Research Center
in your will and
estate planning.

Thank you for your support.

Terrence Scanlon

President

November 2008

FoundationWatch

PhilanthropyNotes

A trial date of January 20, 2009 has been set in the Robertson Foundation’s landmark “donor intent”

lawsuit against Princeton University. Camden Superior Court judge John Fratto has split the case into
two parts. The first case will consider whether the university is liable for the plaintiff’s claims that it ignored
the donors’ intent that their gift be used to educate students for careers in government. If there is a finding
of liability, the second case will consider monetary damages. The Robertsons’ 1961 gift of $35 million has
grown to an estimated $900 million, the Trenton Times reported Oct. 25.

Some charities should be allowed to fail, the Wal-Mart Foundation’s president, Margaret McKenna, said
recently. McKenna said Boston, for example, has too many nonprofits and that instead of squabbling over
shrinking resources they should cooperate in these uncertain economic times. “The argument that ‘our
organization will go out of business’ doesn’t resonate with me,” she said, according to the Boston Herald.
What does resonate is, “Our population will not be served.”

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press tested the political knowledge of 3,612 U.S.
adults and found that the audiences of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity with Alan Colmes were the
best informed about U.S. politics. On two questions that asked respondents to identify the majority party in
the U.S. House of Representatives (Democrats) and to identify the current U.S. secretary of state (Condoleezza Rice), “Hannity & Colmes” viewers scored 84% and 73% respectively. Among Rush Limbaugh listeners, the scores were 83% and 71%.

The Philanthropy Roundtable, an association of grant makers and philanthropists, hired Sue Santa, a
former corporate lawyer and aide to Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), to fill the new position of senior vice
president for public policy, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. The Roundtable said Santa would try “to
protect philanthropic freedom from threats posed in Washington, D.C., and across the country.” The announcement came after AB 624, a now-withdrawn California state bill that would have forced foundations
to disclose information about the race and sexual preferences of their grant recipients, employees, and
boards. (For more on AB 624, see Foundation Watch, July 2008.) In 2005, the Roundtable created the Alliance for Charitable Reform in order to respond to scrutiny of grant makers by Sen. Charles E. Grassley
(R-Iowa).

The World Wildlife Fund announced it will be taking wealthy donors on a whirlwind world tour in an effort
to raise awareness of environmental issues across the globe. Donors will be whisked away by private jet
and enjoy luxury accommodations on this grand eco-tour. The trip will last approximately one month and
set each participant back at least $65,000.

Federal prosecutors said 14 people have been indicted in a wide-ranging racketeering and fraud case
wherein money from criminal activities stateside was being shipped to the Palestinian territories, the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch reports. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said the Hamed Organization, a charity
led by Bassam Hamed, may have illegally moved $1.5 million to terrorist groups.

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Internet search giant, unveiled $14 million in grants to groups
working in Southeast Asia and Africa to prevent the next global pandemic. “Business as usual won’t prevent the next AIDS or SARS,” said Google.org executive director Larry Brilliant.

The Reputation Institute released its list of the “Most Admired U.S. CEOs” of 2008. Top of the list is
Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Also included on the list are domestic diva Martha Stewart and the late Wal-Mart
founder Sam Walton.

November 2008

THANK YOU TO SUE B. FOR THIS INFORMATION.

Dean A. Ayers
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

http://AnimalsClubFreedom.us/

“United States Officially Certified Site”

Dean A. Ayers is a prior United States Air Force Special Agent for the AFOSI. His duties included that of law enforcement specialist, criminal, fraud, and counter-intelligence. He was assigned to felony crimes in federal government, fraud, waste and abuse investigations of the military branches of service, and counter-intelligence in overseas locations. Dean was also a former Texas State Commissioned Alamo State Park Armed Ranger.

Dean is currently Director, Animals C.L.U.B.- Freedom National Organization and Dean is also a Lead Investigative Reporter for the NationalDogPress.com Headline News © and DogPress.org news press services.

Fair Use Notice: Pursuant to Title 17 U.S.C. 107, other copyrighted work is provided for educational purposes, research, critical comment, or debate without profit or payment. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for your own purposes beyond the ‘fair use’ exception, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

NationalDogPress.com Headline News ©

ACORN: Who Funds the Weather Underground’s Little Brother?

Summary: The Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
has become America’s most prominent left-
wing community group. Little-known until
now, ACORN has played a major role in
the subprime mortgage mess that has undermined Americans’ support for free market problem-solving and set off a worldwide
chain of financial troubles. It is also implicated in vote fraud schemes from coast
to coast. ACORN aims to give America
change that socialists can believe in – by
any means necessary. It is deliberately organized to avoid scrutiny. But with an FBI
probe underway, millions of dollars in back
taxes owing, and a racketeering lawsuit
pending, it may finally have to answer for
its many misdeeds. (This is a companion
article to this month’s Labor Watch, which
looks at ACORN’s inconsistent approach to
labor issues.)

ACORN, the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now,
is a 38 year old radical left-wing
activist group that has taken in a minimum
of $126.4 million in donations and tax dollars
since 1993. ACORN calls itself the nation’s
largest community-based organization with
over 400,000 member families in 110 cities.
Its stated mission is “building community
organizations that are committed to social and
economic justice.” But like Jeremiah Wright,
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ACORN activists
build community solidarity by using the
corrosive rhetoric of class-warfare.

ACORN’s “People’s Platform,” ratifi ed in
1979 and updated in 1990, is a kind of Communist
Manifesto for America’s community
organizers:

By Matthew Vadum

Barack Obama, a former benefactor of and organizer for ACORN, meets with ACORN
activists in this undated photograph published in ACORN’s Social Policy magazine
in 2004. Obama has said that his days spent community organizing were the “best
education” he ever had. After organizing for ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate, Obama
lectured at ACORN on organizing techniques.
But we have nothing to show for the work
of our hand, the tax of our labor. Our
patience has been abused; our experience
misused. Our silence has been seen as
support. Our struggle has been ignored.

Enough is enough. We will wait no longer
for the crumbs at America’s door. We
will not be meek, but mighty. We will
not starve on past promises, but feast on
future dreams.

ACORN officials “bill themselves as nonpartisan
community organizers merely interested

CONTENTS
November 2008
ACORN
Page 1
Philanthropy Notes
Page 16

FoundationWatch

in giving a voice to minorities and the poor,”
notes the Wall Street Journal, but that façade
is fading fast. In reality, the organization is
“a union-backed, multimillion-dollar outfit
that uses intimidation and other tactics”
to advance a “highly partisan agenda.” Its
community organizers “are best understood
as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even
the Democratic Party.”

But what does this many-headed hydra
of an organization actually do? The now-
legendary, extensively documented electoral
fraud efforts of ACORN have been indelibly
imprinted in the public consciousness,
but that’s only a smidgen of what ACORN
actually does.

ACORN, with its members dressed in bright
red shirts, organizes crude protests against
businesspeople and public offi cials. Opposed
to the profit motive and capitalism
in general, it pushes for more government
control over citizens and the economy.
ACORN supports gun control, a government
monopoly in healthcare and an open door
immigration policy. It supports a big raise
in the federal minimum wage and so-called
“living–wage” laws enacted by states and
cities. ACORN wants more funding for urban
public schools, and wants federal and state
laws enacted guaranteeing paid sick leave
for all full-time workers. The group claims

Editor: Matthew Vadum

Publisher: Terrence Scanlon

Foundation Watch

is published by Capital ResearchCenter, a non-partisan education and
research organization, classifi ed by
the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

Address:

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Organization Trends welcomes letters to the editor.

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to fight for affordable housing and it rails
against foreclosures and so-called “predatory”
lending, even though it demands that
banks make loans destined to default. (See
Organization Trends, Oct. 2007.)

Next year it is likely that liberals in Congress
will try to enact into law the so-called
Fairness Doctrine in order to bludgeon
conservative-dominated talk radio. An
ACORN position paper argues that “[t]he
increasing concentration of ownership in
communication industries ensures that, unless
positive steps are taken, the concerns
of low- and moderate-income people will
continue to be ignored.” The group urges
reinstating the doctrine, which was rescinded
by the Reagan administration, “so that grass
roots community groups have equal time to
express their views.”

ACORN claims to have “delivered approximately
$15 billion in direct monetary benefits
to our membership and constituency over the
past 10 years.” It also has taken credit for
organizing community and labor coalitions
that enacted living wage laws in 41 cities. It
would be a mistake to dismiss these claims
as idle boasts.

ACORN even indoctrinates students in the
taxpayer-supported schools. In New York
City it runs the ACORN High School for
Social Justice and Bread and Roses High
School. ACORN schools have transported
students to the nation’s capital to protest
tax cuts.

And even though ACORN is an enthusiastic
supporter of government regulation of the
economy, it hates having to obey those same
regulations.

In 1995, ACORN sued the state of California
seeking an exemption from the law
that requires that it pay its own employees
a minimum wage. ACORN, which argued
that keeping its employees in poverty helps
to boost their zeal to help the poor, lost.

Even though it supports the continued imposition
of equal employment opportunity laws
on the rest of America, it argued it shouldn’t
have to comply with those same laws. The
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
had to sue ACORN to force it comply
with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,

the crown jewel of the civil rights movement’s
legislative accomplishments. (EEOC

v. ACORN, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2948; 67
Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. (BNA) 508)
Ironically, ACORN and its affi liates, all
reliable cheerleaders for higher taxes, are
longtime tax deadbeats. A search of public
records found more than 200 federal, state,
and local tax liens adding up to more than
$3.7 million that are associated with groups

ACORN supporter and unrepentant terrorist
William Ayers stands on the U.S. flag in this
2001 photo.
that share ACORN’s address on Elysian
Fields Avenue in New Orleans. The most
recent lien, in the amount of $23,383, was
filed by the IRS against an ACORN affiliate,
American Workers Associates Inc., on Sept.
9, 2008. The largest lien ($547,312) was filed
against ACORN by the IRS on March 10,
2008. (See table of liens at page 3.)

