Rathke said it not only on his blog, but also at a book signing in New Orleans, which was recently covered in the Fox News Special: The Truth About ACORN.”  While we attended that book signing and were not able to get that portion on tape, the Fox documentary crew did.  Sadly, the remarks apparently ended up on the cutting room floor.

The fact is, Patrick Gaspard, Obama’s “Glue Man,” is more important than Van Jones ever hoped of being.  The fact is, one of the most critical and influential jobs in a White House, the Director of Political Affairs, is occupied by a former SEIU health care lobbyist and ACORN organizer.  To be exact, he was Executive Vice President–the #2–at SEIU 1199 in New York City.

After Gaspard was appointed to the White House, Carribbean Voice quoted him as saying, “I grew up in 1199…and I will always be an 1199er wherever I am.”  SEIU’s luxury is that now taxpayers are paying for it.

Wade Rathke, current organizer with SEIU Local 100 (in New Orleans) and ACORN International (now “Community Organizations International”), called Gaspard a “great friend” on his ChiefOrganizer.org blog. Additionally, Rathke theorized how Gaspard was likely instrumental in working with SEIU to bring “big health care operators” to the table.  [Figuring once scrutiny came to someone high-level in the White House, the evidence would be changed, we turned Rathke's blog posting into a PDF.]

That is curious, given the Obama Transition team’s pledge that Gaspard would refrain from issues he had lobbied previously.  According to the Washington Post, a transition spokesman said, “Patrick and Mark [Gitenstein] have jobs on the campaign that are general in nature, but per the unprecedented ethics policy laid out earlier this week they will recuse themselves from the fields of policy or agencies they lobbied in the previous 12 months.”

So we are to believe the Political Director of the White House—one of the most important players in the administration—is sitting on his hands while Obama attempts to salvage his biggest “reform” yet, and likely ever?  Ethics schmethics.

When Sean Bell was shot by New York City police in 2007, Al Sharpton reached out to Patrick Gaspard (while he was at SEIU 1199) to formulate a response.  According to Politicker NY, “In December 2006, Mr. Sharpton asked Patrick Gaspard to help him assemble an emergency meeting of about 300 activists, black nationalists, union and political leaders to decide on an appropriate response to the police shooting…”

Sharpton used the SEIU 1199 office to hold a protest organizational meeting.  According to The Observer, the union was represented by Gaspard at the meeting.

The People’s Organization for Progress, along with the New Black Panther Party, organized protests against the New York City police department, carrying signs saying such things as “KILL THE PIGS THAT KILL OUR KIDS.”

In October 2007, under Gaspard’s eye, the union hosted an event at its headquarters to mark the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Che Guevara “by the military dictatorship of Bolivia under the direction of the CIA.”

“The bitter truth for U.S. imperialism forty years later is that Che’s example and ideas are more powerful and resonant than ever among oppressed peoples of the world, especially the Americas,” an announcement of the event read. Yes, under Gaspard’s watch and likely authorization, the union hosted a celebration of Che Guevara’s life.  See an accouncement flier for a similar event.

Other participants included Communist Party USA, Freedom Socialist Party, People’s Organization for Progress, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Action and many others.

SEIU 1199, in 2007, was a signatory on a petition to “free Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

Shortly after that, SEIU 1199 hosted the “International Secretary of the Hands Off Venezuela Campaign and Latin America correspondent for Marxist.com.”  SEIU 1199, under Gaspard’s leadership, has filled a radical role in New York and national politics.

Gaspard has contributed to the Working Families Party, a political party founded—and still co-chaired—by ACORN.

He is still listed as a member of the advisory board to the Center for Working Families.  The CWF’s address is the same as New York ACORN.

In 2004, Gaspard worked for America Coming Together, a George Soros-funded 527 organization that worked in swing states to elect John Kerry president.  According to Michelle Malkin’s new book, Culture of Corruption:

During the 2004 election cycle, he had led the radical, left-wing, George Soros-funded group, America Coming Together (ACT) as national field director.  SEIU poured $23 million into ACT in a costly, unsuccessful attempt to put Democratic Senator John Kerry in the White House.  Under Gaspard’s tenure at ACT, the get-out-the-vote group employed convicted felons as canvassers and committed campaign finance violations that led to a $775,000 fine by the Federal Elections Commission–the third largest civil penalty levied in the panel’s history.

