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Home Front: Politix
Citigroup Executive Pulls Out of Sham ACORN Panel Under Pressure
2009-11-11
Citigroup executive Eric Eve has resigned from ACORN's phony, allegedly independent advisory panel, a move that removes one of the few people on the panel who could even remotely claim to actually be independent.

According to ACORN, the advisory council was established in early 2009 "to help facilitate a transition to a new management team under the leadership of CEO Bertha Lewis." Eve, senior vice president of Global Consumer Group, Community Relations, at Citigroup, quit after the National Legal and Policy Center pressed Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit to cut ties with ACORN.
If you read between the lines, it also seems to mean Citigroup agrees the panel is a sham. According to ACORN, the advisory council was established in early 2009 "to help facilitate a transition to a new management team under the leadership of CEO Bertha Lewis." The emergence of the undercover prostitution sting videos in September gave the council another problem to mull over.

Eve, senior vice president of Global Consumer Group, Community Relations, at Citigroup, quit after the National Legal and Policy Center pressed Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit to cut ties with ACORN.

In a letter to NLPC president Peter Flaherty, Citigroup announced Eve's resignation from the panel. "We too are deeply concerned about the recent media reports regarding ACORN and, because of those reports, have suspended our charitable financial support and program relationships with ACORN, and we are awaiting the results of the independent audit of ACORN activities now underway," wrote Natalie Abatemarco, Citigroup's vice president, Global Community Relations. "On a related topic, please be advised that Eric Eve has resigned his position on the ACORN Advisory Council."

Citigroup is a Big Government lovers' bank that funds just about every trendy left-wing cause in America. Long before it started drowning in red ink, the poster child for so-called corporate social responsibility was a longtime donor to left-wing pressure groups such as Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's Nature Conservancy. In tax year 2003, Citigroup's foundation gave 20 times more money to groups on the left than to groups on the right, according to Capital Research Center's 2006 study of Fortune 100 foundation giving. (Foundation Watch, August 2006.)

Citigroup's foundation has given a staggering $1.4 million to the alarmist World Resources Institute, as well as $509,000 to ACORN in recent years. The ACORN funding included a $500,000 grant to ACORN's American Institute for Social Justice, which offers Saul Alinsky-style training in community organizing. Other donations to liberal groups include the Aspen Institute ($762,500), Rainbow/PUSH Coalition ($750,000), Nature Conservancy ($380,000), Rainforest Alliance ($200,000), and the Council on Foreign Relations ($50,000).

For her part, former ACORN national board member Marcel Reid never believed the council would accomplish anything. Reid and board member Karen Inman were expelled from ACORN by chief organizer Bertha Lewis for asking too many questions about the $1 million embezzlement perpetrated by ACORN founder Wade Rathke's brother and then covered up for eight years.
Posted by:Fred

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