Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy with a special focus on left-wing advocacy groups.
Vadum is an expert on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and has written more than 60 feature articles on the group and hundreds of blog posts. His groundbreaking research on ACORN was praised and cited by Michelle Malkin in her New York Times bestseller, "Culture of Corruption." Malkin credits Vadum with being one of two people in the nation with the "foresight and insight in reporting on the [ACORN] story when no one else would." Vadum's work is also cited in David Freddoso's New York Times bestseller, "The Case Against Barack Obama," John Fund's "Stealing Elections" (revised edition), and Peter Schweizer's "Architects of Ruin."
Matthew Vadum
Breaking: While An Anxious Nation Is Transfixed By The Healthcare Debate, The Obama Administration Restores ACORN Funding
by Matthew VadumWhile America is distracted by Democrats’ attempts to unconstitutionally ram government-run healthcare down the throats of the American people, the Obama administration began preparing to resume funding to President Obama’s favorite community organizing group.
The fiscal floodgates are opening for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the president’s former employer and legal client, despite a congressional ban on funding the activist group that has long been a practitioner of election fraud.
In a March 16 memo Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Peter Orszag quietly ordered federal agencies to resume funding the group whose employees were caught on hidden camera videos last year condoning a variety of crimes including child prostitution and tax evasion.
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ACORN Official: Gangster Group Will Be Bankrupt Soon But Fake Spinoff Groups Will Carry On The Corruption
by Matthew VadumThe ACORN crime syndicate is not going away anytime soon, but it’s going to look different.
ACORN will probably run out of money and fold by year’s end but a dozen ACORN state chapters reincorporated to seem like new, independent organizations will spring up in the next week to carry on ACORN’s business, a leaked email from ACORN’s online director suggests.
“The truth is that it is hard for us to forsee [sic] any scenario where ACORN continues beyond the end of 2010 and some of us think it might not last that long,” writes Nathan Henderson-James, director of ACORN’s online campaigns, in an apparently authentic Feb. 22 email.
“Last one to leave turn out the lights and wipe the server,” he writes at the end of the message.
In the email Henderson-James explains the subterfuge ACORN will use to lead Americans to believe ACORN is breaking apart.
“It is definitely true that over the next week or so we should see a dozen or more organizations launched on the state level by staff who used to work for ACORN and leaders who developed their skills as ACORN members. These are not just simple name changes, but reimaginings of how best to organize low and moderate income constitiuencies [sic] without any of the legal problems and funding issues dogging ACORN, not to mention the brand damage.”
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ACORN Crime Family Shutting Down Nationwide: Launching Renaming Effort
by Matthew VadumACORN is attempting to perpetrate yet another spectacular fraud on the American people in order to keep tax dollars and foundation grants flowing into its coffers.
With the fallout from the hidden camera videos last fall, congressional funding of ACORN’s election fraud and racketeering business is no longer guaranteed, so ACORN is trying to pass off various state chapters as ”new” groups
As part of the radical group’s fraudulent rebranding scheme, ACORN has renamed its New York chapter New York Communities for Change. Unlike on the West coast where ACORN is at least pretending its renamed California chapter (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment or ACCE) is not part of the ACORN network, New York Communities for Change shares the same Nevins Street address as ACORN’s Brooklyn office.
A March 4 fundraiser for New York Communities for Change is being hosted by Debra Cooper.
Meanwhile, the Massachusetts branch of ACORN has been renamed New England United for Justice.
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Ex-Moderate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) Embraces Communist Van Jones
by Matthew VadumFacing what could become a bruising primary battle, appointed U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is embracing one of President Obama’s best known communist appointees, former green jobs czar Van Jones.
The Hill reports Gillibrand will share the stage with Jones at a panel discussion sponsored by the Advocacy Project at the Harvard Club in New York. Jones, a self-described “communist,” was pushed out of the Obama administration five months ago following the embarrassing revelation that he was a 9/11 “truther” who had signed a petition accusing the U.S. government of orchestrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
For a time, Jones had been politically radioactive to Democrats but Gillibrand’s decision to work alongside him appears to bring Jones’s political exile to an end.
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CRS Report On ACORN An Incompetent Whitewash
by Matthew VadumApparently Congressional Research Service employees are as good at research as ACORN employees are at registering voters.
