With a membership of over 350,000, ACORN is organized into more than 850 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the United States, as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now

lots of Low Income Housing pushing: [CRA]

opposes Charter School and for-profit school-operators

series of Voter Fraud cases

[Dale Rathke], the brother of ACORN's founder [Wade Rathke], was found to have embezzled $948,607.50 from the group and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000. ACORN executives did not inform the board or law enforcement, but signed an enforceable restitution agreement with the Rathke family to repay the amount of the embezzlement... A whistleblower revealed the fraud in 2008, leading to the departure of both Dale and Wade Rathke... Dale Rathke remained on Acorn's payroll until a month ago, when disclosure of his theft by foundations and other donors forced the organization to dismiss him.

Sol Stern http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_acorns_nutty_regime.html

• With the Labor Union allies it has cultivated, it has even helped create new parties that have scored real successes... NewYork houses the most successful of these parties, the [Working Families Party], launched and co-chaired by local ACORN chief [Bertha Lewis].

• At times, ACORN opts for undisguised authoritarian socialism, as when it proposes that "large companies which desire to leave the community" be forced to obtain "an exit visa from the community board signifying that the company has adequately compensated all its employees and the community at large for losses due to relocation."

• For more than a decade, ACORN has used foundation grants to start up its own NewYork Public Schools, something the Board of Ed sometimes allows community-based organizations to do. With warm-sounding names like the Bread and Roses High School, ACORN's schools are political-indoctrination centers with mediocre academic records.

Steven Malanga http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-acorn_squash.htm

• Though Acorn touts [Living Wage] laws as a way to lift the working poor into the middle class, the vast body of academic work on wage laws shows that they end up hurting the poor by forcing businesses to eliminate some low-wage jobs. Acorn's own leadership understands this principle perfectly. When California regulators sued Acorn for not paying its own workers the Minimum Wage, Acorn argued that this would endanger its mission - because it would have to hire fewer workers... Some living-wage efforts have gone one cynical step further - with laws that specifically exempt unionized (Labor Union) companies from adhering to the new wage standards.

• The biggest "but" of all has been ACORN's effort to unionize "Work Fare" workers - welfare recipients who, under the terms of Welfare Reform, must put in a certain number of hours of work at city agencies in exchange for their benefits.

Sounds like the groups in The Future Once Happened Here.

ties to Barack Obama

• http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGC7zm

• Oct10: his response

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