ACORN Still Lives

SUBVERSION,

INC.

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(AP/Kiichiro Sato)

ACORN Still Lives kicker

A new book reveals how Obamas ACORN friends are still ripping off American taxpayers.
by Matthew Vadum
Copyright 2011 by Matthew Vadum. From the forthcoming book Subversion, Inc. by Matthew Vadum to be published by WND Books. Printed by permission. hoping Americans will forget about it. According to congressional investigators, ACORN moved tens of millions of dollars out of its bank accounts. No one outside of ACORNs accountants knows where the money went. Yet no new investigations appear to be in the ofng on Capitol Hill. ACORN has adopted a strategy to keep tax dollars and foundation grants owing into the coffers of the new groups that would then use them to rebuild the ACORN network as a yet-to-be-named successor organization emerges. It is an act of the sheerest audacity for a lawless group that has long acted outside the legitimate political process. As I discovered in my research, at least 54 employees and individuals connected to ACORN have been convicted of election fraud and related offenses. ACORN itself is now facing voter fraud conspiracy charges in Las Vegas that are not affected by the groups bankruptcy proceeding. If ACORN is convicted, it would cause an earthquake in leftist organizing circles across the U.S. More prosecutors might be emboldened to take on ACORN and similar groups. Until it was charged by Nevada, ACORN had frequently boasted about how itas opposed to its employeeshad been able to duck prosecution for voter fraud-related offenses. Amazingly, ACORNs 40 years of lawlessness have been heavily subsidized by taxpayers. From the federal government alone, the ACORN network has received at least $79 million in federal taxpayer funding. No one knows how many millions of dollars ACORN has taken in from states and localities. Yet as of November 2009, ACORN was a tax deadbeat, owing more than $2.3 million in back taxes to all levels of government. You dont have to take my word that ACORN will soon arise from the ashes. Nathan Henderson-James, longtime director of the groups online campaigns, conrmed in a leaked February 2010 e-mail that ACORN plans to come back. Americas most notorious nonprot felt it needed to perform this trick because its employees were caught red-handed repeatedly counseling a fake pimp and prostitute on the ner points of establishing a brothel for pedophiles. ACORN calculated that people would forget the transgressions of the taxpayer-subsidized nonprot best known for its voter fraud efforts. In the e-mail that came ve months after conservative activistjournalists James OKeefe III and Hannah Giles punked ACORN with their pimp and pro routine, Henderson-James explained the groups ongoing hoax that consists of its state chapters separately incorporating under new, innocuous-sounding names. It is denitely true that over the next week or so we should see a dozen or more organizations launched on the state level by staff who used to work for ACORN and leaders who developed their skills as ACORN members, he wrote. These are not just simple name changes, but reimaginings of how best to organize low and moderate income constituencies without any of the legal problems and funding issues dogging ACORN, not to mention the brand damage.

Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of conservatives, said the small-c communist tactician Saul Alinsky, who is now worshipped by the Obama administration and the activist Left. The thuggish, in-your-face activist group ACORN was the vehicle that 1960s radicals created to bash Americans heads in to get them to accept a radical transformation of American society. The antisocial group also led the way in destigmatizing welfare by pushing people to abandon their job searches and get on the public dole. When Barack Obama was a little boy surrounded by parents and grandparents and mentors sympathetic to communism, likeminded people were building ACORNs parent organization, the National Welfare Rights Organization. Armed with tax dollars, left-wing extremists Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, and Alinsky were at play in the 1960s, wreaking havoc on society in an effort to induce revolutionary change. All three of these at the time relatively obscure gures labored to create NWRO along with a vast constellation of tax-supported groups determined to destroy the American society they loathed. Changes in federal social policy in the early 1960s helped to lay the groundwork for this articial activism and the welfare-related unrest it caused. President Lyndon Johnsons unconditional war on poverty in America really should have been called an unconditional war on American values. For four decades, ACORN destroyed property, forcibly occupied banks, assaulted employees of the companies they targeted, intimidated executives and government ofcials at their family homes, and engineered home invasions in order to seize foreclosed properties. ACORN took money from powerful special interests to produce instant rent-a-mobs to harass their clients competitors. But after various setbacks, including a million-dollar embezzlement in 2008 and a series of damning undercover videos in 2009 showing gross employee misconduct, the Democratic National Committee branch ofce known as ACORN led Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Election Day last year. It was a carefully orchestrated public relations ruse. The nowdissolving ACORN is not actually going anywhere. Americas most infamous radical advocacy group and organized crime syndicate is preparing to rise up from the political grave and bring Mickey Mouse and the dead to the polls in 2012. ACORN organizers are quietly laboring to reconstitute a new version of the group in time to help ACORNs former lawyer in next years presidential election. So it turns out that November 2010 reports of the death of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, President Obamas former client and favorite community organizing group, have been greatly exaggerated. With the help of loyal key staff members, ACORN has been playing possum, waiting in the shadows,

