ACORN is doing what it does best: playing the victim blaming everyone else for its self-inflicted wounds perpetuating false narratives and defending the entitlement industry to the death.
On Thursday the disgraced welfare rights organization filed suit over a congressional funding ban passed in September after nationwide undercover sting videos exposed ACORNs criminal element.
The group and its web of nonprofit tax-exempt affiliates have collected an estimated $53 million in government funds since 1994. This pipeline is apparently a constitutionally protected right. According to ACORNs lawyers at the far-left Center for Constitutional Rights the congressional funding ban constitutes a bill of attainder -- an act of the legislature declaring a person(s) guilty of a crime without trial.
Now cue the worlds smallest violin and pass the Kleenex: ACORNs lawyers say the group has suffered cutbacks and layoffs as a result of the punitive funding ban. The congressional persecution means ACORN can no longer teach first-time-homebuyer indoctrination classes and -- gasp -- the loss of an $800000 contract to conduct outreach on asthma.
Message: The demons in the House who defunded ACORN (345 of them including 172 Democrats) are cutting off oxygen to poor people!
Its not the job of Congress to be the judge jury and executioner CCR lawyer Jules Lobel moaned as he equated the Houses act of fiscal responsibility with the death penalty.
It is outrageous to see Congress violating the Constitution for purposes of political grandstanding CCR Legal Director Bill Quigley seethed without a shred of irony.
Congress bowed to FOX News and joined in the scapegoating of an organization that helps average Americans going through hard times to get homes pay their taxes and vote. Shame on them ACORN head Bertha Lewis piled on in an affidavit lamenting the loss of state local and private foundation grants which she blamed on the resolution. It gave the green light for others to terminate our funds as well.
What ACORNs sob-story tellers leave out is the inconvenient fact that nonprofits were bailing on ACORN long before undercover journalists Hannah Giles and James OKeefe and BigGovernment.com publisher Andrew Breitbart entered the scene. Internal ACORN records from a Washington D.C. meeting held last August noted that more than $2 million in foundation money was being withheld as a result of the groups embezzlement scandal involving founder Wade Rathkes brother Dale -- reportedly involving upward of $5 million.
Rathke admitted he suppressed disclosure of his brothers massive theft -- first discovered in 2000 -- because word of the embezzlement would have put a weapon into the hands of enemies of ACORN. In other words: The protection of ACORNs political viability came before the protection of members dues (and taxpayers funds).
A small group of ACORN executives helped cover up Dale Rathkes crime by carrying the amount he embezzled as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc. CCI the accounting and financial management arm of ACORN and its affiliates is housed in the same building as the national ACORN headquarters in New Orleans. Its also home to ACORN International now operating under a different name which Wade Rathke continues to head.
ACORN brass cooked up a restitution plan to allow the Rathkes to pay back a measly $30000 a year in exchange for secrecy about the deal. ACORNs lawyers issued a decree to its employees to keep their yaps shut. Dale Rathke kept his job and his $38000 annual salary until the story leaked to donors and board members outside the Rathke circle.
In June 2008 the left-wing Catholic Campaign for Human Development cut off grant money to ACORN because of questions that arose about financial management fiscal transparency and organizational accountability of the national ACORN structures. In November 2008 -- ahem more than a year before the congressional ACORN funding ban was passed -- CCHD voted unanimously to extend and make permanent its ban on funding of ACORN organizations. This decision was made because of serious concerns regarding ACORNs lack of financial transparency organizational performance and questions surrounding political partisanship according to Bishop Roger Morin.
Did ACORNs lawyers call that withdrawal of funding political grandstanding and scapegoating too?
The lawsuit over the congressional funding ban is just the latest desperate legal measure to distract from ACORNs long-festering ethics and financial scandals. ACORNs attorneys have sued Giles OKeefe Breitbart and former ACORN/Project Vote whistleblower Anita MonCrief. And theyll sue anyone else who gets in the way of rehabilitating the scandal-plagued enterprises image.
It took decades to build up its massive coffers and intricate web of affiliates across the country. It will take months and years to untangle the entire operation. And it will take time money and relentless sunshine to dismantle the government-subsidized partisan racket.
ACORN can never be reformed. It is constitutionally corrupt. Sue me.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
ACORN is doing what it does best: playing the victim blaming everyone else for its self-inflicted wounds perpetuating false narratives and defending the entitlement industry to the death.
On Thursday the disgraced welfare rights organization filed suit over a congressional funding ban passed in September after nationwide undercover sting videos exposed ACORNs criminal element.
The group and its web of nonprofit tax-exempt affiliates have collected an estimated $53 million in government funds since 1994. This pipeline is apparently a constitutionally protected right. According to ACORNs lawyers at the far-left Center for Constitutional Rights the congressional funding ban constitutes a bill of attainder -- an act of the legislature declaring a person(s) guilty of a crime without trial.
Now cue the worlds smallest violin and pass the Kleenex: ACORNs lawyers say the group has suffered cutbacks and layoffs as a result of the punitive funding ban. The congressional persecution means ACORN can no longer teach first-time-homebuyer indoctrination classes and -- gasp -- the loss of an $800000 contract to conduct outreach on asthma.
Message: The demons in the House who defunded ACORN (345 of them including 172 Democrats) are cutting off oxygen to poor people!
Its not the job of Congress to be the judge jury and executioner CCR lawyer Jules Lobel moaned as he equated the Houses act of fiscal responsibility with the death penalty.
It is outrageous to see Congress violating the Constitution for purposes of political grandstanding CCR Legal Director Bill Quigley seethed without a shred of irony.
Congress bowed to FOX News and joined in the scapegoating of an organization that helps average Americans going through hard times to get homes pay their taxes and vote. Shame on them ACORN head Bertha Lewis piled on in an affidavit lamenting the loss of state local and private foundation grants which she blamed on the resolution. It gave the green light for others to terminate our funds as well.
What ACORNs sob-story tellers leave out is the inconvenient fact that nonprofits were bailing on ACORN long before undercover journalists Hannah Giles and James OKeefe and BigGovernment.com publisher Andrew Breitbart entered the scene. Internal ACORN records from a Washington D.C. meeting held last August noted that more than $2 million in foundation money was being withheld as a result of the groups embezzlement scandal involving founder Wade Rathkes brother Dale -- reportedly involving upward of $5 million.
Rathke admitted he suppressed disclosure of his brothers massive theft -- first discovered in 2000 -- because word of the embezzlement would have put a weapon into the hands of enemies of ACORN. In other words: The protection of ACORNs political viability came before the protection of members dues (and taxpayers funds).
A small group of ACORN executives helped cover up Dale Rathkes crime by carrying the amount he embezzled as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc. CCI the accounting and financial management arm of ACORN and its affiliates is housed in the same building as the national ACORN headquarters in New Orleans. Its also home to ACORN International now operating under a different name which Wade Rathke continues to head.
ACORN brass cooked up a restitution plan to allow the Rathkes to pay back a measly $30000 a year in exchange for secrecy about the deal. ACORNs lawyers issued a decree to its employees to keep their yaps shut. Dale Rathke kept his job and his $38000 annual salary until the story leaked to donors and board members outside the Rathke circle.
In June 2008 the left-wing Catholic Campaign for Human Development cut off grant money to ACORN because of questions that arose about financial management fiscal transparency and organizational accountability of the national ACORN structures. In November 2008 -- ahem more than a year before the congressional ACORN funding ban was passed -- CCHD voted unanimously to extend and make permanent its ban on funding of ACORN organizations. This decision was made because of serious concerns regarding ACORNs lack of financial transparency organizational performance and questions surrounding political partisanship according to Bishop Roger Morin.
Did ACORNs lawyers call that withdrawal of funding political grandstanding and scapegoating too?
The lawsuit over the congressional funding ban is just the latest desperate legal measure to distract from ACORNs long-festering ethics and financial scandals. ACORNs attorneys have sued Giles OKeefe Breitbart and former ACORN/Project Vote whistleblower Anita MonCrief. And theyll sue anyone else who gets in the way of rehabilitating the scandal-plagued enterprises image.
It took decades to build up its massive coffers and intricate web of affiliates across the country. It will take months and years to untangle the entire operation. And it will take time money and relentless sunshine to dismantle the government-subsidized partisan racket.
ACORN can never be reformed. It is constitutionally corrupt. Sue me.
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
