Archive for the ‘Wade Rathke’ Category
ACORN Scandal: Will Harshbarger Intervention Make or Break the ACORN?
Posted by Zena Crenshaw in ACORN, Featured Story, Wade Rathke on September 24th, 2009
ACORN’s CEO, Bertha Lewis announced last week that the group will seek an independent review of its operations. ACORN also announced that former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger would oversee the review. Although it seems difficult to imagine that the credentials of an attorney could allay public skepticism about the ethics of ACORN—especially in an era where lawyer-dominated institutions are frequently enmeshed in scandal—the professional background of Harshbarger makes him possibly the right person for the job.
That is, if ACORN—and Bertha Lewis—let him do the job.
Bertha Lewis is among the ACORN senior staff and Executive Committee members who actively concealed an apparently million dollar embezzlement from the organization by Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder and Lewis’ predecessor Wade Rathke. So it is hard to believe Scott Harshbarger’s first line of business will be recommending or otherwise arranging for ACORN to fire Bertha Lewis and all her admitted, embezzlement concealing co-conspirators.
Bringing in Harshbarger does not signal the first time ACORN purported to put its proverbial house in order following a major breach of public trust.
Last year ACORN’s national board of directors installed an Interim Management Committee (IMC) upon learning of Dale Rathke’s embezzlement and the related cover up by some senior staff, including Wade Rathke, and certain ACORN Executive Committee members. After firing Wade, the national board appointed its members, Karen Inman, Carol Hemmingway, and Marcel Reid to collectively act in his stead. Inman was to temporarily address legal affairs; Hemmingway considered financial matters; and Reid handled governance as ACORN’s IMC.
ACORN’s national board authorized its IMC to hire independent professionals to investigate and help reorganize ACORN following decades of arguable domination by the Rathke family. The IMC in turn pursued more definitive remedial actions, including a complete accounting of all ACORN assets, a forensic examination of the known embezzlement and an independent audit of ACORN and its related entities.
So what happened? Unfortunately, 38 of 50 national board members were subsequently swayed by ACORN’s Executive Committee and other corporate insiders to remove the IMC and abandon its members’ prudent inquiries. Nevertheless, eight courageous, now former ACORN board members, banded together and formed the ACORN 8, LLC to reform the once venerable ACORN. Marcel Reid is Chair and Karen Inman is Vice Chair of the ACORN 8.
The ACORN 8 were the first to identify the nebulous Citizen’s Consulting Inc. (CCI) and attempted to “follow the money” at ACORN; the first to seek a forensic examination and independent audit of ACORN and its related organizations; the first to seek injunctions against ACORN, the Rathkes and CCI; the first to call for a national boycott of all charitable donations, federal funding and member dues otherwise payable to ACORN; and the first to formally allege civil and constitutional rights violations as well as RICO offenses against ACORN’s upper management. Consequently, Louisiana Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell issued subpoenas and is investigating ACORN and Wade Rathke.
According to the New York Times, Maude Hurd, chair of ACORN’s board of directors, announced Scott Harshbarger’s appointment. How noble of her, considering that the first meaningful step Harshbarger could take would be to recommend her removal from ACORN. Acting on behalf of ACORN’s Executive Committee, Maude Hurde ejected the ACORN 8 from ACORN in contravention of their First Amendment right to speak out, litigate, and petition government. Title 18, section 241 of the United States Code makes it a federal crime to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, and/or intimidate people in the free exercise or enjoyment of their rights or privileges secured by the U.S. Constitution.
In any event, don’t be fooled – a “review” is not a forensic examination, independent audit, or comprehensive criminal investigation. But we do hold some ray of hope; Harshbarger is sure to recognize an ole’ fashioned Smoke Screen / White Wash. He is a former Massachusetts attorney general and gubernatorial candidate; current chief executive of the advocacy group Common Cause; and lawyer with Proskauer Rose, focusing on corporate investigations and defense as well as nonprofit governance and ethics cases.
Surely Harshbarger will promptly know if his scope of authority in overseeing ACORN’s internal review process is enough for him to “right the ship”. And even if Harshbarger’s role in ACORN’s proclaimed self-reform is too superficial and/or brief, he is sure to immediately conclude ACORN should oust Bertha Lewis and her embezzlement concealing co-conspirators, not to mention ACORN’s criminal-conspiring, constitutional rights violators.
As Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee for the ACORN 8, I say that ACORN’s selection of Scott Harshbarger is a good first step towards positive, meaningful reform of ACORN. Well, actually the organization’s IMC was its first good step towards that reform. Hopefully, Harshbarger will avert additional ACORN missteps
ACORN’s Lobbying Shenanigans
Posted by Matthew Vadum in ACORN, Wade Rathke on September 23rd, 2009
Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve center of the embattled radical activist group ACORN, has filed false lobbying disclosure reports with Congress, according to Ron Sykes, a former ACORN employee.
This revelation is important because, as former ACORN national board member Charles Turner said earlier this year on “The Glenn Beck Program,” CCI “is where the shell game begins.”
“ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved around to – for this purpose to that purpose, this organization to that organization,” said Turner. “We believe the way the money has been moved around, they’ve been laundering money.”
ACORN founder Wade Rathke (left) and ACORN enabler Drummond Pike (right) of Tides Foundation in an undated photo taken in Peru. On the wall is a large poster of Communist icons Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
When former ACORN activist Ron Sykes was informed by this reporter that ACORN affiliate CCI registered him as a lobbyist, he was angry. “It’s like identity theft,” said Sykes in an interview. “I have no idea why they registered me. I didn’t register myself and was not aware that they were doing it.”
Whether this reflects ACORN’s institutional carelessness or a calculated effort to deceive, the discovery throws some light on how ACORN treats its employees, moves money around the ACORN network, and deals with the federal government. Federal lawmakers have known for years about ACORN’s unorthodox and possibly illegal practices, including its use of government resources to promote legislation and its extensive commingling of funds within its network of affiliates.
Former ACORN officials say these activities are controlled by the mysterious CCI, which is located in ACORN’s headquarters in New Orleans. CCI handles the financial affairs of hundreds of affiliates within the ACORN network. ACORN member dues, government money, and foundation grants, are all sucked into the CCI vortex often never to be seen again.
Although CCI is registered as a nonprofit corporation in Louisiana, it does not appear to have sought tax-exempt status from the IRS. Surely it has declined to seek tax-exempt status because entities with that status have to publicly disclose financial data. This is the same approach employed by George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a piggybank for left-wing political infrastructure that is registered as a taxable nonprofit in order to prevent public scrutiny of its finances and internal affairs.
Sykes said he came to the nation’s capital in 2006 as an intern for ACORN’s national legislative program, working for it from April 2006 to February 2007. He said he was never a lobbyist although he did help to prepare lobbyists to meet with lawmakers and their staff on issues of interest to ACORN such as voting rights, housing programs, minimum wage laws, and predatory lending. Occasionally he went along on Capitol Hill visits, but arguing for or against specific legislation was not his job, he said.
According to forms filed under the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act by CCI, Sykes lobbied as an employee of CCI on behalf of ACORN between Jan. 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. He is described in three disclosure forms as a “fellow.” When a person ceases lobbying, the registering organization (in this case CCI) is supposed to declare this fact, but there is no indication in the online lobbying disclosure database maintained by the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives that CCI did so.
Sykes said he received a scholarship from ACORN to help him cover living expenses but that it was abruptly cut off months ahead of schedule in February 2007. During his internship he became curious about ACORN’s financial affairs and began to ask a lot of questions about where the money was going.
“I guess they got a little irritated and the scholarship money from the ACORN executive board was cut off,” Sykes said.
He found out that his internship was coming to a premature end when he received an email and a telephone call from the legendarily smooth Wade Rathke, who was then chief organizer (CEO) of ACORN. Rathke offered him thanks and told him that he did a great job. “I asked him if there were any positions open and said I’d like to stay but he said there was no funding at this time for a salary for me,” Sykes said.
A former senior ACORN official contacted for this article, Marcel Reid, who was a member of ACORN’s national board from October 2005 to late last year, said she and other members were unaware that CCI even did lobbying.
Legal reform advocate and lawyer Zena Crenshaw said CCI’s behavior raises several red flags.
“They certainly should be segregating 501(c)(3) funds from their lobbying activities,” said Crenshaw, a founding director and executive director of the National Judicial Conduct and Disability Law Project Inc. (NJCDLP). “I’m not sure how you can segregate them if the lobbyist is handling the money. I don’t know how CCI can be both a lobbyist and a financial manager handling ACORN’s 501(c)(3) funds.”
“This just confirms the need for an examination of the organization’s affiliates,” said Crenshaw, who is also chairperson of the legal affairs committee of ACORN 8, a group of former ACORN members co-founded by Reid that is calling for a forensic audit of ACORN.
ACORN was warned by its own lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg last year that its lack of internal firewalls and its chaotic organizational structure were likely to land ACORN in hot water. Kingsley’s letter to her client was excerpted in a report by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The investigators found that CCI should have paid an excise tax on any lobbying expenditures it made, but noted that evidence indicates the spending was never reported to the IRS.
