Posted by Tina
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ) has been charged with voter registration fraud in Nevada. The alleged charge filed by Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto states the organizations policies and handbook required employees to sign up twenty new voters each or face being fired.
The Nevada story can be found HERE. A history and map of ACORN fraud cases can be found HERE.
With such a terrible record it behooves us to ask: Does ACORN receive federal money? They deny the claim on their web page but with a caveat:
**The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now does not apply for nor does it receive any federal grants. *** ACORN has had contracts with other nonprofit organizations to perform work on projects which received federal grant support. For example, ACORN has received contracts to: Identify families eligible to receive food stamps and assist them to apply. ** Identify homeowners facing foreclosure and deliver them for housing counseling and loss mitigation services. ** Provide lead paint remediation services to households with children living in older neighborhoods. **
John Boehner (R-OH) begs to differ with ACORNS claim:
** ACORNs free ride on the backs of taxpayers must end immediately. An initial review of federal records shows ACORN affiliates have received at least $31 million in direct federal funding from American taxpayers over the past 10 years, and millions more indirectly through state and local agencies that receive federal block grants. House Republicans worked together to stop the Majority from using taxpayer dollars to fill a slush fund created just for ACORN, but now we must go further to turn off the spigot of federal grants on which ACORN depends” *** Boehner’s staff noted that one grant to an Albuquerque ACORN affiliate “is notable because it appears to facilitate and encourage the use of risky subprime loans” which is at the root of the current financial crisis. The title of the grant was for Education and Outreach Initiative/Subprime Lending Component. **
As noted in an earlier Post Scripts posting, ACORN has been chosen to assist the government in counting Americans for the official census. The Washington Times summed up the situation nicely:
** First it was President Obama trying to break all precedent and run the 2010 census from within the White House. While the administration finally backed down from that politicization of the census, it clearly hasn’t learned its lesson. Now it is having ACORN officially “partner” with the Census to help count the number of Americans in the country. It’s like Santa trusting a child to tell him how many times he or she has been good in the past year. **
(Note to our visiting friends from Free Republic: The photo posted above is not mine. “Free Republic.com” iappears to be written in very small letters at the bottom of the large poster…you guys really get around!)