14 July 08 - 12:08ACORN follies
ACORN is still working their magic. Now they are funding congress members around to showcase the "housing Crisis"Oakland Tribune
Barbara Lee leads foreclosure tour in Oakland
By Kamika Dunlap
Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 07/13/2008 07:26:02 AM PDT
OAKLAND — Berta Berrayo is trying to hang on to the quaint East Oakland home that represents her American dream.
Sitting on her front porch Saturday, decorated with a U.S. flag and a statue of the Virgin Mary, Berrayo shared with Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and a crowd of others her plight as a working mother and recent foreclosure victim.
"We have to find a solution to the foreclosure crisis,'' said Berrayo, who was a first-time home buyer when she made the purchase four years ago. "The banks don't want to negotiate with us or our community.''
Lee was in her district this weekend to take a bus foreclosure tour around Oakland, which is among the 20 U.S. cities with the most number of houses in foreclosure.
She was joined by City Council members Desley Brooks, Eastmont-Seminary, and Larry Reid, Elmhurst-East Oakland. Their districts have about 400 bank-owned homes and are at the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis.
The tour was organized by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which advocates for low- and moderate-income families. Representatives from the Urban Strategies Council and the Department of Housing and Urban Development also participated in the event. Junious Williams, CEO of the Urban Strategies Council, said the foreclosure crisis is the "tipping point" for neighborhoods that already have a lot of problems.
"The American dream is turning into a nightmare, and unfortunately the federal government hasn't done enough to help,'' Lee said. "The impact extends beyond the personal tragedies of families "...there's massive suffering in our country and our communities.''
California led the nation with 68,666 foreclosure filings in June.
Lee is supporting a package of legislation to help those who have been affected by the subprime mortgage crisis.
"The numbers are shameful, and we need to send a loud message to the White House that the president must sign a bill that will be a long-term fix," she said.
Lee hopes to leverage $5.4 million of federal neighborhood revitalization funding to her district to rehabilitate and resell vacant properties.
This year, about 3,800 subprime loans will reset in Alameda County, according to data collected by ACORN
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Huffpo is now noticing that ACORN is coming under the microscope and their counter punch ? LEAVE ACORN ALONE !
Only a handful of top ACORN staff knew about the scandal, and Rathke persuaded them to keep it quiet in order, he argued, to protect the group's reputation. The staff group obtained an enforceable restitution agreement so that the funds would be returned to ACORN. With the help of friends and family, his brother has now repaid all the stolen funds. But now that the scandal has surfaced, Wade Rathke has resigned, and his brother has been fired.
In the world of scandals, ACORN's missteps don't even register on the radar compared with the swindles perpetrated by top executives at Halliburton, Enron, WorldCom, Countrywide, and other major corporations who ripped off the government, stockholders, and consumers of billions of dollars. But progressive groups have to be squeaky clean. They must live by a higher standard, in part because they are constantly under scrutiny by powerful business and government officials and in part, because they depend on the good will of funders (who typically get federal tax breaks for their donations) and low-income members (who sacrifice to pay ACORN dues).
the wake of the Times story, ACORN's leaders are working to keep its reputation among its allies and funders. But Rathke's misjudgment in covering up his brother's embezzlement has now provided ACORN's opponents with ammunition to attack the organization. Indeed, because it has been so successful for almost four decades, ACORN has accumulated many enemies -- including major business groups and conservative politicians that have done battle with the feisty activist group -- who would love to see the organization destroyed. In recent weeks, right-wing opponents have even tried to link Barack Obama to ACORN, which they invariably describe as a "radical" and "left-wing" group. (See here, here and here.)
Despite these and other manufactured charges of voter fraud against ACORN, its enemies still repeat them as if they were true. The stories remain as propaganda fodder for Republican bloggers and conservative media. Last Tuesday, a Wall Street Journal editorial repeated the voter-fraud canard, while warning that a the Democrat-sponsored bill to rescue families facing foreclosure, which includes funds for homeownership counseling, could provide money to ACORN, "the left-wing activist outfit that was infamous for its bare-knuckle politics." Journal columnist John Fund has been a persistent ACORN critic. Last April, he wrote that "Acorn's efforts to register voters have been scandal-prone." On Saturday (July 12), Fund portrayed ACORN as one of Obama's "liberal shock troops," labeling the group, "the granddaddy of activist groups," and repeating the accusation that ACORN has a "history of vote fraud scandals." No comments No trackbacks
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