It is unclear what kinds of taxes ACORN
and its affiliates failed to pay, but because
almost all ACORN affiliates are exempted
from paying most or all taxes, it seems likely
that the liens were issued for non-payment of
employees’ payroll taxes. If so, this would
be ironic because payroll taxes fund the
social and wealth-distribution programs that
ACORN so staunchly supports.

Manufacturing Consent at the Ballot
Box

In the past, low-level ACORN employees
have landed in hot water for registering “Jive
Turkey” and “Mary Poppins” to vote and
for reportedly paying for fraudulent voter

November 2008

FoundationWatch

ACORN & Co.: Community Organizers and Tax Cheats

This table, based on public records, reflects some of the largest of those active tax liens and now-released tax liens pertaining to ACORN and affiliates that list 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117 as their address. A
tax lien is issued only after other attempts to collect the tax debt have been made and the tax debt is seriously delinquent.
If the lien has been released, that means that after the debtor failed to pay the tax owing, it either paid the tax owing or
made arrangements to pay satisfactory to the creditor tax agency. There may be many, many more ACORN tax liens
pending that have been sent out to other ACORN addresses.

Debtor Amount Creditor Original Lien or Filing
Filing Date Release? #
ACORN $547,312 IRS 3/10/2008 lien 930254
ACORN $306,407 IRS 3/6/2008 lien 930015
Community Labor Organizing
Citizens Consulting Inc. $140,994 IRS 3/14/2007 release 893022
ACORN $132,997 IRS 3/14/2008 lien 930768
ACORN $132,109 IRS 3/7/2007 release 892311
ACORN Housing Corp Inc. $125,342 IRS 5/9/2007 release 899820
Citizens Consulting Inc. $118,758 IRS 8/1/2007 release 912881
Citizens Consulting Inc. $118,600 IRS 6/4/2008 release 940211
SEIU $50,000 IRS 8/2/2005 lien 830295
ACORN $33,978 California 6/7/2006 lien 2006221370

The Internal Revenue Service explains its policy regarding imposing and releasing liens:

“[A] Notice of Federal Tax Lien may be filed only after: We assess the liability; We send you a Notice and Demand for Payment - a bill that tells you how
much you owe in taxes; and You neglect or refuse to fully pay the debt within 10 days after we notify you about it.”

The IRS “will issue a Release of the Notice of Federal Tax Lien: Within 30 days after you satisfy the tax due (including interest and other additions) by
paying the debt or by having it adjusted, or Within 30 days after we accept a bond that you submit, guaranteeing payment of the debt.” (source: http://
www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=108339,00.html#release)

registrations with crack cocaine.

Current and former ACORN employees say
ACORN makes no effort to remove bogus
voter registrations. “There’s no quality control
on purpose, no checks and balances,”
said Nate Toler, who worked on an ACORN
voter effort in Missouri. “The internal motto
is ‘We don’t care if it’s a lie, just so long as
it stirs up the conversation,’” he said. (Wall
Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2006)

In this election cycle the group seems to have
gotten much more aggressive. ACORN is
currently under investigation for electoral
fraud in at least 12 states. Not surprisingly,
potential swing states, including Nevada and
Colorado, are ACORN targets. (See chart,
The ACORN Vote Fraud File.)

November 2008

John Fund, a vote fraud expert and Wall
Street Journal columnist, chalks up this
new militancy to desperation. The author of
Stealing Elections, Fund predicted that the
federal investigations and a nearly $1 million
embezzlement scandal will do serious
damage to ACORN. He argues that ACORN
had to join with unions and other left-wing
groups in an all-out push for an Obama victory
in the hope that the scandals would all
get swept under the rug.

Fund’s comments came before the New York
Times reported (Oct. 24, 2008) that ACORN
and its affiliate Project Vote acknowledged
that the figure of 1.3 million new voter registrations
that the groups claimed to have
processed in the 2008 election cycle was a
wild exaggeration.

Michael Slater, Project Vote’s executive
director, said the true total for both groups
was closer to 450,000. About 400,000 registrations
were tossed by election offi cials for
fraud and other reasons.

ACORN always resists accepting blame for
the systemic electoral fraud that is its forte.
It’s never their fault. Not surprisingly, the
group said last month that rogue operators
—not ACORN officials at the top— were
responsible for the invalid voter registrations.
ACORN said it had to fire 829 of the
10,000 canvassers it hired during the election
for problems such as falsifying registration
forms.

Despite its own problems with rampant electoral
fraud, Project Vote tries to get rid of the
problem of electoral fraud by defining it out

FoundationWatch

of existence. The group says voter fraud is
largely a myth. In a Project Vote report called
“The Politics of Voter Fraud,” by Lorraine

C. Minnite, assistant professor of political
science at Columbia University’s Barnard
College, Minnite writes, “The claim that
voter fraud threatens the integrity of American
elections is itself a fraud.” (The report is
available at http://www.capitalresearch.org/
blog/?p=1897.)
Fund disagrees. Going into the 2008 election,
he wrote that the Democrats alone
were poised to mobilize 10,000 lawyers to
monitor the elections, and not just in Florida.
He wrote that this year’s election would be
the first presidential election “where the
full impact of new federally-mandated provisional
ballots will be felt.” Opportunities
for recount anarchy are legion. “Any person
who is not on the voter registration lists this
November must be given a provisional ballot,
which will be set aside and counted if
found valid later.”

Fund warned that

“[a] tug of war over provisional ballots
may be inevitable in key states where
the margin of victory is no greater than
the number of provisional ballots cast.
Both campaigns would once again send
squadrons of lawyers to any closely contested
state to watch and argue as every
single provisional ballot in the state is
reviewed and a determination is made as
to whether it should be counted. Results
could once again be delayed for weeks
after Election Day.”

When ACORN’s Jerry Kellman was asked
months ago if the offi cially nonpartisan
ACORN had assisted the Obama presidential
campaign in any way, he replied that its
501(c)(3) status prevented ACORN from
helping as an organization, but that “lots of
grassroots members” were assisting. Kellman
hired Barack Obama in 1985 to run an
effort called the Developing Communities
Project. (Foundation Watch, June 2008)

How ACORN Acts in Public

For ACORN, the ends justify the means.
Anything goes, from rude protests to crude
intimidation and violence.

* Little attention was paid in 1991 when a
busload of ACORN activists from Baltimore
and Philadelphia jumped the queue and
muscled out lobbyists who had reserved
seats at a congressional committee hearing.
(American Banker, June 20, 1991) In 1992,
80 ACORN members occupied a Crossland
Savings Bank branch in Brooklyn “to demand
a vacant apartment building be turned into
housing for low and moderate income families.”
(Newsday, July 29, 1993)

* But in March 1995, ACORN attracted
lots of attention when about 500 ACORN
activists stormed the Washington Hilton,
forcing then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich
(R-Georgia) to cancel a speech he was to
up at the detention facility and threatened
to stay put until the demonstrators were
released. (“Spreading the Virus,” by Stanley
Kurtz, New York Post, Oct. 14, 2008)

* In Chicago and other cities, ACORN
activists have seized abandoned houses
and encouraged homeless people to squat
there, claiming these actions would convince
authorities to convert them into low-income
housing. “ACORN protests have turned
violent, at times as soon as the rallies began.
Some protests disrupted Federal Reserve
hearings and busted into closed city council
give to county commissioners. Demonstrators
chanting “Nuke Newt!” grabbed the
microphone in the hall and took over the
head table. When the speech was cancelled,
ACORN activists cheered.

* Later that year, ACORN mobilized when
a congressional panel began considering
reforms to the Community Reinvestment Act
(CRA). Led by ACORN national president
Maude Hurd, the activists disrupted a hearing
by chanting, “CRA has got to stay!” and
“Banks for greed, not for need!” When they
again tried to commandeer the microphone,
five demonstrators, including Hurd, were arrested.
Efforts to free them by ACORN allies
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and
Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) failed.
The U.S. Capitol Police let them go only when
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) showed
meetings,” wrote Sol Stern of the Manhattan
Institute. (“ACORN’s Nutty Regime for
Cities,” City Journal, Spring 2003)

* Drawing inspiration from New York’s
homeless “squeegee” people, community
organizers at ACORN harass motorists as part
of the group’s “toll roads” program. Activists
carry canisters and hit up trapped motorists
at intersections for donations. (ACORN v. St.
Louis County, Missouri, 1989, 726 F. Supp.
747; 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14638)
* ACORN is willing to put innocent people’s
lives on the line in order to get its message
out. When proselytizing in communities,
ACORN won’t take no for an answer, even
around hospital emergency rooms. Activists
created a furor when they distributed leaflets
in a busy hospital. (Dallas ACORN v. Dallas
November 2008

County Hospital District, U.S. 656 F.2d 1175;
1981 U.S. App. LEXIS 17382)

* In 2001, ACORN protests outside the
home of the chairman of San Diego Gas &
Electric were so disruptive (demonstrators
handed out fliers with a picture of the chairman
below the word “WANTED”) that the
company got a temporary restraining order
forbidding pickets and requiring demonstrators
to stay 1,000 yards away from the homes
of SDG&E employees. The company’s legal
complaint alleged that the protesters shouted
derogatory comments outside the chairman’s
home, banged on his windows, and pounded
on his front door. (San Diego Union-Tribune,
Dec. 20, 2001)
* In 2002, ACORN activists dumped garbage
in front of Baltimore’s City Hall and demonstrated
outside the home of then-mayor
Martin O’Malley, who had dismissed the
group as “professional protesters.” O’Malley
said, “They unloaded a busload of people
shouting pretty ugly things and scared the
daylights out of my wife and kids. I thought it
was a pretty cruddy thing to do.” (Baltimore
Sun, Oct. 7, 2002)

* In 2004, two Ohio women volunteers
told police that an ACORN protester forced
his way inside the Cuyahoga County GOP
headquarters and assaulted them during an
attempt to protest a Republican challenge
to voter registrations. The ACORN member
said the Republican women assaulted him.
No charges were filed. (AP, Oct. 29, 2004)
* Last year, as Congress was about to begin
hearings on predatory lending, ACORN
FoundationWatch

coordinated protests in cities that have a
Federal Reserve Bank district headquarters.
In Kansas City, the Fed invited protest organizers
inside to meet with a community
affairs offi cer.

