Michael Gaynor
Expose Obama's ACORN ties and lies
By Michael Gaynor
Obama needed to distance himself from ACORN, so he ended its involvement as a census partner and signed the bill defunding of ACORN and his Administration instead has helped ACORN surreptitiously.
Kudos to National Review's Charles C. W. Cooke for refuting the lie that ACORN is dead and tying it still to the Obama Administration and Obama's reelection effort in a February 6, 2012 article titled "ACORN Is Up to its only tricks" available at www.nationalreview.com/articles/289948/acorn-its-old-tricks-charles-c-w-cooke.
ACORN continues to be Obama's Achilles' heel, Obama's allies in the fedderal government and the media continue to help him keep his vulnerable Achilles' heel covered instead of exposed, and the whole truth still needs to become generally known.
Obama lied about his relationship with ACORN in 2008, pointedly during the last presidential debate, and the media let him get away with it.
Obama during that debate:
"...with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they've done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn't really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.
"It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.
"Now, the reason I think that it's important to just get these facts out is because the allegation that Senator McCain has continually made is that somehow my associations are troubling."
Obama is right...about the importance of facts.
McCain was right...about Obama having troubling associations, and ACORN is the most troubling.
Obama's statement — "My only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs." — is a lie, not a fact.
Yes, Obama represented ACORN in that lawsuit and the Clinton Justice Department predictably sided with ACORN.
But that was hardly Obama's only involvement with ACORN.
ACORN is the organization with which Obama has been associated throughout his adult life, as organizer, trainer, lawyer, funder and political beneficiary.
Cooke astutely compared ACORN to a cockroach and warned that "it is not just surviving, but thriving; and it is doing so with thousands of those federal dollars that it is explicitly banned from receiving."
That's only possible because the Obama Administration has been making it so.
Cooke explained: "Since it was ignominiously stripped of all federal funding in 2009, ACORN has steadily maintained its extensive network of 'affiliates' — more specifically, tax-exempt progressive 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations, most of which have been renamed since the scandal hit. For 40 years, it appears, ACORN employed many of these groups to funnel millions of federal dollars its way — and it continues to do so today. It appears to be getting away with it. When somebody buys a gun for a convicted felon, it is called a 'straw purchase,' and it is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. When ACORN takes money prohibited to it by employing others as collection agents, it is called 'accounting.' This is the financial equivalent of being dishonorably discharged, but continuing to serve, and anyone who respects congressional authority should be outraged."
Wade Rathke, ACORN founder and Chief Organizer for 38 years (until he resigned in 2009 after his brother's embezzlement of ACORN funds finally became public knowledge) created a system that Cooke rightly described as "ingenious" and that continues to function.
Cooke explained:
"...while 501(c)3 organizations — such as ACORN's new (i.e., renamed) groups, the Affordable Housing Center of America (AHCOA) and the New York Agency for Community Affairs (NYACA) — are heavily restricted in the political sphere, such impediments can be easily circumvented. This is generally achieved via a mechanism known as 'fiscal sponsorship.' Fiscal sponsorship works pretty much how it sounds: In order to help out third-party organizations ('fiscal agents') that either do not qualify for 501(c)3 status or are waiting for certification, established 501(c)3 groups are permitted to underwrite certain 'projects' that they consider to be vital to their mission. In theory at least, this can be a useful and positive tool, one that allows the easy funding of temporary ventures and the sharing of administrative costs, expertise, and infrastructure. (Think, for example, of a college wishing to fund a student documentary.)
"But fiscal sponsorship also presents 501(c)3 groups with a highly efficient and sophisticated means of laundering money. Indeed, a leading nonprofit tax attorney, John Edie, suggests that the mechanism is predominantly used for that purpose: 'If you're going to use a fiscal agent, to me you're saying, "Well, I'm going to launder the money through somebody.'' In this particular case, that 'I' is any one of the 501(c)3 groups that ACORN has established to do its dirty work, and that 'somebody' is ACORN central."
ACORN was made a 501(c)4 organization, while, for example, Project Vote, which Rathke described as part of "the ACORN family of organizations," is a 501(c)3 and continuing to function.
Tragically, as Cooke reported, "ACORN's apparent misuse of fiscal sponsorship has gone largely unnoticed."
That's no surprise. The liberal media establishment does not want to go there, and even Fox News hired as a contributor former Project Vote director Jehmu Greene.
Fortunately, there is some hope.
