The ACORN shell game — playing games with tax payers’ money

For most of us, we sit in shock at how a clearly partisan organization can continue to receive federal dollars to pay for those partisan activities, and are allowed to keep their tax exempt status.

Matthew Vadum of Big Government has a nice story outlining some of their lobbying shenanigans:

This is important because, as former ACORN national board member Charles Turner said earlier this year on “The Glenn Beck Program,” CCI “is where the shell game begins.”

“ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved around to – for this purpose to that purpose, this organization to that organization,” said Turner. “We believe the way the money has been moved around, they’ve been laundering money.”

CCI handles the financial affairs of hundreds of affiliates within the ACORN network. ACORN member dues, government money, and foundation grants, are all sucked into the CCI vortex often never to be seen again.

Although CCI is registered as a nonprofit corporation in Louisiana, it does not appear to have sought tax-exempt status from the IRS. Surely it declined to seek tax-exempt status because entities with that status have to publicly disclose financial data. This is the same approach employed by George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a piggybank for left-wing political infrastructure that is registered as a taxable nonprofit in order to prevent public scrutiny of its finances and internal affairs.

I encourage you to read the rest of the story on Big Government, as well as some of the other stories they have on ACORN.

This is a problem that isn’t going away.  Remember, during the campaign, then candidate Barack Obama talking glowingly about ACORN.  The ACORN CEO stated openly in a national meeting that it was their job to get Barack Obama elected President of the United States.

We have all seen the video of ACORN workers picking up people off the street in Ohio and telling them to vote for Obama, during the Ohio program allowing people to register and vote at the same time, four weeks before the election.  The video of ACORN workers encouraging people to register multiple times, with multiple addresses — we still don’t know how many of them voted multiple times.

All of this from a non-partisan group, operating with federal funding.  Now, as I have documented, now that the dust has settled, the Democratically controlled House and Senate are quietly working to reinstate ACORN funding.

We need more voices crying out about this partisan group getting tax payer dollars.  The major networks, along with CNN and MSNBC are certainly not going to cover the story.  They will allow the House and Senate to quietly re-fund ACORN.

The question is simple.  Do you want your tax dollars going to a partisan organization that has allegedly broken state and federal laws, election and otherwise?