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Why Are Our Priorities So Screwed Up?

Because of YouTube tapes revealing some of the workers in the organization have read Charlie Rangel’s book on tax preparation and subscribe to John Edward’s ideals of higher moral living, the community organizing group ACORN has been thrown out of the census process, defunded by congress, and is even being completely disavowed by the former ACORN Lawyer-In-Chief. They are thankfully headed down the rat-hole of history. I discovered something recently concerning ACORN that leaves me a bit dismayed. Some how I missed that back back in July of 2008 it was revealed that the brother of one of the founding members of the organization embezzled about a million dollars back in 1999 -2000, then not only hid the fact from outsiders for almost ten years, but kept the guy on the payroll. And it gets better:

Acorn chose to treat the embezzlement of nearly $1 million eight years ago as an internal matter and did not even notify its board. After Points of Light noticed financial irregularities in early June, it took less than a month for management to alert federal prosecutors, although group officials say they have no clear idea yet what the financial impact may be.

A whistle-blower forced Acorn to disclose the embezzlement, which involved the brother of the organization’s founder, Wade Rathke.

The brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from Acorn and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000, Acorn officials said, but a small group of executives decided to keep the information from almost all of the group’s board members and not to alert law enforcement.

Like the latest ACORN scandal, this did make the news, but only sort of. Yes, the story appeared in the New York Times, but it seems to have died a day later, which was why I may have missed it. Even conservative blogs I frequent didn’t seem to mention it. No one seemed to care much that not only had someone within the organization had committed a major crime, but the organization itself committed a second crime by covering it up. Wasn’t this like Enron and Worldcomm, only on a smaller scale?

What disturbs me is this – ACORN is revealed to be corrupt from the top down, with senior officials embezzling then hiding the crime for nine years, and nothing happens, yet when just a few low level workers are caught on tape advising a badly costumed would-be hooker / pimp team, then ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE and ACORN becomes poison to the President, Congress, and everyone else. Maybe the Bill Clinton defenders were right after all – It IS all about the sex.

No one care about stealing millions of dollars anymore, but I guess when half the government officials are tax cheats and the government is running a two plus trillion dollar deficit, what is the deal of a measly missing million. Hell, in some circles that would be considered good creative government accounting. California, I’m looking your way.

PS. ACORN fired the whistle-blowers who spilled the beans. When did we stop caring about whistle-blowers? After they were done taking down Enron and busting Bush’s balls.