The Real ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now-the myths exposed!: June 2008

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Rotten ACORN Falls From the Tree or Rahtke's (Yellow Hair just like Custer) Last Stand

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

You heard it here first folks straignt from inside the rotten ACORN.

So as you may or may not have heard before.

The Rathke machine was built like this.

1) Put your brother and other family members in charge of the money.
2) Put your wife in charge of home office operations.
3) Become the president of a Union as part of your golden parachute.
4) Surround yourself with sychophantic caucasian staff members from elite families who will do anything to make you happy. Why? Because it is a good course up the Democrats of influence ladder.
5) Run your so-called bottom up grassroots organization from the top down.
6) Blackmail companies that do business in poor communities to give you money or you will raise bloody hell into giving you payola.
7) Set up several paralel for-profit entities, internet, radio, mortgagte counseling, so you can really cash in.
8) Laugh all the way to the bank while your employees work for less than 8 bucks an hour in unsafe working conditions out of their sense of YT guilt to build your massive 81 million dollar a year monster.

Do I have that right?

What could go wrong?

Well for starters some of your staff have a conscience. SO sorry! They start to figure out what is going on. People like me left a long time ago. Now? People who have worked there for decades are jumping ship.
Why?
Well Wade's brother just got caught stealing well over 1,000,000 dollars from the till.
The staff finally woke up and realized Wade is a crook.
Foundations want their money back.
Wade's sychophantic young liberals? Split!
Those complacent poor people you thought were so dumb?
Turn's out they aren't all dumb and they want Wade to step down!
Turn's out a bunch of people might be going to jail!
Turns out people like me don't seem sooooo crazy anymore do they Wade?
Turns out I was a bit of a prophet.

Here is my nessage to those who might be listening!

1,000.000 is that all you think they stole?
Let's see there was the Fema trailer out behind the office you used to house visiting dignitaries as well as an annex to your office.
There is all the money you shuffled from organizing itno political when you felt like it.
Need I say more?
When the forensic audit is done the only good organizing Wade will have ever done will be how he got his brother to go to jail while he kept jetting around the world.
Let's see, how about grants collected and spent on offices that were closed.
Think anyone might want to look into that?
How about? Well stay tuned you will see.........

New York Times Article Wade busted!

Funds Misappropriated at 2 Nonprofit Groups

By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: July 9, 2008
Two prominent national nonprofit groups are reeling from public disclosures that large sums of money were misappropriated in unrelated incidents by an employee and a former employee.
The groups, Acorn, one of the country’s largest community organizing groups, and the Points of Light Institute, which works to encourage civic activism and volunteering, have dealt with the problems in very different ways.
Acorn chose to treat the embezzlement of nearly $1 million eight years ago as an internal matter and did not even notify its board. After Points of Light noticed financial irregularities in early June, it took less than a month for management to alert federal prosecutors, although group officials say they have no clear idea yet what the financial impact may be.
A whistle-blower forced Acorn to disclose the embezzlement, which involved the brother of the organization’s founder, Wade Rathke.
The brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from Acorn and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000, Acorn officials said, but a small group of executives decided to keep the information from almost all of the group’s board members and not to alert law enforcement.
Dale Rathke remained on Acorn’s payroll until a month ago, when disclosure of his theft by foundations and other donors forced the organization to dismiss him.
“We thought it best at the time to protect the organization, as well as to get the funds back into the organization, to deal with it in-house,” said Maude Hurd, president of Acorn. “It was a judgment call at the time, and looking back, people can agree or disagree with it, but we did what we thought was right.”
The amount Dale Rathke embezzled, $948,607.50, was carried as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc., which provides bookkeeping, accounting and other financial management services to Acorn and many of its affiliated entities.
Wade Rathke said the organization had signed a restitution agreement with his brother in which his family agreed to repay the amount embezzled in exchange for confidentiality.
Wade Rathke stepped down as Acorn’s chief organizer on June 2, the same day his brother left, but he remains chief organizer for Acorn International L.L.C.
He said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a “weapon” into the hands of enemies of Acorn, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to its often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.
Wade Rathke said he learned of the problem when an employee of Citizens Consulting alerted him about suspicious credit card transactions. An internal investigation uncovered inappropriate charges on the cards that led back to his brother.
“Clearly, this was an uncomfortable, conflicting and humiliating situation as far as my family and I were concerned,” he said, “and so the real decisions on how to handle it had to be made by others.”
The executive director of New York Acorn, Bertha Lewis, who has been named director of an interim management committee set up to run the national group’s day-to-day operations, said Dale Rathke was paid about $38,000 a year but that none of that money was used to pay back Acorn.
Instead, she said, the Rathke family has paid Acorn $30,000 a year in restitution since 2001, or a total of $210,000.
A donor has offered to give Acorn the rest of what the Rathkes owe, and an agreement to that effect should be finalized in coming days, Ms. Lewis said.
“Now that this is under our watch, we are putting financial auditors in place, legal counsel in place, a strong management team in place to make sure this organization moves forward for another 38 years,” she said. “I will not allow and the board will not allow something like this to happen again.”
But the fact that most of the handful of people who did not disclose the fraud when they learned of it eight years ago still work for Acorn or its affiliates concerns many of the group’s financial supporters.
“We’ve told them that when the process is ended, we’ll have a look at it,” said Dave Beckwith, executive director of the Needmor Fund, which has given money to some of Acorn’s charity affiliates for at least 10 years and was contacted by the whistle-blower in May.
Representatives of some 30 foundations and large donors have been discussing the matter on conference calls and may establish a committee to monitor Acorn’s overhaul of its management and accountability systems.

The Real ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now-the myths exposed!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Rotten ACORN Falls From the Tree or Rahtke's (Yellow Hair just like Custer) Last Stand

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New York Times Article Wade busted!

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The Real ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now-the myths exposed!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Rotten ACORN Falls From the Tree or Rahtke's (Yellow Hair just like Custer) Last Stand

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New York Times Article Wade busted!

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