Acorn, the Democrats and Putting Things Together...

I've covered the cause of the Subprime crisis before: without subprimes, there'd be no crisis.

Read here, here and here.

The activist group ACORN is one of the key causes of the subprime crisis.


Now, in a normal world, we'd stop listening to the folks of ACORN, who have had some monumentally bad ideas that have led to the current problem.


Now, the President has signed into law legislation aimed at helping those caught in the Subprime crisis in order to avoid worse effects. It's not the greatest policy, but it should help things from becoming worse.

The problem?

This.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a Harley. I know that politics is the art of compromise, but this one really reeks.

ACORN is going to get $16mn from the Democrats to register voters.

To quote:

What most riles Republicans about the bill is the symbiotic relationship between the Democratic Party and the housing advocacy groups, of which Acorn is among the biggest. Groups such as the National Council of La Raza and the National Urban League also lobby to secure government-funded services for their members and seek to move them to the voting booth. Acorn has been singled out for criticism because of its reach, its endorsements of Democrats, and past flaws in its bookkeeping and voter-registration efforts that its detractors in Congress have seized upon.
...
Democrats on Capitol Hill have helped to steer millions of dollars in housing and other grants from the federal government toward Acorn and groups like it. The groups must qualify and compete for the money, which is typically doled out from the federal government to states and municipalities. The housing package includes a new, permanent source of affordable-housing money that congressional Democrats and grass-roots groups have sought for years. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund will be funded by a tax on mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage titans.

That tax eventually will channel upwards of $600 million annually in grants for developing and restoring housing, mostly as low-income rentals, available to Acorn and other groups. Democrats on Capitol Hill and housing groups say the housing-assistance money is vital to helping Americans hit hardest by what some call the largest drop in home values since the Great Depression. But they acknowledge the perception of political conflict in giving federal funds to an organization that does political work.

They acknowledge the perception???

Good lord, this is rewarding the very folks responsible for the idiocy of subprimes.

But it gets worse:

It's difficult to track Acorn's finances because of its group of legally separate offshoots, nearly all of which use an address in New Orleans in their tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service. Project Vote, with which Acorn has a "joint-effort agreement" to do voter registration, also uses the New Orleans address on its IRS forms. Acorn is providing one-quarter of the effort's budget for this election, and the canvassers are members of Acorn's staff.

Acorn Housing Corporation, the group's housing-aid arm, has released a copy of its 2007 tax form, but the main group, National Acorn, won't release financial statements and isn't required to. Unlike several Acorn subsidiaries, it doesn't seek tax-exempt status. "We're a private organization; it's our members' business, basically," Mr. Jackson said.

Overall, the main national Acorn entities for which tax information is available -- including its Housing Corporation -- spent $14.7 million in 2006. That information is gathered from IRS filings submitted by a half-dozen separate entities. The filings show that Acorn Housing raised $6.9 million for its activities in 2006, of which $1.7 million, or nearly 25%, came from government grants.

I believe it was Lenin who said that capitalists would sell the communists the rope that they would use to hang the capitalists with.

The lunatics here are running the asylum:

Acorn has had a number of missteps. This month its founder, Wayne Rathke, resigned after news emerged that his brother Dale had embezzled nearly $1 million from Acorn and affiliated groups eight years ago -- information the group kept from law-enforcement authorities and most members. Dale Rathke left the organization only last month.

Late last year, a handful of Acorn canvassers in Washington state admitted that they had falsified voter registrations by illegally filling out hundreds of forms with names such as Dennis Hastert, Leon Spinks and Fruito Boy Crispila. In April, eight Acorn workers pleaded guilty to similar charges in Missouri for falsifying forms.

Good lord, doesn't that fundamentally disqualify them for ANY federal aid or financing??? The founder's brother embezzles $1mn and all he does is resign because it leaked? Convenient that this was kept from the authorities until AFTER the statute of limitations ran out.

What isn't mentioned in the story is that the group has been implicated in at least 12 other states for the same kind of voter fraud.

So let's put this together: Acorn, the advocacy group whose policies led to the Subprime Crisis, is an activist group that the Democrats are now using for voter registration, and who are going to profit from the very crisis that they created...

The lunatics are running the asylum...