ACORN Layoffs are Taxpayer Rip-offs

Allegations of continuing corruption continue to mount against the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). In the wake of tremendous negative publicity, much of which was featured here at Big Government, and adverse House and Senate votes ACORN has begun laying off dozens of low-level workers and staff across the country.

However, under conditions of strict anonymity, ACORN organizers and staff have complained to the ACORN 8 (www.acorn8.com) that senior management has ordered them to continue to work for ACORN as “volunteers” but for them to apply for unemployment insurance.

In order to legally collect unemployment insurance compensation, the applicant must attest that they are ready, willing and able to work elsewhere to qualify for benefits. This is unemployment insurance fraud. And fraudulently applying for unemployment insurance compensation is a crime.

When these allegations were first brought to the attention of the ACORN 8, we initially thought no way. This is unbelievable, no one in their right mind would ever agree to do this. But we kept hearing these same allegations, over and over again, from different people in different parts of the country. And this is ACORN – these are the same of workers who registered Mickey Mouse to vote and offered tax advice to a pimp and prostitute. Consequently, we fear that ACORN senior management has launched yet another scheme to exploit the gullibility of some low income workers and bilk American taxpayers out of thousands of dollars of government benefits.

But who controls the staff at ACORN? The national president (Maude Hurd)? The Executive Director (Steve Kest)? The answer is the Chief Organizer, or Bertha Lewis. Under ACORN by-laws the Chief Organizer (not the board of directors) is responsible for all of ACORN staff and employees. Lewis has control of the staff; but the board has to reign in Lewis (and others).

Bertha Lewis has previously announced that an advisory council would assist her in getting ACORN’s “house in order”. This advisory council includes John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank; Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. In our opinion, the first order of business should be to “clean house” entirely and remove all culpable leaders and managers, including Lewis.

This will never stop until the corrupt leadership and senior management are purged from the organization. These individuals have gotten away with doing wrong for so long; they appear incapable of doing anything the right way. Greg Hall of Truth To Power once described ACORN as an organization that can’t count to “one” when preparing voter registrations. Now they can’t fill out unemployment insurance forms either.

The ACORN 8 have always sought to reform – not destroy – ACORN. But as scandal after scandal continue to emerge; it is getting hard for die hard supporters, like the ACORN 8, to believe that ACORN will survive. And there simply is no way that ACORN can continue to exist under the control of incompetent or corrupt senior management and executive leadership.

I’m unemployed and since June I have been filing weekly for my benefits. In mid July I began teaching 2 courses at a technical college. My pay was $2000 and the 2 classes which met from 6pm to 10pm and the quarter finished on Sept. 30th.

When making my unemployment claim I’m asked on the web form how many days I work each week and I reported 2 even though I’m only teaching 4 hours each day for a total of 8 hours per week (the class meets 2 times each week for 12 weeks for a total of 22 class sessions-week off for a holiday). This cut my unemployment benefit in half. I asked the unemployment office if I could only claim 1 eight-hour day and I was told, “No, it wouldn’t matter if you were there for only 5 minutes it would still count as a day.”

I just started teaching a new course in the quarter that started Oct. 7th. I’m only teaching 1 course but it meets 2 days each week so I will still have to report 2 full days when I claim my benefit even though I now teach just 4 hours and 40 minutes each week (it is a slighly longer course).

Before I started teaching my benefit amount was 405 + 25 = $425 each week. After I started teaching my benefit was reduced to 202.50 + 25 = 227.50 each week.

If I only collected unemployment for the 12 weeks (that is, if I didn’t teach) of the course I would have collected $5100 from unemployment.

Since I taught the 2 courses and had to report 2 full days of employment even though it was only 8 hours I made a total of $4730 ($2000 from the college plus $2730 from unemployment).

This quarter, as I said I am only teaching 1 course and my total income for the 12 weeks of the course will be $3980 ($1250 from the college plus $2730 from unemployment).

So, you can imagine my second guessing: Should I not work and make more money or should I take the hit and make less mone but at least have an additional line on my resume and thus avoid a lengthy period of an unemployment gap on my resume.

What do you think?

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