News reports indicate that the national umbrella group, ACORN, will be folding up shop come April 1^st.  Hopefully, for the sake of taxpayers, this isn’t some sort of cruel April Fool’s joke.

Politico’s Ben Smith writes an obituary of sorts:

ACORN was always a very decentralized group, with a great deal of its activity and power concentrated in local chapters from New York to Arkansas — the strongest of which will survive. The collapse of the national group, though, reflects the impact of a conservative assault that never prompted any prosecutions.

Really? Decentralized?  That’s not the impression the ACORN 8 would give.  Ben, if you asked them, they’d likely tell you that for 35 years, ACORN was under the iron grip of Wade Rathke, who, along with his wife, brother and a small group of others, controlled everything.  Members of the national board have publicly said they couldn’t gain access to the financial books or a flow chart of the hundreds of overlapped organizations.

Without a doubt ‘ACORN’ will cease to exist.  But it’s beliefs, agenda, tactics and perhaps most importantly staff, will live on in other organizations.

It will be critical to watch where the brains of the organization land.  An e-mail from Nathan Henderson-James, ACORN’s internet guru explained:

ACORN will be around for a few more months for sure and I’ll be doing the online work throughout it all. We’re going to be aggressive and we’re going to be loud and we’re going to do it as long as we can. After that I’ll be joining one of the organizations that comes out of ACORN’s demise, helping to reimagine community organizing for the 21st century.

Henderson-James ended his e-mail:

Last one to leave turn out the lights and wipe the server.

That doesn’t sound like a sign-off of an innocent organization to me.

But ACORN will still have its apologists.  I’m sure Peter Dreier, the radical Occidental College professor, already is readying his explanation that it was right-wing extremists that brought down ACORN.

What Dreier and others like him fail to realize is that ACORN’s behavior, shoddy hiring practices and massive web of organizations is what brought it down.  Not to take anything away from O’Keefe and Giles (because they deserve virtually all the credit), but they simply pushed the teetering monster off the cliff.

The fight against ACORN is not over.  It will be harder to track its movements as its pieces are now scattering, which is likely the point.  Vigilance will ensure ACORN’s latest moves don’t fool anybody.

ACORN, the ultra-secret, keep-the-books-from-the-leadership community organizing group, called the New York Times to say it’s preparing to file for bankruptcy?  The corrupt outfit is choosing now to be transparent?

Or did it seek that opportunity to call an allied newspaper at precisely the moment conservatives were all in a lather about ObamaCare?

Regardless, ACORN leaders “not authorized to speak to the news media” claimed ACORN will soon be filing for bankruptcy.

The move could be an armadillo action so the group’s critics will move on to other things.  ACORN certainly is down.  It has reportedly lost significant private funding.  It’s been booted out of Ohio for good. From the Times article:

“That 20-minute video ruined 40 years of good work,” said Sonja Merchant-Jones, former co-chairwoman of Acorn’s Maryland chapter. “But if the organization had confronted its own internal problems, it might not have been taken down so easily.”

ACORN’s leaders past and present didn’t help. Wade Rathke and his team admitted to choosing restitution over retribution in his brother’s nearly million-dollar embezzlement.  But it wasn’t just the authorities that were kept in the dark for 8 years – the national board was, too.

Oh, and being accused of voter registration fraud in over a dozen states doesn’t help, either.  So while ACORN will attempt to blame its woes on James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, it ultimately has itself to blame for its apparent downfall.

One thing is clear: the brainchild of Wade Rathke – the web of hundreds of organizations all claiming a single address – does appear to be dead.  But the dream lives on in smaller breakaway organizations sprinkled throughout the country.  What remains to be seen is whether the new organizations will eventually unite to re-form the mighty ACORN, or if they will be small, relatively weak, like-minded allies that are limited to reminiscing about the glory days, when they elected senators and presidents.

The wounded ACORN snake continues writhing.  This time, the group has been barred from the entire state of Ohio, a swing state where the organization was very active in the last presidential election.

