Understanding ACORN's Taxpayer Scheme

In my last post, I noted the millions of taxpayer dollars flowing into ACORN’s housing corporation and that at least twice, Democratic administrations have caught ACORN misusing taxpayer money allocated for community work. To understand ACORN’s repeated scams, it’s important to know that the group has again and again been accused of funneling government grants to ACORN’s political and labor activism (in effect using our money to fund their growth).

It didn’t take long after the group’s founding in 1970 to work its way into the radical Left and sign up for government largess. After Jimmy Carter took office, the group used its connections to win a contract worth almost $500,000 to train community volunteers under the VISTA program.

It took virtually no time for the group to show its true colors. The grant was no small thing; the Heritage Foundation concluded, “It appears that the VISTA grant was crucial to the survival of ACORN.” The money may have helped the far-left group, but the results, as you might imagine, were not pleasant:

Under the ACORN/CORAP grant, VISTAs engaged-in blatantly political activity in Arkansas and Missouri, while five VISTAs were active in a labor organizing campaign in New Orleans.

Those activities are, rightly, illegal for groups receiving government contracts. Gary Delgado, the first organizer hired by ACORN founder Wade Rathke, reported in his book, Organizing The Movement reported of the ensuing Congressional investigation and its effects:

The investigation, which resulted in the cutoff of ACORN’s national grant, also charged that ACORN had used VISTA volunteers to organize the Household Workers’ Union in New Orleans. The audits and charges did seriously affect both the organization’s funding base and, to some extent, its fiscal credibility, since federal auditors cited ACORN with “a deliberate effort to conceal evidence of an organization with serious financial problems.” (Of more interest to the Houston Post and the Arkansas Democrat, however, was ACORN’s refusal to open its financial or membership records to Congressional investigators.) Declaring that ACORN had “religiously avoided federal money up until that point,” Rathke, in a letter to Tabankin, asked that ACORN “not be considered for a national grant.” (In fact, however, ACORN continued to use VISTA through state grants right up to the end of 1980.)

Delgado also noted that volunteers placed under ACORN raised significant concerns:

Immediately following the first training session in Little Rock for VISTA volunteers, one of them flew to Washington and demanded to be reassigned, stating, according to former VISTA staff liaison Andrea Kydd, “ACORN is really interested in power, not helping people. They may even be a threat to the government.”

Fast forward to the next Democratic Administration, when ACORN used government money to get Americans in the door and then pressure them to purchase paid memberships to ACORN (which could then use that money for any of its favored activities, including politics, apparent corporate shakedowns, etc). Investigating the potential misuse of grants totaling $1 million in federal grants to train AmeriCorps members in 13 cities, the Corporation for National Service Inspector General found:

• ACORN and ACORN Housing Corporation did not maintain the appropriate separation, and “transactions included costs charged to AHC, and thus to the CNS grant, by ACORN or other ACORN-related entities.”
• “the only reason for having the AmeriCorps program was to gain new ACORN members, and that if AmeriCorps loan counseling clients did not start becoming ACORN members, she could and would halt the AmeriCorps project.”
• A “client felt like she was not going to be allowed to leave until she gave the ACORN organizer a $60 check, or authorized a $5 per month automatic bank draft for ACORN membership dues.”

Not surprisingly, the government auditors felt their investigation was actively hampered by ACORN officials.

Fast forward again: ACORN Housing has taken in taxpayer money, abused the public trust, and shipped government funds to ACORN and its related political entities.

We have to stop Big Government from funding Radical ACORN.