Cooke:
"...there are people on the case. Most prominent among them is Dan Epstein, executive director of the good-government group Cause of Action and a former counsel for oversight and investigation on the House Oversight Committee. In an October 21, 2011, letter to the inspector general of the Treasury, Epstein declared that the 'evidence uncovered tends to suggest that ACORN instructed its affiliates to funnel tax-deductible and/or taxpayer dollars to ACORN over a forty year period,' including since the 2009 ban. The letter accused ACORN of 'shameful deception' and bluntly requested that the IRS 'investigate ACORN and its allies for tax fraud.' Cause of Action has estimated that between 40 and 60 percent of all money sent to ACORN's affiliates ends up with the parent company through this mechanism, although given the poverty of much of the internal auditing, it is difficult to put an exact number on the deceit."
But:
"Unfortunately for taxpayers, it seems that nobody is particularly interested in the subterfuge, and in recent months things have actually taken a turn for the worse.
"In January 2011, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that AHCOA was not in fact 'affiliated' with or 'allied' to ACORN, and thus was not covered by the ban on federal funding. AHCOA received $650,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) between August 8 and September 2, 2011. But a September 27, 2011, letter from Daniel Epstein to the comptroller general at the GAO called into question the manner in which that decision was made and the evidence submitted to the hearing. Epstein noted that the internal audits on which the GAO relied were lacking in crucial material — material that had earlier led HUD's Office of the Inspector General, in a separate investigation, to declare that AHCOA's funds were not being used in compliance with the law.
"Moreover, the GAO treated AHCOA as a new corporation, instead of just a renamed one. The law states that 'a formerly allied organization or affiliate is considered presently allied or affiliated unless that corporation has been dissolved or has had its status revoked.' 'AHCOA,' Epstein writes, 'met neither of these conditions.' What's more, AHCOA is still very clearly affiliated with many organizations owned by ACORN, including Beverly Homes LLC and the Texas ACORN Housing Association, and currently works with 'twenty-three ACORN-related entities.'
"Contra the GAO, so intertwined are ACORN and supposedly separate AHCOA that Neighborworks — a 'national network of more than 240 community development and affordable housing organizations' — issued a special audit in December 2010 alleging: 'Although AHC[OA] and ACORN might be incorporated as separate entities in form and structure, the financial transactions noted below evidence extensive relationships between both organizations that may undermine claims of an "arm's length relationship" between them.' It also noted that 'AHCOA's issuance of multiple contracts to ACORN gives the appearance that contracts have been distributed among separate entities, "when they are actually one and the same."' Not only did the GAO's poor decision effectively allow ACORN to receive federal dollars in violation of the 2009 ban, but in coming to its ruling, the GAO ignored a provision in that ban that prohibits ACORN from rebranding itself in order to get around the law. Daniel Epstein's letters and other such inquiries have been met mostly with form letters whose authors could barely contain their indifference."
Of course. The Obama Administration wants ACORN funded, because ACORN promotes Obama and is important to his re-election campaign, just as it was important to his election in 2008.
Cooke reported on the Obama Administration's General Accounting Office's convenient willful blindness:
"On January 25, 2012,...the GAO responded to Cause of Action's enquiry. Unfortunately, it seems to be going in the wrong direction.
"ACORN has ostensibly convinced the GEO that it doesn't exist. Responding to Epstein's complaint, the GAO contended that ACORN is 'in Chapter 7 (dissolution) bankruptcy,' and therefore can't be affiliated with anything. This is an absurd position to take: Leaving aside that, according to the Arkansas secretary of state's office, ACORN is still in good standing as an active corporation, the GAO's decision ignores the fact that the word 'ACORN' is something of a red herring: ACORN, like any taxable corporate enterprise, is a nexus of contractual arrangements between individuals, designed for limited liability. ACORN has renamed itself, but the nexus of transactions still remains and is active. Anyone looking for a large building with 'ACORN' written on the side will be disappointed, but to conclude anything from the absence of such is to miss the point entirely."
The Obama Administration is determined to "miss the point entirely." Obama needed to distance himself from ACORN, so he ended its involvement as a census partner and signed the bill defunding of ACORN and his Administration instead has helped ACORN surreptitiously.