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ACORN Security National Still Lives

Stepping out of the spotlight for a while is a tactically smart reaction to the global situation that helps the work of building power for poor people to continue, he wrote. The secret operation was already underway when Henderson-James bragged about the effort to his radical and liberal friends on Townhouse, an invitationonly left-wingers online discussion forum run by Matt Stoller, who was senior policy adviser to colorful former Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla. In late 2009 and early 2010, ACORN staffers across America created a plethora of separate organizations aimed at carrying on ACORNs corrupt affairs. Among them were Arkansas Community Organizations, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New England United for Justice, Missourians Organizing for Reform & Empowerment, New York Communities for Change, Pennsylvania Neighborhoods for Social Justice, and Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change. Almost all of the new groups operate out of old ACORN ofces and are run by old ACORN hands. ACORNs housing bubble generator, ACORN Housing, changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America after the undercover video saga. The organization has long served as the ACORN networks cash cow, funneling millions of dollars to other afliates in ACORNs far-ung empire of activism. ACORNs court historian John Atlas also conrmed that the undead group plans to resurface under a new name after the 2010 elections. A new entity tentatively called the Community Action Support Center (CASC) will be created to provide a range of training, technical assistance, and oversight services to the new community organizations, he wrote last year in his institutional hagiography of ACORN, Seeds of Change. ACORNs Brian Kettenring will be interim executive director. ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis plans to create a Black Leadership Institute. Executive Director Steve Kest quit ACORN but will work with the new community groups in a consulting and voluntary capacity. Kest later became a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which is run by Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta. The emerging community organizations will retain ACORNs commitment to building national power, and are beginning

discussions toward a process to federate at some later date, presumably after the 2010 elections or in 2011, Atlas writes. The new groups focus will be on localities and states. CASC will support the continuation of organizing around jobs and low-wage work, bank lending and foreclosures, immigration, state scal crises, civic engagement, and green jobs and environmental justice. ACORN leaders are working on voter engagement activities. They intend to engage the surge voters of 2008 and turn them into permanent voters in 2010 and beyond. ACORNs fraud-prone Project Vote afliate continues to operate. It ran a nationwide voter registration and getout-the-vote drive during the 2010 election cycle. Despite its history of election fraud, it continues to operate undisturbed, doing business as usual. Project Vote, which used to employ President Obama, even let disgraced ACORN executive Amy Adele Busenk run its 2010 voter drive. Charges were pending against her the whole time she ran the 2010 voter registration and get-out-the-vote effort. Talk about an understanding employer! Busenks job performance in the 2008 election cycle didnt seem to bother Project Vote. The New York Times reported that Project Vote was forced to admit that 850,000 of the 1.3 million registrations from allegedly new voters were not from new voters at all. About 400,000 of the registrations were rejected by election ofcials for a variety of reasons, including duplicate registrations, incomplete forms and fraudulent submissions from low-paid eld workers. ACORN acknowledged it red 829 of the 10,000 canvassers it hired during the election for job-related problems, including falsifying registration forms. Busenk and her subordinate were implicated in a massive conspiracy to commit voter registration fraud in Nevada. Her underling took a plea bargain, and Busenk cut her own deal with prosecutors in hopes of avoiding prison time. She entered an Alford plea, which is similar to a no contest plea. In January 2011, she received a two-year suspended sentence.

