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.

This previously confidential internal audit report was produced by NeighborWorks America, a “congressionally chartered non-profit organization” that doles out taxpayer funds to support “community development.” NeighborWorks is one of those quasi-governmental entities that appears to be outside the scope of the U.S. government but is actually controlled in part by government officials. (The Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, for example, sits on the organization’s Board of Directors. See the rest of the board here.)

NeighborWorks “reinvested” more than $20 billion in rural, suburban and urban communities between 2005 and 2010. The organization’s network consists of 235 community organizations across the country. And it is of extreme significance that AHCOA will, now, not be among them.

NeighborWorks, unlike Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, decided against distributing cash to AHCOA: “Although AHC and ACORN might be incorporated as separate entities in form and structure, the financial transactions noted below evidence extensive relationships between both organizations that may undermine claims of an ‘arm’s length relationship’ between them,” the NeighborWorks America auditors wrote.

(Of course, this is the precise argument Judicial Watch made when we uncovered the Obama administration’s AHCOA grant.)

Aside from the ACORN funding ban, there are numerous reasons why ACORN Housing/AHCOA should never be the beneficiary of American tax dollars.

Here’s one of them: A September 21, 2010, HUD inspector general report, which notes that ACORN Housing is “now operating as Affordable Housing Centers of America,” indicates the organization misappropriated funds from a $3,252,399 federal grant. The inspector general concluded that ACORN Housing/AHCOA had charged salary expenses to the HUD grant that “were not fully supported.” The organization also continued to pay its counselors even after they were terminated, did not meet federal procurement standards and allegedly destroyed documents to conceal the fraudulent activity.

Here’s another: A separate, November 8, 2010, HUD inspector general report stated that ACORN Housing/AHCOA “inappropriately expended more than $3.2 million from its fiscal years 2004 and 2005 grants for the elimination of lead poisoning in its housing program.” The misappropriation included the use of funds “not identified in its grant application’s detailed budgets,” including “campaign services” and “grant fundraising activities.”

And as if this audit wasn’t enough bad news for ACORN, last Wednesday the press was abuzz about a new report from the Department of Justice Inspector General focusing on a New York community organization that acted as an ACORN front group several years ago. Evidently this group misused a Department of Justice grant in the amount of $138,130. According to GovernmentExecutive.com:

A New York City community organizing group that received a Justice Department grant to teach students leadership skills failed to follow requirements for documenting its spending, according to a report the Justice inspector general’s office released Wednesday….

The report also described the New York group as a “pass-through entity” for ACORN, a politically controversial neighborhood activist group that conservatives believe is a tool of the Democratic Party.

“While NYACA’s OJP-approved budget was for the allocation of grant funds to payroll and fringe benefit charges,” the report said, “we determined NYACA did not have any paid employees at the time it received the grant or at any time during the life of the grant-funded project. All of the individuals who worked on behalf of NYACA were ACORN employees. Further, the former NYACA executive director stated that she served concurrently as the executive director for both NYACA and the New York branch of ACORN.”

(The list of infractions is too long to include here. Feel free to read the full IG report here.)

Again, this is just one state-run organization. Just imagine the corruption and fraud that has occurred across ACORN’s massive national network. (Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Just read our ACORN report.)

As I said in an interview with GovernmentExecutive.com, “the fact that these groups continue to get money in violation of the law screams out for a comprehensive criminal investigation.” But don’t expect it from the Obama administration. Barack Obama’s ties to ACORN are well-documented, which is the principal reason ACORN’s spin-offs are handed tax dollars instead of subpoenas.

We want to know how the HUD can justify this decision. So we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on August 19, 2011, against HUD to obtain records related to the department’s approval of AHCOA as an official “housing agency.”

Pursuant to our FOIA request filed on June 8, 2011, we want access to the following information:

• Any and all records concerning or relating to the approval of Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) as a housing agency under Section 106(a)(2) of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968. This request includes, but is not limited to, a copy of all HUD-9900 forms and supporting documentation submitted by, or on behalf of, AHCOA, as well as all records of communication regarding AHCOA’s approval.
• Any and all records of all applications(s) for grants submitted by AHCOA to HUD.

