ACORN workers caught on tape apparently advising on child prostitution

[Bricker]

Here's the CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/10/acorn.prostitution/index.html?iref=mpstoryview) report.

Scott Levenson, a spokesman at ACORN's national offices, says "The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at 'gotcha journalism."

But A local spokeswoman told The Associated Press that both employees seen in the video were fired.


Not sure how both can be true. Having watched the tape, I don't see much defensible about the conduct of the ACORN advisors shown.

Is there?

[E-Sabbath]

... Can't watch the tape right now, but fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, the article looks bad. Woah. Well, morons are morons.

[RTFirefly]

Shouldn't the title of this post have a (RO) in it, and be in another forum?

[Mr. Moto]

If you're outraged, start one right up. Me, I'm just a bit bemused.

[Czarcasm]

If you're outraged, start one right up. Me, I'm just a bit bemused.Child prostitution amuses you?

[Frank]

Having watched the tape, I don't see much defensible about the conduct of the ACORN advisors shown.
Neither do I.

The conservative filmmakers unsuccessfully attempted similar ruses at the group's offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, California, and New York, Levenson said.
Sounds like O'Keefe was trolling for idiots, and managed to find a couple.

[Giles]

Child prostitution amuses you?
If you read the story linked by the OP, you'll find that no children actually worked as prostitutes in the making of the story.

[C3]

I don't think there's anything defensible about what the workers did and they were rightfully fired, if what happened in the article is true (I haven't watched the video). I can see how the ACORN spokesperson's statement can also be true, though, if conclusions were made by the filmmakers that this is somehow and endemic problem within ACORN or if the film was manipulated to draw larger conclusions about ACORN's involvement in this (in contrast to the story being about two stupid people who happen to work for ACORN). They apparently tried this stunt in a bunch of different locations and the Baltimore people were the only ones to take the bait.

[Gyrate]

I have to admit to bristling at the return of the phrase "gotcha journalism", even if this usage is somewhat more appropriate than its earlier appearance.
Sounds like O'Keefe was trolling for idiots, and managed to find a couple.Yep. In fact, it's remarkable that it took six cities before they found some - usually idiots are thick on the ground in all environments.

I'd love to see the tapes from the other five cities though, to see whether the previous refusals to help were polite or, erm, "emphatic".

[Kimstu]

Child prostitution amuses you?

Was this a whoosh? If so, you caught me; if not, "bemused" and "amused" mean different things.

Not sure how both can be true. Having watched the tape, I don't see much defensible about the conduct of the ACORN advisors shown.

Is there?

If they were seriously offering advice to clients (or muckrakers posing as clients) trying to set up an illegal prostitution ring, then no, it's completely indefensible.

However, I'd like to see fuller information before I definitively pronounce sentence:

The video footage -- which has been edited and goes to black in some areas -- was recorded and posted online Thursday by James O'Keefe, a conservative activist. He was joined on the video by another conservative, Hannah Giles, who posed as the prostitute in the filmmakers' undercover sting. [...]

"The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at 'gotcha journalism,' " said Scott Levenson, a spokesman at ACORN's national offices. "This film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed. ACORN wants to see the full video before commenting further."

The conservative filmmakers unsuccessfully attempted similar ruses at the group's offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, California, and New York, Levenson said.

On the one hand, I don't see how anyone at ACORN national offices can say for certain what happened at the Baltimore office if he hasn't yet seen the full video. On the other hand, the muckrakers in this case are apparently motivated by a strong desire to cause trouble for ACORN.

In any case, though, it was at the very least pretty stupid and irresponsible for the Baltimore ACORN workers to do or say anything that even appeared to indicate tolerance or support for activities involving illegal prostitution.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

This was a couple of politically motivated slimeballs out to smear ACORN. I wonder how many ACORN people they had to go to before they could find a couple who played along. Congratulation. If you search hard enough you can find people in any profession who will behave inappropriately. What is that supposed to prove about the profession?

This says nothing about ACORN, so I don't see why it's newsworthy. All of the right wing smear attempts against ACORN have been disgusting, baseless and transparently racist, in my opinion.

[Hamlet]

This was a couple of politically motivated slimeballs out to smear ACORN. I wonder how many ACORN people they had to go to before they could find a couple who played along. At least 6 other cities. Funny thing I didn't see a single "ACORN workers don't help child prostitutes!" announced anywhere or even mentioned and brought up for "debate". Amazing how that works out.

[Shodan]

A local spokeswoman told The Associated Press that both employees seen in the video were fired.

"The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at 'gotcha journalism,' " said Scott Levenson, a spokesman at ACORN's national offices. "This film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed. ACORN wants to see the full video before commenting further."So they fired the workers before they had even seen the whole video. I thought ACORN was all about worker's rights and all that.

I wonder how they would have reacted if some big company had fired an employee before finding out all the facts.

Isn't ACORN the one who wants minimum wage to apply to everyone except them (http://www.rottenacorn.com/)? And there is the election fraud thing (http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/may/04/criminal-charges-filed-against-acorn-two-employees/).

I wonder if ACORN employees are considered "community organizers"? :D

Regards,
Shodan

[Jackmannii]

This was a couple of politically motivated slimeballs out to smear ACORN. I wonder how many ACORN people they had to go to before they could find a couple who played along. At least 6 other cities. Funny thing I didn't see a single "ACORN workers don't help child prostitutes!" announced anywhere or even mentioned and brought up for "debate". Amazing how that works out. "And in other news, all commercial airline flights but one reached their destinations safely today."

[BobLibDem]

And there is the election fraud thing (http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/may/04/criminal-charges-filed-against-acorn-two-employees/).

Whoop-dee-doo. They paid some people $5 for getting 21 registrations. OK, if it's against the law, they shouldn't do it. But jeez, is this worth getting excited about? And they turned in some fraudulent registrations. In many cases, local law requires them to do so. And they flag any suspicious registrations for the local officials. And none of the fraudulent registrations resulted in any illegal votes. A pretty wise man once said remove the plank from your own eye before looking at the speck in your brother's.

[Max Torque]

Withholding judgment until I see the whole thing. There's nothing in the story or the video that clearly shows anything along the lines of, "Hey, I want to start a child prostitution ring, can you help me with that?" "Sure, let me tell you how to sneak unregistered teen hookers past customs!" Funny that the film's creators pulled a ding-dong-ditch on being interviewed.

Frankly, from what the video showed, it sounded like the two "undercover journalists" went into the office asking for tax advice, then started tossing out lines about the alleged prostitution stuff. The little clips shown don't give us much to tell whether the employees were even taking them seriously or not; they may have been blowing them off as cranks and just giving enough advice to satisfy them and get them out of the office. For all I can tell from the video, the "journalist" may have portrayed himself as a foreign bumpkin who didn't understand the difference between a "performing artist" and a "prostitute". Doesn't Jeff Dunham do a bit about how he performs for people and makes them happy to make money, with his pimp-daddy ventriloquist dummy answering, "Then you da ho!"?

[C3]

So they fired the workers before they had even seen the whole video. I thought ACORN was all about worker's rights and all that.

I wonder how they would have reacted if some big company had fired an employee before finding out all the facts.

They could have ascertained the facts by other means, like, perhaps, interviewing the employees involved? Asking witnesses? Considering it sounds like the film was heavily edited, it seems like that would be a more accurate way of figuring out what happened, anyway.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Whoop-dee-doo. They paid some people $5 for getting 21 registrations. OK, if it's against the law, they shouldn't do it. But jeez, is this worth getting excited about? And they turned in some fraudulent registrations. In many cases, local law requires them to do so. And they flag any suspicious registrations for the local officials. And none of the fraudulent registrations resulted in any illegal votes. A pretty wise man once said remove the plank from your own eye before looking at the speck in your brother's.
It should be added that ACORN is not permitted to disallow registration forms on its own, no matter how obviously fraudulent they may be. All they can do is flag them and send them on. The only reason anyone knew about the bogus registration forms is because ACORN itself flagged them as suspicious.

The smearing of ACORN has been one of the saddest jokes of the last year.

[aldiboronti]

This was a couple of politically motivated slimeballs out to smear ACORN. I wonder how many ACORN people they had to go to before they could find a couple who played along. Congratulation. If you search hard enough you can find people in any profession who will behave inappropriately. What is that supposed to prove about the profession?

This says nothing about ACORN, so I don't see why it's newsworthy. All of the right wing smear attempts against ACORN have been disgusting, baseless and transparently racist, in my opinion.

And if this was a left-wing sting of a right-wing organization which turned up abetting of child prostitution I'm sure you would feel exactly the same, Diogenes, wouldn't you?

Of course you would.

[C3]

And if this was a left-wing sting of a right-wing organization which turned up abetting of child prostitution I'm sure you would feel exactly the same, Diogenes, wouldn't you?

Of course you would.
What does that have to do with anything?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

And if this was a left-wing sting of a right-wing organization which turned up abetting of child prostitution I'm sure you would feel exactly the same, Diogenes, wouldn't you?

Of course you would.
There was no abetting of child prostitution, but yes, I would say the same thing. Finding bad employees is no trick. This little scam did not expose anything institutional about ACORN.

[Kimstu]

And if this was a left-wing sting of a right-wing organization which turned up abetting of child prostitution

Whoa there. AFAIK, "abetting" in the legal sense means being an accomplice in an actual crime. No actual criminal act was involved here. What the ACORN workers appear to have done was to give advice on possible ways to commit criminal acts involving illegal prostitution.

Still indefensible, but not the same thing as "aiding and abetting".

[Kimstu]

I wonder if ACORN employees are considered "community organizers"?


Yup, liberal community organizers as a group are enablers of illegal prostitution, while conservative political consultants as a group are child molesters (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=531568). It all casts a sad light on human nature, I tells ya.

[Shodan]

They could have ascertained the facts by other means, like, perhaps, interviewing the employees involved? Asking witnesses?

Then why would they say it was "false and defamatory"?

Either they determined via other means that the facts were as portrayed, in which case they lied by saying it was false, or they did not determine the facts by other means, in which case they fired their employees without determining the facts.

Like I said, if some private company behaved like ACORN did, they would be screaming bloody murder. But they got caught with their pants down, almost literally. So they flip-flopped with the same agility that some Dopers do.

Election fraud is trivial when liberals do it. But they go into screaming fits when the exit polls don't pan out.

:shrugs:

'Twas ever thus.

Regards,
Shodan

[Lightnin']

"And in other news, all commercial airline flights but one reached their destinations safely today."

"... The other six flights successfully evaded the missiles fired at them."

[BobLibDem]

Calling it election fraud doesn't make it so. Let's say you want to register some voters. You go out and do so, but some of the forms you collect don't look right. You flag these forms and call them to the attention of the local officials when you turn them in. These fraudulent registrations are thrown out and no illegal votes are cast. Where have you committed election fraud?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Then why would they say it was "false and defamatory"?
It was false and defamatory of ACORN as an institution.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Cite for ACORN committing election fraud, Shodan, or for committing any fraud at all?

[sqweels]

So they fired the workers before they had even seen the whole video. I thought ACORN was all about worker's rights and all that.

I wonder how they would have reacted if some big company had fired an employee before finding out all the facts.

Isn't ACORN the one who wants minimum wage to apply to everyone except them (http://www.rottenacorn.com/)? And there is the election fraud thing (http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/may/04/criminal-charges-filed-against-acorn-two-employees/).
So as far as you're concerend, "ACORN doesn't band over backwards to protect it's employees" is as big a scandal as "ACORN commits election fraud, then gets involved in child prostitution".

Or do you admit that the latter charges are unfair and the former is all that you're left with? It's hardly worthy of a national scandal.

As for the "election fraud", official at ACORN can be faulted for setting a policy that put too much pressure on employees to return a minimum number of filled-out voter regisration forms, resulting in some bogus registrations being filled out. But these were simply thrown out and nobody at ACORN was involved in any scheme to actually cast fraudulent votes. Does this really fit your definition of election fraud?

[elucidator]

There's something awful damned fishy here, but I don't know what it is yet. Nobody of any political stripe whatsoever favors child prostitution, that's just plain nuts. And for reasons I have yet to understand, the Hannity/Beck/Limbaugh Axis of Anal have a giant hard-on for ACORN, so, yeah, I'm suspicious.

As it happens, I've met a few ACORN people, their determined optimism makes me feel old, corrupt and cynical, their eagerness sets my teeth on edge, and their sincerity makes me want to drink.

