Perhaps you've heard that ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), President Obama's former associates, are once again in the news and the news isn't good. A pair of intrepid young indy filmmakers surreptitiously filmed the proceedings as they visited two ACORN offices, one in Baltimore and one in Washington, posing as a pimp and a prostitute. The pair claimed that they wished to run a prostitution business using teenage El Salvadoran girls and they needed advice on housing options. They were counseled by ACORN representatives as to how they could get away with running their business in Baltimore and how they could mislead the IRS and avoid paying taxes.
The conselors were fired when the video broke, but there's a much deeper, more systemic problem with ACORN than just a few ethically challenged housing advisors. ACORN representatives have over the years been convicted in numerous states of voter registration fraud and a host of other legal violations. The odor of corruption and/or mismanagement has clung to them for at least a decade.
Yet ACORN has been given access to millions of dollars in stimulus money and were contracted to help carry out the 2010 census (although in the wake of this latest scandal the census bureau has severed its connection with ACORN).
If you'd like to be brought up to speed on this latest episode in the ACORN saga go here and scroll down. There's plenty of information and video shot by the young undercover investigators in the ACORN offices.
By the way, the young man who did the filming, who did the kind of investigating reporting the traditional media seem loath to do, James O'Keefe, may be prosecuted by Baltimore City for secretly taping the exchange with the ACORN people. Law enforcement authorities had been questioned as to whether the city was going to do anything about what some thought to be ACORN's obvious breach of the law so the State's Attorney's office looked at the tape and decided, astonishingly, that the malefactor was the filmmaker.
Meanwhile, the traditional media slumbers while this travesty plays out.
Margaret Williams, an ACORN board member, predictably blames the whole contretemps on .... racism. Sigh.
RLC