Mea culpa time. I was wrong about ACORN the first time I posted about it. I still believe the thesis of that post, but I think I was a bit ignorant of the scope of the corruption involved. And a little exchange on Facebook led me to realize that a lot of people (most perhaps) are still living in the happy little world where registering Mickey Mouse was only a little bit of comic relief for the Morning Zoo crowd. In fact, there are some people that still honestly believe that ACORN is being attacked for purely racial motivations. Orly?
Here’s what ACORN’s all about:
- An organization that lobbies extensively for living-wage legislation fought to exempt itself from minimum wage laws: ACORN argued that paying its workers less than the minimum wage aided its organizing efforts.
- According to the AP they have a history of screwing their own workers (the ones who are black and poor.): According to an NLRB [National labor Relations Board] case accusing ACORN of unfair labor practices, “field organizers were expected to work long hours each week — 54 hours — and were paid at a salary of $16,000 annually until January 2001, when the salary was raised to $18,000.”
- It has financial disclosure more opaque than a CIA-funded meth lab. And has had a chronic inability to pay taxes.
- Let’s not forget that its leadership covered up the embezzlement of a million dollars, and fought tooth and nail against its own board members who wanted to audit the books.
- Oh, yeah, then there’s that little, “we have no problem giving tax advice on importing underage prostitutes from Central America“
- Oh, and they filed a bunch of fraudulent voter registrations.
- UPDATE: And for those of you who, like I used to, believe that registration fraud doesn’t end with fraudulent voting: We were soooo wrong. But not like that would determine an election.