Well not really, it's Acorn(s).
I was watching some clips from the past year on the O'Reilly Factor (Fox News) last night and one particular section caught my eye - he had the CEO of Acorn and the Chairwoman of one Acorn chapter on his program. It baffled me because Bill was just straight forward asking both women if they thought it was okay, since he was a 'rich man', for the govt to take half or more than half of his money and give it out to various others like Acorn to then give to other people. He also asked them if they were a socialized or socialist group and the CEO in particular laughed and was saying no. But what caught my ear the most was both women saying they are not aware of the govt giving his money to them. And not aware of the govt giving any tax payers' dollars to them like that. I was very confused --- where do they think the money comes from then??? The CEO of Acorn kept saying that they 'apply for grants' and Bill was getting very frustrated with them because they refused to answer his question directly. If they apply for grants from the govt - WHERE do they think that grant money comes from?? It was truly baffling. When I applied for a grant for a college course, I knew it came from govt coffers which were really full of tax dollars... so why didn't those women admit it? He must have asked the question 4 times and never did get a direct answer, just the comments like 'I am not aware of...'. How can you not be aware of where the 'grant' money comes from? Why did they have a hard time admitting to Bill that 'yes' tax payers who are better off get their money taken from them to be filtered down to groups like Acorn? It was just really bizarre. Bill wasn't even necessarily telling them it was wrong - he was just setting it up for asking why the group that handles the money for Acorn (something like Citizens Inc) is considered a private company so his investigators are not allowed to look at their books. I believe his point was that they use tax payer dollars so his investigators should be able to look at their books - but the CEO and chairwoman would not admit it. He finally asked flat out at the end if the CEO would agree to letting his people look at the books and her response began like this: ""There you go again..."". I get Bill's point - if it is a largely publicly funded group, why can't the public find out where THEIR money is going? But according to the CEO, they apply for 'grants' and that is her excuse for it not being a publicly funded group, open to public scrutiny? WHATEVER!
Strange.
There's a possibility they DON'T know that governments produce nothing, but live off taxes taken from the citizens.
ReplyDeleteI have spoken to many working adults who often refer to "government money" as in all the grants different organizations apply for. When I tell them it's taxpayer's money,they'll argue ,"no,it's government money".
The ACORN people may be just evading the question, but with all the entrenched ignorance out there, maybe they just don't know.
DMOrris
It's possible for some people - when I was in my 20s and early 30s I called it 'govt money' too. I just didn't *think* about it. But the one woman on that show was the CEO of all Acorn. She had two different titles, but I can't remember the secondary one. You would hope that the chief exec officer of a large organization like that would have half a brain. She looked in her 40s or 50s. The other woman, the chair of one Acorn chapter, was much older than that even.
ReplyDeleteI would call it more like evasion because the CEO in particular already knew that O'Reilly was trying to get a look at the books to see where all the money was going and he had been stopped along the way. He was trying to get her to admit that the money was public from tax dollars, therefore making his case for seeing the accounting books plausible. She refused to admit it each time he asked. I can see why he was so frustrated!