Obama heads for the high grass.

Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress.
"Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely," Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn't even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to," he said.
Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group.
Mr. Obama took great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.
Mr. Obama's success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer at Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn's attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names.Read more here.

Op-Ed: Acorn Runs Off the Rails

By JOHN FUNDOn Monday,[September 14] the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to strip Acorn, the premier community organizing group on the left, of more than $1.6 million in federal housing money meant to assist low-income people obtain loans and prepare tax forms. This dramatic step followed last Friday's decision by the U.S. Census Bureau to sever its ties with the organization, one of several community groups it was partnering with to conduct the nation's head count.

Both of these actions came after secretly recorded videos involving employees in Acorn's Brooklyn, N.Y., Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Md. and San Bernardino, Calif. offices were televised on Fox News. The videos were recorded by two independent filmmakers who posed as a prostitute and a pimp and said they were planning to import underage women from El Salvador for the sex trade. They asked for and received advice on getting a housing loan and evading federal taxes.

In response, Acorn has so far fired four of the employees seen on the videos. But it claimed the videos were "doctored" and accused critics of a smear campaign and "racist coverage" of the incidents.

Such rhetoric in the past has deflected scrutiny of Acorn tactics, such as street demonstrations and boycotts against banks to force lower credit standards for home loans, which a congressional report found contributed to the subprime loan mess. But now Acorn may be finally running off the rails.

Last week, 11 of its workers were accused by Florida prosecutors of falsifying information on 888 voter registration forms. Last month, Acorn's former Las Vegas, Nev., field director, Christopher Edwards, agreed to testify against the group in a case in which Las Vegas election officials say 48% of the voter registration forms the group turned in were "clearly fraudulent." Acorn itself is charged with 13 counts of illegally using a quota system to compensate workers in an effort to boost the number of registrations. (Acorn has denied wrongdoing in all of these cases.)

A growing number of people once affiliated with Acorn want nothing more to do with the group. Marcel Reid, for example, was one of eight national Acorn board members who were removed last year after demanding an audit of the group's books. She notes that Acorn received $7.4 million in contributions from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) between 2005 and 2008 but actively fights unionization efforts by its own employees. Ms. Reid also notes that Acorn was sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board in 2003 for illegally firing workers trying to organize a union. Read more here.

A Review of ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis’s Rolodex Suggests Strong White House Ties

It is implausible to think, based on Bertha Lewis’s White House contacts, that Barack Obama is not paying attention to ACORN.

Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)
Tuesday, September 22nd at 8:45AM EDT

The story in a nutshell:

Bertha Lewis is the CEO of ACORN.
In a review of Lewis’s contacts list, which was leaked to RedState, Bertha Lewis has the office, cell phone, home number, and private personal email address of Patrick Gaspard.
Patrick Gaspard holds Karl Rove’s position in the White House and was Obama’s Political Director during the campaign.
In addition to Patrick, Bertha has Patrick’s brother Michael in her rolodex. She lists Michael as working at the Advance Group.
The Advance Group is ACORN’s lobbying organization.
In other words, besides having Obama’s political director’s contact info, the political director’s brother works for ACORN via its lobbying shop.

On Sunday, Barack Obama played ignorant on the situation with ACORN. Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “Frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.” Never mind that Barack Obama used to work for ACORN.
Based on information obtained by RedState, we think Barack Obama may live to regret those words.
With everybody focused on ACORN these days, what if we could dig around and see who in the Obama administration shows up in Bertha Lewis’s rolodex? Bertha Lewis is the CEO of ACORN.
Bertha Lewis is considered one of the 100 most influential women in New York according to Crain’s New York Business. She is an activist, organizer, and radical of the far left. When she calls, union bosses and others pick up the phone.
It’s not that hard to look into her contacts. RedState has seen a list of Bertha Lewis’s contacts. We did not seek it out. It just showed up one day unsolicited. We did not ask for it. We did not expect to get it. But now that we have it, we should see who is in there.
The contacts came from a credible source who is no fan of ACORN. An ACORN employee gave it to him. Having examined the file for a week and after consulting with others, we believe the list is legitimate. It fits a recent pattern of leaks out of ACORN as the rats scramble from the sinking ship.
Read more here.

ACORN Circles the Wagons: Our Staffers 'Are Victims'

What has been ACORN's response to the devastating undercover revelations of abject corruption, mismanagement, tax evasion, and human sex-slave trafficking? Why, blame everyone else, decry racism, and claim victimhood, of course.Here's the ACORN CEO's previous statement:

ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis would not defend the employees in the video, but insists that the videos "are doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist ‘filmmaker’ [James] O’Keefe and his partner in crime. And, in fact, a crime it was—our lawyers believe a felony—and we will be taking legal action against Fox and their co-conspirators."

Also, from the Los Angeles Times, "ACORN Circles the Wagons":
Critics charge that that adversarial mind-set, which helped make ACORN one of the most formidable community organizing groups in the country, may also prevent the group from conducting an honest reckoning with any flaws that the videotapes may have revealed.
"They have a very bunker mentality," said Marcel Reid, a former national ACORN board member who left the organization because she had problems with its leadership. "They perceive everyone as a threat. You're either with them or against them, and there's no space in between" .... Read more here.

ACORN Chief Dodges Congressman's Call to Come Before Congress

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, presses chief organizer Bertha Lewis to prove her commitment to reforming the community activist group by showing more transparency.

ACORN's top officer on Sunday dodged repeated calls to come before Congress and testify about the embattled group's finances and ties to other organizations.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had pressed chief organizer Bertha Lewis to prove her commitment to reforming the community activist group by showing more transparency.
"The bottom line is there's no transparency in ACORN," Issa said on "FOX News Sunday."
The pressure comes in the wake of controversy over a series of hidden-camera videotapes showing the organization's employees offering advice to undercover filmmakers posing as a pimp and prostitute. ACORN has pledged to investigate its offices and workers.
"Internally, let's have some reform," Lewis said. "It's indefensible what I saw (in the tapes)."
But she refused to answer Issa's request to come before his committee. Read more here.

ACORN to stand trial in Nevada voter registration case

12:00 AM CDT on Thursday, October 1, 2009

LAS VEGAS – The political advocacy group ACORN and a former supervisor were ordered Wednesday to stand trial on charges that they illegally paid canvassers to register Nevada voters during last year's presidential campaign.
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace William Jansen set arraignment for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and former regional supervisor Amy Busefink for Oct. 14 in Clark County District Court. Read more here.

Before latest crisis, ACORN was imperiled by scandal

By Carol Leonnig And Alexi Mostrous
The Washington Post

The liberal political organizing group ACORN faced internal chaos and allegations of financial mismanagement and fraud long before two young conservatives embarrassed the group with undercover videos made at field offices across the country.

Internal ACORN documents show an organization in turmoil as last year’s presidential election approached, with a board torn over how to handle embezzlement by the founder’s brother and growing concern that donor money and pension funds had been plundered in the insider scheme.

Minutes from a meeting ACORN held in Los Angeles last summer reveal an organization then on the brink of financial collapse. “Currently owe over $800k to IRS” the minutes note. “Haven’t paid medical bills of over $300k. We are essentially ‘broke’ nationally and lots of offices are struggling.” Read more here.

Posted on 10/03/2009 9:07 AM by Bobbie Patray