Trying to dodge a building conservative firestorm, the House and Senate made clear in separate and highly lopsided votes Thursday that the beleaguered community-based nonprofit advocacy organization ACORN is persona non grata on Capitol Hill.House Republicans took over a debate about a sweeping student loan bill to propose a measure that would bar the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now from receiving any federal funds at all. It passed 345-75, with 172 Democrats joining all of the Republicans in the chamber in support.
In the Senate, an amendment connected to an Interior Department spending bill that would prohibit ACORN from receiving any money from that bill passed by an 85-11 vote. It was the second such vote directed at ACORN in the Senate this week.
The short and simple lesson for progressive groups is: don't get anywhere near the Democratic Party. It will fuck you and happily throw you to the Republican Party. This is not because of cowardice or confusion on their part. They do not want a large, politically active and demanding activist base.
Comments (15)
We saw this during the Bush administration. People who did dirty deeds for Bush were later thrown under the bus. Bush escaped unharmed. The same thing will happen to the people and groups that did dirty deeds for Obama. Rev. Wright, Blago, and now ACORN. There will be a lot more before Obama's term is over.
Posted by johnnyboy | September 18, 2009 10:49 AM
Posted on September 18, 2009 10:49
acorn
inlight of its blown MO
and headlined mug shots
i hear is planning a savage make over
coming back from the shadows of infamy
as corn-hole
what the second acronym
may stand for ......
well
only the org's inner sanctum knows for sure
Posted by op | September 18, 2009 11:26 AM
Posted on September 18, 2009 11:26
The categories shouldn't get too expansive. Blago is a straight up crooked pol; a useless idiot, whose criminality was local. Reverend Wright did nothing dirty, did nothing for the Democrats and constituted an embarrassing association. ACORN is a garden variety vote harvester and has done a lot for the party -- and that was what got them in trouble, not the corruption and petty criminality. The Democrats spare nothing in demobilizing the party supporters once they have what they want.
Posted by Al Schumann | September 18, 2009 1:33 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 13:33
Have no fear, the futurists http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/09/hbc-90005745 are here.
Posted by Jay Taber | September 18, 2009 2:03 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 14:03
"In this free, capitalist nation, people should be held responsible for their own output...Money should not be redistributed to those who do not work, and it should not be sucked off by condescending, manipulative elites."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/opinion/18brooks.html?th&emc=th
odd rehash of an earlier line
--quoted in the column--
"a wise and frugal government...shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned"
free and capitalist nation
..people should be held responsible for their own output
btw
god is he
a less then nicely vexing dildo
Posted by op | September 18, 2009 2:35 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 14:35
did acorn harvest
for
gore in 00
or
kerry in 04 ????
ever tempted by some one
wearing the color green ????
or at least help unseat
a blue ball dem
even in a primary ???
if not the grudge is pre emptive
i can admire that caligula streak
in the donorcrats
Posted by op | September 18, 2009 2:40 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 14:40
The details at Jay's link are mind-blowing. I have great faith in the endless cupidity and mindless opportunism of vote harvesters, but an eagerness to help set up real brothels is hard to believe. I'm taking the accusations with a grain of salt. The sting videographers played too fast and loose with their editing to be taken seriously.
Posted by Al Schumann | September 18, 2009 3:05 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 15:05
I like to think of the ACORN scandal as another indicator of how corroded our society has become in the wake of thirty years of bi-partisan privatization. When our common wealth is looted at the top, what's left at the bottom is a culture of crude criminal enterprise.
I saw this when my alma mater folded a couple years back as the result of white trust funder trustees in cahoots with Black con artists who made their bones in HUD scams of an earlier era.
As our social fabric unravels further, criminality will continue to infect all classes as a matter of survival. We are in essence, becoming Russia.
Posted by Jay Taber | September 18, 2009 3:29 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 15:29
Good summary. It's striking that the same people responsible for "advising" the collapsed Soviet Union and its satellites into blatant oligarchy (greater evilism) find a home in the Democratic heart. I can recall them being vilified for that not too long ago, by the same opinion generators who nevertheless couldn't wait to put them back into power here.
Larry Summers is a standout for a career based on perfectly legal destruction of wealth, where he's solicitous and canny, and destruction of prosperity, where he's canny enough to choose the right victims.
Posted by Al Schumann | September 18, 2009 4:23 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 16:23
"I saw this when my alma mater folded a couple years back as the result of white trust funder trustees in cahoots with Black con artists who made their bones in HUD scams of an earlier era."
marvelous story line
shall we make an Ealing comdey out of it
i'll ring up alec g and that
bull of a black chap..yes jim brown
oh dash alec g has shot thru hasn't he ???
ummmh larry david ??? "
Posted by op | September 18, 2009 6:53 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 18:53
The transition from "honest", generous, trickle-down graft to sanctimonious, parsimonious graft to outright oligarch-coddling looting hasn't taken much time in historical terms. Two generations, I reckon, with maybe one to go before the banksters and other parasites have to wall themselves away for safety, and spend their sleepless hours worrying about how many of their private security guards have been co-opted.
If we're casting for the comedy, I want Smithee's advice.
Posted by Al Schumann | September 18, 2009 7:46 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 19:46
There are so many layers to the fiasco at the former New College of California, that a comedy just might work. Progressive college started by Jesuit priest run out of Gonzaga for molesting boys; taken over by coke-sniffing trust-funder son of TV persona Arlene Francis; public interest law school preying on LSAT flunkers to finance school through their tuitions; Black poverty pimps devising phony degree program for literacy-challenged poor; money-laundering through South American sister campus; and defrauding US Department of Education by falsifying student loan forms.
To top it off, NCOC was the flagship of Bay Area moral theatrics. Angela Davis once taught there.
Posted by Jay Taber | September 18, 2009 8:04 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 20:04
Good story line about New College of CA, maybe, but then there are so many scripts in turnaround about the Nazi-supporting racist institutions of the capitalist Christian rich producing today's imbecilic meritocracy - ever heard of Yale, Harvard, Williams, Stanford, MIT, Amherst, Middlebury, Brown, U-$50,000 This, College of the Drug Ivy-That? The volume of complicit bullshit they produce makes the odd New College fiasco seem tame.
Posted by mjosef | September 18, 2009 11:01 PM
Posted on September 18, 2009 23:01
"If we're casting for the comedy, I want Smithee's advice"
e tu bluto ??
why that vagabond bastard
his slime trail
reads like the turnpike to perdition
he ..well ..ruined
allison hayes twilight years
http://www.geocities.com/alcus2/allisonhayes50footwoman.jpg
and and
traduced larry buchanan's
super sweet direct to tv
production distribution and property rights
deal with AI
http://www.closinglogos.com/page/Azalea+Pictures
Posted by op | September 19, 2009 11:40 AM
Posted on September 19, 2009 11:40
soupy tribute to LB
http://www.dvddrive-in.com/reviews/i-m/larrybuchanan.htm
Posted by op | September 19, 2009 11:44 AM
Posted on September 19, 2009 11:44