His cartoon about the near farcical Beckaton in front of the Lincoln Memorial along the reflecting pool says it all for me right down to the nonsensical right arm:  “ACORN = nuts = insane” though “mosque + cow = Moscow” is pretty much a classic.

When dealing with a clown, a cartoon just seems to say it best!

Laramie

Maryellen Hayden, a warrior who ran the Pittsburg office of ACORN for years, posted a couple of notes on my Facebook wall ranting about the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals overturn of ACORN’s successful injunction at the federal district court level of the Congressional crazy stampede that produced the ACORN Defunding Act in the wake of the pimp-prostitute mess last fall and the general partisan hating on ACORN that had been unremitting for a year.  I had posted a Times printing of an AP story.  Maryellen’s comments seemed to be saying that the appeals court had essentially decided to reject the lower court decision because the punishment of ACORN was de minimus – not significant – because only 10% of ACORN’s funding originated with the feds.  So, I thought, what the heck, I’m stranded in Wyoming chomping at the bit to drive home, I should be at the office early tomorrow, instead here I am, so the least I can do is buckle down and read the decision and see if I can throw some light out there against the dark forces.

So I read the decision this morning with a lot of head scratching.  Several observers have pointed out that the appeals decision was decided 2-1 on a Republican versus Democratic split, and there may be good reason to do so, because a lot of the decision seems more “political” than legal.  Inevitably this will arise when so much of the decision is based on the Appeals Court’s avowed intention in many parts of the writing to parse the degrees of punishment to determine whether or not they can be called “unconstitutionally punitive.”  In that sense Maryellen is right that they certainly cite that suspending 10% of ACORN’s funding should not have been a “death blow.”

The Appeals Court’s error here is both substantive and paradoxical.  In the opening arguments of the decision the judges reject the government’s attempt to pull the Department of Defense and Office of Management and Budget out of the case by arguing that it was irrelevant if ACORN never had or never would apply for funding from the DOD, and it was irrelevant if OMB had tried to paper over its initial instructions when the original injunction was overturned, because the “reputational” damage to ACORN was substantial and enduring from both the OMB and DOD actions.  Word!  But, then the judges, pages later, retreat to hide behind the “10%” screen.  Regardless, the definition of punitiveness is inherently subjective, and here the judges want to have some credibility by pretending that ACORN’s problems were all self-inflicted and that the Congressional action was prudent rather than punitive.

The judges pile a lot on the molehill of a relatively recent decision (cited several times) in which HUD has made a determination that that New York Acorn (as they call it) is a separate corporation and not related to ACORN, therefore it could now receive funding from New York State to NY Acorn under a contract that was funded by HUD.  Frankly, all of this is so confusing and contradictory that even rereading the sections of the decision several times, I felt befuddled, which still leaves me in better shape than the judges who I believe allow their handling of this corporation to be slickly deceiving and deliberately intellectually dishonest.  The description provided in the decision of New York Acorn is of the New York ACORN Housing Corporation.  I had heard that NYAHC had been renamed (rebranded?) as MHANY (Mutual Housing of ACORN New York) Management, Inc.   The actual cover page of the decision acknowledges that the name change has occurred from NYAHC (which I think they misstate with the “c” as company rather than corporation, but who cares since facts don’t seem to matter here) and is now MHANY Management, Inc., but from that point on in the text of the decision the judges simply lump all of this post-facto (after the defunding decision) survival mode activity into something they call “New York Acorn.”  By doing so they are then allowing themselves to pretend that something that was always a separate and distinct corporation in New York State is the same as ACORN, and therefore its ability to slip the noose and access the NY State funding makes this all hunky-dory.  That’s just wrong!

