ACORN Mired in Scandal: Child Prostitution and Murder?

The story the major networks won't cover: Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ("ACORN"), President Obama's former "community organizing" left-wing employer, now is exposed as amenable to child prostitution, tax evasion, and murder?

http://biggovernment.com/

I should add that ACORN's Brooklyn, New York office also is implicated in the scandal, and that ACORN founded the New York Working Families Party, which is ACORN's political wing in New York, and is physically located at the same address as ACORN in Brooklyn, N.Y. So where are the civil and criminal investigations, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and New York state and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and the Eastern District of New York?

From http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968

"Sol Stern writes that ACORN, professing its dedication to "the poor and powerless," in fact "promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor." ACORN, Stern elaborates, organizes people "to push for ever more government control of the economy" and to pursue "the ultra-Left's familiar anti-capitalist redistributionism." This agenda is made plain in ACORN's own "People's Platform," which says: "We are the majority, forged from all the minorities. We will continue our fight … until we have shared the wealth …"

In the early Seventies, Wade Rathke and his ACORN co-founders enlisted civil-rights workers and trained them in a program (at Syracuse University) patterned after Saul Alinsky's activist tactics. Often those tactics were subtle, featuring the quiet infiltration of political, educational, and financial infrastructures by ACORN members. In other cases, the methods were brazenly confrontational.

Such tactics are by no means a thing of the past for ACORN. As recently as June 2009, an angry mob of at least 150 ACORN protesters nearly knocked New York state Sen. James Alesi, a Republican, down to the floor and also spat in the face of his chief of staff. The protesters were reportedly upset that two Democratic senators had decided to caucus with Republicans — a move that, when finalized by the state Senate, would hand Republicans control of that body.

As of May 2009, ACORN claimed more than 400,000 dues-paying member families and more than 1,200 chapters in 110 U.S. cities. (The organization is also active in Canada and Mexico). It owns two radio stations, a housing corporation, and a law office, and maintains affiliate relationships with a host of trade-union locals. In addition, ACORN runs schools where children are trained in class-consciousness (New York City's Bread and Roses High School and the ACORN High School for Social Justice); a network of "boot camps" for the training of street activists; and operations that extort contributions from banks and other businesses under threat of racial violence and trumped-up civil-rights charges.

In 1998 in New York, ACORN founded the Working Families Party (WFP), which endorses candidates for political office. WFP endorsed Hillary Clinton in her 2000 Senate race. Canvassers from ACORN and its sister groups launched a statewide voter-mobilization drive that proved influential in Clinton's victory. In November 2001, a coalition of radical politicians led by ACORN-sponsored candidates running on the WFP ticket won a veto-proof majority on the New York City Council, giving ACORN de facto control of the New York City government.

ACORN's current platform in New York calls for a rollback of welfare reforms; a crackdown on NYC police, including a ban on "racial and ethnic profiling"; and the appointment of a politicized Civilian Review Board newly empowered to prosecute police officers. ACORN also seeks to use its influence to raise corporate taxes, increase regulation, and empower unions with an array of new rights. Moreover, ACORN aims to prevent any corporation from being free to leave New York without first obtaining an "exit visa" from the City Council.

ACORN makes a great deal of money from its "community organizing" campaigns, and shows little tolerance for rival leftist groups infringing on its turf. For instance, when ACORN set up shop in San Francisco in May 2002, it discovered that many of its potential recruits -- low-income blacks and Hispanics -- were networked with the Outer Mission Resident's Association (OMRA). The San Francisco Examiner reports, "ACORN soon began a process of intimidation by busing in activists from Oakland to disrupt OMRA events. ACORN members then began showing up at some neighbors' homes, and in one case jabbed a person in the chest."

Since ACORN is a private corporation, it does not divulge its finances. Complicating any effort to calculate ACORN's income is the fact that the organization operates an enormous number of front groups, many of which conceal their relationship to ACORN. As of October 2008, there were at least 294 front groups, nonprofits, and businesses related to ACORN, the vast majority of which listed their headquarters as: 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana -- the site of a now-defunct funeral home.

In a November 2008 expose about ACORN, Matthew Vadum observes that although the organization has soaked up many millions of taxpayer dollars while agitating for ever-higher tax rates on American workers, it has failed to address its own tax obligations:

"Ironically, ACORN and its affiliates, all reliable cheerleaders for higher taxes, are longtime tax deadbeats. A search of public records found more than 200 federal, state, and local tax liens adding up to more than $3.7 million that are associated with groups that share ACORN's address on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans…. It is unclear what kinds of taxes ACORN and its affiliates failed to pay, but because almost all ACORN affiliates are exempted from paying most or all taxes, it seems likely that the liens were issued for non-payment of employees' payroll taxes. If so, this would be ironic because payroll taxes fund the social and wealth-distribution programs that ACORN so staunchly supports."

In addition to membership fees and government grants, ACORN (and its partner group the ACORN Institute) also have received large donations from a number of charitable foundations, including but not limited to the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the Minneapolis Foundation; the Open Society Institute; the Public Welfare Foundation; the Surdna Foundation; the Woods Fund of Chicago; the Scherman Foundation; the Ben and Jerry's Foundation; the Marguerite Casey Foundation; the Robin Hood Foundation; the Beldon Fund; the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation; the Haymarket People's Fund; the Streisand Foundation; the Union Bank of California Foundation; the Provident Bank Foundation; the JP Morgan Chase Foundation; the Bank of America Charitable Foundation; the US Bancorp Foundation; the PNC Foundation; the Wachovia Foundation; the Roseanne [Barr] Foundation; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the Lear Family Foundation; the Starbucks Foundation; the Arca Foundation; the Tides Foundation; the Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Trust; the Needmor Fund; the Citigroup Foundation; and the Democracy Alliance."