For those who make excuses for ACORN ...
Understand they are an activist organization with a clear political agenda that has weaseled its way to being branded as a "community organization" that is involved with "helping people get registered to vote," which they receive major public funding for. People aren't talking about shutting them down, they are talking about only removing their public funding, and only some of it. They've tapped all sorts of funds, including stimulus money.
As much as people bitch about Fox, Fox isn't taking public funds and stimulus money, ACORN is. ACORN is just fine as an activist organization and a political machine, it's just that people are tired of them being publicly funded. ACORN isn't like NPR or PBS at all, and I take issue with people who claim NPR and PBS are liberals, I only see extremely limited Libertarian-Socialist agendas and more Libertarian in general without any Capitalist or Socialist leaning (and that's a good thing IMHO). But ACORN is definitely an activist organization with a Libertarian-Socialist agenda (and I would question the "Libertarian" aspect at times like I do Republicans who claim such too).
They are an organization without accountability, and that's the continuing issues as they are rightly scrutinized. It's sad that only Fox has had the balls to do it as such organizations (right or left-leaning) should be exposed. I know there are a lot of organizations like that right now, across-the-board. But ACORN has its major political alignments and it is getting old. It's a very legitimate complaint from a lot of people. Yes, I know, every activist organization has its "bad apples," but ACORN's seems to be systematic in nature. And it's been like that for a long, long time. That's what people are taking issue with when it comes to public funding.
