Stimulus bill funds ACORN despite its history of corruption
By: Kristen Lopez Eastlick, OpEd Contributor
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February 8, 2009
KEY DATA:
* ACORN could receive up to $4 billion under the economic stimulus legislation approved by the House of Representatives.
* ACORN has received an estimated $53 million in government funds since its founding in 1970.
* ACORN is under investigation in at least 14 states in connection with allegations of voter registration fraud in the 2008 campaign.
TAKE HOME:
ACORN claims to represent low-income workers but does not pay its own employees the minimum wage and in 1995 sued California for an exemption from its minimum wage requirement.
A multi-million dollar liberal non-profit activist conglomerate reportedly under federal investigation may get a big piece of the economic recovery stimulus pie now under consideration by Congress.
It’s the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – the infamous ACORN.
That’s right. ACORN, the activist group that has been implicated in voter fraud and registration deception in at least 14 states may get the financial bailout it needs to pull off another round of schemes in the next election season.
Last fall, nearly every time ACORN was in the news the group’s credibility was -- rightfully and appropriately -- questioned. In the final weeks leading to the election, twice as many voters held a negative view of the group than a positive view.
But now that ACORN is receding from public view, it’s apparently counting on the economic crisis and its friends in Congress to refill its coffers with up to $4 billion in aid.
Many people are already familiar with ACORN’s dubious pretension as a get-out-the-vote organization. It’s alleged that of the 1.3 million registration cards it “got out to vote” in this election, about a third turned out to be faked.
But ACORN’s close relationship with fraud is nothing new. In fact, it’s chronic.
In 2003, 63 percent of voter registration cards submitted by ACORN in St. Louis were invalid. In 2005, ACORN submitted as many as 3,000 potentially bogus signatures on a minimum wage ballot in Albuquerque.
Last year, election workers found that only six of the 1,800 voter registrations the group submitted in Seattle were legitimate. Only six. The complete list of ACORN’s incriminating voter-drives could fill this page, let alone a book.
These activists don’t care much about voter integrity for a simple reason: increasing voter turnout is merely a means to an end—a highly partisan end.
For evidence of this, look no further than the first sentence of an October 2003 strategy memo written for the group’s local political action committee. In it, ACORN makes clear that it was sponsoring a minimum wage initiative in Florida to manipulate “Democratic turnout in a close election,” in order to “help defeat George W. Bush and other Republicans.”
Lifelong Democrat Joe Johnson resigned from his leadership position at the Florida campaign, telling reporters “there were efforts to try to inform people that this was nonpartisan, when, in fact, it was not.”
ACORN postures as a worker’s advocate. Yet the group failed to pay its own employees the minimum wage. What’s more, in 1995 ACORN sued the state of California, seeking an exemption from the minimum wage law so it could legally pay under that rate.
Hypocritical? Yes. But hardly a surprise. It’s utterly consistent with the group’s decades-old pattern of abusing its way to political power.
ACORN confirmed it cannot be trusted when it was revealed that founder Wade Rathke may have concealed his brother’s embezzlement of nearly a million dollars from ACORN and its affiliates in 1999 and 2000.
The fraud, corruption, and rank hypocrisy of ACORN is breathtaking. And the degree to which the group gets away with it is inexcusable.
Which is why the “stimulus” bill that could enrich ACORN is misguided. In fact, the current credit meltdown is an apt time to hold the group accountable for its malfeasance; it was ACORN, after all, that helped plant the seed of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Since the 1970s, the group has been at the forefront of an activist coalition that has pressured banks to lend money to borrowers without the means to repay. ACORN -- along with allies like the irresponsible Center for Responsible Lending -- pushed for legislation that, The Wall Street Journal noted, “laid the foundation for the house of cards built out of subprime loans.”
Misconduct is one thing. Misconduct at the expense of taxpayers’ money is quite another. ACORN has been receiving federal money since 1977. One conservative estimate indicates that over the years ACORN has received more than $53 million in taxpayer dollars.
For decades, ACORN has cleverly undermined the political process on our dime while helping pull our economy into the ditch. Referring to the economic stimulus, President Barack Obama recently asked that we “put politics aside and do the American people's business right now.”
Yet it appears that some congressmen now have the audacity use the crisis -- which ACORN helped create -- to advance the group and its partisan agenda.
Kristen Lopez Eastlick is senior economic analyst for the Employment Policies Institute.
