Georgia Governor Cuts Ties To ACORN

Let's start with the premise that ACORN is an organization designed and set up to help residents of poor neighborhoods achieve the American dream. I know, I know, but stop laughing long enough to read this. Here is the $64,000,000 question. Why are they only active in areas that are Democratic strongholds and have abandoned areas that while they may be lower incomes are also conservative?

That is exactly what happened here in Georgia and I would be interested in finding out about other parts of the country.

Brooks, who has worked for civil rights, housing and labor groups for decades, said ACORN’s presence in Atlanta has faded.
“I haven’t seen any ACORN activists around here in a while,” Brooks said. “It seems to me that during the election, they moved most of their activists to places like North Carolina and Virginia, since they didn’t think they would win in Georgia.”

Now bear in mind that people like to portray ACORN as an organization that was created to help out with such things as financial counseling, helping people acquire housing and generally improve the life of those living in lower income communities. So why would they move their operations away from Georgia to other states for purely political reasons?

My curiosity on this matter was piqued this week, when in light of all of the videos coming out about ACORN, I decided to call the office in Atlanta. I got a recording saying their phone had been disconnected. I checked out their page on the ACORN website and there was no information at all other then the phone number and address for the Atlanta office. Their page had not been updated since 2007. Imagine my surprise when I found out some intrepid reporter decided to go find out for themselves.

Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, said that managers in the national office decided about four months ago to close the Atlanta office. He said that one ACORN employee had been working from home to wrap up several projects.

What makes this move even more suspicious is the fact that the two metro Atlanta counties that are overwhelmingly Democrat are also experiencing the highest rates of foreclosures. It would seem that ACORN's presence would be more important now then ever before.

Did ACORN help these people get mortgages they couldn't afford and have now cut and run leaving these people high and dry and holding the bag?

The message seems to be clear and appears to be yet another way in which Democrats work to keep minorities on their political plantation. Either play along with us or we don't have the time of day for you. Deliver the votes and they will deliver the services.

I hope this message gets out to those areas who for years have voted Democrat because daddy did, that the Democrats really don't care about you and are only paying lip service to your concerns.

So really Governor Perdue cutting off ties to ACORN is sort of closing the barn door after the animals have escaped type situation, but it does make me wonder if they have been taking Georgia taxpayer dollars and spending them somewhere else.

Maybe somebody could look into that?

Gubmint Skools Fear the Competition

Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia recently signed into law legislation which makes it easier for charter schools to get funding.

The new law, called HB 881, allows a new state-appointed commission to authorize a charter school's use of a school system's per-pupil funding, including local money — even if the local board did not approve it.

The regular public schools, i.e., government schoolsaren't too happy, and of course in this over-lawyered society we have become, might take the expected next step and challenge the law in court.

Nothing like a little competition to bring out the best in folks, but of course the folks so firmly ensconced in the educational system in the administrative roles, rather then look to see what charter schools do that make them so successful and try to adopt those practices, would rather simply run the charter schools out of town.
If folks would really look at what portion of the school budget in their areas go to pay the salaries of the administrators, which is everybody from the principal on up to county board of education and compare that to what is spent in the classroom to pay the teachers and get school supplies there might be more outrage expressed by the citizens.

In Georgia, when you get your property tax bill it shows you just how much is going to education and how much goes to the county in real property tax. For me the amount targeted to schools is three times as much as what actually goes to the county. Since they have started doing this in Georgia a lot of people have started looking at the budget of their local school districts. If you gave people back that money there would be a lot more kids in charter and private schools. Once people started seeing that broken down they realized private school wasn't so expensive after all.

That is the big problem whether talking about Social Security, or Medicare or other taxes taken out of the paycheck, people never see the money so they don't miss it. Imagine if you actually got to bring home every penny of your salary? But that is a topic for another post.

Update: Gov Perdue also signed into law the bill whcih gives gun owners who have concealed carry permits greater freedoms in regards to where they can bring their gun.

Governor Sonny Perdue on Wednesday signed legislation allowing guns in restaurants, on public transportation and in parks.

The new law would only apply to the roughly 300,000 Georgians that have concealed weapons permits. Those permit holders have passed criminal background checks.