An ACORN office in Arizon was vandalized Wednesday night. Staff arrived for work Thursday morning to find windows broken, computers stolen and files taken. Wait. What? The burglars took files? Your run of the mill burglar doesn’t burden himself with worthless paperwork about the doings of a non-profit. What is this? Grandson of Watergate?
So now the office will go into lockdown. People won’t any longer be able to stroll in off the street looking for help. They’ll have to be cleared before they get in. The incident is one small sign, on a local level, of the way ACORN is suffering these days. Both the House and the Senate have passed bills barring ACORN from receiving federal funds. It’s not much money. ACORN has only received about $53 million in federal funds since 1994. That’s less than a drop in the federal bucket. But it still burns me to see Democrats–out of ignorance or cowardice, or both–voting for these bills just because Republicans have brayed so loudly about community organizers.
The Democrats who voted yes are denigrating an organization that, here in eastern Missouri, for example, is working to prevent AmerenUE from gaining an 18 percent rate hike. Ameren rakes in fifty million a month in profits from its monopoly status as electricity distributor over a large chunk of Missouri. In this recession, the Ameren ghouls want to suck almost 20 percent more blood out of rate payers. ACORN is demonstrating against that and working to defeat it. That’s just one example of their worthwhile work.
Glenn Burleigh, the head field organizer for St. Louis, says that the Baltimore organizer has been fired who advised a woman posing as a prostitute about how to avoid paying taxes on her illegal income. Burleigh notes that a white glove standard is being applied that would never happen to the big money boys. Can you imagine Halliburton, with its legion of sins, being similarly persecuted or prosecuted for one employee who advocated fraud, without actually even committing it? Imagine away, because so far, in your mind is the only place you’ve seen even minimal accountability for corporations that screw us the people in the form of our government.
After the spectacle they made of their organization last week, no one will ever trust them again.
How many have noticed that ACORN has promoted child prostitution,aiding ILLEGALS to immigrate, tax evasion, voter fraud, filing fraudulent loan applications, running a brothel, etc. Does helping people to avoid a rate hike by Ameren UE make up for all of that? It hardly seems like a tit for tat to me.
I’m all for holding down rate increases but if the President gets his way an 18% increase by Ameren UE will seem like small potatoes!
staffers (out of thousands) is treated as an indictment of the entire organization — and this after years of malfeasance by BushCo cronies (including murder (Blackwater) and sex for play (Bush interior dept.)) Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that ACORN has been effective in organizing progressive votes?
Glenn Greenwald has it about right:
The most disheartening aspect of this though, is the rush by “moderate” quislings like Claire McCaskill to get some distance from ACORN, although I suppose, given the nature of political discourse, it is to be expected. With Democrats like McCaskill, who needs Republicans?