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ACORN and Drummond Pike’s Tides Foundation


The “Glenn Beck Program” had a segment today on Fox News about the connection between ACORN and the Tides Foundation. (I can’t find a video clip of the segment online yet.)

He said that Drummond Pike, head of the Tides Foundation, wrote a personal check for about $700,000 to ACORN to cover the bulk of the $948,000 that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled from the ACORN network.

The Tides Foundation is a pass-through entity. Wealthy liberals give the charity money, take the tax deduction, and then tell Tides which causes to give their money to. The money is then given in the name of Tides and the real donor’s name is withheld. Pike has said that keeping the identity of Tides donors secret is very important.

Wade Rathke, who was expelled by ACORN’s national board last summer for his role in covering up the embezzlement, is a member of the Tides board. Suspicious? You betcha.

Meanwhile, ACORN stands accused of election fraud, extortion, and racketeering, yet congressional leaders have no interest in investigating the group. House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan) refuse to probe ACORN.

Why?

In a clip shown on Beck’s show today, reporter Griff Jenkins asked Frank about ACORN. Frank, who claims ACORN is not eligible for $8.5 billion in federal funding, tried to blame ACORN on the out-of-office Bush administration.

The congressman probably won’t do anything about ACORN. Why would he? ACORN supporters are his power base.

Matthew Vadum

The author of Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books, 2011), Vadum, former senior vice president at CRC, writes and speaks widely…
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