ACORN: A Self-Sustained Economy (Pt. 3)

Follow the money like a boomerang

Welcome to part three of our review of the Employment Policies Institute’s (EPI) report “Rotten ACORN: America’s Bad Seed.” Click here if you missed parts ONE or TWO.

ACORN is registered as a non-profit corporation out of Arkansas, a state that does not require public disclosure of corporate operating budgets. However, estimates of ACORN’s annual operating budget range from $30 million to $37.5 million, depending upon the source. The New York Times acknowledges that even these figures do not include the “vast resources of the ACORN-run unions or reflect election-year resources given to its ostensibly non-partisan get-out-the-vote efforts.”

Yet they stiff their employees

Here are just a few examples of where the money goes with ACORN, courtesy of EPI research. Note that in all cases, the money is kept in house. They could make quick loans outside the circle if they chose to, which they don’t. One organization pays the other under the ACORN umbrella, and it all comes back to Wade Rathke:

• SEIU Local 100’s Department of Labor financial disclosure for the year 2000 showed a $58,654 grant of union members’ money to another labor group called Hospitality, Hotel & Restaurant Organizing Council (HOTROC), which was also founded by Wade Rathke
• ACORN paid Citizens Consulting, Inc. (which is run by Dale Rathke) $520,000 for lobbying between 1998 and 2004
• Department of Labor financial disclosures show at least $623,829 in transactions between ACORN’s SEIU locals 100 and 880 and other Rathke/ACORN-run operations
• From 2000 through 2003, Project Vote paid more than $1.7 million to ACORN and Citizens Consulting
• Between 1997 and 2003, the Mutual Housing Association of New York paid more than $2.1 million in contractual fees to the New York ACORN Housing Association
• Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corporation paid more than $233,360 in contractual fees to the New York ACORN Housing Company. At the same time, Mott Haven owed as much as $435,000 to the Mutual Housing Association of New York
• The Association for Rights of Citizens, which carries brother Wade and Cornelia Rathke on its board of directors, loaned tens of thousands of dollars to SEIU Local 100, ACORN’s Missouri Tax Justice Research Project, and ACORN, and has made grants totaling tens of thousands of dollars to ACORN
• ACORN’s Agape Broadcasting Foundation showed notes and loans receivable of more than $100,000 from other ACORN-affiliate entities. ACORN’s Affiliated Media Foundation Movement showed notes and loans receivable of nearly $250,000 from other ACORN entities, while also showing notes and loans payable of more than $1.1 million to ACORN and its Institute for Social Justice
• Tax forms show that since 1997, the ACORN Housing Corporation has paid more than $5,100,000 in fees or grants to other ACORN entities
• Since 1997, the American Institute for Social Justice has given grants in excess of $7 million to ACORN and its affiliates

The money is there

But ACORN employees don’t see much of it. CLICK HERE for part four of this series to see how ACORN treats the people who work for them.

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