Friday, September 18, 2009

Right Wing 1, ACORN 0


The House voted yesterday to deny any further federal money to the nationwide community organizing group ACORN. Since 1994, the group has received approximately $53 million in federal support.

Fox “News” Commentator Glenn Beck, (who repeatedly claims to be an independent but only takes up Conservative causes that benefit the wealthy, the Republican Party and the Right) has been on a targeted witch hunt against the organization this year, accusing ACORN of voter-registration fraud among other things. Recently ACORN office workers were videotaped consulting and advising Conservative activists who were “undercover” posing as street hustlers interested in establishing a prostitution ring. Officials at ACORN have called the incidents uncovered in the sting “isolated” and have begun their own internal investigations, maintaining that workers at other ACORN offices immediately reported the Conservative imposters to the local police. Time will tell whether ACORN’s explanations are valid or whether it is a systematically “corrupt” organization as many on the Right are rushing to allege.

I can tell you what I know of ACORN from my own personal experience. In my native South Bronx, ACORN workers did and continue to do extremely important community outreach, passing out flyers notifying people of upcoming election times, from the all important local primaries (I just missed the Democratic primary here in New York City, so shame on me) to the national elections. I first registered to vote because of ACORN outreach and I don’t think I’ve missed a local or national election since. ACORN’s outreach efforts serve the poorest communities and the most impoverished Americans across the nation with information about their rights and responsibilities as voters. You will not find them canvassing in the Hamptons, Beverly Hills, Westchester, Aspen Hills or Hilton Head. It’s pretty much a given-truth if not a discernable fact that ACORN’s efforts do not aid the GOP, which has been consistently hurt when the poorest in America step up to vote en masse. It’s important to point out that this is not ACORN’s fault. If the GOP represented the working poor in this country and proposed any policies that weren’t “tax breaks for the Rich in disguise,” they might get the millions of Poor and lower working classes to vote for their candidates across the nation on occasion. Instead, the GOP will have to rely on those particular lower class White and Hispanic voters who they can scare easily.

In the end, most of ACORN’s operating revenue comes from members and other supporters, so these efforts will not dismantle the organization outright. Yesterday’s House financing ban, which may be Unconstitutional, is crow-barred into an education bill that has to pass the Senate. I'm not counting on an eventual veto by our President, as neither he, nor anyone else seems to have the guts to stand by this organization that has done so much for so many for so long.

All I can say is, game on.

If an entire nationwide not for profit’s funding can be taken down by the alleged criminal negligence of employees in the field or in one office thanks to Glenn Beck and Rupert Murdoch’s Right Wing Media apparatus, then we should all prepare ourselves for more of the same.

Let's see More “investigative activism” by everyone.
Let's do it America. They say "the truth never hurt anyone," but I say the facts are downright poisonous to liars.

I am going to check out ACORN’s local offices here in New York and see about making a contribution and thanking them for reaching out to me when I was in college. I should note that, once registered, I in fact voted for a Republican; George Bush in 1988.
So much for ACORN’s intrinsic leftist agenda and voter fraud.

As of this writing 62 companies have pulled support from Glenn Beck’s show.

Game on.

-SJ

10 comments:

Jack Jodell said...

It's no secret the ultra far right GOP were shellshocked by Obama's big victory and the huge minority and lower class turnout thanks to ACORN. So naturally, they were going to target that group to discredit it, defund it, and minimize its effectiveness.

This is just another conservative attempt to block minorities' and the poor's access to the voting booth. It is a modern-day poll tax attempt.

The resultant action against the staged entrapment of an ACORN employee was way overblown. By Congress' rationale, then none of the bailout banks should have gotten any federal funds due to their corruption and misbehaving. The corporate scandals of recent years (Enron, Worlcom, Tyco, etc.) should therefore have resulted in their forced closure. Of course, we never heard conservative Republicans like John Cornyn call for that, did we?

This right wing double standard is disgusting and infuriating!

SJ said...

