ACORN Plans Massive Layoffs

A credible source claims the embattled left-wing advocacy group ACORN is poised to announce massive staff layoffs but an ACORN spokesman denies this is the case.

A credible source close to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now revealed that the activist network intends to lay off all staff members operating out of its New Orleans headquarters. All information provided by the source to this reporter in the past has turned out to be correct.

However, ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson of the public relations firm The Advance Group in New York City said the source was incorrect.

In an interview Friday afternoon with Levenson said (referring to BigGovernment.com), “You guys just can’t get it right. You’re wrong again.”

Levenson received media attention earlier this year when Fox News host Glenn Beck ejected the combative publicist from his studio during a commercial break. Beck said at the time that Levenson accused him of being a racist.

My source said that one of the employees to be cashiered in the Crescent City is the daughter of disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke. Rathke’s wife, Beth Butler, also works for ACORN but it is unclear at this point if she too will be laid off. Rathke’s son also reportedly is employed by ACORN.

ACORN also plans to lay off two-thirds of its Washington, D.C., staffers as soon as Wednesday of next week, according to the source. Layoffs will also extend to ACORN’s affiliate the ACORN Institute.

The source also revealed that all or most of ACORN’s development staff in the group’s New York City office will soon be laid off if they haven’ been laid off already.

ACORN’s already tarnished image took a major hit last month when BigGovernment.com unveiled undercover sting videos in which ACORN staffers across America were shown advising a pair posing as a pimp and a prostitute on the finer points of avoiding prosecution for prostitution, importation of underage illegal aliens to serve as sex workers, obtaining government grants under false pretenses, and tax evasion.

The adverse publicity generated by the videos and the group’s never-ending scandals is slowly but surely drying up ACORN’s funding sources.

Adverse publicity generated by the videos and never-ending scandals is drying up ACORN’s funding sources. It is time to take the economic chain saws into the Acorn forests and clear-cut them.

According to Dept of Labor statistics, ACORN has received approximately $4 million from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as well as local affiliates.....Illinois Homecare Workers and HomeChildcare Providers, a local Chicago SEIU union, which was formed through ACORNs efforts, which pays rent to ACORN as well as contributing through the SEIU. According to a recent NPR investigation, ACORN also receives funding from the Change to Win labor federation, the Food and Commercial Workers Union and the United Federation of Teachers.

REFERENCE (NPR: ACORN's Money Tree HasMany Branches, October 15, 2008)

ACORN receives funding from a variety of private charitable organizations that are widely recognized as “liberal” ........The Bauman Family Foundation, George Soros' Open Society Institute, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

REFERENCE (NPR: ACORN's Money Tree Has Many Branches, October 15, 2008).

ACORN and its affiliates also receive funding from more traditional sources, such as corporate foundations, including the JP Morgan Chase Foundation, Ben & Jerry's foundation, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, and Citigroup, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and foundations affiliated with the founder of United Parcel Service (UPS). A full list of ACORN and ACORN affiliate donors is available from the Capital Research Center, a non-profitorganization which studies political advocacy groups.

REFERENCE (Foundation Watch, 2008: Capital Research Center Cracks the ACORN). ACORN and its affiliated entities make up a network that has drawn criticism for its complexity and internal relationships.

Elizabeth Kingsley, an ACORN attorney, wrote a devastating 2008 report expressing concerns that ACORN and Project Vote may have violated federal laws because of how they interacted.

ACORNS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

(1) ACORN's man in the Obama White House is longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard. He holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House. He's the President’s fixer and the man who gets ACORN projects and money. Gaspard once worked for ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis.

(2) Patrick Gaspard’s brother Michael Gaspard works for The Advance Group. Michael Gaspard works for ACORN’s registered lobbying organization and with ACORN’s national spokesman Bertha Lewis. Michael apparently keeps a lower profile than his brother. He does not appear on lobbyist disclosures for The Advance Group NY State. Nonetheless, he works there. Ms. Lewis’s contacts list confirms Michael Gaspard’s employment there.

(3) ACORN Shaun Donovan. Mr. Donovan is HUD Secy. Before that, Mr. Donovan was NYC Commissioner of Dept of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)---where Donovan worked on affordable housing initiatives----projects right up ACORN’s alley.

(4) ACORN Karine Jean-Pierre is WH liaison for Dept of Labor (headed by latino agitator Hilda Solis). Karine once worked for John Edwards (vertical or horizontal?). She left there to work for Cong Anthony Weiner, then became Barack Obama’s regional political director.

The web of connections from ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis straight into the White House, out the other door into HUD and the Dept of Labor (headed by latino agitator Hilda Solis), then circle back to ACORN’s lobbying operation.

ACORNS EVERYWHERE Senate Finance Committee Study

ACORN comprises a mind-boggling 94 different affiliates, that amounts to "a big shell game," a biting Senate Finance Committee study shows. The study, by the staff of Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, reveals four ACORN charity groups give more than half their revenue to taxable entities that engage in "impermissible lobbying and political activity." ACORN and it’s subsidiaries for decades have moved taxpayer money into their own pockets and into the left-wing Marxist machine.

Sen Charles Grassley's documents show leaders of ACORN community groups transferred several million dollars in charitable and government money-----meant for the poor---- to parts of the group that have political (and sometimes profit-making) missions.

Sen Grassley's documents indicate that ACORN's tax-exempt groups----along with its tangled web of allied organizations---- used more than half their charitable and public money in 2006 to pay other ACORN affiliates.

==================================================

Let's help the White House distance itself from ACORN
FOX CONTACT PAGE http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77538,00.html
FOX PHONE 1-888-369-4762

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.