Thanks for the links. I disagree with alot of the conclusions drawn from the facts provided (and I’m not sure “bending over backwards to be fair” means the same thing to you as it does to me), but at least these are facts that a rational person could use to come to a negative impression of ACORN in a reasonable manner. This, at least, makes sense.

One comment you made confused me though:

“As is their voter registration fraud where they work hand in hand with unions. It has never been proven that the tens of thousands of fake voter registrations - well beyond “Mickey Mouse” and Dick Tracy - have been used by unions to stuff ballot boxes.”

Are you talking about stuffing ballot boxes at union elections, or general elections? If it was union elections, why would the union be dealing with ACORN in the first place? If it is the general elections . . . what voter registration fraud? Did anybody vote under a fraudulent name? If so, did they give fraudulent name to the clipbord pusher, or are you dsaying that ACORN intentionally registered tens of thousands of fraudulent names and then co-ordinated with tens of thousands of people to frudulently vote under them? If its the latter . . . that sounds pretty paranoid without any kind of evidence. Like Truther paranoid.

Regardless, again an honest thanks for the articles.

Mattherw Vadum’s piece you refer to is full of the inaccurate, popular business commentary posted in various places. The “radical experimentaion” of the CRA in 1977 was a response to the continuing practice by banks that refused to make mortgage loans in certain parts of major cities. Growing up in Chicago, you have to remember that period. And I’ve said it before and will say it again: If the CRA (or it’s changes in the 1990s) were responsible for last year’s financial crisis, then why didn’t we have the same kind of crisis during the recessions of 1980, 1981, or 2000 or the slowdowns of 1989 and 1994?

“Banks felt the heat from community organizers and CRA examiners and instead of fighting, they made loans they shouldn’t have and paid out millions of dollars in protection money to ACORN and its brethren.” Seriously. Has this guy ever even walked into a bank, much less dealt with one? Do you really think banks made loans they knew people would not pay back? For what? I worked for two large banks for 17 years and the CRA examination was taken very seriously. We documented any community involovement we could to show we were good citizens. But why would a bank make a loan and know they would start becoming a real estate tycoon? Earnings suffer, which means the stock price suffers. Those guys are much more interested in stock prices then CRA examiniers.

“The advent of Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBSs) by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gave banks an added incentive to write risky loans, because they knew they could dump their dubious mortgages onto Fannie and Freddie investors who counted on a government bailout if things got rough.” Just plain wrong. MBSs have been around for 40 years. They are the reason most of us who own homes were able to get a mortgage at a reasonably low rate. They match long term borrowers with long term investors (of which a bank is not). Fannie and Freddie have been creating these pass-through securites for years. The reason they almost brought the system down, and where they got greedy, is that they held on to more and more of them rather than sell them to investors. When housing values went down, the assets on their books went down in value as well. This caused problems for their balance sheet, their liquidity, and ultimately their solvency.

“MBSs received strong bond ratings from credit agencies in part because Fannie and Freddie, which had been ordered to place politics over profit making, had long enjoyed an implied guarantee from Uncle Sam, so investors bought them with confidence.” Mostly wrong. MBSs received a high credit rating because, historically, they paid back something like 97% of principal and interest in a timely fashion. The implied gurantee didn’t make them more credit worthy, but probably caused mortgage rates to be lower than they should have been. And it wasn’t politics that drove Fannie and Freedie. They issued publicly held stock, their managers received stock compensation, so they were encouraged to make lots of money so their stock prices would go up. Pretty simple self-interest at work.

“Economist Stanley Liebowitz wrote that the current mortgage market debacle is “a direct result of an intentional loosening of underwriting standards—done in the name of ending discrimination, despite warnings that it could lead to wide-scale defaults.”” Partly right again. The crisis was indeed due to the loosening of underwriting standards. But the disaster came not at the hands of social scientists or socialists but at the hands of capitalists. Somehow investors became convinced that not having proof of income or having poor crdit was OK if you were buying a house. Once that happened the banks and Wall Street starting printing money and could see no reason to stop. The former chairman of Citigroup actually said something like “As long as the music plays, we’re going to keep dancing.” Doesn’t sound to me like ACORN was holding a gun to his head to make these loans.

I went through Vadum’s piece in detail to debunk some of the myths of what’s happened over the last two years. ACORN could be the worst group in the world (I’ve had my own run-ins with them). But this crisis was caused by excessive, unregulated capitalism, not creeping socialism.

Beck is aiming at Obama and even if he is not a conservative his goals and some of his premises agree with ours. So we take our allies when we can.

Coulter herself said she would have voted for Hilary rather than MbCain and I certainly could understand that. McCain was the Republican that loved to cozy to Democarats and knife the conservatives in the back.

However McCain would not have renege on the missile defense radar in Czech. He would have allowed the upgrade and testing of our nuclear weapons.

He would not have socialized and nationalized the auto companies. He would not have tried to ram national Health care down out throats.

However McCain would have destroyed the conservative movement because McCain is not a principlaed conservative. McCain Feingold shouls he did have the understanding of the first amendment and would saacrifice it for hia own reason that money in politics corrupts. That is true but government tryanny is worse tham corruption

The “bottom line” is that I didn’t ask if “international communism” existed but rather the old time Bircher canard about the “international communist conspiracy” - a wry witticism that went so far over your head it barely fluffed your hair.

I’m not surprised I lost you when it is apparent you can’t even read.

ed.

Didn’t Ann Coulter say the same thing before the nomination?

What exactly is the problem with ACORN?

I’ve tried to find out what they do that makes them such a deadly plague to many on the Right . . . but all I find are hysterical rants and hyperbole.

They looked to me to be a relatively non-threatening and socially useful group (as useful as any other), but the creep of ACORN-hate from the hinterlands of Whack-a-doodlevania into mainstream Conservative conciousness suggests that I’ve missed something very serious and very obvious.

I’ve no problem being wrong in my opinions, but I’d like to know why I’m wrong for not viewing them more critically.

Seriously, somebody let me have it with both barrels. Why are they bad?

This is a good primer:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjRjYzE0YmQxNzU4MDJjYWE5MjIzMTMxMmNhZWQ1MTA=

Kurtz bends over backwards to be fair to ACORN here.

It’s not only their agenda which is avowedly socialist in nature (banks owned “by the people” as well as “means of production” in the hands of “workers.”) it is far and away their tactics that should bring them in disrepute with anyone who values democracy. And not just isolated chapters who engage in physical intimidation of their targets, threats, and actual violence on occasion. It is systemic.

As is their voter registration fraud where they work hand in hand with unions. It has never been proven that the tens of thousands of fake voter registrations - well beyond “Mickey Mouse” and Dick Tracy - have been used by unions to stuff ballot boxes. But given their extremely close relationship with unions and the history of union shenanigans at the ballot box, you can put two and two together and be at the very least suspicious.

Their role in intimidating banks to give loans to people so incredibly unqualified to own houses that they were set up to default played a role in the financial crisis last year. I am not convinced that it was a decisive role, but tens of thousands of sub prime loans would not have been let without ACORN. (This piece by AmSpec writer Matthew Vadum gives some background on that.)

You can go on and on. But make up your own mind. The fact that these folks were going to help with the Census is laughable. And Obama owes them a debt because most of his volunteers during his first state senate run as well as subsequent campaigns were ACORN staffers.

ed.

Beck is something of a flake, a loose cannon who has no stake in the institution of the GOP or its institutional interests. So it’s not surprising that support or opposition to the guy breaks along this line — with the knock against McCain making matters worse (Limbaugh never much cared for Mac and Hannity often criticized him, but those guys would never say Mac would have been worse.

Beck is also something of a “populist,” which should not be seen as a compliment. You can shoehorn most any resentment together with any other and claim to be “on the people’s side,” which surely seems to be the direction Beck is headed.

On the other hand, in addition to giving wide circulation and real force to some attacks on the administration that are fair, if not earth-shattering, Beck keeps up a steady taunting of everything about or related to Obama and the Democrats which strikes me as very much like the relentless Bush-bashing of eight years past. Not only was (is) there “truther” conspiracy-mongering, there was the shameful, constant effort to associate Bush and company with the Saudis with the evil implication of blood for oil. Which was in turn connected to the endless battering of Bush and Cheney for supposed nefarious ties to Halliburton, Big Oil and others. And of course, Bush was constantly under attack for attempting a different sort of “radical transformation” of America — namely shredding the Constitution, improperly centralizing federal power I the President’s hands, etc., all of which threatened our freedoms and put us on the path to fascism.

It was not a few nutty bloggers who churned out this stuff daily for years, but MSNBC hosts, national columnists, and even some leading Dem politicians.

Along the same lines, beck (and others) are drawing a picture of Obama at the center of a vast left-wing conspiracy (why is that familiar?), featuring George Soros, MoveOn, Apollo, ACORN, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, the Daley machine and others.

Beck’s picture is exaggerated, and inaccurate. But it’s a polemic, not a detached analysis, just as the attacks on Bush were polemical.

The problem for the right is not whether Beck “goes too far” or paints a false picture. It’s whether he can be trusted as a polemicist with a prominent platform and a big audience to be partisn — to help Republicans, even when he might consider them inadequate, too liberal or whatever. Rudy Guiliani might be able to win in New York, but only be running as a practical moderate (which is what he is). Ditto Simmons V. Dodd in Connecticut. And Kirk in Illinois — among others. Will Beck have the discipline to keep his populism’ or Perotism, or libertarianism or whatever it is in check?

I doubt it. Beck is more likely to do whatever will boost his audience — and that’s not likely to be simply helping the GOP to win