Judicial Watch’s FOIA request was received by HUD on June 13, 2011, (according to postal records). The agency was required to respond by July 12, 2011. This is about as narrow and simple a document request that Judicial Watch makes. But as of August 19, 2011, the date of Judicial Watch’s complaint, HUD hasn’t turned over a single document, or even indicated when a response can be expected.

AHCOA was previously known as ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc., an ACORN offshoot. ACORN filed for bankruptcy on November 2, 2010. However, as we’ve pointed out many times in this space, the organization lives on in the form of numerous state organizations and various ACORN-allied entities, such as AHCOA.

Importantly, none of these ACORN entities or spin-offs are supposed to receive federal funds! President Obama signed into law legislation known as the Defund ACORN Act on October 1, 2009, and other congressional actions that cut off most federal funds to ACORN “or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations.” Following an ACORN lawsuit challenging the funding ban, the federal courts in New York upheld the constitutionality of the restrictions on August 13, 2010. In June 2011, the Supreme Court refused to hear ACORN’s appeal of this funding ban.

And yet, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that on March 1, 2011, despite the ban, HUD announced a $79,819 federal grant to AHCOA to “educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal state, and local fair housing laws.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) did issue a controversial advisory opinion in September 2010 stating that AHCOA is not an “allied” organization of ACORN and is therefore not subject to the funding ban. But this is ludicrous. The government’s own website listing federal expenditures identifies the organization receiving the $79,819 grant as “ACORN Housing Corporation Inc.,” and lists ACORN’s New Orleans, Louisiana, address. And AHCOA maintains the same board of directors, executive director, and offices as its predecessor, ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc.

The organization, whether known as ACORN Housing Corporation or Affordable Housing Corporation of America is corrupt and has no business receiving taxpayer funds. As recently as one year ago, ACORN/AHCOA was criticized by HUD’s Inspector General in two separate investigations for misappropriating funds from federal grants.

A November 8, 2010, report by the Inspector General, for instance, documented fraudulent activity by ACORN/AHCOA, finding that the ACORN front group “inappropriately expended more than $3.2 million from its fiscal years 2004 and 2005 grants for the elimination of lead poisoning in its housing program.” The misappropriation included the use of funds “not identified in its grant application’s detailed budgets,” including “campaign services” and “grant fundraising activities.”

(The GAO reported in June 2011 that ACORN and its “potentially related organizations” received over $48 million for fiscal years 2005 through 2009. Despite the 2009 ACORN funding bans, the GAO found that 11 government agencies had taken no steps to implement the bans until at least August, 2010.)

Look, there is no practical difference between ACORN Housing and this rebranded spin-off. And it should go without saying that the federal government should not grant taxpayer funds to an organization with a history of misappropriating federal funds. The ACORN groups’ close connections to Obama shouldn’t guarantee them tax money in violation of law. This grant is a violation of the ACORN funding ban law and an embarrassment for the Obama administration.

And unfortunately, here we have yet another instance of the Obama administration stubbornly refusing to respect the Freedom of Information Act and the rule of law. It seems these days that the Obama administration has opened up yet another war – a war on transparency.

So why is ACORN still receiving taxpayer dollars in defiance of the funding ban? That’s what we’d like to know.

Judicial Watch investigators recently discovered that the Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has issued a $79,819 grant to the Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) — an offshoot of ACORN — in apparent violation of the ACORN funding ban passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2009.

Moreover, this grant was provided to the organization less than a year after ACORN/ACHOA was criticized by HUD’s inspector general in two separate investigations for misappropriating funds from federal grants.

You remember the funding ban, right? It was a signature moment for Barack Obama (dubbed the “ACORN President”) when he signed a law on October 1, 2009, known as the Defund ACORN Act, which effectively prohibited the federal government from funding “ACORN and any ACORN-related affiliate.” Following a lawsuit filed by ACORN challenging the law, which passed both branches of Congress by wide margins, the federal courts in New York upheld the constitutionality of the funding ban on August 13, 2010. The Supreme Court last month refused to hear ACORN’s appeal of this funding ban.