But I don't actually know anything yet, so I'll just leave it at suspicious.

[Labrador Deceiver]

Is this a joke? I haven't previously had any beef to grind with ACORN, and am much more Liberal than the average person outraged by this story, but I think it's comical that people are tripping all over themselves to excuse the actions on the tape (assuming they accurately portray what really went on). Is the best we can say "Hey, only one in seven ACORN offices will help you with your child prostitution needs. That isn't so bad."

Does anyone honestly think that one in seven IBM reps would help a client custom build a software program to meet their child prostitution needs? How about one in seven Pizza Huts, when asked, willing to provide food for a child prostitution hideout?

[Freudian Slit]

It reminds me of that Planned Parenthood sting with the woman who pretended to be a pregnant 13 year old. Of course, she wasn't in fact a pregnant 13 year old--I'm wondering if the tale in the OP was just so outlandish that the women knew it wasn't true?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Is this a joke? I haven't previously had any beef to grind with ACORN, and am much more Liberal than the average person outraged by this story, but I think it's comical that people are tripping all over themselves to excuse the actions on the tape (assuming they accurately portray what really went on). Is the best we can say "Hey, only one in seven ACORN offices will help you with your child prostitution needs. That isn't so bad."

Does anyone honestly think that one in seven IBM reps would help a client custom build a software program to meet their child prostitution needs? How about one in seven Pizza Huts, when asked, willing to provide food for a child prostitution hideout?
No one's excusing the actions on the tape. What we're objecting to is the insinuation that this is supposed to prove something institutional about ACORN. Do you believe that ACORN is instructing its empolyees to abet child prostitution? To waht end?

And it wasn't the 7th office they went to, it was the 7th city. There's more than one office in each city.

Having said that, if the 7th Dominos pizza guy I offer to sell crack to is willing to buy it, does that mean I've proven something about Dominos? Do you believe that I would have thereby established a representative sample that can be extropolated to conclude that one in seven Dominos drivers is on crack? Do you know anything about statistics?

[C3]

Then why would they say it was "false and defamatory"?


See my post #8. I've already addressed this.

[yorick73]

Whoops....looks like some ACORN employees in DC did the same thing.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,549241,00.html

[Lobohan]

Then why would they say it was "false and defamatory"?

Either they determined via other means that the facts were as portrayed, in which case they lied by saying it was false, or they did not determine the facts by other means, in which case they fired their employees without determining the facts.

Like I said, if some private company behaved like ACORN did, they would be screaming bloody murder. But they got caught with their pants down, almost literally. So they flip-flopped with the same agility that some Dopers do.

Election fraud is trivial when liberals do it. But they go into screaming fits when the exit polls don't pan out.

:shrugs:

'Twas ever thus.

Regards,
ShodanDo you know that Acorn never committed election fraud? Because I'm confused, you're stating it as fact, but it didn't happen. You should make a better effort to educate yourself on things before you talk about them.

I'm sure you're not actually stating things you know to be false, of course.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Whoops....looks like some ACORN employees in DC did the same thing.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,549241,00.html
So what?

[El_Kabong]

Going on what appear to be rather garbled explanations on Limbaugh's show and the sketchy CNN report today, this whole thing makes very little sense. Maybe someone could explain to me just what personal gain an ACORN employee would obtain from advising walk-ins on how to avoid paying taxes on prostitution revenues?

Likewise, what induced the "filmmakers" (I'll happily withdraw the scare quotes if someone can show they have an existing portfolio of documentaries) to try this particular ruse on this praticular organization? Has there been some wave of prostitution rings set up by community organizations that I didn't know about?

Rush's view yesterday was (seriously) that ACORN 'want to sow chaos', but that sounds utterly ridiculous no matter how you slice it.

As for Shodan's link from May 9th, have the persons indicted gone to trial? Were they actually convicted of election fraud? Enquiring minds want to know.

[yorick73]

ACORN has been involved in enough shady shit to have congress at least look into them and possibly stop giving them taxpayer dollars. Conyers claimed his committee was going to investigate ACORN but was called off by the powers that be. I wonder who that was...

[Labrador Deceiver]

No one's excusing the actions on the tape. What we're objecting to is the insinuation that this is supposed to prove something institutional about ACORN. Do you believe that ACORN is instructing its empolyees to abet child prostitution? To waht end?

And it wasn't the 7th office they went to, it was the 7th city. There's more than one office in each city.

Having said that, if the 7th Dominos pizza guy I offer to sell crack to is willing to buy it, does that mean I've proven something about Dominos? Do you believe that I would have thereby established a representative sample that can be extropolated to conclude that one in seven Dominos drivers is on crack? Do you know anything about statistics?

You're damn right it says something about Dominos. It says they haven't the first clue about how to screen a potential applicant. That there are multiple employees in the ACORN example is especially damning.

[elucidator]

The story to the most recent linky-dink says that the incident depicted occured on July 25 of this year. What took so long?

[yorick73]

So what?

Oh, I know for you the top people at ACORN would have to be caught gang-fucking an underage prostitute at an ACORN office, wearing ACORN t-shirts, taping it and selling copies for YOU to be concerned in the least.

[Shodan]

Do you know that Acorn never committed election fraud? Because I'm confused, you're stating it as fact, but it didn't happen. You should make a better effort to educate yourself on things before you talk about them.

I'm sure you're not actually stating things you know to be false, of course.
Don't worry. I'm not (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009189).

Regards,
Shodan

[Diogenes the Cynic]

ACORN has been involved in enough shady shit to have congress at least look into them and possibly stop giving them taxpayer dollars. Conyers claimed his committee was going to investigate ACORN but was called off by the powers that be. I wonder who that was...
Cite for ACORN engaging in "shady" behavior?

I don't know what "powers that be" you imagine that you're referencing, but if your insinuating it was the White House, you're wrong. The White House has no authority to call off Congressional investigations. Basically there just didn't turn out to be anything much to investigate. No evdience was ever shown for ACORN engaging in fraud. Don't believe everything you see on Fox News.

[yorick73]

The story to the most recent linky-dink says that the incident depicted occured on July 25 of this year. What took so long?

I'm sure it took FOX News that long to fabricate the tape.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Don't worry. I'm not (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009189)
A WSJ editorial from 2006? Are you serious?

[El_Kabong]

ACORN has been involved in enough shady shit to have congress at least look into them and possibly stop giving them taxpayer dollars. Conyers claimed his committee was going to investigate ACORN but was called off by the powers that be. I wonder who that was...

What "powers that be" specifically stopped this notional investigation? On what date was this decision made and implemented?

Something verifiable, please. I have no idea who you are or whether your statements are accurate.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Oh, I know for you the top people at ACORN would have to be caught gang-fucking an underage prostitute at an ACORN office, wearing ACORN t-shirts, taping it and selling copies for YOU to be concerned in the least.This is a non-responsive answer to my question. What exactly are you trying to assert about ACORN as an institution?

[Strassia]

I can't see the video at work, so just a couple of comments:

1) About the inconsistency charge. The local office fired two employees, the national spokesman denies any institutional wrongdoing. They are not the same entity. It is entirely likely, even probable, that the local office saw what happened and took action before relaying all details to the national office.

2) I am always suspicious of heavily edited gotcha type footage. I would like to see the full footage before deciding whether it shows two dupes who were tricked or two people willing to look the other way in a case of child prostitution.

From what I have read there are a number of ways this could have happened, with varying degrees of culpability to the ACORN organization.

Since I think that it would be beyond bizarre for any group to actually be pro-child prostitution, worst case is probably a general policy not to inquire about legal issues (probably aimed at being able to help undocumented workers or adult sex workers) that has fostered a climate of willful blindness to any evidence of illegal activity of any type.

Best case, the edited portion has some part of the exchange that completely changes the context and meaning of the whole thing Not having seen the footage, I can't really comment on how likely that is.

Most likely case is probably between these two. Either two employees went beyond policy in their willful blindness, or the local office culture informally went beyond the national policy in encouraging it. Coupled with parts that have been removed that show it not quite as bad is it now looks.

In other words, hard to say what happened, but since it took them six tries to get a heavily edited video to look incriminating, whatever the real problems are, they are not as wide spread as ACORN detractors would like them to be. I would also say that at least some ACORN personnel needed more training in how to avoid even the appearance of wrong doing, at the very least.


Jonathan

[yorick73]

Cite for ACORN engaging in "shady" behavior?

You actually need a cite for this?!?


I don't know what "powers that be" you imagine that you're referencing, but if your insinuating it was the White House, you're wrong. The White House has no authority to call off Congressional investigations. Basically there just didn't turn out to be anything much to investigate. No evdience was ever shown for ACORN engaging in fraud. Don't believe everything you see on Fox News.

Ask Conyers...those were his words.

[Labrador Deceiver]

I can't see the video at work, so just a couple of comments:

1) About the inconsistency charge. The local office fired two employees, the national spokesman denies any institutional wrongdoing. They are not the same entity. It is entirely likely, even probable, that the local office saw what happened and took action before relaying all details to the national office.

2) I am always suspicious of heavily edited gotcha type footage. I would like to see the full footage before deciding whether it shows two dupes who were tricked or two people willing to look the other way in a case of child prostitution.

From what I have read there are a number of ways this could have happened, with varying degrees of culpability to the ACORN organization.

Since I think that it would be beyond bizarre for any group to actually be pro-child prostitution, worst case is probably a general policy not to inquire about legal issues (probably aimed at being able to help undocumented workers or adult sex workers) that has fostered a climate of willful blindness to any evidence of illegal activity of any type.

Best case, the edited portion has some part of the exchange that completely changes the context and meaning of the whole thing Not having seen the footage, I can't really comment on how likely that is.

Most likely case is probably between these two. Either two employees went beyond policy in their willful blindness, or the local office culture informally went beyond the national policy in encouraging it. Coupled with parts that have been removed that show it not quite as bad is it now looks.

In other words, hard to say what happened, but since it took them six tries to get a heavily edited video to look incriminating, whatever the real problems are, they are not as wide spread as ACORN detractors would like them to be. I would also say that at least some ACORN personnel needed more training in how to avoid even the appearance of wrong doing, at the very least.


Jonathan

Excellent post.




(Sorry for the +1)

[Diogenes the Cynic]

You're damn right it says something about Dominos. It says they haven't the first clue about how to screen a potential applicant. That there are multiple employees in the ACORN example is especially damning.
What is the procedure for screening out people who might advise people how to lie on their tax forms?

[El_Kabong]

You actually need a cite for this?!?

Yeas, we need a cite for this. Again, who are you and why should anyone trust your unverified statements as factual?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I'm sure it took FOX News that long to fabricate the tape.
Is anyone saying the tape is fabricated?

[Lobohan]

Don't worry. I'm not (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009189).

Regards,
ShodanOh, I see the problem here. You don't understand what election fraud is. Do us a favor and read up on it, kay?

As Dio mentioned above, Acorn hires people to get registrations. Some people try to crook Acorn out of money, so they fill out fake registrations for the bounty. Acorn can't throw these sheets away, because that would be disenfranchising people if, against all odds they were real.

Are you following along? Good.

Acorn flags the suspicious registrations. In any case it doesn't matter, because if someone turns in a voter registration form for Batman Von Superman III, he's not going to show up.

Now that you've had it explained to you that you're wrong, I trust that you'll stop posting half-assed opinion pieces as fact, right?

See, you've had your ignorance fought!

[yorick73]

What "powers that be" specifically stopped this notional investigation? On what date was this decision made and implemented?

Something verifiable, please. I have no idea who you are or whether your statements are accurate.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/25/conyers-abandons-plan-probe-acorn/

[Labrador Deceiver]

What is the procedure for screening out people who might advise people how to lie on their tax forms?

I have no idea what in the hell you're talking about. This is not simply a case of a couple workers trying to help a guy tell a little fib on his tax forms.

[ElvisL1ves]

And if this was a left-wing sting of a right-wing organization which turned up abetting of child prostitution I'm sure you would feel exactly the same, Diogenes, wouldn't you?

Of course you would.Yet another attempt at a self-satisfying tu quoque based on your imagination.

The rest of us are discussing the real world. :rolleyes:

[Diogenes the Cynic]

You actually need a cite for this?!?
Of course. What do you think this is, Free Republic?
Ask Conyers...those were his words.
Cite?

[Labrador Deceiver]

Cite?

Post #56. Try to keep up.

[yorick73]

Cite?

