W Post: Not Far From the Tree (ACORN and Its Political Seed)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/25/AR2009092502471.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

By Kathleen Parker
Sunday, September 27, 2009

While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending they've hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they've never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation's largest unions.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Service Employees International Union are as tight as Heidi Klum and a new pair of jeans.

You don't think about one without the other.

You also don't talk about either organization without mention of Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN and founder of SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans. Rathke, who resigned from ACORN last year as "chief organizer" after it became known that his brother embezzled almost $1 million from the association, continues to run Local 100, as well as ACORN International, recently renamed Community Organizations International.

Rathke's social justice empire is so vast that he is more hydra than man. Nine heads are surely better than one when you're organizing communities in at least 12 countries. While Rathke and ACORN undoubtedly have done much good for impoverished people here and abroad, it appears likely that American taxpayers indirectly have been helping to underwrite unionizing activities and advance political goals through the commingling of Rathke's various interests.

As an ironic sidebar, America's health-care reform debate could become stalled -- not by Senate Republicans demanding a cost analysis (how mundane) but by dot-connecting prompted by the Halloweenish ACORN sting starring a faux pimp and prostitute.

FULL 2 page story at link.