So active, in fact, it received an “Unsung Hero” award from the Communist Party USA for its “critical but  generally unrecognized role of organized labor and grassroots voter registration efforts in winning Ohio for Barack Obama,” according to a document on ACORNcracked.com.

But now, ACORN has reached a settlement under the Ohio Corrupt Activities Act, similar to the federal RICO Act  –  the same law that’s used to prosecute mobsters and drug kingpins.  Under the settlement, ACORN,  along with Project Vote, agreed “to file a certificate permanently surrendering its business license in Ohio by June 1,” according to The Columbus Dispatch.

The next part of the settlement was critical: it bars ACORN from simply changing its name and moving back into the state. From the Dispatch:

The center’s lawyer, Maurice A. Thompson, said the settlement is mostly confidential but permanently bars ACORN from doing business in Ohio or reconstituting as another group and perpetuating its practices.

 A 2008 press release from the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law said this:

Plaintiffs Jennifer Miller of Mason, Ohio and Kimberly Grant of Loveland, allege that ACORN’s actions deprived them of the right to participate in an honest and effective elections process. They allege fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN dilute the votes of legally registered voters.

“The right to cast a vote that is not diluted by fraudulent votes is a fundamental individual right,” Buckeye Institute President David Hansen said.

“ACORN appears to be recklessly disregarding Ohio laws and adding thousands of fraudulent voters to the state’s roles in the process,” Maurice Thompson, Director of the Buckeye Institute’s 1851 Center for Constitutional Law said. “Such voter fraud erodes the value of legally cast votes,” he added.

The 1851 Center is no longer affiliated with the Buckeye Institute.  A copy of the original court filing can be found here. 

Despite the ruling, ACORN’s lawyer, Alfonse Gerhardstein, said that it didn’t mean much because it was inactive already “for reasons unrelated to this litigation.”

As ACORN reconstitutes itself in other states, watchdogs are tracking its every move and sounding the alarm so such activities don’t occur again.

There are shocking stories, and then there are shocking stories that are supported by the President of the United States verifying them on videotape.

Take the case of Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union.

Medina, “Honorary Chair” of the Democratic Socialists of America, is who Obama gave a shout-out to when he was groveling for SEIU’s endorsement in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

But the question I do want SEIU to ask yourselves is not who’s talking about your agenda, but who can change our politics in Washington so we can actually make your agenda a reality…

Your agenda’s been my agenda in the United States Senate.  Before debating health care, I talked to Andy Stern and SEIU members.  Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I talked with Eliseo Medina and SEIU members…

He’s not any old socialist spouting nutty theories.  He brings with him the weight and authority of the SEIU, an aggressive union and one that admits to spending some $60 million to elect Obama president.  And that’s earned the socialist access to the White House few Americans could even dream of.  According to visitor records dumped around the holidays, Medina posted at least six visits in 2009.

Medina attended an event with the president, another with the vice president, as well as a couple 1-on-1 or 2-on-1 meetings in the west wing.

But there’s more that concerning, beyond the fact that a socialist leader is frequently visiting the White House and the president of the United States admits he talks with him about immigration reform.

Medina himself admits “SEIU is the largest union of immigrant workers in the country. A number of them are undocumented. …The whole world is represented among the undocumented and also in our membership.”

So this is the foundation that immigration reform is being built – a socialist agenda that doesn’t value America’s laws or borders.  And SEIU is leading the charge:

As we get to work in the critical months ahead, there is no question that creating quality jobs, restoring economic fairness and ensuring every American has access to affordable healthcare must be our top priorities. But as it becomes increasingly clear, none of these goals can be achieved over the long-term unless we get serious about fixing an outdated, unenforceable, and increasingly costly broken immigration system.

Simply put: we can’t build a strong economy on top of a broken immigration system.

So how will the debate turn out?  I don’t know, but it’s reasonable to conclude if socialists like Eliseo Medina have a seat at the decision-making table, it won’t turn out well for America’s sovereignty.

