ACORN was the kind of organization that everyone wanted to be apart of to help communities across nation. Now it’s become a sinking ship that’s going down fairly fast.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is a collection of community-based organizations that work to improve health care, affordable housing, voter registration and basic community development. Their goal is to “unite welfare recipients with needy working people around issues such as school lunches, unemployment and Vietnam veterans’ rights.”

This program was originally a good idea. It’s had a positive affect on our nation for a long time. But the association has been the subject of heated controversy lately.

Just in the past presidential election, ACORN has been in the media for voter registration fraud, with lawsuits from 21 states. ACORN employees fabricated registered voters, making up names like Mickey Mouse and Tony Romo to meet their quota of voters registered.

Most recently, a pair went and did some undercover work in ACORN. Their names are Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe. Hannah is a 20-year-old journalism student and James is a 25-year-old documentary filmmaker. Hannah got the idea for her and James to pose as a pimp and a prostitute see about getting help from ACORN.

They ended up getting a lot of help in regards to receiving help from ACORN, from being eligible for home loans, evading taxes by not calling it prostitution, but instead calling it a “performing art.”

It seems far-fetched, but would have worked because of loopholes in that state’s tax codes. They would have even been able to traffic in illegal underage sex workers from El Salvador. The ACORN workers told that the underage girls could pose as dependents of Hannah in order to get into the country.

James recorded this hidden-camera video around July 24 of this year. He produced and released the first of many tapes on the website Biggovernment.com on Sept. 9.

Following the release of the videos, ACORN fired the two women that were shown in the video. They called the video false and defamatory, claiming that supposedly, different undercover teams hadn’t been successful with attempts at other ACORN housing places.

It’s funny that ACORN is quoted as saying that the video was false and defamatory, yet they fired the two workers. Something must be going on within ACORN or else they would’ve kept the workers on and not worried about the videos as much as they are.

The videos are shocking. This is not a Republican or Democratic idea; it’s just the truth as to what is going on right now in our country. It’s not hard to find, it’s right there out in the open.

It’s disappointing what has happened to ACORN over the years. It’s gone from an organization that helped people finding homes to being a group that has serious issues in aiding illegal activities.

It doesn’t matter what side you are on, what matters is that this is corruption at its worst, and it must be stopped.