Dear Readers,
First, apologies on not being on top of things in terms of updating. September has been crazy. October things will settle a bit and Paul and I will try to be better about updating.
Back and Forth is something that will be featured every now and then. It will be a short debate about a current issue.
Without further ado.
The ACORN debate has many sides.
Andrew:
I’ll be quite honest – I’ve been avoiding debates about ACORN like the plague, not because I support them, but because I seriously felt that they were being unfairly targeted by the ultra-conservatives who’ve had an agenda to destroy the liberal movement. Most Americans, including myself, first really learned of ACORN last year during the Presidential election, when the McCain campaign honed in on reports that certain ACORN employees had obtained fraudulent signatures on voter registrations to meet their quotas. While it was true that certain employees had attempted to bolster their registration numbers via unethical and illegal means, ACORN took it upon themselves to ensure that none of these faulty registrations were submitted, despite claims from the McCain campaign to the contrary. After the situation had been resolved, I thought that would be the last we’d hear of corruption within the organization.
Shree:
Andrew I can agree with you on how ACORN is being targeted by ultra-conservatives. However, this is where our disagreement begins…I still believe the ACORN story is a distraction and a way for ultra-conservatives to tarnish the President and derail the health care debate in another way. What’s your take on the current situation Andrew?
Andrew:
I first heard of the latest scandal to hit ACORN sometime last week, without really understanding exactly what all the hype was. For some reason, I’d tuned out the bad vibes from the previous year and decided to give the organization the benefit of the doubt. “It must be another attempt to pull the focus from the health care debate to something trivial,” I thought. Then, I decided to actually review the videos where two actors pose as a pimp and prostitute in an attempt to see if ACORN officials would help them legitimize illegal activities. I’m quite honestly flabbergasted by what I saw. While claims by ACORN that the videos have been doctored hold some water, there are whole snippets of conversation that have not been cut or edited, and it’s these little gems that provide ample evidence to support the claims of James O’Keefe, the man behind this undercover “sting,” whom most will recognize as the “pimp” in the videos. One woman, Trisa Kaelke, divulged that she had been a madame and had also murdered her abusive husband, using what she’d learned from ACORN to work the system. While that portion of video did seem to be a bit edited, there can be no doubt that she did indeed claim that Hiedi Fleiss was her hero, among other things. When asked about it later, Kaelke claimed, “They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me.“ So, who’s telling the truth here? It appears that there’s no evidence to suggest that Kaelke ever killed anyone, as reported by Sgt. Dave Dillon of the San Bernardino Police Department. Let’s give Kaelke the benefit of the doubt and say that she picked up on the obvious “gotcha” tactic immediately – should she have made such outlandish comments to complete strangers? What does that say for professionalism?
Shree:
Obviously this does look bad for ACORN but I still think there’s a lot of hysteria and hypocrisy. Are people truly up in arms about this? My question is where were they when we had two disputed elections for George W. Bush? Oh yeah, they were silent. I think one of my problems with this entire crusade against ACORN is its hysteria. Look, if voter fraud pisses you off, it should ALWAYS piss you off. If illegal activities by an organization that contracts with the government makes you upset, it should ALWAYS make you upset. But I just don’t see that. Equivalent Blackwater hysteria would have been nice. But I digress… Andrew?
Andrew:
Last week, I watched an obviously nervous supervisor from ACORN attempt to defend her organization, claiming that the employees seen in the video were “just a handful,” and that she oversaw, “more than 700 employees.” Two employees from the Baltimore office, who were video taped giving advice on how to evade taxes and disguise identities of underage prostitutes (among other things) were fired. The U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to cut off Housing Funding to ACORN, and the House of Representatives handed out a similar 345-75 vote the next day. Even the White House considers the behavior caught on tape as, “completely unacceptable.”
Shree:
Actually that lady’s defense is probably on point. ACORN is like the United Way of community organizations. In short, it’s humongous and has a lot of chapters around the country. In fact, its chapters all work on multiple issues that are most important to them. From their website, some of the issues they work on are “raise the minimum wage or enact living wage policies; eliminate predatory financial practices by mortgage lenders, payday lenders, and tax preparation companies; win the development of affordable housing and community benefits agreements; improve the quality of and funding for urban public schools; rebuild New Orleans; and pass a federal and state ACORN Working Families Agenda, including paid sick leave for all full time workers.” As you can see, it’s all over the place.
So ACORN has a very loose structure which provides each chapter a great deal of autonomy. This is why I compared it to United Way, which is also quite loose organizationally. I am not saying that this entire situation isn’t wrong. I’m saying, by looking at the facts, it’s obvious that the organization as a whole does not set out this kind of policy.
Additionally, it seems like some of the employees are doing the right thing and reporting these actions to the police but are still getting fired. Deplorable.
Finally, I will repeat that this hysteria is ridiculous. What I find funny about the bill you mentioned is that it will affect all government defense contracts too. So maybe Blackwater will get theirs.
Andrew:
On the surface, it appears like ACORN is trying to handle this situation, ordering an independent investigation whilst suspending advisement of new clients. However, I’m not fully convinced that this organization will be able to weed out the bad seeds. As someone in business, I’m a firm believer that every employee is a direct representative of the company or organization they work for. An organization is only as strong as its weakest link, and it seems that there have been quite a few over the years. It’s one thing to have an occasional employee whose behavior goes against the grain, as even the best organizations can make a mistake, however the more shady characters I hear about coming from ACORN, the less credible the organization becomes, and in turn, the less ethical their image will be. If this organization ever hopes to move beyond these cases of ethical nightmare and unacceptable behavior, they must completely overhaul the majority of their supervisory staff. Who hired these clowns we see in these undercover videos? Fire them. Who hired and oversaw the nuts who decided to fudge voter registrations last year? Fire them. To refuse such a request, in my opinion, will be the downfall of what has in the past been an important organization for the advancement of civil liberties.
Shree:
I think that we agree that there is a problem and that the organization is taking steps to fix it. You know what will really help? A name change. That’s what Blackwater AKA Xe did! (Way to pick a name nobody can pronounce.)
What truly sucks about the situation is that ACORN was one of the main organization that was going to help the government out with the 2010 Census. They have great ties with many communities and probably would have helped the government get an accurate count of underrepresented communities. I don’t think there is an organization as large as ACORN that can take their place. 2010 is just around the corner, it’s really a loss for us all. The repercussions of an inaccurate count are very large.
Paul:
Shree, I completely agree that this is much ado about nothing. Conservatives have their bogeymen and their favorite punching bags of the day, and unfortunately for ACORN, right now it’s them. There are so many issues with congress’ response to the ACORN drama. First, I’ll quote Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who has been looking into this saga in detail since it broke: ”The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Haillburton each day during the war in Iraq.” Second, Glenn Greenwald has been all over the fact that congress probably just passed a bill of attainder, which Con Law 101 will teach you is a big no-no. Finally, as Shree said, it’s easy to see through conservatives’ pearl-clutching and self-righteous indignation (hey, it’s what they do best!) when they were silent about Halliburton corruption or Blackwater problems. Finally, I can’t help but notice the racial overtones in the attacks on ACORN, from last year’s to the current one. Do either of you see ACORN as the token Big Scary Minority Bogeyman for the Right?
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