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?”

As I note in my book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, the WFP is part and parcel of ACORN. In 1998 the party was officially recognized in New York State. WFP’s headquarters is at the same address as ACORN on Nevins Street in Brooklyn. WFP’s executive director is longtime ACORN operative Dan Cantor.

One of the SEIU-funded party’s co-founders is ACORN’s former national chief organizer, Bertha Lewis. Democratic National Committee executive director Patrick Gaspard also contributed to the creation of the party and sat on its board. Gaspard was a political director in the Obama White House and is a former SEIU executive. Gaspard was also an organizer for the radical New Party in the early 1990s. That party’s membership consisted largely of individuals from the Democratic Socialists of America, SEIU, and ACORN. The party endorsed Barack Obama when he ran for the Illinois State Senate.

WFP takes credit for raising taxes both in the city and state of New York and for pressuring the state’s congressional delegation to oppose Social Security reforms. The party has sister WFP-branded parties in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont.

Working with its radical friends at SEIU, WFP advocates more government spending, higher taxes, universal government-run health care, campaign finance restrictions, free universal higher education, oppressive rent control, same-sex marriage, amnesty for illegal aliens, “greening” the economy by creating heavily subsidized union jobs in the energy sector, and mandatory paid sick leave for all workers.

In 2009 Connecticut WFP sent busloads of thugs to confront American International Group Inc. (AIG) executives at their homes. The protests were calculated to intimidate executives who had been receiving death threats after the company reportedly paid out bonuses using taxpayer bail-out funds.

ACORN allies are also involved in protests aimed at destabilizing the nation’s financial system.

SEIU board member Stephen Lerner has vowed to do his part to drive a stake through the heart of capitalism. Lerner says he wants to “bring down the stock market” through a campaign of disruption. He said last week that SEIU plans to terrorize bank executives at their homes.

Last year George Goehl, executive director of Chicago-based National People’s Action, said that “the banking crisis” was “the next big thing,” and “the way to build a big economic justice movement in this country.”

Meanwhile, ACORN’s new front groups are also deeply involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In Pennsylvania, Action United said it plans to participate in Occupy Pittsburgh on Oct. 15. Organize Now will be occupying Orlando, Florida, on the same day.

New York Communities for Change (NYCC), led by longtime ACORN lobbyist Jon Kest, is one of the major protest groups leading the demonstrations in lower Manhattan. Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment is leading the Occupy L.A. protests.

New England United for Justice, which is headed by former ACORN national president Maude Hurd, is participating in the related “Take Back Boston” protests in Massachusetts, according to watchdog group Judicial Watch. Hurd is a close political ally of Boston mayor Thomas Menino.

The influence of ACORN on the Wall Street protests should have been clear by the unhinged nature of much of the demonstrations. The question is really only whether the radical outfit will push the mob into more and more extreme behavior. Determining the answer to this question will likely not be pleasant.

(This is a modified version of an article that was first published in Front Page Magazine).

* * * * *

Americans need 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, pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.

Buy my book Subversion Inc. at Amazon and in Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million bookstores. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

Unfortunately, the copy of the American tax code that The Times used to conduct their careful analysis appears to have been heavily edited by a cadre of left leaning groups, including ACORN President Maude Hurd, Citizens for Tax Justice, Center for American Progress and the Clean Energy Works campaign.

The smoking gun comes in the form of a leaked memo from CEW communications advisor and former Democratic congressional staffer David Di Martino just days after The New York Times ran it’s wildly misguided assessment of U.S. tax policy.

In the memo, Di Martino outlines a strategy to change America’s perception of increased taxes on energy producers as a tax on consumers by arguing “the American people already have a national energy tax — The Big Oil Welfare Tax — in the form of billions of dollars in subsidies to the wildly profitable big oil companies.”  The same day that Di Martino released his memo, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) released their own defective and dishonest hit piece, titled “What Oil and Gas Companies Extract from the American Public.”   The tax breaks referred to by Di Martino and the CTJ memo, in reality, are the same credits that every American company receives for taxes paid overseas to foreign governments on income earned abroad.

