Free Republic

Acorn's plans for Oklahoma City discovered; including their plans to use the current economic crises to swell their numbers in the metro area.

Hawaii received $2,284,000 million of federal stimulus funds for the 11the Congressional district, $40,903,941 million for the 15th Congressional district, $1,651,811 for the “00” Congressional district, and $799,656 in the 99th congressional district creating a combined “3.4” jobs or $13,423,355 per job, according to the federal government’s transparency web site for stimulus funds, http://www.Recovery.gov/.However, Hawaii has just two congressional districts, 1 and 2. Those districts received $592,211,484 million and $174,075,308 respectively, according to the federal web site, creating combined total of 1,541.5 jobs. See the full report on Hawaii here: http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/StateSummaries/Pages/statesummary.aspx?StateCode=HI Media inquires to the governor’s office, the state budget...

Newly appointed White House counsel Bob Bauer is "perfectly positioned to be tasked with erasing the tracks between Obama and ACORN," one Republican lawmaker charged Friday. The lawyer's hiring, announced this morning shortly after Greg Craig officially resigned the post, was also an attempt by the White House to deflect any fallout that may arise from an ACORN investigation currently underway in Louisiana, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) added in a statement. “Bob Bauer has a public record of defending Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN, the congressman told supporters. "Bauer’s hiring appears to be a tactical maneuver to strategically defend the...

In fact, the 9-point drop in the most recent quarter is the largest Gallup has ever measured for an elected president between the second and third quarters of his term, dating back to 1953.

ACORN wants people to register to vote – as long as they’re Democrats. Republican registrations go into the trash. Here is a first-hand account of how it happens. In February 2008, Fathiyyah Muhammad of Jacksonville, Florida, heard that ACORN was paying people three dollars for each voter they could register. ACORN paid her three dollars for each voter she registered, but Fatiyyah Muhammad says that the group threw out her votes and fired her when she brought them registrations of Republican voters. Fathiyyah Muhammad voted for Obama. “I’m a Republican,” she says, “and this was the first time that I...

The latest count shows ACORN under investigation in 20 states, its employees were charged with more than 50 counts of “election-related fraud,” and that ACORN has spent more than $1 million on restitution to avoid criminal prosecutions (although the Louisiana AG says that number is closer to $5 million).The is more than enough evidence to show that ACORN is corrupt throughout its vast organization and in so many ways. For weeks these pages have been calling for a special prosecutor.We cannot rely on the the politically appointed Democratic Party-led justice department to run an investigation, especially when you consider the...

Evidence continues to accumulate from far and wide that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is lousy with corruption. The latest revelations come from Louisiana and Oklahoma. In the former, the local ACORN Housing Corp. office received contracts worth a combined $625,000 from the City of New Orleans for repairing existing low-income housing and developing new units in poor neighborhoods. The contracts were paid for with funds from federal Community Development Block Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. An investigation by the Pelican Institute think tank of New Orleans, however, found that no work...

- Used Rapists & Burglars in Door-to-Door Registration DrivesSo where does a far left political operative land after his organization is fined $775,000 for election violations that included hiring rapists and burglars to register voters? Inside the Obama White House, of course. Obama's ACORN operative in the White House Patrick Gaspard is helping shape domestic policy-- There have been several articles written lately about Barack Obama's ACORN advisor, Patrick Gaspard, who is currently serving in the White House. Gaspard has a long history of working with ACORN-affiliated organizations. Erick Erickson at RedState reported on Gaspard's close ties to ACORN: The...

We are discovering that Obama's promised transparency only goes so far in reporting where stimulus money ends up going. The new tracking website, Recovery.gov, is supposed to let us all know where the federal "stimulus" money is going but apparently will not track money that goes to groups like the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The Denver Post published a story by reporter Miles Moffeit that reveals that the stimulus tracking website will only report so far into the chain of agencies and organizations that end up receiving stimulus cash and will not report where billions of...

