ACORN is dead. Isn’t that what we were told after ACORN workers were caught on tape helping undercover reporters evade prostitution laws? In fact, following the media outburst that resulted from the undercover videos, President Obama himself signed into law an ACORN funding ban that included any affiliate and/or subsidiary. And the organization filed bankruptcy.

But as Judicial Watch announced in September with the release of our groundbreaking report, “The Rebranding of ACORN,” rumors of ACORN’s demise were completely fabricated. Far from defunct, the former “community organization” has splintered into difficult-to-track organizations across the country. (Former ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis calls them “bullet-proof community-organizing Frankensteins.”) And, just like their predecessors, these new ACORN spin-offs are prepared to wreak havoc on the 2012 elections.

One of those ACORN offshoots is the Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA), which was previously known as ACORN Housing.

In July 2011 Judicial Watch uncovered a $79,819 grant to AHCOA. The Obama administration claimed this grant did not violate the ban because the two organizations were separate and distinct. We said the two organizations were virtually indistinguishable and the grant was unlawful.

Well, according to The Daily Caller, at least one influential non-profit organization has conducted an audit of AHCOA indicating the Obama administration operated outside the law:

A newly released internal audit appears to indicate that the Government Accountability Office and President Barack Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development incorrectly argued that a specific organization wasn’t ACORN-affiliated.

HUD’s office of general counsel and the GAO have both claimed that Affordable Housing Centers of America, or AHCOA, is not affiliated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. AHCOA formerly called itself ACORN Housing, but changed its name after the 2009 ACORN meltdown.

The Obama administration has awarded more than $700,000 in taxpayer funds to AHCOA despite a 2010 law stipulating that no taxpayer funds could be awarded to ACORN “or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations.”

You can read the audit, which was uncovered by the group Cause of Action, for yourself, here.

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Lisa Fithian–the radical organizer whose role in Occupy was first exposed at Big Government–has apparently confirmed that ACORN-linked organizations are leading the Occupy movement’s next major protest action against banks nationwide.

Fox News reported earlier today that remnants of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the radical community organizing group that collapsed after its corruption was exposed by Big Government, are playing a “behind the scenes” role in organizing the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

The Fox News investigation followed Matthew Vadum’s report two weeks ago at Big Government that ACORN was paying people to attend the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York through the Working Families Party, an ACORN front group.

Now, Big Government has learned that in an email (below) sent by Fithian to Occupy organizers and supporters on October 22, 2011, she reported that the “New Bottom Line”–an effort to move as much money out of major banks as possible on November 5th–is being led by several ACORN-linked organizations: “National People’s Action, National Pico Network, and Alliance for Just and Sustainable Economy and other key state groups like ACCE in CA, NYCC in NY, or MORE in St. Louis.”

Fithian New Bottom Line

ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), NYCC (New York Communities for Change), and MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment), are apparently nothing more than reconstituted ACORN branches.

National People’s Action, PICO National Network, and Alliance for a Just Society are all closely linked to ACORN. At the time of ACORN’s collapse, National People’s Action in particular vowed publicly to pick up where ACORN left off: “Organizations can come and go, but what’s important is that people who want to come together should have the opportunity to…identify their interests and work on them together.” These groups have also collaborated on similar ACORN-style campaigns against banks in the recent past.

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Evidence suggests that ACORN, the left’s premiere astro-turfing organization, has been paying people to participate in the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Astro-turfing campaigns can generate big money, and ACORN’s lucrative protest-for-profit program is nothing new. As I note in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, ACORN has acquired great expertise in manufacturing so-called grassroots protests.

Left-wing billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler, the founders of World Savings Bank, gave ACORN affiliates close to $11 million to manufacture mobs to protest their competition in subprime mortgage lending. The United Federation of Teachers paid ACORN $500,000 to create a spontaneous uprising against charter schools in Manhattan.

The SEIU-funded Working Families Party, a front group for ACORN, placed a want ad on Craigslist dated Sept. 26. The ad indicates that WFP was recruiting activists to carry out “direct action,” leftist argot for a variety of activities aimed at forcing sociopolitical change.

The line between direct action and violent terrorism can become blurry. Extreme forms of direct action can lead to bodily injury and sometimes death. The labor movement is no stranger to assault and killings. Left-wing activists David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin participated in an attack on an armored car that left two police officers and a security guard dead. Two anarchists tried to disrupt the 2008 GOP convention with Molotov cocktails. The eco-terrorist Sea Shepherd Conservation Society admits both to attacking whaling ships with acid and sinking them.

