Jamie Radtke, a former president of the Richmond Tea Party, says the Internal Revenue Service is going out of its way to make life difficult for her group.
Radtke, now a Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Virginia, told the Daily Caller that the Richmond Tea Party has been waiting for tax-exempt charitable status since December 2009. “After waiting two and a half years for approval the IRS recently communicated a new set of overly-burdensome and invasive demands for information that exceed the scope of the IRS code.” The IRS wants answers to “12 additional questions in 53 separate parts” and demanded the group produce a a list of all its donors and volunteers.
Radtke has asked House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to look into how tea party groups are being treated by the IRS.
This just in from the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee:
DOJ Files Papers to Urge Reversal of ACORN Funding Ruling
WASHINGTON. D.C. – House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) released the following statement today regarding the Department of Justice’s decision to file papers in federal court arguing for a reversal of the Eastern Court Judge Nina Gershon’s ruling last week which found a congressional ban on funding for ACORN to be a bill of attainder:
“Given the numerous ongoing investigations being conducted surrounding ACORN’s criminal activities, the federal government will and should vigorously defend what the President signed and Congress overwhelmingly passed—a bipartisan recognition that ACORN is not fit to receive federal funds to perform duties on behalf of the American people,” said Issa, also a member of the House Judiciary Committee. “There is no plausible way we can allow a left-wing activist Judge usurp the authority of the President and Congress in an effort to bypass Constitutional authority so that a criminal organizations plagued by criminal accusations can have a court-ordered to entitlement to taxpayer dollars.”
Earlier in the week, Ranking Member Issa and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) sent Attorney General Eric Holder a letter urging the department to immediately appeal the ruling.
It’s unclear to me if the GAO did this on its own initiative or was ordered by Congress to do it. I remember a few months ago Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) had offered an amendment to legislation that would have directed GAO to investigate ACORN and report back to Congress within 180 days.
“ACORN’s criminal acts over many years have robbed taxpayers and charitable donors of the honest public services ACORN was paid to provide,” Issa said. “This GAO study should be another step toward understanding the scope of funds from across the federal government that were sent to ACORN yet cannot be verified that they were used as intended.”
As its financial resources dwindle, radical advocacy group and organized crime syndicate ACORN may have to file for bankruptcy protection before Christmas, ACORN insiders say.
“They may have to file for bankruptcy if they don’t have several big pending grants approved or get emergency loans,” a highly placed ACORN source told me over the weekend. This information bolsters Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) claim last week that ACORN is in turmoil amidst internal power struggles and on the verge of bankruptcy.
Given that ACORN is a network of hundreds of affiliated nonprofits, it’s not exactly clear how a bankruptcy filing would work, but the idea is under serious consideration by ACORN’s leadership. It was discussed at length at the group’s most recent national board meeting, which took place in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., during the Oct. 14-15 weekend, ACORN sources told me.
But even if ACORN were to go bankrupt, that doesn’t mean it would disappear. [...]
ACORN chief organizer (CEO) Bertha Lewis and debated (well, sort of debated, more like answered a few questions and stonewalled the important questions) Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) in front of Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.
Issa’s investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform prepared an 88-page report on ACORN after consulting my research on the group.
Meanwhile, even President Obama says an investigation of ACORN, with whom he has strong ties, is called for. However, the president’s statement that he “didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money” cannot possibly be true.
In today’s Examiner investigative reporter Byron York reviews what’s known and what isn’t about the circumstances surrounding the firing of the Inspector General charged with overseeing Americorps, the mismanaged agency that is one of President Obama’s favorite programs. No one’s talking but the heat’s on. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), ranking Republicans on the Senate Judiciary and House Oversight and Government Reform committees, are asking questions and demanding hearings into the affair that concerns an $850,000 Americorps grant allegedly misused by its recipient, Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento and an Obama friend. IG Gerald Walpin was fired when he objected to Justice Department actions that let Johnson off the hook.
It seems unlikely that the Committees of Congress will respond to Republican demands for an investigation of the Justice Department, which agreed to let Mayor Johnson receive federal stimulus money, overruling the IG, who suspended him from receiving any new federal grants. Still, the Democrats in Congress are not as fond of Americorps as the President. The House Appropriations Committee cut $90 million out the the President’s request for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which oversees Americorps, and $41 million from his request for the Americorps state and national grants program, notes Rick Cohen, whose diligent review of the Committee’s treatment of grants to social service nonprofits must have permanently glazed over his eyes. Cohen deconstructs the bureaucratic language in the Committee’s report on CNCS mismanagement and pronounces it “devastating” and a “a very clear vote of no-confidence.”
The show aired before Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released their report on ACORN last week. The report, which accuses ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) of organized criminal activities, is based to an extent on my research detailing the ACORN network’s interlocking directorates and its corrupt practices.
Washington News Observer has a new video in which Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana) offers an update on what’s going on in Congress regarding ACORN and the Census.
Vitter covers some of the same ground I covered in an American Spectator article about the report issued by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week. (I covered much of the material last year in Foundation Watch.)
That report recommended that the election fraud factory known as ACORN be stripped of its tax-exempt status because it illegally spends taxpayer dollars on partisan activities, commits “systemic fraud,” and violates racketeering and election laws.
As a side note, I have a long article about ACORN called “Stealing Democracy” appearing in the August edition of Townhall magazine. The piece is available only in the hard copy edition.
A new congressional report accuses the radical activist group ACORN of organized criminal activities. I will have a full article on the American Spectator website in the morning about it.
The report, called “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?” comes from minority staff on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The ranking member on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), is appearing on the “Glenn Beck Program” on Fox News today to discuss the report.
The report, available here, is based to an extent on my research detailing the ACORN network’s interlocking directorates, its millions of dollars in unpaid taxes, and various unethical and possibly unlawful activities. Its executive summary mirrors the many articles I have written about ACORN for the American Spectator.
Here’s an excerpt from the congressional report:
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate.
Emerging accounts of widespread deceit and corruption raise the need for a criminal investigation of ACORN. By intentionally blurring the legal distinctions between 361 tax-exempt and non-exempt entities, ACORN diverts taxpayer and tax-exempt monies into partisan political activities. Since 1994, more than $53 million in federal funds have been pumped into ACORN, and under the Obama administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds.
Operationally, ACORN is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators. Structurally, ACORN is a chess game in which senior management is shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act. [...]
One small proviso: I don’t think the $8.5 billion referred to consists entirely of funding from President Obama’s February stimulus package. Much of the money ACORN and other advocacy groups are eligible for is to be found in the fiscal 2010 budget for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Congressional Democrats have shown little interest in probing ACORN. After initially expressing interest in an investigation, House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-Michigan), a longtime ACORN ally, backed off saying “the powers that be decided against it.”
The website of “Lou Dobbs Live” indicates Issa will also be on that show at 7 p.m. (Eastern) tonight to talk about the report.
Updated: Here is the video from Issa’s appearance today on the “Glenn Beck Program”:
A congressional report accusing the radical activist group ACORN of organized criminal activities is set to be unveiled on the “Glenn Beck Program” tonight.
The report comes from minority staff on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The ranking member on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), announced on Twitter that he is appearing on Beck’s TV show tonight at 5 p.m. Eastern time to discuss the report. The website of “Lou Dobbs Live” indicates Issa will be on that show at 7 p.m. tonight to do the same.
The report is called “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?”
The report is based, to an extent, on my research detailing the ACORN network’s interlocking directorates, its millions of dollars in unpaid taxes, and various unethical and possibly unlawful activities.