The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Yes, ACORN Does Cheat on Its Taxes

Text Size

The Spectacle Blog

Yes, ACORN Does Cheat on Its Taxes

By Matthew Vadum on 9.22.09 @ 4:18PM

Kudos to the Pelican Institute for excellent research, and to Deroy Murdock and our own Quin Hillyer for resurrecting the issue of ACORN's tax cheating.

I had this story almost a year ago.

The piece, Lien on Me, ran in TAS online on Oct. 28, 2008.

It begins:

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. [...]

Murdock references a $548,000 lien. If in haste he rounded up, it might be the $547,312 lien I discovered.

ACORN also sold out its poor constituents in Brooklyn in exchange for a cash bailout from Forest City Ratner, a wealthy developer trying to build the Atlantic Yards project.

View all comments (11) | Leave a comment

S.L. Toddard| 9.22.09 @ 6:26PM

monomania

mon⋅o⋅ma⋅ni⋅a
/ˌmɒnəˈmeɪniə, -ˈmeɪnyə/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [mon-uh-mey-nee-uh, -meyn-yuh]

–noun
1. (no longer in technical use) a psychosis characterized by thoughts confined to one idea or group of ideas.
2. an inordinate or obsessive zeal for or interest in a single thing, idea, subject, or the like.

Matthew Vadum| 9.22.09 @ 9:31PM

de⋅ni⋅al

/dɪˈnaɪəl/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [di-nahy-uhl]

-noun
8. Psychology. an unconscious defense mechanism used to reduce anxiety by denying thoughts, feelings, or facts that are consciously intolerable.

Deborah D| 9.23.09 @ 5:59AM

Funny, Mr. Vadum. Keep fighting the fight -- the founders would be proud.

Truth to Power| 9.22.09 @ 7:07PM

Toddard projects.

Skip MacLure| 9.23.09 @ 12:50AM

ding - bat ( a disease suffered by liberals due to a lack of vitamin D usually supplied by sunlight)

Deborah D| 9.23.09 @ 6:02AM

Sunlight does make the bats try to hide and the rats to scurry too. Whichever, it truly works.

Skip MacLure| 9.23.09 @ 12:50AM

ding - bat ( a disease suffered by liberals due to a lack of vitamin D usually supplied by sunlight)

S.L. Toddard| 9.23.09 @ 11:43AM

As the great American patriot, indefatigable champion of the American Constitution and tireless defender of our Civil Liberties Glenn Greenwald writes, the tireless efforts of Mr. Vadum and his fellow anti-ACORN crusaders may have unintended positive consequences (meaning beyond crippling a Democratic vote-getting machine): namely, de-funding Halliburton and a host of other defense contractors:

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) -- my guest on Salon Radio today -- yesterday pointed out that the bill passed by both the Senate and House to de-fund ACORN is written so broadly that it literally compels the de-funding not only of that group, but also the de-funding of, and denial of all government contracts to, any corporation that "has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency." By definition, that includes virtually every large defense contractor, which -- unlike ACORN -- has actually been found guilty of fraud. As The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim put it: "the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops."

I spoke with Rep. Grayson this morning regarding the consequences of all of this. He is currently compiling a list of all defense contractors encompassed by this language in order to send to the administration officials (and has asked for help from the public in compiling that list, here). The President is required by Constitution to "faithfully execute" the law, which should mean that no more contracts can be awarded to any companies on that list, which happens to include the ten largest defense contractors in America. Before being elected to Congress, Grayson worked extensively on uncovering and combating defense contractor fraud in Iraq, and I asked him to put into context ACORN's impact on the American taxpayer versus these corrupt contractors. His reply: "The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Haillburton each day during the war in Iraq."

The irony of all of this is that the Congress is attempting to accomplish an unconstitutional act: singling out and punishing ACORN, which is clearly a "bill of attainder" that the Constitution explicitly prohibits -- i.e., an act aimed at punishing a single party without a trial. The only way to overcome that problem is by pretending that the de-funding of ACORN is really about a general policy judgment (that no corrupt organizations should receive federal funding). But the broader they make the law in order to avoid the Constitutional problems, the more it encompasses the large corrupt corporations that own the Congress. The narrower they make it in order to include only ACORN, the more blatantly unconstitutional it is. Now that they have embraced this general principle that no corrupt organizations should receive federal funding, how is anyone going to justify applying that only to ACORN while continuing to fund the corpoations whose fraud and corruption is vastly greater (not to mention established by actual courts of law)?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g.....index.html

I’m sure that Mr. Vadum and all those tireless defenders of Law and Order - who attack ACORN not as a disingenuous proxy attack on the Democrats but rather because of its corruption - will join me in cheering the de-funding of these corrupt defense contractors, who have defrauded the American people out of exponentially more money, and to far more disastrous consequences, than ACORN could ever dream of doing.

Hip! Hip!

…hello?

JupiterSuite| 9.24.09 @ 7:15PM

Does this mean Barack will be reprising his role as ACORN defense lawyer?

ACORN: Association of Criminals Obama Represented in the Nineties.

“I've been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career [including child “services”, financial “services”, and “voter” registration?] Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” --Obama, 2007

ACORN: Assisting Call-girls, Obama, Reid and Nancy

JupiterSuite| 9.24.09 @ 7:26PM

To those who would defend the indefensible, please. It only throws your credibility after theirs. A short review the crimes ACORN casually abets:

"VOTER" REGISTRATION: Could have swayed national and certainly local elections in the past, people may be in office who do should not be there. Voter fraud is political oppression.

FINANCIAL "SERVICES": Imagine how much tax and mortgage fraud they have helped (encouraged!) people to commit. Did you see how blithe and confident they were in those videos? Plus--Subprime Mortgage Fraud! Subprime Mortgage Fraud!--this group likely contributed directly to the meltdown.

CHILD "SERVICES": The sickness and gravity of this needs no explanation. Even flirting with this crime speaks to a lowness and vileness rampant in this group that I can hardly bring myself to think about. You’re a sorry person to excuse the incidences of encouraging sex slaver that have occurred from coast to coast.