Free Republic

Last night, ACORN founder Wade Rathke spoke at Busboys and Poets, a Washington coffeehouse and well-known lefty hangout. Rathke was promoting his new book, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families. Given the controversy over ACORN, you'd think the media would have been interested in Rathke's making a public appearence and taking questions. But you'd be wrong. Besides NRO, only three media outlets showed up to cover the event: BigGovernment.com, The Nation, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune (Rathke's hometown paper). That was it. While Rathke's primary purpose was to discuss and promote his book, he did take a...

Wade Rathke, the former chief organizer of ACORN, acknowledged that the organization he founded in 1970 is caught in a public storm that threatens its existence. "It's a Katrina-like storm for ACORN; they are in a perfect storm, " said Rathke, who left ACORN's leadership a year-and-a-half ago amid revelations about the alleged embezzlement of nearly $1 million from the community organization by his brother, Dale. The money has since been repaid. But Rathke, who lives in New Orleans where the national organization has had its headquarters -- it is relocating to Washington -- said he expects large and well-rooted...

The image of ACORN as a racketeering organization just got another boost from court records revealed in the New York Post. Dale Rathke, brother of the founder Wade Rathke was charging lavish spending to the family business. Ginger Adams Otis of the Post reports: "American Express filed a claim against Rathke in 2003 in Louisiana civil district court. Among the court papers is a partial credit history that indicates Rathke had several different cards from different companies. He used them to shop at places like Gucci and Neiman Marcus, where he spent $1,003 and $1,742 respectively on July 6, 2000....

Former ACORN bigwig Dale Rathke racked up a $157,000 American Express bill that he couldn't repay around the time he was caught embezzling from the group founded by his brother Wade, The Post has learned. Rathke was a big spender with multiple credit cards who rang up purchases at luxury shops, traveled by limo and frequented five-star hotels and restaurants, court papers show. American Express filed a claim against Rathke in 2003 in Louisiana civil district court. Among the court papers is a partial credit history that indicates Rathke had several different cards from different companies. He used them to...

While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending they’ve hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they’ve never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation’s largest unions. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Service Employees International Union are tight as Heidi Klum and a new pair of jeans. You also don’t talk about either organization without mention of Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN and founder of SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans. Rathke, who resigned from ACORN last year as “chief organizer” after it became known that his brother embezzled almost $1 million...

If Obama wants to refute the charge that he has a secret socialist agenda, he now has the perfect opportunity. Congress finally took limited punitive action this week after the revelation on Fox News that employees of Acorn, the nation's biggest community organizing group, were dishing out advice to a pimp and his prostitute on how they could game the system to get subsidized housing loans and evade federal taxes. Our lawmakers' sudden outrage is all a bit rich--and risible. Even in the halls of Congress it's widely known that the sleaze now surfacing in Acorn offices all across the...

The founder of ACORN, the community organizing group embarrassed recently in a video sting, says many of the accusations about the group are distortions meant to undermine President Obama and other Democrats. In an exclusive interview with the Post, founder Wade Rathke said conservative claims that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a "criminal enterprise" that misuses federal and donor funds for political ends -- a claim contained in a report by House Republicans -- are a "complete fabrication." He said exaggeration and conjecture about the group are being passed off daily on cable television and...

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,...

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:

ACORN Registration Forms Found In Apartment During Drug Bust. “A search of a northeast Albuquerque apartment as part of a drug investigation led to the discovery of about a dozen voter registration forms, police said. The forms were filled out and had dates from late last month, Albuquerque police said. Authorities had not determined the authenticity of the forms. The occupant of the apartment, a Cuban national, was arrested on drug charges. He told authorities he obtained the documents while working for the Association of Communities Organized for Reform Now or ACORN.” (“Albuquerque Police Find Voter Registration Forms At...

NEW ORLEANS — ACORN, the national activist group dogged by a high-profile voter registration fraud scandal, has another bruising item on its agenda when its board of directors meets here this weekend. Leaders of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are locked in a legal dispute stemming from allegations that the brother of the group's founder misappropriated nearly $1 million of the nonprofit's money several years ago. The embezzlement case, a recent revelation to some board members, has spawned a lawsuit and set off a power struggle inside ACORN at a time when the liberal group's voter registration...

