Guest Editorial: Personal responsibility

I fear that personal responsibility is a thing of the past and there is nothing in our society to make me feel otherwise.

Banks, Auto Dealers and Insurance companies alike have all been alleviated of personal responsibility and society as a whole is sold and fed daily on the concept that it is the Governments responsibility to take care of you no matter how irresponsible your actions are.

I apologize in advance for the length of this article, but since most newspapers refused to cover the story I really had no choice but to try to bring you the truth that they refuse to publish.

ACORN is the epitome of an Organization continually refusing to accept personal responsibility.

Yesterday the House voted 345-75 to ban all federal funding for the scandal-plagued advocacy group, this coming on the heels of the Census doing the same. This ruling came about after the latest videos surfaced showing ACORN employees instructing a would be “Pimp” and his “Enterprising Call-Girl” associate how to set up a prostitution house and scam the IRS.

But of course ACORN is fighting back and blaming the “Bush White house, (I thought Obama was President), Fox News and other Conservative Quarters”.

Bertha Lewis of ACORN claims that she is not too worried about losing the Government funds, even though they received $10 Million last year. She states that they rely so much more on private and corporate funding. Hmmmmm, that’s funny, they seemed a little “worried” when their initial reaction was to sue FOX news for airing the video. Keep in mind, FOX news did not do the undercover work that netted the video — www.BigGoverment.com was the first to actually publish the video.

This is not by far the first time ACORN has refused to accept personal responsibility for its actions. As a matter of fact ACORN has a long history of such actions, the following only name a few;

• ACORN accepted a $470,000 federal grant in 1977 through the VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) program to train volunteers to help low-income citizens. ACORN was accused of illegally using the resources for its political activities, and the subsequent report from a Congressional investigation found that ACORN had illegally used the money for labor organizing.

• AHC (ACORN Housing Corporation) in 1994, following a Clinton Administration grant worth more than $1 million, underwent an investigation by the Inspector General of AmeriCorps who found that AHC used government funds to register low-income individuals for paid ACORN memberships. This was a clear violation of federal law. The Inspector General found evidence of inappropriate transactions charged to AHC, taxpayers funding, “by ACORN or other ACORN-related entities.” Additionally, ACH had lied about maintaining separation from ACORN, which engages in overt political activities. The Inspector General found evidence of “ACORN having ‘created’ AHC to serve purposes common to both organizations” and “noted numerous transactions involving AHC and other ‘fraternal’ ACORN-related corporations.” The grant was ultimately revoked.

• In 2008 The New York Times reported that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN’s founder Wade Rathke, was found to have embezzled $948,607.50 from the group and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000. ACORN executives, including Rathke, did not inform the whole board, nor law enforcement, of the embezzlement. Wade Rathke stated to the Times that “the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a ‘weapon’ into the hands of “conservatives who object to [ACORN]’s often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.” A whistleblower revealed the embezzlement in 2001; the Rathke brothers both left ACORN in 2008.

• In June 2008 the Consumers Rights League found that taxpayer money supported corporate shakedown tactics, actually counseling potential homebuyers to use “undocumented” or “under the table” income to obtain mortgages, and obtaining mortgages for undocumented workers, meaning taxpayer dollars intended to support housing counseling and easing housing woes directly funded an organization that was covering up massive fraud and engaging in questionable mortgage practices
ACORN also refuses to accept responsibility for all the Voter Fraud that they have been indicted in, they simply say that the employees were just a few bad nuts, (yes pun intended).

• In 2004, four ACORN employees were indicted by an Ohio federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms. This bust involved crack cocaine and fraudulent voter registrations with names like Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey.

• In 2005 two Colorado ACORN workers were convicted of perjury for submitting false voter registration forms; one ex-ACORN employee admitted to registering her friends 40 times.

• Virginia authorities, in 2005, found that of a sample of ACORN’s Project Vote-gathered registrations, 83% were rejected for using false or questionable information.

• Four part time ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City, Missouri in November of 2006 for voter registration fraud.

• In 2006 ACORN was investigated for submitting over one thousand false voter registrations in St. Louis, Missouri. 1,492 fraudulent voter registrations were identified, and eight ACORN workers plead guilty to federal election fraud.

• Five Washington state ACORN workers were sentenced in 2007 to jail time for attempted election fraud. ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms in which the names were made up. All but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes.

• In 2008, the Michigan Secretary of State office told the Detroit Free Press that ACORN had been submitting a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications to vote.

• The Bernalillo County clerk in New Mexico notified prosecutors in 2008 that the office had received 1,100 fraudulent voter registration cards that had been turned in to her office by ACORN. Some cards contained the same name as voters who had already registered

• In June 2008, an ACORN Project Vote spokesman acknowledged that 35 percent of the cards turned into Louisiana officials were duplicates. One woman, for instance, had five cards turned in for her, and other instances that included voters stating that they had never filled out a registration document.

Even in the criminal justice system most states have a “Three Strike” rule, with this rule if you commit the same illegal offense three times than you are down for the count with a minimum sentence. Now one of those crimes is called “Leading organized crime”., well all the above crimes stated look pretty organized to me, organized enough that they organized them over and over
and over again.

The liberal-statist media has refused to cover this story fully and when they do, reporters like MSNBC anchor Norah O’Donnell literally fret on air that the methods used, “might be viewed as entrapment and that some conservative activists with their own hidden agenda used hidden cameras to get” this stuff”, aaaaaah, yes, this coming from the same network that brought us “To Catch a Predator”, which really was a great tool for law enforcement by the way.

I must end this article with recognition of the good work that ACORN has done in the past, and I am sure still doing in many places. ACORN really does and has, every day, helped many working families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes and provided many other community services that are often invaluable to a community. These services are available with the help of the Government and other donors like SEIU.

That does not devoid their criminal actions.

When people fail to accept personal responsibility, than it is fair and wise that they be shown some “tough love”, and that the keys to their “playhouse” be taken away, Congress has done just that. Unfortunately however this does not mean that all there other sister companies that they operate will lose funding. I don’t see Congress going to the effort to make sure that ACORN’s 270 groups all lose their funding. Yes, the same 270 groups/Corporations that operate out of the very same building that houses SEIU, the SEIU that donated 60.7 million to elect President Obama. Therefore no matter what, one way or another American taxpayers will continue to fund ACORN’s corrupt practices until someone finally orders an independent investigation into their criminal behaviors that have wasted so many of those tax dollars. So my fellow taxpayers all I can say at this point is once again you will pay for another corporation’s failure to accept “personal responsibility” and the only left to say after that is, B.O.H.I.C.A and, alas, it won’t be the last time.

Until next time, stand proud, be passionate my fellow patriots and we will prevail.

BreeLee Johnston is the founder of United American Tea Party which is a Chapter of Just Patriots Inc in St. Johns County. She is a member of the National Leadership Council of Tea Party Patriots as well as the Florida Coordinator for ICaucus.org. She also works with the Paul Porter show daily on WFOY News Talk 1240 from 3-5 PM in addition to contributing a regular guest editorial to Historic City News.