Posted on 09/17/2009 6:57:37 AM PDT by big black dog
The Senate should not have voted to deny funds to ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — on account of transgressions perpetrated by a handful of employees.
The group came under fire after two activist filmmakers, posing as a young prostitute and pimp, caught ACORN employees explaining how to run a brothel of underage "women of the night" while evading the federal government.
These actions are inexcusable. However, the answer is not to deprive the agency of federal funding.
The filmmakers visited ACORN branches in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia before finding employees who would react in a way that furthered their anti-ACORN agenda. If conservative activists consider this an appropriate formula for fact finding, they might as well pursue the disbanding of their own political party.
A more appropriate response from the Senate would be to sanction the employees involved in the scandal and to conduct an investigation into their branches.
We wonder why the Senate voted 83-7 to deny ACORN funding based on an amateur display of "gotcha" journalism by a 20-year-old college student.
We also wonder why they succumbed to Republicans who are so intent on vilifying the agency. ACORN gets most of its funding through state and local governments, but this vote is at least a symbolic surrender to the GOP's ongoing attacks.
In the age of YouTube, it's hard to avoid letting fringe groups make their videos viral. It's a sad day, though, when the Senate decides to stop funding a group dedicated to the needy working class due to a distorted video.
Because the MSM wouldn't do it.
And what pray tell, is the effect of a Senate sanction? Does the Senate have the time to investigate and sanction every misbehaving individual that abuses its funding? No, they don't.
Organizations taking government money should be as pure as Caesar's wife when it comes to political and criminal actions. If not, the organization should be cut off and its nonprofit tax status revoked retroactively to the date of misbehavior.
“...handful of employees...”
I wonder what the duo’s success rate was? Number of crooks over number of visits.
The Independent Florida Alligator made for good toilet paper when I was at UF, other than that....
Damn them amateur film making kids.
Responsible adults would just look the other way. After ACORN was helping the poor and down trodden. Such a noble cause should not be questioned...........
GOTCHA.........
Good one. The fellow travelers of this RICO enterprise are really spinning the funding angle.
Yesterday there was an attempt to assert that “only 60 percent” of ACORN’s funding come from government grants, while failing to note that the other 40 percent comes from selling its “services” to other government and social-sector entities, as if ACORN was actually running “a business.”
Ridiculous.
The spinning is shameless and laughable.
The implicit assumption of this twit is that there SHOULD be a way to avoid “letting” people exercise their first amendment rights.
Few questions...why is the government supporting them? Isn’t the government’s job to defend the country and build infrastructure? So explain why people think our tax dollars should go to them...
>Isn’t the government’s job to defend the country and build infrastructure<
Isn’t that in the Constitution somewhere?
Isn’t ACORN just one of the corrupt organizations funded by the government?
The girl was on Hannity last night--she said that their success rate was 100%, i.e. every ACORN office they went to accommodated them.
From what the article says, plus the three videos, they would have a success rate of 43%.
If a random sampling of an organization finds 43% willing to conspire to promote illegal activity to include child prostitution and imprisonment (the children are always held captive), then I’d say that’s definitely enough to go RICO.
Where does the Constitution give Congress or the Senate the authority to sanction private persons employed by any entity ?
Except they have now revealed a video from San Diego. So move that office over into the pwned column.
My guess is ACORN just rattled off the names of cities where they assumed no attempt was made. No film, it's "they said: ACORN said"
Making me do my numbers again? 1st 0.4%, 2nd 0.33%, 3rd .25%, 4th 0.17%, 5th 0.08%. Total: 1 in 2.4 trillion.
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