ACORN, a government-funded community activist group long noted for hard-left stances, has been earning more and more notoriety for sundry shady practices.
During the presidential campaign, the organization got in trouble for voter fraud. ACORN officials blamed a few bad apples. But phony registrations filed by its employees have been discovered in a slew of states. In 2008, 14 states began investigating the group for fraud.
Then there’s the ease with which many ACORN employees are willing to advise sex slave traders on how to avoid taxes.
As you no doubt know, in September of this year, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe posed as a prostitute and a pimp at many ACORN offices. They pretended to seek advice on how to avoid paying taxes for income from the child prostitutes they said they were importing into the country. They recorded these visits with a hidden camera, and employees in all too many offices proved eager to help. ACORN responded by firing implicated employees . . . and suing Giles and O’Keefe.
Now it is coming to light that — to save money — ACORN bosses have been telling paid employees to work for them as volunteers, instead, and earn their pay by collecting unemployment insurance. This, as blogger Michael McCray notes, would be a form of fraud.
A fraud to match other ACORN policies, I guess, and the handout mentality that permeates our nation’s capital.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.