Stupid. Cowardice. Shameful.

Shameful.

ACORN has been a public relations disaster waiting to happen, despite their good works. The organization suffers from loose internal controls and supervision. While in general the voter registration efforts are above board and honest, enough rogue representatives existed to bloody the image of the whole organization. Add to that the whole Rathke scandal which exposed the organization lack of financial controls. Its not hard to imagine if a comprehensive audit was conducted, that they couldn't account for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe most of it went to good purposes or maybe it was siphoned off, but they point would be they couldn't tell you.

Over the years I've come in contact with several ACORN people and it struck me how often they expressed an ends justifies the means attitude, both publicly and privately.

Yes but Acorn has played a significant role in helping the Dems to regain majorities. Not only is it wrong because congress so rarely takes such decisive action against non-grass roots political interests, but it's also tactically stupid. With difficult elections for many Dems coming up not too far down the road, this just seems like a dumb move on all sorts of levels. And given President Obama's well-known affiliation with Acorn, it leaves him with a black eye and might as well have been calculated to weaken him politically. What a cowardly, premature, and opportunistic move.

So because we have seen corruption, treason, adultery etc. by a signifcant number of republicans in both houses, by their own standards we should cut ALL federal dollars that are used to support their activities in any way?

From what I can see the ACORN funding removal is not the big headliner of the bill that it's being made out to be.

Things TPM should be investigating:

*) How are ACORN mortgage staff incentivized? Do they receive bonuses based on how many mortgages they file? Fraud and theft are rampant in the real estate industry; has that spilled over into ACORN?

*) Have ACORN assisted people in committing tax fraud? Again, does this tie back to an issue with incentives?

*) Are ACORN staff trained to provide assistance in all cases, without any thought as to the merits of the assistance being requested? Is management compensation tied to net processing with no conditions on the quality of said processing?

Frex, extending to what you said about loose internal controls. Loose internal controls + misplaced incentives = Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Countrywide, etc. We might have some of that here.

Now the Senate and House have both cut ACORN off