ACORN Challenge for the GOP
Republicans are all over the ACORN scandal and calling for an end to federal subsidies for the group. Well that’s great, but it’s not exactly going out on a limb and pushing for a major budget reform.
Why doesn’t the GOP use this as an opportunity to call for completely ending the programs that funded ACORN? Wouldn’t it be better to save the $13 billion a year that HUD spends on so-called “community development” programs, rather than just the few million dollars a year that taxpayers spend on ACORN?
The federal programs that funded ACORN are particularly wasteful ones, including Community Development Block Grants, Housing Counseling Assistance, and others as Tad DeHaven has explained.
At a minimum, the GOP should be arguing that with deficits of $1 trillion the federal government cannot afford to intervene in classic local and private activities such as community development. Boehner and Canter want the IRS to cut ties with ACORN, but they should be leading the charge to end porky “community development” spending altogether.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Tax and Budget Policy
Marion Barry, Defender of Marriage
Former District of Columbia mayor and current councilman Marion Barry
told church leaders and other opponents of gay marriage Tuesday that he opposed the city council’s decision to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the District.
Calling himself “a politician who is moral,” Barry said he would have voted against the measure if he had been present at the April 6 session.
As a service to our beyond-the-Beltway readers, we should note that Barry is a career politician with 29 years on the public payroll (not counting six months in jail); four wives, one of whom went to jail for embezzling from the federally funded “jobs program” they co-founded; countless extramarital relationships, many of them consensual; a federal conviction for crack use while mayor; eight years of unpaid taxes; and a virtually unbroken trail of graft and scandal in his four terms as mayor.
You wonder what the politicians who are not moral are like.
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