Hoax video “evidence” leads to congressional defunding.
This February, the target was Planned Parenthood. Recently, Planned Parenthood was targeted for defunding through legislation pushed in congress by Rep. Pence (R-Indiana). ACORN’s turn was in 2009. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a now-defunct coalition of membership community organizations that advocated for low- and moderate-income families in social issues, including voter registration, health care, and housing. Both defunding campaigns involved actors posing as pimps and prostitutes to induce employees to make improper statements or, even better, take actions in violation of federal funding rules.
But the similarities are more profound than simple staging. By providing social services and advocacy for low-income families, these two nonprofits are associated with the base of the Democratic Party.
ACORN had the additional stigma of identifying with communities of color, making it vulnerable to accusations of resorting to intimidation and potential violence.
The necessity of cuts to government programs to show fiscal responsibility offers additional and neutral sounding justification for going after politically weak adversaries.
With the 2012 election in the background, deficit fights are an attractive arena for ACORN-like crusades.
Pimps and prostitutes were the most lurid means of public relations assault, but the elements of the campaign against ACORN illustrates the rich assortment of tactics available. It’s worth reviewing the history of ACORN’s demise to help recognize the pattern when we see it the next time.
By late September 2009, the multi year campaign to kill ACORN was close to triumph. In a Forbes magazine opinion piece in September 2009, Sol Stern, a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow, suggested a solution for President Obama’s ACORN “problem”:
“Acorn is now exclusively a Democratic Party albatross. The organization’s many abuses of power now coming to light have been enabled by Democratic mayors, governors and congressmen. If Barack Obama wants to effectively refute the charge by some on the right that he has a secret socialist agenda, he has the perfect opportunity. All he has to do is declare that his administration will henceforth act to block taxpayer funds from ever again going to this very openly radical and socialist organization.”
If ACORN supporters didn’t want to get hurt, all they had to do was withdraw support and walk away.
ACORN’s success in the Community Reinvestment Act process, promoting voter registration and involvement in the census count participation in underrepresented communities was why it drew so much fire.
ACORN as the enforcer of the CRA
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) says that, in exchange for benefiting from federal deposit insurance, banks must make loans in their branch neighborhoods including the poor, without sacrificing financial safety.
As CRA legislation and accompanying regulations evolved, community voices were allowed to influence whether bank mergers would take place. Interestingly, some of the mergers touched by CRA ratings resulted in the banks that had to be bailed out because they had grown "too big to fail".
In the run-up to the 2008 general election, The Wall Street Journal editorial page conflated ACORN's CRA activities with their efforts in voter registration to explain the banking collapse, and how the Democrats and presidential candidate Obama were in on the scheme.
Obama and Acorn: Community organizers, phony voters, and your tax dollars. OCTOBER 14, 2008:
"Acorn... has been around since 1970 and boasts 350,000 members. We've written about them for years, but Acorn is now getting more attention as John McCain's campaign makes an issue of the fraud reports and Acorn's ties to Mr. Obama. It's about time someone exposed this shady outfit that uses government dollars to lobby for larger government.
Acorn uses various affiliated groups to agitate for "a living wage," for "affordable housing," for "tax justice" and union and environmental goals, as well as against school choice and welfare reform. It was a major contributor to the subprime meltdown by pushing lenders to make home loans on easy terms, conducting "strikes" against banks so they'd lower credit standards…
Acorn is spending $16 million this year to register new Democrats... The big question is how many of these registrations are real...
The Obama campaign is now distancing itself from Acorn, claiming Mr. Obama never organized with it and has nothing to do with illegal voter registration... The Justice Department needs to treat these fraud reports as something larger than a few local violators. The question is whether Acorn is systematically subverting U.S. election law -- on the taxpayer's dime."
ACORN involved in "fraudulent" voter registration?
During the October 15, 2008 debate, just before the general election the Republican candidate tried to tie the Democratic candidate to ACORN voter fraud. "We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy. The same front outfit organization that your campaign gave $832,000 for 'lighting and site selection.' So all of these things need to be examined, of course." McCain’s statement punctuated a multi-year partisan campaign against ACORNs voter registration efforts. The GOP activities generated enough public accusations to initiate investigations and then prosecutions. Sometimes the prosecutions didn't come hard enough nor soon enough to satisfy the GOP.
The 2007 congressional investigations into the 2006 firing of nine U.S. attorneys have uncovered at least one likely political motive for the dismissals. Apparently, some of the Justice Department lawyers were insufficiently aggressive while pursuing voter fraud cases. Fraud charges were either not being pursued or were not producing timely prosecutions for the purposes of helping Republican candidates.
At least two cases focused on ACORN.
In 2009, Chair of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele mass mailed a fund raising letter that placed ACORN at the center of a plot, in coordination with the Obama administration, to falsify the census to distort the congressional apportion map in favor of the Democratic Party.
The media climax arrived when political operative "videographers" went public with a collection of highly edited video clips showing ACORN employees who appeared to be giving advice on how to evade taxes and other questionable if not illegal acts. Several ACORN employees were fired. After investigations by several prosecutors in the several distinct jurisdictions corresponding to the locations of the recordings, ACORN was cleared of criminal wrongdoing. All of the videos were found to have been pieced together a highly incriminating video from milder source material.
The onslaught started to take a serious toll on ACORN in the fall of 2009.
A government agency, in effect took, Sol Stern's advice. During the same month, September 2009, Robert M. Groves, Director of the U.S. Census, sent a letter to Ms. Maude Hurd, National President of ACORN terminating their partnership to work together on the 2010 census.
Posted by GOP Leader Press Office on September 15th, 2009:
Today House Republicans, led by Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), are sending the following letter to President Obama asking him to use his authority to end all funding to and break all government 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...
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...
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.
But the real target of this line of aggression is the poor - not ACORN so much. In a torrent of anti-ACORN activism, there is rarely if ever a mention that ACORN’s clients could be better served by some other, more acceptable organization. The services they provide are at best, afterthoughts.
Much like ACORN, Planned Parenthood delivers much more to underserved communities than what it is most known for- abortion services.
Abortions are just the most publicized reproductive health care services and education delivered to low-income clients, most of which is directed to prevent unwanted pregnancies and resulting neglected children. It also helps to arrange adoptions for parents unable to raise a child but decide not to end a pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood is unlikely to be defunded by congress, but this latest exercise from the defund ACORN playbook should serve as a context for following the continuing efforts to keep social services for low income families at the top of the budget cut list.