A Judicial Watch investigation revealed that on March 1, 2011, HUD announced a $79,819 federal grant to ACHOA to “educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws.”

The Government Accountability Office issued a controversial and ridiculous advisory opinion in September 2010 stating that ACHOA is not an “allied organization” of ACORN and is therefore not subject to the funding ban. However, the government’s website listing federal expenditures identifies the organization receiving this grant as “ACORN Housing Corporation Inc.” and even lists ACORN’s New Orleans, Louisiana, address. Moreover ACHOA maintains the same board of directors, executive director and offices as its predecessor, ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc.

Make no mistake, ACHOA is ACORN. So this is a clear violation of the funding ban. But it is also an especially irresponsible waste of taxpayer funds considering the documented corruption at ACORN Housing/ACHOA.

For example, according to a September 21, 2010, HUD inspector general report, which notes that ACORN Housing is “now operating as Affordable Housing Centers of America,” the organization misappropriated funds from a $3,252,399 federal grant. The inspector general concluded that ACORN Housing/ACHOA had charged salary expenses to the HUD grant that “were not fully supported.” The organization also continued to pay its counselors even after they were terminated, did not meet federal procurement standards and allegedly destroyed documents to conceal the fraudulent activity.

The inspector general articulated a number of benchmarks that must first be met by ACHOA before the organization could begin receiving any future federal funds, including reimbursing the government for the misappropriated funds.

A separate November 8, 2010, HUD inspector general report documented additional fraudulent activity by ACORN/ACHOA. The ACORN group “inappropriately expended more than $3.2 million from its fiscal years 2004 and 2005 grants for the elimination of lead poisoning in its housing program,” the report concluded. The misappropriation included the use of funds “not identified in its grant application’s detailed budgets,” including “campaign services” and “grant fundraising activities.”

So why is ACORN still on the government dole, instead of the focus of a major federal corruption investigation? Look no further than the top.

In November 2007, then-Senator Obama addressed ACORN and thanked the organization for its work. Obama has denied that he had any involvement with ACORN other than some legal work he did for them in 1995, but this claim rings hollow when considering statements made by Obama in 2007.

In Senator Obama’s own words: “I’ve been fighting alongside Acorn [sic] on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, Acorn [sic] was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” Barack Obama served as the Illinois executive director of Project Vote in 1992. His campaign paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN organization to help “get out the vote” in his successful primary campaign against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But Obama is not the only one at the White House pitching for ACORN. As reported by The New York Times in 2009, “perhaps no administration official has had more interaction with Acorn [sic] than [Shaun] Donovan”, who is Obama’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The Times notes that Donovan “worked closely” with ACORN’s politically-powerful New York housing affiliate when he was a New York City housing official. And now he’s helped secure a nice chunk of change for ACORN from HUD’s coffers.

ACORN’s ties to Obama and Donavan run deep. So it is no surprise they would continue to dole out tax dollars to an ACORN affiliate with a documented history of fraudulent activity. This is another instance of President Obama’s appointees stubbornly refusing to follow the law by not denying funding to this crooked organization.

And I have to ask the question: Is the Obama gang ensuring that ACORN is around to help them again in 2012?”

By the way, in 2011, HUD provided $40 million in grants to 108 “fair housing” organizations, representing a $13.2 million increase over the 2010 award. According to HUD’s press announcement, the general purpose of these grants is “to educate the public and combat housing and lending discrimination.” This funding of activist groups like ACORN Housing helped lead to our housing crisis. These socialist revolutionaries leveraged your tax dollars to press for government and mortgage policies that gave housing loans to people who couldn’t afford them. That led to the ongoing mortgage crisis.

You can see that the Obama administration is doing three bad things at once — funding a group barred by law from receiving funds, funding a group that has record of fraud, and funding a group and policies that have helped destroy the housing market (and depressed our economy).

