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My advice for Jon Stewart
Instead of piling on with the faux outrage over ACORN, Stewart would do a lot better by sending someone into KPMG or other top accounting firms, and to tax havens, wearing a wire and hidden camera. It would be a lot more illuminating to see who took the bait of helping a prospective "client" set up an offshore account and give advice on illegal tax evasion than to see the penny-ante stuff ACORN workers did. Individuals are estimated by the Tax Justice Network to have $11.5 trillion (with a T) in offshore accounts, costing world governments about $250 billion a year in tax revenue. http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=103
Given what we know about 2006's and 2008's "voter registration fraud" baseless accusations, I am really surprised that Steward bit on this right-wing crap that illustrates nothing and may turn out to be more manipulation than reality.
And yes, I'm biased, ACORN was my first job out of college, June 1978-December 1979. But I'm still right.
Given what we know about 2006's and 2008's "voter registration fraud" baseless accusations, I am really surprised that Steward bit on this right-wing crap that illustrates nothing and may turn out to be more manipulation than reality.
And yes, I'm biased, ACORN was my first job out of college, June 1978-December 1979. But I'm still right.
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Isn't a few dumb employees at ACORN such a very very beeg feesh for Jon to hook? They probably get tens of millions in bonuses too.
September 22, 2009 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's nice to see Jon being a little more evenhanded in his criticism. The left is no more immune to comedy than the right. I'd like to see him take on the PIRGs as well as ACORN.
Fortunately, ACRON is probably done as a national organization now, which is nice. They've done as much as anyone to screw things up; encouraging people who couldn't afford homes to buy them through (often) risky mortgage products and then staging fancy protests at the foreclosure sale.
September 22, 2009 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
You realize that the loans ACORN wrote are performing better than most other classes of mortgage, right?
It turns out one of the most distressed classes of loans is rich people with good credit who do the math and realize they owe more than the property will appreciate over the next 10 years and just walk away - usually after maxing out their equity lines of credit first (and credit cards). And usually they don't even give a warning that the loan is distressed. They figure the 3 years it will take to rehabilitate themselves is well worth 200K, and in today's economy any stigma associated with bankruptcy is nonexistent.
In the words of the immortal Public Enemy: Don't believe the hype.
September 22, 2009 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I'd be in favor of substantially more draconian bankruptcy and credit history laws, which would probably help with the number of bankruptcies.
And the rates of delinquency (while high for wealthier borrowers as well) are pretty smoothly negatively correlated with income. Oddly enough, the people ACORN preys on are the least able to help themselves and the least educated.
September 23, 2009 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink