Eighty-three to seven. That's the Senate vote on the anti-ACORN amendment to the transportation and housing appropriations bill. It comes on the heels of the U.S. Census Bureau severing ties with ACORN. Elected representatives and bureaucrats on both sides of the political aisle are acknowledging an uncomfortable fact: Doing business with ACORN is political poison. I forget who said it, and I'm sure I'm not quoting them verbatim, but a saying I once heard comes to mind: Once is forgivable, twice indicates a lack of intelligence, but three or more times indicates a pattern of immoral behavior. Such as it is with ACORN. Workers were charged with voter registration fraud in last year's election in more than a dozen states. Members have committed trespassing, vandalism, and have engaged in threatening behavior in their zeal to draw attention to the "downtrodden" whom were kicked out of houses after failing to pay for them, or the bank executives who dared to do their job and make money for their employer.
ACORN's director assures us that the criminal behavior we see on tape-- be it breaking into someone else's house, harassing the children of someone just doing their job, or offering tax advice to people promoting a criminal enterprise-- is the actions of a few bad apples. That may very well be so, but why take the chance? Why take a chance steering more and more taxpayer funds to an organization with so many members who break the law? Why take a chance giving this same organization's members the charge of assisting with collecting census data? We might as well furlough convicts for the purposes of counting people, for it would carry the same taint of corrupted data.
So let the investigations proceed. ACORN is entitled to its day in court, so to speak. But until its management can demonstrate zero tolerance for criminal or unethical behavior, they shouldn't get another red cent.
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