Special Report
ACORN’s Labor Pains
Given how it treats its workers, the notorious group is a PR disaster waiting to happen.
A mountain of paperwork detailing extensive, apparently credible allegations of wage and labor law violations against ACORN was received this week by investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
A source with intimate knowledge of the allegations who asked not to be identified said 200 documents were delivered to congressional investigators.
Republican investigators on that committee found a fortnight ago that by “intentionally blurring the legal distinctions between 361 tax-exempt and non-exempt entities, ACORN diverts taxpayer and tax-exempt monies into partisan political activities.” They recommended that ACORN be stripped of its jealously guarded tax-exempt status because it illegally spends taxpayer dollars on partisan activities, commits “systemic fraud,” and violates racketeering and election laws.
ACORN is deeply involved in the labor movement.
Its far-flung empire of activism includes SEIU Locals 100 (Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas) and 880 (Illinois, Indiana), the Living Wage Resource Center (a website that tracks efforts by cities and states to raise the minimum wage above the federal standard), and various other groups concerned with labor-related issues. Organized labor is both a client and ally of ACORN. ACORN (including its affiliates) took in almost $3 million in 2007 from unions to assist unions with anti-corporate campaigns, provide strike support, and help with research and staffing, among other things. The group also had extensive ties to disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat who was thrown out of office this year by his state’s legislature.
The congressional report from July also stated that ACORN submitted false filings to the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Labor, in addition to violating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Investigators found that ACORN failed to pay excise taxes and that “SEIU Local 100 — under the direction of ACORN founder Wade Rathke — filed bogus reports with the Labor Department in order to conceal embezzlement.” The nearly million-dollar embezzlement in question was perpetrated by Rathke’s brother around 2000 and covered up by Rathke and other ACORN leaders until last year. Wade Rathke remains chief organizer of SEIU Local 100 despite an ACORN national board resolution enacted last year that ordered him to sever all ties with the ACORN network.
The same report also found that “ACORN plundered employee benefits and violated fiduciary responsibilities” under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). “ACORN conspired to conceal information concerning prohibited transactions from its board in violation of its corporate charter” and carried out “a cover-up at the expense of adherence to its own bylaws,” it stated.
In unveiling the report, the ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), said, “It is outrageous that ACORN will be rewarded for its criminal acts by taxpayer money in the stimulus and is being asked to help with the U.S. census.”
The group supports raising the minimum wage and enacting so-called living wage policies, more funding for union-staffed urban public schools, and wants federal and state laws enacted that guarantee paid sick leave for all full-time workers. It claims to have “delivered approximately $15 billion in direct monetary benefits to our membership and constituency over the past 10 years.” ACORN takes credit for spearheading community and labor coalitions that succeeded in enacting living wage laws in 41 cities by the end of the 1990s.
ACORN and its affiliates are also 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 network owes millions of dollars in back taxes even though almost all ACORN affiliates are exempted from paying various taxes. The tax liens pending against it at the federal, state, and local level have been 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.
It’s unclear at this early stage if the newly raised allegations will go anywhere.
That’s because the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is chaired by ACORN ally Rep. Edolphus “Ed” Towns (D-New York). As ACORN began drowning in an ocean of bad publicity last fall, Towns signed onto a letter supporting ACORN that called the group an “impressive and vital organization.” Earlier this year another ACORN ally, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan), first promised to probe ACORN but then mysteriously backed off, saying “the powers that be decided against it.”
ACORN, whose full name is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is indeed an impressive organization but not for the reasons cited in the Towns letter. With its members dressed in bright red shirts, ACORN organizes crude protests against businesspeople and public officials. Opposed to the profit motive and capitalism in general, it pushes for more government control over citizens and the economy.
Even if the latest allegations don’t lead to criminal charges, it’s worth noting that the nation’s largest community-based activist organization, which claims to defend the working class, has a record of profound, abiding hostility to the very same pro-labor laws it claims to support.
Although 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 in the 1990s 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.
About the Author
Matthew Vadum is an award-winning investigative journalist at a conservative watchdog group in Washington, D.C. Vadum is also author of Subversion Inc: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (106) | Leave a comment
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Ryan| 8.7.09 @ 8:51AM
Until there is an upheaval in the house, it's going to be up to state and local governments to fight anything that ACORN is pulling.
Bruce| 8.7.09 @ 9:26AM
I agree with Ryan. There is absolutely "no way" this is going anywhere in the House committee.
Face it; Congress practices the same tactics as ACORN: Do as is say, not as I do.
Tim| 8.7.09 @ 12:18PM
It seems to me that "Acorn's Workers" would be better served if they become unionized.
And why not, the other Federal Goverment/Party workers are all union and enjoy working under labor contracts why not the folks who work at Acorn? Are they second class citizens?
I smell a little discrimination here. Why do some Federal/Party workers get all of the tax payers bennies while others like Acorn don't?
I think Congress should investigate this discriminatory practice that is lurking in their own back yard.
I say all Goverment/Party workers should be treated the same.
