Editing 79-02-A6 (section)

= Anti-Poverty Abuses II =

<TABLE BORDER="0"><TR><TD WIDTH="60%" ROWSPAN="2">
=== Transcript ===
Last time I was talking to you about the report of the House
Appropriations Committee Investigations Staff that documented abuses
and mismanagement in ACTION, the federal anti-poverty agency headed
by Carter appointee Sam Brown.

Today, let's get to the National Grants Program, a new policy
initiated by Brown. Its supposed purpose was to help the poor help
themselves. Instead, this is just some of what the Congressional
investigators found:

--One recipient of an ACTION grant, a group calling itself [[wikipedia:Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now|ACORN]]
and CORAP, used volunteers from VISTA (that Volunteers in Service to
America, an ACTION division) to get "involved in the Arkansas primary
election last spring" ... five VISTA volunteers were actively engaged in
organizing a labor union, a violation of federal statutes ... accounting
procedures for the grant were called "careless and inadequate-- by the
report ... monitoring of the grant by ACTION state-level officials is called
"non-existent" ... the grant was so abused, and the projects to help the
poor so mismanaged, that this grant was the last ACTION grant that will
be given to ACORN and its subsidiary CORAP.

--Next there is the [https://keywiki.org/Midwest_Academy Midwest Academy in Chicago], another organization
receiving ACTION dollars -- meaning tax dollars. This group, dedicated to
confrontation politics and the redistribution of income, is headed by a
former officer of the notorious Students for a Democratic Society. Midwest
Academy, according to the House report "did not meet any of the criteria"
that ACTION itself asks for in a grantee. It has not provided uniform
training, and of the groups that it trained with federal anti-poverty
funds were described by the investigators as "organizations set up to
improve the lot of working women." Now improving the lot of working
women is a noble goal, but when you use poverty funds to help women who
are already working, something has to be wrong. Need I add that again,
just as in ACORN grant, federal money was used at one Midwest project in
a labor union organizing drive... finally, one Midwest program had
federally funded anti-poverty warriors... and this is a quote from the report
"working more to save a middle-class neighborhood landmark -- a country
club -- rather than serve the poor."

Then there is an organization receiving ACTION funds that, according
to the report, receives 90 percent of its operating funds from the federal
government, and yet lobbies for federal legislation. That's pot the way
the federal anti-poverty program is supposed to be run.

What can we conclude from all of this? Well, Sam Brown says he is
a victim of the "political right" and "Conservatives" and that the report
of a Democratically controlled committee is a "political attack".

Jimmy Carter appointed Brown. The question is what, if anything,
is Mr. Carter going to do about these latest revelations of incompetence,
scandal and abuse of our tax dollars? 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
</TD>
<TD WIDTH="10%" ROWSPAN="2">&nbsp;</TD>
<TD VALIGN="TOP" HEIGHT="250">
=== Details ===
<TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="80%">
<TR><TD WIDTH="150">Batch Number</TD><TD WIDTH="150">{{PAGENAME}}</TD></TR>
<TD>Production Date</TD><TD>01/19/[[Radio1979|1979]]</TD></TR>
<TD>Book/Page</TD><TD>N/A</TD></TR>
<TD>Audio</TD><TD></TD></TR>
<TD>Youtube?</TD><TD>No</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
</TD></TR>
<TR><TD VALIGN="TOP">
===Added Notes===
* ACORN: ''Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now''
* CORAP: ''Community Organizations Research and Action Project''
</TD></TR>
</TABLE>