Di Martino’s ammunition to redefine these essential standard tax credits?  It should come as no surprise that its The New York Times skewed assessment of the U.S. tax code and biased analysis from the Center for American Progress (CAP).

Before we let The Times and its allies at CEW “redefine” the tax credits that allow America’s oil and gas industry to remain competitive with foreign oil companies that receive more favorable tax treatment, we should ask who’s really behind this smear campaign:

• Citizens for Tax Justice:  A progressive tax policy “think tank” that actively campaigns for the Obama Administration’s tax policies.  CTJ board members include:

o       Maude Hurd, President of ACORN

o       Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group

• CEW:  A collection of labor and environmental organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club and the Community Action Partnership – a network of 1,100 ACORN like Community Action Agencies across the country.

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.”

It is a “tactically smart…reaction to the global situation that helps the work of building power for poor people to continue,” writes Henderson-James, an ACORN employee since 1997.

The Saul Alinsky-inspired public relations hocus-pocus described by Henderson-James is consistent with earlier reports that ACORN is trying to pass off various state chapters as “new” groups. ACORN’s ruse is designed 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 developed a plan that would allow the operation to keep going, albeit on a smaller scale.

ACORN veteran Marcel Reid told me in an interview yesterday that she wasn’t buying into ACORN leadership’s spin. Reid is a whistleblower who was expelled from ACORN’s national board in 2008 for asking too many uncomfortable questions about a million-dollar embezzlement perpetrated in 2000 by the brother of ACORN’s founder and covered up by management for eight years.

“The folding of ACORN isn’t happening because it’s simply going to restructure,” she said. “In the meantime they’ll give all of these new community organizations in the states an opportunity to flourish without ACORN’s legal baggage.”

At least three of these dummy nonprofit corporations that Henderson-James describes have surfaced so far this year. They are Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New York Communities for Change, and New England United for Justice. All three groups operate out of ACORN offices. The president of New England United for Justice, Maude Hurd, just happens to be the 20-year national president of ACORN. (Massachusetts articles of incorporation available here)

The Henderson-James email to ACORN supporters also encourages recipients to help rewrite the history of the embattled group.

ACORN_NathanHendersonJamesEmail –

“[T]here will be a fight over the narrative of ACORN’s demise,” he writes. The other side wants “a narrative about the corruption of popular organizations and how they are simply vehicles for the personal enrichment and power fantasies of their top staff members while pushing public policies that destroy middle America.”

This argument must be fought, Henderson-James argues, because it “gives people pushing a pro-corporate agenda a way to tar progressives and even non-progressive Democrats running for office with the ACORN brush.”

Then comes the whining from ACORN’s cyber-warfare chief.

Henderson-James acknowledges that ACORN made mistakes, but claims it was primarily a victim of dirty tricks perpetrated by the political right. “[W]e were all up against a 24-hour propoganda [sic] channel,” he writes, in an apparent reference to the Fox News Channel, one of the few media outlets to closely follow the ACORN saga.

Progressives didn’t fight back hard enough “in a moment of extreme duress, orchestrated by propogand [sic] videos,” he complains.

The movement “stood by as ACORN got gutted, while we also handed the forces of pro-corporate politics a handy club to kick the shit out of anything that vaugely [sic] sounds progressive. And that comes with a license to go after the next group or groups that embody the progressive agenda. This went beyond ACORN. We were just a convienent [sic] target to make into a bogeyman. This was about everything progressives stood for. And when it came time to stand up, most of us didn’t.”

Marcel Reid, who also heads a reform group called ACORN 8, told me ACORN’s setbacks are the fault of the left, not the right. Progressives should have come forward to help fix ACORN, but they didn’t.

“We stood up in the organization to straighten out its problems before they got to this point,” she said. “When they could have stood up to save it they sat down.”

“It’s the left’s fault because when it was time for them to police themselves they would not do it. The left didn’t stand up to purge itself when it could have. They can’t blame the right when they didn’t clean up their own house.”

In the email Henderson-James also complains that federal lawmakers and the mainstream media didn’t do enough to help ACORN, bemoaning “the breathtaking swiftness with which the Congress condemned us on the basis of what have been clearly shown by real journalists to be nothing but the purest propaganda [sic].”