Furthermore I would bet money that the facts, by which I mean the politics and not the law, undermine that as well.  A New York Times story some months ago documented clearly the difficult problems that ACORN’s new management had in navigating the old New York relationships with officials in the Obama Administration.  Shaun Donovan, the head of HUD, always had a close and productive working relationship with Ismene Spiliotis, the head of NYAHC and the head of MHANY Management, Inc dating to his time as a New York housing czar.  In the story it was painful to read how Ismene, who was always a great ACORN staff member and manager and widely acknowledged to be one of the best nonprofit housing developers in New York, was being victimized by the fact that one of the primary gotcha tapes from the pimp-prostitute mess was right under her nose involving a housing counselor for NYAHC.  As the saying goes, “all politics is local,” and a wrong was finally righted by restoring justice in New York that the kangaroo court of media and the Congress had not allowed earlier.  A restoration of that kind should not be a justification for the Appeals Court though, espcially so long after the fact.

All of this is the tendency of the decision throughout which is a not so subtle attempt to simply “blame the victim” for the unconstitutional actions of Congress by applying ambiguous standards to ACORN that would be unacceptable to any other corporation or entity.  If one reads this decision one thinks that ACORN has been convicted of fraud, financial misuse and misappropriation, and any number of crimes, none of which is true, yet all of which are used by the Appeals Court to justify allowing the defunding of ACORN.

The majority judges also cite in a number of instances what they call ACORN’s “admissions of significant mismanagement.”  None of this is cited or referenced of course, and being a pretty close follower of this story, and quite frankly, for 38 years as Chief Organizer, probably the principal manger here, I read all of this with an eagle eye.  The judges only cite the fact that there have been “reports” (largely overheated, inappropriate, and inaccurate) that the ACORN “family” of organizations involved more than 200 different corporations, which must hardly bring a nod from most corporate heads given the common practice of separating real estate and development projects and nonprofit versus tax exempt organizations into separate corporations and is hardly illegal much less suspect.  They don’t like the fact that the structure and relationships were “complex.”  If they had asked me (which no one anywhere ever has) I would say that we structured the organization smartly from jump and that recent events have proven the rightness of that strategy and the mistake of not holding the line and protecting the walls between various entities.

As for these so-called “admissions of significant mismanagement” in fact where are these admissions and what might they have been?  Obviously Bertha Lewis, who emerged in the year after I resigned under the new title of “chief executive officer” would promise to do things differently, nail down any loose boards, and tighten any wobbly screws.  Frankly, that’s what all new managers do when they replace someone, either with a deft touch or a loud scream.  It was hard for me to ever take personally.  It’s part of the common politics of transitions, and hardly an admission of “significant mismanagement,” nor given Bertha and her teams long history in ACORN’s management would there ever be a credible “admission of significant mismanagement” unless there was a suicide pact to self destruct their own credibility and ACORN itself.

My best guess would be that the judges are relying on the botched, discredited, confidential, slapdash hack job done by attorney Beth Kingsley and commissioned during the upheaval of new management being selected amid the internal power struggles involving the board and staff about the control, direction, and resources of the organization in the months after I resigned.  And, they are certainly relying on that less than the repeated references to it after it was leaked by members of the rump ACORN 8 caucus to the New York Times as they tried to advance their leadership coup.  Probably the only thing the ACORN 8 ever did that I had to agree made sense was attempt to censure Kingsley for unprofessional and ethical violations before the DC bar, though unfortunately they were doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.  Kingsley was overmatched for the job and out of her arena by hundreds of miles, and wrote a political document relying on an embittered, alienated, and disillusioned staff member, that basically offered hip shooting opinions and allegations to cover up any substantive examples of problems or mismanagement other than to say that it was too complex for her and she didn’t like it. (Wade, what did you really think of that “report”? I thought even some of the “and’s” and “the’s” were lies!)

But, who knows, since the bottom line is that the Appeals Court judges just continue the allegation walking on whatever thin ice is beneath them, yet it’s substantial, since they use it to cover the heart of the crime here:  “Although the appropriations laws may have the effect of alienating ACORN and its affiliates from their supporters, Congress must have the authority to suspend federal funds to an organization that has admitted to significant mismanagement.”  By doing so the judges exercise their political will beneath the judicial screen by essentially arguing that even if Congress erred, ACORN asked for it.  That’s a dangerous legal precedent for the future if allowed to stand.

