ACORN, Stealing More Than Just Your Tax Dollars

Here at the RNLA we’ve been talking a lot about the federal money that flows to ACORN.  We’ve tracked over $54 million in grants from HUD alone.  It was the basis of the complaint we filed with the HUD Office of the Inspector General. 

We’ve seen the criminal activity that Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe helped expose.  We’ve seen the ACORN workers providing “tax counseling” which consisted of advice on how to evade IRS reporting and how to structure brothels and international underage prostitution rings.  It’s wrong for your tax dollars to be supporting this kind of behavior.

But what’s worse is the fact that your church may have also been helping bankroll these activities.

Last week the Institute on Religion and Democracy looked into ACORN funding from the Presbyterian Church.  They found the following payments were made:

-$7,500 from the Presbyterian Hunger Program for “general support”
-$10,000 to the ACORN New Orleans office for “community organizing”
-$35,000 from the PCUSA Self Development of People fund “to address the issue of security”

The Catholic Church had been an even greater funder of ACORN, but promptly halted their investment in this criminal enterprise once Dale Rathke’s million dollar embezzlement was disclosed last summer.  The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) had previously given ACORN more than $7 million.  I applaud the CCHD for putting an end to its support of ACORN once the embezzlement and cover-up were revealed.  I hope that in light of the more disturbing revelations we’ve seen lately other churches follow suit.

We’ve been calling on the Government to defund ACORN.  We’ve demanded HUD fight to get back any money that was misappropriated or misspent. 

If like me, you’re troubled that your church may still be financially supporting ACORN’s criminal endeavors it’s time to speak up.