The Service Employees International Union’s Anna Burger
shocked political observers last week when she told a
congressional hearing that her union “cut all ties to
ACORN.”
Burger’s statement came days before Louisiana Attorney
General Buddy Caldwell
announced yesterday that former ACORN official Dale Rathke
allegedly stole $5 million from ACORN, as opposed to the
originally reported sum of close to $1 million. Current ACORN
chief organizer Bertha Lewis denies the $5 million figure is
correct, and other ACORN inside sources I trust also deny the
figure is correct, but more on the embezzlement saga in a
moment.
Surely the SEIU’s claimed break from ACORN is the kind of
earth-shattering news that a powerful, high-profile labor union
like SEIU would want to get out there as ACORN becomes
increasingly associated in the public mind with corruption and
criminality.
Alas, it only came up when Burger, who is SEIU’s
international secretary-treasurer, was asked about ACORN by Rep.
Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) during a
Sept. 30 hearing conducted by the House Financial Services
Committee, as reported by
BigGovernment.com.
The New York Times, Washington
Post, Los Angeles Times,
ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, along with Time,
Newsweek, the Nation,
Mother Jones, and American
Prospect were immediately all over the story –
oh wait, no they weren’t. I guess I must have dozed there and
started dreaming. Sorry about that, dear reader. I must be
under-caffeinated.
At press time yesterday, a Nexis search for the keywords
“ACORN SEIU Anna Burger” yielded exactly zip, except for an
official transcript of the congressional testimony.
Moving along, at the hearing last week, McHenry said, “As
of today the U.S. Census Bureau, the IRS, and even Bank of
America have severed ties with ACORN and according to
yesterday’s, actually the day before yesterday’s report from the
Chicago Sun-Times the SEIU has given ACORN
$4 million. Could you clarify to me the extent of your financial
and programmatic ties to ACORN.”
In reply, Burger said, “SEIU has also cut all ties to
ACORN.”
McHenry interrupted. “They have?”
Burger gave a rambling reply: “We have. In Illinois, I
believe that I’m correct, that the ACORN institution, the
consumer protection, the community organization in Illinois cut
its ties to ACORN two years ago and so in Illinois there was
[sic] no ties in the last two years between any SEIU work and
ACORN.”
“What was the extent of your financial ties with ACORN?”
the congressman asked.
“I will get that information for you for the record,” she
said. Called the “queen of labor” by some, Burger is an officer
of George Soros’s Democracy
Alliance, a left-wing billionaire donors’ collaborative that
has steered funds to ACORN. She also chairs the powerful labor
federation known as Change to Win.
Yesterday, Burger did supply the requested information to
McHenry. Her letter (available
here) states that in 2008 SEIU paid $190,000 to ACORN for
“Contributions (including General Support and ACORN Projects like
Voter Registration).” The figure for 2009 was $25,000.
The letter states that SEIU paid ACORN $1.4 million in 2008
for “Contracted Services (including services such as the
Organizing Apprenticeship Program and Childcare Worker Organizing
Campaigns).” The figure for 2009 was $220,000.
I asked SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette in an interview
what Burger meant when she said SEIU had cut all ties with
ACORN.
Ringuette replied, “We have suspended all contracts and
active work with ACORN,” pending the results of a panel of
inquiry looking into ACORN. SEIU boss Andy Stern sits on that
supposedly independent panel.
I’m skeptical of Ringuette’s statement but it may turn out
to be accurate. Of course, SEIU could still be providing help to
ACORN behind the scenes even if it publicly distances itself from
the embattled activist group.
Also bear in mind that ACORN was set up to have a
deliberately confusing structure. It seems decentralized but
that’s an illusion. In fact, the ACORN network of affiliates is
tightly controlled from the top through interlocking directorates
and regular intra-network financial transfers.
When affiliates get into trouble, ACORN can always try the
plausible deniability defense. It’s always a rogue employee or a
subsidiary acting without permission from the top, ACORN claims.
