ACORN - The Saga Continues

ACORN Still Receives Gov't Funding

Admin — Thu, 7 Jul 2011 06:27:17

Quoted Text

Obama Violated ACORN Funding Ban With Housing Grant to Offshoot, Watchdog Says
Published July 06, 2011
| FoxNews.com
AP

A conservative watchdog group is accusing President Obama of violating a funding ban that he signed into law that prohibits the flow of federal money to the now-defunct community activist group ACORN or any of its affiliates.
Judicial Watch says that in March, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued nearly $80,000 in grants to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA), which the groups says is an offshoot of ACORN.
"This was an ACORN affiliate at the time of the funding ban and it has not changed in sum or substance since then," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Fox News in an interview. "The funding ban was violated and the administration is calling these new entities. It just doesn't pass the laugh test."

But Alyson Chadwick, a spokeswoman for AHCOA, denied any connection to ACORN.
"We are not an affiliate, subsidiary or ally of ACORN," she told FoxNews.com. "Both the GAO and HUD's General Counsel have done exhaustive work and come to the same conclusion."
A HUD spokesman told Fox News that the department is in complete compliance with the law and added that AHOCA was awarded the $79,819 grant "to provide fair housing and fair lending information and assistance to at least 35,000 minority, non-English speaking and immigrant households in the Miami-Dade metropolitan area."
In September, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued an opinion saying, "The record does not show AHCOA to be directly or indirectly under the control of ACORN."
"It is our view that AHCOA is not presently an affiliate, subsidiary, or allied organization of ACORN," the GAO concluded.
Judicial Watch senior investigator Sean Dunagan told Fox News that the GAO ruling used "strained logic."
The group says the government's website listing federal expenditures identifies the organization receiving the $79,810 grant as "ACORN Housing Corporation Inc." and lists ACORN's New Orleans address.
The group also says that ACHOA maintains the same board of directors, executive director and offices as ACORN Housing.
The group also notes that a HUD general counsel report from September 2010 says that ACORN Housing is "now operating as Affordable Housing Centers of America" and has misappropriated funds from a $3.2 million federal grant...................>>>>.................>>>>.................Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....-says/#ixzz1RPyiOwHM

ACORN Philadelphia Sues Filmmakers

Admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 08:05:52

Quoted Text

ACORN Employee Sues Undercover Filmmakers

The civil lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia accuses the filmmakers of illegally recording their conversation with the worker

An employee at a Philadelphia branch of ACORN, the national community organization under fire for allegations of wrongdoing, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the two filmmakers who set off the controversy last fall with their undercover videos.

The civil lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia accuses the filmmakers, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, of illegally recording their conversation with the worker, Katherine Conway-Russell, and then publicizing the videos, which Conway-Russell says "caused emotional distress, harm and injury."

Conway-Russell is featured in one of several videos recorded by O'Keefe and Giles, who posed as a pimp and prostitute and visited ACORN offices around the country with a hidden camera. The videos, released initially through the conservative Web site BigGovernment.com, showed ACORN employees seeming to offer to help the couple skirt tax and housing laws while setting up a brothel.............>>>>...............>>>>...............http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....ers/?test=latestnews

ACORN Los Angeles

Admin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:13:34

Rathke Embezzled $5M From ACORN

Admin — Tue, 6 Oct 2009 09:50:46

Quoted Text

AG: ACORN Embezzlement Totaled $5M, Not $1M
An internal review by ACORN's board of directors found that $5 million was embezzled from the community organization, far more than previously reported

AP
Tuesday, October 06, 2009

BATON ROUGE, La. -- An internal review by ACORN's board of directors found that $5 million was embezzled from the community organization, far more than the previously reported amount of $1 million, according to documents released Monday.

The new amount was reported in a subpoena from the investigation by Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported. It is unclear if the money was taken from state, federal or private funds, according to the subpoena.

ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis said the new embezzlement allegation is "completely false." She said she would comment further after she and ACORN attorneys have a chance to review the subpoena, which was released Monday.

Caldwell issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to ACORN International then-President Wade Rathke and his brother, Dale Rathke, who kept the group's books. Those subpoenas targeted possible violations of state employee tax law, obstruction of justice and violations of the Employee Retirement Security Act.

The attorney general made inquiries in June into alleged embezzlement within ACORN that happened 10 years ago. The group last year dealt with an internal dispute and a lawsuit involving accusations that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000. Rathke's brother and a donor repaid the money.

But Caldwell said last month that the statute of limitations prevented prosecutors from taking action on the alleged embezzlement, and that his investigation was not focused on that issue.

The subpoena issued Monday puts a new emphasis on the embezzlement issue. It appears to be in reaction to documents gathered from ACORN's board as a result of the subpoenas issued in August.

"Current high ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million," the new subpoena says.

The subpoena requests documents from Citizens Consulting Inc., which assisted ACORN, and from various accounting and legal consultants in New Orleans.

Wade Rathke could not be reached immediately for comment.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/06/ag-acorn-embezzlement-totaled-m-m/

Gaspard Political Affairs Director Ties To ACORN

Admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:16:34

Quoted Text

Patrick Gaspard = ACORN = SEIU = White House political affairs director.
Posted by Moe Lane
Monday, September 28th at 1:54PM EDT

We know that Patrick Gaspard is the White House political affairs director.
We know that Patrick Gaspard enjoys the trust of the White House to perform sensitive tasks.
We know that Patrick Gaspard is in fact one of the most quietly powerful people in this administration.
We know that Patrick Gaspard was formerly an ACORN higher-up.
We know that Patrick Gaspard was also formerly affiliated with SEIU.
We know that Patrick Gaspard was seen by Big Labor as being a payoff for SEIU’s support.
We know that Patrick Gaspard’s brother Michael represents ACORN (and that ACORN Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis kept contact information for Patrick Gaspard).
And we know that links between ACORN & SEIU and ACORN & the White House have been minimized, downplayed, and outright sanitized recently.
What we don’t know yet is whether the White House is going to do the same thing with the ties between SEIU and the White House.

http://www.redstate.com/moe_la.....al-affairs-director/