The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
and its affiliates are content to impose crippling big-government
laws, regulations, and taxes on Americans, but when called upon
to obey those same rules, ACORN’s network of scofflaws and
deadbeats simply refuses to comply.
The most egregious example is the fact that more than 200
federal, state, and local tax liens adding up to more than $3
million have been filed against the ACORN network since 1989. All
of these liens, which are only issued by creditor tax agencies
after a tax debt has become seriously delinquent, are associated
with ACORN’s 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue address in New Orleans,
Louisiana. That address is the official headquarters for nearly
300 ACORN-affiliated groups.
The most recent lien ($23,383) was filed by the IRS against an
ACORN affiliate, American Workers Associates Inc., on Sept. 9.
The largest lien ($547,312) was filed against ACORN itself by the
IRS on March 10.
You may remember that during this year’s primaries, the
presidential campaign of Barack Obama paid $832,598 to Citizens
Services Inc., an ACORN affiliated nonprofit registered in
Louisiana, for get-out-the-vote activities. My research
determined that ACORN affiliate Project Vote (a.k.a. Voting for
America Inc.) also paid ACORN affiliate Citizens Services Inc. a
total of $1,206,942 in 2005 and 2006.
Despite these huge cash injections, Citizens Services Inc. still
can’t make ends meet. Two liens filed against it in 2007 by
Arkansas ($568) and Maryland ($357) remain outstanding.
Federal tax laws make it virtually impossible to find out what
kinds of taxes the ACORN affiliates didn’t feel like paying. As
IRS spokesman Anthony Burke told me, “federal tax law precludes
federal employees from disclosing tax return information.” An
exception to this is a federal tax lien filed at a county court
house. That information may be public but “anything beyond that
would be protected by the disclosure provisions of the federal
tax law,” Burke said.
Even though it’s unclear what kinds of taxes ACORN and its
affiliates failed to pay, because almost all ACORN affiliates are
nonprofits that are exempted from paying most or all taxes, it
seems likely that the liens were issued for non-payment of
employees’ payroll taxes, which are not covered under the
tax-exemption.
Several accountants confirmed this view, saying the tax debts are
probably related to delinquent payroll taxes. If so, this would
be the ultimate irony because payroll taxes fund the social
programs and wealth redistribution schemes that ACORN so ardently
supports. (See Foundation
Watch (pdf), November 2008.)
But ACORN’s refusal to pay taxes is just the tip of the iceberg.
The group has used the courts to wage war on the same worker
protections it publicly supports.
ACORN stoutly defends the right of workers to organize unions,
but the group doesn’t like it when its own workers try to
organize. It has tried to stop its own employees from signing up
with unions, and in 2003 the National Labor Relations Board
determined it had unlawfully blocked its workers from organizing.
ACORN supports raising the minimum wage and enacting so-called
living wage policies, and claims it organized community and labor
coalitions that succeeded in enacting living wage laws in 41
cities by the end of the 1990s.
Yet a 2003 study of ACORN by the Employment Policies Institute
found the group paid a wage of $5.67 per hour, which was “less
than half the level demanded by many proposed ‘living wage’
ordinances that ACORN supports.”
And in 2006, $250-a-week Baltimore ACORN intern Sandra Stewart
told Baltimore City Paper that the Baltimore chapter hadn’t
bothered to pay her for her work. Three other former ACORN
workers told the paper that the group failed to pay them back
wages.
In 1995, ACORN sued California seeking an exemption from the
state law that requires it to 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 in
a separate lawsuit that same year that it shouldn’t have to
comply with those 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. (See Labor
Watch (pdf), November 2008.)
Strangely, when ACORN fell victim to a theft, it just couldn’t
bring itself to trust the government to help resolve the matter.
After founder Wade Rathke’s brother Dale embezzled $948,000 from
the group in 2000, ACORN refused to hand the matter over to
government-run courts and instead embraced a refreshingly
libertarian approach to dispute resolution.
Euphemistically calling the theft, which Wade Rathke covered up
for eight years, a “misappropriation,” ACORN allowed the Rathke
family to pay private restitution at the rate of $30,000 per
year. The founder disguised the missing funds as a loan to an
officer on the ledgers of ACORN affiliate Citizens Consulting
Inc. That affiliate, by the way, currently has a minimum of
$112,597 in federal tax liens pending against it plus a $2,307
District of Columbia tax lien.
And these people want Americans to trust them to handle voter
registration drives?