Left-wingers, he writes, now have to promote a narrative “that says the attacks on ACORN were part of a concerted attempt to demobilize key progressive constituencies because they banded together to take power and threaten the status quo and that the legacy of ACORN deserves that regular people stand up for themselves and organize to take power, to pass public policies that create an America we all want to live in. One in which organizing is about average people making their lives and their communities and their workplaces better.”

This left-wing spin “will be contested for a bit and you can be sure that it will be marked by serious right-wing triumphalism,” he predicts. “Our side needs to make sure our narrative wins, using the kind of pushback that’s taken place recently around [undercover video maker James] O’Keefe.”

“That’s been beautiful,” Henderson-James coos.

1) What can the local, state, and federal government do right now to help the poor and middle class?

The answer that Rathke gave was both surprising and impressive. I expected him to rattle off several laws that could be implemented, maybe a moratorium on foreclosures, and other policy changes that he believed in. Instead, Rathke was practical and pithy.

He said that all government programs: unemployment insurance, welfare, etc. should be streamlined on the internet so that all citizens would be given access to electronic files. By doing this, the government would cut all sorts of red tape and save those in need all sorts of time and energy in receiving these benefits. For the money the government would spend in implementing these systems, the benefit to the people would come back ten fold.

The answer was impressive both in its practicality and in its non ideology. In fact, Rathke is right. The government’s entitlement system is outdated. There’s no reason why people still need to show up to apply for benefits, and streamlining the process through the use of technology would benefit all.

2) When someone calls you a radical, do not care, agree, or disagree vociferously?

“I don’t care”.

Rathke said that he doesn’t see himself in those terms. In fact, he sees himself as an organizer first. This is the biggest misconception of most opponents and observers of Wade Rathke. Most people think he is driven by a radical ideology. The only ideology Rathke is driven by is the ideology of organizing. That’s not only a way of life for Rathke but it’s a way for him to see the world.

Don’t get me wrong. He has political thoughts and opinions. (I asked him those later) They don’t drive him. Organizing drives him. Organizing is the way that he has been able to influence society and make his mark on the world. Community organizing has been mocked and ridiculed by conservatives, but conservatives don’t understand that to be a good organizer means you can do anything. It means you have an army behind you to accomplish any goal. Finally, there’s been very few, if any at all, organizers better than Wade Rathke. (as an aside Rathke said he doesn’t consider himself a radical and believed that his political views were much more pragmatic than people might think)

3) Do you know George Soros and do you believe in one world government?

I asked this because it’s been widely reported that Rathke is on the board of the Tides Foundation and Soros is tied to Tides.

First, Rathke doesn’t know George Soros personally. Of course, he knows who he is but has never met him. In fact, he told me that it was news to him that Soros has any ties to Tides. Rathke told me that he’s been involved with the Tides Foundation for almost four decades. Conservatives have often used the Tides Foundation as a link between one radical in their view, George Soros, and another, Wade Rathke. The truth is a bit more complicated. Rathke’s been with Tides long before Soros ever became involved with them. Furthermore, as a member of the board, that meant attending two the three days of meetings every quarter. In fact, as Rathke later told me, Tides is all a part of a synergy of his vocation as an organizer. (in a previous interview Rathke told me he’s also never met Bill Ayers)

As for one world government, that’s not something that Wade Rathke thought could practically happen.

4) What’s the relationship between Citizen’s Consulting Incorporated and ACORN?

For some background, when I first started investigating ACORN, I was told that CCI was a sort of weigh station for all monies that reached not only ACORN but any and all of its multi hundred affiliates. CCI is also the company that Wade’s brother Dale used to be the comptroller of back at the beginning of this decade.

Wade Rathke characterized it in a much different manner. He said that CCI was contracted by ACORN for “accounting services”. He said they’re a separate organization with its own board and its own business.

I pointed out that when Wade Rathke is head of ACORN and Dale Rathke is head of CCI, how separate are two organizations?