So, ACORN connection or not, Gaspard is a radical.  Whether or not he drew a paycheck from ACORN is a distinction without a difference. And we shouldn’t allow a whitewash of the evidence to negate the rest of Gaspard’s background.

Recent well-publicized events that I need not recount here show ACORN’s criminal propensities. In a moment I’ll explain how ACORN’s financial affairs ought to raise a red flag for investigators at the U.S. Department of Justice, but first some background.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which was created to prosecute organized crime, allows the federal government to go after individuals who commit any two RICO-related crimes over a decade. The law allows courts to convict persons if it can be shown that they committed those crimes as part of an illegal enterprise and can order disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains from the enterprise.

RICO is the right tool for the job.

Perhaps it’s the only tool for the job because the ACORN network is deliberately structured to deter scrutiny. Its nebulous legal status and opaque corporate structure allow it to keep its activities largely hidden from public view.

The social justice entrepreneurs of ACORN sit on the boards of ACORN and of ACORN affiliates. Many, many, many of them.

These “interlocking directorates” create an appearance of conflict of interest. Such arrangements may be widespread and lawful, but they always raise legitimate questions about the quality and independence of board decision-making. The ACORN network claims to be a “family” of organizations embodying the ethos of community organizing, which stresses local action and decentralized authority.

In fact, ACORN is tightly controlled from the top. One blogger discovered last year that 294 ACORN affiliates operate out of ACORN’s building on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans.

ACORN’s many affiliates have extraordinarily sophisticated financial arrangements that are largely hidden from public view. ACORN uses its system of interlocking boards of directors to oversee its affiliates and make financial mischief.

As Jim Terry of the Consumers Rights League has noted, “ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain.”

Look at a person named Donna Pharr. Pharr sits on the boards of at least 22 ACORN affiliates. She’s also deputy treasurer of the Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee and is listed by Michigan as the contact person for Communities Voting Together, a “527″ pressure group.

And even now after it was revealed last year that ACORN founder Wade Rathke covered up his brother’s nearly $1 million embezzlement, Rathke remains chief organizer of ACORN affiliate SEIU Local 100, president of ACORN International Inc. (since renamed Community Organizations International), and president and a director of Affiliated Media/Foundation Movement (AM/FM) Inc., which is an ACORN affiliate that produces news segments for eight alternative radio stations.

There are plenty of other examples of directors and officers playing musical chairs throughout the ACORN empire. (See Foundation Watch, November 2008.)

Commenting on ACORN’s complex administrative arrangements, Charlotte Allen observes in the Weekly Standard, “The potential for abuse in an interlocking arrangement governed top-down from New Orleans is as obvious as a thicket of ‘Change’ signs at an Obama rally.”

ACORN takes recycling seriously, at least when it comes to money.

My research determined that ACORN affiliate Project Vote (its proper legal name is Voting for America Inc.) has funneled $16,487,690 to ACORN and other ACORN affiliates since 2000.

The $16 million-plus figure consists of $12,712,121 in direct payments to ACORN, $1,912,647 in payments to Citizens Services Inc. (CSI), and $1,862,922 in payments to Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI).

CSI is the ACORN affiliate that the Obama campaign paid $832,598 to during last year’s primary season. The Obama campaign falsely declared in campaign finance filings that the expenditures were for “staging, sound, lighting” but corrected the record after my friend the late blogger Nancy Armstrong uncovered the truth. (Armstrong of Garden Plain, Kansas, an ardent researcher of all things ACORN, died at age 49 of a massive heart attack in late July. She ran the MsPlacedDemocrat blog so named because she became disillusioned with the Democratic Party and left it last year to become an Independent.)

CCI is the shadowy ACORN affiliate that has been called the ACORN network’s financial nerve center. CCI controls the flow of money throughout the ACORN network.

CCI is where ACORN founder Wade Rathke’s brother Dale worked. Dale Rathke embezzled almost $1 million from ACORN, and apart from having to pay the money back, got away scot-free. Big brother Wade orchestrated an eight-year coverup of the embezzlement with senior ACORN management. When the coverup fell apart last year, Wade Rathke was expelled from ACORN and until very recently law enforcement hadn’t lifted a finger to investigate.

