From town-hall-meeting-bullies shouting down members of Congress to Joe "You Lie" Wilson of South Carolina disrespecting the President at a joint session of Congress, 2009 has been a year of dramatic political theater. A conservative activist with a hidden video camera set out to embarrass ACORN -- and succeeded -- and a chain reaction was set off led by a brand of journalism known as "advocacy journalism" which does not purport to be objective.
I have been impressed by how ACORN has responded. They appointed former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to conduct an independent inquiry into ACORN's delivery of social services, including housing and tax assistance. Harshbarger is now a Senior Counsel to the Firm of Proskauer Rose LLP and is the former President and CEO of Common Cause. ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis has committed to implement the recommendations of the independent inquiry. I would call that swift and responsible action.
ACORN deserves to be scrutinized, but not treated unfairly. The Senate recently passed a measure to deny all federal funding to ACORN, the nation's leading community organizing organization. This strikes me as pandering to the right wing. Low-level employees caught by Fox News giving improper and potentially illegal advice have been used as a pretext to attack the entire organization.
It comes as part of a systematic attempt to muzzle grass-roots organizing of poor and marginalized communities. It includes the attacks on legal aid and riders to countless federal grants, which specifically prohibit nonpartisan voter registration.
What makes the Senate action particularly egregious is the fact that the United States Supreme Court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, is seriously considering doing away with restrictions on corporations and unions, giving unlimited funds to political campaigns based on free speech protections. Numerous political candidates are already avoiding campaign spending limits -- New York's mayor is estimated to be spending nearly $100 million on his own bid for reelection. And the current meltdown in the news media with newspapers serving communities large and small collapsing -- and many of those that remain serving an overtly anti-poor agenda -- endangers the future of a democratic society where the working poor can at least have some leverage at the ballot box.
This is clearly a case of selective prosecution. Many other organizations and institutions -- United Way, the Catholic Church, Covenant House -- have continued to receive both government and private support once they've fired the bad actors and cleaned up their act. The action by the Senate smacks of a cave-in to the political right which has always been suspicious of any organization that aids or represents poor people in this country.
In fact, ACORN immediately fired the employees who behaved inappropriately. All intakes to ACORN service programs were suspended and all frontline staff were ordered to take in-service training within 48 hours. Not one single piece of improper paperwork was completed or filed in any of the incidents portrayed in the recently aired videos. While the guerrilla theater video made for interesting TV it does not accurately portray the work ACORN does. ACORN has a done a tremendous amount of good.
For four decades ACORN has provided a vital service to New York City and to our country. ACORN is the largest membership organization of poor people in the country. It is a place where people make democracy work and where people can work together to get more control over their lives and their communities.
In addition to providing free mortgage counseling and tax preparation services for millions of poor people across the country, ACORN has been a champion of affordable housing, quality neighborhoods, good schools, and good jobs so people can support themselves. All of this supports strengthening families and communities.
There is no place where ACORN has made its mark in New York City like it has on housing. ACORN has been a leader in ensuring that affordable housing is available for low- and moderate-income families, in eliminating housing discrimination and exclusionary zoning, in reducing foreclosures, and stopping risky predatory lending.
ACORN has been very active on education issues as well. The organization's activities have helped to deliver new funding and to stop cuts in funding totaling more than $2 billion for New York City schools. They have founded two successful schools and have consistently involved their members in demanding quality schools for their children and for every child.
ACORN's track record for 40 years is one of working with people across all spectrums to tackle some of our nation's most challenging problems. ACORN's errors don't even register on the scale of mistakes our government has tolerated on Wall Street.
With the economy tanking, unemployment spiking, and corporate money dominating the political landscape in Washington and in many state capitols, this is not the time to declare war on the nation's leading community organizing institution.
Bill Maher: New Rule: Everyone Deserves Equal Rights
This weekend is the perfect time for Obama to announce he's repealing "don't ask, don't tell" and committing to a full-throated endorsement of gay marriage. But of course that's not going to happen.
Dumb it Down!
Too bad- too bad Murdoch students will not get their wish!
ACORN is not over either.