ACORN: Is it “Nonpartisan”?

In February, ACORN Votes, which is
ACORN’s national political action committee,
endorsed Barack Obama for president.
ACORN’s senior offi cials lavished
praise on Obama. Maude Hurd, ACORN’s
national president, said the senator “is the
candidate who best understands and can
affect change on the issues ACORN cares
about like stopping foreclosures, enacting
fair and comprehensive immigration reform,
and building stronger and safer communities
across America.”

The Many Faces of ACORN

Among ACORN’s many affiliates and subsidiaries are:

385 Palmetto Street Housing Fund Corp.
4415 San Jacinto Street Corp.
ACORN
Acorn 2004 Housing Development Fund Corp.
Acorn 2005 Housing Development Fund Corp.
ACORN Associates
ACORN Benefi cial Association
ACORN BeverlyY LLC
ACORN Campaign Services
ACORN Campaign To Raise The Minimum Wage
ACORN Center for Housing, Inc.
ACORN Children’s Benefi cial Association
ACORN Community Land Association
ACORN Community Land Association of IL
ACORN Community Land Association of LA
ACORN Community Land Association of PA
ACORN Community Labor Organizing Center
ACORN Cultural Trust
ACORN Dumont-Snediker Housing Development
Fund Corp.
ACORN Fair Housing
ACORN Fund
ACORN Housing Corp.
ACORN Housing Corp. of IL
ACORN Housing Corp. of MO
ACORN Housing Corp. of PA
ACORN Institute
ACORN Law For Education, Representation,
And Training
ACORN Management Corp.
ACORN National Broadcasting Network
ACORN Services
ACORN Television In Action For Communities
ACORN Tenant Union Training And Organizing
Project
ACORN Tenants Union
Affiliated Media Foundation Movement
Agape Broadcasting Foundation Inc

American Environmental Justice Project Inc.
American Home Childcare Providers Association
American Institute for Social Justice
Arizona ACORN Housing Corp.
Arkansas Broadcasting Foundation
Association for the Rights of Citizens Inc.
Associated Regional Maintenance Systems
Austin Organizing and Support Center
Baltimore Organizing and Support Center
Boston Organizing and Support Center
Broad Street Corp.
California Community Network
Chicago Organizing and Support Center
Chief Organizer Fund
Child Care Providers for Action Franklin
Citizens Action Research Project
Citizens Campaign for Work, Living Wage &
Labor Peace
Citizens Consulting, Inc.
Citizens Campaign for Finance Reform
Citizens for Future Progress
Colorado ACORN Housing Corp.
Crescent City Broadcasting Corp.
Desert Rose Homes LLC
Dumont Avenue Housing Development Fund
Elysian Fields Corp., Inc
Elysian Fields Partnership
Fifteenth Street Corp.
Floridians For All PAC
Franklin ACORN Housing
Greenville Community Charter School Inc.
Greenwell Springs Corp.
Hospitality Hotel and Restaurant Organizing
Council (HOTROC)
Houston Organizing And Support Center
KABF Radio
KNON Radio
Labor Neighbor Research and Training Center Inc.

Living Wage Resource Center
Louisiana ACORN Fair Housing
Massachusetts ACORN Housing Corp.
Metro Technical Institute
Missouri Tax Justice Research Project
Montana Radio Network
Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp.
Mutual Housing Association of New York Inc.
National Center for Jobs & Justice
New Mexico Organizing and Support Center
New Orleans Community Housing Organization
New York ACORN Housing Company Inc.
New York Agency for Community Affairs Inc.
New York Organizing and Support Center
Organizers Forum
Pennsylvania Institute for Community Affairs
People’s Equipment Resource Corp.
Phoenix Organizing And Support Center
Project Vote
SEIU Local 100
SEIU Local 880
Service Workers Action Team
Shreveport Community Television
Site Fighters
Sixth Avenue Corp.
Social Policy
Southern Training Center
St. Louis Organizing And Support Center
St. Louis Tax Reform Group
Student Minimum Wage Action Campaign
Texas ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
Wal-Mart Workers Association
Wal-Mart Association for Reform Now
Working Families Association

source: Employment Policies Institute report, “Rotten
ACORN: America’s Bad Seed,” July 2006, see PDF fi le at
http://www.rottenacorn.com/downloads/060728_badSeed.
pdf.

November 2008

FoundationWatch

The ACORN Vote Fraud File

Commenting before the 2008 election, ACORN attorney Kathryn Simpson: “There’s no voter fraud. There has been no
election.” Not so fast, ACORN. “It is against the law to register someone to vote who does not fall within the parameters to
vote, or to put someone on there falsely,” said FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patterson.

This list provides an overview of ACORN’s electoral improprieties but is by no means exhaustive.

Arkansas

1998: Project Vote contractor arrested for
falsifying 400 voter registration cards

Colorado

2005: Perjury convictions for 2 ex-ACORN
employees for false voter registrations
2004: ACORN employee admits forging signatures, registering 3 friends 40 times

Connecticut

2008: ACORN registers 7 year old girl, claiming she’s 27 on voter form

Florida

2008: ACORN registers “Mickey Mouse” to
vote in rodent’s home city of Orlando

Indiana

2008: Lake County receives 5,000 ACORN
registrations, at least 2,100 fraudulent

Michigan

2008: municipal clerks accuse ACORN of filing
fraudulent, duplicative registrations

Minnesota

2004: ACORN ex-worker illegally carried 300+
voter registrations in his car’s trunk

Missouri

2007: Identify theft, false voter registration
indictments for 4 ACORN employees
2006: Federal election fraud indictments for 8
ACORN employees (forgery, registrations)
2003: ACORN files 5,379 registrations but
only 2,013 appear valid

Missouri (continued)
2000: At least least 1,000 invalid registrations
fi led by ACORN

Nevada

2008: (Democratic) Sec’y of State ordered
vote fraud raid on ACORN Las Vegas office
2008: Clark County reports “thousands” of
phony registrations from ACORN

North Carolina

2004: ACORN investigated for filing fake voter
registration cards

New Mexico

2008: ACORN hires registrars with criminal
records for forgery and identify theft
2005: ACORN files 3,000 potentially fraudulent signatures for ballot initiative
2004: ACORN registered a 13-year old boy
to vote

Ohio

2008: ACORN pays teenager cash and cigarettes to register 73 times
2008: ACORN registers homeless man 13
times
2008: Buckeye Institute sues ACORN/Project
Vote under state racketeering law
2007 : after ACORN registers him in 2 counties,
man indicted on two felony counts
2004: ACORN worker indicted for false signatures and voter forms

Pennsylvania

2008: ACORN employee sentenced to 23
months for identity theft and record tampering
2008: ACORN employee pleads not guilty to
identity theft and record tampering
2008: U.S. Attorney investigates after Philadelphia flags 1,500 registrations from ACORN
2008: Dauphin County officials say 100 registrations from ACORN are suspicious
2004: ACORN probed, Berks County official:
voter fraud “absolutely out of hand”

Texas

2004: voter accuses ACORN of fi ling false
registration form in his name

Virginia

2005: state audit finds 83% of registrations
filed by ACORN/Project Vote invalid

Washington

2008: Indictments on felony voter fraud handed
down against 7 ACORN workers
2007: guilty pleas by 3 ACORN workers after
2,000 fraudulent registrations filed
2007: vote fraud charges laid against 4
ACORN workers
2006: Sec’y of state says all but 6 of 1,800
registrations from ACORN were fake

Wisconsin

2004: A D.A. probes 7 registrations fi led by
Project Vote without voters’ permission

(Sources: Employment Policies Institute web-
site http://www.rottenacorn.com/, media reports)

Obama understands the issues facing low-
and moderate-income people, said Alicia
Russell, ACORN’s western regional representative.
“He’s on the same level as we
are, and sees our issues as we do.” Texas
ACORN president Toni McElroy lauded
Obama, embracing his call for “fundamental
change in our economy to protect homeowners
and neighborhoods from the scourge of
foreclosures that is sweeping communities
across Texas.”

To protect the 501(c)(3) tax status of some
of its affiliates ACORN often claims to be
community-oriented and offi cially nonpartisan.
But it celebrates the most left-wing urban

politicians and endorses Democratic Party
candidates. If it’s ever endorsed a Republican,
that endorsement is well-hidden.

For instance, this year Minnesota ACORN
endorsed Democrat Al Franken in his 2008

U.S.Senate campaign against Republican incumbent
Norm Coleman. ACORN endorsed
Democrat Kweisi Mfume in his unsuccessful
2006 primary run for the U.S. Senate
against Ben Cardin, the eventual winner,
and ACORN’s PAC endorsed Rep. Chaka
Fattah (D-Pennsylvania) when he ran unsuccessfully
for mayor of Philadelphia against
Michael Nutter in 2007. (Philadelphia Daily
News, May 2, 2007) ACORN’s 2005 annual
report identifies as allies Los Angeles mayor
Antonio Villagairosa, a Democrat, and Rep.
Maxine Waters (D-California).

A recent video promoting ACORN didn’t
even bother to show a single Republican
lawmaker. The video called “ACORN
Grassroots Democracy Campaign,” available
on YouTube (http://www.youtube/.
com/watch?v=cLCSnbN1lRI), showcases
a parade of Capitol Hill Democrats as its
allies, including strategist Paul Begala,
Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and
Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pennsylvania), and
Representatives Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio),
Donna Edwards (D-Maryland), Barney

November 2008

Frank (D-Massachusetts), and Brad Miller
(D-North Carolina).

