The Demise of ACORN
ACORN looks to be mortally wounded. Several states have terminated payments to ACORN and the U.S. Congress has begun passing bills that prevent funds from certain federal agencies going to ACORN. Most of these bills and state’s Executive Orders also preclude ACORN from receiving state and federal funds in the future. And that’s not all, one can expect that the large “charitable” funds and individual contributors will shy away from publicly supporting an organization that’s been tainted by widely publicized wrongdoing. When OSI, Tides, and Woods funds pull their support, ACORN will be on life-support, and when membership revenue falls, they will flat-line.
Bringing down ACORN is an event that I thought to be practically impossible just a few months ago. Yes, I understand that the federal legislation must be reconciled and Obama must still sign the final bills, but political expediency (and the looming elections) will prevent even diehard dems from killing all of the resultant legislation. That would be political suicide.
But circumstances change, and now there are two reasons that ACORN will be allowed to pass into eternal slumber: 1) Wade Rathke is no longer Grand Poobah and Fund-Distributor-in-Chief. He was fired from ACORN and now heads ACORN International. He had been the “brains” behind the distribution (laundering) of funds through supposedly unrelated organizations (all coincidently headquartered at his 1024 Elysian Fields location in New Orleans), and 2) the remaining hundreds of other organizations that make up the ACORN Axis of Evil, are still alive and kicking. The powers controlling ACORN will just do a “search and replace” on notes and contracts and fill in one of the other shell organization’s name – get new documents signed and it’s business as usual. Nothing has to change.
Some other entity, like Project Vote, will take over ACORN’s voter registration program. They’ll take creative control of the bogus name development (maybe they’ll improve on “Mickey Mouse”), voter registration duplication, and proxy votes for the deceased, just like ACORN used to do. The democrat party will hardly know the difference.
Another ACORN subsidiary will no doubt take over filing taxes for low-income "taxpayers." In 2004, they were successful in obtaining $190,000,000 in tax refunds for 150,000 low-income families. It's no wonder they felt qualified to provide tax advice for a hooker-wrangler and his "ho." The IRS ought to check out the dependents claimed on those returns. Maybe it'll be H & R ACORN, a newly formed tax assistance group.
And yet another corporate member of the ACORN Axis of Evil will become responsible for getting their hands on that $5 Billion in the Porkulus bill reserved for housing rehibilitation programs. They would have been a shoo-in to get most of those funds, but not now. We, the public, will have to check out those entities who seek those funds and make sure that some ACORN-oid doesn't get past the first elimination round. The Fringe Media isn't going to vet the applicants, someone must.
Until a REAL, in depth investigation occurs that exposes the ACORN money shuffling scheme, nothing will change.
“Wow, ACORN is being exposed,” I thought. Who’da Thunkit?
And then I stumbled upon this comment on Michelle Malkin’s blog by someone called “Rogue Cheddar” who said,
“It looks like the thread on the ACORN sweater is starting to unravel! Pretty soon those boobs will be fully exposed.”
H/T to Rogue Cheddar - now that’s clever!