As former ACORN official Charles Turner has said, CCI “is where the shell game begins.” CCI employees are no doubt helping to give a major shot in the arm to the document-shredding industry right now.

According to the most recent publicly available IRS Form 990 (tax return) for Project Vote, in 2007 the voter registration and get-out-the-vote outfit alone paid $1,907,592 to ACORN, $705,705 to Citizens Services Inc., and $395,260 to Citizens Consulting Inc.

Since 2000 ACORN affiliate the American Institute for Social Justice Inc. (training and publishing) paid ACORN $1,926,831, CCI $362,464, and ACORN Associates Inc. $258,593.

On its 2002 tax form, the Institute disclosed a $1,684,184 “community reinvestment” grant to ACORN, along with a $9,637 loan to SEIU Local 100. (On the same document, the Institute also reported receiving a $50,000 interest-free loan from the Tides Foundation for “purchase of equipment,” and a $4,000 interest-free loan from the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute’s Progressive America Fund Inc.) In an LM-2 (labor union disclosure) form in 2007, SEIU Local 880 revealed that it gave $60,118 to ACORN for “membership services.”

On its 2006 tax form, the American Institute for Social Justice Inc. disclosed that it provided a $4,952,288 “community reinvestment” grant to ACORN, the non-tax-exempt Arkansas nonprofit corporation that controls the ACORN network.

Why is all this money flying around the ACORN network? What could the group possibly being doing with it all? What other network of tax-exempt nonprofit entities does business this way?

ACORN may have reasonable explanations for some or all of these suspicious transactions but it has yet to offer them. In light of recent developments, these are questions it should be forced to answer.

ACORN lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley raised the alarm about interlocking directorates and the perilously close ties between ACORN and Project Vote. As the New York Times reported last fall, Kingsley found:

[T]he tight relationship between Project Vote and Acorn made it impossible to document that Project Vote’s money had been used in a strictly nonpartisan manner. Until the embezzlement scandal broke last summer, Project Vote’s board was made up entirely of Acorn staff members and Acorn members.

Ms. Kingsley’s report raised concerns not only about a lack of documentation to demonstrate that no charitable money was used for political activities but also about which organization controlled strategic decisions.

She wrote that the same people appeared to be deciding which regions to focus on for increased voter engagement for Acorn and Project Vote. Zach Pollett, for instance, was Project Vote’s executive director and Acorn’s political director, until July, when he relinquished the former title. Mr. Pollett continues to work as a consultant for Project Vote through another Acorn affiliate.

“As a result, we may not be able to prove that 501(c)3 resources are not being directed to specific regions based on impermissible partisan considerations,” Ms. Kingsley said, referring to the section of the tax code concerning rules for charities.

She also found problems with governance of Acorn affiliates. “Board meetings are not held, or if they are, minutes are not kept, or if minutes are kept, they never make it into the files,” she wrote.

Project Vote, for example, had only one independent director since it received a federal tax exemption in 1994, and he was on the board for less than two years, its tax forms show. Since then, the board has consisted of Acorn staff members and two Acorn members who pay monthly dues.

The newspaper also interviewed George Hampton and Cleo Mata, two former Project Vote board members. Both denied serving on the board and Hampton, who acknowledged he had been an ACORN member, said he had never heard of Project Vote.

Ironically, Rathke condemned interlocking directorates in the corporate world. In 1980, he endorsed the proposed “Corporate Democracy Act” which would have fined directors up to $10,000 per day for “serving more than two corporations” simultaneously. (Heritage Foundation backgrounder, March 11, 1980)

Go figure.

(This article is an updated version of an article originally published by the American Spectator.)

Part of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s (ACORN) rotten core includes a very cozy relationship with Big Labor.  In fact, in many instances ACORN and Big Labor are one and the same.  In 2008, Big Labor funneled ACORN millions of dollars for so-called organizing activity.  But, that is only the tip of the Big Labor iceberg.

ACORN controls or significantly dominates several Big Labor unions and organizations.  ACORN created and controls SEIU 100 (Gulf Region) and SEIU 880 (a recently expanded SEIU mega-local that covers Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas).