Yet, it will probably be allowed to stand as poorly reasoned and as erroneously based.  I wouldn’t bet on the Supreme Court being willing to hear the case in the future, and I certainly would never bet on the odds of justice at the hands of the Roberts’ court in the future.

This may be a sorry ending, but it is likely the ending of the last legal lifeline for ACORN.

Portland

On the web the news out of Nevada indicates that a Project Vote and ACORN voter registration worker is due for trial after Thanksgiving.  The AG in Pennsylvania is scrapping around the cases of another couple of workers.  For all the sound and fury two years ago about ACORN and its voter registration efforts among the poor and disenfranchised, these two efforts seem to be all that remains of a forest of press coverage back then, and both are mighty thin soup.

All of these ironies come in focus for me as I realize that even as ACORN Canada and ACORN Kenya work to expand voting access and participation in that country, the fire has been snuffed out in the United States.  Two years on as some observers look at the impending election and the absence of huge, large scale registration efforts like those mounted by ACORN; some understand that the loss is huge to democracy when such forces are removed from the battle.

A recent piece by Tonyaa Weathersbee, regular columnist and member of the editorial board of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville that was published in the Louisiana Weekly called “We’ll Soon Wish We Still Had ACORN,” is worth noting:

”Call it a piece of democracy done in by deception.

ACORN, the community organizing group that became an obsession of right-wingers appalled that scores of black people dared to exercise their right to vote in 2008, was recently vindicated by the General Accountability Office.

As it turns out, the GAO found that the group, which is formally known as the Association of Communities Organizing for Reform now, did not misuse any of the $40 million in taxpayer funds it received between 2005 and 2009.

Seems that when Congress voted to strip it of its funding last year, all it was guilty of was employing some dimwitted folks who allowed conservative operatives masquerading as a pimp and whore to dupe them into doling out illegal  advice.

But now, ACORN is in tatters – done in by a doctored videotape and a Republican witch hunt. And their demise couldn’t have come at a worse time.

I say this because in 2008, the organization helped to register millions of voters in key swing states that President Obama won. And while there’s no denying that the communities ACORN serves tend to be filled with black and poor people who are constantly marginalized and vilified by the GOP, the key thing that they did was help millions of people understand the power that voting gives them.

Perhaps, just perhaps, ACORN could have used its power to persuade many of those same people who voted for the first time in 2008 to vote in the upcoming midterm elections – because there are lots of people who are counting on them to stay home as they vote to undo what was done two years ago.

I know this because recently, Gallup released a poll showing that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more enthusiastic about voting in the midterm elections this year than they’ve ever been in the past. Fifty-nine percent of them say they plan to vote in November, compared to 44 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

That’s the highest average that Gallup has found among Republicans since it first asked the question in 1994 – the year that the GOP swept both housing of Congress and saddled us with Newt Gingrich and the Contact with America.

That tells me that that a whole lot of GOP voters see a chance to, by way of their vote, accomplish what all the town hall screaming and racial epithets couldn’t: Neutralize Obama’s agenda. It also tells me that a lot of Democrats are, at this point, either disillusioned by what he hasn’t done, or don’t understand that he still needs them to vote if he is to get anything done.

For some of that, Obama has himself to blame.

When black people and Latino people went out and voted for him in unprecedented numbers, they did so because they saw him as representing a new social and political order; one in which their needs and issues would be a priority.

But so far, that hasn’t happened.

There’s no immigration bill. Black unemployment is still triple that of whites, and while Obama inherited an economy that will certainly take years to fix, he’s shown little inclination to create any programs that target black joblessness.

Of course, Obama continues to poll high among those key constituencies. But he isn’t on the ballot, and the voters who put him over the top in 2008 haven’t seen enough difference in their own lives to make the connection between the president’s success and the success of his party in the midterms.

