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Posts Tagged ‘ACORN’
September 18th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Cartoon Friday
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Acorn-big

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September 17th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
ACORN, Say Goodbye to Federal Funding
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Andrew Breitbart’s BIGGOVERNMENT.COM, which first aired the undercover ACORN videos, just reported that the U.S. House of Representatives has voted to discontinue all federal funding to ACORN.  The vote was 345 to 75.

Now, where are the Governors?  So far, only Pawlenty and Schwarzenegger have done the right thing.

Kudos to James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who made the videos (with still more to come, apparently) and to Breitbart for demonstrating that we don’t need no stinking mainstream media no more.

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September 16th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
House Republicans to Obama: Cut ACORN Off

Following the release of the bunker-busting ACORN videos, more than 130 House Republicans sent a letter to President Obama yesterday urging that the Federal Government cut off all funding to and sever all ties with ACORN. 

Dear Mr. President:

We write to you today in the wake of new reports of potentially criminal activity involving associates of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to respectfully request that you use your authority to publicly disclose and terminate all federal funding to ACORN and its affiliates.  It is evident that ACORN is incapable of using federal funds in a manner that is consistent with the law.  Immediate action is necessary to ensure that no additional tax dollars are directed to ACORN.  Simply put, ACORN should not receive another penny of American taxpayers’ money.

Congressional pressure, coupled with the impact of recent media reports, prompted the U.S. Census Bureau on September 11 to end its partnership with ACORN.  We support this decision by the Census Bureau, and believe it is vital that all other federal agencies with ties to ACORN follow the Census Bureau’s example by severing all ties to ACORN and its affiliates, whether those ties consist of partnerships or the awarding of federal funds, including federal funds distributed through state and local governments from federal block grants.

This is a matter of common sense and respect for taxpayer dollars.  Last year, millions of Americans were outraged to learn their tax dollars were being used to subsidize an organization linked to multiple instances of voter registration fraud and other illicit activity.  An analysis of federal data by the Office of the Republican Leader determined that ACORN has received more than $53 million in direct funding from the federal government since 1994, and has likely received substantially more indirectly through states and localities that receive federal block grants.

The Census Bureau has made the commendable decision to sever ties with ACORN, and it is now critical that all remaining federal entities with ties to ACORN do the same.  We ask that you use your authority to ensure that all federal funding of ACORN is publicly disclosed and terminated immediately.  To facilitate this effort, the Republican staff of the Oversight Committee has compiled a complete list of the corporations that form the ACORN Council, and we would be pleased to share it with you and members of your administration.

We thank you for your attention to this request.

View the letter, with signatures, here.

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September 16th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Minnesota Governor Cuts Off State Funding to ACORN

Kudos to Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.

CNSNews.com is reporting that Pawlenty sent a letter today to the director of the Minnesota Commission of Management and Budget with orders to stop all state funding to ACORN. 

The report reads, in part: 

“The letter cites recent reports of questionable behavior and potentially illegal activity by ACORN and states that they are of great concern to the governor and underscores the recent vote by the U.S. Senate to ban federal funding to ACORN, which also reflects those concerns,” Pawlenty spokesman Alex Carey told CNSNews.com.
 
In the letter, the governor directs Hanson to stop all state funding to ACORN, unless the state is legally obligated to continue funding. No precise dollar amount is available, Carey said.
 
“In addition, the letter directs” the commission “to conduct a thorough review of the state’s relationship with ACORN and to report back to the governor with his findings,” he said.

Read the full CNSNews.com report here.

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September 16th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Bunker-Busting ACORN Videos
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Forget the Peabody and the Pulitzer and all those other awards that journalists love to pass back and forth among themselves for, like, getting a leaked document, word-processing it up and then going to lunch.

James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles – who made the brilliant undercover ACORN videos – aren’t likely to get any of those.  What they are likely to get is the sense of accomplishment in doing the job that journalists and government officials would not or could not do:  they have begun to unravel an enterprise that has for decades wrapped its slimy tentacles around the underbelly of this country and squeezed the dead presidents from the hands of unwilling private interests and more-than-willing government agencies.

How ACORN must have reveled in the election of a live president, one of their own.  The estimated $53 million (at least) that the organization has received in federal grants since 1994 would be pocket change compared to what ACORN could reap with a special friend in the White House.

The work of O’Keefe and Giles may provide the push to end that.  If the videos (from Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Brooklyn and California) individually are devastating, releasing them one by one (and we have no idea how many more they have) is sheer genius.  Likewise, the sneering, dismissive reaction of the mainstream media – running off more viewers, readers, subscribers and influence than could have been imagined a decade ago – is sheer idiocy.

It can only be hoped that the off-the-scale radioactivity that now emanates from ACORN will be enough to move the Congress and the President to quickly deny all federal funding and to order a full-scale investigation of all past practices.

But even that will not be enough, because ACORN has many aliases in its subsidiaries and affiliates, and much of its income comes from state and local governments, and those tentacles also must be severed.

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