ACORN founder S. Wade Rathke referred to mega-union SEIU 880 as “one of the pillars of the ACORN Family.”

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern hand picked ACORN’s Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.

In addition to Rathke’s and ACORN’s SEIU involvement, Rathke controlled Louisiana HERE Local 100, was Secretary-Treasurer of a New Orleans based AFL-CIO labor organization, and served on the board of a hotel employees union organizing committee.

A search of financial disclosure reports (UnionReports.gov) filed with the U.S. Department of Labor for the years 2000 and 2006 disclosed the following positions that Rathke held in labor unions while he concurrently served as ACORN’s Chief Organizer:

Wade Rathke DOL Reported Union Positions (2000,2006)

ACORN’s connections extend to several other Big Labor funded organizations such as the Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now (WARN), Site Fighters, and Community Labor Organizing Center (CLOC).

An Inside Look

An internal ACORN memo disclosed by Michelle Malkin provides more insight into the ACORN-Big Labor collaboration:

WHICH CORPORATIONS? Local 100 was nurtured by ACORN, but I think US Labor law prevents ACORN from interfering in Local 100 affairs. And it is not clear that ACORN wants to bother with Local 100 anymore, except to collect money Local 100 has borrowed from ACORN affiliates (some $250,000). There are some Local 100 subsidiaries which ACORN probably doesn’t care about, e.g., some Baton Rouge Teachers organizations, a couple Texas organizations…. they are nonprofits set up to TRY to represent workers who are not allowed to organize themselves into collective bargaining units. I assume ACORN is ready to let these go to Local 100.

–L100. To what extent does the Local 100 Board and Local 100 members know about the perfidy of their Chief Organizer? Do they know how hokey their LM-2 filings are?

–DOL and Local 100. To what extent should ACORN monitor Local 100 activities and filings and report them to the DOL? Apparently a new election of Local 100 officers is due to happen in September 2008.

–Local 100’s debts. An initial review of Local 100’s LM-2’s suggests that Local 100 owes some $250,000 to ACORN affiliates. When will those debts be called in?

–CCI. [received union funds, provided bookkeeping for SEIU 880 in Chicago]  The point here is that if ACORN wants nothing to do with WR [Wade Rathke], then presumably CCI needs to terminate its contracts with any WR tainted organization. These conflict of interest issues are about to come to a head with CCI attorneys. So far our model has been “Well, in the past we wait to see if conflict can be worked out—THEN we worry.” In the past conflict has been resolved. In the present crisis the CCI lawyers may have to face these issues shortly. As an ethical if not a legal matter, the whole of CCI will have to face these issues also.

–WARN. [received union funds]  This corporation is WAL-MART ALLIANCE FOR REFORM NOW, INC., and its Board members are –Wade Rathke, 3810 Burgundy Street, New Orleans, LA, 70117; –Rick Smith, 1344 W Cass St, Tampa, FL, 33606; and –Tamecka Pierce, 6537 Chantry St, Orlando, FL, 32835. The corporate name somewhat resembles ACORN’s. If it is a membership organization I find it hard to believe it is anything more than laughable. However, it may have a lot of grant money from some people somewhere? Bottom line is I don’t know much about this, and I don’t know if ACORN should care, or how to find out if ACORN should care.

–Acorn Institute.  [received union funds]  I think this is clearly an ACORN corporation, but I have to observe that it seems to me that WR has been trying to fill it with shills. I think it is one of ACORN’s major 501c3s, and control of it needs to be monitored

–ACLOC. [received union funds]  I think control of this organization is up for grabs, but the more critical question is who gets business from SEIU and ACORN. One could almost give this to WR because it’s worthless without business—yet if ACORN gave it to him it would have to be under the condition that the ACORN name was deleted. By way of additional information, WR seems to have founded a “CLOC” in Florida a while back. Maybe ACORN should keep ACLOC and WR should see what he can do with CLOC.

–ARC . [received union funds]  This used to be a key 501c3 feeder for labor projects. Right now the Board supposedly consists of Steve Bachmann and Mildred Edmond. And Dale Rathke and Cornelia have supposedly left this Board. ACORN should advise Wade Rathke that this corporation is going to be cleaned up, and should probably be closed down. Steve Bachmann is going to ensure that if WR wants to try any tricks with this corporati[o]n, then WR is going to find his Mumsy is going to be very VERY upset.