Rathke said that by that estimation that means that because Rahm Emanuel is Chief of Staff in the White House and Ari Emanuel (inspiration for Ari Gold in Entourage) is a Hollywood agent that this means there’s no separation between the White House and Hollywood.

That’s an interesting comparison but not exactly fair. The White House hasn’t contracted out all its film work to clients of Ari Emanuel. The problem with one brother running ACORN and the other running CCI is that CCI relied on ACORN for most, if not all, of its business. There’s a clear conflict there, and it’s unclear that there were any clear firewalls.

He also told me that ACORN is one organization always registered as a “vanilla” non profit. In my first interview, I thought Rathke had made a stunning admission when he said that ACORN is one organization. That’s because those members of the board that were concerned about corruption, most later became members of ACORN 8, felt that ACORN AND IT’S AFFILIATES were all one organization. I initially thought that Rathke was admitting to what they were accusing. In fact, Wade Rathke was only talking about ACORN itself. Organizations like ACORN Housing were organizations that, according to Rathke, ACORN “partnered with”.

All of this is vital to the story of ACORN and it’s also terribly complicated and confusing. Those, like members of ACORN 8, who thought and think that there’s malfeasance at ACORN believed that all these affiliates, as they call them, are all part of the same organization. They believe that money, resources, and human capital all transferred freely between them all. In fact, often, ACORN Housing and ACORN share offices. The so called Kingsley memo said this as well. Rathke maintained that everything was separated and all above board. He maintained that ACORN was fully audited each of his years at the helm and they went through the very forensic audit that ACORN 8 has been demanding.

5) What’s your vision for the future of Community Organizations International?

First, Rathke wanted to clarify. He changed the name of ACORN International in the United States to Community Organizations International to avoid confusion between ACORN and the now called COI. Internationally, this organization still maintains the ACORN name. So, for instance, it maintains a presence in the Dominican Republic and it’s called ACORN Dominican Republic. This name change couldn’t really have been butchered any more if the media tried to report it inaccurately. In fact, Rathke says he still gets calls asking why ACORN changed its name. (once again, ACORN didn’t change its name.)

He sees COI as an organization that goes into each and every urban area with “significant infrastructure problems” (or every urban area) and organizing the community to be “a positive force for change”. He told that his passions are really juiced when he thinks about what kind a force for change COI can be in urban areas that are at the “crossroads of huge populations”.

To be frank, the vision he laid out for COI was inspirational. It’s hard not to believe when someone puts it as inspirationally as that. I’ve said that Rathke is not only charming but hypnotic even and when speaking about his vision, he was at his finest.

6) In our last interview, we got into ACORN 8. Rathke believes that ACORN has done plenty wrong and deserves criticism. He also believes that ACORN’s faults are being singled out and over emphasized by those with an agenda. So, I asked him, “how you process ACORN 8 making the same criticism as opponents”. He essentially boiled it down in the last interview to an internal philosophical dispute. Privately, he told me that his answer wasn’t fully developed. So, I asked him to expand.

If Rathke was at his most inspirational in the previous answer, he was at his most cunning in this one. First, he played a bit coy. He told me that much of what happened, happened following his leaving ACORN. So, he wasn’t necessarily speaking from first hand experience. Of course, one thing I don’t worry about is Wade Rathke knowing about the inner workings of ACORN, even after his departure.

He said that according to his understanding the dispute boiled down to a dispute over power. First, the internal debates that started between those like Marcel Reid and Karen Inman and Maude Hurd (president of ACORN) hardened following his departure. According to his understand, Reid and Inman were part of a thirteen person group set up following disclosure of Dale Rathke’s embezzlement to investigate ACORN to root out future problems. This group included three board members Inman, Reid, and Carol Hemingway, and ten employees of ACORN.

In Rathke’s view Inman and Reid began to make demands for the entire group. In other words, the two of them started speaking for the board in its entirety. This went outside of protocol. So, Carol Hemingway was there to reign them in. Inman and Reid wanted to get the books of ACORN and they wanted a forensic audit. Rathke said that ACORN had gone through this exact forensic audit a few years earlier. Because there was no calming presence (meaning Wade Rathke) there to make sure cooler heads prevailed the confrontation lead to Inman and Reid being removed. Of course, if he were still around, this wouldn’t have happened.

