Activist group ACORN facing plethora of problems

WASHINGTON — ACORN, the community activist group shown on Internet videos aiding a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute, started in 1970 to help poor people in Arkansas.

It expanded into a multimillion-dollar conglomerate with a mission so far-flung that two New York schools now bear its name, two radio stations are affiliates and a man its political arm endorsed is the president of the United States.

Has it grown too big for its own good?

The organization praised for its Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and treated by federal, state and local governments as a valuable public resource has had nearly $1 million embezzled from it by its founder's brother. The openly Democratic-leaning group has seen its employees accused of voter registration fraud, and taking it down has become a cause celèbre for Republican lawmakers, activists and pundits.

As if volunteers allegedly signing up cartoon character Mickey Mouse to vote didn't give ACORN enough bad publicity, the public is enthralled with new videos distributed on the Internet and aired on television news shows showing ACORN employees in Brooklyn, N.Y., advising a couple posing as a hooker and pimp to lie to get housing aid, and employees in other cities counseling the pair on tax, banking and immigration issues.

Many Democrats used to advertise their ACORN connections. Now, however, the Democratic-led Senate has voted to cut off its grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Democrat-dominated House doesn't want it to get any federal money, period.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called the conduct in the videos "completely unacceptable" and a top supporter and prominent ally of President Barack Obama, John Podesta, is on an ACORN advisory panel working to clean up the mess.

Republicans are using ACORN to portray Democrats as corrupt and distract Obama from his policy agenda, the same way that Democrats used issues involving Halliburton, the giant government contractor and ex-employer of former Vice President Dick Cheney, against the GOP during the Bush years. Top Republicans from congressional leaders to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger want criminal probes of ACORN's activities and conservative voters are pressuring news organizations to cover the situation.

The Census Bureau this month cut ties with ACORN for the upcoming census, and a nonpartisan watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste, this past week named senators who voted to continue financing ACORN as its "September Porkers of the Month."