The Democratic Party realizes this is a problem – and it plans to spend $50 million to get those new Obama voters to return to the polls come November.

Still, I wish ACORN was around to help because voting shouldn’t just be about putting a particular party in power, but about helping marginalized people realize their own power to hold all politicians – Obama included – accountable.

I also wish they’d vote because it’s disturbing to hear right-wing pundits continue to paint Obama’s election as an anomaly – because what they’re really saying to white politicians is that without Obama’s name on the ballot, they never have to worry about black folks voting again.

That alone ought to be enough to make black people mad. Mad enough to prove them wrong.”

Greetings were read from ACORN Canada and ACORN International.  Mildred Edmond, President of Local 100 of the United Labor Unions, was there and in the thick of the celebration.  I wore my new “Tenants Vote” t-shirt from Toronto ACORN with its big maple leaf in the middle of their design of the ACORN button, which elicited comments and appreciation from many of the leaders in the room.

This was a gathering of a community foraged in the steel of struggle from decades of neighborhood and citywide campaigns, fights for the living wage, heroic struggles to lead the post-Katrina recovery, and now the heartbreak of having to build a new organization again.  Watching the smiles as leaders hugged Vanessa Gueringer and Gwen Adams as they marched up to get their certificates and listening to their remarks sometimes brought tears to my eyes.  I couldn’t help thinking about the indomitable spirit and will of the members, which trumps money every time.

Here is a place where the name, the experience, the “brand” of ACORN is still golden in the streets and community centers of New Orleans just as it is in so many other cities in the country.  It’s not a “word” but a shared experience that lights the flame guiding the work going forward.  Beth Butler spoke about her father having told her when she went to work for the organization in Little Rock to make sure she worked with “strong leaders” and many were in this room.  Mark Moreau, head of New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation, brought the crowd to peals of laughter after receiving an award, saying he had been with them for more than twenty years and would be with them forever “no matter what the name.”

In fact the truth of the old chant is indisputable:  the people united shall never be defeated!

Happy anniversary to a peoples’ struggle that will continue unbroken!

New Orleans

Several conservative bloggers sent me the link to give me a heads up yesterday.  From the executive summary (which is as far as I’ve gotten) it appears that Issa has two issues:

• ACORN and its family of organizations involved way too many corporations to make Issa’s staff happy.  I’m not sure exactly what the issue there is or what might have been wrong with having a lot of different corporate entities to handle different kinds of business?  It’s actually pretty common practice with most large outfits to keep property holdings in separate corporations and to limit liabilities within various corporate missions.  I guess being in government and all, the Congressman and his staff find it unsettling, but…yawn…so what?
• The other issue he seems to have is that ACORN’s low and moderate income families wanted to use the organization to build power.  ACORN was a straight non-profit with no special tax status or privileges (the first Issa staff report got that wrong, so maybe they’ve learned something here).  ACORN was always very transparent about the fact that its members wanted to organize together to build enough power to actually solve some issues and make a difference in their communities, cities, states, and country.  Nothing to apologize for there as far as I can see, and with freedom of speech and freedom of association in the USA, I’m not sure what the beef might be?

The Washington Examiner tried to help me by laying out Issa’s real interest:

“The ranking Republican on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, who speaks at CPAC today, asserts that a judicial decision blocking Congress’s efforts to stop funding ACORN amounts to a new bailout, because ACORN is currently on the precipice financially. Meanwhile, even as it continues to draw down the taxpayer’s hard-earned dollar, ACORN’s affairs remain a shadowy mess of mixed private, non-profit and government money characterized by collusion between various organizations.”

For the life of me, I’ve read those sentences a couple of times, and I’m still not sure that I get it.  But, I’m guessing that Issa is arguing that because a federal judge ruled that the defunding of ACORN was illegal (thwarting the will of Congress for trying an illegal bill of attainder), he’s upset because some of his buddies and informants (the Louisiana Attorney General’s office seems to have a lot of loose lips) have told him that they think ACORN is on the edge of insolvency, and despite having been jammed up by a federal judge for illegal activity, Issa is disappointed because he may have been so close to his goal of putting ACORN out of business that now he’s upset that he may not have succeeded.  Is that the drift?

So while he waits to see if he and others have succeeded in the original smear and subterfuge, he thought he would go down to the CPAC meeting with the rest of the heavy breathing haters and throw out some more innuendos, allegations, unfounded asserts, mud and general garbage.  All in a day’s work for an esteemed member of Congress, eh?  And, they wonder why the public has nothing but contempt for Congress in every poll taken these days?

New Orleans

Now in a twist, and you just can’t make this stuff up, this yahoo and a couple of other dim lights from the right, were all caught redhanded by the FBI on Monday morning trying to scam their way into Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in the city.  Seems they were tricked out with fluorescent vests and tried to talk their way into the phone system.  O’Keefe in  clownish fashion seems to have been easily observed filming his buddies on this Watergate bumblers expedition with his cell phone, although I’m betting it was a flip camera, but we’ll soon see.  Once Landreiu’s office staff showed them the main GAO phone system, it seems like the secretary called the feds on their stupid butts.

Next stop St. Bernard Parish Prison, which is disappointing to hear, since the brothers at the Orleans Parish Prison might have showed them a little bit more of New Orleans life than they really wanted to explore.  I hope that I don’t have to read that they were shepherded over to St. Bernard because they were mainly white dudes and the FBI feared that hanging with real pimps might not have been pretty, especially since there were no doubt huge numbers of ACORN friendly folks in the OPP.

One of these boneheads was the son of William Flanagan who is the interim US Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, which includes Shreveport and Lake Charles.  Many will be watching whether or not they get any breaks from that.  For her part Senator Landrieu said in essence that she could hardly wait to find out what these boys were up to.  Their own lawyers described the whole affair as, well, stupid.

Why Landrieu for goodness sake?  What papers or blogs are they reading that argues that Mary is some kinda flaming, commie, liberal the likes of which they are supposed to attack and expose.  I can’t even imagine what they thought they might have heard by tapping into her district offices phones.  For the most part people complain that you can’t even get through on the lines or get a return call from Mary’s local office, so this would have been a hoot, if they had gotten farther.

O’Keefe has gone from darling to dunderhead of the right, though most of his promoters were keeping buttoned up.   Keith Obermann seemed to be speculating on MSBN last night about whether or not O’Keefe’s funders might be targeted now to determine who was financing and pushing this crazy stuff, which may be why biggovernment.com and other O’Keefe backers were “mums the word” and waiting to see how much of the jig is up.

O’Keefe’s credibility is obviously gone, but seriously, did he really have any in the first place?

Marcala          

             We had started the day at eight in a makeshift meeting room in the hotel chapel with many of our union brothers as well as several new companeros from NGOs and the University.  For hours one after another listed the issues in and around San Pedro Sula that needed attention and organizational activity:  water, remittances, housing, public services.   It was a long list delivered in lengthy and passionate speeches listened to respectfully by all interrupted only by the appearance of a Channel 39 TV reporter who had heard the discussion was going on and that I was in town.  At noon we drove through some of the colonias including one fascinating development some of my union brothers showed me where the union had built the houses and the school.  This was only minutes away from a new highrise condo development abutting one piece of a small creek in San Pedro Sula.  Another sign down the road indicated the future would be filled with these luxury developments, the first in the city.  Another five minutes away and we were looking at a squatters development along a larger riverbank where families had been forced after Hurricane Mitch’s devastation in Honduras, as still remained.  Driving away we could see children swimming as their mothers washed their clothes in the calmer pools of the stream

            Next stop was a quick lunch and visit with a woman and her family who had graciously invited us over for pico gallo in the Honduran style with red beans.  The reason in the interconnected world of organizing:  her sister had been a member of ACORN in the Queens.  Anything she could do to help, just ask.

