The Case for ACORN as a Criminal Enterprise

Dana Loesch provides a fabulous analysis of White House's implication in the NEA communist funding scandal: "Conference Call Transcript Implicates Fed Art Agency in Government Co-Opt of Arts Community." (Via Memeorandum.)

But the ACORN scandal's far from resolved. See also, Peter Roff, "The Case for ACORN as a Criminal Enterprise." Here's the key passage:

This latest round of problems for ACORN may be the best documented, but they are not the first nor, for that matter, are they the most serious. A report issued last summer by the Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to Sunday's Washington Times, "presented evidence that ACORN had engaged in criminal misconduct."

Among the findings, the report said, ACORN:

• Engaged in tax evasion, obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting a cover-up of nearly $1 million embezzled by Dale Rathke, brother of group founder Wade Rathke;

• Committed investment fraud, depriving the public of the right to "honest services," and engaging in a racketeering enterprise affecting interstate commerce;

• Conspired to defraud the United States by using taxpayer dollars for partisan political activities;

• Submitted false filings to the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Department of Labor; and,

• Violated the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act.

Any one of these is a serious allegation. Taken together, they give ACORN most every appearance of being some sort of massive criminal enterprise worthy of a federal investigation of the sort made under the terms of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act—or RICO. In fact the group and its affiliates are currently the target of more than a dozen lawsuits related to voter fraud in the 2008 election alone.

As a result of the increased public scrutiny of its actions, the Obama administration has "severed it ties" with ACORN, at least as far as allowing it to participate in the 2010 Census. The U.S. House and Senate are both voting as fast as they can to cut off federal funding of the group and more than one coalition has been created to ask state legislatures and governors to do likewise. ACORN's response began as a militant defiance of the criticism, likening it to the use of "Willie Horton" in the 1988 presidential campaign.

Except that talking about Mr. Horton, a convicted murderer sentenced to life in a Massachusetts prison without the possibility of parole who walked away from the last of nearly a dozen unsupervised furloughs he had received to commit additional crimes in Maryland, was not a political dirty trick as certain liberals and Democrats continue to insist; he was proof positive that former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis held views about incarceration, crime and punishment that were well outside the mainstream of American thinking. Likewise, the folks at ACORN who think they can mount a racially-tinged, aggressive offense to deflect attention from what is on those tapes are likely to be disappointed.