The investigators also found that by “intentionally blurring the legal distinctions between 361 tax-exempt and non-exempt entities, ACORN diverts taxpayer and tax-exempt monies into partisan political activities.” They argued that ACORN should be stripped of its jealously guarded tax-exempt status because it illegally spends taxpayer dollars on partisan activities, commits “systemic fraud,” and violates racketeering and election laws.
“Operationally, ACORN is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators,” the report said. Structurally, it is “a chess game in which senior management is shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act.”
The report examines the ACORN network’s abusive interlocking directorates, and claims that the group deliberately organized itself to escape legal and public scrutiny. “ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate.”
ACORN uses interlocking directorates, which refers to individuals serving as directors on multiple corporate boards, in order to subject its network of affiliates to centralized control from the top. Having interlocking directorates may be widespread and lawful, but the practice raises questions about the quality and independence of board decision-making.
While the ACORN network claims to be a “family” of organizations, embodying the ethos of community organizing, which stresses local action and decentralized authority, it is run by senior officials who treat its national board as a rubber stamp.
It’s worth noting that all three lobbying disclosure forms were signed digitally by Donna L. Pharr, who is listed as CCI’s assistant treasurer. The services of the ubiquitous Pharr, herself a walking, talking example of interlocking directorates, are in demand all throughout the ACORN empire. She’s on the board of dozens of ACORN affiliates including ACORN Housing Corp. and the American Institute for Social Justice Inc. Pharr is also deputy treasurer of Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee and is listed in a Michigan Bureau of Elections filing as the contact person for Communities Voting Together, a 527 pressure group.
CCI itself has a long and checkered past.
In 1996 the federal Department of Labor sued CCI. The next year a federal court ordered CCI to cough up $10,000 in back wages.
CCI currently owes at least $400,117 in back taxes to the IRS, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Indiana, Louisiana, and Maryland, according to the Nexis tax liens database. This figure excludes the $442,533 in tax liens that the IRS has rescinded over the past five years after they were presumably paid. Tax liens are only issued by creditor tax agencies after a tax debt has become seriously delinquent. The ACORN network has had millions of dollars in tax liens filed against it since 1989.
Last year Wade Rathke was dumped as chief organizer of the group he founded after ACORN’s national board learned that he failed to notify police when he discovered in 2000 that his brother Dale, who was a senior official at CCI, had embezzled $948,000 from the group.
Wade Rathke engineered a cover-up for his brother and allowed him to leave the payroll of CCI to work as his $38,000 a year “assistant” at ACORN headquarters. The missing money was disguised as a loan to an officer on the books of CCI.
Despite being expelled from ACORN, Wade Rathke remains involved with at least five ACORN affiliates. Rathke recently changed the name of ACORN’s international consultancy, ACORN International, to Community Organizations International. Both ACORN and Rathke maintain that COI is no longer an affiliate in the ACORN network.
Rathke also remains chief organizer of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of SEIU, another ACORN affiliate he founded. He does not appear to have stepped down as president and director of Affiliated Media Foundation Movement (AM/FM), an ACORN affiliate that produces news segments for eight alternative radio stations. He is also publisher and editor-in-chief of Social Policy magazine, a quarterly journal published jointly by two ACORN affiliates (ACORN Institute and American Institute for Social Justice).
And Rathke’s family members remain employed by ACORN. His common law wife, Beth Butler, and his son and daughter still work for ACORN. Butler is ACORN’s regional director for the Southeast U.S.
(This article was originally published by the American Spectator on Aug. 17, 2009.)
Understanding ACORN’s Taxpayer Scheme
Posted by Bret Jacobson in ACORN, Politics, Wade Rathke on September 17th, 2009
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.â€
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.â€
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.
SEIU: ‘One of the Pillars of the ACORN Family’
Posted by Don Loos in ACORN, Hannah Giles, Wade Rathke on September 16th, 2009
Part of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s (ACORN) rotten core includes a very cozy relationship with Big Labor. In fact, in many instances ACORN and Big Labor are one and the same. In 2008, Big Labor funneled ACORN millions of dollars for so-called organizing activity. But, that is only the tip of the Big Labor iceberg.
ACORN controls or significantly dominates several Big Labor unions and organizations. ACORN created and controls SEIU 100 (Gulf Region) and SEIU 880 (a recently expanded SEIU mega-local that covers Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas).
