What is ACORN?

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio is calling for ACORN to be defunded. "The latest allegations of voter registration fraud by ACORN are further evidence that this group cannot be trusted with another dollar of the taxpayers' money," he said.

ACORN helped make the term "affordable housing" a Washington staple. So as the roots of the financial crisis are laid bare, take a hard look at ACORN. If the political left is an abstract concept for social justice and socialist sentiments, then ACORN is its avatar. [snip]

ACORN's work has been primarily focused on affordable housing for low-income families first through community activism to force improvements to public housing. The group initially wanted to also increase welfare, which it succeeded in doing in cities across the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but the effort ultimately created concentrated pockets of poverty that led to overwhelming crime that knew no borders; the residents themselves became easy prey for the criminal drug culture.

In 1984, ACORN expanded widely, establishing chapters in a dozen cities and winning over poor and working-class members who took up the mantle for living wages and single-payer health care. ACORN also protested against insurance redlining issues. In 1991, ACORN began lobbying for banks to offer low-interest loans to people of limited financial means with little to no collateral. ACORN then worked to defeat the weakening of the Community Reinvestment Act in 1991...

[and from that little acorn sprang our global financial crisis]

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