ACORN Covering Up SEIU Ties? Rathke is The Link......

ACORN Covering Up SEIU Ties?

By Matthew Vadum on 4.22.09

 

Wade Rathke of ACORN with SEIU

Organizers from Local 100, ACORN, and SEIU, supporters and attorneys
celebrate our victory on February 3, 2002.

 A photo retrieved from SEIU Local 100′s website today. The original photo caption reads: “Organizers from Local 100, ACORN, and SEIU, supporters and attorneys celebrate our victory on February 3, 2002.” The man with the sandy hair to the right of the microphones is Wade Rathke, founder and then-chief organizer of ACORN.

ACORN Deletes References to Unions from

Web Site

By: Kevin Mooney
Examiner Investigative Reporter
04/22/09 5:04 PM EDT

Just a few days after The Washington Examiner reported on links between the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) and organized labor it appears the self described group of non-partisan community activists has erased web site references to union affiliates that were cited in the article.

Fortunately, Matthew Vadum, a senior analyst and editor with the Capital Research Center (CRC) who closely scrutinized ACORN and its many affiliates has a record of the web site.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and ACORN are essentially joined at the hip. SEIU Locals 100 and 880 were previously identified as allied organizations on ACORN’s web site. But the reference was deleted shortly after The Examiner story ran.

U.S. Department of Labor LM-2’s (financial disclosure forms) point to over $600,000 in transactions between these same SEIU locals and other ACORN operations. A 2007 LM-2 form shows SEIU Local 880, which is active in Illinois and Minnesota, donated $60,118 to ACORN for “membership services.” Organized labor has kicked it back in the form of gifts and grants to ACORN totaling $2.4 million, the LM-2’s reveal

“ACORN claims to be non-partisan but there are mountains of evidence that show it is flagrantly partisan,” Vadum said. “It celebrates the most left-wing politicians and endorses Democratic Party candidates. Whenever ACORN is called out for activity that might violate their tax status, the standard operating procedure is to deny responsibility and to place the blame on rogue actors. Their network is deliberately set up to avoid scrutiny and to create confusion.”

Top ACORN officers have also been supportive of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), also known as the Card Check bill, Vadum points out. The bill was reintroduced earlier this year by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). Organized labor has contributed to members of congress, mostly Democrats, who have expressed support for Card Check.

In 2008 SEIU spent over $42 million on independent expenditures and communications, more than any other group aside from the Republican and Democratic National Committees, according to OpenSecrets.org. SEIU’s political action committee (PAC) also contributed about $2.3 million to candidates in the 2007-2008 cycle, with 94 percent of its donations going to Democrats, campaign records show.

The web site that listed SEIU 100 and 880 up until a few days ago no longer has these affiliates listed. An older copy of the web site that includes the SEIU affilates is available here.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/ACORN-Deletes-References-to-Unions-from-Web-Site–43468342.html

 

ACORN Covering Up SEIU Ties?

By Matthew Vadum on 4.22.09

ACORN did a strange thing today.

It scrubbed its website of references to two of its key affiliates, Locals 100 and 880 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), an event reported by Kevin Mooney of the Washington Examiner.

Why would the radical left-wing ACORN do that? An observer I spoke with earlier today speculated that organized labor doesn’t want to be associated with ACORN, which is pure PR poison, right now as it presses for the most important item on its legislative agenda: the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) also known as “card check.”

Is the labor movement actually taking political heat for its ties to ACORN? It seems like a reasonable hypothesis but I don’t have proof right now. Perhaps in time we’ll find out. In any event, erasing the listings is weird.

What is ACORN afraid of?

In detail, here’s what went down:

ACORN, which until recently proudly listed Locals 100 and 880 of SEIU as affiliates, removed the short blurbs and logos of the two entities from its allied organizations page.

As of April 20, one day before Mooney’s article on ACORN and its ties to unions ran in the Washington Examiner, the ACORN website page looked like this. (The link leads to a PDF of the page I made on Oct. 30, 2008.)

From the same website, here is a copy that I made on Oct. 24, 2008 of an official list of ACORN’s affiliates, a document called “ACORN, ACORN Affiliate, and COUNCIL Offices.”

Moreover, SEIU Local 100′s most recent publicly available IRS Form 990 shows ACORN founder Wade Rathke as that local’s chief organizer (see page 5 of above linked PDF file).

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/04/22/acorn-covering-up-seiu-ties

 

Notes:

It has been proven that ACORN and the SEIU are the ones that organized the bus loads of people that were taken to the homes of the AIG executives (receiving bonuses), who then in turn harassed and scared the families of these AIG executives into returning their bonuses.

Obama brownshirts?

Obama’s scare squad?

Obama and Andy Stern(SEIU) are buds.  Obama has ties to ACORN and Wade Rathke.

Read this: http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/fw1108advanceuncorrectedproofversion2.pdf

Put two and two together America……

America needs to DEMAND an investigation into ACORN and an audit of their books…..

WHY does Andy Stern believe he wields more power than any other Union in America?

Now we find out that ACORN could possibly get $8.5 BILLION dollars in Obama’s new budget?

You decide….

 

 

 

About these ads