See post 56.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/25/conyers-abandons-plan-probe-acorn/
Conyers was non-specific, but one thing's for sure -- it couldn't have been the White House. It was most likely Pelosi. Fascinating that you see a complete lack of specific allegations, evidence or investigation as proof of guilt, though.

[jayjay]

Oh, look! A Moonie Times cite...

[yorick73]

Conyers was non-specific, but one thing's for sure -- it couldn't have been the White House. It was most likely Pelosi. Fascinating that you see a complete lack of specific allegations, evidence or investigation as proof of guilt, though.

I didn't say it was the WH. The fact that he was called off any investigation should concern you.

[El_Kabong]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/25/conyers-abandons-plan-probe-acorn/

Thanks. Hey, I won't even do the usual dismissal of the Washington Times as a reliable source.

Ok, so the head of the House Judiciary Committee claims that some mysterious "powers that be" somehow forced him to abandon an investigation, but refuses to say who. Geez, maybe someone with a sack should be appointed to the position.

[Polerius]

Whoops....looks like some ACORN employees in DC did the same thing.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,549241,00.html

When I first heard of the story and how they tried it in several cities and were only successful in one office, I thought "these guys should have kept trying until they had at least two such cases", just so that they can show a systematic problem and not an aberration.

Now that there are in fact two cases, I agree that this shows a systematic problem at ACORN, at least to the degree that they don't screen and/or train their people well. It doesn't show that ACORN wants to "spread chaos", as that idiot Limbaugh and his ilk said.

[yorick73]

Oh, look! A Moonie Times cite...

That's clever. Do you have anything of substance to add? Or do you just insult news sites you don't like? Use google and you'll find more than one site. www.google.com

[Labrador Deceiver]

Thanks. Hey, I won't even do the usual dismissal of the Washington Times as a reliable source.

Ok, so the head of the House Judiciary Committee claims that some mysterious "powers that be" somehow forced him to abandon an investigation, but refuses to say who. Geez, maybe someone with a sack should be appointed to the position.

What does that have to do with anything? Really, what?

[jayjay]

I didn't say it was the WH. The fact that he was called off any investigation should concern you.

If you're saying that House leadership sucks big rocks, I'm right behind you. If you're saying that ACORN bullied Pelosi into calling him off, I can't follow to that one. The article you cited quotes an ACORN executive as being more than happy to cooperate with any investigation, as they had nothing to hide.

Besides, Conyers is as much of a wuss as Pelosi and Reid are. He was effectively muzzled throughout 2007 and 2008 in the matter of impeachment proceedings, despite what he once described as his belief that investigations should occur.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I have no idea what in the hell you're talking about. This is not simply a case of a couple workers trying to help a guy tell a little fib on his tax forms.
Yeah, that pretty much is what it was. They were telling them to lie about where their money came from.

My point was that it's not the kind of poetential employee behavior that can be "screened" for, so using that route to try to smear ACORN as an institution is lame and reaching. You can find people in any profession, any public position, any institution who are sleazeballs. It doesn't prove anything about who they work for. Unless anyone seriously wants to allege that ACORN itself has encouraged employees to behave this way, then there isn't any revelation here. It's just a Michael Moore stunt.

[jayjay]

That's clever. Do you have anything of substance to add? Or do you just insult news sites you don't like? Use google and you'll find more than one site. www.google.com

I insult news sites that have obvious and long-standing conservative biases, like the Moonie Times and Faux Snooze.

[El_Kabong]

What does that have to do with anything? Really, what?

I have no clue. You might ask yorick73, he brought it up.

[jayjay]

Yeah, that pretty much is what it was. They were telling them to lie about where their money came from.

My point was that it's not the kind of poetential employee behavior that can be "screened" for, so using that route to try to smear ACORN as an institution is lame and reaching. You can find people in any profession, any public position, any institution who are sleazeballs. It doesn't prove anything about who they work for. Unless anyone seriously wants to allege that ACORN itself has encouraged employees to behave this way, then there isn't any revelation here. It's just a Michael Moore stunt.

But, Dio! ACORN is eeeeevuuuul! They defraud polls, they cheat at taxes, they encourage child prostitution (I hear they LOVED Taxi Driver!), they espouse the fraudulent takeover of our government by Donald W. Duck III, and they helped elect OBAMA! I bet if you dug deep enough you'd discover that they were founded by Stalin, Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini acting as a cabal in 1941, just before Pearl Harbor, with the very-long-term mission of undermining American democracy by registering cartoon characters to vote!

[Labrador Deceiver]

Yeah, that pretty much is what it was. They were telling them to lie about where their money came from.

My point was that it's not the kind of poetential employee behavior that can be "screened" for, so using that route to try to smear ACORN as an institution is lame and reaching. You can find people in any profession, any public position, any institution who are sleazeballs. It doesn't prove anything about who they work for. Unless anyone seriously wants to allege that ACORN itself has encouraged employees to behave this way, then there isn't any revelation here. It's just a Michael Moore stunt.

As has been suggested already, it could very well be indicative of an organizational culture that encourages employees to turn a blind eye. I don't think most employees at ACORN would do so to this degree, but I woudn't be surprised if it happened to a lesser extent on a more widespread basis.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I didn't say it was the WH. The fact that he was called off any investigation should concern you.
Why should it concern me? What is your evidence that anything needed to be investigated? Can you cite any evidence for institutional fraud or corruption from ACORN whatsoever?

[Labrador Deceiver]

But, Dio! ACORN is eeeeevuuuul! They defraud polls, they cheat at taxes, they encourage child prostitution (I hear they LOVED Taxi Driver!), they espouse the fraudulent takeover of our government by Donald W. Duck III, and they helped elect OBAMA! I bet if you dug deep enough you'd discover that they were founded by Stalin, Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini acting as a cabal in 1941, just before Pearl Harbor, with the very-long-term mission of undermining American democracy by registering cartoon characters to vote!

If you can't argue like a grown up, then I won't waste my time with you in the future. I neither said nor insinuated any such thing. Nowhere near it.

[Labrador Deceiver]

I have no clue. You might ask yorick73, he brought it up.

Please show me where yorick brought up Conyers' sack.

[Shodan]

Oh, I see the problem here. You don't understand what election fraud is. Do us a favor and read up on it, kay?

As Dio mentioned above, Acorn hires people to get registrations. Some people try to crook Acorn out of money, so they fill out fake registrations for the bounty. Acorn can't throw these sheets away, because that would be disenfranchising people if, against all odds they were real.

Are you following along? Good.

Acorn flags the suspicious registrations. In any case it doesn't matter, because if someone turns in a voter registration form for Batman Von Superman III, he's not going to show up.

Now that you've had it explained to you that you're wrong, I trust that you'll stop posting half-assed opinion pieces as fact, right?

See, you've had your ignorance fought!
It's the silliest thing, but for some reason I thought you were serious.

Don't worry, it won't happen again.

Regards,
Shodan

[jayjay]

If you can't argue like a grown up, then I won't waste my time with you in the future. I neither said nor insinuated any such thing. Nowhere near it.

Why should I argue like a grownup with the right wing anymore? They don't have an adult idea in their entire arsenal at this point. It's all paranoid conspiracy theories and a huge suspicion of anything that tries to raise the democratic power of poor people up to their full potential. ACORN's major crime, to the right wing, is that they try to get poor people to vote. Everything that's actually thrown at them is thrown from that perspective, and anyone who actually thinks they're being "neutral" or who thinks they're coming at it from a liberal perspective (inside criticism, sort of) needs to examine where the original idea that ACORN is "guilty" of something, as an organization, came from.

[Labrador Deceiver]

Why should I argue like a grownup with the right wing anymore? They don't have an adult idea in their entire arsenal at this point. It's all paranoid conspiracy theories and a huge suspicion of anything that tries to raise the democratic power of poor people up to their full potential. ACORN's major crime, to the right wing, is that they try to get poor people to vote. Everything that's actually thrown at them is thrown from that perspective, and anyone who actually thinks they're being "neutral" or who thinks they're coming at it from a liberal perspective (inside criticism, sort of) needs to examine where the original idea that ACORN is "guilty" of something, as an organization, came from.

I'm not the right wing, genius. Kinda screws up your entire point, doesn't it.

[Lobohan]

It's the silliest thing, but for some reason I thought you were serious.

Don't worry, it won't happen again.

Regards,
ShodanSo you're not willing to admit your were wrong? One might come to believe that you aren't arguing in good faith.

But I suppose if you want to parrot partisan misinformation that's your business. I imagine it's a lot less work than keeping informed.

[jayjay]

I'm not the right wing, genius. Kinda screws up your entire point, doesn't it.

If you're going to quack like a duck...

Also, if you'd read my post, you'd have noticed that I did mention people who think they're coming at this from a neutral or even liberal standpoint.

[Polerius]

Why should I argue like a grownup with the right wing anymore? They don't have an adult idea in their entire arsenal at this point. It's all paranoid conspiracy theories
Agreed that this is unfortunately becoming the modus operandi of the RW

ACORN's major crime, to the right wing, is that they try to get poor people to vote.
Why would an organization whose mission is to try to get poor people to vote also be in the business of giving tax-evading advice to these people, and why are they instructed to turn a blind eye to the legality of the job of the person they are advising? (as some have suggested)

BTW, have the "filmmakers" explained why the video was so heavily edited? That looks very fishy to me.

[yorick73]

Why should it concern me? What is your evidence that anything needed to be investigated? Can you cite any evidence for institutional fraud or corruption from ACORN whatsoever?

It should concern you because your tax dollars are going to ACORN. And, maybe if Conyers et. al. had investigated ACORN we would know more about whether or not there was institutional fraud.

[Sam Stone]

I think there are valid points about this kind of 'gotcha' journalism being a bit misleading. If these guys kept trying ACORN offices over and over again, and kept at it until they found someone stupid enough to play along, then it does skew the result a bit.

However, that said, ACORN has a long history of being prosecuted for various misdeeds. In 1986 12 members were convicted of voter fraud. In 2004, six ACORN volunteers plead guilty to multiple counts of election law violations. In 2005, another ACORN member was convicted of voter fraud. In 2006, 1492 voter registration cards in St. Louis were found to be fraudulently filed by various ACORN volunteers. In 2007 four ACORN employees were indicted on fraud charges. This year, eight more ACORN members in St. Louis pleaded guilty to election fraud.

All of this just in Missouri. So far this year, FOURTEEN states have launched investigations into voter fraud, voter intimidation, and other violations of the law by ACORN employees.

Just yesterday, 11 more ACORN workers in Florida were arrested on vote fraud charges (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5ZxJgjHzO_C-1f0H0FHImQwjR2gD9AJTJ1G0).

ACORN has a problem with controllership. Anyone who has worked for a large private corporation knows how much effort they undertake to make sure their employees stay within the law. In my company, we get mandatory ethics training every year. We have to sign documents that outline our legal responsibilities and we certify that we understand them and follow them. We have internal ombudsmen set up to investigate concerns about ethics violations. We have a 'no retaliation' policy for employees who blow the whistle on unethical behavior by their bosses. We have anonymous reporting facilities for employees who don't feel comfortable exposing themselves even with the assurances of non-retaliation.


Private companies do this because the courts have repeatedly held companies liable for the actions of its employees. And major punitive damages can be laid down if it is determined that the company fostered a 'culture of corruption' by looking the other way or by putting procedures in place that made it easy for employees to skirt the law.

ACORN intentionally sets up procedures that encourage its volunteers to cheat and commit fraud. For example, it pays workers by the number of voter registration cards turned in, regardless of whether or not they are valid.

If Acorn has a 'don't ask' policy regarding illegal workers seeking home loans, and this is what lead these particular employees to accept such a blatant and egregious case, then ACORN itself should be held responsible. It has the responsibility to make sure its employees follow the letter of the law. It should have plans in place to spot-check applications accepted by employees, or even have its own 'undercover' teams going around trying scams just like the one that caught these guys, to verify that its own people are following the law. It is NOT acceptable for ACORN to let its employees run amok and then claim innocence because it didn't know about it.

[Labrador Deceiver]

If you're going to quack like a duck...

Also, if you'd read my post, you'd have noticed that I did mention people who think they're coming at this from a neutral or even liberal standpoint.

In other words, anyone who questions anything that happens at ACORN is "quacking like a duck"? Are you serious? Your worldview is so based on the labels Democrat and Republican that anyone who doesn't march in step to the party line must be one of the other side?

It's hardly surprising. That seems to be SOP from both sides of the aisle on this board.

