More on Richard B. Berman's Vicious Campaign Against ACORN
Richard B. Berman's Berman & Company is being paid a lot of money by who knows who to attack ACORN. Berman's company hides behind various organizations masquerading as legitimate non-profits including the very serious-sounding Employment Policies Institute (EPI).
According to EPI's 2005 990, EPI received $1,174,921 in direct contributions of which $870,616 was paid to Berman & Company.
EPI, a 501(c)(3), admits to being affiliated with the FirstJobs Institute and the following websites:
www.LivingWage.org
www.MinimumWage.org
www.GatewayJobs.org
www.ECON4U.org
www.LivingWageResearch.com
www.RottenAcorn.org
(The RottenAcorn site can be accessed here.)
EPI's officers and directors and the number of hours per week devoted to EPI:
Richard B. Berman
Executive Director
14 hours
Craig Garthwaite
Secretary and Treasurer
1 hour
Jacob Dweck
Director
1 hour
Jeff Campbell
Director
1 hour
James R. Ledley
Director
1 hour
All of the officers and directors list their address as 1775 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Ste 1200, Washington, DC 20006 which is the address of Berman & Company.
ACORN, of course, is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now which states that it is "the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities." ACORN has recently been in the news in connection with the DOJ scandal. One of the issues is whether ACORN was unfairly targeted by political appointees in the DOJ because of its voter registration efforts.
The Employment Policies Institute threw in the kitchen sink in this 6/30/05 press release, "John Edwards Should Separate Self From ACORN's Baggage on Columbus Minimum Wage Tour, Says Employment Policies Institute; Voter Fraud, Union Busting, Embezzlement and Federal Grant Violations Are Just The Tip of The Iceberg of ACORN's Long, Sordid History":
COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- The activist group to which former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards has attached his minimum wage crusade once sued the state of California to exempt itself from paying its own employees the minimum wage. This stunning hypocrisy is just the beginning of a lengthy history of duplicity, fraud and illegalities committed by Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) -- all of which were detailed in a letter to Edwards today by the Employment Policies Institute (EPI).
"Earlier this year, you stated that the best anti-poverty program is 'a job.' We wholeheartedly agree. It is concerning that in your enthusiasm to address this critical issue, you have allowed yourself to become aligned with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). While ACORN claims to work for the benefit of low-income employees, its actions betray a troubling disregard for this very group," wrote EPI Research Director Craig Garthwaite in the letter to John Edwards.
The Employment Policies Institute highlighted for Edwards the findings in its report, "The Real ACORN: Anti-Employee, Anti-Union, Big Business" including:
ACORN and Minimum Wage Hypocrisy -- Most egregiously, ACORN promotes ballot initiatives and local ordinances to force businesses to pay higher minimum wages, as they are currently doing with Edwards in a number of cities. In 1995, however, ACORN actually sued the state of California to have its employees exempted from the state minimum wage. ACORN argued that being forced to pay higher wages would mean that they would hire fewer employees -- the very dilemma faced by businesses. Incredibly, ACORN stated that paying its employees a lower wage would allow them to be more sympathetic to the low- and moderate-income families they were attempting to help. ACORN argued that abiding by the state minimum wage would limit their ability to promote their agenda and would therefore be a violation of their First Amendment rights. The trial court judge dismissed ACORN's suits, stating, "leaving aside the latter argument's absurdity ... we find ACORN to be laboring under a fundamental misconception of constitutional law."
ACORN Involved in Florida Voter Registration Fraud -- In 2004, ACORN was at the center of a Florida Department of Law Enforcement statewide investigation into widespread fraudulent voter registrations tied to its ballot initiative campaign to raise the minimum wage. An ACORN whistleblower reports that ACORN illegally threw out Republican registrations while paying gatherers for Democratic ones. He also charged that ACORN targeted ex-cons and that he personally set up registration tables outside the Miami police department and Dade County jail and went on to state, "The voter registration project has been operating illegally since it started."
