Defending the ACORN Mob Enterprise

At the video, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis wants to slam down the race card against the conservative activists at Big Government who went undercover to expose the corruption and malfeasance at the community organizing group. Here's the key quote from Lewis: "I think that says a little bit about what Mr. O’Keefe thinks that a black and brown organization would go for." More at the clip:

Sadly, the flip side of Lewis' comments are truly racist: That Americans shouldn't expect high standards of morality from those entrusted to advocate for the poor, or from the minority poor themselves.

Given that, it's especially interesting to read Joe Conason's pitiful attack on the GOP for its allegedly depraved campaign against a "noble" institution. See, "In Defense of ACORN: The Right-Wing Crusade Against ACORN Is a Far Bigger Fraud Than Any Misdeeds a Few Employees Might Have Committed":

Like so many conservative attacks, the crusade against ACORN has been highly exaggerated and even falsified to create a demonic image that bears little resemblance to the real organization. Working in the nation's poorest places, and hiring the people who live there, ACORN is not immune to the pathologies that can afflict institutions in those communities. As a large nonprofit handling many millions of dollars, it has suffered from mismanagement at the top as well -- although there is nothing unique in that, either.

Yet ACORN's troubles should be considered in the context of a history of honorable service to the dispossessed and impoverished. No doubt it was fun to dupe a few morons into providing tax advice to a "pimp and ho," but what ACORN actually does, every day, is help struggling families with the Earned Income Tax Credit (whose benefits were expanded by both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). And while the idea of getting housing assistance for a brothel was clever, what ACORN really does, every day, is help those same working families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.

Perhaps the congressional investigation now demanded by some Republican politicians would be a useful exercise, if conducted impartially. A fair investigation might begin to dispel some of the wild mythology promoted by right-wing media outlets.

Among the most popular canards on the right, repeated constantly by conservative pundits and politicians, is that ACORN has been found guilty of engaging in deliberate voter fraud, using federal funds. In reality, ACORN has registered close to 2 million low-income citizens across the country over the past five years -- a laudable record with a very low incidence of fraud of any kind.

Conason's an incredibly bad liar, although I guess that's what makes a skilled smear-merchant.

It's widely known that ACORN's essentially a criminal enterprise. John Fund has done yeoman's work in covering the epic scale of ACORN's corrupt voter registration racket. See, for example, "A Victory Against Voter Fraud"; "An Acorn Whistleblower Testifies in Court"; and "More Acorn Voter Fraud Comes to Light."

But see also Dana Loesch's post yesterday, "Taxpayer Funded Serve.gov Filtering Activists to ACORN." Dana shows that some of ACORN's poor assistance is designed to help disadvantaged clients avoid paying taxes. As she notes, "after they assist you in procuring housing for your brothel of underage girls, ACORN can also assist you in skirting your taxes ..."

All of this is straightforward. ACORN's a thug organization and corporate-shakedown enterprise. If it wasn't for Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, the group would be enjoying continued mob activity outside of the public eye. The mass media doesn't care, and the radical left loves ACORN's radical anti-capitalist expropriation. And for both Bertha Lewis and Joe Conason to blame this on white racist assumptions of "black and brown people," or as part of a long GOP "frenzy" of attacks on the poor, is simply indicative of how morally bereft are those on the left today.