Thankfully, the media has picked up on our story (Fox News Channel extensively covered our new ACORN findings). And I know Congress is almost certain to react.

This is another great example of your support helping Judicial Watch uncover and, hopefully, stop government corruption right in its tracks. In the meantime, I’ll be sure keep you updated as to what happens next with this new Obama ACORN scandal.

The massive conglomerate ACORN Housing Corp. and its subsidiaries owe an eye-popping $162,813 in back taxes, according to the Nexis public records database.

The money is owed to the IRS, California, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, the city of Philadelphia, and the California counties of Fresno and Santa Clara. (The 106 tax liens are listed at the bottom of this article.)

Like a con artist trying to escape his past, ACORN Housing legally changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America Inc. (AHCOA).

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

ACORN Housing also helped to inflate the mortgage bubble. It bragged in a 1999 pamphlet that it had strong-armed banks into accepting food stamps and welfare as income on home loan applications.

Even now as America struggles with grave financial problems, the “new” ACORN Housing is going all out to get its hands on your hard-earned money.

AHCOA and its subsidiaries now have 32 “DUNS” numbers that have been officially registered. DUNS stands for Data Universal Numbering System.

Since 2003 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has required applicants to obtain DUNS numbers in order to seek federal grants, so without them ACORN can’t feed at the public trough.

Posing as a new tax-exempt organization, ACORN Housing in San Antonio, Texas will receive an undisclosed percentage of a $619,696 federal grant. The subgrant comes from the federal National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling (NFMC) program.

The subgrant will probably be a fraction of the $6,184,168 in government grants ACORN Housing acknowledges receiving in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010. (The $6,184,168 figure appears at page 9 of the group’s most recent publicly available tax return.)

Tax dollars given to ACORN Housing apparently don’t stay in ACORN Housing’s bank accounts for very long. Since 1997, ACORN Housing has shelled out more than $5.1 million in fees or grants to other entities in the ACORN network.

In 2008 alone, over 67 percent of gift and grants to ACORN Housing came from the federal government (and Bank of America). According to its tax returns, ACORN Housing gave $4,057,174 to the ACORN affiliate known as the American Institute for Social Justice, which has trained generations of Saul Alinsky-inspired organizers in the antisocial art of political agitation.

Investigators got wise to ACORN’s Enron-style accounting years ago. According to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigators, the group participates in a “shell-game of corporate financing that enables ACORN to commingle funds and potentially divert federal monies into partisan activities in violation of federal law.”

Meanwhile, it turns out that the $461,086 grant to AHCOA I reported on Monday was rescinded by President Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

This gets complicated, so bear with me.

After the article was published here at Big Government, HUD spokesman Jereon M. Brown contacted me by email. Brown acknowledged that the government’s USAspending.gov database referred to the money but said that a subsequent entry indicated that the award was canceled. “This amount was de-obligated and recovered,” he said. (The money was an unexpended portion of a block of funds from fiscal 2005, as detailed in the Federal Register.)

Through a quirk in the way the government reports on grants, even when a grant is withdrawn it is first reported in the database. After that, the cancellation of the grant is then reported in the same database. A separate item in the USAspending.gov database shows the rescission, Brown noted. The database “tracks dollars granted and it also tracks money recouped to provide an accurate snapshot to taxpayers,” he said.

This would appear to mean that in January when the Obama administration disallowed the $461,086 grant, it chose to obey the congressional ban on funding ACORN. That ban applies to monies appropriated in fiscal 2010 and previous fiscal years.

But just two months later, the Obama administration ignored the law when it provided a $79,819 grant to AHCOA. That grant came out of fiscal 2010 appropriations.

So in January funding AHCOA was a no-no, but March arrives and voila! – magically an Obama check gets cut.

What changed between January and March?

(Buy the book at Amazon. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.)

TABLE OF TAX LIENS PENDING AGAINST ACORN HOUSING (a.k.a. AFFORDABLE HOUSING CENTERS OF AMERICA) AND ITS SUBSIDIARIES

Click on the chart below to enlarge it.

