Somebody Here Is Nuts, But It's Not ACORN

(And I also posted here.)

I’ll begin with this “Thumbs Up” writeup from the Bucks County Courier Times this morning…

To the U.S. Senate for its prudent vote blocking grant money for ACORN, a controversial community organization involved in several voter-registration fraud cases.

ACORN has used Department of Housing and Urban Development grant money in the past to counsel low-income people on how to obtain a mortgage and for fair housing education and outreach.

These are laudable programs. But the group is suffering from a self-inflicted black eye after a pair of activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp released hidden camera videos of ACORN employees giving advice on buying a house and how to hide the woman's illicit income.

The ban comes just as ACORN, which has received $53 million in taxpayer money since 1994, had become eligible for a wider set of funds.

Call it good timing.

Of course, the august editorial board of the Courier Times also praised the Baucus health care bill because the bill is “just 223 pages.”

Call it lousy editorializing (and by the way, this tells us of the 83-7 Senate vote that froze out ACORN’s funding; I’ve dumped on Bob Casey in the past, but kudos to him for standing as one of the seven – along with Roland Burris, Dick Durbin, Kirsten Gillibrand, Pat Leahy, Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse…and a great big raspberry goes out to “Democrat” Arlen Specter for standing as one of the 83).

And as a reminder of why ACORN lost its funding, this tells us of the entire episode where James O’Keefe posed as a pimp and Clown Hall columnist Hannah Giles posed as a hooker and approached the DC ACORN office, where some truly clueless ACORN staffers appeared to encourage prostitution and tax evasion by assisting them (of course, the filming could have been illegal, but the New York Times and Baltimore Sun, among other news sources, chose not to report that).

Also, I’d like to remind everyone of a couple of points. As noted here by ACORN’s Mike Shea, no client files were created or billed, no loan documents were signed or submitted, and no bank loans were arranged for O’Keefe and Giles.

Another thing…these two people are not “activists,” as the Courier Times calls them. At the very least, they’re troublemakers advancing no cause except their own self-promotion. I was always taught than an activist worked for some kind of a constructive purpose…silly me, I guess.

Want more evidence of O’Keefe causing nonsense? This story tells us the following (the source for the above pic)…

The Irish American 'pimp' at the center of the ACORN video controversy once launched a fake campaign to ban Lucky Charms from the campus at Rutgers.

"Cereal killer" James O'Keefe, the then editor of a conservative magazine at Rutgers, has become a right-wing icon with his hidden videos which show an Acorn employee advising O'Keefe how to seek loans while he poses as a pimp.

…

In 2004, he stirred up a lot of fake anger in a campus campaign against Lucky Charms saying they were offensive to Irish Americans.

He posed as an upset Irish American and ambushed a Rutgers University official with three other mischief makers to make an official complaint about Lucky Charms and Irish stereotypes.

O'Keefe used a hidden video to record the school official who was clearly doing the right thing in accommodating O'Keefe's complaints.

In the video, O'Keefe says he is worried that Lucky Charms make people think that all Irish Americans are short and wear green coats. (Has he seen New Jersey on St Patrick's Day?!)

Posing as an aggrieved Irish man, O'Keefe tells the official that he's tired of the Lucky Charms branding which portrays Irish Americans as "a green-cladded (sic) gnome, and as you can see ... we're not all short," O'Keefe says. "We have differences of height, and we think this is stereotypical of Irish-Americans."

The tape could be hilarious but the joke falls flat because the whole thing's so pompous.

Is this the best the right can do? Rely on a man who waged a phony war against Lucky Charms?

Apparently so – and as Media Matters tells us here, O'Keefe previously taped distribution of a "good wife's guide" to a women's studies class at Rutgers (the school had the unfortunate distinction of serving as the butt of many of O’Keefe’s stupid antics, as noted here).