Not surprisingly, the new Congressional Research Service report on ACORN continues the Democrats’ coverup of President Obama’s favorite advocacy group.
The CRS report commissioned by House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) –both longtime ACORN allies– is a whitewash.
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Soros Wants IMF To Subsidize His Green Investments
by Matthew VadumLeftist troublemaker George Soros has already made it explicitly clear he wishes to destroy capitalism.
Maybe the Third World will help the hedge fund manager and currency manipulator do it.
The preeminent funder of the left in America wants the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to become a kind of globetrotting Bernard Madoff, offering low-interest loans to poor countries so they can invest in the doomed global warming industry.
George Soros, owner, Democratic Party
According to Soros, the loans would allow developing countries to “jump-start forestry, land use, and agricultural projects – areas that offer the greatest scope for reducing or mitigating carbon emissions, and that could produce substantial returns from carbon markets.”
Soros, who personally wants to invest $1 billion in “clean” technology, wants the IMF to help stimulate demand for the technology he plans to underwrite.
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ACORN’s Federal Lobbying Shenanigans
by Matthew VadumACORN is no stranger to shady lobbying practices.
Months before GOP investigators on the House Oversight and Government Committee revealed that ACORN appears to be lobbying illegally in Delaware, a former ACORN employee alleged ACORN violated federal lobbying laws.
The ex-ACORN employee, Ron Sykes, said that Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve center of the ACORN network, filed false lobbying disclosure reports with Congress.
This is important because, as former ACORN national board member Charles Turner said earlier this year on “The Glenn Beck Program,” CCI “is where the shell game begins.”
“ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved around to – for this purpose to that purpose, this organization to that organization,” said Turner. “We believe the way the money has been moved around, they’ve been laundering money.”
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ACORN Whitewash: ACORN Report Is Dishonest Legal Hair-Splitting
by Matthew VadumI participated in listen-only mode in the teleconference call Monday in which ACORN’s allegedly independent “audit” was released.
I regret it was difficult to make out what the players were saying.
That’s because as the left ferociously circled the wagons, all the creaking wheel noises in the background drowned out much of what was said.
Scott Harshbarger, ACORN ally and former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
One the main points that ACORN ally and former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger and ACORN CEO/chief organizer Bertha Lewis were trying to make was that ACORN, i.e. the lead entity that controls the ACORN network, and ACORN Housing, are separate entities.
Because ACORN Housing and ACORN are different organizations neither is responsible for the other, they argued. In other words, ACORN is not responsible for ACORN Housing employees caught on video encouraging illegal behavior, and vice versa, they reasoned.
Harshbarger said on the conference call
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Eric Holder Won’t Investigate His Radical Friends at ACORN
by Matthew VadumAttorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18. He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that used to employ President Obama and White House political director Patrick Gaspard counts for nothing.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (center) with ACORN ally Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (left), and former California Gov. Gray Davis (right).
But Americans really shouldn’t be surprised that Attorney General Holder is bending over backwards to help his radical friends at ACORN.
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ACORN Still Owes $2.3 Million in Overdue Taxes
by Matthew VadumACORN and its affiliates are content to impose crippling big-government laws, regulations, and taxes on Americans, but when called upon to obey those same rules, ACORN’s network of scofflaws and deadbeats simply refuses to comply.
ACORN and its affiliates currently owe more than $2.3 million in long overdue back taxes to all levels of government.
It's deathly quiet at the former funeral home at 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans. (photo: Kevin Kane)
As of Nov. 11 the exact figure was $2,328,596.95.
ACORN owes money to the IRS, Arkansas, California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and to the cities of New York and Philadelphia.
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BREAKING: More Proof of White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard’s Ties To ACORN Surfaces
by Matthew VadumIt’s becoming more and more difficult for the Obama White House to deny that White House political director Patrick Gaspard has strong, longstanding ties to the corrupt activist group ACORN.
Gaspard is a longtime operative for ACORN and one of its political parties, New York’s Working Families Party.
Internal ACORN documents show Gaspard gave ACORN $40,000 over the past two years while he worked as an executive vice president of Service Employees International Union Local 1199 in New York.
