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Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (view source)
Revision as of 13:21, September 8, 2020
, 13:21, September 8, 2020→Prostitution
In Sept. 2009 Fox News showed videos from [[Andrew Breitbart]] of ACORN workers in several cities, including New York, Baltimore and Washington, giving advice to two conservative undercover investigators who posed as a prostitute and her pimp. The two activists were [[James O'Keefe]] and [[Hannah Giles]]. During the sting, they said that they wanted to buy a house and run it as a brothel with underage teenage girls smuggled in from Central America. Happy to help, ACORN staffers gave practical advice on how to evade taxes and conceal the nature of the illegal business. The result was Congress voted to defund the group, the Census cancelled their contract and ACORN eventually declared bankruptcy.<ref>[https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/20/report-acorn-verge-bankruptcy/?test=latestnews Report: ACORN on the Verge of Bankruptcy, FOX News, March 20, 2010]</ref>
In Sept. 2009 Fox News showed videos from [[Andrew Breitbart]] of ACORN workers in several cities, including New York, Baltimore and Washington, giving advice to two conservative undercover investigators who posed as a prostitute and her pimp. The two activists were [[James O'Keefe]] and [[Hannah Giles]]. During the sting, they said that they wanted to buy a house and run it as a brothel with underage teenage girls smuggled in from Central America. Happy to help, ACORN staffers gave practical advice on how to evade taxes and conceal the nature of the illegal business. The result was Congress voted to defund the group, the Census cancelled their contract and ACORN eventually declared bankruptcy.<ref>[https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/20/report-acorn-verge-bankruptcy/?test=latestnews Report: ACORN on the Verge of Bankruptcy, FOX News, March 20, 2010]</ref>
===Subprime mortgage scandal===
:''Main article : [[Financial crisis of 2008]]''
In 1991, ACORN members took over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the [[Community Reinvestment Act]] (CRA). ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the [[Clinton Administration]] that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the [[Fannie Mae]], [[Freddie Mac]] borne [[financial crisis of 2008]]. [[Barack Obama]] was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote [[subprime loans]] more aggressively. As a ''[[New York Post]]'' article describes it:
:"A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.
:Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.<ref>[http://www.nypost.com/seven/02052008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_real_scandal_243911.htm?page=0 The Real Scandal: How Feds Invited the Mortgage Mess,] By Stan Liebowitz, ''[[New York Post]]'', February 5, 2008; see also judiciary.house.gov [http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Liebowitz080612.pdf].</ref>
Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counselling is required, of course.
Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted." That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.<ref>[https://www.nationalreview.com/article/225898/planting-seeds-disaster-stanley-kurtz Planting Seeds of Disaster], [[National Review]]</ref>
The lender they were speaking of was [[Countrywide]], which specialized in subprime lending and had a working relationship with ACORN.<ref>[http://www.inman.com/news/2008/02/1/countrywide-acorn-partner-foreclosure-prevention Countrywide, ACORN partner for foreclosure prevention]</ref>
''Investor's Business Daily'' added:
:"The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical "housing rights" groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama." <ref name=manufactured>[https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis], [[American Thinker]]</ref>
Since these loans were to be underwritten by the government sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: "It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit."<ref name=manufactured />
===Embezzlement===
===Embezzlement===