Members of ACORN 8 scoffed at this notion when I spoke with them afterwards. In their minds, it was very clear. They were members of the board of ACORN. They had a right and a duty to see the books. They were never given the books, and instead thrown out of ACORN when they demanded them.

(for the full story from the other side, here’s how ACORN 8 was started as recounted by members of ACORN 8)

7)Do you believe in single payer health care?

Much like one world government, Wade Rathke doesn’t see single payer as any possibility. He believes a robust public option is “very important to providing competition”. He believes that every health care system is different. He believes Canada’s single payer is good but not as good as some make it out to be.

He also said that the public option wasn’t a litmus test for his support. He went back nearly four decades to frame the issue. In the early 1970’s, welfare rights groups he had previously been alligned with were fighting for welfare reform. They wanted a bill that would give a family of four earning less than $5,500 welfare benefits of $5500 when unemployed. The bill proposed $1800. So, the groups opposed the plan. By doing so, they actually joined forces with conservative groups who wanted the bill to give zero. The bill was defeated. So, sometimes, it’s better to get some of what you want than be an ideological purist and oppose unless you get all.

He said that he sees his role as seeing what passes and then organizing to make it better.

Do you believe in free markets and capitalism?

He said he doesn’t really know any free markets. With a plethora of bailouts, we no longer have free markets. In fact, China’s markets are currently much more free than are ours. Ironically enough, on this issue, Wade Rathke made a very intuitive and correct point, and unfortunately, I must agree. (I say unfortunately because I wholeheartedly support free markets)

He said that his role isn’t to see the world through a theoretical prism that he wants. Instead, he works within the framework of the world as it is and organizes to make that framework better.

Epilogue:

After the interview, I came to what I initially thought was a stunning revelation. After I thought about it it isn’t that stunning. To frame it, let’s first play one of my favorite 80’s songs.

It’s true everybody does want to rule the world. We are all struggling to influence society as much as possible. The reason that people blog, give their opinion, and write about politics is in hope that their point of view influences others. We are all through this media trying to rule the world. So, why should Wade Rathke be any different?

I’ve come to the conclusion that Wade Rathke’s goal is to rule the world. If you think about what community organizing is, the whole thing makes perfect sense. A good organizer will organize a lot of people. A really good organizer will organize even more. How do you measure someone’s worth in community organizing? It’s by how many people they’ve organized. It’s by how much influence they’ve had in they issue they organize for. Furthermore, effective organizing means a synergy of media outreach, political outreach, and community outreach. Effective organizing means the ability to reach your tentacles into all levels of society. Make no mistake, the reason that ACORN became a force in our society has everything to do with the organizing genius of Wade Rathke.

Now, think about COI. It’s a confederation of international organizations currently in seven countries. It was started about five years ago. In five years, it might be in seventy countries. Wade Rathke started and founded ACORN (then Arkansas Community Organization for Reform Now) nearly four decades ago. Then, it was an organization of one. It grew into an organization that had tentacles into nearly all parts of our politically, cultural, and media structure by the time he left. This happened because Wade Rathke is a unique and remarkable organizer. He was so good at it, that he gained enough influence to become embedded into governments of all levels in the U.S. So, what was his goal in ACORN? It was to rule the U.S. If you think that’s absurd and provocative, think again about what makes a good community organizer, the biggest community possible. The bigger the community meant bigger influence. That was in the U.S.

COI is a world organization. It knows no borders. It can go anywhere but it’s purpose is the same. Remember, Wade Rathke told me himself that he wants to go into every urban neighborhood. He himself told me he wants to rule the world. There’s nothing provocative or incorrect in what I’m saying. He’s a community organizer. His goal is as big a community as possible. His place of business is the entire world. So, in effect, Wade Rathke wants to rule the world.

What makes Wade Rathke different from everyone else? He can do it. He grew ACORN from one person to a force in politics, culture and life in the U.S. Now, he wants to do something very similar in the world. I’ve said it before. ACORN is no longer the story. They’re a dying organization that’s disintegrating in front of us. We’re only paying attention for the same reason we pay attention to a trainwreck.