ACORN bilks AmeriCorps -- In 1996, the Inspector General of the AmeriCorps program, Luise Jordan, stripped a $1 million grant from the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC). When applying, AHC had denied any connections to ACORN, since the grant was not intended for political advocacy organizations. Evidence later uncovered by the Inspector General found that not only was AHC created by ACORN, engaged in numerous transactions with one another, and sharing staff and office space -- but it utilized the AmeriCorps grant to increase ACORN membership, a violation of federal guidelines. AHC also utilized its government-funded loan counseling program to steer low-income families toward ACORN memberships. Jordan found that AHC had distributed leaflets stating that low income, first-time homebuyers were required to join ACORN, at an annual cost of $60, in order to receive the government-subsidized counseling.
ACORN Union-Busts Own Workers -- On March 27, 2003 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that ACORN had violated the National Labor Relations Act and was required to rehire and pay restitution to employees terminated for attempting to form a union. The NLRB ruling is just the latest in a trend of ACORN's union-busting tactics. ACORN employees have historically demanded higher wages, safer working conditions and more timely contracted wages. These efforts have been repressed behind closed doors by the hypocritical ACORN leadership, which publicly advocates higher pay and better working conditions for private sector workers.
"ACORN's history of voter registration fraud, hypocrisy, abuse of federal grant programs, and disregard for sound economics should raise a red flag for John Edwards or anyone lending their name to this group," Garthwaite said.
The full report is available online at http://www.epionline.org/
The Employment Policies Institute is a nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding entry-level employment.
CONTACT: Mike Burita of Employment Policies Institute, +1-202-463-7650
More to come.
I wonder if Berman & Company is in touch with the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Wall Street Journal
Editorial
November 3, 2006
"The Acorn Indictments"
So, less than a week before the midterm elections, four workers from Acorn, the liberal activist group that has registered millions of voters, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board. But hey, who needs voter ID laws?
We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
The good news for anyone who cares about voter integrity is that the Justice Department finally seems poised to connect these dots instead of dismissing such revelations as the work of a few yahoos. After the federal indictments were handed up in Kansas City this week, the U.S. Attorney's office said in a statement that "This national investigation is very much ongoing."
Let's hope so. Acorn officials bill themselves as nonpartisan community organizers merely interested in giving a voice to minorities and the poor. In reality, Acorn is a union-backed, multimillion-dollar outfit that uses intimidation and other tactics to push for higher minimum wage mandates and to trash Wal-Mart and other non-union companies.
Operating in at least 38 states (as well as Canada and Mexico), Acorn pushes a highly partisan agenda, and its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party. As part of the Fannie Mae reform bill, House Democrats pushed an "affordable housing trust fund" designed to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits to subsidize Acorn, among other groups. A version of this trust fund actually passed the Republican House and will surely be on the agenda again next year.
Acorn and its affiliates have pulled some real stunts in recent years. In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.
"You have to wonder what's the point of that, if not to overwhelm the system and get phony registrations on the voter rolls," says Thor Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights, who also testified at the hearing. "These were Democratic officials saying that they felt their election system in Ohio was under assault by these kinds of efforts to game the system."
Given this history, it's not surprising that Acorn is so hostile to voter identification laws and other efforts to ensure fairness and accuracy at the polls. In Missouri last month, the state Supreme Court held that a photo ID requirement to vote was overly burdensome and a violation of the state constitution. Acorn was behind the original suit challenging the statute, and it has brought similar challenges in several other states, including Ohio.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that blacks today are almost twice as likely as they were in 2004 to say they have little or no confidence in the voting system. Such a finding would seem like a powerful argument for voter ID laws, which consistently poll well among people of all races and incomes and would increase confidence in the voting process. Of course, voter ID laws would also cut down on fraud, which, judging from the latest indictments, would put a real crimp in Acorn's style.
(See related letter: "Letters to the Editor: Acorn Clarifies Issues On Voter Registration" -- WSJ Nov. 9, 2006)
June 11, 2007 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
From an 11/7/06 OMB Watch article, "ACORN Voter Registration Drive Investigated":
"...News of these charges caught the attention of Senate Finance Committee Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA), who has been active in investigating nonprofit organizations. Grassley proceeded to write ACORN National President Maude Hurd, asking 62 questions to determine whether or not the organization violated the law that grants nonprofits their tax-exempt status. Grassley expressed concern that "misuse of tax-exempt organizations for political and lobbying activities is a widespread problem." His letter also drew a connection between ACORN and the misuse of nonprofit organizations by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates. Grassley requested ACORN provide vast information in a searchable, electronic format within nine days, and many of his questions had no apparent relationship to the organization's voter registration activities..."
