It’s been quite a spectacle in recent days.
The county has gone nuts over ACORN, a nationwide community action group that assists low-income persons with housing and other issues – and it’s a pretty good indicator of how topsy turvy things are in this country.
Certainly, what prompted the outcry is eyebrow-raising. A conservative and self-described journalist posed as a pimp in many ACORN offices in the nation, and on video, apparently captured a few ACORN workers in Washington, D.C., Brooklyn and Baltimore advising him on how to circumvent federal laws on obtaining a loan to open a brothel.
Naturally, within hours, conservative talk hosts labled the entire community organization an evil Mafia-like gang, spurring a pitchfork-laden mob to demand its summary execution. Here at the Lansing State Journal, receptionists fielded many calls from readers, demanding the story receive front-page play.
True to form, the U.S. House and Senate courageously bowed to this pressure and quickly voted to strip ACORN of all taxpayer funding – calling it a “corrupt” organization -- and hilariously, a handful of states like Louisiana moved to strip ACORN of money it doesn’t even provide to it.
All of this would be very funny indeed, if not for one thing: ACORN does a large amount of good in this country, offering housing assistance to low-income persons who simply have nowhere else to go for help.
Without groups like ACORN, these disenfranchised people will be at the sole mercy of large lending institutions, many of which have engaged in subprime lending schemes or other shady ventures. Remember these guys? Our nation’s largest banks and brokerages engaged in financial shenanigans so appalling that they would make the robber barons of old blush.
And when these shysters pushed the economy last fall to the brink of collapse – after paying themselves many millions in salary – I don’t recall Congress moving to cut any funding or demand a pound of flesh.
Nope. I remember Congress and then-President Bush, supported by Barack Obama, handing out billions of additional dollars to these offenders.
Every organization has its bad apples, as we all know, and we know that ACORN has a few bad acorns, with some ethical lapses (some exaggerated). No one has ever called for the dissolution of the Department of Defense because of some isolated (or even widespread) corruption that has occurred at the agency. No true American has ever asked Congress to close up shop, despite its many cases of corruption. The notion of dismantling our banking industry has never been seriously entertained (nor should it).
But apparently poor people – and their advocates – make for easy targets in this country.
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