Going forward, Wade Rathke is the story. He’s an individual that not only wants to rule the world but he’s found the vocation to do it, and he’s effective enough to make it happen. An individual with the means, the capability and the resources to rule the world is a story. That’s one I want to follow. It’s one everyone should follow.

However, under conditions of strict anonymity, ACORN organizers and staff have complained to the ACORN 8 (www.acorn8.com) that senior management has ordered them to continue to work for ACORN as “volunteers” but for them to apply for unemployment insurance.

In order to legally collect unemployment insurance compensation, the applicant must attest that they are ready, willing and able to work elsewhere to qualify for benefits. This is unemployment insurance fraud. And fraudulently applying for unemployment insurance compensation is a crime.

When these allegations were first brought to the attention of the ACORN 8, we initially thought no way. This is unbelievable, no one in their right mind would ever agree to do this. But we kept hearing these same allegations, over and over again, from different people in different parts of the country. And this is ACORN – these are the same of workers who registered Mickey Mouse to vote and offered tax advice to a pimp and prostitute.

Consequently, we fear that ACORN senior management has launched yet another scheme to exploit the gullibility of some low income workers and bilk American taxpayers out of thousands of dollars of government benefits.

But who controls the staff at ACORN? The national president (Maude Hurd)? The Executive Director (Steve Kest)? The answer is the Chief Organizer, or Bertha Lewis. Under ACORN by-laws the Chief Organizer (not the board of directors) is responsible for all of ACORN staff and employees. Lewis has control of the staff; but the board has to reign in Lewis (and others).

Bertha Lewis has previously announced that an advisory council would assist her in getting ACORN’s “house in order”. This advisory council includes John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank; Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. In our opinion, the first order of business should be to “clean house” entirely and remove all culpable leaders and managers, including Lewis.

This will never stop until the corrupt leadership and senior management are purged from the organization. These individuals have gotten away with doing wrong for so long; they appear incapable of doing anything the right way. Greg Hall of Truth To Power once described ACORN as an organization that can’t count to “one” when preparing voter registrations. Now they can’t fill out unemployment insurance forms either.

The ACORN 8 have always sought to reform – not destroy – ACORN. But as scandal after scandal continue to emerge; it is getting hard for die hard supporters, like the ACORN 8, to believe that ACORN will survive. And there simply is no way that ACORN can continue to exist under the control of incompetent or corrupt senior management and executive leadership.

That is, if ACORN—and Bertha Lewis—let him do the job.

Bertha Lewis is among the ACORN senior staff and Executive Committee members who actively concealed an apparently million dollar embezzlement from the organization by Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder and Lewis’ predecessor Wade Rathke.  So it is hard to believe Scott Harshbarger’s first line of business will be recommending or otherwise arranging for ACORN to fire Bertha Lewis and all her admitted, embezzlement concealing co-conspirators.

Bringing in Harshbarger does not signal the first time ACORN purported to put its proverbial house in order following a major breach of public trust.

Last year ACORN’s national board of directors installed an Interim Management Committee (IMC) upon learning of Dale Rathke’s embezzlement and the related cover up by some senior staff, including Wade Rathke, and certain ACORN Executive Committee members.  After firing Wade, the national board appointed its members, Karen Inman, Carol Hemmingway, and Marcel Reid to collectively act in his stead.  Inman was to temporarily address legal affairs; Hemmingway considered financial matters; and Reid handled governance as ACORN’s IMC.

ACORN’s national board authorized its IMC to hire independent professionals to investigate and help reorganize ACORN following decades of arguable domination by the Rathke family.  The IMC in turn pursued more definitive remedial actions, including a complete accounting of all ACORN assets, a forensic examination of the known embezzlement and an independent audit of ACORN and its related entities.

So what happened?  Unfortunately, 38 of 50 national board members were subsequently swayed by ACORN’s Executive Committee and other corporate insiders to remove the IMC and abandon its members’ prudent inquiries.  Nevertheless, eight courageous, now former ACORN board members, banded together and formed the ACORN 8, LLC to reform the once venerable ACORN.  Marcel Reid is Chair and Karen Inman is Vice Chair of the ACORN 8.