WFP’s ad is titled, “FIGHT TO HOLD WALLSTREET [sic] ACCOUNTABLE NOW! MAKE A DIFFERNENCE [sic] GET PAID!” It states:

The WFP is seeking immediate hires.

You must be an energetic communicator, with a passion for social and economic justice.

Only outgoing, articulate dedicated, determined candidates will be considered for the positions.

For those candidates that qualify WFP offers substantial paid-training provided by senior leadership, on varied issues such as: advocacy, public speaking, mobilizing, fundraising, networking and organizing. We invest in passionate people with excellent communication skills and a full benefits package is offered to those candidates that qualify. In addition, there is opportunity for advancement and travel to our satellite chapters and out of state affiliates.

This is not a policy job! Through direct action you will be shaping NY state politics for the next 20 years.” [emphasis added]

As previously reported, WFP has been involved in organizing the Occupy Wall Street protests since the beginning.

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The Working Families Party, an infamous ACORN front group notorious for corruption, was instrumental in organizing the Occupy Wall Street protests, according to radical journalist Laura Flanders of Free Speech TV.

The protests, which have spread to several other large U.S. cities, are part of what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke calls an “anti-banking jihad.”

Working Families Party (WFP) organizer Nelini Stamp has “been here since day one and she is part of the organizing team and the outreach team that has managed to bridge the distance between that first day and this day and between the grassroots folks here and the labor movement,” Flanders said at the protest in lower Manhattan.

We are “actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today because it’s not working for any of us,” Stamp told Flanders in an interview. Demonstrators are asking “how do we really reform and bring revolutionary changes to the states?”

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Why is the Obama administration defying federal law by funding ACORN?

Judicial Watch discovered that the president is flouting the will of Congress by surreptitiously giving federal taxpayer money to ACORN, his former employer and legal client. This is the first such grant to surface this year but more are certain to follow.

Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave a $79,819 grant to a Florida office of the largest branch of the ACORN tree, the massive conglomerate known as ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC). AHC filed papers last year legally changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). Despite the nifty new moniker, it’s the same old corrupt, antisocial organization.

As I wrote in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, ACORN Housing grew out of crime: trespassing. It emerged from a 1982 squatting campaign in which ACORN built a squatters’ tent city behind the White House. Rampaging ACORN activists break in and illegally occupy property already owned by others – and your tax dollars subsidize this criminal activity.

The secretary of HUD is Shaun Donovan. Donovan and ACORN are tight. (Donovan and ACORN’s then-chief organizer Bertha Lewis are seen in the above screen grab from footage shot for the documentary film Battle for Brooklyn.)

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(continued from Part 2)

It should come as no surprise that on the campaign trail, President Obama refused to be interviewed about Saul Alinsky, the community organizing guru who wrote Rules for Radicals, a how-to guide for destroying American capitalism and democracy.

Presumably Obama, who taught courses on Alinsky’s brutal, sometimes violent organizing techniques, declined to speak to reporters about the late guru. He must have realized that such an interview would throw an unwanted spotlight on Alinsky’s radicalism, and by extension, his own. Such counterproductive publicity would also have undermined the candidate’s efforts to reinvent himself as a moderate. Alinsky’s adherents now dominate the modern Democratic Party establishment. Apart from President Obama himself, they include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, Federal Communications Commission diversity chief Mark Lloyd, Obama’s ex-green jobs czar Van Jones, former DNC trainer Heather Booth, Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to name just a few. “Who the hell isn’t [an Alinskyite] in this administration?” asks conservative author David Horowitz.

And President Obama hasn’t been the only longtime ACORN operative working in the White House. There’s also the low-profile Patrick Gaspard who, until recently, was White House political affairs director, one of the titles Karl Rove held in President Bush’s White House.

In a move that ought to disturb anyone who cares about the integrity of the democratic process, earlier this year Gaspard took over the reins of the Democratic National Committee as its executive director—just in time to begin initial preparations for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Gaspard hails from the same world of radical left-wing community organizing that made Barack Obama who he is today. Gaspard is an expert in the harsh, street-smart organizing tactics taught by Alinsky. He’s the hatchet man Obama sent to New York over a year ago to strong-arm then-Gov. David Paterson into dropping his reelection campaign. As executive director running the DNC’s day-to-day operations, Gaspard will oversee Organizing for America, a project of the DNC supposedly modeled on Alinskyite organizing principles.