[Zephyurs]

In order to determine if this indicates anything bad about ACORN specifically, we need to find an equivalent example about another organization.

When was the last time a left-winger went to dozens of offices of a right wing organization, attempted to entrap low-level employees, and then selectively edited the heck out of the video in an attempt to make it as outrageous as possible?

The closest example I can think of is Michael Moore, but even he focused on elected officials and didn't pose as anyone except himself.

[ElvisL1ves]

It should concern you because your tax dollars are going to ACORN. Where the holy fuck did you get that idea? Er, rather, Cite? :dubious:

[Gary Baldy]

To add fuel to the fire, video was just released where James O'Keefe (the guy behind all this) tried this in Wasington DC and had the same results. http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/11/washington-dc-acorn-video-child-prostitution-investigation/

[Sinaijon]

Private companies do this because the courts have repeatedly held companies liable for the actions of its employees.

I think this is an especially good point. It's not that ACORN workers are just breaking the law. It's that they are breaking the law while in their official capacity as an ACORN employee.

[ElvisL1ves]

That's Or do you just insult news sites you don't like? Only the ones with no credibility. The Washington Times, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal opinion section are the primary ones for which citing for factual content will gain you only scorn from the reality-based community.

[yorick73]

Where the holy fuck did you get that idea? Er, rather, Cite? :dubious:

Are you serious? You didn't know that?!? Here's one link...you should have no trouble finding more.

http://republicanleader.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=104821

[gonzomax]

I suppose some people think you can tell all you need to know about a huge organization from a couple rule breakers. These two people were playing the system a bit, therefore ACORN is guilty and is a corrupt organization. Of course that would damn every large organization in the world.
Lets disband our government. There have been endless illegal incidents involving politicians. Corporations cheat and break laws. We must disband them too.
This is again, much smoke ,no fire.

[ElvisL1ves]

Are you serious? You didn't know that?!? Here's one link...you should have no trouble finding more.

http://republicanleader.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=104821

John Boehner? You're serious? :D:D:D

[E-Sabbath]

Does anyone honestly think that one in seven IBM reps would help a client custom build a software program to meet their child prostitution needs?

Bad example. They will cheerfully help you tabulate jews.

[Zephyurs]

Sam, I think it's fair to say that ACORN can be somewhat lax in its employee management. But the way you describe implies ACORN is getting some kind of implicit benefit by turning a blind eye. Most of the vote fraud cases are employees trying to get out of doing their work for ACORN.

For instance, the 14 workers in Florida. They were reported by ACORN to Florida prosecutors because they were filling out fake registrations with the intent of defrauding ACORN.

Which only supports your point, of course. But the people who should be mad at ACORN aren't Republicans who are getting screwed because ACORN is turning a blind eye to its employees in order to get fake votes racked up. The people who should be mad are people who donate to it and, more importantly, donors to Democratic campaigns who're having their money funneled to an organization that is wearing an ass for a hat.

[Labrador Deceiver]

Only the ones with no credibility. The Washington Times, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal opinion section are the primary ones for which citing for factual content will gain you only scorn from the reality-based community.

I think they're a crappy-ass paper, but I don't know of any instances where they have invented a quote out of whole cloth and attributed it to a public official.

[yorick73]

Only the ones with no credibility. The Washington Times, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal opinion section are the primary ones for which citing for factual content will gain you only scorn from the reality-based community.

This is not an op-ed piece. Did you even open the link? Are you suggesting the Washington Times is not to be trusted as a source of news?

[Labrador Deceiver]

Bad example. They will cheerfully help you tabulate jews.

I was unaware that it suddenly became 60 years ago.

[Strassia]

Agreed that this is unfortunately becoming the modus operandi of the RW


Why would an organization whose mission is to try to get poor people to vote also be in the business of giving tax-evading advice to these people, and why are they instructed to turn a blind eye to the legality of the job of the person they are advising? (as some have suggested)

BTW, have the "filmmakers" explained why the video was so heavily edited? That looks very fishy to me.

ACORN does a lot of things other than voter registration drives. They just came to national attention because of them, specifically there was an effort to find anything fishy with anything to do with the election so that fraud could be alleged. IAN a right wing strategist, but I suspect the point was to bolster the claims that we need to tighten voting requirements (ID laws and only such) with specter of many people voting illegally.

Jonathan

[Zephyurs]

Something to consider: imagine the filmmakers had chosen the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, or the Sierra Club instead of ACORN to run this gag on. It's hard to imagine any employees of any of them biting.

[Jas09]

Just yesterday, 11 more ACORN workers in Florida were arrested on vote fraud charges (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5ZxJgjHzO_C-1f0H0FHImQwjR2gD9AJTJ1G0).I don't have much of a problem with most of your post, and agree that the compensation schemes ACORN has in place can encourage this type of misbehavior (the voter registration fraud, not the tax-liability advice). However, many people keep making the same mistake you are and I think it needs to be continually corrected. The charges in this case (and in most, if not all, of the others I'm familiar with) are voter registration fraud. Not voter fraud. The crime was submitting fraudulent registrations, not attempting to vote fraudulently.

Until somebody produces evidence that someone is attempting to vote based on these registrations it seems pretty clear to me that it is not an attempt to swing elections so much as an attempt by ACORN-hired workers to make easy money. The fact that in almost all of these cases the workers were turned over by ACORN itself seems to support his interpretation.

[ElvisL1ves]

I suspect the point was to bolster the claims that we need to tighten voting requirements
You do? I for one suspect the point was to demonstrate that Obama's presidency is illegitimate.

[elucidator]

Not demonstrate. Imply.

[ElvisL1ves]

Until somebody produces evidence that someone is attempting to vote based on these registrations it seems pretty clear to me that it is not an attempt to swing elections so much as an attempt by ACORN-hired workers to make easy money. Right - there has not only been no proof or even assertion that anyone with an invalid registration via ACORN has actually voted illegally, there has been no proof or even assertion that any have even tried. None.

But give the Sams of the world credit for using their imaginations, at least.

[ElvisL1ves]

Not demonstrate. Imply.
To their target audience, those are synonyms.

Are you suggesting the Washington Times is not to be trusted as a source of news? It's more than just a suggestion, Slugger.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Agreed that this is unfortunately becoming the modus operandi of the RW


Why would an organization whose mission is to try to get poor people to vote also be in the business of giving tax-evading advice to these people
They aren't.
, and why are they instructed to turn a blind eye to the legality of the job of the person they are advising? (as some have suggested)
Cite that they are instructed to do this?

[Sam Stone]

I suppose some people think you can tell all you need to know about a huge organization from a couple rule breakers. These two people were playing the system a bit, therefore ACORN is guilty and is a corrupt organization. Of course that would damn every large organization in the world.
Lets disband our government. There have been endless illegal incidents involving politicians. Corporations cheat and break laws. We must disband them too.
This is again, much smoke ,no fire.

Let's turn this around. Let's say a Halliburton employee was caught bribing a government official to look the other way while Halliburton broke the law. Would you be jumping to the company's defense?

From this cite (http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/business-operations/insurance/liability-employee-acts.html):

Under a legal doctrine sometimes referred to as "respondeat superior" (Latin for "Let the superior answer"), an employer is legally responsible for the actions of its employees. However, this rule only applies if the employee is acting within the course and scope of employment. In other words, the employer will generally be liable if the employee was doing his or her job, carrying out company business, or otherwise acting on the employer's behalf when the incident took place.

Some examples:
* A pizza company hired a delivery driver without looking into his criminal past -- which included a sexual assault conviction and an arrest for stalking a women he met while delivering pizza for another company. After he raped a customer, the pizza franchise was liable to his victim for negligent hiring.
* A car rental company hired a man who later raped a coworker. Had the company verified his resume claims, it would have discovered that he was in prison for robbery during the years he claimed to be in high school and college. The company was liable to the coworker.
* A furniture company hired a delivery man without requiring him to fill out an application or performing a background check. The employee assaulted a female customer in her home with a knife. The company was liable to the customer for negligent hiring.

In general, if an employee breaks the law while acting on behalf of a company, the company will be held liable. If the company appears to tolerate such behavior through lax standards or a 'don't ask, don't tell' type of policy, the company can expect to be hammered by the courts with punitive fines as well.

Why should ACORN be held to a different standard?

[Strassia]

You do? I for one suspect the point was to demonstrate that Obama's presidency is illegitimate.

That may have been part of it, but I think it goes deeper. There has been a push for stricter requirements to vote for a long time based on the idea that we need to prevent voter fraud by people voting who shouldn't. Making voting inconvenient reduces voter turnout. These efforts usually make things less convenient for poor people without really affecting anyone else. So it makes cynical political sense to support these measures if the poor don't vote for you, and oppose them if they do. But the only non-political reason to do this is if it actually solves a problem with voter fraud that is worse distortion of the people's will then the effect of putting selective barriers up to be able to vote.

Jonathan

ETA: The fact that Obama was even slightly connected with ACORN did raise the amount of negative coverage that focused on this, but even if he hadn't run, I suspect we still would have heard about all these fake registrations and how dangerous they were to our country.

[Labrador Deceiver]

They aren't.

Cite that they are instructed to do this?

Do you just run around screaming for cites all day? Did you not catch the "as some have suggested" part at the end of his sentence?

Psst. He wasn't making a claim.

[Gangster Octopus]

I have no problem with ACORN, but I do think it is ridiculous that in this country voter registration is driven by private organization "drives".

[ElvisL1ves]

I have no problem with ACORN, but I do think it is ridiculous that in this country voter registration is driven by private organization "drives".Anybody at all can do it themselves if they want to; it isn't hard at all. What any of these private organizations do is simply educating and energizing people who had heretofore lacked sufficient motivation to participate.

What difference do you see with any other political advocacy groups' "get out the vote" campaigns in election season?

[yorick73]

It's more than just a suggestion, Slugger.

Wow...Do you have any evidence of this other than the fact that you dislike some of their reporting? I'm starting to see that you have zero substance and that responding to your posts is a waste of time

[Raygun99]

I suspect he's saying it shouldn't be up to those groups. In Canada, you either check a box on your tax return which allows Elections Canada to collect your info, or you're surveyed by a non-partisan volunteer from said same.

[Bosstone]

Let's turn this around. Let's say a Halliburton employee was caught bribing a government official to look the other way while Halliburton broke the law. Would you be jumping to the company's defense?I'm going to be charitable and presume you worded this poorly. The implication in what you wrote is that Halliburton, as a company and with the express blessing of its top executives, is breaking the law. The single act of an employee bribing a government official is just part and parcel of the company-blessed illegal activity.

Now, if it can be shown that a small group of Halliburton employees took it upon themselves to break the law for the company's benefit, which is what I think you meant in the first place, and management found out and fired them? Like people here, I might question the company's screening process for new employees, but I wouldn't accuse the company itself of engaging in illegal activities.

You know as well as I do, Sam, and probably better, that a company is viewed as an individual entity in the eyes of the law. So it's pretty important to make clear whether it's the company or an employee (or group of employees) who's breaking the law.

[Vinyl Turnip]

Yeah, that pretty much is what it was. They were telling them to lie about where their money came from.

Yeah. And technically, providing a map to a nice, quiet wooded area with soft soil where I can bury the body I've got in my trunk counts as "giving directions."

"Gotcha" journalism or not, this is (barring the revelation that the whole thing is a hoax) a major fuckup, an indelible shitstain on ACORN, and a huge score for Obamaphobes.

[ElvisL1ves]

But the only non-political reason to do this is if it actually solves a problem with voter fraud that is worse distortion of the people's will then the effect of putting selective barriers up to be able to vote.What reason do you have to believe there is a non-political reason in play at all?

I suspect we still would have heard about all these fake registrations and how dangerous they were to our country.I strongly suspect otherwise, but we'll never know.


yorick73, here's a clue: If it's news, if it's factual, you'll find it reported in at least a few other places than the Moonie Times. So can you or can't you? :dubious: Sheesh.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Just yesterday, 11 more ACORN workers in Florida were arrested on vote fraud charges (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5ZxJgjHzO_C-1f0H0FHImQwjR2gD9AJTJ1G0).
No they weren't, they were arrested for registration fraud, and ACORN itself is who reported them. Try to follow along. We've already covered this. ACORN hires people to go into neighborhood registering voters (and this is the REAL issue that righties have with ACORN -- that they register minority voters). Some of those workers falsify registration forms to pad their pay. ACORN is not permitted to disallow these bogus forms. They have to flag them and send them onto the appropriate state agency. The state then discards the fake applications. At no point in this scenario is ACORN doing anything wrong, and at no point is there any voter fraud.

