OUR-WA fact checking omitted ACORN links

Brad Shannon’s Sept. 22 article, “Washington’s latest anti-McKenna ad has some truth,” fact checking the ads and describing the group behind them, had factual deficiencies itself.

First, the group airing the ads is not “Our Washington” but “OUR Washington” – OUR stands for Organization United for Reform. Another omitted fact is that OUR-Washington is a branch of the discredited and disbanded group ACORN, quietly re-branded under a new name.

Also omitted is the fact that their major funder is the ACORN-affiliated public employee and service sector union, Service Employees International Union.

Considering their notoriety, ACORN simply carrying on as OUR-WA should not go unremarked. News items referring to OUR-WA should state “the group formerly known as ACORN” as a service to readers.

Now, I’m for giving ACORN as OUR-WA a second chance to demonstrate it can be an honorable participant in political discourse. Its ads, however, verify that this Organization United for Reform is still desperately in need of reform itself.

Declaring OUR Washington’s ads “partly true” is implausibly charitable, especially since other fact checkers have stamped them as “mostly false.”

Shannon must have superior eyesight indeed, to distinguish the single grain of truth baked into its loaf of falsehoods.