Acorn and Republican Values

[firespin]

Your spelling is improving.

He's not doing so well on line breaks yet.

 

[brw02]

There are many faith based and evangelical organizations that are sincere and well-intended. There are others that are merely money making fronts designed to enrich their organizers and staff. There are many community service organizations that strive to combat the very poverty that they themselves operate in on a daily basis. Others exist mainly to profit their organizers and staff in whatever way they might cash in on America's sense of racial and economic guilt.

Setting yourself and your cronies up as a non-profit charitable organization is one of the greatest tax scams going and one of the toughest to expose. In the case of ACORN, various incidents such as the embezzlement of $1 million of the organization's funds by the brother of one of the founders (which wasn't reported to law enforcement agencies or even the organization's board of directors), the voter registration irregularities you mentioned and now the video taped conspiracy to defraud the IRS raises serious questions about the exact nature of ACORN's mission and certainly the manner in which they go about achieving it. Taken as a whole, these questions easily qualify the organization to be a target of not only the Justice Department, but certainly any news media organization that would have the time and inclination to investigate it.

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These isolated instances involve a handful of people in an organization which consists of over 400,000 families with 1200 chapters nationwide. And even these charges have already been addressed internally. The ACORN firestorm on the right is actually more of a tempest in a teapot. The problems that the right-wing lie in ACORN's success in meeting their goals:

"Each ACORN office carries out multiple issue campaigns. ACORN members across the country work to raise the minimum wage or enact living wage policies; eliminate predatory financial practices by mortgage lenders, payday lenders, and tax preparation companies; win the development of affordable housing and community benefits agreements; improve the quality of and funding for urban public schools; rebuild New Orleans; and pass a federal and state ACORN Working Families Agenda, including paid sick leave for all full time workers."

It shouldn't be hard to figure out who opposes ACORN. Mortgage lenders, payday lenders, minimum wage employers, for starts. That is who is funding the wingnuts in their "Get ACORN" crusade.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

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These isolated instances involve a handful of people in an organization which consists of over 400,000 families with 1200 chapters nationwide. And even these charges have already been addressed internally. The ACORN firestorm on the right is actually more of a tempest in a teapot. The problems that the right-wing lie in ACORN's success in meeting their goals:

"Each ACORN office carries out multiple issue campaigns. ACORN members across the country work to raise the minimum wage or enact living wage policies; eliminate predatory financial practices by mortgage lenders, payday lenders, and tax preparation companies; win the development of affordable housing and community benefits agreements; improve the quality of and funding for urban public schools; rebuild New Orleans; and pass a federal and state ACORN Working Families Agenda, including paid sick leave for all full time workers."

It shouldn't be hard to figure out who opposes ACORN. Mortgage lenders, payday lenders, minimum wage employers, for starts. That is who is funding the wingnuts in their "Get ACORN" crusade.

The handling of the $1 million embezzlement was indicative of something far more troublesome. It remains to be seen whether the other incidents are as "isolated" as I'm sure you hope they are.