Cooke's good news:
"Heads are starting to turn: Representative Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) has written to the Attorney of New York's Eastern District, complaining that ACORN-affiliated 501(c)4 group New York Communities for Change (NYCC) is soliciting donations from union members under false pretenses, and questioning whether federal funds are being illegally directed to Occupy Wall Street and others. An illustration of ACORN's diffuse rebirth: NYCC is headed up by Jon Kest, formerly of NY ACORN, and the group works out of ACORN's offices in Brooklyn, retaining swathes of ACORN's former staff. According to one Fox News report, 'sources inside NYCC allege that the group has hired approximately 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities, paying some of them $100 a day, to attend and support Occupy Wall Street.' My request for a comment from NYCC was met with only with 'the statement [NYCC] sent to Fox News when they raised these false allegations in October,' which reads that '[NYCC] is a new organization that fights for low- and moderate-income families. We don't pay protesters and any monies raised by NYCC's canvass are used in support of our ongoing issue campaigns.' The statement didn't address my questions about fiscal sponsorship."
Don't expect the Obama Justice Department to put the rule of law above the re-election of Obama, however.
Cooke even explained that Issa has much more work to do if ACORN is to be effectively exposed:
"As of yet,...Issa's complaint has had nothing to do with the issue of fiscal sponsorship, and he is still scratching at the surface. Both Fox News and Andrew Breitbart's Big Government have looked into this issue — as have a variety of other groups — but given the apparent complexity of the ruse, it is becoming clear that only a more comprehensive enquiry will suffice. Congressional authority is being flouted and, in a nation of laws and not men, it does not matter whether the infraction is to the tune of a billion dollars or a single cent. Congress might start by enforcing the existing laws, for then, and only then, will John Boehner's promise that 'the writing is on the wall for ACORN' be true."
It is useful to expose ACORN's machinations, but it is essential that the truth about Obama and ACORN be made common knowledge before Election Day 2012 and the key to that happening is ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
MonCrief received standing ovations at CPAC 2010 and CPAC 2011 and has appeared on Fox News programs and the Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham radio programs, but the liberal media establishment does not report her amazing story.
In 2008, MonCrief voted for Obama.
That won't happen again.
In 2008, Fox News invited MonCrief to be interviewed in the days before the election, but MonCrief, then a self-described "liberal' and African-American, did not trust Fox News to be "fair and balanced."
MonCrief is still African-American, but she's conservative now and it's time for Fox News to really be "fair and balanced" and give MonCrief at least as much air time as it gives her old boss at Project Vote, Jehmu Greene (who is still "liberal").
Anerica's future is at stake.
© Michael Gaynor
February 8, 2012
Obama needed to distance himself from ACORN, so he ended its involvement as a census partner and signed the bill defunding of ACORN and his Administration instead has helped ACORN surreptitiously.
Kudos to National Review's Charles C. W. Cooke for refuting the lie that ACORN is dead and tying it still to the Obama Administration and Obama's reelection effort in a February 6, 2012 article titled "ACORN Is Up to its only tricks" available at www.nationalreview.com/articles/289948/acorn-its-old-tricks-charles-c-w-cooke.
ACORN continues to be Obama's Achilles' heel, Obama's allies in the fedderal government and the media continue to help him keep his vulnerable Achilles' heel covered instead of exposed, and the whole truth still needs to become generally known.
Obama lied about his relationship with ACORN in 2008, pointedly during the last presidential debate, and the media let him get away with it.
Obama during that debate:
"...with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they've done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn't really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.
"It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.
"Now, the reason I think that it's important to just get these facts out is because the allegation that Senator McCain has continually made is that somehow my associations are troubling."
Obama is right...about the importance of facts.
McCain was right...about Obama having troubling associations, and ACORN is the most troubling.
Obama's statement — "My only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs." — is a lie, not a fact.
Yes, Obama represented ACORN in that lawsuit and the Clinton Justice Department predictably sided with ACORN.
But that was hardly Obama's only involvement with ACORN.
ACORN is the organization with which Obama has been associated throughout his adult life, as organizer, trainer, lawyer, funder and political beneficiary.
Cooke astutely compared ACORN to a cockroach and warned that "it is not just surviving, but thriving; and it is doing so with thousands of those federal dollars that it is explicitly banned from receiving."
That's only possible because the Obama Administration has been making it so.
Cooke explained: "Since it was ignominiously stripped of all federal funding in 2009, ACORN has steadily maintained its extensive network of 'affiliates' — more specifically, tax-exempt progressive 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations, most of which have been renamed since the scandal hit. For 40 years, it appears, ACORN employed many of these groups to funnel millions of federal dollars its way — and it continues to do so today. It appears to be getting away with it. When somebody buys a gun for a convicted felon, it is called a 'straw purchase,' and it is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. When ACORN takes money prohibited to it by employing others as collection agents, it is called 'accounting.' This is the financial equivalent of being dishonorably discharged, but continuing to serve, and anyone who respects congressional authority should be outraged."