@Jack,
You present a very toxic double standard that I frankly hadn't considered with regard to the banks.
It's so easy to beat up on ACORN and make them the scapegoat of the moment. Just another ruse to take everybody's mind off lopsided taxation and the healthcare debate and the the GOP's role in all of the current economic trouble.
-SJ

Vigilante said...

SJ, I question if Glenn Beck serves in the interests of the GOP. His behavior does not appear to serve in the interests of electoral politics. He's into street politics. I think he embarrasses Republicants. I consider him to be the Pied Piper of Putsch. Not to say that putsch looms in American politics, of course. I'm just sayin' Beck is not working to get people elected; he just wants to prevent governance.

SJ said...

@Vigilante,
I hear you, but something about Glenn Beck's posture strikes me as being "anti-governance like a fox" to use a one-time only silly phrase. Ugh, -excuse me that was horrible.
I guess I mean to say there's been a lot of calculated "a plague on both your houses" talk going on for the last couple of years, especially at Fox, but only when a Conservative is in trouble.
The GOP's goal right now, -at times by their own admission-, is to stop anything meaningful from happening (any policy or legislation) that has a Democratic origin. There's nothing upfront about Beck's posturing in my estimation. When he was at CNN he'd always find counter examples if there was a problem with a Conservative politician or policy, but would instead promote any allegations against a Liberal, or Democrat, or union leader etc., etc. in isolation.
Bill O'Reilly also started out on FNC maintaining an "Independent" identity, but I don't think anyone ever really fell for it.
I think emboldening people who are afraid of any change at all and have a knee-jerk aversion to anything that someone (even dishonestly) calls Socialism is Beck's ultimate role in these times, and in this age when we actually have people walking around unafraid to say something as idiotic as "Sarah Palin in 2012!" Beck is certainly someone the GOP is happy to have on the airwaves, after all he's promoted some of their most spurious lies about climate change, healthcare and the President.
-SJ

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Hi SJ. Just thought I'd check you out. On Acorn, what do you think about the Dems in the Senate voting to cut their funding? Do you think it was done out of political expediency? Hell, I even heard that Barney Frank was going to vote that way in the House. P.S. Good solid chat on Vigilante's site. I enjoyed it.

SJ said...

@Will,
Possibly, I'm going to let the investigations run their course at this point. At the end, whatever corruption and ineptitude there is in ACORN should be ferreted out and whatever corrective steps need to be taken should be. They're far from perfect, but they've been a favorite target of the Right because of their overall mission with the Poor who tend to vote left, liberal, etc. Many corporations have done far worse in the way of law-breaking and still get huge government subsidies, and some of them even got bailouts last year. However I don't think anybody will stand behind ACORN now, including the President.
Cheers to you Will, I'll be checking your blog out too; -good and thought provoking writing going on there.
-SJ

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

SJ, I just saw Glenn Beck on O'Reilly tonight. I don't know, I think he's just kind of making it up as he goes along. He actually said (this, after he's been lambasting Obama for months now) that McCain would have been an "even worse President" than Obama. Something about a belief that McCain would do a lot of sneaky colluding (a return of McCain of 2000, perhaps) with the Dems, but not so much that the right would have galvanized against him like they've clearly done with Obama. It was kind of hard to follow, actually.

SJ said...

@Will,
thanks for the heads up, I haven't actually seen it yet, but heard about this quote on the web from Beck but didn't see its context. I'd have to see what Beck means by "worse." McCain's not an unprincipled guy, and his not being relentlessly doctrinaire has raised the ire of people who don't think he's "Conservative enough, -kind of what we talking about on that thread on Sodazee's last post. I'll keep an eye out for it and try and catch for myself.
-Frankly I'm also curious about Bill O'Reilly's recent remarks about supporting a Public Option in Healthcare Reform.
-SJ

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

He says he was "misquoted", SJ. That what he claims anyway.

SJ said...

@Will,
I actually saw the clip just now, he actually said he supported a Public Option because it provides needed competition inpricing... wow he's backing off already.
-SJ