Boy, ACORN is good.  They’re so good the White House should give them a call and seek some political tips. Er…given the recently-unearthed video of the president yearning for ACORN’s endorsement, something tells me that’s not necessary.

The evolution of ACORN, summarized by Matthew Vadum, is not surprising but is impressive.  Even Al Capone wasn’t this successful at morphing his organization into a new beast.

But interestingly, that’s not exactly what’s happening.  ACORN is simply adding to and remodeling what it has already created.  The gang is splitting up to do the same work, likely with the same funders – radical foundations and individuals, oh, and the American taxpayers.

But rest assured, no lessons have been learned, nothing will really change.  The same people are involved. So no one expects there to be much difference.  New box, same crappy product.  The radical left is simply painting a little lipstick on the pig and hoping American will fall in love with it all over again.

What is particularly disturbing about what is happening is that ACORN is essentially adding new corporate identities to its massive roster, already pegged at somewhere around 300.  ACORN now appears to be decentralizing, making it a much harder target to scrutinize – which was likely the point.

No slimming down, no greater efficiency – just more confusing bureaucracy.  So of course, the natural question is: which came first, the chicken or the egg.  Did ACORN learn its model from leftists and the federal government or did the federal government learn its bureaucratic ways from ACORN, because that is all that seems to be being proposed in Washington these days?  It’s a question for the ages, and I’m digressing…

The fact of the matter is, ACORN is transforming itself to shed is soiled name and continue receiving tax dollars – our money.  And until there’s serious leadership in Washington, DC prepared to tackle the waste and fraud, they’ll be successful.

ACORN founder Wade Rathke has been gloating on his blog about the recent arrest of James O’Keefe in Rathke’s hometown of New Orleans. 

Andrew Breitbrat and his www.biggovernment.com site stopped pretending that James O’Keefe, bungler-in-charge, was not his boy, and realized that he needed to stop shouting and start ‘splaining.

Breitbrat?  Zing!  How adult of you, Wade.

Similarly, current ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis issued a statement upon the news:

The recent arrest of James O’Keefe, is further evidence of his disregard for the law in pursuit of his extremist agenda. From the day that O’Keefe’s undercover “sting” videos came out, ACORN leadership pledged accountability for its own staff while pointing out that the videos had been shot illegally and edited deceptively in order to undermine the work of an organization that has empowered working families for four decades.

It’s as if O’Keefe’s problem somehow is vindication for the corrupt web of organizations she oversees.

Bad news, Bertha: it’s not.

Regardless of what O’Keefe and his friends did or didn’t do, the facts remain: ACORN has been accused of voter registration fraud in multiple states, and its Nevada trial is set to begin this spring. The government’s star witness in that case is a former ACORN employee.

Several ACORN employees gave dubious tax and housing advice to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute, with much of it caught on camera.  Their actions were shameful and the case could be made, I believe, should the government want to pursue one (which it apparently decided not to), that ACORN staffers were providing tips to defraud the IRS and HUD.  They were also caught aiding people who supposedly were attempting to smuggle underage girls into the United States for nefarious purposes.

Meanwhile, several former ACORN employees and national board members have leveled serious accusations against the group, including being loose with its taxpayer-provided resources and allowing those resources  to be comingled with political funds.

Much more can be found in the report issued by Congressman Darryll Issa (R-CA), the ranking Republican member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 

I suppose in ACORN’s world, where morals and ethics are all relative, Bertha might have a case.  But in the real world of average, law-abiding citizens, the organization is plainly corrupt.

And the reality is, ACORN was set on a course of corruption and sleight-of-hand tactics by Wade Rathke – the man that has the gall to criticize James O’Keefe.  It was Rathke that held virtually everything close to the vest and out of the reach of other ACORN leaders, including financial books and organizational charts.

If it wasn’t for Rathke and his – dare I say – poor organizational skills, there would not have been anything for James O’Keefe to expose in the first place.

To the people of Orlando: your long Florida nightmare may soon be over.  Congressman Alan Grayson is up for re-election this year.

