Welch does the wrong thing on ACORN

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Per The Burlington Free Press:

Lawmakers targeted the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for this financial sanction because of a series of recent allegations of fraud and deception. The most talked- about has been the allegation of illegal activity that grew from videos showing two people posing as a prostitute and a pimp receiving advice from ACORN staff about how to avoid taxes, falsify documents and hide illegal child workers.

On the surface, this seems kind of reasonable.  Except, with most of these things, the surface doesn’t tell you much.

As both Sanders and Leahy have noted, there is an actual process for determining which organizations get funding of the kind that ACORN gets.  To use the legislative process to specifically target one organization makes this process needlessly political.  It sets the precedent for us to allow right-wing groups to hound us into defunding a group not on the merits of its case but on political fearmongering and the fostering of racial hatred.

It’s not a shock, or even any sort of surprise to me that this vote played out the way it did.  

It is, however, a great disappointment to me that Welch supported it.

9 thoughts on “Welch does the wrong thing on ACORN”

  4. If we’re going to eliminate federal funding of programs through groups whose members or representatives have been involved in scandals (real or imagined), that pretty much eliminates any of the “faith-based” organizations from receiving federal dollars, doesn’t it?

  5. Unconstitutional Congressional rebuke of MoveOn.

    This case may well meet the Lamont standard, by being a case of imposing an undue burden.

    In case anyone might misconstrue the ruling, in the Lamont case, Justices Brennan and Golberg included the following footnote:


    “It may be that it is the obnoxious thing in its mildest and least repulsive form; but illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely, by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. This can only be obviated by adhering to the rule that constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close and literal construction deprives them of half their efficacy, and leads to gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance. [381 U.S. 301, 310]   It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon.”

    Congress usurped the role of the courts – denying due process to the organization and its members, and imposing an undue burden, all based on a highly-edited video made by two right wing operatives, trained and equipped by Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute (Karl Rove’s training camp).



    This is a deeply troubling action.

    I am VERY disappointed that Welch went along with both this vote and the MoveOn vote. Both set terrible, and likely unconstitutional, precedents – leading down a slope as slippery as oil on teflon.

    Welch should know better, and Leahy and Sanders should be far more outspoken against this kind of action.

  6. Isn’t that rather like what that great bastion of American commerce, Walmart, was found to be doing?  A couple of years ago, they were discovered to be giving advice to their employees on how to get the most out of the social welfare programs available from the state.  This was apparently their way of “helping” their workers learn to live on a Walmart salary!

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