Much to the chagrin of the DO NOTHINGS!
Here is your Murdoch Style - WASTE of TIME!
Days before the big HEALTHCARE Break in August- Guess what GOP did with 7 precious hours of their time on the House Floor days before the August break?
Guess? Go ahead- -C-span for facts.
7-27-09- R-IA King stood for 2 hours on the House floor ranting about Criminal Acorn- anything to do w/healthcare?
Then- to really enforce the WSJ/Murdoch DUMB DOWN- 7-29-09 Guess what R-IA King did for 2 more hours?
Yep! DO NOTHING; DUMB it DOWN Murdoch Style all the way did the exact same thing again.
R-IA King 2 more hours on the House floor ranting about Criminal Acorn have to do w/healthcare?
SWIFTBOAT at its FINEST!
DUMB it DOWN Mr. President, Murdoch style - 7 hours before the Town Halls begin!
Returning to DC after August break and guess who CNN has on –demanding Congressional Hearings for ACORN in early September?
Yep! R-IA King! The EXPERT on Criminal ACORN!
ACORN=CENSUS WORKER
Late September –R (IN) Pence on Murdoch’s Hannity - stating no more funding for ACORN and pushed Obama connection- again!
In 1995, ACORN sued the state of California seeking an exemption from the law that requires that it pay its own employees a minimum wage. ACORN, which argued that keeping its employees in poverty helps to boost their zeal to help the poor, lost. Even though it supports the continued imposition of equal employment opportunity laws on the rest of America, it argued it shouldn’t have to comply with those same laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had to sue ACORN to force it comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Until and unless substantiated by specific citation, whatever you may claim about it could very well just be made-up nonsense.
SOT
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/politics/main575356.shtml
And Blackwater:
http://www.bluebloggin.com/2007/10/03/bush-and-his-blackwater-ties/
However, they should not be receiving tax dollars to do this work.
SOT
But when 5 offices are caught on tape, 15 states are investigating voter fraud, the founders brother steals 5 million according to subpoena documents released yesterday, and stays with the organization for 8 more years, we have a problem.
Which is to say that there are plenty of other charities who help the poor who don't funnel money into politics, and at the same time receive federal and state tax dollars.
Those so-called investigations are all bogus -- most have already been dismissed for lack of evidence -- and all were launched at the direction of Karl Rove. They were launched by those other U.S Attorneys who weren't fired... the ones who kept their jobs because they were willing to break the law and use the criminal justice system for partisan political purposes. The nine who refused to do that were the ones that Rove fired.
That strategy came about because of a 1966 article in The Nation magazine, "The Weight of the Poor," by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
The discrepancy is not an accident stemming from bureaucratic inefficiency; it is an integral feature of the welfare system, which, if challenged, would precipitate a profound financial and political crisis. The force for that challenge, and the strategy we propose, is a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls..
Widespread campaigns to register the eligible poor for welfare aid, and to help existing recipients obtain their full benefits, would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments. These disruptions would generate severe political strains, and deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas. By the internal disruption of local bureaucratic practices, by the furor over public welfare poverty, and by the collapse of current financing arrangements.
SLIGHT correction
From Wikipedia:
1970 –1975: Founding
ACORN was founded by Wade Rathke when he was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas by the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in 1970 as an organizer.[31] Gary Delgado and George A. Wiley were also instrumental to its founding. ACORN's first campaign was to help welfare recipients attain their basic needs, such as clothing and furniture. This drive, inspired by a clause in the Arkansas welfare laws, began the effort to create and sustain a movement that would grow to become the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, the beginnings of ACORN.[32]
ACORN's goal was to "unite welfare recipients with needy working people around issues such as school lunches, unemployment, Vietnam veterans' rights, and emergency room care."[33]
How did you get from helping welfare recipients attain their basic needs to relying permanently upon government welfare?
When did the US become a county for the wealthy and by the corporation? Seems to me the right should have a bit more compassion for their fellow man if they follow their religious teachings. Aren't you supposed to love thy neighbor? Feed the hungry? House the homeless? WWJD?