But in the mean time, he’s continuing his gasbaggery.  He’s taking up President Obama’s mantle of intimidating the Supreme Court and has introduced several bills so political free speech can once again be squelched.

Grayson has introduced several pieces of legislation aimed at restricting political speech, according to the George Soros-funded Secretary of State Project.  But first, a bit about that group.

SOS was formed to elect Secretaries of State around the country that will be tolerant of ACORN-style voter registration and Election Day shenanigans.  The Minnesota recount debacle – and seating of Al Franken – came courtesy of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, an SOS Project recruit.

So now the Soros-funded SOS Project is pushing Grayson’s package of bills. The interpretations of them come courtesy of SOS, not me:

1.  The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act (H.R. 4431): Implements a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees, and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns.

2. The Public Company Responsibility Act (H.R. 4435): Prevents companies making political contributions and expenditures from trading their stock on national exchanges.

3.The End Political Kickbacks Act (H.R. 4434): Prevents for-profit corporations that receive money from the government from making political contributions, and limits the amount that employees of those companies can contribute.

4. The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act (H.R. 4432): Requires publicly-traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than to promoting their products and services.

5. The Ending Corporate Collusion Act (H.R. 4433): Applies antitrust law to industry PACs.

6. The End the Hijacking of Shareholder Funds Act (H.R. 4487): This bill requires the approval of a majority of a public company’s shareholders for any expenditure by that company to influence public opinion on matters not related to the company’s products or services.

SOS signs off by saying, “Our elected officials should be chosen by voters on election day, not by corporations at the auction block.”

Just curious, do labor unions, like the Obama-campaign bankrolling SEIU count?  Will the “Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act” also apply to compulsory dues squeezed out of union members and prevent those from being spent on political activities?

No, Congressman Grayson?  Didn’t think so.  So it’s free speech for Andy Stern and SEIU but not those “evil corporations.”  Or maybe they negotiated a carve-out, like they did for the tax on “Cadillac health plans.”

To see how you can help rid the Congress of this guy, visit www.mycongressmanisnuts.com.

Let me first say, if what is being reported in the media is accurate, a dumb prank was attempted in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu by James O’Keefe and his comrades. 

There should be zero tolerance for crime, regardless of who does it.  If O’Keefe is guilty of what the FBI is alleging, he should be held accountable.  The Left believes that now, but where were they six months ago?

It’s interesting to observe, and personally experience, the hypocritical way the Left is treating this situation. Consider two unsolicited e-mails I received Monday night from a few liberal wackos with too much time on their hands.  Here’s the first, which was accompanied by the subject line, “Republicans are As—-es!”:

Hey as—-e, why don’t you talk about the son of a bitch who broke into Senator Landrieu’s office in LA? Yeah, scumbags like you don’t care about the law.

The other, titled, “James O’Keefe is going to jail! YOU FAILED!”:

HAHAHAHA, apparently going to college meant nothing since you never heard of Watergate and the name Richard Nixon. I hope they throw all of you c—s [beyond crude term for a female body part] into prison where trash like you belongs.

The alleged crimes committed by ACORN employees in the O’Keefe and Giles videos were excused, and even rationalized, by the Left.  But they don’t apply the same level of patience and understanding for O’Keefe and Company.  Even worse, they’re jumping to conclusions about their guilt, and the nature of their alleged crime.

The liberal media is openly theorizing that O’Keefe and his friends were trying to bug telephones in the senator’s office. The Louisiana Democratic Party is already calling it the “Louisiana Watergate.”  As Andrew Breitbart said:

MSNBC and other “news organizations” are even billing this developing story as “Watergate”. What do Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow know? And when did they know it?

Surely James O’Keefe is not dumb enough to think he could actually bug the phones of a sitting U.S. Senator.  Only the “A-Team” could do that,  and they disbanded well over a decade ago.

The Left, despite video evidence, was silent about ACORN’s gross shenanigans.  But when scant details emerge from a stunt in New Orleans, it’s the next Watergate.  It shows what their real agenda is.  It’s not truth, it’s not justice and it’s certainly not the American way.  It’s maintaining power and access to taxpayer dollars by any means necessary.

