ACORN's real problems
Betsy's Page
While the Biggovernment videos revealed the ethical hole at ACORN offices, those videos aren't their only problem. They are teetering on the edge financially and legally in other areas besides their employee's propensity to give potential sex slavers tax advice. The Washington Post reported on some of those woes yesterday.
<<< 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 a group 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."
Some top ACORN officials tried to shield the scheme, which involved Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke. "Leadership has no faith in staff. Wade betrayed them," the minutes said.
The documents present a troubling picture of one of the nation's leading social justice advocacy groups, with more than 400,000 members, offices in 75 cities and an expanding international presence.
....An investigation by Republican members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also showed that there was concern within ACORN that its voter outreach efforts, which are required to be nonpartisan, were aimed at electing Democratic candidates, a key complaint of conservative critics.
In a June 2008 report to ACORN, Washington lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley, who conducted an independent review of the group's finances, expressed concern that inadequate documentation of money transfers between ACORN and an allied organization, Project Vote, would make it difficult for either group to respond effectively to questions about whether tax-deductible charitable contributions were used for political purposes. She also noted conflicts created when decision-makers at the tax-exempt entity had roles in political activities carried out by other groups.
"My question all along was, are we funding a liberal political agenda with taxpayer dollars without knowing it?" said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who co-sponsored last week's House legislation cutting off ACORN's federal funding and led the oversight committee investigation, whose findings were released in July. "By the end, it was clear to me, this organization can't assure anybody, including itself, that it won't use our money for partisan politics."
....Issa's investigators unearthed e-mails and documents offering details of how the organization reacted to the discovery that Dale Rathke, the former chief financial officer of ACORN, had embezzled $947,000 in 1999 and 2000. Wade Rathke left his post as ACORN's chief organizer in June 2008 after the embezzlement was discovered.
Neither the full ACORN board nor most of its staff members knew about the embezzlement until a donor revealed it in 2008, eight years later. ACORN reached a private settlement with Dale Rathke in which he and his family agreed to repay the money that, according to ACORN documents, he spent on luxury hotels and trips on the Concord. The organization agreed not to turn over the matter to prosecutors. Dale Rathke could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Minutes of an ACORN conference in Washington in August 2008 reflect the group's concern that Wade Rathke kept vital information from the board.
"Wade never fully told anyone on the board," the notes show. "He allowed Dale to continue working for ACORN and despite his assurances to the management committee at the time allowed him to continue being involved with almost all finances."
Under the confidential settlement, the Rathke family agreed to repay ACORN at a rate of $30,000 a year. Wade Rathke could not be reached, but he told the New York Times last year that the organization counted the losses as a loan on financial records, rather than reporting it to police, because word of the embezzlement would have put a "weapon" in the hands of conservative enemies.
Issa said his inquiry found a handful of Wade Rathke loyalists in charge of nearly 200 entities and affiliates with varying status -- some tax-exempt, some political -- but with blurred lines.
"If you weren't interested in merging all your corporate entities to foster one political end, why did you create this structure that would allow you to do just that?" Issa said. >>>
Ah, how ironic - they aren't paying their medical bills.
And add in this further irony. They wanted to exempt themselves from minimum wage laws. Here's the story from 2006.
<<< a few years ago the group sued the state of California in order to be exempted from its minimum wage requirement, which was higher than the federal government's. In its appellate brief, ACORN acknowledged that the more it had to pay each worker, the fewer such workers it would be able to hire. Of course, the same thing is true for businesses as well, something minimum wage advocates refuse to admit.
Furthermore, ACORN argued that paying its workers less than the minimum wage aided its organizing efforts. Said the brief, "A person paid limited sums of money will be in a better position to empathize with and relate to the low and moderate membership and constituency of ACORN." Somehow I doubt that a business catering to those with low incomes would get any sympathy from ACORN if it made the same argument.
Indeed, ACORN has a history of denying its workers rights that it demands from corporations. For example, its "People's Platform" says that all workers have the right to organize. Yet, when its own workers have tried to do so, ACORN strenuously fought them.
In 2001, all of the workers in ACORN's Seattle office signed cards stating a desire to join the Industrial Workers of the World, a labor union with a long history of radicalism. ACORN's management refused to recognize the union and locked out the workers. Eventually, ACORN relented and paid a $20,000 settlement. Afterwards, an IWW organizer said, "This underscores further the doublespeak that causes their workers to unionize or resign in disgust, and it shows that [ACORN's leaders] have learned nothing about workers' rights."
That same year, ACORN intimidated and fired workers in its Dallas office for threatening to organize. In 2003, the National Labor Relations Board found that it had violated the law. Said the NLRB, "By interrogating employees about their union activities, by informing employees that other employees have been discharged because of the union, by threatening employees that selecting the union to represent them will be futile, and by threatening employees with discharge, respondent has violated section 8(a) of the act." >>>
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