–SEXUAL HARASSMENT. Mitch Klein has filed a complaint against Chaco Rathke for harassment, and against Wade, Beth and Dine for retaliation. It is not clear that these items are subject to much negotiations, because they are matters of law. Depending upon what Alex Mora finds and recommends, ACORN will have to take whatever steps will pass muster with the EEOC, the DOL, and ultimately, the Courts. Another player in this play is EFC, because as landlord EFC must provide its tenants with safe environments, that don’t have its property managers engaging in sexual harassment, and that don’t allow its tenants to intimate other tenants. Again, much of this will turn on what Alex Mora finds, and generally what the law requires. ACORN has little room for negotiation or discretion here, but since it involves the Rathkes, its existence must be acknowledged and noted.  [Emphasis added]

(Note:  According to two conflict-of-interest reports filed at the U.S. Labor Department, ACORN’s SEIU 100 actually had a union position called “child of the chief organizer” listed.  Better view the reports now, because the Obama Labor Department is busy eliminating future conflict-of-interest reporting by union officers and employees.)

Big Labor – ACORN Organizing Partnership

From the early days of Saul Alinsky-styled union organizing, ACORN and Big Labor learned that forced unionism provides the financial fuel to perpetuate their organizational schemes and political clout.  ACORN and Big Labor have turned organizing into a numbers game; it is no longer about improving working conditions, as Randy Schaber’s and David Bego’s stories clearly illustrate that SEIU was not escalating pressure to improve working conditions.  The tactics that SEIU used border on sadism.

According to Vanessa Tait’s book, Poor workers’ unions: rebuilding labor from below, ACORN and Big Labor have grown more politically powerful and more militant together:

ACORN’s autonomous labor organizing projects – Unite Labor Unions (ULU) – were quite different.  Drawing on labor’s traditions, the ULU locals reached out to other unions and community groups to build solidarity around campaigns.

… In New York, workfare organizing lead to strong relationships between ACORN and some progressive unions such as CWA 1180, which worked with ACORN to gain permanent ballot status for the state’s Working Families Party.

… Networks of activists both inside and outside of mainstream labor spread this philosophy of new militant unionism.  By the late 80’s, organizers with social justice or community organizing experience had made headway inside local, regional , and national trade unions.  Experience with … ACORN was common … Mark Splain and Stewart Acuff, both community organizers with ties to ACORN who directed the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Department.

Ms. Tait describes in some length ACORN’s rise and its long intertwined relationship with the new more militant Big Labor movement.  And, she exposes Rathke acolytes Stewart Acuff and Mark Splain, who coordinate the AFL-CIO’s entire Organizing Department.

Further, according to Washington Times reporter S. A. Miller, ACORN operates mob-styled protection rackets:

ACORN provided liberal causes with protest-for-hire services and coerced donations from the targets of demonstrations through a mob-style “protection” racket.  ACORN called it the “muscle for the money” program, according to prepared testimony…

The “unofficial” program collected payments to organize protests. For example, the Service Employees International Union [SEIU] hired ACORN to harass the Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm. Other paid protests targeted Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt and Money Mart, according to the testimony.

If you want first hand reports from the front lines of an SEIU ACORN-type campaign, listen to the National Right to Work Committee’s Interviews with two victims of separate multi-year card check unionization campaigns: Randy Schaber and David Bego.  They describe the “protection racket” in detail.

ACORN and Big Labor’s Ultimate Goal

Just prior to the BigGovernment.com ACORN exposé, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent five letters to Departments and Federal Agencies asking questions about ACORN’s illegal activities. Now, the Senate and House are voting to cutoff federal funds.

Because of what Tait referred to as the “new militant unionism,” American workers can expect to see more ACORN-orchestrated Big Labor organizing harassment campaigns in their neighborhood if the Card Check Forced Unionism (S 560) bill is passed as promised by President Obama (who likely has a very close relationship with ACORN and SEIU 880 from his Chicago “community organizing” days).

ACORN’s and Big Labor’s ultimate goal is to force more workers to pay labor union dues as a condition of employment.