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(continued from Part 1)

Amazingly, ACORN’s 40 years of lawlessness have been heavily subsidized by taxpayers. From the federal government alone, the ACORN network has received at least $79 million in federal taxpayer funding. No one knows how many millions of dollars ACORN has taken in from states and localities. Yet as of November 2009, ACORN was a tax deadbeat, owing more than $2.3 million in back taxes to all levels of government.

Bertha Lewis

You don’t have to take my word that ACORN will soon arise from the ashes. Nathan Henderson-James, longtime director of the group’s online campaigns, confirmed in a leaked February 2010 e-mail that ACORN plans to come back. America’s most notorious nonprofit felt it needed to perform this trick because its employees were caught red-handed repeatedly counseling a fake pimp and prostitute on the finer points of establishing a brothel for pedophiles. ACORN calculated that people would forget the transgressions of the taxpayer-subsidized nonprofit best known for its voter fraud efforts.

In the e-mail that came five months after conservative activist-journalists James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles punked ACORN with their “pimp and pro” routine, Henderson-James explained the group’s ongoing hoax that consists of its state chapters separately incorporating under new, innocuous-sounding names. “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,” he wrote. “These are not just simple name changes, but reimaginings of how best to organize” low and moderate income constituencies “without any of the legal problems and funding issues dogging ACORN, not to mention the brand damage.” Stepping out of the spotlight for a while is a “tactically smart … reaction to the global situation that helps the work of building power for poor people to continue,” he wrote.

The secret operation was already underway when Henderson-James bragged about the effort to his radical and liberal friends on Townhouse, an invitation only left-wingers’ online discussion forum run by Matt Stoller, who was senior policy adviser to colorful former Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla. In late 2009 and early 2010, ACORN staffers across America created a plethora of separate organizations aimed at carrying on ACORN’s corrupt affairs.

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**UPDATED

President Barack Obama has won praise from the media — and from himself — for putting the White House visitor logs online. Yet the visitor logs may hide more than they reveal.

The White House is still holding back “tens of thousands” of visitor logs, according to congressional testimony last week by Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, who also added that “the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration.”

We also know that some of the most important presidential visitors don’t even walk into the White House. The administration meets K Street lobbyists at Caribou Coffee, and holds secret meetings in Jackson Place townhouses where there are no visitor logs.

The visitor logs that have been released are problematic, because they are simply lists of names, with no way to verify whether a specific name belongs to a particular person.

When the first names were released on Oct. 30, 2009, late on a Friday afternoon, then-White House “ethics czar” Norm Eisen noted the lists included “false positives” — “names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else.” According to Eisen, these included ordinary visitors named “Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly (“R. Kelly”), and Malik Shabazz.” (more…)

Last year I wrote in Big Government about ACORN”S most successful criminal enterprise, the New  York Working Families Party. Linked directly to voter fraud in New York State, ACORN quietly changed it’s name in the State and it’s chief political honcho quietly “retired”, when prosecutors starteed examining their activities. But don think the vote stealing and voter fraud by the WFP has stopped.

AP reported last week -

“TROY, N.Y. — A Troy Democratic councilman in Troy and the Democratic elections commissioner for Rensselaer County face charges that they forged absentee ballots in a Working Families Party primary in 2009. A county grand jury has accused Councilman Michael LoPorto and Commissioner Edward G. McDonough of participating in a scheme in which dozens of bogus absentee ballots were submitted in the names of unsuspecting Troy residents.LoPorto and McDonough were arraigned Friday and are now free on bail. Special Prosecutor Trey Smith began investigating after the Times Union, of Albany, interviewed a number of people who were surprised to learn that their names had appeared on ballot applications.”

The two men pleaded not guilty Friday to a combined 116 felony counts alleging they falsified dozens of  absentee ballots.  The ballots not only involve clearly forged signatures, but also, falsifying excuses for not being present to vote  and registering individuals who no longer live in the area. In some cases a false promise of a trip to a Las Vegas casino was used as an inducement to fill out absentee applications. WFP leaders and their Democratic allies have no qualms about forging absentees to keep control of their political arm.

The WFP has been proven to be nothing more than a front for ACORN and its left-ward agenda.

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Incredible timing with this news.  Bad news dump of the year?  The Los Angeles Times reports:

ACORN, a national organization whose mission included registering and turning out low-income and minority voters, announced on this election day that it was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Founded in 1970, the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now had in recent years become a target of conservatives who accused the group of engaging in widespread voter fraud. It was forced to scale back its efforts after a scandal erupted, centered around undercover video footage that purported to show ACORN staff helping young activists posing as a pimp and prostitute engage in illegal activity.