            Though there seemed to be no hurry to the drive, and it was a good thing since construction and 18-wheelers had us parking for long stretches as we crossed the mountains on the good highway from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, we parked in Marcala in one of the barrios and followed the noise and music into a giant structure just in time for a young political theater company to begin their presentation.  There were several hundred children and a score of adults in the crowd, as the moderator shouted, “Silencio!” over and over to gain attention.  Suyapa explained to me that this was part of a celebration for the women in the community, but the theater company brought much more to it.

            This was a well acted and rehearsed production by a half-dozen enthusiastic late teen or early 20’s actors.  In the beginning a “generalito” – small general – with his lieutenant wanted everything to be gray, gray, gray, and the three citizens, two women and one man, lived in gray huts in fear.  As the play developed to great humor and passion from the actors and increasingly the crowd as they warmed to the theme, the caricature soldiers in the face paint of Batman’s Joker gradually lost control.  Singing and dancing would erupt and pull the people off of their knees to find that they could walk and be happy again.  At the same time their huts turned from gray to white, pink, and green.  A giant bride dressed in white appeared on stilts and danced along as well.  A toy cannon exploded and led the soldier to defect to the people until the generalito was deflated with the air escaping from him like wind from a bag.  More singing ensued.  Children were pulled from the crowd.  Marching and dancing.  My summary doesn’t do the play or the skill and quality of the actors justice for this hour long presentation, but it was one of the few times where one had the feeling people were staying for the action and not the frijoles and tortillas passed out to all of us with plastic cups of weak coffee at the end of the show.

            There may have been a fake election in Honduras to try to rightsize the military coup, but the scars will wear deep among these people.  When the elected president announced on my first day in country that he was agreeing to go into exile in the Dominican Republic there was no celebration about his volunteering to take the first step to “reconciliation.”  It seemed hollow, and this children’s play with its well practiced themes and smooth presentation was hardly designed for this one show, but was traveling around the country.

            All of these things were on our minds as our eyes closed in the dark last night.  We were staying at the unfinished compound organized as a project to support the campesinos in this area. 

            It was an honor and a gift to have lived this day!

New Orleans

Reports all over my Google alerts indicated that in some kind poll, conducted it seems by Public Policy Polling, there was huge fear of ACORN shenanigans.  Going to the source I found this posting:

Monday, January 18, 2010

ACORN in Massachusetts

Scott Brown may be leading in the race for Ted Kennedy’s seat in the US Senate, but his supporters are still feeling some trepidation about his chances. 39% of them on our poll said they thought ACORN would try to steal the election for Martha Coakley while 23% think it will not and 38% are unsure.

Overall 25% of voters in the state think ACORN will mess with the Senate election while 38% don’t and 37% are unsure.

I think to most sane people the thought that ACORN would or could steal an election is pretty goofball, but if Martha Coakley pulls out a small victory tomorrow after most of the polls have shown Brown in the lead you’d better believe you’re going to be hearing the ACORN card played quite a bit.

Posted by Tom Jensen at 12:24 PM

A quarter of the voters believing this is indicates a huge amount of drug abuse in the state, so fortunately there is a mandated health plan in the state so there’s hope for a cure, but, wow, how can people be sold such snake oil?

Michelle Maklin headlines today, “Expect ACORN to Lead Voter Fraud Effort.”

Jensen’s got it right despite the wildness in the blogosphere.  How could “sane people” believe that ACORN “would or could steal an election…?”  Scratch Maklin off the sane list, if she was even remotely still on it.

More dismaying is that in ACORN’s currently crippled state in Massachusetts and elsewhere how anyone could imagine that they can even mount an effort to protect some of their own members in the neighborhoods much less stand up and fight in an election.

The efforts to scapegoat ACORN has truly passed from the ridiculous to the absurd.  Does it really take the level of lies for the right to convince its adherents to vote for their candidates?