Rocco| 8.7.09 @ 1:49PM
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
CO Defender| 8.7.09 @ 4:28PM
The Republican Party has nobody to blame but themselves for all of this statist crap sandwich we've been fed the last 200 days. Between "wide stances", infidelity, not to mention spending like a sailor on shore leave leading up to the 2006 elections--we deserve what we're getting thanks to them. It is truly time to throw out ALL of the incumbents--R and D alike. Professional politicians have ruined this once great nation--it's time to give it back to the taxpayers who's labor has gone unrecognized. I'm sick of this crap.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.7.09 @ 6:01PM
ACORN equals "Ghetto Lords".
Do we let this country become a "drive by shooting"?
Take a deep breath, productive Americans. We must cut the funds to these ghetto lords' welfare scams.
Their "ole ladies" get the money, then the ghetto lords steal it from them AND us, then addict another generation of children.
Pray a lot, then decide.
Hardius| 8.7.09 @ 7:51PM
CO DEFENDER hey bud I am with you.
Pfft!| 8.8.09 @ 5:35AM
Good article. But, White House trolls, shouldn't you be composing your email to flag@whitehouse.gov ?
Pingback| 8.8.09 @ 7:40AM
The Anchoress — A First Things Blog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 8.8.09 @ 2:31PM
Jack’s Newswatch » Blog Archive » ACORN’s Labor Pains (1) links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Mayte| 8.8.09 @ 3:58PM
Why are there so many of these anti-Jewish crap comments on this article? If you all can't monitor your comments, do not allow for them. Who is writing this, a bunch of disgusting Muslims or Arabs, well known for their terrorism and inferiority. Please clean up your site!!
Pingback| 8.8.09 @ 5:38PM
Capital Research Center: links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Delete the Anti-Semitic Crap..| 8.9.09 @ 12:11AM
I'm with Mayte, if you can't monitor your comments, get rid of them. Makes your site look like a hate site.
Neo-Nazis, go away| 8.9.09 @ 4:28PM
I see that the monsters from the "Judenfrei Jew Review" are commenting here as well as after other TAS articles. In case any TAS readers don't know, the JJR is, according to its own Web site, "aiming to expose the Jewish crime network and set the stage for the expulsion of Jews from the United States of America as well as other Western societies."
Their Web site says that "Jews won't stop with their criminal agenda. They have to be stopped by us." JJR is "dedicated to the Jewish problem." It says that "the Holocaust is a hoax" and that "Jews did 9/11."
It also has a number of items against black Americans, including lurid cartoons. In a comment, one fan suggests writing articles that "present a detailed anecdote of black malfeasance, [but] don't cap it off with how much you hate blacks now. Let the reader live through your imparted experience, and come to dislike blacks on his own." Clearly, these monsters use the same tactic to try to turn people against Jews.
The person who writes the Web site notes the formation of the "One World Nazi Party," and says that "if they are serious or if some other serious contenders come up, then Judenfrei could join in to set up a formal movement to expel Jews."
I hope the TAS staff will find a way to keep these neo-Nazis out. Nothing they have to say is worth reading.
Pingback| 8.9.09 @ 6:06PM
ACORN's Labor Pains - Politics and Other Controversies - City-Data Forum links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Marc Jeric| 8.9.09 @ 7:33PM
Let us talk about Obama's ACORN BROWNSHIRTS and SEIU THUGS. You have to know what most Americans do not know - i.e.,
community organizations closely follow the Lenin'a concept of soviets; the word is the same. Obama had only one kind of "working" experience: a) as a community organizer; b) as a lawyer for community organizers; and c) as a law instructor for future lawyers for community organizer. The White House-sponsored alliance of the eco-nazis, ACORN, and SEIU are gearing up to communize America under the new name of that deadly combination APPOLO. The environmental cult of death is now combined with the ACORN attack brownshirts (paid by Obama's stimulus bill's $9 billion), SEIU union armed thugs, all "tax-free" benevolent associations. The White House members of Appolo now gather names of the "enemies of the people", just like the KGB, UDB, and STASI used to do.
JoeJazz2000| 8.10.09 @ 9:22AM
I think this thread is lost.
Pingback| 8.12.09 @ 2:36PM
ACORN's Labor Pains - Politics and Other Controversies - City-Data Forum links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Justin Roether | 8.12.09 @ 9:05PM
Interesting. I patiently await action from our government in addressing this issue. And I am curious why the mainstream media hasn't discussed this at all yet.
Juudas| 3.29.10 @ 11:15AM
Tuo on minullekin helpoin tyyli laittaa piilarit. Mulla on kirkkaat kuukausilinssit, tosin niitä tulee ostettua/ käytettyä silloin kun on ylimääräistä varallisuutta, köyhinä kausina kuljen silmälasit päässä. Tahtoisin semmoiset fairynvihreät piilarit, mutta ei ole vielä tullut hankittua vaikka ne kyllä saisi vahvuuksilla. Ja niin, mie en muista mistä noista lukuisista nettipuodista hankin linssini! olikohan se joku YourLenses tjsp?
Pingback| 9.14.09 @ 12:06PM
Big Government » Blog Archive » ACORN’s Lawless Ways links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 9.20.09 @ 12:32AM
Yet Another ACORN Scandal – Is This the Final Straw? « Lighthouse Patriot Journal links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 9.22.09 @ 9:32AM
Baby-Parenting.co.uk - Is this Labour? links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 9.24.09 @ 2:26AM
IRS severs ties with ACORN over scandal - AllDeaf.com links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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