Wade Rathke

Not good for America; not good for the world.

"Wade Rathke said on the Fox show that when funding ran out for welfare rights [the way he made his living in the 1970s] he moved to Little Rock to start his own community organizing effort, based on that same sense of endless grievance. ACORN became skilled at moral gangsterism, shaking down governments and corporations for larger and larger amounts, making ever more ridiculous demands. (A former worker said on the show she became disillusioned when she realized ACORN was asking Sherwin-Williams for $1 billion as reparations for having manufactured lead-based paint. The money, of course, would go into ACORN's coffers.)

And that's where ACORN did itself in. It wasn't just an accident that the women in ACORN offices were willing to hand out advice on how to set up a brothel and dodge income taxes by claiming underage Central American prostitutes as dependents. ACORN simply doesn't produced good citizens. The organization is saturated with the sense that the world is one big shakedown and that anything you do to increase your share is justified."

Read the whole piece by a former welfare worker of the same era, William Tucker, The Real Problem with Acorn.