Just days after offering some “interesting” tax advice on film, ACORN was hit with a House bill that would deny federal funds to the group. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) explained:
ACORN has violated serious federal laws, and today the House voted to ensure that taxpayer dollars would no longer be used to fund this corrupt organization.
The group touts itself as an advocate for low- and moderate-income people on fair wage, education and housing issues.
Earlier in the week, the Senate voted to block HUD funding to the group as part of an amendment to a larger bill. However, at least one Senator took issue with the vote: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) felt that the vote was merely ceremonial since the attached bill didn’t include any funding for ACORN in the first place. She said, “All of this is really, I guess, to show people.”
Sen. Feinstein was clearly in the minority with respect to opposing the bill. Both her colleagues in the Senate and those in the House voted overwhelmingly in support of withholding ACORN funding.
Of course, don’t expect the ban to take effect immediately. The bills are not retroactive and would apply to future funding, likely beginning in 2010. The funding could be significant: over the last 15 years, the group has received an estimated $53 million in federal aid.
ACORN’s chief executive officer, Bertha Lewis, noted that ACORN primarily relies on funding from private, not government sources, and indicated that the organization would continue to operate. Despite such optimism, concessions, including reduced hiring, are expected. And ACORN’s woes may not stop there – the FBI has made noise that it may be considering an investigation after the “tax tape” was made public.
I tried to see what kind of response ACORN would offer to the public but their web site was down for the evening (despite repeated attempts to access it). Funding woes already?
I can get to their site just fine now. They probably had a bit of a traffic surge earlier. Yesterday, they announced steps to address “issues” raised by the videos. Today they have the response to the House amendment you quote from above.
This is disgusting and infuriating. The unedited tapes have not been released as far as I know, and I have heard a direct response from only one employee, who stated that her outrageous responses were to play along with what was obviously a prank of some sort. The guy was wearing a suit and a fur cape for crying out loud, with a lacquered walking stick. That’s not an undercover disguise, it’s a freaking costume. These people, who were acting with clear malice and with no advance evidence of wrongdoing in these programs expect us to take them at their edited word. The idea that two white people would walk into an ACORN office in a low income neighborhood dressed as they were, and immediately and without prompting give detailed descriptions of their international child smuggling and abuse operation to complete strangers in the guise of seeking homebuying and tax advice is beyond absurd. At least one ACORN employee has declared that her responses were in recognition of this absurdity.
The vast majority of ACORN employees that they tried this on refused them service; here in Philadelphia they called the police. The three offices that they visited where the tapes give the impression that the staff are aiding them in their illegal activity are edited. I would not be in the least surprised if those employees also saw right through this ridiculously thin scheme and were also just playing along to see where it went.
If I’m mistaken and complete and unedited videos are available for viewing online, I’d love to take a look. But the executive response has been appropriate, swift and thorough. That Democrats are aiding and abetting Republicans in this scheme when the full evidence hasn’t even been made available makes me sick to my stomach.
hmmmm ok…good they defund them…obvious choice>!
I have heard, but not verified, that this “undercover investigation” was orchestrated by Glen Beck.
The YouTube thing was obviously a setup. ACORN has been around forever — at least in Boston, I remember them from back when I was looking through the Help Wanted ads as a college kid. Only with the rise of Obama — and the conservative wingnuts who can’t stand him — has the organization suddenly become a lightning rod for Beck and his right-wing hissy fits.
The time has come for the “Nuclear Option” — get rid of the filibuster, go ahead and pass bills with a mere 59 votes in the Senate, and tell Beck and Dick Armey to come up with something better or shut up.
By any objective measure, regardless of this recent scandal, ACORN is a partisan operation and should not get federal funding. If ACORN gets federal funding then so should the NRA. In principle, there is no difference.
Whether or not this recent scandal is real or contrived, it is only one thing in a laundry list of violations attributed to ACORN. Last election, they were clearly committing voter fraud with bogus voter registrations and this fact is undeniable. They should lose their funding.
P.S. I always find it amusing when libs call conservatives names like wing nuts. Have you ever seen a liberal rally? They are filled with the dregs of society. Liberals own the rights to the term wing nuts. Even the supposed sane ones have no grounding in logic. Logic and liberalism are complete opposites so if we want to talk about crazy ideas and the wing nuts who support them, you have to look at the liberals. All they care about is good intentions and the thing they abhor the most is personal responsibility. Just don’t try to logically understand them. Just look at their good intentions, because in the end, they are just paving one more mile on that road to hell.
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. -Winston Churchill
What partisan activity has ACORN engaged in? Be specific. No generalities like “they register more Democrats than Republicans.” Name one or more specific acts that violate their 501(c)3 designation. This is a tax law blog and you are accusing them of violating tax law. Back it up.
Second, to my knowledge, no one has ever presented evidence of a single vote cast based on a bogus registration submitted by ACORN, ie, there is no evidence that ACORN activity has ever altered the outcome of an election. ACORN is required by law to submit every registration card it collects (for the law to be otherwise would be an invitation to partisan political activity). It reviews and submits in separate flagged batches those registrations it believes may be problematic, and then terminates and turns over to authorities the lawbreakers among its canvassers. Virtually every single prosecution of an ACORN voter registration worker has been aided by information proactively provided by ACORN.
Oh — and just to blow my “lib” credentials, it should be noted that I voted for McCain, last time he was up for re-election in AZ. :-p
Urb
Too bad this happened. Many poor people are helped by ACORN and I could end up being one of them. The Republicans are targeting this group and although this situation was bad, it’s not indicative of the group across the board. It needs to be cleaned up but not “throw out the baby with the bath water”.