In case you haven't seen a TV in the last month, here is some background. Bertha Lewis is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Organizer of ACORN, the largest community organization in the country. Appointed in May 2008, Ms. Lewis oversees the operations of its 400,000 strong membership, which is active in over 110 cities across the country. During the past few weeks while Lewis has been all over the press defending her organization, she has claimed that her first priority is ACORN's Clients, those poor people needing housing, medical care, etc. If she is so concerned about "the little...

LAS VEGAS — When ACORN took to Las Vegas and started playing "Blackjack" and "21," the activist group was making a far bigger gamble than it ever guessed, according to Nevada prosecutors. There's nothing wrong with playing the tables in Vegas, but authorities say ACORN was using the names of those casino games as a cover to illegally pay workers to sign up voters as part of an illegal quota system. A preliminary hearing Tuesday in the downtown Clark County courthouse has put ACORN on trial for the first time as a criminal defendant. Until now, prosecutions for voter registration...

This broke earlier this morning. Bank of America Corp. is suspending its work with the housing affiliate of embattled community organizing group ACORN. The decision comes as three Republicans in Congress ask Bank of America and 13 other financial institutions to give Congress a complete accounting of their dealings with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or its affiliates.

Taxpayer-Owned Citigroup Still Bankrolling ACORN Submitted by Peter Flaherty on Sun, 09/27/2009 - 18:59   Now that taxpayers are Citigroup’s biggest shareholder, owning 36% of common stock, it is time for the company and its foundation to end its relationship with ACORN and its affiliates.Citigroup has received $45 billion in taxpayer TARP funds. In addition, taxpayers are on the hook for the lion’s share of losses on the company’s $335 billion loan portfolio.According to the 2008 annual tax return of the Citi Foundation, it provided the ACORN Institute, Inc. with grants of $500,000 for each of the years 2006, 2007...

It has been two weeks since the shocking undercover video work of James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles was released to the world. Those videos reveal beyond any shadow of a doubt that ACORN is the very definition of a "corrupt organization." Furthermore, they demonstrated clearly that ACORN officials in several cities are more than willing to get involved in the most heinous kind of criminal activity – up to and including murder and white slavery rings involving the exploitation of helpless underage foreign minors. Nevertheless, since the astonishing sting operations were made public, no charges have been filed against ACORN,...

About 60 members and supporters of the community-action group ACORN gathered at a North Philadelphia church yesterday to sing the praises of the beleaguered organization. "There are two ACORNs out there," said Ian Phillips, ACORN's Pennsylvania legislative director and one of the organizers of the event. "We wanted to talk about the ACORN that people who live in the community know." The 90-minute session, at the House of Prayer Episcopal Church on Limekiln Pike, was part pep rally, part revival meeting. Speakers included State Rep. Mark Cohen, retired city labor leader Tom Cronin, city Consumer Affairs Director Lance Haver, and...

Like rats deserting a sinking ship, ACORN's many enablers over the years are racing for the exits as the scope of the organization's shenanigans come to light. Even leftist fellow-traveler -- and, until now, stalwart ACORN defender -- Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is squirming. What took them so long? We've been warning about the group for ages.

According to the Grassley report, charities "are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or to other organizations for purposes other than what the donor may have intended. . . . Dollars raised for charitable [purposes] appear to be used for impermissible lobbing and political activity."

More bad news for the Democratic Parties Favorite community organizing group, ACORN. While Harry Reid continues to get heat at home for refusing to allow Senate hearings on ACORN, Senator Grassley had his staff do a little investigation of their own. According to the Capital Research Center, Grassley (R-Iowa), asked the IRS to probe ACORN – and asked that the group be dropped from the Combined Federal Campaign (a charitable program for government workers). This is not the first time the Senator has gone after the ACORN criminal enterprise, in 2006 he asked the IRS to investigate ACORN for voter...

ACORN is using a tangled web of tax-exempt organizations to funnel tax money to itself according to a detailed review released last night by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.Some or all of them may be nothing more than shell companies used to pass money from the government directly through to ACORN and its affiliates. “This analysis regarding the vast number of charitable organizations that ACORN set up to funnel money to itself raises questions about whether ACORN used the entities to advance the charitable mission of helping poor people get housing, or whether...

