Congress held hearings, defunded several of these programs, but Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch found innovative methods to continue the funding by financial terrorism and extortion. This is all without the oversight of Congress and mostly in legal secrecy.

 

In part from the report by the Government Accountability Institute:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith took a very direct approach

in his January 25, 2012 correspondence addressed to Eric Holder. He stated:

I am concerned that the terms of the Justice Department’s recent settlement

with Countrywide Financial Corporation and certain affiliates (collectively,

“Countrywide”) will allow the Department to give large sums of money to

individuals and organizations with questionable backgrounds or close

political ties to the White House without any guidelines or oversight. If that is

to be the case, this sort of backdoor funding of the president’s political allies

would be an abuse of the Department’s law enforcement authority.85

He was specifically addressing a December 28, 2011 DOJ settlement with Countrywide,

which required that Countrywide deposit $335 million into an interest-bearing escrow

account to remedy alleged violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Fair Housing

Act.86

****

The Rise and Fall of ACORN

Saul Alinsky’s influence is undeniable. Since the publication of Reveille for Radicals

in 1946 and Rules for Radicals in 1971, grassroots organizations have been launched for the

purpose of community organizing and systemic social/political change.91 As the movement

grew, organizers created several national support organizations including the Industrial

Areas Foundation (IAF) which was founded by Alinsky. Other organizations that grew out

of the Alinsky philosophies included NACA, and ACORN. One of the first was The National

Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), an activist organization founded in 1966, focused on

welfare rights.92 Both John Calkins, founder of The Direct Action and Research Training

Center (DART) and Wade Rathke founder of ACORN worked with the NWRO.93 Other

groups that appeared on the community organizing scene who modeled Alinsky’s style of

activism were groups like DART, National People’s Action (NPA) and La Raza.

One of the chief beneficiaries of this wealth redistribution by the federal

government has been ACORN. In its July 2006 report, “Rotten ACORN, America’s Bad Seed,”

the Employment Policies Institute described ACORN as a “multi-million-dollar

multinational conglomerate.”94 The report described ACORN’s hunger and pursuit of

political power:

ACORN’s no-holds-barred take on politics originates from its philosophy,

which is centered on power. An internal ACORN manual instructed

organizers to sign up as many residents as possible because “this is a mass

organization directed at political power where might makes right.”95

This sentiment aligns with the Marxist underpinnings of the Students for a

Democratic Society, a group that housed Rathke. ACORN enjoyed rapid growth facilitated

 

through government grants and contracts before, during, and after the 2008 election.

Handwritten notes obtained from an FBI investigative file by Judicial Watch through a FOIA

request indicate ACORN’s headquarters was working for the Democratic Party.96 During

and after the 2008 election there were numerous allegations of massive fraud on the part

of ACORN.97 In 2009, several major scandals involving ACORN and its affiliated groups

broke into the national news. These included rampant embezzlement, fraud, and evidence

that ACORN and their affiliated groups were advising individuals how to break the law.98

A July 23, 2009 Staff Report for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on

Oversight and Government Reform in its title asked, “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured as

a Criminal Enterprise?” Then offers the following findings in its executive summary:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has

repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and

operationally, 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.

Emerging accounts of widespread deceit and corruption raise the need for a

criminal investigation of ACORN. By intentionally blurring the legal distinctions

between 361 tax-exempt and non-exempt entities, ACORN diverts taxpayer and taxexempt

monies into partisan political activities. Since 1994, more than $53 million

in federal funds have been pumped into ACORN, and under the Obama

administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available

stimulus funds.

Operationally, 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. Structurally, ACORN is a chess game in which senior management is

shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated

employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act.99

One of the events described in the report was the cover-up of the embezzlement of

$948,607.50 by Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke.100 These and

other events led to a ban on all federal funding for ACORN affiliated groups in 2009.101

Fox News reported that the former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his

top aides renamed New York ACORN to New York Communities for Change (NYCC), used

the same office and stationary as New York ACORN and employed many of the same staff as

previously employed by New York ACORN.106 In 2013, Fox News and several other news

outlets reported that contracts for services known as Navigator grants under Obamacare

were awarded to former associates of ACORN and its affiliated organizations. Wade Rathke

had announced in September 2013 that The United Labor Unions Council Local 100, a New

Orleans-based nonprofit, would take part in a multi-state “navigator” drive to help people

enroll in Obamacare.107

****

In the most recent consent orders from Bank of America, Citigroup and

JPMorgan settlements offered credit for giving to nonprofits. These not only require banks

to make donations to nonprofits but incentivize them to give more than the required

amount. The evolution of these consent orders illustrates the growing effort by the current

administration to funnel money to these nonprofit groups.