ACORN founder S. Wade Rathke referred to mega-union SEIU 880 as “one of the pillars of the ACORN Family.â€
- Wade Rathke: “SEIU Local 880, one of the pillars of the ACORN family of organizations”
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern hand picked ACORN’s Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.
In addition to Rathke’s and ACORN’s SEIU involvement, Rathke controlled Louisiana HERE Local 100, was Secretary-Treasurer of a New Orleans based AFL-CIO labor organization, and served on the board of a hotel employees union organizing committee.
A search of financial disclosure reports (UnionReports.gov) filed with the U.S. Department of Labor for the years 2000 and 2006 disclosed the following positions that Rathke held in labor unions while he concurrently served as ACORN’s Chief Organizer:
Wade Rathke DOL Reported Union Positions (2000,2006)
ACORN’s connections extend to several other Big Labor funded organizations such as the Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now (WARN), Site Fighters, and Community Labor Organizing Center (CLOC).
An Inside Look
An internal ACORN memo disclosed by Michelle Malkin provides more insight into the ACORN-Big Labor collaboration:
WHICH CORPORATIONS? Local 100 was nurtured by ACORN, but I think US Labor law prevents ACORN from interfering in Local 100 affairs. And it is not clear that ACORN wants to bother with Local 100 anymore, except to collect money Local 100 has borrowed from ACORN affiliates (some $250,000). There are some Local 100 subsidiaries which ACORN probably doesn’t care about, e.g., some Baton Rouge Teachers organizations, a couple Texas organizations…. they are nonprofits set up to TRY to represent workers who are not allowed to organize themselves into collective bargaining units. I assume ACORN is ready to let these go to Local 100.
–L100. To what extent does the Local 100 Board and Local 100 members know about the perfidy of their Chief Organizer? Do they know how hokey their LM-2 filings are?
–DOL and Local 100. To what extent should ACORN monitor Local 100 activities and filings and report them to the DOL? Apparently a new election of Local 100 officers is due to happen in September 2008.
–Local 100’s debts. An initial review of Local 100’s LM-2’s suggests that Local 100 owes some $250,000 to ACORN affiliates. When will those debts be called in?
–CCI. [received union funds, provided bookkeeping for SEIU 880 in Chicago] The point here is that if ACORN wants nothing to do with WR [Wade Rathke], then presumably CCI needs to terminate its contracts with any WR tainted organization. These conflict of interest issues are about to come to a head with CCI attorneys. So far our model has been “Well, in the past we wait to see if conflict can be worked out—THEN we worry.†In the past conflict has been resolved. In the present crisis the CCI lawyers may have to face these issues shortly. As an ethical if not a legal matter, the whole of CCI will have to face these issues also.
–WARN. [received union funds] This corporation is WAL-MART ALLIANCE FOR REFORM NOW, INC., and its Board members are –Wade Rathke, 3810 Burgundy Street, New Orleans, LA, 70117; –Rick Smith, 1344 W Cass St, Tampa, FL, 33606; and –Tamecka Pierce, 6537 Chantry St, Orlando, FL, 32835. The corporate name somewhat resembles ACORN’s. If it is a membership organization I find it hard to believe it is anything more than laughable. However, it may have a lot of grant money from some people somewhere? Bottom line is I don’t know much about this, and I don’t know if ACORN should care, or how to find out if ACORN should care.
–Acorn Institute. [received union funds] I think this is clearly an ACORN corporation, but I have to observe that it seems to me that WR has been trying to fill it with shills. I think it is one of ACORN’s major 501c3s, and control of it needs to be monitored
–ACLOC. [received union funds] I think control of this organization is up for grabs, but the more critical question is who gets business from SEIU and ACORN. One could almost give this to WR because it’s worthless without business—yet if ACORN gave it to him it would have to be under the condition that the ACORN name was deleted. By way of additional information, WR seems to have founded a “CLOC†in Florida a while back. Maybe ACORN should keep ACLOC and WR should see what he can do with CLOC.
–ARC . [received union funds] This used to be a key 501c3 feeder for labor projects. Right now the Board supposedly consists of Steve Bachmann and Mildred Edmond. And Dale Rathke and Cornelia have supposedly left this Board. ACORN should advise Wade Rathke that this corporation is going to be cleaned up, and should probably be closed down. Steve Bachmann is going to ensure that if WR wants to try any tricks with this corporati[o]n, then WR is going to find his Mumsy is going to be very VERY upset.
