Halloween Scary Out There!!

Finding Enemies of America Everywhere


It is that time of year to look for communists, anti-Americans, class warriors, election thieves, and the robber-barons who caused this financial collapse. Is it political sport because of the national election to label political rivals as enemies or is it something far more sinister like a new House Committee on Un-American Activities? I saw a few bogus comments from elected officials about how the National Housing Trust Fund was passed in order to subsidize ACORN. One of the most amazing charges is that ACORN is responsible for the mortgage meltdown because of their advocacy on behalf of Community Re-Investment Act. There are two good statements about CRA that bust some of the myths here at National Community ReInvestment Coalition and here at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Both of these charges are rediculous, and the media needs to do a better job to set the record straight. Greed is at the heart of the mortgage crisis not the law that protects against bank redlining their lending practices. No government forced these banks to make these loans. CRA protects communities from racist sharks attempting to keep minority populations out of a neighborhood. CRA forces banks that make money from poor communities to provide the same loan products they offer to the richer communities where they have branch offices. Greed, inflated salaries of CEOs, and attempts to make money in a dishonest manner are at the heart of the mortgage crisis. Blaming CRA for the mortgage meltdown is like blaming the gun trigger lock for excessive violence on the streets of Chicago.

I have to say that ACORN does not deserve the criticism they are currently receiving, but they do deserve some criticism for their voting activities. The Coalition did a ton of work on protecting the rights of homeless voters in 2008, 2006, and 2004. Back in the last presidential election in 2004, we paid homeless people to register other homeless people. We quickly realized that we had to set up a system to protect against fraudulant registrations being submitted. We did not want the added scrutiny from election officials, and we did not want to reward people for making up registrations. We had this extensive process put in place to protect ourselves. It is obvious that ACORN did not adopt the same standards. Maybe it is because they put in place a national system that had to conform to 30 different state laws. Maybe it has to do with the relative high turnover in staff at ACORN locally or maybe there are some other reasons. I have to say that ACORNs inability to effectively supervise a registration campaign has hurt our efforts. NEOCH was swept up in the anti-ACORN ferver, and we had a harder time settling our two voting lawsuits. They had to realize that by setting a goal of registering over one million people, they would have a huge target on their backs. They needed to set up a system to protect their agency from unnecessary criticism. Carelessness on their part makes it hard for all of us trying to do the right thing. Do not get me wrong. I do not believe that they were trying to undermine the election or there was any larger conspiracy as some suggest. It is just that the organization did not pay attention to the details, and made a whole lot of work for the local boards of elections.

Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.