ACORN’s Pension Shell Games

I have another piece on ACORN in the American Spectator today.

It’s about the way ACORN has been playing around with pension funds.

Here’s the top of the article:

ACORN appears to have been involved in improper use of pension funds and this lawbreaking may yet land some of its officials in serious legal difficulties.

That’s according to F. Vincent Vernuccio, formerly a special assistant at the U.S. Department of Labor (and an American Spectator contributor) and editor of EFCAUpdate.org.

Vernuccio reviewed what I’ve called the Kingsley memo, an internal ACORN legal memo from June 19, 2008, in which ACORN lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley gives her client a stern warning to shape up or face grave legal consequences. “If you do not make some hard choices now and ensure they are carried out, they almost certainly will be made for you,” she wrote. [Italics in original.]

ACORN didn’t listen. It let the problems fester. In the following months when honest national board members such as Marcel Reid and Karen Inman tried to do something about ACORN’s corruption and demanded to see critical paperwork, current chief organizer Bertha Lewis showed them the door and denounced them as traitors to the ACORN cause. […]