Baltimore, Nov 11, 2008 (CNA).- The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has not yet been able to determine if grants made to ACORN were used for fraudulent voter registration, but has cut off all funding to the community organizing group, Bishop Robert Morin announced on Tuesday. Shortly after addressing the full assembly of U.S. Catholic bishops, Bishop Morin spoke to reporters about what the bishops had learned concerning the use of grants from the CCHD to the group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which is currently under investigation in 13 states for voter fraud. CCHD originally...

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear In 1970, one of George Wiley's protégés, Wade Rathke -- like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) -- was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn't accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke's group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low income "rights." Shortly thereafter they changed "Arkansas" to "Association of" and ACORN went nationwide. Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration...

Oversight: As the Senate votes to de-fund Acorn, add pimping, tax evasion and human trafficking to voter fraud paid for with taxpayer dollars and you have an organized criminal enterprise. It's time to investigate.After Acorn workers were caught on tape in three cities allegedly abetting what they believed was a fraudulent-mortgage and sex-trafficking scheme, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to strip the group of funding in the Transportation/Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. The amendment, offered by Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, passed by an 83-to-7 margin and marked the third time this year that Republicans have tried to block...

THE radical activist group ACORN is the E.F. Hutton of prostitution. It stands ready to provide discreet advice on setting up a brothel and engaging in other associated acts of criminality. When ACORN talks, pimps and hookers listen. This has been established by an audacious video-sting operation undertaken by guerrilla conservative documentarian James O'Keefe, 25, and his sidekick Hannah Giles, 20. O'Keefe posed as a pimp and Giles as a prostitute seeking help getting a mortgage for a brothel. In cities around the country, workers for ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- happily obliged.

ACORN founder Wade Rathke didn't have a problem with domestic terrorists trying to kill delegates at the Republican Party's national convention in 2008, former radical community organizer Brandon Darby suggests at Andrew Breitbart's new website Big Government. Darby, who got to see how the ACORN crime syndicate operates up close in New Orleans, writes that after he acknowledged that he helped the FBI foil a plot to attack the RNC convention in Minnesota Rathke denounced him on his blog. Darby writes . . .

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is a network of nonprofit community groups formed nearly 40 years ago on the premise that banks, corporations and insurance companies, immersed in greed, have kept poor and predominantly minority neighborhoods desperate. Within the past couple months, however, its leaders have been engaged in the more mundane task of spinning a scandal that already has claimed its most visible leader. To longtime ACORN critics, it’s a case of belated just deserts. ***** At the center of this storm are ACORN co-founder and chief organizer Wade Rathke and his brother, Dale.

Rathke lamented the infighting within different unions and the inaction of Democrats in Congress on behalf of low-income Americans. "We're not going to get what many of us thought was possible a year ago," he said. And even if organizers could unionize 100,000 or 150,000 Wal-Mart workers, no plan exists for how the organizations could handle the influx of new members, he said. One bright spot is overseas, Rathke said, where unions are signing thousands of garbage pickers in India and Argentine cartoneros, the ultrapoor in Buenos Aires who recycle cardboard and other trash.

Note these names in particular: George Soros–Multi-billionaire funder of leftwing causes and groups, Tides Foundation’s Wade Rathke (ACORN founder), and Anna Burger–Secretary Treasurer of SEIU, with massive influence over Obama. The Alliance has boasted of writing both the stimulus bill AND Cap and Trade. And it is driving the Obama Reich’s agenda with unbelievable force.

(Admin: This is breaking news. Please do not remove.) Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve center of the embattled radical activist group ACORN, has filed false lobbying disclosure reports with Congress, according to Ron Sykes, a former ACORN employee. This revelation is important because, as former ACORN national board member Charles Turner said earlier this year on "The Glenn Beck Program," CCI "is where the shell game begins." "ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved around to - for this purpose to that purpose, this organization to that organization," said Turner. "We believe the...