Hey Fox News! ACORN Has Been Exonerated Again!

Greetings from the West Coast! Since moving out of Cincinnati to Los Angeles a few months ago, the whirlwind of activity has led to a great lull of posting activity on my part. I have no immediate timetable for a more regular posting schedule, but I did want to pass along this item that has been overlooked by the rest of the corporate media.

I'm sure many of you vividly remember when Fox News and other media outlets began running this video through much of their 24-hour news cycle. It is a video of Conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles going into ACORN offices and supposedly getting all sorts of free advice on how to legally get away with prostitution:



The news media, especially Fox, acted as judge, jury and executioner treating O'Keefe as a celebrity (until he was arrested for breaking into a Congressmember's office) and creating such a stir that Congress pulled all Federal funding for the organization.

Despite the actions of Congress being struck downin court, ACORN suffered enough damage to fold and close operations.

Interesting considering this news from a Government Accountability Office report that was released on Monday:

...a preliminary probe by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)of ACORN has found no evidence the association or related organizations mishandled the $40 million in federal money they received in recent years.

So this is yet ANOTHER instance of ACORN being exonerated of any wrong doing.

I am sure glad that Fox News has issued corrections and given these findings the coverage that they gave to the pimp and prostitute videos.

Wait...they HAVEN'T given this any coverage? Oh well, at least an organization devoted to helping the poor didn't have to fully shut down operations or anything.


This is cross posted here.

Obama to Tackle Social Security Reform?

Here is an item to watch. According to Co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, Dean Baker:

Word has it that President Obama intends to appoint a task force the week after next which will be charged with "reforming" Social Security. According to inside gossip, the task force will be led entirely by economists who were not able to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which is giving the country its sharpest downturn since the Great Depression.

Let's hope that Baker is dead wrong about this and that this rumor (I don't like to put my faith in articles that start with the phrase "word has it") will remain a rumor. Tackling Social Security reform is a silly idea at a time of such economic crisis and plus, as Baker points out, Social Security can pay out its benefits for the next 40 years without reform according to the GAO's own figures. Remember what happened when President Bush tried to reform Social Security?

Perhaps President Obama's time would be better spent continuing to focus on getting the economy back on track and if anything is in need of reform in the near future, it is the Health Care industry, not Social Security. Stay tuned on this one.