My point was more general in that ACORN, itself, isn't doing anything illegal or immoral. If there are specific problems with individuals then nobody can complain if they're punished but, as I understand what's happening, they're being denied federal funding and other 'punishments' for the 'crimes' of a few individuals. In the same way the problem of corruption and criminal infiltration in unions has been dealt with in the past, (to my CERTAIN knowledge having spent 15 years in the shipping business including running ships to the US east coast), by high-level anti-corruption actions that targeted the stevedore unions as institutions as well as, sometimes almost instead of, the individuals themselves. The point being that that wouldn't be done with any OTHER organisation, particularly corporations. I'm just drawing a parallel. Of course, some of you, (well, almost all of you I'd guess), wouldn't have had my experience in the matter so maybe you wouldn't be aware of it.
Well, that logic would imply that a whole lotta traders and executives for major banks would be wise to lawyer up - I mean - credit default swaps did wind up exploding the economy and hurting people a lot worse than a few exploding gas tanks.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the impetus for GOP discontent with ACORN that this organization receives a fair amount of federal money for their operations while a) their role in the oversight of consistency with federal lending policy could/should be done by true civil employees, and b) suspicions that ACORN has required personnel and some receivers of its services to stump for political campaigns? (ie: They're getting taxpayer money to go out and help elect more ACORN-friendly politicians, usually Democrats) It was an article about such accusations that first introduced me to the organization, and all this other stuff seems to be the byproduct of the heightened scrutiny. I certainly agree that on average companies aren't supposed to be blamed for the ills of their employees. If this has been covered earlier then please just let me know.
A second-tier debate in the US in the aftermath of the housing bubble has been, what is the obligation of the mortgage holder? You guys are taking the two sides of the debate in a kind of roundabout way. http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/12/walking-away You'd probably be interested in this blog post.
But as a counterpoint if we are looking for examples on the right similar to the way ACORN was defunded - Blackwater. After all the crap that went down in Iraq (perhaps by just a few bad apples) - there was a huge push to blacklist Blackwater. Now certainly Blackwater employees acted far far far far worse than any ACORN employee - and perhaps Blackwater as an organization actively encouraged or enabled such bad apples - so the details are a lot different. But the end result was kinda the same - both groups lost a lot of government funding. Of course, Acorn coulda pulled an end-around like Blackwater did. Blackwater changed their name to XE or something (sounds a lot like Executive Outcomes which IIRC was the merc company active in overthrowing African governments for $$$$) Acorn coulda pulled a fast one too - renamed themsleves "Acorny", or reincorporated with a PO box in Canada and the name EhCORN, and gave the middle finger to DC idiots
If there are specific allegations of wrongdoing then I'd suggest that they be proved. It's PRECISELY all this old toffee about 'suspicions' that is the problem and, again, even if it IS true that crimes have occurred, that doesn't mean that all the other ACORN employees and volunteers, not to mention the organisation itself, should suffer because of it. The point about ACORN is that it's an umbrella grouping that includes many areas of support to the poor, such as this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now#Katrina_relief Are we REALLY saying that volunteers helping to refurbish housing after Katrina, should lose out, (for example, maybe having to provide their own tools and equipment to do the work), because some numbnut in Philly or New York doesn't know helping pimps is wrong? More to the point, are we going to extend that to corporations such as Blackwater whose employees have carried out illegal and immoral acts? Are they going to be 'defunded' as well? That's been the major area of discussion in the thread and it's a fair argument IMO, because it implies that the US government can penalise ONE organisation but not another for doing essentially the same thing, the difference being simply political expediency.
I don't think you nailed it on the head. Conservatives don't want civil employees (big gubbament!). So no, its not that they want federal employees doing their job - they don't want their job done period I don't buy that one either. ACORN goes and helps organize folks in need, and the needy. Those folks tend to vote dem. Ergo, Repubs don't want them to get help at all - for politcal reasons (less dem voters!) and philosophical reasons (F the poor!). If there was a law/rule that ACORN employees couldn't stump for preogressive politicians - repubs would still try to kill the organization, because its very existence in anathema to their political future and their feelings that the poor should stay poor.
Thanks for the note, Andy. TMZ-worthy stoires aside, which I couldn't care less about, I agree this is overall an unsteady slope and calls into question the value of so many federally released contracts, the oversight of such contracts, or both facets of the issue. For local Libertarians/independents that's their big beef, that ACORN is but one exapmle of bureaucracy out to expand bureaucracy for its own sake, at the expense of taxpayers. On it's face it does sound odd for tax-payer dollars to fund an organization that does political advocacy even as so simply stated on the wiki page, for clearly they will end up taking sharp stances on an issue. As would any advocacy group, but not all receive federal and state funding or play structured roles within fiscal policy (such as requirements for their comments to impact institution ratings). Thus I think the heart of the matter gets back to that connection - If they were not also receiving government support then people would be less impacted by the zealotry of any their actions, be they small or large. GOP mistake was couching this as if ACORN is the only entity so entrenched, or using these stupid stories to generalize ACORN as nothing but incompetent people.
