Who Sucks? - ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) Sucks

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)
134 SW 153rd St
Suite D
Burien, WA 98166
Phone: 206-723-5845
waadmin@acorn.org

ACORN, which stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, sucks.

UPDATE: On September 16, 2009 Congress finally voted to cease funding ACORN. After the release of a series of amateur videos showing ACORN workers in different offices dispensing similar, illegal advice on subjects such as tax evasion, underage prostitution, slavery (importing underage girls to become prostitutes), etc. Congress finally acted in a 345-75 vote to defund the corrupt organization. The 75 votes to continue funding ACORN were all Democrats.

ACORN is yet another liberal attempt to promote a liberal agenda, with a strategy that includes a willingness and desire to manipulate elections. I have always been of the opinion that it should be all Americans who decide things like who is our President. ACORN would much prefer to manipulate our elections and have a liberal in every political office, even though our country is not even remotely full of liberals. You have to remember that liberals are selfish and do not care what the majority wants, liberals only care about what they want, and they are determined to get their way.

In 1970 ACORN was founded by George Wiley, Wade Rathke, and Gary Delgado, all of whom are liberals. Since that time, ACORN has proceeded to obtain public funds and use them, illegally, to promote their liberal political agenda.

• ACORN accepted a $470,000 federal grant in 1977 through the VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) program to train volunteers to help low-income citizens. ACORN was accused of illegally using the resources for its political activities, and the subsequent report from a Congressional investigation found that ACORN had illegally used the money for labor organizing.

• AHC (ACORN Housing Corporation) in 1994, following a Clinton Administration grant worth more than $1 million, underwent an investigation by the Inspector General of AmeriCorps who found that AHC used government funds to register low-income individuals for paid ACORN memberships. This was a clear violation of federal law. The Inspector General found evidence of inappropriate transactions charged to AHC, taxpayers funding, “by ACORN or other ACORN-related entities.” Additionally, ACH had lied about maintaining separation from ACORN, which engages in overt political activities. The Inspector General found evidence of “ACORN having ‘created’ AHC to serve purposes common to both organizations” and “noted numerous transactions involving AHC and other ‘fraternal’ ACORN-related corporations.” The grant was ultimately revoked.

• In 2008 The New York Times reported that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN's founder Wade Rathke, was found to have embezzled $948,607.50 from the group and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000. ACORN executives, including Rathke, did not inform the whole board, nor law enforcement, of the embezzlement. Wade Rathke stated to the Times that "the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a 'weapon' into the hands of "conservatives who object to [ACORN]'s often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers." A whistleblower revealed the embezzlement in 2001; the Rathke brothers both left ACORN in 2008.

ACORN also shares a role in the current financial crisis brought about by fighting for 'progressive' loans to people who can't afford to pay for their obligations. ACORN has constantly campaigned against personal responsibility and for housing 'welfare', and now the country is saddled with billions and billions of dollars of worthless paper. Now ACORN wants America to forgive those bad loans, essentially socializing the housing industry for the benefit of poor people. If being poor didn't suck no one would be bothered by being poor and there would not be any motivation for the poor to improve their situation.

• In June 2008 the Consumers Rights League found that taxpayer money supported corporate shakedown tactics, actually counseling potential homebuyers to use “undocumented” or “under the table” income to obtain mortgages, and obtaining mortgages for undocumented workers, meaning taxpayer dollars intended to support housing counseling and easing housing woes directly funded an organization that was covering up massive fraud and engaging in questionable mortgage practices.

The simple fact is, a society cannot be made to cater to the poor. I used to be poor, so I know a little bit about having no money. Being poor isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, being poor motivated me to not be poor. Guess what? Now I'm not poor, all because I thought being poor sucked.

Anybody that uses poverty as an excuse for a lack of personal responsibility is playing the victim game. Welfare doesn't resolve the issue of poverty. Welfare is supposed to be short term assistance, not a way of life. For example, all across America there are thousands and thousands of Section 8 apartments filled with single mothers who, in addition to getting their rent subsidized by the government, also obtain welfare benefits such as food stamps, health care, and cash money disbursements. Typically, these benefits last until the youngest child becomes 4 years of age, and the single mother is then expected to enter into a subsidized training program which is supposed to help them obtain employment.

The problem with this scenario is that many of these women simply have children every few years, and they never reach the point whereby they have to get a job. One of these women used to be my girlfriend, and she described welfare to me as her 'benefits'. It's been 8 years since she and I have been together, and she's had two children in those 8 years, bringing her grand total to 4 children. Put another way, for 16 years society has paid her to make babies. ACORN believes that simply supporting these kinds of people isn't enough, we must now also give them houses.

I resent this position for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I have to actually pay for my house. What is it about personal responsibility that ACORN has issue with? It used to be that the American dream was to work hard at your career, grow your family, buy a house, retire and live out the remainder of your life enjoying the fruits of your labor. Apparently ACORN's idea of the American dream is to grow up on welfare, force national healthcare then make it pay for a sex change operation, get a house you can't afford then not pay for it, and then live the remainder of your life on welfare railing against anyone who doesn't want to subsidize your lifestyle.

With regards to how liberals attempt to influence elections, and therefore deprive honest voters of their right to vote, ACORN has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar many, many times:

• In 2004, four ACORN employees were indicted by an Ohio federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms. A worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and members of the community with such colorful names as Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.

• In 2005 two Colorado ACORN workers were convicted of perjury for submitting false voter registration forms; one ex-ACORN employee admitted to registering her friends 40 times.

• Virginia authorities, in 2005, found that of a sample of ACORN's Project Vote-gathered registrations, 83% were rejected for using false or questionable information.

• Four part time ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City, Missouri in November of 2006 for voter registration fraud. Prosecutors said the indictments were part of a national investigation. The four indicted, Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner, were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters.

• In 2006 ACORN was investigated for submitting over one thousand false voter registrations in St. Louis, Missouri. 1,492 fraudulent voter registrations were identified, and eight ACORN workers plead guilty to federal election fraud.

• Five Washington state ACORN workers were sentenced in 2007 to jail time for attempted election fraud. ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms in which the names were made up. All but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes. ACORN agreed to pay King County $25 000 for its investigative costs and acknowledged that the national organization could be subject to criminal prosecution if fraud occurs again.

• In 2008, the Michigan Secretary of State office told the Detroit Free Press that ACORN had been submitting a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications to vote. Several municipal clerks across the state reported fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them coming from ACORN.

• The Bernalillo County clerk in New Mexico notified prosecutors in 2008 that the office had received 1,100 fraudulent voter registration cards that had been turned in to her office by ACORN. Some cards contained the same name as voters who had already registered, but contained different birth dates or Social Security numbers while others contained addresses that did not exist, In one instance, a series of about nine cards appeared to have been taken directly from the phone book.

• In June 2008, an ACORN Project Vote spokesman acknowledged that 35 percent of the cards turned into Louisiana officials were duplicates. One woman, for instance, had five cards turned in for her, though she didn’t complete them. Authorities in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania announced the investigation of more than 100 voter registration cards submitted by ACORN, including instances where voters stated that they had never filled out a registration document.

If you have to lie, cheat and steal to get your point across, then you have no point, you are simply a liar and a thief. ACORN is nothing more than an extremely liberal political organization that uses poor people to obtain federal funds, and ACORN has every inerest in maintaining a liberal government because Republicans would not fund their theft and deception.

Does ACORN speak for your interests? ACORN doesn't care about your interests at all, as long as they can keep getting government funds they will continue to fight for their own interests.