The Prostitute in the Living Room

If a pimp walks into a nonprofit tax clinic and asks for advice about his prostitutes and 13 underaged & undocumented El Salvadorean girls, what should you say?

A) Sure we can help you set up a tax-sheltering brothel! (Said with more enthusaism than a Walmart greeter.)
B) That would be illegal, unethical, and immoral! (Said with self-righteous outrage.)
C) Would you happen to be actors? (Said with suspicion.)

I wish this whole ACORN scandal was a joke, even a not-so-funny one. But instead it's a not-at-all-funny ring of hellfire for the nonprofit that even Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash couldn't make sound good. Leftists can make an okay argument for why prostitution should be legalized. But pimping underaged girls?

ACORN, you've made good progress digging your own grave and now you have lots of helpers and decidedly fewer defenders to dig you out. Nonprofits will be under more supervision and observation now, having to prostitute ourselves more to show we're not poisoning trees or murdering babies. Just give it a year, and I bet my own brothel that this shit will have led to even more nonprofit restrictions -- and at some point belt-tightening becomes asphyxiation.

Straitjacket

For a change of pace, I’m blaming everything on Harry Houdini today. He was the king of escape acts, disentangling himself from (among other things) straitjackets, a Siberian prison van, packing crates, an underground burial, and a glass tank filled with water. What a smart ass. His act, and the shows of other magicians who’ve followed, have always seemed like the equivalent of a gold-plated middle finger to me: shiny, but in the end, a big, condescending Screw You. My wonder and awe are quickly followed by a complete feeling of inferiority. If he can hang upside down in a tank filled with water while wearing a straitjacket, why can’t I?

I could use some magical escape in my life right now. I’m still reading the book “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” which really should be subtitled “They’re Out To Systemically Get Us.” The book reeks of conspiracy theory, but what really gets me is that professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s theories kind of make sense.

The shadow state [the nonprofit sector], then, is real but without significant political clout, forbidden by law to advocate for systemic change, and bound by public rules and non-profit charters to stick to its mission or get out of business and suffer legal consequences if it strays along the way.

Let me translate. She’s saying the very nonprofit structure we are told to work within also binds us in a way that makes it impossible to do the entirety of what needs to be done. Wanna solve poverty? Too bad, advocacy will mess with your nonprofit status. Wanna experiment with holistic ways of treating homelessness? Good luck quantifying that for the grant report. The straitjacket of regulation keeps us workers nitpicking at details even when we know it’s not enough.

I wonder how Houdini would get us out of this one. You know, he used to dislocate his shoulders for his straitjacket act. I wonder what’s going to have to give to end ours.