ACORN Affiliate Given Taxpayer Funds By Candidates It Supported

ACORN, the leftwing activist group with Obama ties, has indirectly received New York State and New York City taxpayer funds through a charity it controls according to an article in City Hall News, http://www.cityhallnews.com/news/132/ARTICLE/2116/2009-09-02.html by Sal Gentile.

The New York Agency for Community Affairs (NYACA) is located at the same offices as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now www.acorn.org), shares many of the same personnel, and gave most of the taxpayer funds it received over to ACORN.

Gentile reports "

NYACA has transferred most of the government money it has received through grants and contracts in recent years to ACORN. In 2006, for example, NYACA reported a little over $1.3 million in income-producing activities, almost all of which was allocated from the government. That same year, the organization paid close to $1.2 million for “contractual services” to ACORN and donated another $67,000 in direct grants also to ACORN, according to tax records. In 2007, NYACA reported just over $730,000 in government contracts and public support, and gave $711,152 of that money to ACORN."

Through the budget earmarks that New Yorkers call member items "NYACA received $175,000 from eight state senators this year, $240,500 from 10 Assembly members and $85,000 from four Council members. " Gentile thoughtfully provides a list of those I see as rogue legislators doling out taxpayer funds to this outfit.

City Hall News previously reported on the very questionable activities of the Working Families Party’s for-profit political services firm, Data and Field Services. (Corrected: I erroneously wrote ACORN when I meant Working Families)

Separately, it has been reported that ACORN has sought federal funds.

What do we have here? Taxpayers fund a political organization whose views they may not share. This is wrong.

ACORN and its rent-a-pickets have been at the disposal of progressive developer Bruce Ratner’s Forest City Ratner’s exercise in corporate welfare and eminent domain abuse known as Atlantic Yards which would incorporate a Brooklyn Nets Arena for the basketball team Ratner owns.

When St. Luke’s Pentecostal Church, a poor black church, was threatened by eminent domain abuse in New Cassel, New York we had no help from the likes of ACORN.

Why do we Americans have a First Amendment with the principle of separation of church and state? As Jefferson wrote "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. "

Earmarks such as these couple legalized theft with the magnified injustice of injury to freedom of thought, speech and expression. We do not hear from the advocates of taxpayer financing of election campaigns about the evils of such handouts. Government should not be making "gifts" to private organizations, corporations, individuals or associations. -30-

About the author: Richard Cooper is an international trade executive with a manufacturing firm on Long Island, New York, USA. He is active in the Libertarian Party www.lp.org on eminent domain and other issues. He was chair of the Libertarian Party of New York www.ny.lp.org

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