I Say, "Nuts to ACORN!"

Until this past presidential campaign, I doubt most Americans had ever heard of ACORN, President Obama's former community organizing employer.

ACORN (an acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has received hundreds of millions of dollars over the years from the federal government. In turn, ACORN has made millions of dollars in campaign contributions to liberal Democrats, so that liberal Democrats can keep funneling more millions of our tax dollars back to ACORN.

I have been missing the boat! I must be a chump to work at a real job and pay my own way through life. But those days are over. Allow me to announce the formation of my new civic organization, Deadbeats Using Federal Funding (DUFF) and invite you to join me.

As a member of DUFF, you will be part of a great political movement designed to ease the financial strain of the working class.

We will implement our DUFF agenda using the ACORN template. First, we apply for a federal grant of $1 million to set up shop. Out of that first million, we can pay five staff members an annual salary of $100,000 each. We'll use another $200,000 for miscellaneous office expenses and overhead.

That leaves us $300,000 that we can contribute to help get more Democrats elected: Democrats who will be so grateful to us for our campaign donations that they will gladly increase our funding to $3 million in the next round of federal pork-barrel appropriations. Way cool!

Now that we have $3 million in the new annual budget, we can increase our staffing to 15 people making $100,000 per year. We can upgrade our offices and increase our overhead allowance to $500,000 per year. I'm thinking we need a gym and a nice wine cellar in the new administrative complex - and don't you think I'd look hot tooling around in a new company Humvee?

This still leaves us a cool $1 million to contribute to more Democratic candidates. We are rubbing elbows with the real movers and shakers now. Politicians with their hands out will see DUFF as a steady cash cow. It will be a cinch to get our DUFF appropriations raised to $10 million in the next Porkulous Bill.

The sky is the limit here! We at DUFF can grow as large as the government allows, and we never have to worry about producing anything, since we don't have to answer to any customers. All we have to do is make sure we keep about 30% of our budget in reserve to pay kickbacks - oops - I mean, give campaign contributions to our Democratic benefactors.

The politicians in DUFF's pocket are happy to appropriate all the money we need. After all, it's not costing them a dime. It's tax dollars, taken from the fools who keep electing them, and they love to gain favors using other people's money.

Think hard about this: a politician can steer millions of dollars of OUR money to any group he wants to fund. It costs him nothing. In return, he garners a steady annual stream of campaign contributions that helps keep him in power. The group receiving the tax money is living entirely off the government. They don't have to earn what they receive. It costs them nothing to "give away" campaign contributions to the people who gave them the money in the first place. Where is there any incentive for accountability?

It is my understanding that ACORN is slated to receive $4 BILLION from the new Porkulous Bill that former ACORN member President Obama just signed. The president certainly knows how to take care of his own, doesn't he? If it was anybody else but the federal government doing this, there would be a RICO investigation underway!

My question is: Why do we allow organizations that receive federal funding to make campaign contributions? This is such a blatant conflict of interest that it should be a no-brainer. There should be a law against this - but it will never happen until we get rid of the band of thieves that currently controls Congress.

There is another thing that bugs me about ACORN. This organization ostensibly began as a non-profit group to register voters. Now think really hard about this: the federal government is funding voter registration drives.

Is this really something we should be paying for?

Call me old-fashioned, but guess what I did when I turned 18 and was eligible to vote - I went downtown to the City-County Building and filled out a voter registration form at the County Clerk's office. No ACORN representative ever came to visit me. Nobody held my hand. No one had to persuade me that I needed to register. I did it on my own. When I registered to vote, the only expense to the taxpayers was the cost of the form. What a novel concept: self reliance!

That is the way it should be. This is America. We are supposed to be free, independent and responsible citizens.

It is easier to register to vote than it is to sign up for food stamps. There are even voter registration forms you can send in with your automobile license plate renewal. If there are people out there who cannot get themselves registered to vote without federal help, I sincerely question whether they should be allowed around sharp objects or small children. What kind of doofus is so far gone that he needs an ACORN rep to hold his hand through the voter registration process?

I do realize, of course, that we are talking about members of the Democratic Party, an organization that wants to enfranchise convicted felons, vagrants and illegal immigrants, on the assumption, I presume, that the more politically ignorant the voter, the more likely he will vote for liberals.

I don't want to deny the vote to anyone. It is one of our most precious rights. But let's put on our big boy pants here and be realistic. If some people are so uninformed and unmotivated that they cannot make the token efforts necessary to register themselves to vote, I believe our political conversation is better off without their input.

Anyone who does not have enough common sense to register himself to vote should do all of us a favor and stay home on Election Day.

ACORN deserves to wither on the vine. It is ridiculous that we funnel our scarce tax dollars into this cesspool of graft. How long will liberals bleed the US Treasury dry before we figure out we have been played for suckers?