AHC = ACORN Housing Corp.

On October 1, 2009, President Obama signed the Defund ACORN Act into law, effectively prohibiting the federal government from funding “ACORN and any ACORN-related affiliate.” ACORN challenged the law in court and lost. The federal courts in New York upheld the constitutionality of the funding ban on August 13, 2010. The Supreme Court last month refused to hear ACORN’s appeal of this funding ban.

A Judicial Watch investigation has revealed that on March 1, 2011, HUD announced a $79,819 federal grant to ACHOA to “educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws.”

In an apparent effort to remedy the prohibition against funding ACORN or its affiliates, the Government Accountability Office issued an opinion in September 2010 claiming that ACHOA is a separate entity from ACORN. Nonetheless, the government’s own website that lists federal expenditures identifies the organization receiving the $79,819 grant as “ACORN Housing Corporation Inc,” and lists ACORN’s New Orleans, Louisiana, address. Moreover, ACHOA maintains the same board of directors, executive director and offices as its predecessor, ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc.

Fraudulent activity on the part of ACORN Housing/ACHOA is nothing new.

A September 21, 2010, HUD inspector general report states that ACORN Housing is “now operating as Affordable Housing Centers of America,” which misappropriated funds from a $3,252,399 federal grant. The inspector general concluded that ACORN Housing/ACHOA had charged salary expenses to the HUD grant that “were not fully supported.” The organization also paid its counselors even after they were terminated, did not meet federal procurement standards and allegedly destroyed documents to conceal their misdeeds.

A separate HUD inspector general less than two months later details more questionable activity by ACORN/ACHOA: “[ACORN/ACHOA] inappropriately expended more than $3.2 million from its fiscal years 2004 and 2005 grants for the elimination of lead poisoning in its housing program.” The misappropriation included the use of funds “not identified in its grant application’s detailed budgets,” including “campaign services” and “grant fundraising activities.”

Obama and ACORN go way back. During the presidential campaign in November 2007, then-Senator Obama addressed ACORN and thanked the organization for its work. While Obama has denied that he had any involvement with ACORN other than some legal work he did for them in 1995, his statements in 2007 suggest otherwise. In Senator Obama’s own words, “I’ve been fighting alongside Acorn [sic] on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, Acorn [sic] was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” Barack Obama served as the Illinois executive director of Project Vote in 1992. His campaign paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN organization to help “get out the vote” in his successful primary campaign against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The New York Times reported in 2009 that “perhaps no administration official has had more interaction with Acorn [sic] than Mr. [Shaun] Donovan,” who is Obama’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The Times notes that Donovan “worked closely” with ACORN’s politically-powerful New York housing affiliate when he was a New York City housing official.

President Obama is truly the president from ACORN. So it is no surprise that his administration would continue to dole out tax dollars to an ACORN affiliate with a documented history of fraudulent activity.

This is another instance of President Obama’s appointees stubbornly refusing to follow the law and deny this crooked organization funds. Is the Obama gang ensuring that ACORN is around to help them again in 2012?

This year, HUD is to provide $40 million in grants to 108 “fair housing” organizations, which is a $13.2 million increase over last year’s expenditures.

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.)

“Perhaps no administration official has had more interaction with ACORN than” Donovan, the New York Times has reported. Reinforcing the newspaper’s point, ACORN’s Bertha Lewis praised the HUD secretary. “We grew to respect him, and he grew to respect us,” she said.

Roll Call said Lewis admitted “ACORN has friends in high places for the first time in a long time.” She acknowledged “that she has particularly good relationships with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and with Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director.”

Donovan’s close ties to ACORN might help to explain why the cabinet member went into overdrive two years ago publicly distancing himself from the group. That’s around the time Big Government began promoting the undercover brothels-for-pedophiles videos that showed ACORN employees giving two conservative activists helpful advice on how to break the law without getting caught.

No doubt Donovan was personally involved in making sure ACORN landed this new grant.