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a
lawyer who is a national co-chairman of
Obama’s presidential campaign, represented
the Clinton era Justice Department in support
of ACORN in ACORN v. Edgar, a 1995 ballot
access case in which Obama was ACORN’s
lead attorney. In April, the Democratic
governor steered a $33,000 grant through
the Massachusetts legislature for ACORN
Housing. (Boston Herald, Oct. 22, 2008)

Senator Hillary Clinton, who wrote her
Wellesley College senior thesis on Saul Alinsky,
the “father” of community organizing,
once gushed about ACORN in a speech at
the group’s national convention: “I thank you
for being part of that great movement, that
progressive tradition that has rolled across
our country” (July 10, 2006).

ACORN: No Ties to Obama?

Senator Barack Obama has tried to distance
himself from ACORN. That effort went into
high gear beginning in September when
ACORN began to receive a mountain of bad
publicity relating to nationwide allegations
of election fraud. Obama supporters tried to
confuse the issue by saying the senator was
never an ACORN community organizer, and
they say that Project Vote, the voter registration
drive that Obama ran in 1992, was never
a part of ACORN. (Project Vote itself is now
engaged in legalistic hairsplitting, conveniently
claiming that it didn’t become closely
aligned with ACORN until Obama left. Of
course, Project Vote has presented no legal
documentation to support its claim.)

At an ACORN-sponsored forum on Dec.
1, 2007, Senator Obama announced that he
would meet with ACORN in his fi rst 100
days as U.S. president. He said, “Before I
even get inaugurated, during the transition,
we’re going to be calling all of you in to
help us shape the agenda. We’re going to be
having meetings all across the country with
community organizations so that you have
input into the agenda for the next presidency
of the United States of America.”

The month before, Obama said: “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 drives in Illinois,
ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it,

and we appreciate your work.” And during
the primaries, the Obama presidential campaign
paid $832,598 to Citizens Services
Inc., an ACORN affiliate, for get-out-thevote
activities.

Obama’s ties to ACORN go back at least
to 1992. That’s the year he directed voter
registration for Project Vote, an ACORN
affiliate. Obama helped train ACORN lead

ers, and he represented ACORN in ACORN

v. Edgar.
The socialist New Party, which served as
ACORN’s electoral arm, endorsed Obama,
who was one of its members, when he ran
for the Illinois state senate in the mid-1990s.
As Stanley Kurtz noted (National Review
Online, Oct. 20, 2008), ACORN founder
Wade Rathke played a role in founding
the New Party, which embraced “fusion.”
Fusion parties, popular in the 19th century,
had a separate line on the ballot but often
endorsed major-party candidates. This
meant they didn’t function as “spoilers”
in tight elections, and were able to offer
their endorsements as an incentive to pull
a candidate in a specific political direction.
Obama used legal technicalities to have all
his opponents thrown off the ballot in the
1996 state election, but still he sought the
endorsement of the New Party.

Of course, ACORN values its close connection
to Obama, but when it recognized that
public recognition of its ties could hurt him
it tried to cover up the association.

In early October, as media coverage of

FoundationWatch

ACORN election fraud scandals intensified,
ACORN removed a smoking gun from one
of its websites. This was an article that linked
Obama to ACORN and to Project Vote and
made clear that the two entities were joined
at the hip.

The 2004 article was by Toni Foulkes, a
Chicago-based member of the ACORN national
board and now a Chicago alderman,

and it appeared in Social Policy, a publication
of ACORN’s American Institute for
Social Justice. Extolling Obama’s political
organizing abilities, Foulkes described the
close connections between ACORN and its
affiliate, Project Vote. She wrote that ACORN
“invited Obama to our leadership training
sessions to run the session on power every
year, and, as a result, many of our newly
developing leaders got to know him before
he ever ran for office.” So it was only “natural
for many of us to be active volunteers in his
first campaign for State Senate and then his
failed bid for U.S. Congress.” The upshot?
“By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were
old friends.”

ACORN hadn’t counted on resourceful
bloggers copying the Foulkes article, which
was titled “Case Study: Chicago-The Barack
Obama Campaign.” After weeks of unremitting
criticism, the article had been restored
to the Social Policy website as of Oct. 18.
(The article is available at http://www.capitalresearch/.
org/blog/?p=1701.)

Even now ACORN tries to claim that Project
Vote is a completely separate entity. But a job
posting at idealist.org, which lists an opening

There better be more than one bathroom: Amazingly, almost 300 ACORN-affiliated
groups officially live in this one house on Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans.
Photo: noquarterusa.net
November 2008

FoundationWatch

for a Project Vote finance director, notes that
the group is “[w]orking closely with its community
partner, ACORN.”(See http://www/.
capitalresearch.org/blog/?p=1646.)

Arianna Huffington’s liberal gossip website,
the Huffington Post, has egg on its face.
It published several articles in the weeks
leading up to Election Day that disputed
both Obama’s connection to ACORN and
ACORN ties to Project Vote. Writer Seth
Colter Walls has written that linking Obama
to ACORN was “a smash of a smear.” (For
more on Obama, see “Barack Obama: A
Radical Leftist’s Journey from Community
Organizing to Politics,” by Elias Crim and
Matthew Vadum, Foundation Watch, June
2008.)

ACORN: Structure and Affiliates
The acronym ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations
for Reform Now. Although most sources
say it was founded by 22-year-old Wade
Rathke in 1970, the group’s fi ling with
the Arkansas Secretary of State shows the
date of registration as 1977 (fi ling number
100004435). Perhaps in its early days it
didn’t bother to incorporate, but its tangled
legal status and welter of affiliations raises
many questions.

Today ACORN is a nonprofit corporation, but
it is not tax-exempt. Were ACORN to request
tax-exemption, it might have to abide by a
dizzying array of legal constraints and would
definitely have to make basic information
about its internal operations publicly available.
But such transparency would hinder
ACORN’s radical activities. ACORN community
organizers prefer to operate behind
closed doors. The Arkansas registration
doesn’t even list the group’s officers.

In 1977 ACORN also registered with the
Louisiana Secretary of State as a nonprofit
corporation (Charter/Organization
ID: 04700320X). That registration shows
ACORN’s mailing address, “principal
office,” and “principal business establishment
in Louisiana” as 1024 Elysian Fields
Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117. The
Louisiana document also discloses the top
three officers of ACORN. They are President
Maude Hurd of Dorchester, Massachusetts,
Vice President Maria Polanco of Brooklyn,
New York, and Secretary Maxine A. Nelson
of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Left-wing groups like ACORN often have
overlapping memberships and interlocking
directorates. They constantly align and
realign themselves in short- and long-term
strategic coalitions. Sometimes there are
formal mergers and sometimes “strategic
partnerships.” ACORN’s tangled family tree
includes a host of subsidiaries and affiliated
nonprofits that do not have to honor public
disclosure laws.

Blogger Larry Johnson (of “No Quarter”)
did a LexisNexis corporate fi lings search
for ACORN’s southern headquarters at
1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans,
Louisiana 70117. He found that there are
an incredible 294 ACORN-related entities
and nonprofits and businesses using
that address. (See http://noquarterusa.net/
blog/2008/10/14/obamas-campaign-liesabout-
acorn/ or http://tinyurl.com/6zkn5d.)
The Employment Policies Institute has
identified more than 100 business names
associated with ACORN. (See “The Many
Faces of ACORN” table at page 5.)

The ACORN empire includes the ACORN
Institute Inc. (leadership training for activists),
W*A*R*N (Wal-Mart Alliance for
Reform Now, which supports organizing
unions in Wal-Mart stores, ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. (arranges mortgages), Living Wage Resource Center (a website that
tracks efforts by cities and states to raise the

minimum wage above the federal standard),
ACORN Law on the Web (a web address
that automatically redirects to the main
ACORN website), two “social justice” radio
stations (KAFB 88.3 FM in Little Rock,
Arkansas, and KNON 89.3 FM in Dallas,
Texas), Project Vote (voter registration and
mobilization), Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) Locals 100 (Arkansas,
Louisiana, Texas) and 880 (Illinois, Indiana),

Site Fighters (fighting “big box” chains such
as Wal-Mart and Target), and the American
Institute for Social Justice Inc. (publishes
Social Policy magazine with ACORN Institute
Inc. and the Organizers’ Forum).

ACORN: Its Money and Donors

To quote Sir Walter Scott, “Oh what a tangled
web we weave, when first we practice to
deceive.”

Lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley, who acts for
ACORN, alerted the group this summer that
its relationship to its affiliated groups may
violate federal law. Kingsley’s report spells
out “her concerns about potentially improper
use of charitable dollars for political purposes;
money transfers among the affiliates;
and potential conflicts created by employees
working for multiple affiliates, among other
things,” according to a New York Times story
by reporter Stephanie Strom (Oct. 22, 2008).
Strom reports that ACORN has 174 affili-

ACORN embezzler Dale Rathke (shown at left) enjoys the good life at the 18th An-
nual New Orleans Film Festival in 2007. Photo: http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/
November 2008

FoundationWatch

The Interlocking Directorates of the ACORN Network

Here are examples of senior ACORN activists who serve either as offi cers or on the boards of ACORN affiliates or both (according to the affiliates’ most recently filed 990 forms):

*ACORN national President Maude Hurd. She is secretary-treasurer of ACORN International Inc. and director of Affiliated Media Foundation Movement Inc.

*ACORN’s national Vice President Maria Polanco. She is the official contact person for the ACORN Dominican Republic Council. Polanco
is also a member of the ACORN affiliate, Working Families Party (WFP), a registered political party in New York. Along with ACORN and
WFP, Polanco was a plaintiff in the 2003 lawsuit Working Families Party v. New York City Board of Elections, in which the left-wing Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law challenged the use of voting machines in New York City.