Subsequent investigations found that the footage had been substantially edited, but the damage was done. Congress ultimately passed Republican-backed amendments to appropriations legislation that ended federal funding for the group.

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It looks like Matt Damon’s been overdosing on Kool-Aid again.  He’s apparently doing the bidding now for the ACORN spawn, Working Families Party.  Watch as he asks you for his birthday present.

I’m about to celebrate a very important birthday myself, Matt.  On November 13^th, I turn 41 ! I know, I can’t believe it either.

If there’s something you want to give me for my birthday that’s going to really cheer me up, please tell the recently departing Working Families Party co-chair Bertha Lewis to stop referring to constitutional conservatism as “McCarthyism”.  And while you’re at it, could you please ask your friend, President Obama not to call American citizens “enemies” simply for not belonging to his political party?

I think maybe it’s time to step away from Soroswood and start paying attention to the real world.

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Citing massive irregularities and gross taxpayer funding abuses, federal investigators are recommending that government funding for ACORN’s still operating housing affiliate be cut off immediately.

Investigators must have felt it was necessary to urge the funding cutoff because the federal government’s prohibition on funding ACORN isn’t a permanent ban. It exists at the whim of lawmakers and runs out at the end of this month. This is the finding of an analysis by Capital Research Center (which has been tracking ACORN since 1998).

Investigators may also have wanted to remind the public that ACORN is still alive. Reports of ACORN’s demise continue to be churned out by misinformed journalists who  amplify the zombie group’s lies. In recent days the Washington Post incorrectly described ACORN as “a dead NGO,” and Slate said ACORN has “stopped existing.” More on this in a moment.

The Sept. 21 report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Inspector General found that ACORN Housing, which changed its name earlier this year to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHC), may have concealed fraud by destroying or failing to produce records.

ACORN violated federal rules on how grants are to be used. The group charged the government salary costs for employees after they were terminated, the report said, and violated federal procurement standards.

The report suggested ACORN corruptly funneled taxpayer dollars to its affiliates and engaged in money laundering. ACORN has taken in more than $19 million in housing counseling grants since 1995 from HUD. NeighborWorks, a congressionally chartered nonprofit, gave ACORN $25.9 million. ACORN Housing has received more than $27.3 million from other federal and non-federal sources, the report said.

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It’s only a trespassing charge, but there is something really gratifying about seeing the corrupt, race-baiting Bertha Lewis being led away in handcuffs. This happened just yesterday, at an immigration rally in NYC. Skip ahead to the 7:30 mark to see the arrest (Lewis is dressed in all white, at the far left of the still image below):

Their attempt to feign patriotism by singing the national anthem is despicable, as the immigration “reform” movement is only the latest front in the ongoing war socialists are waging against our nation.

But don’t take my word for it, Bertha Lewis outlined the whole strategy just a couple of months ago: (more…)

A federal court of appeals overturned Clinton-appointee Judge Nina Gershon’s ruling that claimed the government had the right and responsibility to fund ACORN.

Thank God, in light of the latest antics from ACORN Chief Organizer Berth Lewis.  While applauding the Young Democratic Socialists, she said, “Any group that says, ‘I’m young, I’m Democratic, and I’m a socialist,’ is all right with me.”

I’m glad the real socialists, with the ear of our government, are finally standing up to be counted.

The Tea Parties, which Lewis called a “bowel movement,” are bringing America into a phase that will surpass Jim Crow, McCarthism and the Japanese internment camps of World War II.

This woman, who has overseen an organization and employees accused and/or convicted of voter registration fraud in well over a dozen states, has no shame.

Lewis’ actions, both past and present, show why her organization isn’t worthy of our hard-earned tax dollars.

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The New York Times reported today that long-suffering Brooklyn homeowner Daniel Goldstein has finally been forced out by the state’s eminent domain abuse in the Atlantic Yards case. And the paper turned to ACORN chief Bertha Lewis for some gloating commentary:

Bertha Lewis, a housing advocate who supported the project, bid Mr. Goldstein “good riddance.”

“Low- and moderate-income people had to wait years for housing while he obstructed the Atlantic Yards project,” she said.

Of course, Lewis is much more than just a “housing advocate who supported the project,” she was the CEO of ACORN, a group that signed a contract with Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner “to publicly support the [Atlantic Yards] Project by, among other things, appearing with the Developer before the Public Parties, community organizations and the media as part of a coordinated effort to realize and advance the Project.” In return, Ratner pledged to include a certain amount of “affordable housing” in the project, units that ACORN stood to make a fortune from marketing and managing. As the New York Post reported, “Anita MonCrief, a former ACORN official-turned-whistleblower, estimates the anticipated deal could bring the group $5 million to $10 million annually over multiple years.”

