Hi-Yo, Silver! (Unless You’re Poor) May 17, 2018May 15, 2018 I once wrote a book under the pseudonym of the Lone Ranger — John Reid — and, let’s face it: a lot of time has passed. Even David Letterman is now long off the air, let alone Reid’s cry of Hi, Yo, Silver! But if you’re in the mood for a five-minute story, with the Lone Ranger in the back of a Volvo, here it is. (Thanks, Mel!) On an entirely different — tragi-serious — note, read how selfish rich people (I would argue), and their minions, killed off ACORN, which worked to help the poor and powerless. In small part: . . . ACORN advocated for the poor. In addition to helping families navigate federal aid programs, the group ran campaigns to improve city sanitation, protested against predatory lenders and registered people to vote. The nation’s top Republican politician had just declared this body of work tantamount to stealing an election. . . . . . . Nobody could find a single fraudulent vote that had been cast by someone connected to ACORN. But the ACORN story kept bouncing around conservative media anyway. Prosecutors in a few states cited a handful of ACORN employees for shoddy voter registration ― submitting incomplete forms or paperwork with bogus names like “Donald Duck.” In many cases, ACORN itself had flagged the faulty documents before turning them over to state officials, since election laws required that all registration paperwork an organization had collected be turned in. This detail often wasn’t included in the stories. . . . There’s lots more, some of it critical of Democrats for panicking and caving too quickly. Read the whole thing? If the Lone Ranger were around today, he’d have a lot of bad guys to ride out of town. What the hell is he doing in the back of a Volvo?