It's all ACORN
-- all the time.
Much has been happening in the wacky world of the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now in recent days.
Longtime ACORN ally Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) backed out of
the congressional probe of the group he promised. The
Washington Examiner's Kevin Mooney has the story and
quotes me in it. Mooney is slated to be on the "Glenn Beck
Program" to talk about ACORN at 5 p.m. Eastern today.
I have a longer piece on the same topic right here at the
American Spectator. GOP lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh
testified in Congress about ACORN's many misdeeds and Conyers
said at the time the allegations were "a pretty serious matter."
Heidelbaugh testified the nonprofit group violated a host of tax,
campaign finance, and other laws. She said the presidential
campaign of Barack Obama sent ACORN its "maxed out donor list"
and asked two of the avowedly nonpartisan group's employees "to
reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them
for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN."
Heidelbaugh said the New York Times had the donor list
story but editors there spiked it the month before the election,
a claim she repeated on "The O'Reilly Factor" two weeks later.
The newspaper told the Philadelphia-based Bulletin that
"political considerations played no role in our decisions about
how to cover this story or any other story about President
Obama."
Heidelbaugh's star witness is former ACORN employee Anita
MonCrief. MonCrief maintains a blog where she tells
her story and reflects on all the latest goings-on with ACORN.
Mooney discovered that ACORN has received
at least $53.6 million in federal funds since 1994. The sum
is probably much higher but this sort of information is very
difficult to track. Moreover, the ACORN network consists of more
than 100 affiliates and those affiliates routinely transfer money
to each other. He also reported that ACORN and other liberal
advocacy groups could get as much as $8.5 billion from the
February stimulus bill and fiscal 2010 budget.
It's old news by now that Nevada
charged ACORN and two former senior ACORN officials with
election fraud Monday, but just today it was learned that
Pennsylvania authorities have charged seven ACORN workers
with election fraud.
Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minnesota) bid to keep an anti-ACORN
funding provision in a mortgage reform bill
went down in flames but not without embarrassing House
Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank
(D-Massachusetts) first.
CNSNews reported some people are worried about the fact that
ACORN has signed up to be a partner in the 2010
U.S. Census.
From the you-win-some-you-lose-some-file, a judge has recommended
that the
Buckeye Institute of Ohio's state racketeering lawsuit
against ACORN be dismissed.
In the Manhattan Institute's City
Journal, Steven Malanga has an article called "Obsessive
Housing Disorder." He explains ACORN's role in lowering lending
standards, which housing activists denounced as racist and
unfair. This lowering of the standards contributed to the
subprime mortgage meltdown.
