Some within the left-blogosphere are up in arms about the memorandum from the head of the Office of Management and Budget denying any future obligations to ACORN, suspending current obligations, and terminating all payments to the organization.
They shouldn’t be surprised. From a political perspective, ACORN has been isolated for years, with little in the way of tangible grassroots support. As a result, the organization simply had no constituency to protect it.
While respecting its advocacy work, the political community was well aware of the organization’s limitations. Anyone present at the Boston Elections Department at the last day for voter registration would hear employees joking about the false names, fictitious streets; the sheer bulk of crap voter forms.
Elected politicians found the group useful because its institutional arrogance and lack of a real constituency could be manipulated to ensure positive media coverage; thus negating the need to address real problems. The bogus registration drives just added humor relief (except for those poor unfortunates in Elections who had to spend hours of unpaid overtime checking fraudulent motor-voter forms).
As an astroturf organization with little grassroots support, ACORN was simply expendable when right-wing activists videotaped activities that were already common political knowledge. Any protests by left-progressives can be safely ignored because they have no meaningful constituency either, and the primary function of the Left in American politics is to operate as a Republican outreach mechanism.
To be fair, the structural corruption within ACORN was noted by some on the Left, most notably Bill Fletcher, whose article on the subject therefore deserves to be quoted at length:
It is important to separate the attacks on ACORN which it is receiving from the political Right from the actual content of the organization’s problems.
Something is very wrong in ACORN and, unfortunately, the leadership of the organization does not seem to recognize the depth of the problem. The alleged embezzlement of nearly one million dollars by Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder and long-time chief organizer, Wade Rathke, sent shockwaves throughout the progressive movement and foundation community. It was not simply the fact of the alleged theft, but the reported manner in which this had been covered up such that much of the leadership, not to mention the membership, apparently had no knowledge of the circumstances. The matter was handled much like a family embarrassment rather than as a legal and ethical challenge.
and:
From the outside it appears that at least two things are operating within ACORN. The first is arrogance within a part of the leadership. That fact that a clique within the leadership would attempt to shroud an alleged theft and treat it as if it were a personal matter displays a significant level of lack of accountability. The extent of the alleged embezzlement was such that criminal prosecution should have been entertained immediately. Yet this clique kept this silent and did not discuss the ramifications for the entire organization.
The second thing that appears to be operating is that the organization is not operating, at least in a functional manner. In other words, there is a systemic lack of accountability and training. On the one hand, in the face of the right-wing provocation, some cities immediately recognized that something was up, but, for reasons unknown, this was not communicated to the entire organization. Worse, that some employees when actually confronted with an illegal business proposition did not have the proper awareness of the consequences of giving advice on an illegal matter shows, at a minimum, poor judgment.
The subsequent attacks on ACORN by the Right, therefore, have been entirely predictable. ACORN has opened itself up and invited the enemy in. Yet they now wish for all liberals and progressives to rally around them in their defense yet their leadership only offers an anemic explanation of the depths of this crisis.
Fletcher summarizes with a list of steps to reform the organization, including:
An apology to the friends, supporters and members of ACORN: To be honest, I do not want to hear anything more about how the Right is attacking ACORN. What I do want to hear is how sorry and self-critical the ACORN leadership is about the current state of affairs and how they, in fact, let down the members, supporters and friends of the organization.
At this stage, it’s a bit too late to resuscitate the corpse. There is a competition among prosecutors across the country and across the political spectrum, including the federal level investigate ACORN, with an eye to crimonal prosecution. Since the President of the United States and the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee are among those calling for an investigation it makes no legal or political sense for the federal government to fund a possible criminal defendant.
Anyone thinking otherwise is deluded, at best.
Notes from the Field Dog 