INFILTRATING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

It should come as no surprise that on the campaign trail, President Obama refused to be interviewed about Saul Alinsky, the community organizing guru who wrote Rules for Radicals, a how-to guide for

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ACORN Still Lives kicker

destroying American capitalism and democracy. Presumably Obama, who taught courses on Alinskys brutal, sometimes violent organizing techniques, declined to speak to reporters about the late guru. He must have realized that such an interview would throw an unwanted spotlight on Alinskys radicalism, and by extension, his own. Such counterproductive publicity would also have undermined the candidates efforts to reinvent himself as a moderate. Alinskys adherents now dominate the modern Democratic Party establishment. Apart from President Obama himself, they include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, Federal Communications Commission diversity chief Mark Lloyd, Obamas ex-green jobs czar Van Jones, former DNC trainer Heather Booth, Childrens Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to name just a few. Who the hell isnt [an Alinskyite] in this administration? asks conservative author David Horowitz. And President Obama hasnt been the only longtime ACORN operative working in the White House. Theres also the low-prole Patrick Gaspard who, until recently, was White House political affairs director, one of the titles Karl Rove held in President Bushs White House. In a move that ought to disturb anyone who cares about the integrity of the democratic process, earlier this year Gaspard took over the reins of the Democratic National Committee as its executive directorjust in time to begin initial preparations for President Obamas 2012 reelection campaign. Gaspard hails from the same world of radical left-wing community organizing that made Barack Obama who he is today. Gaspard is an expert in the harsh, street-smart organizing tactics taught by Alinsky. Hes the hatchet man Obama sent to New York over a year ago to strong-arm then-Gov. David Paterson into dropping his reelection campaign. As executive director running the DNCs dayto-day operations, Gaspard will oversee Organizing for America, a project of the DNC supposedly modeled on Alinskyite organizing principles.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Haitian parents, not much is known about this Rasputin-like power behind the throne. Gaspard studiously avoids publicity and is reluctant to talk to journalists. Look him up on Nexis and you will nd virtually nothing about this inuential radical leader. But his colleagues hold him in high esteem. Patrick is the best political mind of his generation in New York and maybe the nation, according to Kevin Sheekey, a lieutenant of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. I wouldnt dispute that, added David Axelrod, at the time a senior advisor in the Obama White House. Gaspard came to the White House from ACORNs favorite labor organization, Service Employees International Union. (SEIU Locals 100 and 880 were, until recently, ofcial afliates of ACORN.) He had been executive vice president for political and legislative affairs for SEIU Local 1199 United Healthcare Workers East, which claims to be the largest union local on the planet, representing more than 300,000 members and retirees in New York, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Massachusetts. Evidence suggests that before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis political director in New York. How do we actually know Gaspard, who goes to extraordinary lengths to shun the public spotlight and scarcely appears in Nexis searches, was Lewis righthand man? Because Gaspards employment with ACORN was acknowledged by no less an authority than ACORN founder Wade Rathke himself. Rathke wrote May 16, 2009, at his blog: Tell me that 1199s former political director, Patrick Gaspard (who was ACORN New Yorks political director before that) didnt reach out from the White House and help make that happen, and Ill tell you to take some remedial classes in politics 101. The before that time period Rathke is referring to is 2003, when Gaspard was executive vice president for political and legislative affairs for Service Employees International Union Local 1199 (United Healthcare Workers East). Its also worth noting that of all the entries in Bertha Lewis

Left: Michael Shea, executive director of Affordable Housing Centers of America, formerly known as ACORN Housing, poses next to the organizations new sign in Chicago. Groups once affiliated with ACORN nationwide are changing their names in the wake of a video scandal that exposed the corruption of ACORN.
(AP/M. Spencer Green)

Right: An undercover state investigator removes computers from the ACORN offices in New Orleans. A warrant was obtained to seize computers, hard drives and other documents after ACORN attorneys said two unidentied former employees took computers and other items when they left the organization.
(AP/Patrick Semansky)

