Friday, November 13, 2009

ACORN Fights For Equal Treatment

Democracy Now reported today that ACORN is suing the U.S. government on the grounds that singling out one organization for special treatment, whether favorable or punitive, is unconstitutional on several counts.

Dec. 7, 2009 update:
Darcy Burner recently said on C-SPAN that there had been a small problem with the legislation defunding ACORN for fraud, namely that almost all defense contractors would also have been similarly affected.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Update on Rightwing Persecution of ACORN

At the very end of an op-ed piece posing as journalism, I learned that the cowardly Congressional ban on federal funding for ACORN expires on December 18.

The ax-grinding that precedes this lone piece of information contains a number of accusations about ACORN's radical advocacy for extremist groups such as a Working Families Party that advocates for living-wage jobs. Although somebody thinks I should be very afraid of advocacy for working families and voter registration for poor folks, I don't get why ACORN's victimization by internal embezzlement means that registering poor people as voters is bad.

Similarly, allegations - that minor instances of registration inflation by a handful of young staffers among thousands nationwide constitute voter fraud that is anywhere near as momentous as what we witnessed in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 - are apparently more examples of straining at gnats while swallowing elephants, since these claims seem to be more related to party affiliation than anything.

Other allegations that ACORN is connected with violations of campaign funding cite a source that doesn't clearly support the allegations, at least for this reader. But that hasn't stopped fishing expeditions by investigators.

Don't Republicans and so-called conservatives have anything constructive to do with their time? There are a lot of real problems, such as homelessness and nuclear weapons that are far more hazardous to the health of our nation than a grassroots community organization that focuses on voter registration and financial literacy.