June 20, 2007 8:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
5/16/07 Kansas City Star Buzz Blog:
8:41am
ACORN indictments: the press release
Several bloggers, and people who have posted here, have asked to see the press release issued by Brad Schlozman when a grand jury indicted four former ACORN workers last November.
We've checked our files, and can't find an official press release, which is perhaps why one can't be found on the DOJ website. Instead, we were sent PDF copies of the indictments (one of which named the wrong person) along with this statement by Don Ledford, the office's PIO, reprinted here in its entirety
Attached are four separate indictments returned this afternoon by a federal grand jury in Kansas City. All of these defendants are KC residents who were employed by ACORN. US Attorney Bradley J. Schlozman is not available for interviews, but issues the following statement:
Those who commit fraud in the electoral process dilute the votes of their fellow citizens and undermine the integrity of our democratic system. The Department of Justice will not allow such fraud to go unpunished.
This national investigation is very much ongoing.
Schlozman did issue a formal release when one of the workers pleaded guilty last February. The release is attached below. ...
3:12pm
There was no press conference involving Brad Schlozman after the ACORN indictments were handed up Nov. 1, 2006.
Here's what we posted on the Buzz Blog that afternoon:
"The U.S. Attorney's office says a federal grand jury handed up indictments this afternoon against four people who, the indictments claim, worked for the community group ACORN to register voters.
The four face two felony counts each: of providing false information to the KC Election board, and of filing a false voter application with the board. Each carries a 5 year/$250,000 fine penalty.
ACORN says it's happy the indictments were handed up -- they say they provided the names of three of the four indicted individuals, who, they say, no longer work for ACORN.
Said U.S. attorney Bradley Schlozman, in a statement: "Those who commit fraud in the electoral process dilute the votes of their fellow citizens."
More to come.
Here's what the story said in The Star, the next day:
"A federal grand jury handed up indictments Wednesday against four people for allegedly submitting false voter registrations to the Kansas City election board.The indictments -- against Kwaim A. Stenson; Dale D. Franklin; Stephanie L. Davis, also known as Latisha Reed; and Brian Gardner -- include two felony counts against each, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
All four defendants worked this year as voter registration recruiters for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN. They could not be reached for comment.
ACORN officials said they no longer work for the group. And, they emphasized, ACORN turned in the names of three of the defendants to authorities last month after learning of the problem.
"I think that our system is working because we caught these people," Andrew Ginsberg, head organizer for Kansas City ACORN, said in an interview. "Sometimes people cheat, whether they make eight dollars an hour or eight million an hour."
Each charge of "knowingly and willingly" filing the false information carries a potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
"Those who commit fraud in the electoral process dilute the votes of their fellow citizens," U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman said in a statement.
The statement added: "This national investigation is very much ongoing."
Claudie Harris, board president for Kansas City ACORN, said the indictments do not taint the 35,000 other voter registrations submitted by ACORN in Kansas City this year. "I think we’re doing a great job," she said.
Kansas City’s Republican election director, Ray James, said the indictments could help maintain public trust in the election process.
"I hate for anyone to be prosecuted and suffer," James said. "But I’ve long been concerned about the rights of the general public to a fair election."
James and his Democratic counterpart, Sharon Turner Buie, have said that as many as 15,000 recently submitted voter registrations could be "questionable" -- which they define as duplicates, unreadable applications, or containing information that doesn’t match other existing records.
Last week the board chairwoman, Melodie Powell, said the board had turned over the investigation of the questionable cards to local and federal authorities.
ACORN has said that some of its applications may have contained honest mistakes. But it also says some of the problems may be political.
"I think if we had registered 35,000 Republicans, none of this would have been in the news," Ginsberg said.
Republicans were quick to respond. "This illegal assault on our election system should concern every voter in the state," party spokesman Paul Sloca said in a statement.
Democratic party spokesman Jack Cardetti said, "We absolutely support the prosecution of anyone who turns in fraudulent registration cards."
The Republican election director in St. Louis has criticized ACORN’s voter registration process in that city. Its board sent letters to 5,000 voters asking them to re-verify their registrations, an action some critics called illegal."
June 20, 2007 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink