ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis has a message for everyone: It’s not her fault.
As the leader of the embattled, taxpayer-funded group conducts what she calls her “set-the-record-straight” tour, Lewis admits vaguely to problems with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. But she papers over what little she’s done to fix them, and she blames outside forces for nearly everything.
Take for example, ACORN’s million-dollar embezzlement scandal. An employee stole from ACORN nearly a decade ago and top ACORN officials, including the embezzler’s brother, hid the theft from ACORN’s directors until it was finally made public last year. (The accepted figure is $1 million, but there are allegations that as much as $5 million was stolen.) That cannot be blamed on Lewis, who took charge of ACORN in the wake of the scandal. “I don’t think it’s fair to judge me,” she says, “as I’m cleaning up after a previous administration.”
But how much cleaning up has she done? Some of those who admitted to covering up the embezzlement — including the embezzler’s brother — still work for and run ACORN affiliates.
No one has been referred for prosecution. The only people purged so far were two board members who wanted to make the pertinent financial records public.
That doesn’t look like a real housecleaning. But don’t blame Bertha.
ACORN workers in several cities use taxpayer-funded grants, supposedly to help poor people with taxes and housing. We now have videotapes of how it works.
An ACORN rep in Brooklyn tells a prostitute to underreport her income by a factor of 10, and bury the extra cash in her backyard. Those under-age Salvadoran sex slaves you’re keeping? Report them on your 1040 form as “dependents,” says an ACORN rep in Baltimore.
Don’t blame Bertha Lewis, who actually runs ACORN. Blame those two meddling kids with the hidden camera, who caught ACORN in action.
They forced Lewis to fire a handful of people whom Lewis described as “mothers and grandmothers who thought they were doing the right thing,” who in some cases “had been working with us for over ten years.”
How many times in the last 10 years do you suppose they offered similar tax advice?
ACORN is now suing the filmmakers under Maryland’s wiretap law. Asked about the lawsuit, Lewis said that the two should be held accountable because “[n]othing trumps breaking the law. Nothing. Nothing.”
Someone with authority might want to tell that to ACORN employees.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, recently accused ACORN of intermingling its nearly 200 affiliates’ activities, effectively using tax-deductible contributions to engage in politicking. Taken on their own, the accusations merit a look at ACORN’s government funding. In fact, ACORN had drawn the same conclusion about its activities in an internal audit conducted last year, according to the New York Times.
But Lewis cannot accept that organizational misconduct has consequences. She blames Grassley and Republicans for “modern day ACORN McCarthyism,” and for hating poor people.
“When you organize poor people to have real power, what you do is often turned against you,” she said. Ultimately, nothing is Lewis’ fault. The worst she admitted to in Tuesday’s presser was some “naivete” about “folks coming after” her.
Lewis did not embezzle ACORN’s money. No one caught her on tape abetting tax fraud or sex-trafficking. No one has accused her of registering fake voters, or of personally taking nonprofit money and using it to fund political activities.
Lewis doesn’t seem to grasp that she runs an organization that is now best known for these criminal activities. Public forgiveness comes with repentance, not finger-pointing.
David Freddoso is a Commentary staff writer can be reached at [email protected]