And the money didn’t stop there.

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If the video clip of Bertha Lewis I posted yesterday exposed her disturbing views on the tea party and conservatives in general, as well as her support for genuine socialism, the clip I am going to post here reveals the means by which she and others on the left plan on achieving their radical goals. For all the phony accusations against the Tea Party movement for racism and fomenting violence, if there is anything which will lead to racial violence and civic unrest in this country it’s the agenda on display here – watch:

Transcript:

First of all, let me just say that any group that says “I’m young, I’m democratic, and I’m a socialist” is alright with me. [applause]

The reason that you have to build your organization, and make it as big and as powerful as you can, is because you need to get into real battles. And here’s what I think you need to do. And you need make sure that you get into this battle. The next big battle that’s coming…whether healthcare lives or dies…[break]

Immigration is the next big battle. Immigration, immigration, immigration. And the reason this is so important is, you know, here’s the secret [whispers]:

We’re getting ready to me a majority, minority country. Shhhh. [applause] We’ll be like South Africa. More black people than white people. [laughter] Don’t tell anybody.

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There is something very important to consider about the recent Bertha Lewis rant posted earlier on Big Government, in which she referred to the Tea Party movement as a “Bowel movement”. Something that has thus far been largely overlooked.

While it is important to consider the implications of Bertha using this kind of language to describe average Americans, the actual story is not just what she said, it’s who she said it to.

Bertha was addressing the Young Democratic Socialists. This is not just some fringe, esoteric, Socialist youth group.

The Young Democratic Socialists is the on-campus section of the Democratic Socialists of America.

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Apparently CEO Bertha Lewis said of ACORN yesterday “we’re on life support”. Well, I think ACORN’s remaining benefactors might be a little closer to pulling the plug once and for all after watching this bizarre rant from Ms. Lewis from just a few weeks ago. She is speaking at the Winter Conference of the Young Democratic Socialists on March 25, 2010 – watch:

As I’ve said elsewhere, I think it is unbecoming of conservatives to engage in hyperbole and personal attacks. We should allow this to remain the primary tool of our opponents. Lewis is clearly a bit unhinged here, but the underlying debate is an important one for the future of America. Frankly, I wish more “progressives” would express their views so openly. The debate between socialist values of collectivism and government control, and traditional American values of individual liberty and free enterprise is one we should relish.

The White House recently rescinded the ban on federal funding for ACORN after a court order, as reported by Matthew Vadum here yesterday. While the Justice Department is vigorously appealing in an attempt to re-instate this ban, it is a little late for the President, key Democrats, and certain members of the progressive media to distance themselves from Lewis and ACORN now. As much as they might like to.

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The organized crime syndicate known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which has been making much ado about its feigned withdrawal from the national political stage, continues doing business as usual.

Proof comes in the form of an email, which went out to ACORN supporters on April 16 and which came two weeks after ACORN’s faked dissolution on April Fool’s Day as a national organization.

ACORN_email_April162010

Writes ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis:

ACORN is not dead!

ACORN is alive because you are alive and still fighting for justice. Over the past 40 years, ACORN members have been through a lot in the fight to empower working families and families of color — and it has been the commitment of people like you, regular folks doing extraordinary things, that has made it possible.

In the email the perennially truth-averse Lewis, whose lies throughout the undercover video saga are well documented, continues to play the victim card arguing that ACORN, dozens of whose employees have been convicted of election-related crimes, was set up by shadowy corporate forces.

Nathan Henderson-James, director of ACORN’s online campaigns, already admitted ACORN isn’t really going away.

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 to carry on ACORN’s business, his leaked email suggested. At least a dozen of the group’s state chapters have already broken away under new names.

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Did you hear that the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is schedule to dissolve today?

ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis and her allies in the mainstream media said so and everything.

April Fool’s! Ha ha ha.

Whew! ACORN almost had America going there.

The truth is ACORN’s not going anywhere. Right now the embattled organization that used to employ President Obama is engaged in a strategic retreat. ACORN is plundering the assets of state chapters and affiliated organizations and stockpiling cash for future use.

I know this because in recent days ACORN sources have told me repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that the much-publicized shut-down of ACORN today is a gigantic fraud. ACORN intends to avoid the spotlight for a year or two and then come back using a new name, they say.

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