You can't cite a single example of institutional fraud or corruption in ACORN. The smearing is purely political.

[Strassia]

They aren't.



I think the confusion is that most people don't understand what Acorn does. From their mission statement:
. The members of ACORN take on issues of relevance to their communities, whether those issues are discrimination, affordable housing, a quality education, or better public services. ACORN believes that low- to moderate-income people are the best advocates for their communities, and so ACORN's low- to moderate-income members act as leaders, spokespeople, and decision-makers within the organization
This was probably a low or no cost tax or financial advice service to help people who can't afford going to an accountant.

Cite that they are instructed to do this?

I have no cite, but I mentioned it originally as one of the possible explanations for what happened her. It would not be unheard of for community aid, or even government aid, organizations to have policies not to inquire into certain things, such as immigration status. Even people with nothing to hid may avoid going for help if they fear that they would be investigated somehow. I can see a policy meant to insure even people on the margins get the help without fear of getting arrested or deported warp the way people interact.

Jonathan

[Ludovic]

Now, if it can be shown that a small group of Halliburton employees took it upon themselves to break the law for the company's benefit, which is what I think you meant in the first place, and management found out and fired them? Like people here, I might question the company's screening process for new employees, but I wouldn't accuse the company itself of engaging in illegal activities.

With the caveat that their deniability becomes a lot less plausible because the company benefitted from the bribes. Whereas every sane person can see that ACORN cannot benefit from the alleged acts.

[Gangster Octopus]

Anybody at all can do it themselves if they want to; it isn't hard at all. What any of these private organizations do is simply educating and energizing people who had heretofore lacked sufficient motivation to participate.

What difference do you see with any other political advocacy groups' "get out the vote" campaigns in election season?

No difference, I simply don't think it should be up to "get out the vote" campaigns by any private advocacy groups to have people registered. I think they can educate people, I have no problem with that, but to have them literally collecting voter registration cards and handing them in, whether it is ACORN or the Young Republicans, just doesn't taste right to me.

[Strassia]

What reason do you have to believe there is a non-political reason in play at all?

None, actually. What I was trying to say was the only time it would be justified to increase voting requirements would be when it fixes an actual distortion at a lesser cost (e.g. if districts routinely reported 150% voter turn out, then something needs to be done, even if it decreases legal turnout by 5%). In this case, to the best of my knowledge individual voter fraud (people showing up and voting fraudulently) is such a minor issue that any remedy would need to have basically no effect on legal turnout

I strongly suspect otherwise, but we'll never know.

Well, I remember voter fraud charges of this type in both 2000 and 2004. They just didn't glom onto ACORN as the root of all evil. Without Obama, I suspect it would have been presented as more a systemic, we need to do something thing, rather than an effort to fix the election in any specific direction. In fact, it would probably play better if it could be presented as a high minded, "anyone could do this, so why wouldn't the other side be as worked up as we are?" type of way.

Jonathan

[ElvisL1ves]

Raygun99 and Gangster, it isn't up to those groups to register people. Anybody can go to Town Hall and register themselves if they want, and that's even the normal method.

All ACORN, or any other registration-drive organization, does in the US is pass out the forms and help turn them in to the relevant municipal government. They're just facilitators in the process, not official participants.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I have no cite, but I mentioned it originally as one of the possible explanations for what happened her. It would not be unheard of for community aid, or even government aid, organizations to have policies not to inquire into certain things, such as immigration status. Even people with nothing to hid may avoid going for help if they fear that they would be investigated somehow. I can see a policy meant to insure even people on the margins get the help without fear of getting arrested or deported warp the way people interact.

Jonathan
From what I know of the culture (during my days as a community organizer), there is some truth in this, in that ACORN serves neighborhoods where people have some patchy backgrounds, and the workers, as a rule, do not ask a lot of questions about a person's history unless it's relevant, but it's basically "don't ask, don't tell." They are not instructed to simply ignore people who are brazenly confessing to crimes, especially not crimes as egregious as child prostitution.

[Strassia]

No difference, I simply don't think it should be up to "get out the vote" campaigns by any private advocacy groups to have people registered. I think they can educate people, I have no problem with that, but to have them literally collecting voter registration cards and handing them in, whether it is ACORN or the Young Republicans, just doesn't taste right to me.

May I ask why? The truly indifferent will never vote anyway. Is there a problem with having more people who are legally eligible registered?

Jonathan

[Bosstone]

With the caveat that their deniability becomes a lot less plausible because the company benefitted from the bribes. Whereas every sane person can see that ACORN cannot benefit from the alleged acts.Absolutely.
No difference, I simply don't think it should be up to "get out the vote" campaigns by any private advocacy groups to have people registered. I think they can educate people, I have no problem with that, but to have them literally collecting voter registration cards and handing them in, whether it is ACORN or the Young Republicans, just doesn't taste right to me.I don't really have a problem with it myself. A person is much more likely to register to vote if they can fill out a quick form at the booth or wherever when the thought is at the top of their mind. If they have to register on their own, they're much more likely to go "Yeah, you're absolutely right, I should register," to the advocacy group they're talking to and then immediately forget about it.

It's giving rewards for the number of registrations turned in that prompts the fraud. Personally, I think if you're going to advocate, the job should be its own reward.

[Strassia]

From what I know of the culture (during my days as a community organizer), there is some truth in this, in that ACORN serves neighborhoods where people have some patchy backgrounds, and the workers, as a rule, do not ask a lot of questions about a person's history unless it's relevant, but it's basically "don't ask, don't tell." They are not instructed to simply ignore people who are brazenly confessing to crimes, especially not crimes as egregious as child prostitution.

That is what I would suspect, and what I gave as the most probably scenario. However, it is possible that at some level, from these two on their own, that particular office, or all the way up to the national level that a passive don't ask policy has morphed into something more pro-active. It is just human nature to not want to deal with things like having someone arrested or deported, and just pretending they didn't say something.

Jonathan

[Bricker]

You know me, ever alert for the rampant hyocrisy of the left. We had a thread a while ago in which employees of Backwater were accused of having used prostitutes, even child prostitutes. Refresh your memory here. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=528868)

And ... what do you know? Although a few posters did hop on the Blackwater-is-evil-a-ha! bandwagon, most noted the flimsy evidence and drew distinctions between a few Blackwater employees and the organization itself.

I'm just sayin', is all.

[Sam Stone]

Until somebody produces evidence that someone is attempting to vote based on these registrations it seems pretty clear to me that it is not an attempt to swing elections so much as an attempt by ACORN-hired workers to make easy money. The fact that in almost all of these cases the workers were turned over by ACORN itself seems to support his interpretation.

Actually, there are a number of people who think that flooding electoral offices with voter registration cards is a specific tactic used to insert uncertainty into election results and set the stage for protests and contests of close elections. By flooding an office with registrations (even fraudulent ones), ACORN can set up a situation where it's impossible to check them all. Then after the election, they can protest about 'voter disenfranchisement' because X% of voter registrations weren't processed in time.

From the Pottstown Mercury News (http://www.pottstownmercury.com/articles/2004/10/08/today%27s%20stories/13098474.txt):

Director of Elections V. Kurt Bellman told the Board of Elections Thursday that there have been flagrant attempts at voter registration fraud.

"It’s absolutely out of hand," Bellman said. "Not only do we have unintentional duplication of voter registrations but we have blatant duplicate voter registrations."

Bellman said groups conducting voter drives are coming out of the woodwork, something Berks County hasn’t seen before. He added that some of the drives are being conducted in violation of the law because they are paying incentives to sign up voters.
...
Bellman said his office has had numerous calls from people who were registered through a group called the Association Communication Organization for Reform Now (ACORN), complaining that those taking down the voter information deliberately put inaccurate information on the form.

Bellman said he also received a batch of registrations from Citizens for Consumer Justice in Allentown that contained several hundred forms, including ones that have been held since July and ones with fictitious names and addresses and even wrong counties.

Bellman said he believes it’s an attempt to overload the elections office.

"It’s election sabotage," Scott added.

Volunteers are working in the Board of Elections office throughout the day, in the evenings and even on weekends. County officials are asking volunteers to commit to a schedule for volunteering since county workers have to train each volunteer.

Here's a CNN Investigation Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkUKOSnv2zY&feature=related) on ACORN's tactics. In this case, they turned in 5,000 voter registration cards right at the deadline before the election. HALF of them were fraudulent. The election official said it was disrupting their office and preventing them from doing their other work.

Also, ACORN will use the fact that only a small percentage of registered voters actually vote as an example of voter intimidation.

Another possible motivation: Swelling the ranks of registered Democrats affects poll results. When a pollster takes a poll, he records the affiliation of the respondent. After the poll is completed, the results are adjusted to match the registered voter ratio. Having a whole lot of extra registered Democrats means that such polls will always be skewed towards the Democratic position.

So this isn't harmless. It undermines confidence in the electoral system, it overloads electoral workers which makes other errors more likely, and it may bias election polling. And of course, if there ARE fraudulent votes, the huge flood of registrations makes them harder to spot. And of course, ACORN lobbies like crazy to prevent voters from having to show ID.

And all of those potential sources of error work in favor of the people ACORN wants elected. What a coincidence.

The question I have is, if this is all completely harmless and has no effect on the eletion, why is ACORN so willing to pay for so many fraudulent registrations? They pay per registration, so this is cost them a lot of money. Yet they seem to be perfectly okay with it. Why is that?

Also, if ACORN's sole interest was to make sure that legitimate voters are registered, why do they have this habit of turning all the registrations in right at the deadline? Why don't they turn them in as they receive them, to maximize the electoral office's chance of getting them all processed? In the first article I linked to, they said that some of the registrations had been collected as early as July, and were held until the last minute then turned in. If you take ACORN's word that they are simply trying to help voters get registered, this seems like bizarre behavior.

[Dick Dastardly]

Then why would they say it was "false and defamatory"?

Either they determined via other means that the facts were as portrayed, in which case they lied by saying it was false, or they did not determine the facts by other means, in which case they fired their employees without determining the facts.

Like I said, if some private company behaved like ACORN did, they would be screaming bloody murder. But they got caught with their pants down, almost literally. So they flip-flopped with the same agility that some Dopers do.

Election fraud is trivial when liberals do it. But they go into screaming fits when the exit polls don't pan out.

:shrugs:

'Twas ever thus.

Regards,
Shodan

What does election fraud have to do with this?

[jsgoddess]

I agree with those who have said that it's possible that ACORN has a culture of non-inquiry into illegal activities, which can then be taken too far. I, too, have been unable to watch the video as of yet.

The voter registration fraud discussions spanned many many threads and pages last year, and at the end of them, the righties were still making the same bogus claims as they had at the beginning. That they're trotting them out again is disgusting but not surprising.

[Sam Stone]

I'm going to be charitable and presume you worded this poorly. The implication in what you wrote is that Halliburton, as a company and with the express blessing of its top executives, is breaking the law. The single act of an employee bribing a government official is just part and parcel of the company-blessed illegal activity.

Now, if it can be shown that a small group of Halliburton employees took it upon themselves to break the law for the company's benefit, which is what I think you meant in the first place, and management found out and fired them? Like people here, I might question the company's screening process for new employees, but I wouldn't accuse the company itself of engaging in illegal activities.

You know as well as I do, Sam, and probably better, that a company is viewed as an individual entity in the eyes of the law. So it's pretty important to make clear whether it's the company or an employee (or group of employees) who's breaking the law.

Yeah, that was worded very poorly. A better example would be from my mandatory annual ethics training - we were told of a case where a salesman bribed a customer to get a sale. The company did not direct him to do so, but the salesman was acting as an agent of the company, so the company was fined millions of dollars.

In another case, an employee violated company procedure and dumped some toxic chemicals in a ditch because he didn't want to take them to the proper disposal facility. Again, the company itself was fined because the employee was acting as an agent for the company.

I see no difference between this an an ACORN employee in an ACORN office actively colluding to defraud the government and hide child prostitution. ACORN should be held responsible.

[StusBlues]

I've been watching the full Baltimore video, and this screams BS to me. Specifically, the pimp's voice sounds edited and dubbed in, and the ACORN worker never seems like she's reacting directly to what he's saying.

The DC video, on the other hand, is pretty undeniable. Either it's a total setup, or the ACORN reps are completely crazy. Very disturbing.

http://www.youtube.com/user/veritasvisuals

[ElvisL1ves]

That's some pretty vigorous backpedaling there, Sam. Shall we wait for you to catch your breath?

