President Obama has given ACORN $729,849 so far this year and billions more in federal cash may be in the pipeline.
The president’s new economic stimulus package, the so-called “jobs bill,” contains as much as $15 billion for radical left-wing groups such as ACORN (his former employer). Obama has been using his presidential bully pulpit to demand that Republicans in Congress “pass this bill,” even though there is no bill yet. Despite all the rhetoric, the proposed “American Jobs Act of 2011” apparently hasn’t even been introduced in Congress.
Meanwhile, longtime ACORN ally Shaun Donovan, who heads Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has been showering ACORN with your tax dollars. The money has gone to Affordable Housing Centers of America Inc. (AHCOA), which is the new name for ACORN Housing. Like a con artist trying to escape his past, ACORN Housing legally changed its name last year.
ACORN Housing grew out of crime: trespassing and breaking and entering. It emerged from a 1982 squatting campaign in which ACORN built a squatters’ tent city behind the White House. Rampaging ACORN activists routinely break in and illegally occupy property already owned by others – and your tax dollars subsidize this criminal activity, as I write in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.
HUD’s grants to AHCOA this year come despite a congressional ban on funding ACORN. Although the same longtime ACORN loyalists remain in charge of the massive housing conglomerate, HUD disingenuously claims that AHCOA has no ties to the ACORN network, relying on a slipshod, superficial legal memo written by someone who didn’t apparently understand how ACORN operates. And the mainstream media routinely let HUD get away with this kind of sleight-of-hand.
The most recent grant is dated Sept. 2. HUD gave $350,030 to AHCOA in Philadelphia for “housing counseling.”
In August HUD gave $300,000 to AHCOA’s head office in Chicago. The money is also designated for housing counseling.
Although the government’s USAspending.gov database identifies the grant recipient as “Affordable Housing Corp. of America,” its DUNS number (965998347) is registered to AHCOA. DUNS numbers enable nonprofit groups to apply for federal grants. Since 2003 the federal government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has required federal grant applicants to obtain DUNS numbers. DUNS stands for Data Universal Numbering System.
HUD issued a $79,819 grant to AHCOA’s Miama, Florida office in March for a left-wing political agitation and indoctrination program known as the “Education and Outreach Initiative.”
AHCOA in San Antonio, Texas, will receive an undisclosed percentage of a $619,696 federal grant from the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling (NFMC) program. NFMC is administered by the congressionally funded nonprofit NeighborWorks.
When it was known as ACORN Housing, AHCOA was notorious for transferring funds to the most political branches of the ACORN network.
According to its tax returns, ACORN Housing gave the following grants to ACORN’s American Institute for Social Justice, which trained Alinskyite community organizers: $253,226 (2007); $67,112 (2006); $846,617 (2005); $947,609 (2004); $476,702 (2003); $566,535 (2002); $606,873 (2001); and $292,500 (2000).
Incidentally, even though the ACORN network has taken in $79 million from the federal government over the years, the deadbeats at AHCOA owe an astounding $162,813 in back taxes to the IRS, California, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, the city of Philadelphia, and the California counties of Fresno and Santa Clara.
The $15 billion referenced at the top of this article is earmarked for something called “Project Rebuild.” The funds would go to states and localities and to “qualified nonprofit organizations” to redevelop abandoned and foreclosed properties. ACORN, which has been in the real estate development business for decades, won’t get anything close to the whole $15 billion because it has to compete with other groups and governments.
Now that public polling shows Americans are realizing that economic stimulus programs don’t work, the Obama administration is calling the latest round of futile stimulus a “jobs bill.” In one sense it really is a jobs bill: a jobs bill for Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizers.
Contrary to mainstream media reports, ACORN is very much alive, albeit in a changed form. Although the shell corporation that ran the ACORN network filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy almost a year ago, ACORN continues to operate.
Project Vote, ACORN’s voter fraud facilitation division, is still business. It operates out of ACORN’s old Washington, D.C., office across from the U.S. Marine Barracks.
ACORN’s state chapters now operate under assumed names such as Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New York Communities for Change, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, Organizers in the Land of Enchantment (New Mexico), Texas Organizing Project, and Action United (Pennsylvania).
As I note in Subversion Inc., ACORN officials openly acknowledge the network is restructuring and is re-emerging in an effort to help re-elect President Obama in 2012.
At least 54 ACORN employees and individuals associated with ACORN have been convicted of voter fraud. Voter fraud is a blanket term coined by lawyers. It refers to fraudulent voting, identity fraud, perjury, voter registration fraud, forgery and a variety of crimes related to the electoral process. ACORN itself was convicted of voter fraud in Nevada earlier this year.
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Americans need to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.
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