WASHINGTON – The embattled community activist group ACORN appears to be collecting charitable contributions through affiliate organizations that it then uses for impermissible lobbying and political activity, says the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee. The assessment, in a memo to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, further fuels the controversy surrounding ACORN, formally known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The GOP staff memo says ACORN-affiliated charities are being used to raise money which is then funneled to other charities or other organizations for purposes other than what a donor may have intended. In response, ACORN chief...

Here is video of undercover filmmaker James O'Keefe giving, what MSNBC touts as his "first broadcast network interview," to NBC News Mara Schiavocampo. Schiavocampo asked O'Keefe why he targeted an organization like ACORN, who she said helps "low-income, disadvantaged people." O'Keefe responded that they are "not helping low-income, disadvantaged people. They are breaking the law." O'Keefe said he was doing what the media is not - seeking to hold these people accountable. NOTE: It is more than a little ironic that a network that virtually refused to even acknowledge the ACORN Scandal is touting the fact they got the first...

The IRS yesterday severed its ties with ACORN, the profoundly corrupt community organizing group embroiled in a seemingly never-ending string of controversies, criminal investigations and voter registration fraud charges.  Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau also severed ties with the group. The latest controversy is over the series of videos covertly taped by new media journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.  In these videos, O’Keefe and Giles, posing as a pimp and prostitute, are given tax advice by ACORN representatives in different cities across the country.   The tax advice included listing “performance artist� as the prostitute’s employment code in...

ACORN being called a criminal enterprise. Despite years of warning signs that ACORN was violating the law, many state attorneys general have not investigated the organization or brought enforcement actions. State attorneys general, besides being the chief enforcement officers for violations of state laws, claim unique law enforcement authority over nonprofits. The reasons for inaction by state attorneys general may explain why ACORN is such a problem. ACORN has developed close ties, to put it mildly, with many state attorneys general as well as others deep in the Democrat establishment. The relationship between ACORN and Democrats may be described as...

See video @ WDSU: IRS Leins on ACORN

WASHINGTON (AP) - The IRS says it is severing ties with ACORN, the community activist group involved in a scandal after employees were caught on video giving advice to a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp. The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday it would no longer include ACORN in its volunteer tax assistance program. The program offered free tax advice to about 3 million low- and moderate-income tax filers this spring

As scandals concerning the left-wing "community" group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) continue to metastasize, the organization seems to think it can handpick allies to "investigate" its own transgressions. Fortunately for the rest of us, the growth of independent writers and researchers using modern communications means there are plenty of other outfits that can and will expose corruption. Case in point: The Pelican Institute think tank in New Orleans keeps unearthing examples of federal and state tax liens against ACORN's national headquarters in the Crescent City. The institute's indefatigable research broke into national attention yesterday via a...

The Justice Department's inspector general has agreed to investigate whether ACORN has applied for or received any DOJ grant money, in the wake of bipartisan criticism of the community activist group's operation. And seven other inspectors general are being asked by two congressional members to take a look at their funding mechanisms.

U.S. Reps, John Conyers (D-Detroit) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on Tuesday wrote a letter to the Congressional Research Service requesting an investigation of ACORN, the anti-poverty group whose employees in Baltimore recently were caught on hidden camera offering questionable advice to conservative activists posing as a prostitute and pimp. In the letter, Conyers and Frank ask the nonpartisan research group to look into ACORN's alleged misbehavior, including funding violations and alleged voter registration irregularities. But they also question whether Congress' swift move to cut the group's funding was unconstitutional. Specifically, Conyers and Frank ask whether the funding cuts qualify as...

San Diego County will not open its own investigation into ACORN, the community organizing nonprofit that has become embroiled in a national scandal over video showing employees advising potential criminals. Instead, county officials will assist the state attorney general and the district attorney in auditing thousands of voter-registration cards submitted with the Registrar of Voters Office before the November 2008 election, the Board of Supervisors decided on Tuesday. “This is not about politics,” Supervisor Pam Slater-Price said. “This is about the use of taxpayer money and taxpayer resources and public trust. We should have a thorough investigation from top to...