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Working Families Party.) The party is part of ACORN, according to ACORNs website, which in 2009 conrmed that in 1998, ACORN members spearhead[ed] formation of the Working Families Party, the rst community-labor party with ofcial ballot status in New York state in more than 50 years. Internal ACORN documents obtained by this writer show Gaspard gave ACORN $40,000 before he joined the Obama administration. While Gaspard worked as an executive vice president of SEIU Local 1199, he gave ACORN $15,000 in 2007 and $25,000 in 2008. Thats an awfully large tithe for someone who made $111,894 in 2007 and who has a wife and two children. The $111,894 gure comes from an SEIU 1199 tax return. (If salary and deferred benets are combined, the total is $151,869.) Given Gaspards longstanding links Radical liberal and former ACORN and SEIU operative Patrick Gaspard, who has been at President Obamas side in the White House, has taken the reins of the Democratic National Committee as its executive director. to ACORN, its not at all surprising (AP/Charles Dharapak) that Scott Levenson, a lobbyist and spokesman for ACORN, dropped by the rolodex, a copy of which this writer gained possession of in 2009, White House to visit with his former co-worker. The purpose of the entry for Gaspard is the most extensive. the meeting was not disclosed. Gaspards ties to ACORN, SEIU, and Lewis go back at least Another New Yorker in the Obama administration, Secretary of to 1989, when he volunteered for the David Dinkins mayoral Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, has close ties campaign in New York City. In 2003, he became acting eld to ACORN. Before taking ofce, Donovan was New York Mayor director for Howard Deans presidential bid. He was national eld Michael Bloombergs housing development commissioner. He director in 2004 for America Coming Together, a now-defunct worked closely with ACORN for ve years on several projects. get-out-the-vote operation that received a $775,000 ne for Perhaps no administration ofcial has had more interaction campaign nance abuses. In 2006, Gaspard was acting political with ACORN than Donovan, according to the New York Times. director for SEIU International. In 2008, Gaspard worked as Reinforcing the newspapers point, ACORN chief organizer Bertha national political director for the Obama campaign followed Lewis praised the HUD secretary. We grew to respect him, and by a stint as associate personnel director for the Obama-Biden he grew to respect us, she said. transition team. Roll Call, a Washington, D.C., newspaper that covers Capitol As the old Washington saying goes, politics is personnel. Who Hill, reported Lewis admitted ACORN has friends in high knows how many administration ofcials were put in place places for the rst time in a long time. Lewis acknowledged by Gaspard with direct input from ACORNs Bertha Lewis? It that she has particularly good relationships with Housing and boggles the mind. Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and with Patrick Gaspard also worked for New Yorks Working Families Party, Gaspard, the White House political director. an appendage of ACORN. Lewis is a co-founder of that party This writer led a Freedom of Information Act request with which endorsed Obama in 2008and has close ties to Rep. HUD last year seeking all correspondence between Secretary Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who pointedly refused to have the House Donovan and ACORN. Instead of the maximum 45 days allowed, Judiciary subcommittee he chaired in the previous Congress HUD responded eight months later. investigate ACORN. The letter said no such records of correspondence between As news of Gaspards involvement with ACORN spread, Rathke ACORN and Donovan exist. changed his blog entry. Where he had written that Gaspard worked Thats hard to believe. for New York ACORN, he inserted two new sentences: This line used to contain a reference to Patrick Gaspard working for NY An award-winning investigative journalist, Matthew Vadum ACORN. This is untrue, he never worked for ACORN. But Rathke wasnt able to shove all evidence tying Gaspard to is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. Vadum is also author of ACORN down the memory hole. If Gaspard isnt tied to ACORN, Subversion Inc.: How Obamas ACORN Red Shirts Are Still why did he sign a letter to the editor of the Nation magazine Terrorizing And Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND (dated July 2, 2001) on behalf of the Working Families Party of Books), from which this piece is adapted. New York? (Lewis signed the letter on behalf of ACORN and the

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