That’s an awfully large tithe for someone who made $111,894 in 2007 and who has a wife and two children. The $111,894 figure comes from SEIU 1199′s most recent publicly available tax return.
Moreover, Gaspard hails from New York which has a crushing tax burden, especially for individuals earning six-figure salaries — and he lived in the upscale neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was unclear at press time if Gaspard’s wife contributes to the family fisc.
It is also entirely possible that the $40,000 Gaspard handed over to ACORN was SEIU money.
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Citigroup Executive Pulls Out of Sham ACORN Audit Under Pressure
by Matthew VadumCitigroup executive Eric Eve (pictured below) has resigned from ACORN’s phony, allegedly independent panel of inquiry, a move that removes one of the few people on the panel who could even remotely claim to actually be independent.
If you read between the lines, it also seems to mean Citigroup agrees the panel is a sham.
Eve, senior vice president of Global Consumer Group, Community Relations, at Citigroup, quit after the National Legal and Policy Center pressed Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit to cut ties with ACORN.
In a letter to NLPC president Peter Flaherty, Citigroup announced Eve’s resignation from the panel.
“We too are deeply concerned about the recent media reports regarding ACORN and, because of those reports, have suspended our charitable financial support and program relationships with ACORN, and we are awaiting the results of the independent audit of ACORN activities now underway,” wrote Natalie Abatemarco, Citigroup’s vice president, Global Community Relations.
“On a related topic, please be advised that Eric Eve has resigned his position on the ACORN Advisory Council,” she added.
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The Soros Plan To Kill Capitalism
by Matthew VadumHaving purchased, rented, or placed a down payment on all the political influence up for sale in America, leftist troublemaker George Soros now plans to ramp up his war on markets worldwide by creating an “Institute for New Economic Thinking” (INET).
“The system we have now has actually broken down, only we haven’t quite recognized it and so you need to create a new one and this is the time to do it,” Soros told the Financial Times last month.
Soros said he wants Communist China to run this new financial system. “You really need to bring China into the creation of a new world order, a financial world order,” Soros said.
If that doesn’t send a chill down the spines of freedom lovers in America and elsewhere, nothing will.
In an interview with Der Spiegel last year Soros said European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful — but also very harmful to our society.”
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ACORN Operative Patrick Gaspard Received Colleague at White House
by Matthew VadumWhite House political director Patrick Gaspard met with ACORN spokesman and lobbyist Scott Levenson, a former co-worker, at the White House the Obama administration disclosed Friday.
Levenson’s inclusion in the newly released list of visitors to the Obama White House makes the president’s claim he’s clueless about his former employer ACORN — and its election fraud trials and tribulations — especially difficult to believe. That’s because Gaspard is President Obama’s right hand man. Some describe him as the new Karl Rove.
The purpose of the visit by Levenson (pictured below) who met with Gaspard in March was not disclosed.
The relentlessly combative Levenson, who is also a registered lobbyist for New York ACORN, was thrown out of Glenn Beck’s TV studio May 6 for suggesting during a commercial break that the TV host was racist for daring to challenge ACORN. Levenson’s been helping to coordinate ACORN’s public disinformation strategy which relies heavily on lies and misdirection.
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BREAKING: ACORN Ally Nadler Resists Probe While Giving ACORN Advice
by Matthew VadumWashington has long been a place where ethics are flexible. If mainstream media outlets are snoozing, it’s easy to get away with a lot.
The mainstream media has paid very little attention to the ties between Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs a House Judiciary subcommittee that might be called upon to investigate ACORN, and Nadler’s close working relationship with ACORN.
Nadler a longtime ACORN ally who has run for Congress on the ticket of ACORN’s political party, the Working Families Party of New York, is now offering advice to ACORN on how it should try to weather the controversies currently embroiling it.
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ACORN Filmmakers Batting 1.000 But Media Matters Says It’s “Statistically Insignificant”
by Matthew VadumAs damning video after video is released showing ACORN’s willingness to counsel lawbreakers, no one has been more willing to assassinate the character of ACORN’s opponents than the hired guns at the left-wing group Media Matters for America.