[Snowboarder Bo]

In general, if an employee breaks the law while acting on behalf of a company, the company will be held liable. If the company appears to tolerate such behavior through lax standards or a 'don't ask, don't tell' type of policy, the company can expect to be hammered by the courts with punitive fines as well.

Why should ACORN be held to a different standard?

Because ACORN is the one turning in the bad employees to the authorities.

[Snowboarder Bo]

I see no difference between this an an ACORN employee in an ACORN office actively colluding to defraud the government and hide child prostitution. ACORN should be held responsible.

No, they shouldn't. ACORN is the one discovering the wrong-doing and turning people in to the authorities (wrt fraudulent registrations).

Armed with a tip from the grassroots group ACORN about its own workers, authorities on Wednesday began arresting 11 people suspected of falsifying hundreds of voter applications during a registration drive last year.

cite (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5ZxJgjHzO_C-1f0H0FHImQwjR2gD9AJTJ1G0)

And they're glad to do it:

ACORN officials in Kansas City said they turned in the four people who were indicted.
"We're very happy that they were indicted," said Claudie Harris with ACORN.
Harris said ACORN workers are paid by the hour and not by the number of voter registration cards they turn in.
"When you fraudulently defraud this, that gives us a bad name and what we're trying to do a bad name," Harris said.

cite (http://www.kmbc.com/politics/10214492/detail.html)

[Lightnin']

So this filmmaker went to six cities before he found an Acorn staffer willing to give him the damning evidence he was looking for.

One has to wonder... how long would he have kept doing it if nobody had ever given him the result he was looking for?

And should we use this example in the future? Let's say someone decided to set up the RNC... and went around, trying to get them to accept bribes. You know that eventually, they'll find someone who will accept the bribes. Can this then be used to impugn the RNC?

Do we really want to go here? 'Cause I can see this sort of thing getting really out of hand.

[El_Kabong]

Please show me where yorick brought up Conyers' sack.

OK, look, I was messing about a bit because I thought most people would get what I was driving at, but clearly you didn't. yorick's cite proves nothing save the apparent willingness of the Washington Times to believe in conspiracy theories. The cited article provides no supporting evidence of supression of an ACORN investigation other than Conyers' own claim that this was so. The article's author apparently made no attempt to determine the veracity of Conyers' claim, simply reported it as it was. In my experience, most legitimate news organizations would either not bother to center a story around such an unverifiable claim, or at least run it with the caveat that no supporting evidence could be found. This is, therefore, a perfect example of why the WT is generally thought of as an unreliable source of news.

Now, with that hijack over, lets see how any of this fits in with the subject of the OP. You, yorick, and a few others seem to be ready, willing and eager to believe that whatever this so-far very poorly reported story of support for prostitution may turn out to be, it shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with ACORN as an organization. Why do you believe this? Well, in part it would seem that you already believe equally badly reported rumor, and outright lies, about the organization. As several posters have pointed out, there appears to be no credible evidence whatever that ACORN, as an organization, ever perpetrated voter fraud. At best, as many have repeated over and over again, a few individuals working for ACORN falsified voter registration forms to meet quotas, and in nearly all cases were exposed by their own employer. Apparently no one registered by ACORN is known to have voted fraudulently. What, then, is the actual evidence of voter fraud?

I don't have any particular axe to grind fer or agin ACORN; in fact, I never even heard of them prior to the most recent presidential election. All I'm saying is, I personally will need to hear a lot more about this story, particularly a plausible reason why the ACORN employees involved would willingly go along with discussing strategies for avoiding taxes on prostitution revenues, before I draw any conclusions about the organization as a whole. I would say precisely the same if this were an equally absurd monkeywrenching attempt on any other organization, even (gasp!) one that identified itself as right-wing.

[ElvisL1ves]

You know me, ever alert for the rampant hyocrisy of the left. We had a thread a while ago in which employees of Backwater were accused of having used prostitutes, even child prostitutes. Refresh your memory here. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=528868).

So your purpose in starting this thread wasn't really to get the board to discuss ACORN, but simply to stimulate a reaction. Interesting.

[wierdaaron]

ACORN was formed by Barack Obama to be his personal army of indoctrinators, right? They're the reason Obama is destroying America. Right? So I guess this means Obama likes child prostitution.

What will we call the next gang of misinformed people? Not deathers, but hookerers? Trickers? Ho-ers?

[Gangster Octopus]

Look is it newsworthy? Yes. Should ACORN take some heat for it? Yes. Can ACORN take some lessons on screening personnel from this? Of course. Is it indicitive of ACORNs purpose and/or actual accomplishments? No.

[Bosstone]

Yeah, that was worded very poorly. A better example would be from my mandatory annual ethics training - we were told of a case where a salesman bribed a customer to get a sale. The company did not direct him to do so, but the salesman was acting as an agent of the company, so the company was fined millions of dollars.

In another case, an employee violated company procedure and dumped some toxic chemicals in a ditch because he didn't want to take them to the proper disposal facility. Again, the company itself was fined because the employee was acting as an agent for the company.

I see no difference between this an an ACORN employee in an ACORN office actively colluding to defraud the government and hide child prostitution. ACORN should be held responsible.That makes more sense, and I see where you're coming from on this.

[Jas09]

The question I have is, if this is all completely harmless and has no effect on the eletion, why is ACORN so willing to pay for so many fraudulent registrations? They pay per registration, so this is cost them a lot of money. Yet they seem to be perfectly okay with it. Why is that?I think these are fair questions, and will attempt to answer them even though it is primarily engaging in supposition on both of our parts.

As to why they pay per registration is likely because it is the simplest and most cost-effective method of compensation. Obviously paying per hour is not acceptable if you suspect your workforce may be unmotivated. Paying per valid registration (or at least non-suspicious registration) requires that you keep track of who submitted each registration up until the time that it is checked. This is certainly possible but probably would be more costly than simply bundling the registrations at the local level, paying the submitter, and then validating them at some centralized location.

Also, if ACORN's sole interest was to make sure that legitimate voters are registered, why do they have this habit of turning all the registrations in right at the deadline? Why don't they turn them in as they receive them, to maximize the electoral office's chance of getting them all processed? In the first article I linked to, they said that some of the registrations had been collected as early as July, and were held until the last minute then turned in. If you take ACORN's word that they are simply trying to help voters get registered, this seems like bizarre behavior.I agree that this is suspect behavior. I could perhaps see a situation where the policy was to make one submission of registration to allow for the maximum amount of time to register new voters. But in general it does seem to be an attempt to overwhelm the system.

Of course same-day registration would eliminate all of these issues. Or hell go the ND route and don't require registration at all - show up with proof that you live in the district and cast your ballot. But I think we both know why these are not proposed as a solution to ACORN's activities.

[Sam Stone]

I think these are fair questions, and will attempt to answer them even though it is primarily engaging in supposition on both of our parts.

As to why they pay per registration is likely because it is the simplest and most cost-effective method of compensation. Obviously paying per hour is not acceptable if you suspect your workforce may be unmotivated. Paying per valid registration (or at least non-suspicious registration) requires that you keep track of who submitted each registration up until the time that it is checked. This is certainly possible but probably would be more costly than simply bundling the registrations at the local level, paying the submitter, and then validating them at some centralized location.

Okay... So what should ACORN's liability be if this practice has been repeatedly shown to result in fraudulent registrations being turned in to election officials - and ACORN refuses to modify the policy?

An analogy would be a private company paying its employees to remove toxic waste from a facility, paying them by the pound of waste removed, and not checking to see where they were taking it. If they continued such a policy after many such employees were found to be breaking the law by dumping the waste in non-approved locations, would you not hold the company liable if they did not clean up their procedures and remove the system that gave incentives to employees who break the law?


I agree that this is suspect behavior. I could perhaps see a situation where the policy was to make one submission of registration to allow for the maximum amount of time to register new voters. But in general it does seem to be an attempt to overwhelm the system.

I don't see how that helps maximize the time to register new voters, unless they are only allowed one submission per election season. But that's not the case. They could easily submit registrations in small bundles the day after they receive them from the field. There's no rule that says they all have to come in at once.


Of course same-day registration would eliminate all of these issues. Or hell go the ND route and don't require registration at all - show up with proof that you live in the district and cast your ballot. But I think we both know why these are not proposed as a solution to ACORN's activities.

The U.S. election system is screwed up in many ways. As a Canadian, I'm just baffled by how difficult Americans find the whole process. Voting and counting votes just isn't that hard. I suspect the U.S. system is so convoluted because so many different groups try to game the system and laws are passed willy-nilly to benefit one group over another and over time it's become a patchwork mess.

Take your problem with electronic voting machines. In Canada, we fill in a ballot manually. We hand it to the attendant, and it goes into an electronic machine. If we made an error, such as filling in two boxes or not marking plainly enough, the machine rejects the card and we go back and fill out a new one. If the machine accepts it, the vote is tabulated electronically, but the written card goes into a file which is kept to cross-check the machine count. So you have an instant electronic tally AND a paper trail. There are no spoiled ballots because the voter is right there when the machine accepts the ballot or rejects it. Where's the problem?

But that's a hijack. Back to the ACORN bashing.

[Bricker]

I can sort of understand why this thread has moved in the direction of voter registrations, but the OP was about the willingness pf specific ACORN employees to turn a blind eye to the creation of a brothel and actively assist the brothel owner in concealing his true business, and in concealing the use of child prostitutes.

When I posted, the reports were that this was a solo incident. Now there are two such incidents. It seems reasonable to ask, as others have, if ACORN has a corporate culture that encourages looking the other way when people ask for help doing illegal stuff.

[Labrador Deceiver]

Now, with that hijack over, lets see how any of this fits in with the subject of the OP. You, yorick, and a few others seem to be ready, willing and eager to believe that whatever this so-far very poorly reported story of support for prostitution may turn out to be, it shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with ACORN as an organization.

And you, apparently, don't know how to read. I stated in my first post that my speculations about ACORN as an organization were based on the assumption that the tapes portrayed the situation accurately. I did not assert that they did. My initial post was in response to people who were defending them using the same set of assumptions. I have been eager to believe nothing, actually.

Try again. This time, use less hand waiving.

[elucidator]

All right, all right, I confess! I'll tell you what's wrong with ACORN, and so many other lefty populist organizations.

They trust poor people. This is a political bias, to be sure. They hire poor people whenever they get the chance, they feel an obligation to do so. And so, they get screwed over. Time and again, and again, because they will keep doing it. They will not stick thier nose up the applicant's ass and ferret out every possible misdemeanor, because they trust poor people.

Now, of course, the opposite prejudice is a tendency to distrust guys with expensive suits and spreadsheets, financial types, and so forth. A blind, unfounded prejudice, to be sure, since we all know that these men are the very paragons of virtue and fair dealing.

ACORN is foolish to trust the poor without suspicion. Granted. I confess. Poor people are no less likely to screw you than a white guy in a suit, they just aren't as good at it.

[ElvisL1ves]

Okay... So what should ACORN's liability be if this practice has been repeatedly shown to result in fraudulent registrations being turned in to election officials - and ACORN refuses to modify the policy? It has been explained to you repeatedly that they are legally required to submit them anyway. Gawdamighty. :rolleyes:

[RTFirefly]

You know me, ever alert for the rampant hyocrisy of the left. We had a thread a while ago in which employees of Backwater were accused of having used prostitutes, even child prostitutes. Refresh your memory here. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=528868)

And ... what do you know? Although a few posters did hop on the Blackwater-is-evil-a-ha! bandwagon, most noted the flimsy evidence and drew distinctions between a few Blackwater employees and the organization itself.

I'm just sayin', is all.Then I'm still trying to figure out what legitimate reason you had for starting this thread.

[wierdaaron]

I like how Blackwater is a "conservative thing" and Acorn is a "liberal thing." Acorn doesn't have anything to do with anything. Scaremongers trying to make Acorn out like a branch of the Democratic party are overreaching.

[Labrador Deceiver]

I like how Blackwater is a "conservative thing" and Acorn is a "liberal thing." Acorn doesn't have anything to do with anything. Scaremongers trying to make Acorn out like a branch of the Democratic party are overreaching.

Have none of you realized that Bricker was attempting to pay a compliment with his Backwater post? That's how I read it, anyway.