Wade Rathke, ACORN founder and Chief Organizer for 38 years (until he resigned in 2009 after his brother's embezzlement of ACORN funds finally became public knowledge) created a system that Cooke rightly described as "ingenious" and that continues to function.
Cooke explained:
"...while 501(c)3 organizations — such as ACORN's new (i.e., renamed) groups, the Affordable Housing Center of America (AHCOA) and the New York Agency for Community Affairs (NYACA) — are heavily restricted in the political sphere, such impediments can be easily circumvented. This is generally achieved via a mechanism known as 'fiscal sponsorship.' Fiscal sponsorship works pretty much how it sounds: In order to help out third-party organizations ('fiscal agents') that either do not qualify for 501(c)3 status or are waiting for certification, established 501(c)3 groups are permitted to underwrite certain 'projects' that they consider to be vital to their mission. In theory at least, this can be a useful and positive tool, one that allows the easy funding of temporary ventures and the sharing of administrative costs, expertise, and infrastructure. (Think, for example, of a college wishing to fund a student documentary.)
"But fiscal sponsorship also presents 501(c)3 groups with a highly efficient and sophisticated means of laundering money. Indeed, a leading nonprofit tax attorney, John Edie, suggests that the mechanism is predominantly used for that purpose: 'If you're going to use a fiscal agent, to me you're saying, "Well, I'm going to launder the money through somebody.'' In this particular case, that 'I' is any one of the 501(c)3 groups that ACORN has established to do its dirty work, and that 'somebody' is ACORN central."
ACORN was made a 501(c)4 organization, while, for example, Project Vote, which Rathke described as part of "the ACORN family of organizations," is a 501(c)3 and continuing to function.
Tragically, as Cooke reported, "ACORN's apparent misuse of fiscal sponsorship has gone largely unnoticed."
That's no surprise. The liberal media establishment does not want to go there, and even Fox News hired as a contributor former Project Vote director Jehmu Greene.
Fortunately, there is some hope.
Cooke:
"...there are people on the case. Most prominent among them is Dan Epstein, executive director of the good-government group Cause of Action and a former counsel for oversight and investigation on the House Oversight Committee. In an October 21, 2011, letter to the inspector general of the Treasury, Epstein declared that the 'evidence uncovered tends to suggest that ACORN instructed its affiliates to funnel tax-deductible and/or taxpayer dollars to ACORN over a forty year period,' including since the 2009 ban. The letter accused ACORN of 'shameful deception' and bluntly requested that the IRS 'investigate ACORN and its allies for tax fraud.' Cause of Action has estimated that between 40 and 60 percent of all money sent to ACORN's affiliates ends up with the parent company through this mechanism, although given the poverty of much of the internal auditing, it is difficult to put an exact number on the deceit."
But:
"Unfortunately for taxpayers, it seems that nobody is particularly interested in the subterfuge, and in recent months things have actually taken a turn for the worse.
"In January 2011, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that AHCOA was not in fact 'affiliated' with or 'allied' to ACORN, and thus was not covered by the ban on federal funding. AHCOA received $650,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) between August 8 and September 2, 2011. But a September 27, 2011, letter from Daniel Epstein to the comptroller general at the GAO called into question the manner in which that decision was made and the evidence submitted to the hearing. Epstein noted that the internal audits on which the GAO relied were lacking in crucial material — material that had earlier led HUD's Office of the Inspector General, in a separate investigation, to declare that AHCOA's funds were not being used in compliance with the law.
"Moreover, the GAO treated AHCOA as a new corporation, instead of just a renamed one. The law states that 'a formerly allied organization or affiliate is considered presently allied or affiliated unless that corporation has been dissolved or has had its status revoked.' 'AHCOA,' Epstein writes, 'met neither of these conditions.' What's more, AHCOA is still very clearly affiliated with many organizations owned by ACORN, including Beverly Homes LLC and the Texas ACORN Housing Association, and currently works with 'twenty-three ACORN-related entities.'