The ACORN 8 were the first to identify the nebulous Citizen’s Consulting Inc. (CCI) and attempted to “follow the money” at ACORN; the first to seek a forensic examination and independent audit of ACORN and its related organizations; the first to seek injunctions against ACORN, the Rathkes and CCI; the first to call for a national boycott of all charitable donations, federal funding and member dues otherwise payable to ACORN; and the first to formally allege civil and constitutional rights violations as well as RICO offenses against ACORN’s upper management. Consequently, Louisiana Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell issued subpoenas and is investigating ACORN and Wade Rathke.

According to the New York Times, Maude Hurd, chair of ACORN’s board of directors, announced Scott Harshbarger’s appointment.  How noble of her, considering that the first meaningful step Harshbarger could take would be to recommend her removal from ACORN.  Acting on behalf of ACORN’s Executive Committee, Maude Hurde ejected the ACORN 8 from ACORN in contravention of their First Amendment right to speak out, litigate, and petition government.  Title 18, section 241 of the United States Code makes it a federal crime to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, and/or intimidate people in the free exercise or enjoyment of their rights or privileges secured by the U.S. Constitution.

In any event, don’t be fooled – a “review” is not a forensic examination, independent audit, or comprehensive criminal investigation.  But we do hold some ray of hope; Harshbarger is sure to recognize an ole’ fashioned Smoke Screen / White Wash. He is a former Massachusetts attorney general and  gubernatorial candidate; current chief executive of the advocacy group Common Cause; and lawyer with Proskauer Rose, focusing on corporate investigations and defense as well as nonprofit governance and ethics cases.

Surely Harshbarger will promptly know if his scope of authority in overseeing ACORN’s internal review process is enough for him to “right the ship”.  And even if Harshbarger’s role in ACORN’s proclaimed self-reform is too superficial and/or brief, he is sure to immediately conclude ACORN should oust Bertha Lewis and her embezzlement concealing co-conspirators, not to mention ACORN’s criminal-conspiring, constitutional rights violators.

As Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee for the ACORN 8, I say that ACORN’s selection of Scott Harshbarger is a good first step towards positive, meaningful reform of ACORN.  Well, actually the organization’s IMC was its first good step towards that reform.  Hopefully, Harshbarger will avert additional ACORN missteps

Ms. Maude Hurd
President
ACORN
739 8th St SE
Washington, DC 20003

Dear Ms. Hurd:

The goal of the U.S. Census Bureau’s partnership program is to combine the strengths of state, local, and tribal governments, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, schools, media, businesses and others to ensure an accurate 2010 Census. While not (sic) Census bureau employees, partners are advocates for census cooperation and participation. They serve a trusted voices within their communities and are critical to our strategy to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place.

The Census Bureau has established criteria for partnerships, which are listed on our Web site at www.census.gov and reserves the right to decline partnership or to terminate an existing partnership agreement with any group that 1) may create a negative connotation for the Census Bureau; 2) could distract from the Census Bureau’s mission; or, 3) may make people fearful of participating in the census.

To that end, and in keeping with the standards we shared with your organization and others who volunteered to partner with the Census Bureau to help promote the 2010 Census, we are today terminating our Partnership Agreement with ACORN.

Over the last several months, through ongoing communication with our regional offices, it is clear that ACORN’s affiliation with the 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 Census efforts.

While not decisive factors in this decision, recent events concerning several local offices of ACORN have added to the worsening negative perceptions of ACORN and its affiliation with our partnership efforts.

We do not come to this decision lightly. It was our original assessment that your organization could be helpful in encouraging cooperation with the 2010 Census among individuals who are historically hard to count, including renters, low-income residents, the linguistically isolated, and others. As of today, we have close to 80,000 partnership agreements with national and local groups – many of whom are trusted voices and serve these same populations – and we will be relying upon those groups to continue our outreach in the communities you serve. The full participation of those populations remains of utmost importance to us.

Read the full letter here.