Moving along, it needs to be said that the $79,819 HUD grant that has gone to ACORN funds a political agitation and indoctrination program. Saul Alinsky himself couldn’t have devised better euphemisms than the ones HUD uses to describe the program:

Education and Outreach Initiative grants (EOI) – HUD awarded $6.8 million to organizations that educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws. Groups will also conduct fair lending workshops, community meetings, and individual counseling activities focused on homeowners at risk for discrimination.

According to HUD, the grant money came out of fiscal 2010 appropriations.

That’s a big problem.

As I reported previously, in 2009 Congress passed four separate appropriations measures that contained language blocking federal funds from flowing to ACORN during federal fiscal year 2010, which ran from Oct. 1, 2009 through Sept. 30, 2010. All four of the laws prevent ACORN and its affiliated groups from receiving federal taxpayer dollars.

The funding prohibition in Public Law 111-117 (PDF) applies specifically to HUD. It spells out in pretty clear terms that ACORN shouldn’t be getting any government funding. Let’s see just how clearly it spells it out:

Division A – Section 418. None of the funds made available under this Act or any prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations. [p. 80 of PDF]

Division B – Section 534. None of the funds made available under this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries. [p. 125 of PDF]

Division E – Section 511. None of the funds made available in this division or any other division in this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries. [p. 279 of PDF]

Yet despite the ban, President Obama, who worked for ACORN as an employee and as the group’s lawyer, found it in his heart to hand over $79,819 of your money to his thug friends at ACORN.

*  *  *  *  *

America needs to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, Machiavellian pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.

Buy the book at Amazon. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

EMBARGOED 12-8-10 DHS IG Report – ACORN Grants

Contacted by Big Government about the report, incoming Chair of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Rep. Darrell Issa, had this comment:

It is really unthinkable that anyone would use the guise of public safety and helping victims of a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina as a calculating way to inappropriately obtain taxpayer dollars.  As the discussion over how to reign in government’s growth and spending moves forward, there couldn’t be a more important time to ensure that the grants awarded with taxpayer dollars meet rigorous criteria and are subject to vigilant oversight to ensure that grant recipients are not given access to taxpayer dollars under false pretenses.”

The key things in the DHS IG’s report were:

• “We concluded that the ACORN Institute should not have received these funds, did not fully implement and evaluate the program as approved, and could not substantiate all its grant expenditures.
• “The FEMA did not have sufficient oversight processes to prevent the award or to fully evaluate the use of the grant money.”
• The Technical Evaluation Panel that reviewed ACORN’s grant request recommended it not be funded but “FEMA overrode the panels’ recommendation and awarded the grant without documenting how it addressed the Technical Evaluation Panel’s concerns.”
• ACORN described an Urban Fire Initiative that did not actually exist until they requested the funding:  “the Urban Fire Initiative did not exist prior to the grant application, but was created specifically for activities funded by the FY 2007 Fire Prevention and Safety Grant.  Neither ACORN Institute nor the Urban Fire Initiative was involved in any of the above activities and events.”
• ACORN claimed partnerships with local fire departments but “there was no evidence of these partnerships were in place…”
• FEMA relied on “self certification” and “has no requirement or standard procedure in the evaluation process of the Fire Prevention and Safety grant applications to validate the legitimacy of significant claims and assertions used to qualify an applicant for the grant…”

In response to aSeptember 16, 2009 request by Issa and Senator Collins, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Inspections and Evaluations Division of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a report “detailing the results of its investigation of grant funds awarded under HUD’s Housing Counseling Program to ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc. (AHC) of Chicago, now operating as Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA).”

“For continued approval as a HUD-approved housing counseling agency and for future awards consideration, AHC (now operating as AHCOA) must bring its operations into full compliance with applicable laws, regulators, and policies governing HUD’s Housing Counseling Program,” the OIG’s report recommends.

“The inability to fully support salary expenses allocated to the HUD grant raises serious concerns about the integrity of those charges, particularly given the millions of Federal and non-Federal dollars made available to AHC in FY 2008 and 2009.  Further, services procured from ACORN “associated” organizations failed to meet the required tests of ‘open and free competition’.  We recommend that HUD’s Office of Single Family Housing, Program Support Division consider placing AHCOA in ‘inactive’ status while its initiatives corrective actions to address the exceptions and recommendations in this report.”

