Does a Criminal Organization Have Links to Occupy Wall Street and the President?

Are there connections between Occupy Wall Street (OWS), leftist and socialist organizations, and the US administration? A published report provides detailed information about one of these organizations with a history of criminal activity and direct ties to President Obama.

P>KNOXVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) - In an article published by Catholic Online recently, I noted some possible connections between Occupy Wall Street (OWS), various leftist and socialist organizations, and the Obama administration. The organizations are as follows: the Working Family Party, SEIU, ACORN, the New Party, the DNC, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Tides Foundation. Now, a major news agency has published a report which provides detailed information about one of these organizations and OWS. The organization has a history of criminal activity and direct ties to President Obama.

We are most familiar with them as ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. They have been implicated in illegal immigration and the housing bust, which led to the financial collapse in 2008. However, they are probably best known for their widespread involvement in voter fraud during the last presidential election, and for the time when ACORN staffers were caught on video in 2009 telling a young couple how to set up a criminal enterprise and conceal it from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Let's take a look at these two high-profile events.

There have been numerous convictions of ACORN employees for voter registration fraud, but the first prosecution thus far of ACORN itself took place this past August in Nevada. The organization was fined the maximum $5000. Their Nevada field director, Christopher Edwards, previously pleaded guilty, while Amy Busefink, ACORN's regional director, pleaded no contest and was sentenced to probation. The judge said, "To me this is reprehensible. This is the kind of thing you see in some banana republic, Uruguay or someplace, not in the United States."

You may also recall the outrageous incidents when ACORN staffers at the Baltimore and Philadelphia offices were caught on video telling a young man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute how to conceal a prostitution business from the IRS. The couple told the staffers that they wanted to acquire housing for their business, and that they were going to use underage girls from South America. The staffers did not bat an eye. They merely proceeded in a nonchalant manner to tell the couple how to lie to the IRS and how to claim the underage girls. The video can be viewed at the top of this page. What we witness in this video is not only criminal and immoral, it is vulgar and disgusting.

ACORN, which had up to 400,000 members and over 1200 chapters in 75 cities, filed bankruptcy in 2010. In part, this was due to all the negative publicity they received as a result of being exposed for their criminal wrongdoings. They also lost public funding. Congress voted to stop funding them in 2009. They received $31 million in federal funding over a 10 year period. In addition, their other funding dried up too. It was reported that they took in over $46 million in 2008 but only $1.57 million in the first ten months of 2010. Interestingly, some of their big donors were labor unions, foundations, corporate philanthropies, and big banks like JP Morgan Chase and Citibank.

However, ACORN's demise and their anemic flow of funds may be deceiving. According to an article by Jana Winter and published by Fox News, "Exclusive: ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role in 'Occupy' Movement," they have been reorganizing under assumed names, and this time their focus is the OWS protests. According to this report, ACORN offices around the country are being staffed by many of the same people, using the same equipment and even the same stationary. ACORN's New York office is now New York Communities for Change (NYCC), and it is run by the same director, Jon Kest, and his old staff.

Fox reports that NYCC has hired about 100 former employees and are paying some of them $100 per day. They have also recruited dozens from shelters and are paying them $10 per hour. All these new hires are either supporting OWS and protesting or collecting money as door-to-door canvassers. At least in some cases, prospective donors were lied to about why the money is being collected.

Fox reported a source saying that canvassers were told that the cash donations were for a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive. Apparently, NYCC supervisors even gave them the "addresses of union members and told them to go knock on their doors and ask for contributions." In another case, money was collected for NYCC's PCB campaign, which tests schools for deadly toxins. One worker said in neighborhoods like Harlem and Washington Heights, they got contributions by telling people that NYCC will use the money to fix whatever problems exist in their area, including problems with housing and the schools.

But in each of these cases, the money was reportedly diverted to the OWS protests. The worker noted above also told Fox, "All the money collected from canvasses is pooled together back at the office, and everything we've been working on for the last year is going to the protests, against big banks and to pay people's salaries." And  "They're doing the same stuff now that got ACORN in trouble to begin with. And yes, we're still ACORN, there is a still a national ACORN."

According to the article, Kest announced NYCC support for OWS on September 30, but NYCC and ex-ACORN staffers "have been planning events like the Occupy Wall Street protests since February." Their plans included the May 12 protests against Chase Bank and the Beyond May 12 campaign which targeted Wall Street and other big banks. However, the Beyond May 12 campaign involved a coalition comprised of the NYCC and other community groups and unions. These groups are also being credited with the Millionaires March on October 11, which involved demonstrations at the homes of certain wealthy individuals living in Upper East Side.

This criminal organization helped Obama get elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, and they helped him get elected to the presidency four years later. During the presidential campaign, Obama played down his associations with ACORN. But according to Steven Malanga of the New York City Journal, during the Summer of 2008, Obama said, "I've been fighting alongside ACORN my entire career. . . ." And so he has--he even conducted leadership seminars for their members in Chicago. Furthermore, in an article for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, David Brown said Obama's campaign hired Citizens Services, Inc., a subsidiary of ACORN, at the expense of $800,000, which they mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.

The fact that the President of the United States has been, and might still be, associated with a criminal organization like ACORN or NYCC or whatever they are calling themselves is a disgrace. Moreover, if the Fox News report is accurate, then it is a strong indication that there are organizations bent on using OWS to advance their narrow and possibly subversive interests. This means that those hoping the OWS movement will address growing abuses in the free market and ensure that it functions more efficiently and fairly, will have to confront these organizations. And if our leaders are not able or unwilling to confront these organizations, then we need new leaders.
 
 
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Michael Terheyden was born into a Catholic family, but that is not why he is a Catholic. He is a Catholic because he believes that truth is real, that it is beautiful and good, and that the fullness of truth is in the Catholic Church. However, he knows that God's grace operating throughout his life is the main reason he is a Catholic. He is greatly blessed to share his faith and his life with his beautiful wife, Dorothy. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.

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