American Spectator
As ACORN gears up to use your tax dollars to get involved in the 2010 Census and influence future elections, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is conducting a "massive" probe of ACORN Housing Corp., a source familiar with the ongoing investigation says.
The HUD probe comes as ACORN Housing, the best-funded of ACORN's affiliates, participates in the ACORN network-wide rebranding aimed at duping funders and the public and allowing ACORN to continue to devour government grants. ACORN Housing is a key component of the far-flung ACORN empire of activism which has long used its housing affiliate as a piggy bank -- so it's too important to be allowed to collapse. (also see related ACORN articles)
Although ACORN is now converting state chapters into new shell corporations operated out of the same old ACORN offices and staffed by many of the same people, ACORN Housing opted simply to change its name. ACORN's latest public relations ruse may give it an opportunity to take in untold millions of taxpayer dollars under cover of darkness just in time to cause trouble during the 2012 election cycle.
ACORN Housing has been rechristened Affordable Housing Centers of America Inc., which allows the entity to continue using AHC as an acronym. ACORN Housing was awarded $25 million in federal funding through the congressionally chartered nonprofit NeighborWorks in 2008 -- which is more than it took in in the 10-year period before. This federal funding is a problem because ACORN Housing funnels funds -- possibly including government funds -- to ACORN and other affiliates in the ACORN network. The network is notorious for its commingling of funds and it has used government resources previously for partisan political activity.
In 2007, when ACORN Housing reported taking in $5,205,527 from the government, it also made a $119,509 loan to ACORN. The same year it also paid out $496,615 to the shadowy ACORN affiliate Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI) for "administrative services." From 2000 to 2006, ACORN Housing also gave $3,803,948 in grants to the American Institute for Social Justice (AISJ), which trains budding young community organizers to go forth and agitate the proletariat. If AISJ used the money for partisan activities, federal law may have been violated.
(The full article is available at http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/02/acorn-housing-boom.)
RELATED
Plus, historian Michael Zak says the ACORN rebranding strategy has been tried before: the Ku Klux Klan used it to throw off its opponents. See http://biggovernment.com/mzak/2010/03/02/acorn-and-the-ku-klux-klan/
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MATTHEW VADUM, Senior Editor, Capital Research Center Formerly a CRC research fellow, veteran journalist Matthew Vadum edits Organization Trends and Foundation Watch. During his seven years in the Washington bureau of The Bond Buyer, a daily financial newspaper based on Wall Street, he covered Congress, the Supreme Court, housing, and state and local finance. While a reporter for the Central Penn Business Journal in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he won an award for outstanding legal journalism from the Pennsylvania Bar Association for an article that focused on employment law. He holds an M.A. in American Studies from Georgetown University. An expert on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Vadum has written somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 feature articles on the group and hundreds of blog posts. His groundbreaking research on ACORN was praised and cited by Michelle Malkin in her New York Times bestseller, "Culture of Corruption." Malkin credits Vadum with being one of two people in the nation for "foresight and insight in reporting on the [ACORN] story when no one else would." Vadum's work is also cited in David Freddoso's New York Times bestseller, "The Case Against Barack Obama," and in John Fund's "Stealing Elections" (second edition). |
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