It now looks very much like there was a lot more truth to the criticisms about ACORN—the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now—than its leadership, its allies on Capitol Hill and its supporters in the media were willing to acknowledge.... This latest round of problems for ACORN may be the best documented, but they are not the first nor, for that matter, are they the most serious. A report issued last summer by the Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to Sunday's Washington Times, "presented evidence that ACORN had engaged in criminal misconduct." Among the...

The story in a nutshell: Bertha Lewis is the CEO of ACORN. In a review of Lewis’s contacts list, which was leaked to RedState, Bertha Lewis has the office, cell phone, home number, and private personal email address of Patrick Gaspard. Patrick Gaspard holds Karl Rove’s position in the White House and was Obama’s Political Director during the campaign. In addition to Patrick, Bertha has Patrick’s brother Michael in her rolodex. She lists Michael as working at the Advance Group. The Advance Group is ACORN’s lobbying organization. In other words, besides having Obama’s political director’s contact info, the political director’s...

SNIPPET: "So how could the major media fail to hold ACORN to account all these years? I have my pet theory. Political correctness has been slowly rotting the establishment media to its core, to the point where few professional journalists would dare launch a serious investigation into the exalted Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. Why? Simple: according to the tenets of political correctness, the racial makeup of the communities being “organized” automatically confers the presumption of moral superiority upon ACORN. So all those nasty rumors about ACORN must be no more than lies spread by racist propagandists. To...

It was one of the most popular topics among the questions you submitted to me for my interview with President Obama – the controversy involving ACORN. While the President said that ACORN "deserves to be investigated" in light of the "inappropriate" video that's gone viral, he did not endorse recent votes in Congress to cut off federal funding for the community group. Here’s our FULL exchange: STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN? OBAMA: You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money....

San Antonio - The Express-News is now fully immersed in the ACORN story, or at least the pimp and prostitute part of it. The story went from a national brief on Sept. 11 to Page 14A last Tuesday, to 7A on Wednesday to 2A Thursday — and would have been on Page 1 had local TV icon Chris Marrou not picked the day before to announce his retirement from KENS-TV. The question is, does it deserve Page 1 status, as scores of you — many proudly identifying yourselves as members of the anti-big government San Antonio Tea Party — have...

The president has just stepped into another major controversy with this answer regarding ACORN to George Stephanopoulos. STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN? OBAMA: You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money. STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off. OBAMA: You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated. STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're not committing to -- to cut off the federal funding?...

Bertha Lewis, ACORN's chief organizer, appeared on Fox News Sunday yesterday, and even though Joe Wilson was nowhere to be found in the studio, you could hear his unspoken words as she misrepresented the fates of several of her employees. Lewis's performance during the interview with U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and host Chris Wallace was the finest in liberal arrogance and dishonesty. Throughout, she didn't bother to acknowledge Issa with eye contact and she often evaded their questions so she could continue to assert ACORN does so much good for poor, working class minorities.

Everything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror. ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah. They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What's more, it ain't over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet. Stay tuned....

  From Pennsylvania Right-to-Work:Most readers are already aware of a growing scandal involving the pro-forced unionism Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) in New York, Baltimore, Washington, and now, California. For those who missed it, ACORN representatives were caught on camera giving advice to undercover journalists on how to open an illegal brothel, launder its profits, and commit a host of other illegal activities.According to The Washington Examiner, teacher union officials have contributed over 1.3 million dollars (in mostly forced union dues) to ACORN since 2005.We decided to do a little digging into union financial disclosure forms on...

"The Justice Department's inspector general has agreed to investigate whether ACORN has applied for or received any DOJ grant money, in the wake of bipartisan criticism of the community activist group's operation. And seven other inspectors general are being asked by two congressional members to take a look at their funding mechanisms."