*ACORN’s national Secretary Maxine Nelson. She is president and a director of Project Vote and secretary of Arkansas Broadcasting
Foundation Inc.

*ACORN’s currently embattled founder Wade Rathke. He remains chief organizer of SEIU Local 100, president of ACORN International
Inc., and president and a director of Affiliated Media Foundation Movement Inc.

*Donna Pharr is assistant treasurer and director of 385 Palmetto Street Housing Development Fund Corp. and ACORN Community Land
Association of Illinois.

Pharr is also assistant treasurer of ACORN 2004 Housing Development Fund Corp., ACORN Community Land Association of Pennsylvania Inc., ACORN Dumont-Snediker Housing Development Fund Corp., ACORN Law for Education Representation & Training, ACORN
Housing Corp. Inc., ACORN Housing Corp. of Pennsylvania Inc., ACORN Housing Corp. of Missouri Inc., ACORN Institute Inc., ACORN
International Inc., ACORN Tenant Union Training & Organizing Project Inc., Affiliated Media Foundation Movement Inc., American Institute
for Social Justice Inc., Arizona ACORN Housing Corp. Inc., Arkansas Community Housing Corp. Inc., Association for Rights of Citizens
Inc., California Community Network, MHANY 2003 HDFC, Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp., New York Agency for
Community Affairs Inc., and Project Vote. Pharr is also deputy treasurer of Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee and is listed
in a Michigan Bureau of Elections filing as the contact person for Communities Voting Together, a 527 organization (see http://tinyurl/.
com/5kjens).

*George Butts is president and a director of the Pennsylvania Institute for Community Affairs Inc. and vice president of the ACORN
Institute Inc.

*Mike Shea is executive director of both ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. and Texas ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.

*Dorothy Amadi is president of ACORN Dumont-Snediker Housing Development Fund Corp., ACORN 2004 Housing Development Fund
Corp., Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp., both president and director of 385 Palmetto Street Housing Development
Fund Corp., both vice president and director of New York ACORN Housing Co. Inc., and both vice president and trustee of New Jersey
ACORN Housing Inc.

*Vernon Bolden is vice president of ACORN International Inc. and president and a director of SEIU Local 100.

ates; Pablo Eisenberg, a veteran scholar and separate.” ACORN entities exchange millions of dol-
participant in community organizing, writes lars every year for goods and services. The
that there are 103 affiliates in 38 states. The report noted that, “AmeriCorps members scantfinancial documents available for public

of AHC raised funds for ACORN, performed inspection paint a picture of a spider web of
Federal lawmakers have known about voter registration activities, and gave partisan ACORN-run organizations that trade loans,
ACORN’s unorthodox finances for years. speeches. In one instance, an AmeriCorps leases, payments, and grants.”
ACORN has used government resources member was directed by ACORN staff to
to promote legislation and has long com-assist the [Clinton] White House in preparing One journalist estimates that ACORN had
mingled funds within its network of affili-a press conference in support of legislation.” a 2006 budget of $37.5 million excluding
ates. A congressional report noted that there (“Report on the Activities of the Committee “its spinoff research and housing organiwas
“apparent cross-over funding between on Economic and Educational Opportunities zations.” Of the $37.5 million, $3 million
ACORN, a political advocacy group and During the 104th Congress,” Report 104-875, came from membership dues and the rest
ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC), a non profit, Jan. 2, 1997) came from foundations, private donations,
AmeriCorp [sic] grantee.” The government-corporations, and other sources. “Onetime
funded AmeriCorps, which promotes public If ACORN’s affiliates are hard to count, it’s corporate targets, like the Household Fiservice,
suspended AHC’s funding “after it impossible to calculate the total revenue nancial Corporation, pay ACORN to run
was learned that AHC and ACORN shared of the ACORN network. The Employment programs, in this case to educate people
office space and equipment and failed to Policies Institute (EPI) writes: “Because it about mortgages and loan terms.” (New
assure that activities and funds were wholly operates a virtual self-contained economy, York Times, June 26, 2006). Even the $37.5

November 2008

FoundationWatch

million estimate “likely does not include the
vast resources of the ACORN-run unions
or reflect election-year resources given to
its ostensibly non-partisan get-out-the-vote
efforts,” concludes EPI.

By using philanthropy databases and nonprofit
tax returns (IRS Form 990) Capital
Research Center has gathered a wealth of
information on money that flows into and
out of ACORN network coffers.

Project Vote (Voting for America Inc.) discloses
on its 990s that it received $23,658,487
in donations from 1994 through 2005. The

American Institute for Social Justice
Inc. reports that it took in $32,497,575
in donations from 1993 through 2005.
ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. reports it
took in $48,666,179 in donations from
1993 through 2004. ACORN Institute Inc.
took in donations of $2,074,409 from 2001
through 2005.

This means the four ACORN affiliates
took in a total of at least $106,896,650 in
donations from foundations and individuals
since 1993.

Organized labor is both a client and ally of
ACORN. ACORN (including its affiliates)
took in almost $3 million last year from
unions to assist unions with anti-corporate
campaigns, provide strike support, and help
with research and staffing, among other
things. (See “In a Rotten Nutshell: Everything
You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about
ACORN,” by Matthew Vadum and Jeremy
Lott, Labor Watch, November 2008.)

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Without the assistance of forensic accountants,
it would be impossible to determine
how many taxpayer dollars have gone to
the ACORN network. This is partly because
government grants and contracts can be
reported in Part I of the 990 form or they
can be easily buried in other sections of the
form. Accounting tricks could also have
been used to conceal government grants. The
total figure for government contributions to
ACORN and its affiliates could easily run
into billions of dollars.

Here are the $19,502,273 in government
grants to the ACORN network that we found
in Part I of all 990s available in the guidestar.
org database of nonprofits for ACORN’s four
main (non-labor union) affiliates:

*Project Vote: none.

*American Institute for Social Justice
Inc.: $53,870 (2006), $107,488 (2005),
$132,000 (2004), $70,000 (2003), $170,000
(2002), $100,000 (2001), $17,665 (2000),
and $10,050 (1997, when the Institute was
apparently named Arkansas Institute for
Social Justice, Inc.).

*ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.:
$1,700,317 (2005), $3,020,045
(2004),$2,608,961 (2003),$1,710,203

ACORN national president Maude Hurd
(at right) with former President Bill Clinton
in 2006. Clinton was at a press event urg-
ing Hurricane Katrina survivors to claim
the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
(2002), $1,977,306 (2001),$1,296,085
(2000),$1,151,929 (1999), $1,124,989
(1998),and $1,365,349 (1997).

*ACORN Institute Inc.: $2,275,182 (2006),
$300,880 (2005), $130,494 (2004), and
$179,460 (2003).

Add the $19,502,273 in tax dollars to the
$106,896,650 in donations and it becomes
apparent that the ACORN network has
taken in a minimum of $126,398,923 since
1993. (House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-
Missouri, said last month that ACORN has
received at least $31 million from taxpayers
since 1998. If he’s right, it means ACORN has
received at least $137,896,650 in donations
and government money since 1993.)

Bear in mind that the fi gures shown for
ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. (AHC) are
well below the actual level of government
housing-related grants to the ACORN network.
ACORN has many state- and local-
level housing affiliates that have accepted
government money. AHC itself brags on its
website that from 1986 through 2006 it has

“counseled” 250,226 clients and “educated”
284,758 more, and “created” 79,539 mortgages
in the amount of $10,080,912,633. It
claims to have 37 offi ces nationwide.

In February, AHC unveiled its non-profit
mortgage brokerage in 34 U.S. cities. The
brokerage, called Acorn Housing Affordable Loans LLC, partners with CitiMortgage, Bank of America, First American
Title Insurance Co., and Fannie Mae.
“The new mortgage brokerage will also help
homeowners faced with resetting adjustable
rates that may make their current home mortgage
payments unaffordable,” AHC said in
a statement. No financial data regarding the
new brokerage has turned up in philanthropy
databases yet.

The ACORN network is likely to get its
hands on even more taxpayer dollars in the
future. That’s because the housing bailout
bill enacted this summer contains language
creating a so-called affordable housing trust
fund that conservatives call a slush fund. This
unusual off-budget funding mechanism that
siphons off funds from the government’s two
Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs),
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provides
virtually no safeguards ensuring that the
money will actually be spent on affordable
housing.

The funding will go to left-wing housing
advocacy groups such as ACORN, National
Council of La Raza, and the Greenlining
Institute and “[t]here are no explicit requirements
for recipients of the grants to fi ll out
timesheets for housing activity, or restrictions
on groups using grant money to pay
employees who also happen to do other things

— such as lobbying and political campaigning,”
writes John Berlau of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute. “And there are really
no penalties other than being forced to give
the money back and being disqualifi ed for
a new grant.”
ACORN’s Capitol Hill supporters tried to
insert another affordable housing funding
mechanism in the $700 billion Wall Street
bailout package in September. However, the
legislative language supporting the funding
was removed after conservatives made it
clear that the slush fund provision was a
deal-breaker.

Foundation Support for ACORN

Although the four main ACORN affiliates

November 2008

took in least $106,896,650 in donations
since 1993, detailed grant data on the
ACORN network goes back only to 1998
on the foundationsearch.com philanthropy
database. The total figure is certainly higher
than $107 million.

Donors to ACORN, the lead entity registered
in Arkansas and Louisiana, include the
Marguerite Casey Foundation ($3 million),
Robin Hood Foundation ($821,000
– a board member is NBC newsman Tom
Brokaw), Beldon Fund ($750,000 to
“Florida ACORN”), Edna McConnell
Clark Foundation ($595,000 to “Bronx
ACORN”), Annie E. Casey Foundation
($65,000), George Soros’s Open Society
Institute ($25,000), Haymarket People’s
Fund ($15,000 consisting of an $8,000 grant
to “Massachusetts ACORN” and $7,000 to
“Rhode Island ACORN”), Barbra Streisand
Foundation ($15,000 consisting of a $7,500
grant to “Los Angeles ACORN” and $7,500
to ACORN)), Union Bank of California
Foundation ($15,000 consisting of a $5,000
grant to ACORN, and two $5,000 grants
to “San Diego ACORN”), and Provident
Bank Foundation Inc. ($5,000 to “New
Jersey ACORN”).

