ACORN folds

[Mr. Peabody]

Good news for all of you right-wingers who said the election was stolen -


Acorn folds

The national group ACORN is folding, an official there, Kevin Whelan, said in an emailed statement:

The ACORN Association Board met on Sunday March 21 and approved a set of steps to responsibly manage the process of bringing its operations to a close over the coming months. These include:

* Closing ACORN’s remaining state affiliates and field offices by April 1st; and
* Developing a plan to resolve all outstanding debts, obligations and other issues.

ACORN’s members have a great deal to be proud of--from promoting to homeownership to helping rebuild New Orleans, from raising wages to winning safer streets, from training community leaders to promoting voter participation—ACORN members have worked hard to create stronger to communities, a more inclusive democracy, and a more just nation.

ACORN was always a very decentralized group, with a great deal of its activity and power concentrated in local chapters from New York to Arkansas -- the strongest of which will survive. The collapse of the national group, though, reflects the impact of a conservative assault that never prompted any prosecutions.

[DarrinS]

No one thinks the election was "stolen" -- we leave that kind of nutbaggery to the left.

[George Gervin's Afro]

who are the republicans going to blame now?.. this is bad news for the GOP..they don't have the boogey man to blame in the fall..

[boutons_deux]

ACORN was highly effective in registering have-nots to vote against the haves.

Breitbart's dishonest take down (he still won't release the full tapes, only the heavily edited, doctored, 'chopped tapes) of ACORN was just another battle in the class/race war (which, unlike terrorism, is a REAL war).

[Nbadan]

Just as Ash said, ACORN lives!

Reports of ACORN’s Death Greatly Exaggerated
Written by Bob Adelmann
Wednesday, 24 March 2010 09:55


Following the announcement on Sunday that the ACORN Association Board had “approved a set of steps to responsibly manage the process of bringing its operations to a close over the coming months,” spokesman Kevin Whelan tried to explain it away by saying, “It’s really declining revenue in the face of a series of attacks by partisan operatives and right-wing activists that have taken away our ability to raise the resources we need.”

Bertha Lewis, Acorn CEO, expanded on why Acorn was closing its doors: “ACORN has faced a series of well-orchestrated, relentless, well-funded right wing attacks that are unprecedented since the McCarthy era. The videos were a manufactured, sensational story that led to rush to judgment and an unconstitutional act by Congress.”

Mark Twain is alleged to have said, in jest, that “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” And so are the reasons behind the PR statement by Whelan and Lewis.

Indeed, the videos sponsored by BigGovernment.com and released last September were the final straw that broke ACORN’s back, but for nearly 40 years, accusations of voter fraud, misuse of funds, and embezzlement of millions of dollars have haunted ACORN. In fact, the report by the GOP staff of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform was so broad and wide-ranging that it has been extensively reviewed elsewhere on this site.

From the very first sentence from that report, however, the degree of corruption involved is revealed:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systematic fraud…ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American public.” Described as a “complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators…ACORN is a chess game…which has evaded taxes, obstructed justice, engaged in self-dealing, and aided and abetted a cover-up of embezzlement.

A comment from an unnamed source inside ACORN said that although the board has decided to disband, they are reorganizing under new names. This was confirmed by Iowa Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a long-time critic of ACORN: “I don’t think we’re done with this. This is a big step in the right direction because I believe they are a corrupt, criminal enterprise.”

For instance, in New York City the ACORN office now has a new sign: “New York Communities for Change.” In Massachusetts, the “new” ACORN group, called “New England United for Justice” lists Maude Hurd as its president, the same Maude Hurd who serves as president for ACORN itself. Matthew Vadum, an investigator for the Capital Research Center, points out that ACORN Housing has changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America, Inc., and other ACORN-connected groups include Arkansas Community Organizations, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and Missourians for Reform Empowerment. “This is a trick, a public relations trick to dupe Congress and the American people to think they have gone away and that have not,” says Vadum. “The same people are running the new chapters that have sprung up and in some cases, out of the same offices.”

Consequently, the death of ACORN has, unfortunately, been greatly exaggerated

The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/crime/3181-reports-of-acorns-death-greatly-exaggerated)

[spursncowboys]

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
-shakespear

[jack sommerset]

No one thinks the election was "stolen" -- we leave that kind of nutbaggery to the left.

LOL. No shit. Lefty dems whhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa all the freaken time!

[Wild Cobra]

ACORN’s members have a great deal to be proud of--from promoting to homeownership .
So they are proud that they helped force the regulations that eventually brought us into this housing crisis.

Figures.

[Wild Cobra]

ACORN was highly effective in registering have-nots to vote against the haves.

Wow..

You actually got one right!

[ChumpDumper]

So they are proud that they helped force the regulations that eventually brought us into this housing crisis.

Figures.Which regulations?

Everyone on the right says banks were "forced" to lend to people who couldn't pay back.

What were the penalties for not doing so?

[Winehole23]

Having their bad risk assumed by the US taxpayer, receiving massive, low interest loans from the government for well over a year now, being allowed to mark their legacy assets to the nonexistent market for them, kiting said crappy assets for cash loans at emergency Fed facilities...a whole host of penalties just like that, basically.

[coyotes_geek]

The Community Reinvestment Act had certain targets for loans being made to low income people, but the act itself didn't have any specific penalties attached to it. However, federal regulators did keep a "CRA score" which basically graded the banks as to whether or not they were complying with the CRA loan targets. That CRA score came into play because federal regulators used it in the process of deciding whether or not to allow mergers and acquisitions. So there was some incentive to being CRA compliant. The federal government was also encouraging Freddie and Fannie to buy up CRA loans, so that created a market for them that the banks ended up looking to fill.

So in shorter verbage, the government did not "force" banks to make those risky loans, but it was definitely "encouraging" them to do so.