November 2, 2010 by Brenda J. Elliott
Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for World Net Daily, reports:
ACORN, a national registration organization accused of rampant voter fraud, celebrated this election day by declaring it is filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
“For over 40 years ACORN has fought the good fight,” Bertha Lewis, the group’s CEO, said in a news release today.
Lewis blamed a “barrage of unmitigated accusations” as taking its toll on the organization while “ongoing political onslaught caused irreparable harm.”
“We have spent our remaining resources trying to dissolve the organization with integrity, while continuing to respond to the extremist attacks,” she said. “Let us all learn from the past, and march boldly into the future.”
While ACORN claimed this past March it was disbanding, the organization continues to operate under different names as local chapters throughout the country.
ACORN International, for example, changed its name to Community Organizations International. California ACORN now goes by the name of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment while New York ACORN renamed itself New York Communities for Change.
An offshoot ACORN organization called Acorn Housing changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America, but it retained the same tax and employee identification numbers that it held under its former name.
Obama misleads on ACORN ties
WND previously documented Obama’s close relationship with ACORN.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, when asked about his relationship with ACORN in a televised debate, Obama declared, “The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.”
Obama’s claim his only involvement with Acorn was his representation of the organization in a lawsuit is inaccurate. The 1995 suit on behalf of ACORN, in which the state of Illinois was compelled to implement the federal “motor-voter” bill, was just a sampling of Obama’s association.
ACORN was very active in Obama’s native Chicago, where in 1997, some 200 members attempted to storm a City Hall meeting, resulting in six members being arrested, including Madeleine Talbot, ACORN’s Chicago director.
In the early 1990s, Talbot invited Obama to help train ACORN activists.
While Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit, it channeled millions of dollars to ACORN and affiliated groups.
Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund’s website. According to tax filings, Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2000.
He served on the Fund alongside William C. Ayers, an unrepentant member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.
Obama actively sought and received the endorsement by ACORN for his local campaigns.
In the Social Policy Journal, Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN leader, documents what he terms Obama’s “long service” with ACORN, which he said led many of theorganization’s members to help in voter campaigns for Obama’s early Chicago campaigns.
Foulkes said Obama and ACORN were “old friends.”
In 1992, Obama was director of Project Vote in Chicago, which helped register 150,000 voters on the city’s South Side. Obama’s successful work was credited in multiple media reports with helping to elect Democratic Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.
Obama’s campaign in 2008 falsely claimed ACORN was “not part of” Project Vote, but the organization’s incorporation papers, obtained by WND, show Project Vote is a trademark name whose parent company is registered at the same New Orleans address in which ACORN and multiple ACORN affiliates are housed.
Obama himself previously connected Project Vote to ACORN.
“I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drives in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work,” Obama was quoted on his own campaign website as saying at an ACORN meeting, according to a post by official Obama website blogger Sam Graham-Felsen.
Clarifying the role of ACORN in Project Vote, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the New York Times Project Vote and ACORN were not as intertwined in 1992 as they are today, as a significant part of Project Vote’s revenues flow to ACORN and various affiliates as payment for services.
But LaBolt’s statement, which admits Project Vote and ACORN were intertwined on some level while Obama was director, directly contradicts the Obama campaign’s “Fact Check” claim that ACORN was “not part” of Project Vote.
In a misleading statement, Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign website claimed “ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee,” but it fails to mention Obama was an unpaid ACORN trainer, as WND first reported in August.
Lewis Goldberg, a spokesman for ACORN, confirmed Obama conducted two hour-long leadership training sessions for his organization in the late 1990s and said Obama was not paid for the work.
Obama actively sought and received the endorsement by ACORN for his local campaigns.
Campaign pays ACORN affiliate
WND first reported in August 2008 Obama’s campaign paid more than $800,000 in services to Citizen Services Inc., or CSI, which, as McCain mentioned last night, is a nonprofit offshoot of ACORN.
According to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Obama campaign paid CSI $832,598.29 from Feb. 25 to May 17, including $564,342.21 for “stage, lighting and sound.” The payments stood out since CSI does not offer services for stage, lighting or sound.
The Obama campaign amended the FEC reports in August and September to claim the payments to CSI were for get-out-the-vote efforts.
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