Donors to ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
include JPMorgan Chase Foundation
($5,007,500 plus at least $300,000 to separate
state-level ACORN-affi liated housing
nonprofits), Bank of America Charitable
Foundation Inc. ($1,405,000), Annie E.
Casey Foundation ($610,500 to ACORN
Housing Corp. of Illinois), US Bancorp
Foundation ($285,000, plus $470,000 to
ACORN Housing Corp. of Illinois), PNC
Foundation ($95,000), and Wachovia
Foundation ($5,000).

Donors to the ACORN Institute Inc. include
Roseanne Foundation, as in actress-comedienne
Roseanne Barr ($50,000), Annie E.
Casey Foundation ($50,000), Carnegie
Corp. of New York ($50,000), Lear Family
Foundation ($15,000), Starbucks Foundation ($13,563), the hard-left Arca Foundation ($10,000), and Wachovia Foundation
($5,000).

ACORN itself, as opposed to its affiliates,
received a $4,952,288 grant from its affiliate,
the American Institute for Social Justice Inc.
for “community reinvestment,” according to
the Institute’s 990 form from 2006.

ACORN’s voter mobilization arm, Project
Vote, has taken in more than $12 million in
foundation grants since 1999.

Project Vote donors include Rockefeller
Family Fund Inc. ($4,047,500), Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program ($2,643,100), Tides Foundation
($1,460,801), Bauman Family Foundation
($1,100,000), Omidyar Network Fund Inc.
($400,000), Beldon Fund ($383,000), Carnegie Corp. of New York ($300,000), HKH
Foundation ($200,000), Open Society Institute ($150,000), Stephen M. Silberstein
Foundation ($100,000), Barbra Streisand
Foundation ($60,000), and Ben & Jerry’s
Foundation ($15,000).

ACORN’s American Institute for Social
Justice Inc. has received at least $29,940,576
in foundation grants since 2000.

The Institute’s donors include Marguerite
Casey Foundation ($5,125,000), Rockefeller Family Fund Inc. ($4,130,000),
Sandler Family Supporting Foundation
($2,560,000), W.K. Kellogg Foundation
($829,285), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust ($500,000), Open Society Institute($350,000),Needmor Fund ($265,000),
McKay Foundation ($165,000),Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. ($150,000), Walter
and Elise Haas Fund ($120,000), Woods
Fund of Chicago ($145,000 — $75,000 in
2001 when Obama and William Ayers were
on its board, $70,000 in 2002), and Wachovia
Foundation ($5,000).

FoundationWatch

Other notable ACORN benefactors include
the Tides Foundation, which has given 24
grants totaling $603,375 to the ACORN
network, and Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr.
Trust, which has given four grants totaling
$275,000 to the ACORN network. The
Needmor Fund, which focuses on community
organizing, has given $189,500 to the
ACORN network. Citigroup Foundation
gave a $5,000 grant to “ACORN Baltimore”
and a $4,000 grant to ACORN Child Care
Providers for Action.

The Woods Fund of Chicago, which has
been in the news because Barack Obama
and ex-Weather Underground leader William
Ayers were fellow board members, has given

at least $190,000 to the ACORN network.
From at least 1999 through 2001 Obama and
Ayers were on the Woods Fund board. Two
of the three grants appearing in the foundationsearch.
com database were listed during
that period. A $45,000 grant for “community
development” went to “Chicago ACORN”
in 2000. The Woods Fund gave two grants
to “Chicago ACORN” as “fiscal agent” for
the American Institute for Social Justice Inc.
The first such grant for $75,000 for “social
and human services” was dated 2001 while
Obama and Ayers sat on the board, but the
second such grant ($70,000) was dated 2002,
after Obama had left the board. That grant
was also designated for “social and human
services.”

George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, an

Embattled ACORN founder Wade Rathke (at right) with former President Bill Clinton
in 2006.
November 2008

FoundationWatch

ambitious left-wing fi nancial clearinghouse
profiled in the January 2008 Foundation
Watch, directed a grant of unknown size to
ACORN in 2006. It is unclear if the grant was
directed at a specifi c ACORN affiliate.

Financial Transfers Within the ACORN
Empire

ACORN takes recycling seriously, at least
when it comes to money.

In the Employment Policies Institute’s
authoritative July 2006 report, “Rotten
ACORN: America’s Bad Seed,” July 2006,
the authors offer a glimpse of fi nancial transactions
within the ACORN network.

Among its findings:

*ACORN-affiliated SEIU Local 100
gave $58,654 of union members’ money
to another labor group, the Hospitality,
Hotel & Restaurant Organizing Council
(HOTROC), which was founded by
Wade Rathke

*Citizens Consulting, Inc., run at the
time by Rathke’s brother, Dale, took in
$520,000 from ACORN between 1998
and 2004 for lobbying

*Citizens Consulting, Inc. and ACORN
took in more than $1.7 million from
Project Vote from 2000 through 2003

*Since 1997 ACORN Housing Corp. paid
more than $5.1 million in fees or grants
to other entities in the network

Our own research has determined that
Project Vote (Voting for America Inc.) paid
ACORN $10,861,825 from 2000 through
2006, according to Project Vote’s 990 forms.
Project Vote also paid ACORN affiliate
Citizens Services Inc. $1,206,942 in 2005
and 2006, and paid $1,266,967 to ACORN
affiliate Citizens Consulting Inc. from 2000
through 2004.

Project Vote, ACORN, Citizens Services Inc.,
and Citizens Consulting Inc. all share the
same address, namely, 1024 Elysian Fields
Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70117, according
to 990 forms filed with the IRS.

Other ACORN affiliates including the American
Institute for Social Justice, ACORN
Housing Corp. Inc., and ACORN Institute
Inc. also show the Elysian Fields Avenue
address as their headquarters.

Since 2000 ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
paid its roommates, Citizens Consulting,
Inc., and Peoples Equipment Resource
Center $1,566,228 and (at least) $58,003,
respectively. It also gave a $37,500 grant to
the American Institute for Social Justice Inc.
for “education” in 2005.

Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky
In the crowded house on Elysian Fields Avenue,
since 2002 ACORN Institute Inc. has
paid ACORN $861,783, Citizens Consulting,
Inc. $61,443, ACORN Services $117,261,
ACORN Associates, Inc. $61,451, and
ACORN International, Inc. $83,966.

Since 2000 the American Institute for Social
Justice, Inc. paid ACORN $1,926,831, Citizens
Consulting, Inc. $362,464, and ACORN
Associates, Inc. $258,593.

On its 2002 tax form, the Institute disclosed
a $1,684,184 “community reinvestment”
grant to ACORN, along with a $9,637 loan
to SEIU Local 100. (On the same document,
the Institute also reported receiving a $50,000
interest-free loan from the Tides Foundation
for “purchase of equipment,” and a $4,000
interest-free loan from Open Society Institute’s
Progressive America Fund Inc.) In an
LM-2 (labor union disclosure) form last year,
SEIU Local 880 revealed that it gave $60,118
to ACORN for “membership services.”

On its 2006 tax form, the American Institute
for Social Justice, Inc. disclosed that it
provided a $4,952,288 “community reinvestment”
grant to ACORN, the non-tax-exempt
Arkansas nonprofit corporation that controls
the ACORN network.

ACORN’s Interlocking Directorates

Understanding how ACORN activists hold
key positions in the ACORN network is crucial
to understand how ACORN operates.

The term “interlocking directorates” describes
how individuals can serve as directors
on multiple corporate boards. This practice
is common in the ACORN family; it is
widespread and lawful. But it raises questions
about the quality and independence of
board decision-making.

ACORN’s interlocking directorates suggest
that even though each ACORN affi liate may
be legally separate, it is subject to centralized
control. The ACORN network claims to be
a “family” of organizations, embodying the
ethos of community organizing, which stresses
local action and decentralized authority. In
fact, ACORN is tightly controlled from the
top. (See table, The Interlocking Directorates
of the ACORN Network, at page 9.)

News of ACORN’s embezzlement scandal
has finally begun to stir debate over its structure
and organization. Until recently, it’s been
hard to find public debate about ACORN or
criticism of ACORN “chief organizer” Wade
Rathke. Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at
the Georgetown University Public Policy
Institute, has written that Rathke “sought to
put the national organization in control of
operations of the group’s affi liates.” ACORN
bylaws gave Rathke “the power to appoint
the head organizers of both local and state
affiliates.”

Eisenberg notes although local boards
“technically had the authority to overrule
his appointments, they rarely did, according
to senior staff members,” He added: “The
decision to keep so much control over the
affiliates seems at odds with Acorn’s mission
– its goal is to empower local people to
fight their own battles – but some organizers
agree with Mr. Rathke that it is important
to centralize operations. They say only a
unified network led by headquarters has the
power and speed needed to wage successful
national advocacy efforts.” (Chronicle of
Philanthropy op-ed, Oct. 2, 2008)

And centralize Rathke did.

Capital Research Center discovered that the
crowded house on Elysian Fields Avenue is
owned by ACORN affiliate Elysian Fields
Corp Inc. Afiling with the Louisiana secretary

November 2008

of state’s office reveals that Wade Rathke is
the corporation’s president and the ubiquitous
Donna Pharr is its treasurer.

ACORN lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley focused
on the current ties between ACORN and
Project Vote. As reported in the Oct. 22, 2008
New York Times story, Kingsley found:

[T]he tight relationship between Project
Vote and Acorn made it impossible to
document that Project Vote’s money
had been used in a strictly nonpartisan
manner. Until the embezzlement scandal
broke last summer, Project Vote’s board
was made up entirely of Acorn staff
members and Acorn members.

