One of the biggest organizations in the country that supports lower and moderate income people is called ACORN. According to their website, “ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful players in our democratic system.” Also, “ACORN members across the country work to raise the minimum wage or enact living wage policies; eliminating predatory financial practices by mortgage lenders, payday lenders, and tax preparation companies… 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.” Including all of this, ACORN also helps register thousands of people to vote.
Essentially, this organization is supposed to be very helpful to those in need. Am I opposed to this, not at all. However, in recent news there has been many allegations against ACORN on election frauds, and filing fraudulent forms to federal and state regulatory agencies. With these allegations, the House and congress have been thinking about cutting federal funds to ACORN. Obviously, ACORN is not too happy about this, go check their website.
One may be wondering why I am taking the time to write about this situation. Personally, I feel that a lobbyist organization should not be funded by the American tax payer. Therefore, funds from the federal government should be taken away from this group. Secondly, there have been many accusations about fraudulent voter registration. ACORN has repeatedly denied these allegations but refuses to allow any governmental agency to review their record books. If that is not sketchy, then I am not sure what is.
Another problem is ACORN is their persistence on getting the minimum wage raised. Since when is a lobby group so influential to get a federally mandate thing such as minimum wage, raised? Raising minimum wage sounds fantastic to college age and part-time workers. However, when the minimum wage raises people tend to forget that the amount of hours that one works gets cut and the chances of getting a promotion are slimmer. Better yet, the raising of minimum wage means the taxes also gets raised so more money comes out of your pay check.
There are numerous things wrong with this organization. Because of the recent allegations, several employees have lost their jobs because they have “wronged” the company. Stealing from the government and using fraudulent voting registrations is a good way to get shut down. There are other organizations that like to help the lower and middle income people that do not lie, cheat, and steal. Someone in this organization needs to step up and really explain what is going on. As for the House and Congress, please stop using my tax payer dollars to fund these crooks.
*GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: www.acron.org
Also, if you are interested in seeing videos of the allegations or getting more in depth about this topic, do not hesitate to ask and I will post them!
This is where a lot of government waste comes from.... funding all of these lobbying groups. Including ACORN, there is the gun lobby, oil lobby, etc. NONE of them deserve money or subsidies or anything from the government. It is these organizations that have become a money pit for this country and maybe we should reconsider how much we give to them. If we cut back on giving to these people, the government may have more money to throw around. I see where you are coming from with minimum wage but there is one problem with our economy today. The cost of EVERYTHING is going up.... very fast. This includes health care, which is going up 4 times faster than inflation. If most of our expenses increase faster than inflation then how on earth are people supposed to survive on minimum wage. I read about a woman in Minnesota who tried to live on minimum wage for a year and she couldn't pay for anything. She barely paid rent and that was it, and millions of families have to deal with this and it isn't even their own fault most of the time. So we either find a way to make our expenses more affordable or make it so that everyone's hard earned dollar goes farther. You make some good points about ACORN but I think the real reason that republicans are attacking ACORN is because A. Obama was linked to, but not heavily involved with ACORN and B. that ACORN likely registered more people who would vote democrat than republican. I think that republicans see ACORN as a threat to their party and will do anything to make sure that ACORN is destroyed. This is another reason why I hate party politics in this country
ReplyDeleteI'm with Greg - get rid of the lobbyists. All of them. Like, tomorrow. Any chaotic clusterfuck that would come out of such a swift move would be better than the shameful and depressing perversion of democracy that we have now.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to be naive and idealistic enough to believe that ACORN is the only such group pulling some manner of tax-subsidized illegal bullshit, and that destroying them would signify taking a significant step towards fixing our country, but it's not, and I'm not.
Thankfully, all of this talk hasn't managed to overshadow the fact that we're losing the only justifiable war we've fought in the last decade (among countless other more pressing issues). But the fact that it's even on the radar is another reminder of the persistent failure of our culture to think critically about issues and appreciate our real problems. I mean, we're talking about ACORN. Really?