Sounds like you're generalizing conservatives in much the same way some of their political zealots are portraying ACORN. If it were so black and white that Democrats help people and Republicans don't than I imagine elections would be far more one-sided than we've seen, no?
Well, elections-wise, it guess it would come down to the perception that dems try to help the lowerclass (and sometimes middle-class), while republicans are quite good at turning the middle/upper classes against the lower class. And since we have a balanced demographic split between lowerclass voting dem and middle/upperclass voting Repub - then we get between a 50/50 or 60/40 congress. As long as demographics work well, then we can continue the situation. And both parties have reason to keep the split no worse than approximately 60/40 or 40/60. If lowerclass goes above 60% due to punitive republican policies, then we approach the area where repubs lose any say in government (or get a French/Russian revolution and lose their money and heads). Yet if the lowerclass drops below 40% due to democrat policies, they lose votes because the middle class will be out to protect what they got and screw the poor. So we can get relative stability by oscillating between 40/60 and 60/40. But going too far outside those boundaries leads to inherantly unstable demographics under the current political philosophy. And remember - power is all about control - so nobody really has an interest to bring us out of a stable oscillation into an unstable zone.
I'm not clear what you mean by 'structured roles'? Are you saying you'd prefer UNstructured roles? Surely, it's precisely the 'structured roles' that provides some element of transparency for the rest of us in finding out where the funds are going? In any event ARE there any organisations that receive state or federal funding and DON'T record what they do with the money? I'd be very surprised if that's the case. But in any case, that all raises another interesting analogy, doesn't it. I saw a figure somewhere that something like 25% of all the private land in the USA is owned by churches and other religious bodies and yet they pay no taxes on their income. In a very real sense that amounts to a subsidy of them and yet they very often hold political positions. If the argument is that nobody with a political stance should receive tax dollars why is it OK for the church to avoid taxes the rest of us would have to pay? Indeed, one could argue that any organisation that has a tax exemption should be banned from expressing a political opinion on ANY matter at all, such as abortion for example.
Which, however, suggests both sides have an interest in maintaining a working class. To wit... ... all the better to foster more entitlement programs so as to control mass behavior and dependency on the government, right? Just saying. As I understand it, federal credit ratings for lending institutions are based in part on the comments of select institutions, including ACORN. I'll have to research it all the more, but it sure sounded at first impression like allowing your children veto privileges for dinner, knowing they'll keep complaining until they get exactly what they want. If ACORN is going to be an ardent advocacy group, I wonder if they shouldn't be a formal factor in this scoring methodology. Don't know for sure, just my impression. Don't get me started. Once GA enacted a law exempting all property owned by religious istitutions, every mega-church got into the development business and it's killing local tax revenues. As a city planner I don't mind tax privileges for bona fide charitable organizations, but not property taxes and only for their principle activities. And despite being a practicing Christian I think it's high time the definition of what constituted a religion was highly scrutinized and amended, if for nothing other than tax purposes.
So you mean that ACORN, (or a part of it, presumably... as we already know it's not one large amorphous lump), provides information to lending institutions that they rely on in making decisions as to whether or not to provide a loan to an individual? Well, to repeat myself, if someone can provide PROOF that this is being abused and they're saying to people, 'vote democrat* or we tell them not to give you the loan', then I'd say there isn't a problem. Alternatively, of course, it could be argued that you should be in prison now because as you're a city planner you might take bribes from companies to put business their way. I mean, whether you have or not is irrelevant... you MIGHT do Personally I don't think that's a very sensible approach, do you? * Although how they'd know different with it being a secret ballot is another matter.
I'll bet anything that either they have two related but separate entities, or they have separate revenue sources for the political advocacy. Yeah, the conservative media bias IS powerful.
That's like saying you voted for a Dem or a Reep OR a Reep or a Dem. Hell, it's twighlight time and I am drunk so what is your definition of anything?
the banking industry needed better oversight. as you can imagine, i'm not big on "regulation", but the financial practices of banking institutions must have been responsible to some significant extent for the recent tailspin in the US economy. i don't think it's global warming exclusively...
I may be wrong on the details, but don't groups like this have a 501c3 corp. and a 501c4 corp., and they have to keep separate budgets for both revenues and expenditures? That's what I was getting at.
The independent filmmaker who brought ACORN to its knees last year with an undercover expose was arrested this week along with three others, including the son of a federal prosecutor, and accused of trying to interfere with the phones at Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office. Activist James O'Keefe, 25, was already in Landrieu's New Orleans office Monday when Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel, both 24, showed up claiming to be telephone repairmen, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office said Tuesday. Letten says O'Keefe recorded the two with his cell phone. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/26/acorn-antagonist-arrested-senate-phone-scheme/ bad O'Keefe... bad!