ACORN Received $53 Million, Another $8 Billion on the Way
Thank God someone with some sense. Michele Bachmann has written an amendment that would stop funding for any taxpayer funded organization under investigation or indicted.
First of all let’s see some of the charges brought against ACORN recently:
A voter registration worker for ACORN in East St. Louis was indicted on two counts of voter fraud for submitting forged cards for residents at nursing homes without their knowledge. – KSDK, 1/09
“A suburban Philadelphia man is charged with forgery, allegedly altering 18 voter-registration applications during his employment with an organization [ACORN] whose voter-outreach efforts have become a flashpoint in the presidential campaign.” – Associated Press, 10/23/08
“Clifton Mitchell helped register nearly 2,000 voters for the community group ACORN. But not one of them actually existed… Mitchell was convicted last year and spent nearly three months in prison.” – CNN, 10/22/08
“An internal report by a lawyer for the community organizing group Acorn raises questions about whether the web of relationships among its 174 affiliates may have led to violations of federal laws… The June 18 report, written by Elizabeth Kingsley, a Washington lawyer, spells out her concerns about potentially improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates, among other things.” – New York Times, 10/22/08According to the Economist in October of 2008 leading up to the Presidential election:
“In Orlando, home to the Magic Kingdom of Disney, Mickey Mouse tried to register. In Indiana there was an application from a sandwich shop called Jimmy Johns. Authorities in Nevada were surprised to receive voter registration forms from the starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys.
“All these applications were provided by the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group that works to register low-income voters. ACORN has been industrious this year, signing up 1.3m voters in 21 states according to its own tallies. But they have run into some trouble; thousands of their voter-registration applications are fakes. In Connecticut a seven-year-old girl applied. A man in Ohio admitted he had signed up with organizers more than 70 times in exchange for cash and cigarettes. In one county in Indiana ACORN turned in 5,000 applications, 2,100 of which were quickly identified as fakes.”
The Washington Examiner reports:
At least $53 million in federal funds have gone to ACORN activists since 1994, and the controversial group could get up to $8.5 billion more tax dollars despite being under investigation for voter registration fraud in a dozen states. The economic stimulus bill enacted in February contains $3 billion that the non-profit activist group known more formally as the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now could receive, and 2010 federal budget contains another $5.5 billion that could also find its way into the group’s coffers. An Examiner review of federal spending data found that ACORN has received at least $53 million in federal money since 1994. A down-loadable spreadsheet of the $53 million is posted here.
Bend over taxpayers! Don’t you love how your taxpayer money is going to fraudulent, corrupt organizations such as ACORN. The same ACORN that Obama was legal council for and spoke at their conventions? The same Obama who leaned on ACORN in this last election.
Cat Fight! Michele Bachmann and Barney Frank Duel Over ACORN
MEOW! Go get ‘em Michele!
Two partisan heavyweights did battle Thursday over an amendment prized by conservatives, as House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) withdrew backing for a bill that would have toughened regulations for community organizing groups.
Frank withdrew his support from an amendment offered by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) that would forbid groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) from receiving federal grants if any of their employees have been indicted for voter fraud.
Good! Why should any groups that claim to be non-partisan receive our taxpayer funds when they are anything but non-partisan? I personally wouldn’t care if the group was conservative or liberal, I don’t want my taxpayer funds going to either.
After approving the amendment by a unanimous voice vote, Frank announced Thursday he was mistaken to back the bill, and said he’d offer a substitute that would apply the amendment only to groups with employees who are actually convicted — not just indicted. Frank’s version would also take into account the employee’s position in the organization, and how long ago the conviction had been handed down.
Frank is flip-flopping because ACORN and groups backed by George Soros have more power on Capitol Hill than most want to admit. He wants to make it appear that he is writing legislation that will not be misconstrued (funny how that’s never what Democrats want in any of their bills – they prefer being vague so they can find loopholes to help themselves). Stipulating that an actual conviction is necessary would delay the withdrawal of funds which is all that Frank is trying to do.
“Focusing on an indictment and letting an indictment be the trigger of penalties would be a violation the basic rules and fairness of American law,” Frank told The Hill. “So if one person is indicted, the whole “innocent until proven guilty, etc”� just goes totally out the window.”
When has fairness or the law ever applied to Democrats? These groups shouldn’t be getting taxpayer money anyway – especially since they are trying to pass themselves off as non-partisan when they most definitely are not!
“The temptation to indict someone you don’t like — after the Ted Stevens thing, I don’t even know how anyone could think about that,” he said.
Typical liberal counterpoint (passive-aggressive) and typical Barney Frank – lay the blame elsewhere and try to make the person asserting the statement out to be mean-spirited or bigoted.
Bachmann blasted Frank for “siding with ACORN,” a group that had stoked the ire of many conservatives for their efforts to turn out the vote for President Obama during the 2008 elections.
“Are we expected to keep forking over tax dollars to these organization when they’re under the cloud of suspicion of a public criminal indictment?” Bachmann asked in a statement.
“If nothing else, this shows us just how much influence ACORN and others have over Chairman Frank and the Democrat party,” she said. “Your tax dollars are being abused.”
Right you are Bachmann - keep on fighting the good fight!
Another funny side note:
Chairman Barney Frank accepted the amendment right there in front of the whole committee — I assumed because it was his very own language as passed under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) of 2008 — and the amendment was then passed by unanimous voice vote.
So he originally approved all of this when he wrote it – but something made him change his mind. He thinks that these facts aren’t on record and that the media will be able to cover all of the Democrats’ messes up forever. This is similar to Pelosi’s amnesiaon waterboarding.
Newsmax: Cap and Trade and Other Political Opinions of Recent
Cool compilation of videos from Newsmax of some of the biggest news worthy stories of recent.