Like a phoenix released to spread it wings, ACORN founder and former chief organizer Wade Rathke has been letting it all hang out on his lively, but troubling blog. 

He recently attacked no-nonsense Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, lamented the continuing questions regarding ACORN/SEIU involvement in the 2010 census, and even went after me on one occasion.

Now he’s attacking the concept of personal responsibility, something our society is sorely lacking. He’s encouraging homeowners who are falling behind on their mortgage payments to simply walk away from their homes, as if the money still owed is neither their problem nor their concern.

At least his message is consistent, because Rathke has always been the Johnny Appleseed of bad advice when it comes to housing.

ACORN, under his command, played a huge role in creating the mortgage crisis by pressuring the federal government and financial institutions to grant mortgages to people who clearly couldn’t afford them.

Then he pressed the Obama administration to bail out homeowners who, for too long, were living dangerously beyond their means. He wanted us to believe that mortgage companies somehow duped lower-income people into mortgages that were unaffordable. Why in the world would a company want to sell something it knew it would never be paid for?

In any case, Rathke has obviously arrived at the realization that the taxpayers are not coming to the rescue, so he’s offered a new solution – “Abandon ship!”

I’m now convinced the only way to protect citizen wealth for working families and force the issue to a real resolution, is for underwater homeowners to acknowledge the reality that they are only paying high rent with huge anxiety, and to walk away from these mortgages.  This is good for their family, and as bad as it is for the community, and this has been the hangup for me, it may finally force the government and banks to do the right thing. (emphasis added)

…

Walk away, brothers and sisters – it’s time to abandon this ship! If a family is worried about damage to credit, just rent for what you can afford and SAVE some money.

Where was your organization a few years ago, Wade, when so many people were foolishly buying homes they couldn’t afford?  Instead of spending your time shaking down the big, bad banks for ACORN contributions, perhaps you should have been offering sound, honest advice to families that were about to make really bad financial decisions.

Instead his 11^th hour solution is for the homeowners to walk away, avoid their financial responsibilities, and leave the taxpayers holding the bag. We can be sure the government will hold us financially responsible for those who refuse to be responsible for themselves.

Thanks, Wade. Take a vacation from the blog, will you?

The White House appears to have revealed more than it may have intended when it published an Excel spreadsheet of visitors to the presidential complex.  Claiming to release data for the first two weeks of September, dates on many of the visits fall outside that range, as first brought to light at BigGovernment.com.

And with the White House’s transparency comes its publication of its inner circle.

Two groups of entries caught our eye. Besides the fact that ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis visited the White House residence in early September, two other key groups appear in the logs.

Fresh off his swearing-in ceremony (30 minutes to be exact), the Who’s Who of liberal politics joined the new administration at a celebrative luncheon in the Old Executive Office Building.

In addition to the new administration’s staff (which aren’t listed in the logs), the heads of several special interest groups appear.  Of 19 luncheon visitors listed, the notables include:

SEIU President Andy Stern

SEIU Vice President Anna Burger

Steelworkers President Leo Gerard

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka

Howard Dean

Center for American Progress President John Podesta

EMILY’s List President Ellen Malcolm

NARAL President Nancy Keenan

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards

Abortion and Organized Labor sums up Obama’s inner circle.  Isn’t that swell.

On the health care reform front, a May 11 meeting in the Roosevelt Room took place with POTUS himself.  The key players in health care reform? 

SEIU President Andy Stern

SEIU Health care head Dennis Rivera

Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plan (AHIP)

Greater New York Hospital Association President Kenneth Raske

American Medical Association President John Rohack

Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler

PhRMA lobbyist Billy Tauzin

Besides SEIU, as it has been pushing ObamaCare since his candidacy, it’s interesting to note the AMA and Pfizer jumped on board to support the legislation.

This is just the first of our analysis conducted on the visitor records of the White House.  More will likely be on its way…