Charles Jaco is a leftwing journalist for the local Fox channel whose never met a Tea Party slur he didn't like. Jaco did hit pieces on the April 15th Tea Party, comparing us to domestic terrorists and bringing in the Southern Poverty Law Center to compare us to militia volunteers. His report was so egregious, the Fox Channel apologized for it the next day, dismissing his allegations of connections from the Tea Party to any domestic terror group.
Not content to smear regular citizens, Jaco is now out trying to give a sympathetic audience to the Missouri branch of ACORN, run by head organizer, Glen Burleigh. Forced to respond because both houses of Congress voted to shut off funds to ACORN, Burleigh did a small media tour where he claimed federal money wasn't going his part of ACORN, and they are an effective organization helping low-income households with advice on home buying and foreclosure. Jaco was one of those stops.
Jaco, whose purpose was to give ACORN cover, never followed up on that statement, so allow me to.
1) What "assistance" is being given these low income households? Buying a house and stopping foreclosure are very difficult tasks that even those with the best credit and licensed real estate agents have troubles with. Real Estate law is enormously complex. What advice is being given, exactly, and at what price?
2) How are the ACORN workers who give this advice in the state of Missouri trained? Nationwide we see that there is a training problem with ACORN, as the O'Keefe/Giles video shows - the advice given was actually illegal. What typical advice is given by ACORN employees, and how are they certified?
3) Real Estate requires extensive documentation. Does ACORN provide this documentation and continue to work with the low-income household after an initial consultation. It's tremendously easy to "gum up the works" of a foreclosure, but all that buys is time. Is there any quality control that ensures that ACORN advice actually helps the people they are working with, or is this temporary assistance ony designed to make it more difficult to foreclose? This is the heart of the matter. What is the quality of the assistance given by ACORN to the public, and does it actually help, or is it only a way to take advantage of low-income neighborhoods for the purpose of gathering political power?
4) ACORN is on record as claiming that the minimum wage campaign was designed to build databases of potential voters for use in elections. Was the minimum wage campaign in Missouri used as a way to build up a database of potential voters for the 2006 and 2008 elections?
5) Burleigh says ACORN Housing is a separate corporation with separate staff and funding. When did the ACORN Housing office in St Louis shut down, and why does the current office still use the same phone numbers and space. Did ACORN move into that space, and if so were there lease transfers, rental documents, or other documents drawing a clear line between ACORN Housing and Missouri ACORN?
6) Mayor Slay is on record in June 2009 as giving $100,000 to ACORN to help with mortgage foreclosures. Who are the people that were involved in that from ACORN, and what happened to that money?
These are the real questions for Missouri ACORN. Jaco lacks the objectivity to ask real questions, and so we must turn to other journalists and find out. What are the answers to those six questions on ACORN?
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