"Contra the GAO, so intertwined are ACORN and supposedly separate AHCOA that Neighborworks — a 'national network of more than 240 community development and affordable housing organizations' — issued a special audit in December 2010 alleging: 'Although AHC[OA] and ACORN might be incorporated as separate entities in form and structure, the financial transactions noted below evidence extensive relationships between both organizations that may undermine claims of an "arm's length relationship" between them.' It also noted that 'AHCOA's issuance of multiple contracts to ACORN gives the appearance that contracts have been distributed among separate entities, "when they are actually one and the same."' Not only did the GAO's poor decision effectively allow ACORN to receive federal dollars in violation of the 2009 ban, but in coming to its ruling, the GAO ignored a provision in that ban that prohibits ACORN from rebranding itself in order to get around the law. Daniel Epstein's letters and other such inquiries have been met mostly with form letters whose authors could barely contain their indifference."
Of course. The Obama Administration wants ACORN funded, because ACORN promotes Obama and is important to his re-election campaign, just as it was important to his election in 2008.
Cooke reported on the Obama Administration's General Accounting Office's convenient willful blindness:
"On January 25, 2012,...the GAO responded to Cause of Action's enquiry. Unfortunately, it seems to be going in the wrong direction.
"ACORN has ostensibly convinced the GEO that it doesn't exist. Responding to Epstein's complaint, the GAO contended that ACORN is 'in Chapter 7 (dissolution) bankruptcy,' and therefore can't be affiliated with anything. This is an absurd position to take: Leaving aside that, according to the Arkansas secretary of state's office, ACORN is still in good standing as an active corporation, the GAO's decision ignores the fact that the word 'ACORN' is something of a red herring: ACORN, like any taxable corporate enterprise, is a nexus of contractual arrangements between individuals, designed for limited liability. ACORN has renamed itself, but the nexus of transactions still remains and is active. Anyone looking for a large building with 'ACORN' written on the side will be disappointed, but to conclude anything from the absence of such is to miss the point entirely."
The Obama Administration is determined to "miss the point entirely." Obama needed to distance himself from ACORN, so he ended its involvement as a census partner and signed the bill defunding of ACORN and his Administration instead has helped ACORN surreptitiously.
Cooke's good news:
"Heads are starting to turn: Representative Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) has written to the Attorney of New York's Eastern District, complaining that ACORN-affiliated 501(c)4 group New York Communities for Change (NYCC) is soliciting donations from union members under false pretenses, and questioning whether federal funds are being illegally directed to Occupy Wall Street and others. An illustration of ACORN's diffuse rebirth: NYCC is headed up by Jon Kest, formerly of NY ACORN, and the group works out of ACORN's offices in Brooklyn, retaining swathes of ACORN's former staff. According to one Fox News report, 'sources inside NYCC allege that the group has hired approximately 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities, paying some of them $100 a day, to attend and support Occupy Wall Street.' My request for a comment from NYCC was met with only with 'the statement [NYCC] sent to Fox News when they raised these false allegations in October,' which reads that '[NYCC] is a new organization that fights for low- and moderate-income families. We don't pay protesters and any monies raised by NYCC's canvass are used in support of our ongoing issue campaigns.' The statement didn't address my questions about fiscal sponsorship."
Don't expect the Obama Justice Department to put the rule of law above the re-election of Obama, however.
Cooke even explained that Issa has much more work to do if ACORN is to be effectively exposed:
"As of yet,...Issa's complaint has had nothing to do with the issue of fiscal sponsorship, and he is still scratching at the surface. Both Fox News and Andrew Breitbart's Big Government have looked into this issue — as have a variety of other groups — but given the apparent complexity of the ruse, it is becoming clear that only a more comprehensive enquiry will suffice. Congressional authority is being flouted and, in a nation of laws and not men, it does not matter whether the infraction is to the tune of a billion dollars or a single cent. Congress might start by enforcing the existing laws, for then, and only then, will John Boehner's promise that 'the writing is on the wall for ACORN' be true."
It is useful to expose ACORN's machinations, but it is essential that the truth about Obama and ACORN be made common knowledge before Election Day 2012 and the key to that happening is ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
MonCrief received standing ovations at CPAC 2010 and CPAC 2011 and has appeared on Fox News programs and the Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham radio programs, but the liberal media establishment does not report her amazing story.
In 2008, MonCrief voted for Obama.
That won't happen again.
In 2008, Fox News invited MonCrief to be interviewed in the days before the election, but MonCrief, then a self-described "liberal' and African-American, did not trust Fox News to be "fair and balanced."
MonCrief is still African-American, but she's conservative now and it's time for Fox News to really be "fair and balanced" and give MonCrief at least as much air time as it gives her old boss at Project Vote, Jehmu Greene (who is still "liberal").
Anerica's future is at stake.
© Michael Gaynor
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
