Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer -- Time to Get Real About ACORN Controversy
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:34:16 EDT
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Time to Get Real About the ACORN “Controversy”—and  Republican Double 
Standards 

It’s time to get real about the Republican distraction de jour – the  
great ACORN controversy.   
The bottom line is this: if the same standard used to prevent ACORN from  
receiving federal contracts were applied to many large corporations -- 
Boeing,  financial institutions like AIG and CitiCorp, not to speak of private 
military  contractors like Blackwater -- they would all have been barred as 
federal  contractors long ago.  But instead  of being blacklisted, many of them 
actually received billions of taxpayer  dollars to bail them out. 
ACORN has worked for decades to organize a nationwide grass roots  
community organization with a mission of empowering poor and moderate income  
people.  ACORN has never been one of  those outfits that seeks just to “represent”
 the interests of the poor.  Since its inception it has been made up  of 
poor and moderate income people themselves.  Its members pay dues, elect their 
 leadership and choose the battles that they fight.  Its executives don’t 
make huge salaries  and – in my experience – most of its organizers and 
staff are true believers who  really care about the battle for social justice. 
The Right wing has always hated ACORN.  Partially that’s because the  
organization has been effective – especially when it comes to its battles for  
better housing and its campaigns to empower the poor the way we should do it 
in  a democracy – registering people to vote.  The Right wing hates it when 
poor people vote. 
During last year’s election campaign the Republicans did everything they  
could to discredit ACORN by exposing “irregularities” in some of its voter  
registration programs.  They pointed  to a number of instances when ACORN 
canvassers – who were being paid to register  people to vote – registered 
non-existent voters like “Mickey Mouse”.   
It was absolutely wrong for some ACORN employees to fake registrations to  
meet their quotas and keep their jobs.  And ACORN’s voter registration 
operation should have caught these fake  registrations with better quality 
control.  But there was never any danger that there would be a parade of cartoon  
characters out of  Disney World and  “Mickey Mouse” or “Donald Duck” were 
going to show up at a polling place and  cast a ballot. To hear the right 
wing media tell it, ACORN was engaged in a  great voter fraud scheme.  In  
reality, a handfull of its canvassers were defrauding the organization itself – 
 and also creating a public relations nightmare.   
The Republicans knew full well that there was no danger of “Mickey Mouse”  
voting.  But they milked the  “controversy” for every ounce of bad 
publicity they could deliver – and did  their best to paint the former community 
organizer Barack Obama with the same  brush. 
Now we have a new controversy created when two aspiring Right Wing  “
journalists” posed as a pimp and a hooker and toured the country trying to coax  
an ACORN mortgage counselor to say something outrageous for their hidden  
camera.  Their motive was not to  expose any “bad advice” being doled out by 
the mortgage counselors.  They admit it was to “bring down” ACORN.  They 
failed in their quest at most ACORN offices.  In one, the mortgage counselor 
actually  called the police when they asked for help figuring out how to 
create a scheme  to get tax deductions for fictitious underage prostitutes.   But 
they finally hit the jackpot  in Baltimore,  where the local credit 
counselor gave them – and their camera -- unbelievably  stupid advice. 
As soon as the behavior of their employees came to light, ACORN fired the  
offending employees and soon thereafter closed ACORN counseling offices for  
several days of retraining to prevent a similar infraction in the  future. 
Bear in mind, as outrageous as the employee’s conduct was, no one was  
injured, no money was stolen, no deal was fixed.  There was no victim of their 
acts.  No matter, within days the Right Wing  noise machine went into full “
fury” mode.  Republicans used their procedural prerogatives in Congress to 
force votes  cutting off any federal funding for ACORN. Enough Democrats went 
along, and the  motions passed both Houses. 
Compare that to what happened when Boeing was caught fixing bids for a  
giant tanker project, or AIG created the massive Credit Default Swap scheme 
that  helped sink the entire financial system, or the greed of traders who 
received  tens of millions in personal compensation caused millions of retirees 
to loose  half of their 401K plans.  Remember  the hundreds of millions of 
dollars in overcharges for fuel in  Iraq by KBR, the subsidiary of  
Haliburton.  Or compare it to what  happened to the security contractor Blackwater 
when its personnel opened fire  and killed 14 civilians in Nisoor  Square in 
Baghdad.   
No Republican demanded that these firms be “defunded” by Congress.  No, 
instead AIG and the banks that were  “too big to fail” received billions in 
bail-out money.  The brilliant traders who sunk AIG got  multi-million dollar 
bonuses.  KBR,  Haliburton, Boeing and even Blackwater still have huge 
government  contracts.   
Think about it.  An amateur  Right Wing journalist finally finds an ACORN 
employee who provides him and his  faux hooker cohort with some outrageous 
advice, and the Republicans get Congress  to pass legislation cutting off 
funding in little more than a week.  Blackwater employees kill 14 Iraqi  
civilians, endangering America’s mission in Iraq  and the Republicans don’t utter 
a peep.  
Then again, what do you expect from the political party that last week  
promoted a “values summit” and is lead by philanderers like former Speaker 
Newt  Gingrich, Senator David Vitter, Governor Mark Sanford, and Senator John 
Ensign.  The Republicans have always been the kings of the double  standard. 
Robert Creamer is a long-time political  organizer and strategist, and 
author of the recent book: “Stand Up Straight: How  Progressives Can Win,” 
available on _amazon.com_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206567141&sr=8-1
) . 

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