[ElvisL1ves]

Have none of you realized that Bricker was attempting to pay a compliment with his Backwater post?
A blackhanded compliment?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I can sort of understand why this thread has moved in the direction of voter registrations, but the OP was about the willingness pf specific ACORN employees to turn a blind eye to the creation of a brothel and actively assist the brothel owner in concealing his true business, and in concealing the use of child prostitutes.

When I posted, the reports were that this was a solo incident. Now there are two such incidents. It seems reasonable to ask, as others have, if ACORN has a corporate culture that encourages looking the other way when people ask for help doing illegal stuff.
The answer is no. Sorry to disappoint you.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Okay... So what should ACORN's liability be if this practice has been repeatedly shown to result in fraudulent registrations being turned in to election officials - and ACORN refuses to modify the policy?
ACORN doesn't have a CHOICE about the policy. Please inform yourself. They are required BY LAW to submit the bogus registrations. They are not ALLOWED to decide what registrations are or or not valid. All they can do is flag the ones they are suspicious about, which they do CONSISTENTLY, and which is the reason we know about them in the first place.

What part of this is not getting through to you?

One more time -

ACORN is REQUIRED BY LAW to submit all registration forms, regardless of how bogus they look. It's not their policy to change, m'kay. It's the law.

Could you please acknowledge that you understand this point.

[Bricker]

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic;11544642]The answer is no. Sorry to disappoint you.

They don't have such a corporate culture? For sure?

So you'd be very surprised to hear of a third or fourth similar incident?

[ElvisL1ves]

Give it up, Bricker.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

They don't have such a corporate culture? For sure?
They do not. Sorry to piss in your cheerios.
So you'd be very surprised to hear of a third or fourth similar incident?
Not a bit. Four people out of thousands is a very tiny sample. I'm sure I could find at least four cops who have taken bribes from pimps. That doesn't mean that there is a culture in law enforcement that encourages taking bribes from pimps.

Unless you can produce a shred of evidence that any of the ACORN employees involved in this story were acting with the knowledge, approval or encouragement of ACORN, either tacitly or explicitly (and to what end, by the way?), then all you're doing is try to score cheap political points against ACORN, and smear people and a "culture" that you don't actually know a damn thing about.

[Bricker]

They do not. Sorry to piss in your cheerios.

Not a bit. Four people out of thousands is a very tiny sample. I'm sure I could find at least four cops who have taken bribes from pimps. That doesn't mean that there is a culture in law enforcement that encourages taking bribes from pimps.

Unless you can produce a shred of evidence that any of the ACORN employees involved in this story were acting with the knowledge, approval or encouragement of ACORN, either tacitly or explicitly (and to what end, by the way?), then all you're doing is try to score cheap political points against ACORN, and smear people and "culture" that you don't actually know a damn thing about.

It seems to me you're not applying the same strict standard when you talk about the guilt of Bush and Cheney for various acts committed by others.

[E-Sabbath]

I'd call it more of a consistent failing of the nonprofit style organization, where people have to deal directly with the crazy fucking end of real life on the streets and all kinds of loonybots, without making judgments and treating them all equally.

You kind of have to give the lowest-end of your employees the highest possible autonomy.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

It seems to me you're not applying the same strict standard when you talk about the guilt of Bush and Cheney for various acts committed by others.
What are you talking about? Specifically -- what are you talking about?

[Bricker]

What are you talking about? Specifically -- what are you talking about?

Treatment of prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Grahib, to pick two of many examples.

[El_Kabong]

And you, apparently, don't know how to read. I stated in my first post that my speculations about ACORN as an organization were based on the assumption that the tapes portrayed the situation accurately. I did not assert that they did. My initial post was in response to people who were defending them using the same set of assumptions. I have been eager to believe nothing, actually.

Try again. This time, use less hand waiving.

Dude, in less than ten hours, this thing has gone to four pages, and probably 20,000 words. Sorry if I missed a few of yours.

Calm the fuck down, fer fuck's sake.

[jayjay]

Treatment of prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Grahib, to pick two of many examples.

We have more than enough evidence to suggest that treatment at Gitmo, anyway, was condoned and probably approved at the Cabinet level, from my understanding. Even the right-wingers are questioning the value of pursuing it in the court system rather than questioning whether it was approved by the administration. Abu Ghraib is harder to pin down, but it certainly went higher than just Lyndie England and her crew...whether it stopped at the administrative level of the prison itself or went beyond is less certain than in the case of Gitmo.

[ElvisL1ves]

Treatment of prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Grahib, to pick two of many examples.

Do us all a favor and describe up front just what constitutes the Gotcha you're after this time, okay? It will save us all a lot of guessing.

[Bricker]

We have more than enough evidence to suggest that treatment at Gitmo, anyway, was condoned and probably approved at the Cabinet level, from my understanding. Even the right-wingers are questioning the value of pursuing it in the court system rather than questioning whether it was approved by the administration. Abu Ghraib is harder to pin down, but it certainly went higher than just Lyndie England and her crew...whether it stopped at the administrative level of the prison itself or went beyond is less certain than in the case of Gitmo.

And that makes Bush and Cheney guilty?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

By the way, just for the record, the second video does not involve child prostitution, but just garden variety, adult prostitution, which...who gives a shit.

[jayjay]

And that makes Bush and Cheney guilty?

It certainly doesn't rule them out. Nobody's saying "Export them to the Hague immediately!" (Not seriously, anyway.) But there's enough smoke to make an investigation to see if there's fire logically appealing.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

And that makes Bush and Cheney guilty?
They've pretty much both acknowledged that they knew about the torture. Cheney, in particular, appears to have been heavily involved in it. He was desperately trying to torture somebody into saying that Iraq was involved with 9/11. He was unsuccessful.

[Malthus]

They do not. Sorry to piss in your cheerios.

Not a bit. Four people out of thousands is a very tiny sample. I'm sure I could find at least four cops who have taken bribes from pimps. That doesn't mean that there is a culture in law enforcement that encourages taking bribes from pimps.

Unless you can produce a shred of evidence that any of the ACORN employees involved in this story were acting with the knowledge, approval or encouragement of ACORN, either tacitly or explicitly (and to what end, by the way?), then all you're doing is try to score cheap political points against ACORN, and smear people and a "culture" that you don't actually know a damn thing about.

I tend to disagree about the cop example. A few "stings" where cops are caught taking bribes are distrubing for exactly that reason - they indicate a corporate culture which tolerates bribe-taking.

There is simply no other way that such an issue could come to light, as it is very unlikely that *all* cops would ever be caught taking bribes.

A few such incidents indicate, but of course do not prove, there is a widespread problem.

That being said, it is of course a far cry from a "sting" by actual internal investigators, to have some shady political mooks with a hefty ideological axe to grind cobble up a heavily edited tape or two and claim it is proof of their victim's wrong-doing. But assuming the tapes are not deliberate distortions (a big assumption), they do raise questions about the organization's corporate culture - whether the target is the cops, the Republican party, or ACORN.

[Sam Stone]

It has been explained to you repeatedly that they are legally required to submit them anyway. Gawdamighty. :rolleyes:

Yes, I understand that. My point is that they have put incentives in place which guarantee the poor people they hire will attempt to pad the roles. They could easily prevent this. For example, by validating the registrations themselves and only paying for the valid ones. Or by requiring 3rd party witnesses. Or even by spot-checking the registrations handed in and refusing to pay anything if any are found to be fraudulent.

Yes, they'd still have to hand the fraudulent ones in, but the fact is that either through negligence, idiocy, or intention, ACORN has set up an incentive system for their vote registration drives which maximizes the possibility that workers will try to game the system.

So keep your rolleyes to yourself. It's not my problem if you're refusing to look at the issue from any perspective other than the most simplistic one that bolsters your case.

[Sam Stone]

ACORN doesn't have a CHOICE about the policy. Please inform yourself. They are required BY LAW to submit the bogus registrations. They are not ALLOWED to decide what registrations are or or not valid. All they can do is flag the ones they are suspicious about, which they do CONSISTENTLY, and which is the reason we know about them in the first place.

What part of this is not getting through to you?

One more time -

ACORN is REQUIRED BY LAW to submit all registration forms, regardless of how bogus they look. It's not their policy to change, m'kay. It's the law.

Could you please acknowledge that you understand this point.

See my response to ElvisL1ves. Your are intentionally avoiding the larger point in order to stick to your script that portrays them as unwitting victims of the process.

ACORN could take all sorts of steps to minimize the number of fraudulent registrations they accept in the first place. They refuse to do so. They know their policies increase the probability of fraudulent registrations being turned in, and they refuse to change them. Therefore, they are liable.

Furthermore, they appear to have a policy of turning in these registrations as late as possible, which puts a heavy burden on election officials to validate them. Either they are doing this on purpose, or they are a completely incompetent organization that can't get its act together and turn in registrations in a timely manner. Either way, they suck.

[Bricker]

It certainly doesn't rule them out. Nobody's saying "Export them to the Hague immediately!" (Not seriously, anyway.) But there's enough smoke to make an investigation to see if there's fire logically appealing.

Actually, I bet I can find ten posts onthis board saying essentially precisely that, with no indicia of lack of seriousness.

But I agree that there's no evidence to investigate them -- I have for a long time. I just don't agree there's enough evidence to declare them guilty.

Here, we have much the same situation. I think there's enough evidence here to warrant a further probe into ACORN's practices.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Yes, I understand that. My point is that they have put incentives in place which guarantee the poor people they hire will attempt to pad the roles. They could easily prevent this. For example, by validating the registrations themselves and only paying for the valid ones.
They are not allowed to validate or invalidate the registrations themselves.
They are required, by law, to submit all of them. They are not allwed to make a determination as to what they think is valid, only what they think is suspicious. Or by requiring 3rd party witnesses.
This is discriminatory, and ACORN has no authority to impose such a road block to a citizen registering to vote.
Or even by spot-checking the registrations handed in and refusing to pay anything if any are found to be fraudulent.
This is basically day labor. They aren't going to be able to wait until months down the line to determine who deserves to be paid what. They also can't hold every worker responsible for people who submit fraudulent regstrations without their knowledge.
Yes, they'd still have to hand the fraudulent ones in, but the fact is that either through negligence, idiocy, or intention, ACORN has set up an incentive system for their vote registration drives which maximizes the possibility that workers will try to game the system.
They have set up the system which is the most cost effective and timely, and which does not allow for any real chance of voting fraud.
So keep your rolleyes to yourself. It's not my problem if you're refusing to look at the issue from any perspective other than the most simplistic one that bolsters your case.
Irony.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

See my response to ElvisL1ves. Your are intentionally avoiding the larger point in order to stick to your script that portrays them as unwitting victims of the process.

ACORN could take all sorts of steps to minimize the number of fraudulent registrations they accept in the first place. They refuse to do so. They know their policies increase the probability of fraudulent registrations being turned in, and they refuse to change them. Therefore, they are liable.
There's no reason to do so. Fraudulent registrations are little more than a paperwork nuisance. They don't matter. They don't lead to voter fraud. Any remedy would be worse than the disease.
Furthermore, they appear to have a policy of turning in these registrations as late as possible
Cite they they have such a policy?

[ElvisL1ves]

Yes, I understand that.That claim is not at all consistent with your yammering about their "liability". It's all up there for anybody to read, you know.

My point is that they have put incentives in place which guarantee the poor people they hire will attempt to pad the roles. They could easily prevent this. For example, by validating the registrations themselvesBzzt. No, you don't understand how it works. Validation is an official government function. No private organization has that authority.

ACORN has set up an incentive system for their vote registration drives which maximizes the possibility that workers will try to game the system.No, you don't get it at all. Not, that is, unless you can cite something, anything, that shows there is a significant number of bogus filings and that ACORN is responsible for them. But of course you can't, so let's not bother even asking.

It's not my problem if you're refusing to look at the issue from any perspective other than the most simplistic one that bolsters your case.Log, eye. :rolleyes:

You're manfully trying to support the RW-blog case you've swallowed whole that ACORN is an evil tool of the Democratic Party, but it just ain't working, is it? But will you reconsider that case? Will you consider the possibility that your favorite "news" sources are misleading you? Will you consider the possibility that you just don't quite know how things work in a foreign country as well as the people who live there do? Will you even stop just making up assertions as if they were fact? Of course not.

Now go educate yourself before spouting off just for damn once, willya?

[flickster]

If this group was closely associated with the Republicans, you can bet there would already be a half dozen Congressional investigations ongoing, computers seized, and funding cut off....