Ms. Kingsley’s report raised concerns
not only about a lack of documentation
to demonstrate that no charitable money
was used for political activities but also
about which organization controlled
strategic decisions.

She wrote that the same people appeared
to be deciding which regions to focus
on for increased voter engagement for
Acorn and Project Vote. Zach Pollett, for
instance, was Project Vote’s executive
director and Acorn’s political director,
until July, when he relinquished the former
title. Mr. Pollett continues to work
as a consultant for Project Vote through
another Acorn affiliate.

“As a result, we may not be able to prove
that 501(c)3 resources are not being
directed to specific regions based on
impermissible partisan considerations,”
Ms. Kingsley said, referring to the section
of the tax code concerning rules for
charities.

She also found problems with governance
of Acorn affiliates. “Board meetings are
not held, or if they are, minutes are not
kept, or if minutes are kept, they never
make it into the files,” she wrote.

Project Vote, for example, had only one
independent director since it received
a federal tax exemption in 1994, and
he was on the board for less than two
years, its tax forms show. Since then,
the board has consisted of Acorn staff
members and two Acorn members who
pay monthly dues.

The newspaper also interviewed George
Hampton and Cleo Mata, two former Project
Vote board members. Both denied serving on
the board and Hampton, who acknowledged
he had been an ACORN member, said he had
never heard of Project Vote. Go figure.

Scandal!

The truth about Wade Rathke’s management
style is starting to dribble out now that he’s
been forced out. But as early as the 1980s
some ACORN dissidents were beginning
to protest, saying Rathke had created a sti-

Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s interim chief
organizer, speaks at a rally.
fling “cult of personality.” Dorothy Perkins
of North Little Rock, a former Arkansas
ACORN chairman, complained at the time
that ACORN was “run like a Jim Jones cult.”
Rev. Daniel Perkins said funds raised by
ACORN were “never seen” by the low- to
moderate-income people the organization
was supposed to help. They somehow ended
up in the Big Easy, controlled by Rathke. (Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette, Sept. 2, 1987)

All of this was kept under wraps until this
summer when it was discovered that Wade
Rathke failed to notify police when he
discovered in 2000 that his brother Dale,
ACORN’s chief fi nancial officer, had embezzled
$948,000 from the group. Instead,
Wade Rathke engineered a cover-up for his
brother and allowed him to leave the payroll
of Citizens Consulting Inc., the ACORN affiliate
that handles its financial affairs, and go
to work as his $38,000 a year “assistant” at
ACORN headquarters. The missing money
was disguised as a loan to an offi cer on the
ledgers of Citizens Consulting.

For perhaps the first time in ACORN’s
history, its leaders embraced a libertarian
approach to dispute resolution. The Rathke
family signed a restitution agreement with
ACORN, promising to repay the amount

FoundationWatch

stolen at the rate of $30,000 per year. They
reportedly have repaid $210,000. In return,
ACORN promised to keep quiet about what
was called a “misappropriation.” To keep
the theft secret Wade Rathke made his arrangement
with colleagues who comprise
ACORN’s senior management. He did not
inform ACORN’s 51-member board of
trustees. Dale Rathke remained an ACORN
employee until May 2008 when a whistle-
blower caused the uproar that led to his firing
and his brother’s resignation.

Maude Hurd, ACORN’s national president,
has since rationalized this conduct, saying
it was best to “protect” ACORN and “to
deal with it in-house.” ACORN’s national
board has turned a blind eye and agrees. At
a mid-October meeting in New Orleans the
board voted to withdraw a lawsuit fi led by
two board members, Karen Inman and Marcel
Reid, on behalf of ACORN that sought
access to ACORN’s financial records. “The
board is moving in a positive manner for
a speedy resolution in the best interests of
the organization,” said spokesman Charles
Jackson.

Inman, Reid, and six other dissident board
members have dubbed themselves the
“ACORN 8.” In a press release Oct. 14,
Reid urged fellow board members to overcome
“the ACORN culture of quiescence to
Wade Rathke and his family so that ACORN
vindicates the poor and moderate income
people it represents.”

That ACORN filed suit against itself underlines
its complex, confusing web of relationships.
Bertha Lewis, who replaced Rathke as
ACORN’s interim chief organizer, has said
the two boards members lacked legal standing
to sue on the board’s behalf. Lewis also
said the civil suit had distracted the group
from answering “Republican right-wing attacks”
on ACORN voter registration.

The New York Times broke the story (Aug.
17, 2008) that Drummond Pike, founder and
CEO of the Tides Foundation and a personal
friend of Wade Rathke, secretly purchased
the promissory note wherein the Rathke
family agreed to repay the remaining stolen
money—$738,000—to ACORN.

Even though senior ACORN offi cials signed
confidentiality agreements forbidding them
from disclosing the identity of the buyer,
someone in the group leaked the information
to the media.

November 2008

FoundationWatch

Let’s get this straight: ACORN and Tides
covered up ACORN’s original cover-up of
the embezzlement?

Some ACORN funders such as Dave Beck-
with, executive director of the Needmor
Fund, are upset that the employees who
learned of the fraud in 2000 still work for
ACORN and its affiliates. Needmor has
been donating to ACORN affiliates for at
least a decade.

Wade Rathke is a director on the boards
of the far-left funders Tides Inc., Tides
Center, and Tides Foundation. However,
John A. Powell, board chairman of the Tides
Network, the umbrella organization for
Tides affiliates, said in August that Rathke
is taking a leave of absence from all Tides
boards. Powell added that no Tides money
was used in the cloak-and-dagger transaction
by Pike, who is also treasurer of George
Soros’s Democracy Alliance.

Although Wade Rathke resigned from
ACORN, he retains his position as “chief
organizer” at ACORN International LLC,
a private company with overseas offices.

ACORN’s Radical New Left Origins

ACORN’s origins lie in the 1962 Port Huron
Statement, a manifesto of radical students
disillusioned with America. The ponderous
statement was largely written by Tom Hayden
(Jane Fonda’s ex-husband). It claimed
America was hopelessly racist, militaristic,
and soulless: “America is without community,
impulse, without the inner momentum
necessary for an age when societies cannot
successfully perpetuate themselves by their
military weapons, when democracy must be
viable because of its quality of life, not its
quantity of rockets.”

The statement called for greater worker
control over the economy and so-called
participatory democracy. It asserted that
“[t]he allocation of resources must be based
on social needs,” and that “public utilities,
railroads, mines, and plantations, and other
basic economic institutions should be in the
control of national, not foreign, agencies.”

The authors of the Port Huron statement
created an organization to carry out their
vision. It was Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS), perhaps the preeminent group
of the New Left movement of the 1960s.
Inevitably, SDS failed to achieve its goals

and it broke into splinter factions. One bloc
of SDS members formed the violent group,
“Weatherman” (known colloquially as the
Weathermen). The group took its name from
Bob Dylan’s song “Subterranean Homesick
Blues,” whose lyrics include the line, “You
don’t need a weatherman to know which way
the wind blows.” The group embraced terror
as a tool of political change and morphed into
the revolutionary terrorist group, the Weather
Underground Organization (WUO). Two of
its leaders were the would-be mass murderers
William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who
would later become members of the faculties
of, respectively, the University of Illinois,
Chicago and the Northwestern University
School of Law.

Those who rejected terrorist violence included
Wade Rathke, who had worked as a
draft resistance organizer for SDS. He also
was an organizer for the National Welfare
Rights Organization (NWRO), a group
whose members physically occupied welfare
offices, intimidating social workers and insisting
that they be given every government
welfare dollar that the law “entitled” them to.
NWRO followed what has since been called
the Cloward-Piven Strategy after sociologists
Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward.
They defined a model of political and economic
subversion that called upon activists to
pack the welfare rolls to spread dependency,
bankrupt the government, and cause uprisings
against the capitalist system.

Rathke believed in “welfare rights” in the
1960s and he believes in them today, the

U.S. Constitution notwithstanding. In 1970
he founded ACORN to carry out the strategy
of upheaval and the agenda of welfare entitlement.
That agenda manifests itself today in
the ACORN Tax & Benefi t Access Center
and the ACORN Financial Justice Center.
ACORN partnered with the Marguerite
Casey Foundation, a left-wing funder, to
create a new kind of tax preparation service
based on the assumption that Americans have
a “right” to welfare. Think of it as H&R
Block for subversives. The group and its
allied entities help people claim the Earned
Income Tax Credit, a make-believe tax credit
that functions more as a welfare benefi t. The
goal is not primarily to help Americans in
need but to pack the welfare rolls in order
to expand the size and scope of government.
(See the foundation’s press release at http://
tinyurl.com/58efet.)
Although there is nothing wrong with registering
poor people, who have just as much of
a right to vote as other Americans, ACORN’s
focus on registering those dependent on government
programs seems consistent with the
Cloward-Piven Strategy. Its voter registration
drives in Louisiana, for example, focus on
registering people at “welfare waiting rooms,
unemployment offices, and on Food Stamp
lines.” (ACORN v. Fowler, 1999 178 F.3d
350; 1999 U.S. App. LEXIS 11937. )

ACORN and WUO, siblings who took different
paths to radical change, one through
violence and terror, the other through protest
and politics, draw their inspiration from a
second source, the Chicago activist Saul
Alinsky. He is the leftist who wrote Rules
for Radicals, the seminal how-to guide for
radical activists that elevated local-level
political agitation to an ugly art form.

As the father of community organizing
Alinsky urged activists to “rub raw the
sores of discontent.” In his book, Alinsky
praised the Devil as the “first radical” who
“rebelled against the establishment and did
it so effectively that he at least won his own
kingdom.”

