When Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1808, “Oh what a tangled web we
weave, when first we practice to deceive,” he wasn’t writing
about ACORN, but he might as well have been.
In 2008, the activities of the radical, corrupt left-wing
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has
tangled itself up in an infinitely complex web of deceit,
thuggery, and questionable financial dealings, is long overdue
for a RICO probe.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act,
which was created to prosecute organized crime, allows the
federal government to go after individuals who commit any two
RICO-related crimes over a decade. The law allows courts to
convict persons if it can be shown that they committed those
crimes as part of an illegal enterprise and can order
disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains from the enterprise.
The Ohio-based Buckeye Institute isn’t waiting for
the feds to act. It filed a civil action under a state
racketeering law, arguing ACORN has engaged in a pattern of
corrupt activity that amounts to organized crime. It seeks
ACORN’s dissolution as a legal entity, the revocation of any
licenses it holds in Ohio, and an injunction against fraudulent
voter registration and other illegal activities.
The Buckeye Institute said in a press release that the suit,
filed on behalf of two voters, alleges that “ACORN’s actions
deprive them of the right to participate in an honest and
effective elections process.” The voters “allege fraudulent voter
registrations submitted by ACORN dilute the votes of legally
registered voters.”
The suit also alleges that ACORN’s voter-mobilization arm,
Project Vote, “regularly advises Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer
Brunner on election strategy, even recently issuing a news
release that claims credit for Brunner’s directive restricting
challenges to suspected fraudulent voter registrations.”
Brunner, a Democrat, has declined to enforce the provisions of
the Help America Vote Act that requires her to use a database to
allow the verification of 600,000-plus registrations from new
Ohio voters. Brunner admits there are “discrepancies” on about
200,000 of the new registrations, but won’t give local election
officials the registration data they need to verify the validity
of the registrations.
It’s a recipe for disaster, but that’s exactly the way her allies
at ACORN like it.
That’s because ACORN thrives on confusion. Its nebulous legal
status and opaque corporate structure allow it to keep its
activities largely hidden from public view.
The social justice entrepreneurs of ACORN sit on the boards of
ACORN and of ACORN affiliates.
These “interlocking directorates” create an appearance of
conflict of interest. Such arrangements may be widespread and
lawful, but they always raise legitimate questions about the
quality and independence of board decision-making. 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. One intrepid
blogger discovered that 294 ACORN affiliates operate out of
ACORN’s building on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans.
ACORN’s many affiliates have extraordinarily sophisticated
financial arrangements that are largely hidden from public view.
ACORN uses its system of interlocking boards of directors to
oversee its affiliates and make financial mischief.
As Jim Terry of the Consumers Rights League has noted, “ACORN has
a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style
accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own
political gain.”
Look at a person named Donna Pharr. Pharr sits on the boards of
at least 22 ACORN affiliates. She’s also deputy treasurer of the
Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee and is listed by
Michigan as the contact person for Communities Voting Together, a
“527” pressure group.
And even now after it was revealed earlier this year that ACORN
founder Wade Rathke covered up his brother’s nearly $1 million
embezzlement, Rathke remains chief organizer of ACORN affiliate
SEIU Local 100, president of ACORN International Inc., and
president and a director of ACORN affiliate Affiliated Media
Foundation Movement Inc.
There are plenty of other examples of directors and officers
playing musical chairs throughout the ACORN empire. (See
Foundation
Watch, November 2008.)
Commenting on ACORN’s complex administrative arrangements,
Charlotte Allen observes in the Weekly Standard, “The
potential for abuse in an interlocking arrangement governed
top-down from New Orleans is as obvious as a thicket of ‘Change’
signs at an Obama rally.”
ACORN takes recycling seriously, at least when it comes to money.
My research determined that ACORN affiliate Project Vote paid
ACORN $10,861,825 from 2000 through 2006. 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.
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 lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley raised the alarm about
interlocking directorates and the perilously close 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.
Ironically, Rathke condemned interlocking directorates in the
corporate world. In 1980, he endorsed the proposed “Corporate
Democracy Act” which would have fined directors up to $10,000 per
day for “serving more than two corporations” simultaneously.
(Heritage Foundation backgrounder, March 11, 1980)
Go figure.
