nothing against ACORN specifically, but Congress is already being paid to help folks who need help[ preventing foreclosure... as well as a miriad of other problems duplicated by thousands of nonprofits set up to receive taxpayer's money.

the whole notion of a huge portion of grant funds going out to congressional constituents who will then support the reelection of those same congressmen is plain wrong. lst of all, 10% to 20% of those funds are spent doing nothing more than paying grant writers. Another protion is spent paying those who read the grants. Much of it does nothing more than line the pockets of university professors who are being paid to teach students, not suppliment their income with outside efforts.

Agencies around the nation now get much of their funding from grants, not the taxes set up for that purpose, so some of their time is now spent hiring folks to do nothing but come up with good and bad ideas to use grant money for instead of their normal duties.

Many of these nonprofits have grown so huge that their only purpose is to ensure they continue to get more money so they can keep their employees working... not fulfill their mission statement which actually is suppose to serve the public good.

ACORN is just one of those nonprofits which diverts funding from needed services and uses them for their own purpose. The DARE program, a 2 BILLION dollar fiasco is another. A few years ago the DARE program admitted they did absolutely no good... their program was a failure... but they would try doing something else... and they now receive more funding than before. Meanwhile, Big Brothers and Sisters, which has been around for many generations, is a proven mentoring program and is barely sustainable because funding is instead going to civil service employees running around in police cars with $30,000 paint jobs teaching our youth more about how to use drugs.

CRAZY!

But then again, the purpose of these billions of dollars never has been to help the nation solve social problems but rather to make sure those in power can pay off folks who will ensure their reelection... IMHO

BTW: BOTH mobs (Republican AND Democrat) are equal culprits, in case you actually think I'm picking on the democrats...

The way to give conservatives a "hoist by your own petard" moment is to say that now that there isn't a non-profit doing the housing work, we'll need to set up a government program.

Embezzelers are us

http://blog.nola.com/tpmoney/2008/10/acorn_dirty_laundry_to_be_aire.html

ACORN dirty laundry to be aired

Now ACORN, the venerable 38-year-old social justice organization, faces the fight of its life over an embezzlement scandal and leadership crisis that hits Orleans Parish Civil District Court today at 9 a.m.

In late May, the group's board was shocked to learn that the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke had stolen nearly $1 million from the organization and its affiliates eight years ago.

"It was like a bomb. Things just went bonkers, " said Bertha Lewis, director of the group's New York office, who has taken over Rathke's duties on an interim basis. "Nothing like that had ever happened before."

The news has attracted national scrutiny of ACORN, which was founded in Arkansas in 1970 and maintains a strong political presence in New York, New Orleans and Washington. In fact, early versions of the Wall Street bailout under consideration by Congress called for the routing of some profits from the sale of troubled assets to activist groups like ACORN. That provision emerged as an early sticking point in the plan's passage, in part because of the current scandal.

The imbroglio dates to 1999 and 2000, when the nonprofit was calling for local increases in the minimum wage and trying to unionize hospitality workers in New Orleans. Dale Rathke, the founder's brother, was serving as comptroller through a related organization called Citizens Consulting Inc., and Lewis said he abused his authority by using the group's credit cards to buy things that were unrelated to its work.

A co-worker alerted Wade Rathke, who consulted with a few of ACORN's national leaders. When the group's longtime accountants at the New Orleans firm Duplantier, Hrapmann Hogan & Maher conducted an audit and found that $948,507 had been stolen, the Rathke family set up a formal repayment schedule. Dale Rathke was removed as comptroller at CCI, but he stayed on as a consultant at ACORN.

Lewis said the 51-member board did not know about the apparent theft until an ACORN financial supporter heard about it this spring and raised questions about whether its contributions had been misappropriated.

National board members were furious at the disclosure, and they have asked for a full airing of how the money was stolen and why it was kept secret from group for so long.

Dale Rathke resigned in early June. Wade Rathke also resigned from his position as chief organizer but remains with an affiliated group, New Orleans-based ACORN International, which does human rights work overseas.

Well, that's the objective of harassing ACORN, isn't it? Preventing ACORN from helping the poor, most of whom are not white?

Is it just me or does this ACORN "sting" stink? Pimps and ho's no longer dress in the fashion of the "actors" in this video and I'm sure that African Americans aren't so stupid that they would be duped by these folks coming in to get "business" help. You can't be a pimp and be stupid. Therefore my conclusion is that the ACORN employees were not folks who were committed to this the principles of the organization and therefore were willing to accept conservative pimp money to make this hidden camera "expose." That being said, ACORN management has been too cavalier in their button-up approach and have given people who were either venal, or willing to be corrupted by venal individuals jobs in their organization. So they've lost their financial support because of it when they should have remembered, as Tavis Smiley has said, "all my skinfolk ain't my kinfolk."