Topic category:  Government/Politics

Glenn Beck's recent focus on ACORN is great.

Beck describes ACORN as "the community organizing group that became notorious for voter registration fraud allegations during the 2008 election."

Right.

But apparently Beck does not appreciate the critically important political aspect of the ACORN scandal.

Beck: "Everyone wants to focus on politics and make this out to be a left-right issue…. But that’s just noise; it’s misdirection.”

"Al," a poster on Beck's Blog, laments: "The biggest shame here is that a corp group of conspirators have hijacked a genuine organization and turned it into a tool to manipulate and extort the people. They have succeeded in turning the people on each other and through the media manipulation have caused enough distraction to place themselves into powerful positions...."

Beck's analysis of the ACORN problem as simply a matter of right and wrong is simplistic and "Al" doesn't know ACORN's history.

ACORN was founded in 1970 by radicals Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado.

Beck is right about this being a matter of right and wrong.

But politics ("left and right") is at the core of the ACORN scandal.

Wikipedia: "Wade Rathke (born August 5, 1948) is the founder of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 100. He was ACORN's chief organizer from its founding in 1970 until he stepped down June 2, 2008."

During the 2008 presidential campaign New York Times national correspondent Stephanie Strom was working on a blockbuster story connecting ACORN and the Obama campaign, but her editors (she said in a voicemail to her then confidential source, Anita MonCrief) told her to "stand down."

A review of Ms. Strom's articles on ACORN suggests that she was foreshadowing a story that her editors rightly feared would be "a game changer."

Ms. Strom, in "On Obama, Acorn and Voter Registration" (October 10, 2008):

"In 1992, Mr. Obama was personally involved in voter registration efforts when he served as director of Project Vote in Chicago, helping to register 150,000 voters on the South Side. His success was widely written about at the time and credited with helping to elect Senator Carol Moseley Braun, the first African-American woman in the Senate.

"Mr. LaBolt emphasized that Project Vote and Acorn were not as intertwined at that time as they are today, when a significant part of Project Vote’s revenues flow to Acorn and various of its affiliates as payment for services.

"But according to Sam Graham-Felsen, who blogs on the Obama campaign’s Web site, Mr. Obama himself linked his 1992 work to Acorn in a meeting with Acorn’s leaders in November.

“'Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drives in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work,' Mr. Obama said, according to a post Mr. Graham-Felsen made in February."

A New York Times story exposing ACORN as an unofficial arm of the Democrat Party and improper coordination between ACORN and the Obama campaign would have been a disaster for the Obama campaign and so Ms. Strom was told to "stand down."

ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief explained to me that The New York Times had killed an ACORN expose story involving the Obama donor list (the full one, including small donors, not the much shorter one filed with the Federal Election Commission and "watered down" other ACORN expose stories. I posted on this beginning October 22, 2008, but the mainstream media missed or ignored.

Ms. MonCrief appeared briefly on Fox News with Eric Shawn on Mother's Day to discuss ACORN.

The next day Ms. MonCrief was interviewed a bit longer (and lauded) by Megyn Kelly of Fox News in the morning and, for an hour, with Matthew Vadum of Capital Research Center, by G. Gordon Liddy in the afternoon.

If you want to hear the interview by Mr. Liddy (and if you care about the truth and America, you will), here's a link: www.capitalresearch.org/podcast/.

Mr. Vadum too was telling the ugly truth about ACORN before the last election.

From "Cracking ACORN: Vote fraud is just one of its illegal practices," posted on November 3, 2008 at National Review Online (article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MDY2ZWFjNTk4ZDdiZmFjYmY5YjQwMzhmMjM1YmNmOTA=)

"Massive, exhaustively documented electoral fraud is but a line-item on the radical left-wing direct-action group ACORN’s political balance sheet.

"In fact, the antics of the hyper-aggressive Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — which has taken in at least $126.4 million in donations and tax dollars since 1993 — cry out for a probe under federal racketeering laws.

"ACORN and its affiliates are not only reliable cheerleaders for higher taxes, but also longtime tax deadbeats. More than 200 federal, state, and local tax liens adding up to more than $3 million are associated with ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans. (See Foundation Watch, November 2008.)

"The IRS won’t say what kinds of taxes are owed, but accounting experts say they’re probably payroll taxes. This means ACORN, while aggressively advocating social and wealth-redistribution programs, in practice has been undermining those programs by stiffing Uncle Sam.

"ACORN uses a complex system of interlocking directorates to control its far-flung network of affiliates. Well, actually they’re not that far-flung. An intrepid blogger discovered that 294 ACORN affiliates operate out of ACORN’s building on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans.

"ACORN lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley raised the alarm about interlocking directorates and the dangerously close ties between ACORN and Project Vote in an internal report, the New York Times reported on October 22. There is so much overlap that 'we may not be able to prove that 501(c)3 resources are not being directed to specific regions based on impermissible partisan considerations,' Kingsley wrote in a reference to the tax code provision regulating charities.

"Capital Research Center discovered that ACORN moves money around its network with a boldness and agility that Pablo Escobar would have admired.

"ACORN affiliate Project Vote paid ACORN $10,861,825 (2000–2006), Citizens Services Inc. (CSI) $1,206,942 (2005–2006), and $1,266,967 to ACORN affiliate Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI) (2000–2004). Incidentally, Project Vote, ACORN, CSI, and CCI all share the same address in New Orleans.

"Other ACORN affiliates with the same Big Easy address swap funds all the time.

"Since 2000, the American Institute for Social Justice Inc. (AISJ) has paid ACORN at least $8,563,303. AISJ has paid CCI $362,464, and ACORN Associates Inc. $258,593. Since 2000, ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. paid its roommates, CCI and ACORN affiliate Peoples Equipment Resource Center $1,566,228 and (at least) $58,003, respectively.

"In 2002, AISJ gave a $9,637 loan to ACORN affiliate SEIU Local 100. The same year, AISJ received a $50,000 interest-free loan from the Tides Foundation and a $4,000 interest-free loan from liberal mega-funder George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

"These examples are just a few of ACORN’s unusual financial transactions. (More are listed in the Foundation Watch article mentioned to above.)

"Don’t count on Barack Obama to investigate the ACORN network’s forensic accounting make-work project if he becomes our next president.

"Obama’s ties to ACORN go back to at least 1992, when he ran a voter-registration drive for Project Vote. Obama helped train ACORN leaders, and he represented ACORN in a ballot-access case. The socialist 'New Party,' which served as ACORN’s electoral arm, endorsed Obama, who was one of its members, when he ran for the Illinois state senate in the mid-1990s.

"Last year, Obama promised a meeting of community organizers he would meet with ACORN after winning on Election Day. 'Before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we’re going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We’re going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.'

"The month before, Obama said: 'I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drives in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.' And during the primaries, the Obama presidential campaign paid $832,598 to ACORN affiliate CSI for get-out-the-vote activities.

"ACORN’s political action committee has endorsed Obama, as has the officially nonpartisan ACORN itself.

"In a video posted on YouTube on October 22, ACORN’s interim chief organizer Bertha Lewis thanked 'everyone out there for defending ACORN against the scurrilous right-wing attacks and smears.' She told the audience to 'vote for the community organizer Barack Obama.' (See the video here.)

"Let’s see ACORN try and spin its way out of this one."

Mr. Beck, if you want to present the whole truth about ACORN, I recommend that your interview Ms. MonCrief, Mr. Vadum and attorney Heather Heidelbaugh (for whom Ms. MonCrief testified as a witness in a Pennsylvania ACORN case last October).

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.