As I noted yesterday, thin-skinned Jamison Foser of Media Matters wrote Oct. 16 that “some conservative activists induced a statistically insignificant number of the organization’s low-level employees to behave badly.” [emphasis added]
Setting aside the question of whether the ACORN employees were “induced” by activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles to do things they wouldn’t have already been willing to do, was the number of ACORN personnel behaving badly statistically insignificant? Let’s take a look at that claim.
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PHILLY VIDEO IS MORE PROOF: Liberal Smear Merchants ‘Media Matters for America’ Will Slime Anyone Who Takes on ACORN
by Matthew VadumThroughout the ACORN undercover sting video saga, no one has been more willing to assassinate the character of ACORN’s opponents than the hired guns at the left-wing group Media Matters for America.
Headed by former journalist and confessed serial liar David Brock, the extremely well-funded Washington, D.C.-based defamation factory has gone out of its way to attack conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, online news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, and this website – the truth be damned.
It’s worth noting that even the New York Times describes Media Matters as a “highly partisan research organization.”
Media Matters is only interested in generating a body count and won’t let facts get in the way.
Nothing better illustrates the depths to which Media Matters is willing to sink in order to protect its allies and smear its opponents than its outrageously irresponsible commentary on the ACORN undercover video saga.
Remember that ACORN provides the “shock troops” of the left. ACORN gets the vote out. ACORN wins elections. Those Democratic politicians who don’t love ACORN fear it – and for good reason. To the establishment left, ACORN must be defended at all costs.
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Is ACORN’s Bertha Lewis Even Capable Of Telling The Truth?
by Matthew VadumDid ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis say anything that was true in her recent speech at the National Press Club?
The embattled ACORN CEO deserved an Academy Award nomination for her virtuoso performance in which she not only depicted ACORN as an innocent victim but also as a whistleblower that tried to nip the subprime mortgage crisis in the bud.
She blamed everyone but herself: “We’ve seen this play before, whether it was the civil rights movement or whatever, when you organize poor people to have real power, what you do is often turned against you.”
She blamed Republicans: “The RNC…because we’ve been inflated as the boogeyman, raises almost $2 million a day, every day, and this form of modern-day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop.”
Lewis’s statement about the Republican National Committee was immediately torpedoed by RNC chairman Michael Steele who defended ACORN.
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Breaking: Cross-Dressing Escort Registered by ACORN Imprisoned for Voter Fraud, ACORN Probe Continues in Ohio
by Matthew VadumACORN just can’t seem to stay away from hookers.
The activist group, which has long worked with criminals as it preys on the weak and the troubled, is on the verge of yet another public relations catastrophe.
That’s because a cross-dressing Ohio male escort whom ACORN registered multiple times to vote was convicted of full-fledged vote fraud in addition to the lesser crime of voter registration fraud. A spokesman for Cleveland prosecutor Bill Mason (an elected Democrat) confirmed yesterday that a local investigation of ACORN remains wide open.
The conviction of Darnell Nash (shown in photo above), apparently known by several aliases including Serina “Sexy Slay” Gibbs, is hugely significant for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that ACORN has long maintained that vote fraud, as opposed to the lesser crime of voter registration fraud, essentially never happens.
It appears to be another historic first for ACORN.
ACORN’s Ohio chapter had a run-in with another alleged prostitute last fall.
A woman named Shari Bell who was allegedly a crack cocaine user, prostitute, and ACORN worker, was arrested on drug and prostitution charges in October. Bell was arrested by Cincinnati police after she allegedly offered an undercover cop sex for money. Police found a crack pipe in the pocket of her coat.
Real the full story at American Spectator.
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ACORN and SEIU Have Been Going Steady a Long Time: Did They Break Up?
by Matthew VadumNow that ACORN is drowning is an ocean of adverse publicity, its longtime ally the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) claims to have broken with the embattled radical left-wing activist group.
Last week SEIU international secretary-treasurer Anna Burger dropped this political bombshell that has been ignored by the mainstream media.
In response to a question from Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) posed during a meeting of the House Financial Services Committee, Burger casually noted that her union “cut all ties to ACORN.”
In an interview Monday night I asked SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette what Burger meant when she said SEIU had cut all ties with ACORN.
Ringuette replied, “We have suspended all contracts and active work with ACORN,” pending the results of a panel of inquiry looking into ACORN. SEIU boss Andy Stern sits on that supposedly independent panel.
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