Alinsky said his book was “a step toward a
science of revolution,” and acknowledged
its debt to the amoral Renaissance political
plotter Niccolo Machiavelli. “The Prince
was written by Machiavelli for the Haves
on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals
is written for the Have-nots on how to take
it away.”

Alinsky believed that in political combat
almost anything goes. “In war the end justifies
almost any means.” Alinsky wrote that “the
practical revolutionary will understand …
[that] in action, one does not always enjoy
the luxury of a decision that is consistent
both with one’s individual conscience and
the good of mankind.”

Marian Wright Edelman, head of the left-
wing Children’s Defense Fund, said of
Alinsky: “He was brilliant. He was working
for underdogs. He was trying to empower
communities, which we still need to do. He
spoke plainly. He had his outrageous side,
but he also had his pragmatic side.”

The Washington Post reported (March 25,
2007) that Edelman “knows Obama, worked
closely with Clinton and spoke at Alinsky’s

November 2008

funeral. It quoted her observation: “Both
Hillary and Barack reflect that understanding
of community-organizing strategy. Both
just know how to leverage power.” It’s worth
noting when she was First Lady, Clinton
pushed President Bill Clinton to prioritize
ACORN’s “Motor Voter” legislation, which
opened up new opportunities for electoral
fraud. It was the first bill President Clinton
signed into law.

In early 2008, ACORN’s political action
committee endorsed Democrat Barack
Obama for U.S. president as have former
Weather Underground members Ayers and
Dohrn, a married couple who helped launch
Obama’s political career by hosting a 1995
fundraiser for the then-Illinois state senate
candidate in their Hyde Park home. Former
SDS and WUO member Mark Rudd also
supports Obama.

Not surprisingly, Hayden, who served in
the California legislature for close to two
decades, endorsed Obama in January, arguing
that the Democratic candidate represents
“the spirit, excitement, energy and creativity
of a new generation bidding to displace the
old ways.”

Other former SDS members who endorsed
Obama included Michael and Susan Klonsky,
and Michael’s brother Fred Klonsky, who was
active in the Communist Party USA. Former
SDS member Carl Davidson, who is also a
leader in the Marxist group, United for Peace
and Justice, supports Obama.

Public relations executive Marilyn Katz,
a former SDS member, supports Obama
and is one of his “bundlers” (a fundraiser).
Former SDS president Todd Gitlin also supports
Obama.

Creating A Financial Crisis

Some writers have suggested the actions of
ACORN and other Alinsky-inspired organizers
who adhere to the Cloward-Piven Strategy
of manufactured crisis have helped cause the
meltdown on Wall Street. Certainly radical
activists have had their eyes on Wall Street
for a long time. A cheeky conservative might
even argue that the crisis on Wall Street is a
kind of Reichstag fire but that this time the
Communists really are the arsonists.

At an ACORN “banking summit” in New
York City in 1992, keynote speaker Jesse
Jackson explained why activists should go

after banks. “Get the money from where the
money went,” said Jackson. “Don’t make
things complicated. Why did Jesse James
rob banks? Because that’s where the money
was.” (ABA Banking Journal, Oct. 1, 1992,
available at http://tinyurl.com/6jjdgc)

One ACORN document, “To Each Their
Home: Success Stories from the ACORN
Housing Corporation.” makes its plans
explicit in boasting that successful ACORN
militancy can undermine bank underwriting
standards. It says ACORN Housing
developed “several innovative strategies”
to get around traditional lending guidelines,
which were unfair because they “were
geared to middle class borrowers.” Instead,
ACORN convinced lenders to adopt “more
flexible underwriting criteria that take into
account the realities of lower income communities.”
Henceforth banks would accept
“less traditional income sources such as
food stamps.”

Those ideas were ratified by the Carter-
era Community Reinvestment Act (CRA),
which opened up banking to ACORN-style
agitation. This 1977 law punishes lenders
for limiting loans to wealthier, more creditworthy
markets, a practice called “redlining.”
Banking regulators are given the power
to make trouble for banks that fail to lend
enough money to “underserved” minority
communities.

Since CRA went into effect, Alinsky-inspired
groups such as ACORN, the National
Council of La Raza (profi led in Foundation
Watch, Dec. 2007), and the Greenlining
Institute (profi led in Organization Trends,
Aug. 2008) have gone into the shakedown
business. It intensified when then-Treasury
Secretary Robert Rubin presided over the
Clinton administration’s effort to put the
CRA on steroids. Banks began to make
risky subprime loans and Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac aggregated them for sale as
mortgage-backed securities (MBSs). Those
practices made it easier for banks to give in
to ACORN’s demands because they knew
they could offload their high-risk debt on
Fannie and Freddie.

Was all of this a good idea? Not according to
University of Texas economist Stanley Liebowitz.
He writes that the current mortgage
market debacle is “a direct result of an intentional
loosening of underwriting standards

– done in the name of ending discrimination,
FoundationWatch

despite warnings that it could lead to wide-
scale defaults.” (See New York Post, Feb. 5,
2008, at http://tinyurl.com/2ahdkd.)

Liebowitz isn’t alone is pointing out that U.S.
financial markets are now being asphyxiated
by a terrible credit crunch that might have
been avoided if lenders had refrained from
making loans they should have known were
doomed to default.

Political activism drove the banks to make
irresponsible decisions, and it has put taxpayers
on the hook for bank and housing
bailout packages costing potentially trillions
of dollars.

As Stanley Kurtz has observed, “For years,
ACORN had combined manipulation of the
CRA with intimidation-protest tactics to force
banks to lower credit standards. Its crusade,
with help from Democrats in Congress, to
push these high-risk “subprime” loans on
banks is at the root of today’s economic
meltdown.”

That ACORN is costing all Americans their
long-term prosperity for the sake of a failed
political strategy to help the poor is perhaps
the fi nal irony.

Matthew Vadum is Editor of Foundation
Watch.

(Editor’s Note: This article draws on the
excellent research of discoverthenetworks.
org, John Fund’s book, Stealing Elections,
the Employment Policies Institute’s report,
“Rotten ACORN,” and Vadum’s many blog
posts about ACORN that are available at
http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/.)

FW

Please remember
Capital Research Center
in your will and
estate planning.

Thank you for your support.

Terrence Scanlon

President

November 2008

FoundationWatch

PhilanthropyNotes

A trial date of January 20, 2009 has been set in the Robertson Foundation’s landmark “donor intent”

lawsuit against Princeton University. Camden Superior Court judge John Fratto has split the case into
two parts. The first case will consider whether the university is liable for the plaintiff’s claims that it ignored
the donors’ intent that their gift be used to educate students for careers in government. If there is a finding
of liability, the second case will consider monetary damages. The Robertsons’ 1961 gift of $35 million has
grown to an estimated $900 million, the Trenton Times reported Oct. 25.

Some charities should be allowed to fail, the Wal-Mart Foundation’s president, Margaret McKenna, said
recently. McKenna said Boston, for example, has too many nonprofits and that instead of squabbling over
shrinking resources they should cooperate in these uncertain economic times. “The argument that ‘our
organization will go out of business’ doesn’t resonate with me,” she said, according to the Boston Herald.
What does resonate is, “Our population will not be served.”

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press tested the political knowledge of 3,612 U.S.
adults and found that the audiences of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity with Alan Colmes were the
best informed about U.S. politics. On two questions that asked respondents to identify the majority party in
the U.S. House of Representatives (Democrats) and to identify the current U.S. secretary of state (Condoleezza Rice), “Hannity & Colmes” viewers scored 84% and 73% respectively. Among Rush Limbaugh listeners, the scores were 83% and 71%.

The Philanthropy Roundtable, an association of grant makers and philanthropists, hired Sue Santa, a
former corporate lawyer and aide to Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), to fill the new position of senior vice
president for public policy, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. The Roundtable said Santa would try “to
protect philanthropic freedom from threats posed in Washington, D.C., and across the country.” The announcement came after AB 624, a now-withdrawn California state bill that would have forced foundations
to disclose information about the race and sexual preferences of their grant recipients, employees, and
boards. (For more on AB 624, see Foundation Watch, July 2008.) In 2005, the Roundtable created the Alliance for Charitable Reform in order to respond to scrutiny of grant makers by Sen. Charles E. Grassley
(R-Iowa).

The World Wildlife Fund announced it will be taking wealthy donors on a whirlwind world tour in an effort
to raise awareness of environmental issues across the globe. Donors will be whisked away by private jet
and enjoy luxury accommodations on this grand eco-tour. The trip will last approximately one month and
set each participant back at least $65,000.

Federal prosecutors said 14 people have been indicted in a wide-ranging racketeering and fraud case
wherein money from criminal activities stateside was being shipped to the Palestinian territories, the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch reports. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said the Hamed Organization, a charity
led by Bassam Hamed, may have illegally moved $1.5 million to terrorist groups.

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Internet search giant, unveiled $14 million in grants to groups
working in Southeast Asia and Africa to prevent the next global pandemic. “Business as usual won’t prevent the next AIDS or SARS,” said Google.org executive director Larry Brilliant.

The Reputation Institute released its list of the “Most Admired U.S. CEOs” of 2008. Top of the list is
Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Also included on the list are domestic diva Martha Stewart and the late Wal-Mart
founder Sam Walton.

November 2008

THANK YOU TO SUE B. FOR THIS INFORMATION.

Dean A. Ayers
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

http://AnimalsClubFreedom.us/

“United States Officially Certified Site”

Dean A. Ayers is a prior United States Air Force Special Agent for the AFOSI. His duties included that of law enforcement specialist, criminal, fraud, and counter-intelligence. He was assigned to felony crimes in federal government, fraud, waste and abuse investigations of the military branches of service, and counter-intelligence in overseas locations. Dean was also a former Texas State Commissioned Alamo State Park Armed Ranger.

Dean is currently Director, Animals C.L.U.B.- Freedom National Organization and Dean is also a Lead Investigative Reporter for the NationalDogPress.com Headline News © and DogPress.org news press services.

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