And here are some “other lovely treats” from O’Keefe, as Daily Kos diarist mconvente tells us:

*(O’Keefe teamed) with Joe Nedick, fellow founder of The Centurion and Cap and Skull member to release the names of the senior Cap and Skull society members during the first week of the 2005-2006 academic year, trashing a long time tradition of keeping their membership secret until the new class was tapped. (Source - PDF)

*(O’Keefe criticized) Rutgers University curriculum standards requiring all students to take a non-Western course, accusing the policy of deeming a "Southern American Christian" less cultured than an "isolated non-Westerner". As a quote, Mr. O'Keefe writes "Multiculturalist Rutgers professors have become eccentric elites, sadly out of touch from with American culture, family, and purpose" (Source - page 9 - PDF)

*(He repeatedly bashed) famous Rutgers Alum Paul Robeson for his support of socialist policies, despite his grand accomplishments as a student, athlete, actor, and early civil rights icon. (Source - page 15, plus MANY others - PDF)

*(He) personally prevent(ed) via town-hall-esque shenanigans the start of a student government meeting for 45 minutes as protest for the student government endorsing a unification of separate colleges into one Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.

*(He claimed) a liberal bias in distribution of student fees for organization funding, citing the fact that the Islamic Society of Rutgers and RU Against the War got more funding than the Israeli Action Committee and RU For the Troops, respectively. Of course, as former Treasurer of the student government and delegate to the Allocations Board, (the diarist) would like to inform (us) that funding is strictly formula-based and if groups apply within the guidelines for more funding (i.e. - larger event, more food, etc.), they will get funded more. (Source - Page 20 - PDF)

So, because of a guy who has pulled these types of antics, Congress chose to freeze out ACORN funding.

And Joe Conason tells us here of what ACORN primarily does (and you can figure out how people will be hurt by the cowardice of many of our elected officials)…

Like so many conservative attacks, the crusade against ACORN has been highly exaggerated and even falsified to create a demonic image that bears little resemblance to the real organization. Working in the nation's poorest places, and hiring the people who live there, ACORN is not immune to the pathologies that can afflict institutions in those communities. As a large nonprofit handling many millions of dollars, it has suffered from mismanagement at the top as well -- although there is nothing unique in that, either.

…

Yet ACORN's troubles should be considered in the context of a history of honorable service to the dispossessed and impoverished. No doubt it was fun to dupe a few morons into providing tax advice to a "pimp and ho," but what ACORN actually does, every day, is help struggling families with the Earned Income Tax Credit (whose benefits were expanded by both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). And while the idea of getting housing assistance for a brothel was clever, what ACORN really does, every day, is help those same working families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.

Perhaps the congressional investigation now demanded by some Republican politicians would be a useful exercise, if conducted impartially. A fair investigation might begin to dispel some of the wild mythology promoted by right-wing media outlets.

…

The proportion of (actual ACORN) fraud is infinitesimal. For example, a half-dozen ACORN workers were charged with registration fraud or other election-related crimes in the 2004 election. They had completed fewer than two dozen false registrations -- out of more than a million new voters registered by ACORN during that cycle. The mythology that suggests that thousands or even millions of illegal registrants voted is itself a fraud.

And as Conason tells us, “when ACORN officials discovered those cases, they informed the state authorities and turned in the miscreants."

So congratulations, all of you weak-kneed editorialists and politicians of both parties. You successfully caved to the conservative noise machine, legitimizing the juvenile antics of a couple of professional opportunists who, after being turned away repeatedly, finally found some victims who fell for their con.

I’m sure the people who will no doubt lose their homes as a result of ACORN’s loss of government funding will thank you.

Update 1: Great stuff by BooMan on this here (h/t Atrios)...

Update 2 9/19/09: More from Media Matters here...

Update 3 9/21/09: I see that the apple doesn't fall far from the same rotten tree (trying not to beat the ACORN metaphor to death) here...

Update 4 9/22/09: On second thought (h/t Atrios)...

Update 5 9/25/09: Good (and congratulations to O'Keefe and Giles for breaking the law...ha, ha, ha).