My article from today’s Front Page Magazine:

A former senior ACORN official has been put in charge of close to half a billion taxpayer dollars in Illinois, one of the most corrupt states in the Union and the home state of America’s Community Organizer-in-Chief.

What could possibly go wrong?

In 2010 the Obama administration designated $7.6 billion for a foreclosure relief program. Of that total $445.6 million will be administered by ACORN alumnus Joe McGavin, now a director at the Illinois Housing Development Authority. As Judicial Watch discovered, McGavin was “Chicago Operations Manager” at Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) from November 2008 through January 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Until two years ago AHCOA was called ACORN Housing. The nonprofit corporation renamed itself Affordable Housing Centers for America after undercover activists caught ACORN employees offering helpful advice about starting a brothel for pedophiles and committing other crimes on video in 2009. Soon after, popular revulsion prompted Congress to ban funding of ACORN and groups related to it.

ACORN Housing, which had been the largest affiliate in ACORN’s corrupt, taxpayer-subsidized empire of activism, grew out of crime: squatting. It emerged from a 1982 action in which ACORN built a squatters’ tent city behind the White House.

ACORN Housing helped to erode lending standards by pushing the financial affirmative action law known as the Community Reinvestment Act. The group also pressured banks to adopt, in its own words, “more flexible underwriting criteria that take into account the realities of lower-income communities.” Inner-city lenders were pressured to use “less traditional income sources such as food stamps,” the group bragged in a pamphlet years before the mortgage bubble that it helped to inflate burst.

Not much is known about McGavin but it is clear that he has worked at the Illinois Housing Development Authority since February 2011. Richard M. Daley, mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011, happens to be “Of Counsel” at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, the same law firm at which IHDA chairman Terry E. Newman is a partner.

The federal money McGavin is administering comes from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Hardest Hit Fund which is supposed to be used to help the “unemployed or substantially underemployed” make their mortgage payments. Mortgage counseling and foreclosure counseling are lucrative taxpayer-funded scams that politicians use to enrich their allies in the left-wing activist community.

Given ACORN’s 40-year history of sustained criminal activity that I documented at length in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, it is amazing how easy it is for ACORN veterans to find new employment. Common sense dictates that former ACORN officials ought to bear a scarlet letter ‘A’ that makes finding new jobs at least a little bit more difficult – but they don’t. Not even close.

ACORN is everywhere and McGavin is merely the tip of the ACORN iceberg. The lawless Alinskyite agitators of ACORN operate with impunity, deliberately ignored by the mainstream media. Some journalists want to protect President Obama who was an employee of ACORN and the group’s lawyer. Other reporters are so far to the left that ACORN’s activities seem normal, even admirable, so they tend not to get covered much in the media.

ACORN-SEIU operative Patrick Gaspard now runs the Democratic National Committee after serving as political director in the Obama White House. Convicted voter fraud ringleader Amy Busefink still works at ACORN affiliate Project Vote organizing voter registration drives, the same thing that landed her in legal hot water when she was employed by ACORN. ACORN founder Wade Rathke travels the globe fomenting revolution (and in India with the assistance of the Obama administration). ACORN operative Jehmu Greene is now a paid on-air Fox News Channel contributor.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan is a longtime ally of ACORN and has been since his days as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s housing development commissioner. The mainstream media doesn’t care about Donovan’s unsavory connections so the ethically questionable cabinet member continues doling out millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to his old friends at ACORN. Donovan is just one of several Obama cabinet members who kissed Al Sharpton’s ring at the convention his group, National Action Network, held recently in Washington, D.C.

Various ACORN front groups (Working Families Party, New York Communities for Change, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) were deeply involved in organizing and participating inOccupy Wall Street protests and they’re gearing up right now to reelect President Obama in November.

Meanwhile, the ACORN front group New England United for Justice, which is headed by former national ACORN president Maude Hurd, has filed suit against Massachusetts.