Trying to get the goods on ACORN and affiliates turns into a game
of political whack-a-mole. Titles change, people move around,
money is transferred, and outsiders often give up investigating
ACORN out of sheer frustration.
That said, although ACORN has long been affiliated with
SEIU, I caught ACORN — not SEIU — red-handed in April trying to
flush its SEIU ties down an Orwellian memory hole.
It scrubbed its website of references to two of its key
affiliates, SEIU Locals 100 and 880, an event reported by Kevin
Mooney of the
Washington Examiner. Fortunately, I made a
snapshot of the web page a year ago.
Why would the radical left-wing ACORN do that? At the time
observers speculated that organized labor didn’t want to be
associated with ACORN as its reputation continued to sink in the
quicksand. The observers may have been right.
Ringuette said both locals continue to exist as labor
unions but are no longer affiliated with SEIU. Local 100 “simply
couldn’t meet requirements to be a stand alone union” because it
was “not financially viable,” she said.
SEIU’s international executive board moved last month to
revoke Local 100’s charter, she said. The local had until Sept.
30 to appeal the disaffiliation decision but didn’t do so to the
best of her knowledge, Ringuette said.
Ringuette said that Local 880 was created in Chicago in the
late 1970s and affiliated with SEIU in the mid-1980s. Local 100
was founded in New Orleans around the same time and also
affiliated with SEIU in the mid-1980s, she said.
ACORN insider Keith Kelleher heads 880 and ACORN founder
Wade Rathke heads 100. SEIU dwarfs ACORN. The union claims to
have 2.1 million members compared to ACORN’s 400,000 “member
families.”
MEANWHILE, IN OTHER ACORN news, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy
Caldwell, a Democrat, said yesterday that the embezzlement at
ACORN perpetrated around the year 2000 by then-ACORN official
Dale Rathke involved $5 million, not the originally reported
figure of close to $1 million.
Citing a report from the New Orleans
Times-Picayune,
BigGovernment.com reported that the $5 million figure is
mentioned in a subpoena.
The subpoena states:
Current high ranking members of ACORN have publicly
acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact
amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently
acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on October 17,
2008 by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had
determined that the amount embezzled was $5,000,000.00
(FIVE MILLION), and it is still unclear if some of the monies
embezzled are from state, federal or private funds.
Current ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis yesterday denied
the figure was $5 million. Lewis is scheduled to speak at the
National Press Club in Washington, D.C., this morning. Sources
within ACORN I trust also say the $5 million figure is wildly
inaccurate.
Liz Wolf, also referred to in the subpoena, works for
Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve
center of the ACORN network. Wolf has been negotiating with tax
collectors on behalf of ACORN to have interest on its tax debts
waived and to have some of the debts partially forgiven.
SEIU spokeswoman Ringuette said rumors about the ACORN
embezzler Dale Rathke, who is the brother of ACORN founder Wade
Rathke, working for SEIU are untrue. “Dale Rathke does not work
for SEIU or any of its affiliates,” she said.
Dale blew much of the money he stole on luxury items, the
New York Post has reported. Wade Rathke,
Lewis, and other senior ACORN officials are said to have covered
up the embezzlement for years. The Rathke family repaid about
one-quarter of the stolen money and Drummond Pike, founder of the
left-wing Tides Foundation, covered the rest out of his own
pocket when the embezzlement came to light last year. Like SEIU’s
Burger, Pike is an officer of the Democracy Alliance.
ACORN national board members Marcel Reid, Karen Inman, and
others were expelled from ACORN by Lewis for asking too many
questions about the embezzlement after the board appointed them
to a special investigative committee that was supposed to get
answers about the incident. After leaving, Reid and Inman
co-founded the reform group ‘ACORN 8.’
In the annals of the ACORN
scandal, it must feel like a good day when a key former ally can
distance itself from ACORN and at the same time claim it never
had any ties with one of its more notorious
players.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring? It’s clear that a serious
public inquiry into the ACORN network is only just beginning.
