posted by Chenjerai Kumanyika

What’s good? This is crazy. DON’T WATCH THIS WHOLE VIDEO (unless you’re hooked on politics like me) but skim through it quickly to get the details on this ACORN investigation. You can get the main idea by watching the first 3:00 minutes and then watch from 5:30 -6:15.

A little background: The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a community-based organization in the United States that advocates for low and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. They’ve got some problems though because some of their employees are more than happy to engage in shady activity…

Wait!! Before you go off with predictable shock and awe comments at ACORN’s actions-stop. Breathe. Briefly inform yourself about ACORN.

Then consider a couple of things.

1.  Some of the main things that ACORN does are to help people find housing through direct actions and lobbying for fair housing legislation.

2.  According to the Washington Examiner, ACORN received $53 million dollars from federal tax coffers since 1994 (note that most of it goes to housing for poor people – click HERE if you’re interested) That’s a lot of money. And…

3.  Wall street has received over $500 billion dollars in federal aid for to heal their wounds from gaming the housing system.

4.  Private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan such as KBR and Blackwater have cost taxpayers billions in excessive, padded billing costs.

So the political media circus is taking full advantage of this. Folks on the right are gleefully holding this up as an example of everything that we fear about the Obama Administration – excessive social programs, corruption, tax payer money going to thieves, and black people. (By the way, ACORN has fired the employees on this video and called the incidents “an attempt at ‘gotcha journalism.’”) Folks on the left are going to try to defend ACORN’s larger purpose without looking like hypocrites. Obama says he has bigger things on his mind. Yeah…like what?

Now go off. I did.

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