ACORN to Mullis: We don’t have ‘tax-exempt’ status
January 14, 2009 at 12:11 pm by Thomas Wheatley in NewsCharles Jackson, ACORN’s communications director, sends this prepared statement regarding a resolution filed yesterday by state Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chicamauga, urging the IRS yank the grassroots’ organization’s tax-exempt status.
ACORN says there’s just one problem — it doesn’t have such a status. ACORN President Maude Hurd says Mullis “indicates his ignorance” with the resolution.
*ACORN Response to Ga. Senator’s Legislation: Organization has no tax-exempt status *
On Jan. 13, ACORN President Maude Hurd released the following statement on Georgia State Sen. Jeff Mullis’ legislation urging the Internal Revenue Service to no longer allow ACORN to keep its tax exempt status.
“Senator Mullis is just throwing around an old John McCain talking point. He would do better focusing on the issues of working families in Georgia, like jobs or foreclosures.
ACORN is proud of our work to help low and moderate-income citizens become apart of the electoral process. More than 900,000 voters – mostly minority and low-income — have cast ballots since 2004 through ACORN’s voter registration efforts.
ACORN has never been charged with falsifying any voter records. There has been a small fraction of the 13,000 temporary workers we hired to try to defraud ACORN by turning in bogus cards. ACORN has a zero policy for employees deliberately falsifying registrations, and in the cases where our internal quality control procedures identifies this is happening, the person is fired and turned into elections and law enforcement officials.
As required by law and legal advice, ACORN turned in all signed applications for final verification to be determined by election officials. This extensive Quality Control process held up well in the face of politically-motivated attacks and unprecedented media scrutiny. Though this fact was not always widely reported, most of the forms that Boards of Elections found to be problematic had already been flagged as such by ACORN’s own staff.
Senator Mullis indicates his ignorance by calling for revocation of ACORN’s tax-exempt status; the organization does not have such status.”
(Jim Galloway at the AJC’s Political Insider reminds us that Mullis was one of the earliest supporters of John McCain, the former presidential candidate who accused ACORN of “maybe destroying the fabric of democracy in this country” with its controversial voter registration drives.)
January 14th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
D’OH!!!
January 14th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Surprise, surprise, there are ignorant members of the Georgia State Assembly. To most legislators under the Gold Dome, having any sort of intellect is considered faggy.
January 14th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Not so fast there Maud. ACORN is a non-profit with no special tax status and The ACORN Institute is a 501(c)3. Also, different chapters are chartered differently in different states,
This may be like Obama saying he didn’t work for ACORN, but worked for Project VOTE, even though he often said ACORN in the past and kept modifying his websites to remove the association.
ACORN is currently under investigation by approximately 14 states. Offenses include ACORN officials submitting 20,000 – 30,000 fraudulent registrations and coaching voters to vote for a particular candidate in Missouri to paying people with cash and cigarettes to register repeatedly.
Regarding the so called “quality control” a simple Google search of ACORN+vote+fraud proves that is a lie.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
there are right wing nut jobs in 14 states in this great union who are willing to sue over this?
SHOCKING!
January 15th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
and to the point at hand – if acorn does NOT have a tax-exempt status but a related entity called project vote mentioned above DOES have a tax-exempt status, and if this brainiac senator mullis feels like this action is best representing the interests of his constituents, then go ahead.
the other good people working for the people of georgia under the golden dome wouldn’t allow this to proceed if the action was frivolous, correct?
so i trust them to do the right thing.
as for questions about ACORN’s methods, i’m not sure that telling people to google right wing conspiracy blogs is a convincing argument that ACORN’s process is flawed, or worth stripping their non-existent tax-free status.
stripping their non-existent status would take us take us to a place i don’t want to go. possibly a black hole. possibly another big bang. most likely, more derision at georgia politics when the story breaks nationwide and people’s quotes start showing up in clips on the daily show.
cheers.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Given recent news reports, do you care to restate your comments about “non-existent” tax status?
Oh and I am referrign to criminal investigations currently under way, not civil suits, and the dozen ples people convicted of felonies for their actions working for ACORN.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:43 am
You talking to me, Dale? I get confused with all these comments.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
no,your fine… I was referring to wesley about the tax exempt status bein non-existant
June 21st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO JEFF MULLIS.ITS ABOUT MY BROTHER_IN LAW,HE IS IN PRISON AT GA.DIAGNOSTIC AN CLASSIFICATION PRISON.HIS FAMILY WOULD LIKE HIM TO BE CLOSER TO HOME,MAYBE IN CARROLTON,GA. A CAMP.MY EMAIL IS angel.eyes.23@LIVE.COM
June 21st, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO GA.STATE SENATOR,JEFF MULLIS. ITS ABOUT MY BROTHER-IN-LAW,HE IS IN PRISON,BUT HIS FAMILY HAVING A HARD TIME SEEING HIM,WE WAS HOPING THAT HE COULD BE MOVED CLOSER,MAYBE IN A CAMP IN CARROLTON,GA. HOPE YOU CAN HELP.