With a long history of lawbreaking that is finally getting media attention, the poverty pimps of ACORN are currently in retreat across the nation, and an upcoming voter registration fraud trial may reveal embarrassing information that disrupts the operations of the embattled radical activist group. This is in addition to the undercover child prostitution sting videos revealed in recent days on this website.

The testimony will come soon from former ACORN Las Vegas field director Christopher Edwards. Charged with election fraud by Nevada’s Democratic attorney general, he cut a deal last month with prosecutors and has pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters.

Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 17.

ACORN stands accused of enforcing voter registration quotas with its employees and offering bonuses for extra registrations. Nevada law forbids the use of such incentives on the theory it encourages canvassers to file fraudulent registrations. No wonder: ACORN registers “Mickey Mouse” and various celebrities, out-of-state residents, and dead people, every election cycle.

As part of the plea deal, Edwards, whom state investigators consider to be the mastermind of the incentive program, has agreed to testify against former regional director, Amy Busefink, and against ACORN, which is a co-defendant. The Las Vegas Sun reported that Edwards acknowledged he conspired with Busefink and ACORN to create the “Blackjack” incentive program that gave canvassers an extra $5 for submitting 21 or more registration cards each day. The daily quota was allegedly 20 forms.

If ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) happens to be convicted, it could have its status as a nonprofit corporation revoked in Nevada, which could make it very difficult for the ACORN network to operate in that key battleground state.

Such a conviction would send shock waves through leftist organizing circles across the nation and might embolden more prosecutors to take on ACORN. Until it was charged by Nevada this year, ACORN had boasted about its ability to duck prosecution for election fraud.

Amy Schur, a senior ACORN official who has been in charge of the group’s national campaigns, is likely to testify in the Nevada case, said Karen Inman of St. Paul, Minnesota, a former member of ACORN’s national board.

Schur’s testimony might be devastating to ACORN because it provide a public airing of many of the group’s skeletons, suggested Inman, a lawyer by training.

That’s because Schur has intimate knowledge of how ACORN operates and was one member of a group within ACORN including then-chief organizer and founder Wade Rathke that covered up a nearly $1 million embezzlement by Rathke’s brother, Inman said. Wade Rathke was fired by the board last summer and ordered to sever all ties with ACORN. He has failed to do so. He is still, for example, chief organizer of SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans, an ACORN affiliate he founded.

Inman herself was ousted from the national board by management last fall after she asked too many questions about the embezzlement. Now she’s one of the leaders of the “ACORN 8,” a group of former ACORN members trying to reform ACORN.

Inman also made the point that ACORN is in turmoil throughout America.

Liz Wolf of Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve center of the ACORN network, has been negotiating with tax collectors on behalf of ACORN to have interest on its tax debts waived and to have some of the debts partially forgiven, Inman said.

CCI alone owes at least $400,000 in back taxes to the IRS, various states, and the District of Columbia. Collectively, the many affiliates within the ACORN network owe millions of dollars to tax authorities. The tax debts remain even after ACORN took a controversial payment from a developer in exchange for the group’s support for a sports stadium and mixed-use complex in Brooklyn. (The Pelican Institute recently unearthed $1 million in ACORN tax debts.)

Experts say the taxes owed are probably employment taxes, the same taxes used to support the Big Government programs that ACORN is so enamored of. Always resourceful, ACORN is using its massive tax liabilities to cry poor and beg funders for more money.

According to Inman, so far this year ACORN has closed many of its offices nationwide. Offices in Ohio (Dayton and Columbus), Michigan (Grand Rapids), and Texas have closed their doors. The offices in Oakland, California, and in her hometown of St. Paul are barely operating, she said.

“This is the first time in Minnesota that the office has gone dormant after an election,” she said.

ACORN is moving much of its operations out of its traditional headquarters in New Orleans to New York so executive director Steve Kest and chief organizer Bertha Lewis can exercise tighter control over the whole network, Inman explained.

Former ACORN employees are facing trial on election fraud charges in Pittsburgh, but those charges appear to be on hold now that the ACLU is challenging the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s voter registration law. ACORN remains under investigation by the local Democratic prosecutor in Cleveland, Ohio, after a grand jury indicted a local man for voting illegally after being registered multiple times by ACORN. The Louisiana attorney general’s office is also investigating ACORN.