The DOJ limited distributions to “HUD approved housing counseling agencies,” such

as the groups set to receive mandatory minimum payments under the Citigroup and Bank

of America settlements, and incentivized payments under many of these settlements. These

organizations had been preapproved by prior administrations. These included La Raza,

Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) and part of the old ACORN

network who in the wake of the scandal and congressional prohibition against further

funding restyled itself as the Mutual Housing Association of New York (MHANY). The HUD

website lists MHANY’s contact as Ismene Speliotis. Speliotis previously served as the New

York director of ACORN Housing. Furthermore, an examination of tax returns for the

nonprofit reveals that MHANY Management, Inc. maintained the EIN (72-1303737)

previously used by New York ACORN Housing Company, Inc. Between the 2007 and 2008

tax filings, only the group’s name had changed.147 This corporate entity was merely New

York ACORN Housing Company, Inc. rebranded with a new name and clothed in a new

“moral garment.” Despite the prohibition on ACORN funding from Congress, New York

ACORN Housing Company, Inc. had sidestepped congressional intent by simply changing its

name.

****

In September 2012, FHC hosted its annual conference in Orlando. The keynote

speaker for day two: Judith Browne Dianis,198 longtime liberal activist, attorney, and

scholar.199 In its 2012 post-election newsletter, FHC published Browne Dianis’s editorial on

that election.200 She did not mention the word “housing” once. Instead, she denounced what

she termed “the greatest rollback on voting rights in more than a century.” This was her

terminology for the “partisan” voter ID laws passed that year, and the subject of so much

litigation. Furthermore, as its website clearly shows, Browne Dianis’s Advancement Project

 

was in the thick of this litigation.201 In her FHC editorial, she condemned those laws at

length, and called for Election Day to be made a national holiday, and a “next generation

voting-rights movement.”202 She denounced other practices that she claimed amount to

voter suppression. She quoted the recently re-elected Barack Obama on these same issues.

So who was she and how did she find her way to the editorial page of the FHC

newsletter and the keynote speaker slot at the FHC convention? Advancement Project’s tax

return for 2012 lists a grant of $25,000203 to a 501(c)(4) advocacy group known as Florida

New Majority.204 The grant was designated as “Voter Protection Program” – amounting to

nearly one-tenth of the approximately $280,000.00 in grants given out by Browne-Dianis’s

nonprofit, the Advancement Project, for such purposes that year.205 Interestingly, the

Florida New Majority’s 990 for 2012 says nothing about protecting voters, but includes

nearly half-a-million dollars to “reach and mobilize voters during the 2012 elections with

the objective of promoting progressive federal and state legislators…” (emphasis added)206

****

Asian Americans for Equality: Margaret Chin and John Choe

Margaret Chin cut her political teeth as a student activist in the Communist Workers

Party (CWP) while attending the City College in the 1970s. It was Chin who stood before

the cameras and condemned the killing of five of her party members in Greensboro, North

Carolina where the CWP had sponsored a “Death to the Klan” rally which led to an armed

confrontation with the Klan.221 The “Communist” moniker would not serve them well in

their efforts to influence politics in New York City, but a solution was forthcoming. In 1974,

protests erupted in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Asian Americans for Equal Employment

was formed to fight discriminatory hiring practices on a federally-financed construction

project. A “stunning civil rights victory” ultimately led to the founding of Asian Americans

for Equality (AAFE) and a continued focus on “civil liberties” issues.222 Chin, a founding

member of AAFE223 and other members of the CWP, found great success in identifying an

issue important to the community and wrapping themselves in it. We know this because of

the overlap of individuals involved the CWP and AAFE. Many of the founders of AAFE were

also active with the CWP. AAFE shared an address and phone number with the CWP for

several years. It seemed that CWP veterans regularly ended up as AAFE officers. Chin

served as President of AAFE from 1982 to 1986 and was associated with AAFE until 2008

when she began efforts to run for the city council. Her work at AAFE served as a launching

pad into New York politics and in 1986 and with the help of the progressive liberal group,

the Village Independent Democrats, she was elected to the Democratic State Committee

were she served two terms. The AAFE afforded Chin the kind of resources and respectable

platform from which she could chase her political aspirations.224

In 2009, AAFE announced it had joined the NeighborWorks America charter.225 With

this came the “seal of approval” from HUD and federal funding. NeighborWorks funding also

increased—from just over $250,000 in 2008, the year before the announcement, to over