–SEXUAL HARASSMENT. Mitch Klein has filed a complaint against Chaco Rathke for harassment, and against Wade, Beth and Dine for retaliation. It is not clear that these items are subject to much negotiations, because they are matters of law. Depending upon what Alex Mora finds and recommends, ACORN will have to take whatever steps will pass muster with the EEOC, the DOL, and ultimately, the Courts. Another player in this play is EFC, because as landlord EFC must provide its tenants with safe environments, that don’t have its property managers engaging in sexual harassment, and that don’t allow its tenants to intimate other tenants. Again, much of this will turn on what Alex Mora finds, and generally what the law requires. ACORN has little room for negotiation or discretion here, but since it involves the Rathkes, its existence must be acknowledged and noted. [Emphasis added]
(Note: According to two conflict-of-interest reports filed at the U.S. Labor Department, ACORN’s SEIU 100 actually had a union position called “child of the chief organizer†listed. Better view the reports now, because the Obama Labor Department is busy eliminating future conflict-of-interest reporting by union officers and employees.)
Big Labor – ACORN Organizing Partnership
From the early days of Saul Alinsky-styled union organizing, ACORN and Big Labor learned that forced unionism provides the financial fuel to perpetuate their organizational schemes and political clout. ACORN and Big Labor have turned organizing into a numbers game; it is no longer about improving working conditions, as Randy Schaber’s and David Bego’s stories clearly illustrate that SEIU was not escalating pressure to improve working conditions. The tactics that SEIU used border on sadism.
According to Vanessa Tait’s book, Poor workers’ unions: rebuilding labor from below, ACORN and Big Labor have grown more politically powerful and more militant together:
ACORN’s autonomous labor organizing projects – Unite Labor Unions (ULU) – were quite different. Drawing on labor’s traditions, the ULU locals reached out to other unions and community groups to build solidarity around campaigns.
… In New York, workfare organizing lead to strong relationships between ACORN and some progressive unions such as CWA 1180, which worked with ACORN to gain permanent ballot status for the state’s Working Families Party.
… Networks of activists both inside and outside of mainstream labor spread this philosophy of new militant unionism. By the late 80’s, organizers with social justice or community organizing experience had made headway inside local, regional , and national trade unions. Experience with … ACORN was common … Mark Splain and Stewart Acuff, both community organizers with ties to ACORN who directed the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Department.
Ms. Tait describes in some length ACORN’s rise and its long intertwined relationship with the new more militant Big Labor movement. And, she exposes Rathke acolytes Stewart Acuff and Mark Splain, who coordinate the AFL-CIO’s entire Organizing Department.
Further, according to Washington Times reporter S. A. Miller, ACORN operates mob-styled protection rackets:
ACORN provided liberal causes with protest-for-hire services and coerced donations from the targets of demonstrations through a mob-style “protection†racket. ACORN called it the “muscle for the money†program, according to prepared testimony…
The “unofficial†program collected payments to organize protests. For example, the Service Employees International Union [SEIU] hired ACORN to harass the Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm. Other paid protests targeted Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt and Money Mart, according to the testimony.
If you want first hand reports from the front lines of an SEIU ACORN-type campaign, listen to the National Right to Work Committee’s Interviews with two victims of separate multi-year card check unionization campaigns: Randy Schaber and David Bego. They describe the “protection racket†in detail.
ACORN and Big Labor’s Ultimate Goal
Just prior to the BigGovernment.com ACORN exposé, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent five letters to Departments and Federal Agencies asking questions about ACORN’s illegal activities. Now, the Senate and House are voting to cutoff federal funds.
Because of what Tait referred to as the “new militant unionism,†American workers can expect to see more ACORN-orchestrated Big Labor organizing harassment campaigns in their neighborhood if the Card Check Forced Unionism (S 560) bill is passed as promised by President Obama (who likely has a very close relationship with ACORN and SEIU 880 from his Chicago “community organizing†days).
ACORN’s and Big Labor’s ultimate goal is to force more workers to pay labor union dues as a condition of employment.
ACORN Co-Founder Defends Group’s Integrity, Blasts ‘Unfair’ Critics
Posted by Publius in ACORN, News, Obama, Wade Rathke on September 15th, 2009
FoxNews.com reports:
[ACORN co-founder Wade] Rathke has repeatedly blasted the news media and conservative groups for intentionally targeting ACORN because of its progressive agenda. In a posting on his “Chief Organizer Blog,” Rathke said the Census Bureau’s decision to break ties with ACORN showed “how willing the Obama administration is open to a cave-in to the conservatives on false pretenses on a completely fake ‘issue.’”
“This is all just more reputational McCarthyism as the rightwing and Republicans attack ACORN,” he wrote.
Read the full article here.