The Edwards plea bargain came the same week that CCI, the financial heart of the ACORN network, was accused of filing false lobbying disclosure reports with Congress. That revelation is important because, as former D.C. ACORN housing committee member Charles Turner said earlier this year, CCI “is where the shell game begins.”

“ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved around to – for this purpose to that purpose, this organization to that organization,” said Turner. “We believe the way the money has been moved around, they’ve been laundering money.”

Federal lawmakers have known for years about ACORN’s unorthodox practices including its use of government resources to promote legislation and its extensive commingling of funds within its network of affiliates.

Former ACORN officials say these activities are controlled by the mysterious CCI, which is located in ACORN’s headquarters in New Orleans. CCI handles the financial affairs of hundreds of affiliates within the ACORN network. ACORN member dues, government money, and foundation grants, are all sucked into the CCI vortex often never to be seen again.

This summer, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent an information request to the IRS about CCI, which he noted “simultaneously managed the accounts of political and private donor-funded organizations.”

In the letter, Issa asked if “CCI’s co-management of various tax-exempt and non-exempt affiliate accounts, many of which receive federal funds and some of which are 527s, violate[d]” the Internal Revenue Code. His follow-up question was, “If so, has the IRS taken steps to prevent CCI’s co-management of affiliate accounts that are legally required to be separate and segregated?”

Issa’s committee investigators released a report last month stating that ACORN “is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators.”

The report examines the ACORN network’s abusive interlocking directorates, and claims that the group deliberately organized itself to escape legal and public scrutiny. “ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate.”

There is “a pattern of loose financial accounting and no firewalls” within the community-based group’s byzantine network of hundreds of affiliated groups, Issa said.

Although the actions and possible outcomes explored in this article aren’t likely to end up killing ACORN outright, it’s clear that the group has already used up more than a few of its nine lives.

Even if allegations in the Issa report don’t lead to criminal charges, it’s worth noting that the nation’s largest community-based activist organization, which claims to defend the working class, has a record of visceral, abiding hostility to the very same pro-labor laws it claims to support.

Although it supports the continued imposition of equal employment opportunity laws on the rest of America, it argued it shouldn’t have to comply with those same laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had to sue ACORN in the 1990s to force it comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the crown jewel of the civil rights movement’s legislative accomplishments.

And for a group that poses as a champion of workers’ rights, ACORN doesn’t treat its own workers well. What follow below are just a few select examples from ACORN’s sordid history of employee abuse.

The Industrial Workers of the World complained that Wade Rathke’s SEIU Local 100 sabotaged a union drive by employing union-busting techniques used by corporate America. In 2003 the National Labor Relations Board determined ACORN had unlawfully blocked its workers from organizing.

Fed up with long hours and paltry pay, four ACORN organizers were canned by ACORN two days after they started a union certification drive against the group in Portland, Oregon. “We felt there was a lot of deceit in the organization,” organizer Sarah Manowitz told Williamette Week. Employees reportedly worked 54 hours per week, including Saturdays, for annual pay of just $20,200. Two organizers said they were often paid late.

In 2006, $250-a-week ACORN intern Sandra Stewart told Baltimore City Paper that the Baltimore chapter hadn’t bothered to pay her for her work. Three other former ACORN workers told the paper that the group failed to pay them back wages.

A 2003 study of ACORN by the Employment Policies Institute found the group paid a wage of $5.67 per hour, which was “less than half the level demanded by many proposed ‘living wage’ ordinances that ACORN supports.”

ACORN doesn’t like paying its employees overtime. In 1996 the federal Department of Labor sued Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), a shadowy ACORN affiliate that traditionally took care of administrative matters for ACORN. The next year a federal court ordered CCI to cough up $10,000 in back wages.

A 1995 court case offered a window it what ACORN thinks of itself.

ACORN sued the state of California seeking an exemption from the law that requires that it pay its own employees a minimum wage. The group treated its workers as if they were mendicant friars, arguing that keeping its employees in poverty helps to boost their zeal to help the poor.

“We have employees who come to work for us because they’re politically committed to the things we’re doing,” Steve Kest, ACORN’s executive director, said in 1996. “They do their work, then [as volunteers] they do similar work, sometimes late into the night.”

ACORN lost.