$700,000 in 2013 alone. In total, since 2008, AAFE has received over $4 million in grants from

NeighborWorks.226 Some have not only lamented, but have charged that the AAFE has left

its activist routes to become no more than a “housing developer.” As the New York Times

described it:

Down from the ramparts, fists unclenched, their protest signs long ago set aside,

Asian Americans for Equality — leaders among a cadre of community groups that

brought thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Chinatown and to the steps

of City Hall in the mid-1970’s — is now a major landlord and residential developer.

That same article published the following criticisms:

“I think AAFE has aligned itself with business interests and political interests at the

expense of Chinatown’s residential and low-wage workers,” said Margaret Fung,

executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. ”They

want to acquire properties or city-owned buildings so that they can be the

developers, instead of some other group. They favor themselves.”

****

A Rising New Star

In January 1993, an article in Chicago Magazine described how “a huge black turnout

in November 1992 altered Chicago’s electoral landscape-and raised new political

star.”243 Leading up to the election George Bush had been making gains on Bill Clinton in

Illinois. Carol Moseley Braun who had previously been seen as “unstoppable” was on the

ropes amidst allegations regarding her mother’s Medicare liability. Even so, she was able to

win her seat and Bill Clinton won the state. The article attributed their success to “…the

most effective minority voter registration drive in memory…” which was the result of the

efforts of Project Vote. At the helm of Project Vote was a young lawyer named Barack

Obama.

Sandy Newman, a lawyer and civil rights activist who founded Project Vote

explained the work of the nonprofit organization in the election as follows:

Project Vote! is nonpartisan, strictly nonpartisan. But we do focus our efforts on

minority voters, and on states where we can explain to them why their vote will

matter. Braun made that easier in Illinois. (emphasis added)

Project Vote’s work in voter registration was hailed as the reason Braun was elected

drawing a direct correlation with voter registration activities and election outcomes.

Indeed, in another portion of the article the writer contrasts the old way of doing things

and the new paradigm created by Mr. Obama’s efforts through the nonprofit:

To understand the full implications of Obama’s effort, you first need to understand

how voter registration often has worked in Chicago. The Regular Democratic Party

spearheaded most drives, doing so using one primary motivator: money. The party

would offer bounties to registrars for every new voter they signed up (typically a

dollar per registration). The campaigns did produce new voters. “But bounty

systems don’t really promote participation,” says David Orr, the Cook County

clerk….

The article suggests that the old political engine previously supplied by the “Regular

Democratic Party” had now been replaced by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and its leader, Barack

Obama.244

****

Billionaire George Soros founded data utility company, Catalist, to mobilize liberal

voters through nonprofits. Catalist provides the advanced data analysis necessary for

micro-targeting and is building a base of voters and contributors for the exclusive use of

progressive left-leaning groups. Its compatriot is an organization called Nonprofit VOTE

whose goals include providing “high quality resources for nonprofits and social service

agencies to promote voter participation and engage with candidates on a nonpartisan

basis.”247 Their website mentions that Nonprofit VOTE is a nonpartisan organization, and

they acknowledge the demographics of the voters that nonprofits are most likely to reach

are “young, low-income, and diverse populations.”248 Studies have shown that this

demographic is most likely to vote Democrat. As the Wyss memorandum points out these

populations “tend to be reliably progressive on economic […] issues.”249

In 2012 and 2014 Nonprofit VOTE ran pilot projects to increase voter turnout

through nonprofits. The project report acknowledged the help of Catalist, LLC, an

organization that “works with and for data-driven progressive organizations to help them

effect change: issue advocates, labor organizers, pollsters, analysts, consultants, campaigns,

and more.”

The two stated goals of the project were to:

• “For nonprofits already doing voter engagement and those considering it, the goal

of Track the Vote program was to provide tangible data to assess the impact of

nonprofits on increasing voter participation—using that data to ground their work

in outcomes and make the case for voter engagement as an ongoing priority.”

Read the full report here.