Acorn Is Stripped of Funding

[Chris Englert]

Any thoughts? Acorn has been a political liability for the Democrats
and Obama for a long time. It's one less thing they can throw at
Obama in my opinion.

[Tidetracker]

Well, it's hard to argue in favor of ACORN after the recently released
undercover videos. Had there been just one video, at one site, it
would have been easier to defend the organization. The fact that a
handful of comparable events in different ACORN offices have been
documented is pretty damning.

Of course, it would be stupid to idict the entire organization, even
for this many documented cases of irresponsible behavior.... but I
think it's pretty obvious that ACORN suffers from very poor
management... and has had similar problems in the past (during voter
registration drives). I don't think they deserve being defended at
this point... they need to clean up their own house.

Interesting how the right has taken these incidents, almost like a
miner striking gold.... but, as if they weren't bad enough, some have
to embellish. Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) had to issue a letter cutting
off any funding to ACORN... except that Minnesota didn't do any
funding to ACORN. Similarly, other right wingers claimed that ACORN
was going to get $8.5B out of the TARP program.... without bothering
to explain that $8.5B was the total money available for grants, and
ACORN would have to apply for, and win, every single grant for that to
be true.

I agree with you, Chris.... community organizing is a good thing, but
ACORN isn't helping the cause.... time to throw them under the bus....
deservedly.

[ironknee]

There are some comments related to this on the main site.
See http://politicalirony.com/2009/09/18/obama-refuses-to-be-their-nigger-and-its-driving-them-crazy/#comments

[Eva Douglas]

http://start.localnet.com/article.php?article=D9AQ1T3O0.html

 

This absolutely infuriates me.  Faux News stages a news event paid for by them, then pays ads in their company owned newspapers to bash the other networks for not covering their staged event.  the other networks end up defending themselves.  Surely you can do something with this "Wm"

[Starluna]

I don't think ACORN is a political liability for Obama. Republicans
have been attacking ACORN for decades. Obama could have been a VISTA
volunteer with absolutely no history with ACORN and they would still
insinuated that Obama was connected to them.

ACORN is a threat to the political status quo more at the local level
than anything else. I am personally careful about my own interactions
with them. I've had good and bad experiences with them. And the bad
experiences give me pause.

But I will say here what I said on the blog: insofar as they were
assisting the pimp and his prostitute on how to file their taxes, they
did nothing wrong. You are required to report all income and pay taxes
on all income regardless of its source. Drug dealers, hookers,
embezzlers, etc must pay their taxes along with the rest of us.

Where they went wrong was trying to do the same thing that the
government allow thousands of wealthy people to get away with every
day: hide assets and other forms of tax fraud. However, whatever is
infuriating is that our government allows tax cheats who collectively
owe millions of dollars in taxes to get away with it but get really
upset over the few thousand dollars (at most) in taxes that misguided
ACORN counselors may have successfully hidden.

But it reminds me of a lesson that I learned early in my career: when
you work for or on behalf of marginalized people, you cannot afford to
behave in any other way than with the utmost of integrity. ACORN must
have forgotten that.