The OIG’s findings included:

• HUD has awarded ACORN more than $19 million in housing counseling grants since 1995.

• ACORN received $3,252,399 in housing counseling grants between 2008 and 2009.  More than $2.544 million (nearly 80%) of the HUD grants were used to pay ACORN’s salaries.

• ACORN may have concealed fraud by destroying or failing to produce records.

• • “A determination could not be made as to what activities the employees performed or which grant to charge for those activities.  Consequently, HUD had no assurance that it did not bear more than its fair share of the costs incurred for salary expenses of AHC’s counselors.” (p.10).

• • “Availability of records impeded [HUD’s] attempt to trace AHC’s summary schedules of counselors’ salary expenses to the housing counseling activities that occurred[.]” (p.11).

• ACORN Housing received more than $27.269 million from other Federal and non-Federal sources.

• NeighborWorks, a congressionally chartered nonprofit, provided ACORN with $25,857,000 million.

• • “AHC’s caseload allocation methodology for salary expenses to the HUD housing counseling grants proved problematic in an environment of multiple funding sources and was unsupported.” (p. 11).

• • NeighborWorks grant funds were misappropriated as well. “The housing counseling service costs were either charged as salary expenses to the HUD housing counseling grants or as fees to the NeighborWorks’ NFMC [National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling] grants.  For counselors who provided services under both grants, reimbursement of their salary costs for HUD billing purposes was based on a percentage derived from the ration of HUD to NFMC cases as opposed to using the actual number of hours attributable to the HUD counseling grant.” (p. 11).

• “Also, missing was documentation of the actual activities to support the percentages of allocations to the HUD grant.” There was “the risk of inequitable charges when counselors’ time was split between HUD, NFMC, and/or other funding sources.” (p. 11).

• ACORN’s use of grants did not comply with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-122.

• • ACORN charged the government salary costs for employees after they were terminated (p.12).

• • ACORN charged 2008 salary expenses to a 2009 grant in violation of Article III and Article IX of the HUD grant agreement (p.12-13).

• ACORN violated 24 CFR Part 84 (federal procurement standards) when it obtained accounting and legal services, leased office space, and sought health care and retirement benefits from its affiliated nonprofits.  These services were obtained by ACORN without ensuring open and free competition as required by law.

• Because ACORN failed to comply with 24 CFR Part 84, § 84.43, which requires that “All procurement transactions shall be conducted in a manner to provide . . . open and free competition [without] conflicts of interest as well as noncompetitive practices”, ACORN’s self-dealing served to funnel taxpayer dollars to its affiliates (p.13).

• • Citizens Consulting, Inc., (CCI) an ACORN affiliate, provided AHC’s accounting and legal services and charged $345,174 to HUD.

• • “CCI’s services were essentially a sole source arrangement that lacked an ‘arms length’ basis for demonstrating cost reasonableness.’” (p. 14).

• • AHC leased office space from ACORN-San Jose, ACORN-Sacramento, Elysian Fields Corporation, and New Mexico Organizing and Support Center – all ACORN affiliates – and “Branch office leasing costs were charged directly to the HUD housing counseling grants” (p. 14).

• • AHC obtained health care benefits for its employees from the Council Health Plan and the Community Health Insurance Plan (CHIP), both were identified as ACORN-owned in Elizabeth Kingsley’s June 18, 2008 report on ACORN mismanagement. “The costs of both plans were billed to the HUD counseling grants” (p. 15).

• • ACORN’s retirement funds were managed by ACORN affiliate Council Benefit Association (CBA).  Costs of $460,630 in 2008 and $384,693 in 2009 were billed to HUD (p. 15).

• Unfortunately, ACORN’s money laundering is impossible to track: “Further, cost or price analysis and documentation to support the basis and justification for the services was not readily available.” (p. 13).