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After several employees of the Tacoma ACORN office were indicted in Seattle, with the help of Tacoma prosecutors, we’re now learning more about corrupt practices within their organization.

Despite raking in a troubling 40 percent of its revenue from taxpayers over the last three years, ACORN Housing Corporation’s actions range from controversial to borderline illegal:

• AHC has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens
• AHC relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money that may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service
• ACORN’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, but AHC has recommended ten-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and reverse mortgages (which can be detrimental to senior citizens)
• AHC may have violated federal law by failing to maintain a proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and the aggressive political activities of ACORN

Not much of an advocacy / counseling group if they steer people wrong when they come in for help. Makes me wonder who’s interests they are really advocating. Actually, no it doesn’t. There’s ample evidence that they’re nothing more than a left-wing political group pretending to be something else.

When charges where filed in Seattle the organization was supposedly cooperating with authorities to prosecute their supposedly wayward employees. Considering there were several other cities where charges were filed against their employees, some of us doubted that these people were acting outside of their organization’s policies. Now we see even more evidence of corruption.

Liberals are attacking the platform adopted by the WA GOP Convention in Spokane over the weekend. Some of their attack is based on misrepresentations and some is based on values that differ greatly from the people who actually adopted the platform, the WA GOP grassroots voters.

The WA GOP Convention

I’ve been trying to get a better feel for all that went on over the weekend. I wasn’t there since I didn’t even submit my name for consideration as a delegate in the Pierce County convention. I figured I wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything there so it would be a waste of my time and money. From all reports, as I expected, it was politics as usual, something that usually turns the grassroots off and drives them away from the party (like it’s doing to me).
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It was frustration with the Washington State Republican Party (WSRP) that first prompted me to refer to myself as a ‘Republican by default’ several years ago. It stemmed from all the trips to the voting booth where I couldn’t find a candidate that I could vote for so I ended up voting against the other candidate. I still voted Republican, but only because the other guy was worse.

That same feeling returned when I showed up at the caucuses in February of this year. Fred Thompson had already withdrawn and Mitt Romney withdrew shortly before we the event. The base of the party wasn’t having a party. We were stuck with a candidate who had kicked us to the curb several times in the last six years as he journeyed leftward, probably the result of his previous defeat in the battle for the party’s presidential nomination.
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I’ve been reading some of the posts over at TheNextRight.com. It covers the spectrum of Republican opinion with a majority of the posts being relatively conservative.

There’s a pretty good article about the Ron Paul campaign. It puts it into context fairly well. I’m not a Paul fan so I’m guessing that some of his die-hard supporters would differ with the opinion presented in that post.

The left-leaning side of the site is a mixed-bag on some of the ‘moderate’ (which I consider to be ‘liberal Republican’) posts. One such post, which I won’t link to, was a typical McCain supporter bashing principled conservatives with the usual tripe. I don’t bother pointing out the error when someone posts garbage like that because I’ve found that it isn’t worth the effort.

What McCain supporters are trying to do is to paint conservatives who continue to oppose him as though they are just being petty and emotional about the issue. I do understand some of where they’re coming from, and it doesn’t paint a very good picture of them.
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Recently a commenter on this site asked me how I defined ‘a conservative’. I didn’t respond because it’s not up to me to define it.

Something liberals seldom understand is that words have meaning. If we try to change the meaning of a word we end up misrepresenting something or someone, which is usually tantamount to a lie.

That being said, I guess a definition of ‘a conservative’ is in order. Simply put, and pardon me for pulling a Webster and using another form of a word to define that word, a conservative is someone who holds to conservative principles.

An easy mistake that is made is to confuse conservative principles with the issues of the day. Another is to refer to someone as a conservative who only holds some of those principles while rejecting others.

What are those conservative principles? America has a somewhat unique set of principles that make up the ideals that we want to conserve. The individual principles are not unique, but together they are uniquely American.
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Is this what conservatives have needed? A few techno-conservatives have banded together to create a new site called ‘The NextRight‘ that they hope will shift the center of gravity on the Internet back toward the political right (h/t NewsBusters.Org). Here’s what they say about what they’re planning:

The Next Right is the place for wired activists to build a new Republican Party and conservative movement. As a community-driven grassroots action website for the right, we’ll feature in-depth political analysis, on-the-ground reports, and strategic discussion and debate.

Sounds cool to me. It sounds like they’re on the right track (pardon the pun), but many questions remain.

Will they be able to provide the tools to make it happen? Will anyone want to use the tools? Will anyone (such as the McCain campaign) try to exploit it for votes? Will real conservatives find a home there or is it just another attempt by RINO’s to sport their fake conservative credentials?
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been quoting the Bible. Well not actually quoting. And, well, not actually the Bible.

What she’s been saying is, “The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’” (More over at MichelleMalkin.com.)

The word ‘minister’ simply means ’serve’, so Nancy is telling us to serve created things. And is it an act of worship? Probably, but not one that is worshiping God. When you worship God, you worship God, not the things He created. But since she was ambiguous about who or what was is being worshiped, maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe she meant ’serving created things is also worshiping created things’.
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Frank Rogers, a long-time Pierce County Republican and active member, has written an open letter to the state party chair, Luke Esser, regarding the handling of a vote at the convention last week.

I’ve been mulling over some concerns about that vote for the last week and couldn’t settle on how (or whether) to blog about it. Since this post is available, I guess I have a way to talk about it. What held me back from commenting was that I’m not well versed on parliamentary procedures at this point, so I wasn’t sure what to focus on. This open letter helped me find a way to address it.

After reading the letter I spoke with the convention parliamentarian (Alex Hays, see our discussion about another matter at the convention in the comments here.) His points about the County Executive endorsement vote were basically:
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Terry Bergeson, WA State Superintendent of Public Instruction, spoke at the Pierce County GOP Convention on Saturday. Now we find out that she approved an effort to bring children from public schools in 25 counties to see the Dalai Lama. When asked whether she would do the same for the Pope, her response was:

[Essex] PORTER: Would the Superintendent of Public Instruction urge schools to bring kids to the Pope?

[Terry] BERGESON: Well, I probably couldn’t get away with that as the Pope, Essex. But the Dalai Lama is a man of the whole world.

Radio talk show host Dori Monson talked with Bergeson about the issue. Give it a listen. She tries to make a distinction between the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Buddhists, and the Pope, spiritual leader of Roman Catholics. But as she does she describes Dalai Lama’s efforts as religious in nature, bringing our hearts, minds and spirits together to bring more compassion.
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Dino Rossi, once again running against Queen Christine to take back the election that he won in ‘04, has unveiled his transportation plan for Washington state.

Funding for the plan comes from several sources:

• Less than half of revenue from vehicle sales taxes [goes to funding roads] ($7.7 billion)
• Stop charging state sales tax on transportation projects ($2.4 billion)
• Half of the current and future eastside subarea equity Sound Transit surplus ($690 million)
• Reasonable tolling ($ ?)

The plan:

• Congestion relief - nine projects given the highest priority (other than safety, stated in a video)
• Other Transportation Initiatives - Alaskan Way Viaduct, our state ferry system, and addressing the funding gap for projects statewide
• Green Initiatives - promotes the use of hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles, and provides funding to repair salmon blocking culverts owned by the WSDOT
• Transit - Transit has always been planned, and managed, at the local level. The state should not meddle in local transit decisions.

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