The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) provides assistance to low-income families. Among other activities ACORN has crusaded for a living wage, aid for the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, and relief for families facing foreclosure. Perhaps ACORN is based known for registering minority and poor voters in record numbers in the 2008 election.
It is hardly surprising therefore that ACORN has been a favorite target of conservative pundits and politicians. In the 2008 election Republicans charged that ACORN canvassers were engaged in voter fraud when a number of canvassers registered suspicious sounding names like “Donald Duck.” Of course, there was no evidence that Mr. Duck or any of a number of other cartoon characters voted. Nor was there any reason to suspect that ACORN had intentionally engaged in fraudulent voter registration. (Presumably, if one really wanted to commit voter fraud one would have used a more credible name like John Doe.)
Now we learn that a few ACORN employees were secretly filmed providing assistance to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute. The phony couple and the filming were supported by Biggovernment.com, a right-wing website. ACORN employees allegedly advised the couple how to apply for a mortgage without disclosing that they planned to operate a house of prostitution and how to avoid paying income taxes.
Obviously, the video looks bad for ACORN and suggests that ACORN needs to improve its management and do a better job of training its employees. ACORN has acknowledged its mistakes, and they promptly dismissed the employees who fell for this ruse. Nevertheless, the right-wing is not satisfied and is trying to inflate the issue into something more.
The Democratic majority in the Senate, terrified of the right-wing blogosphere, immediately pushed through a measure to punish ACORN by denying it any federal aid to assist low-income people in obtaining mortgages. And the Census Bureau has ended its partnership with ACORN to count low-income families in the upcoming census. The overreaction of the media and the federal government to ACORN’s management problems is a symptom of what’s wrong with American politics.
First, it should be noted that there is no evidence that ACORN is engaged in a pattern of criminal activity. The same tricksters visited many ACORN offices around the country. In most cases they were tossed out, and in at least one case, the Philadelphia office of ACORN phoned the police on them. The advice offered by ACORN employees to obtain a mortgage and avoid taxes was pretty banal – stuff like don’t mention you’re a prostitute. These were not criminal masterminds.
Second, ACORN employees are generally hired from low-income communities with minimal education and job experience. Perhaps they were overly solicitous, but is it really fair to blame poor people for a lack of professional experience? It’s one thing when corporate executives engage in price-fixing conspiracies; it’s another when people working at a nonprofit for a minimum wage are entrapped in a rightwing sting operation.
Third, cutting off ACORN’s access to federal housing funds hurts poor people, and it saves the federal government nothing more than pocket change. According to one congressional report ACORN received less than $54 million over the last 15 years. The Senate’s measure won’t make a dent in the face of a $1.2 trillion federal deficit.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this whole affair is that Senators, who knew or should have known, voted overwhelmingly for a punitive measure that is expressly prohibited by the Constitution as a “bill of attainder.” A bill of attainder is any legislation that imposes a penalty on a particular individual or group; it is the equivalent of Congress acting like a judge and jury in violation of the separation of powers. The Framers of our Constitution expected the Senate to cool down the fever of the popular will and allow time for a deliberative response to a public demand. The Framers did not expect that the Senate’s first response to a public relations fiasco would be to toss the Constitution overboard.
The same senators who angrily denounced ACORN were noticeably silent when billions of tax dollars went unaccounted for in Iraq or were paid to private contractors for work that was never done properly in Iraq and Afghanistan. But of course those contractors did not do work for poor people; they were major campaign contributors.
Finally, in all the reporting on ACORN it has hardly been mentioned that the conservative group that secretly filmed ACORN violated state laws that prohibit secret videotaping. California Attorney General Jerry Brown has called for an investigation of the illegal taping.
The ACORN scandal is just another danger sign that American democracy is in trouble. Congress deadlocks over any attempt to reform health care, taxes, budgets, or education, but a stupid prank turns into a national news story, and Congress has a knee-jerk reaction that overtly violates the Constitution.
ACORN needs new management, but that is hardly a national problem. The real problems that our country faces – unemployment, housing, health care, education – are the very problems that ACORN works on everyday. If Congress spent its time addressing the real problems of our nation, ACORN wouldn’t be needed.
If you like reading this blog, check out my new book, UNLIKELY ALLIES.
Booklist called UNLIKELY ALLIES, ”A rip-roaring account of the American Revolution, told from a fresh, and undeniably offbeat, perspective.”
Subscribe