An internal watchdog at the Justice Department said he was reviewing the agency’s involvement with the national community organizing group Acorn. Inspector General Glenn Fine wrote to Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, that his office would examine whether Acorn sought or received any Justice Department grant money, or conducted any reviews of the group’s use of such money. More than a dozen state and local authorities

Policymaking: If the stimulus isn't working, perhaps it's because it was largely written by a collection of leftist interest groups called the Apollo Alliance that counts among its directors a co-founder of the Weather Underground.The Labor Department reported Friday that 42 states lost more jobs than they gained in August, and that 14 plus Washington, D.C., reported unemployment rates of 10% or more. Michigan's rate rose to 15.2%, highest in the nation. Nevada, represented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is second with 13.2%. California, home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is tied for fourth with Oregon at 12.2%. Clearly,...

Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress. "Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely," Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn't even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to," he said. snip Given his longstanding ties with Acorn, President Obama's protestations of ignorance or disinterest...

"Some things are worth fighting for, and I think your family and your home are two of those things." -Baltimore ACORN Foreclosure Fighters Co-Chair Louis Beverly The foreclosure crisis lies at the very heart of the broader economic collapse. The glut of foreclosed properties on the market forced housing prices into a tailspin, and banks loaded up with mortgage-backed securities and complex derivatives, unable to value or sell these assets, stopped lending to each other and the credit markets froze up, triggering the broader economic morass. A broad and successful economic recovery is impossible without directly addressing the record foreclosure...

Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood is out today with new details on the National Endowment for the Arts scandal, including a full transcript and audio recording, as well as a CliffsNotes summary by John Nolte, of the notorious Aug. 10 conference call in which administration officials urged artists to help promote President Obama's legislative agenda. Formally, the call was led by Michael Skolnik, who is not a government employee. But Skolnik declares at the start of the call that he is acting on behalf of the administration:I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about...

A tangled web of ACORN affiliates amassed a real estate empire worth at least $50 million, owns or manages nearly 1,500 housing units and collects an estimated $5.7 million in rents, fees and profits from sales. The properties are controlled by an opaque collection of nonprofits, holding companies and development funds w/ generic names: 385 Palmetto Street Housing Development Fund or the Mutual Housing Association of NY, hiding ties to ACORN conglomerates.....the income supports at least 18 local ACORN affiliates largely based at 2-4 Nevins St, Brooklyn, an address ACORN shares with the left-of-center political entity--the Working Families Party. NY...

Acorn has been helping illegal aliens receive home loans for years. Finally the media is catching on that the government is complicit in helping the loans to go through. Fox report- video at link

Baltimore Sun: A spokeswoman for Attorney General Doug Gansler said the probe will "involve everything," although she declined to say whether it includes the videos, which could constitute a violation of Maryland's two-party consent law. The article mentions that Gansler asked permission to initiate the investigation from Governor Martin O'Malley, whose office made the announcement via a press release. Neither O'Malley's or Gansler's website has a news release or other announcement about the ACORN probe as of yet. ACORN's spokeswoman told the Sun they "welcome" the investigation as a way to clear their name. Previously, Gansler had said the ACORN...

chicagotribune.com Independent prosecutor for ACORN By Charles Lipson September 20, 2009 ACORN is in very deep, very public trouble, and the U.S. attorney general should appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate. What we know so far is due entirely to two amateur reporters, James E. O'Keefe III, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, who managed to videotape a web of corrupt practices in ACORN offices. Dressed as a pimp and prostitute, O'Keefe and Giles walked into ACORN offices from New York to California and simply asked for business advice. ACORN officials were happy to provide it and were secretly recorded explaining...

Very, say longtime watchers of the extreme leftwing group that sprouted out of a radical 60s anti-government movement. For decades ACORN has presented itself as a grassroots network dedicated to improving the lives of the poor. But there's more to ACORN than its do-gooder veneer. Just ask the banks, corporations and politicians who've been the target of ACORN's shameless shenanigans over the past 40 years. Here's how the tiny seed of 1960s radicalism blossomed into a well-funded, national organization with political connections reaching all the way to the White House:

The liberal political organizing group ACORN faced internal chaos and allegations of financial mismanagement and fraud long before two young conservatives embarrassed the group with undercover videos made at field offices in Washington and across the country.