[ElvisL1ves]

I think there's enough evidence here to warrant a further probe into ACORN's practices.
Really? Lay it all out for us, then, Counselor. Do a side-by-side listing of the evidence for a probe into Bush and Cheney authorizing torture too, if only for entertainment value.

You're welcome to make yourself look as foolish as you want there, of course. Your choice.

[Bosstone]

Diogenes and Elvis, when Sam is talking about validation by ACORN, he's not talking about validation for purposes of registering voters or not, but for purposes of payment. As in, if a form for Batman comes along, flag it, refuse to pay for it, but send it along anyway as they're legally required to do. I don't know how well that would work, but your posts don't seem to make that distinction.

I do think that, unlike the topic of the OP, the fake registrations are endemic to ACORN. The nature of the reimbursement encourages it. Whether or not it's a problem worth worrying about, however, is a different matter.

[ElvisL1ves]

Diogenes and Elvis, when Sam is talking about validation by ACORN, he's not talking about validation for purposes of registering voters or not, but for purposes of payment. As in, if a form for Batman comes along, flag it, refuse to pay for it, but send it along anyway as they're legally required to do. Let him say that himself, then. Along with some kind of cite for how that huge mass of crap is crippling the system, too.

I don't know how well that would work, but your posts don't seem to make that distinction.Nor do his.

[Bosstone]

Let him say that himself, then.He did.

They could easily prevent this. For example, by validating the registrations themselves and only paying for the valid ones. Or by requiring 3rd party witnesses. Or even by spot-checking the registrations handed in and refusing to pay anything if any are found to be fraudulent.

Yes, they'd still have to hand the fraudulent ones in, but the fact is that either through negligence, idiocy, or intention, ACORN has set up an incentive system for their vote registration drives which maximizes the possibility that workers will try to game the system.

[ElvisL1ves]

He did.
I see no distinction there between different kinds of fraudulency. No way to tell an unremarkable false name or address from Batman, Gotham City, NY.

Keep up with the clairvoyance classes, though. You show promise.

[El_Kabong]

If this group was closely associated with the Republicans, you can bet there would already be a half dozen Congressional investigations ongoing, computers seized, and funding cut off....

Jeez, and I get accused of "handwaiving"...

[Bosstone]

I see no distinction there between different kinds of fraudulency. No way to tell an unremarkable false name or address from Batman, Gotham City, NY.

Keep up with the clairvoyance classes, though. You show promise.You and Dio have already said they flag the suspicious ones before sending them on, right? Sounds to me like they do some checking already, if not conclusive.

[ElvisL1ves]

You and Dio have already said they flag the suspicious ones before sending them on, right? Sounds to me like they do some checking already, if not conclusive.Sure, the Batman ones. But they can't do the ones that aren't obviously bogus. And we still don't have a factual cite for the numbers of the ones that do get submitted, bogus or not. We do, however, know how many of these actually turn into votes and therefore how much effect they have on actual elections.

BTW, you've just invalidated Sam's latest retreat-covering argument with that.

There is no there there.

[ElvisL1ves]

If this group was closely associated with the Republicans, you can bet there would already be a half dozen Congressional investigations ongoing, computers seized, and funding cut off....

The same old imaginary tu quoque shit yet again ??? Puh-leeeeze.

[Mr. Moto]

C'mon - this needn't be so absolute. When ACORN workers were prosecuted for fraud in Seattle a couple of years back, the organization was not prosecuted - but they did proceed under a consent decree to tighten up their training and supervisory procedures.

Also, those defending ACORN wouldn't likely defend the embezzlement of close to a million dollars from the organization in 1999-2000 by the brother of Wade Rathke, the organization's founder - nor the fact that this crime was kept secret from donors and even the ACORN board so that that man's reputation could be protected. This blew up last year forcing Dale Rathke to leave the organization (amazingly, he had continued to work for ACORN after the theft) and Wade to reduce his role there.

Link. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/us/09embezzle.html)

And now comes this.

ISTM that ACORN has a few matters to set right. And frankly an organization like this has to build up a reputation for integrity. Wade Rathke said he hid the embezzlement because he didn't want that to be used as a weapon against the organization - but the coverup was worse than the original crime as far as perceptions like this go.

There are conservative organizations I don't donate to because I don't trust them. Were I a liberal, this might be true of ACORN.

[ElvisL1ves]

Also, those defending ACORN wouldn't likely defend the embezzlement of close to a million dollars from the organization in 1999-2000 by the brother of Wade Rathke, the organization's founder - nor the fact that this crime was kept secret from donors and even the ACORN board so that that man's reputation could be protected.And you're blaming that crime on the victim? Dare we ask why, or do we already know?

And frankly an organization like this has to build up a reputation for integrity.Why do you think so? The validity of voter registrations has nothing to do with who delivers them to City Hall.

[Mr. Moto]

And you're blaming that crime on the victim? Dare we ask why, or do we already know?

Well, the founder conspired in the coverup, and while he stepped down as chief organizer for ACORN he remains chief organizer for ACORN international LLC, per the article. So I'm blaming him, sure, to the extent that he made the situation about ten times worse to protect his brother.

I think calling this blaming the victim wildly misstates things - it is more like calling out a co-conspirator.

[flickster]

Why do you think so? The validity of voter registrations has nothing to do with who delivers them to City Hall.

Here's where I get confused. Seems like all the discussion here is based on voter registration, but it's clear that ACORN is involved in more activities than that.

[ElvisL1ves]

Maybe I have to be clearer. How does any of that reflect badly on ACORN or its reputation, rather than on the guy who stole from it?

Maybe you're not actually trying to smear them. Maybe you really haven't thought this out. It's possible.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Well, the founder conspired in the coverup, and while he stepped down as chief organizer for ACORN he remains chief organizer for ACORN international LLC, per the article. So I'm blaming him, sure, to the extent that he made the situation about ten times worse to protect his brother.

I think calling this blaming the victim wildly misstates things - it is more like calling out a co-conspirator.
If ACORN isn't the victim, who is? How can you say the agency which was stolen from wasn't the victim? If you're saying ACORN wasn't a victim, then you're saying there wasn't a crime.

[Sam Stone]

BTW, you've just invalidated Sam's latest retreat-covering argument with that.

There is no there there.

What are you talking about? All ACORN would have to say is, "If we find even one fraudulent registration in the pile a worker submits, no payment will be forthcoming for any of it."

Even if they did random spot checking, the potential of losing all the money would greatly reduce the incentive to cheat, wouldn't it?

Or, if they don't want to be that draconian, they could say that for every fraudulent registration they uncover, the worker involved will forfeit 50 good ones. Or something like that.

Or even just, you know, FIRE the people who turn in bad registrations.

As for not citing evidence that this is damaging the system, I gave you MULTIPLE cites. Did you even bother to read them? The CNN investigation went to an electoral office that had been swamped by ACORN dumping 5,000 registrations on them just at the deadline, with HALF of them being fraudulent. The Mercury News cited said that ACORN and other related organizations were dumping large numbers of fraudulent registrations on them late, and it was actually causing their system to break down.

You consistently misrepresent what I've said, ignore my cites, refuse to read my actual arguments and respond to arguments you wish I had made instead of the ones I actually made. I have no idea why I waste any time with you. Masochism, I guess.

[yorick73]

Does anyone remember the ACORN 8, Anita MonCrief, and the spiked NYT story? They claim the corruption goes to the top levels of ACORN management. It seems to me that someone should look into this before they get another dime of our tax dollars.

http://www.acorn-8.net/

[Mr. Moto]

If ACORN isn't the victim, who is? How can you say the agency which was stolen from wasn't the victim? If you're saying ACORN wasn't a victim, then you're saying there wasn't a crime.

I didn't say there wasn't a victim or that they weren't among them - I just said blaming the victim didn't describe what went on.

Would you call Enron blaming the victim? After all that corporation was used fraudulently and now no longer exists. I don't think that is an apt description, though, and I don't think it applies in this case when the founder of the organization and someone so closely associated with it is associated with the cover-up, and his brother is the embezzler.

Sorry.

[yorick73]

Very sad that it took these two videos for the census bureau to cut all ties with ACORN. I would have assumed the 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations would have been enough. But, thank goodness they have cut all ties nonetheless.

[StusBlues]

By the way, just for the record, the second video does not involve child prostitution, but just garden variety, adult prostitution, which...who gives a shit.


Well, pretty much everybody involved with law enforcement.

Hey, I'm all for legalized prostitution along the Nevada model for a plethora of reasons, first and foremost the safety of sex workers. As long as it's illegal, though, any office (particularly one receiving gov't funding) that shows folks how to get illegal loads to finance prostitution should be taken down.

[Leaper]

It's the silliest thing, but for some reason I thought you were serious.

Don't worry, it won't happen again.

Regards,
Shodan

Sorry, Shodan, but I'm not getting your point. What part of what Lobohan said do you think is false? Are you saying ACORN was not legally barred from destroying what they thought were false registrations? Are you saying ACORN knowingly and deliberately solicited false registrations? Or are you saying that ACORN turned in those false registrations with the deliberate intent of (somehow) getting actual votes out of them?

[Leaper]

It seems to me that someone should look into this before they get another dime of our tax dollars.


Wait, okay... IS or IS NOT ACORN funded by public money? I've seen conservatives in this very thread say yes, and liberals say no. (Or at least what I interpret as "yes" and "no," perhaps erroneously.)

Please clarify.

[Snowboarder Bo]

My point is that they have put incentives in place which guarantee the poor people they hire will attempt to pad the roles. They could easily prevent this. For example, by validating the registrations themselves and only paying for the valid ones.

You're wrong, Sam. ACORN does not pay per registration. See post #136 (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11544373&postcount=136) in this thread.

[Frank]

Wait, okay... IS or IS NOT ACORN funded by public money? I've seen conservatives in this very thread say yes, and liberals say no. (Or at least what I interpret as "yes" and "no," perhaps erroneously.)

Please clarify.
ACORN was, until today, going to get some money for work with/for the Census. Whether that counts as "funding" is, I suppose, in the eye of the beholder.

[yorick73]

Wait, okay... IS or IS NOT ACORN funded by public money? I've seen conservatives in this very thread say yes, and liberals say no. (Or at least what I interpret as "yes" and "no," perhaps erroneously.)

Please clarify.

I don't think that they are fully supported by federal money but they have been the recipients of federal grants. I think I've heard 58 million so far and stand to get much more from the stimulus plan. Here is one document showing they receive HUD grants.

http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr01-114.cfm

They should not receive one more taxpayer dime until they are fully investigated.

[yorick73]

Here's a commentary that states that ACORN has received 53 million in federal funds.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/special-editorial-reports/ACORN-got-53-million-in-federal-funds-since-94-now-eligible-for-up-to-8-billion-more-44406217.html

[flickster]

What about local/state funding?

[yorick73]

What about local/state funding?

HUD gives grants to states which may then go to ACORN but I don't know that this happens. Regardless I don't think that constitutes local funding.

[Frank]

Here's a commentary that states that ACORN has received 53 million in federal funds.
I didn't know that, thank you. (I'll trust that they have some basis for the figure, as the remainder of the article is . . . umm, shall we say . . . slanted.)

[yorick73]

I didn't know that, thank you. (I'll trust that they have some basis for the figure, as the remainder of the article is . . . umm, shall we say . . . slanted.)

Yes, it is commentary. I had my hand on a HUD document earlier today that listed all the ACORN grants from 2007 but I'm having trouble finding it again.

[Snowboarder Bo]

What are you talking about? All ACORN would have to say is, "If we find even one fraudulent registration in the pile a worker submits, no payment will be forthcoming for any of it."

As has been pointed out before (with cites), ACORN does not pay registration workers per registration. They pay an hourly wage.

Even if they did random spot checking, the potential of losing all the money would greatly reduce the incentive to cheat, wouldn't it?

Or, if they don't want to be that draconian, they could say that for every fraudulent registration they uncover, the worker involved will forfeit 50 good ones. Or something like that.

As has been pointed out before, this would be illegal.
Or even just, you know, FIRE the people who turn in bad registrations.

As has been pointed out before, ACORN does indeed fire people who have turned in false registrations.

As for not citing evidence that this is damaging the system, I gave you MULTIPLE cites. Did you even bother to read them? The CNN investigation went to an electoral office that had been swamped by ACORN dumping 5,000 registrations on them just at the deadline, with HALF of them being fraudulent. The Mercury News cited said that ACORN and other related organizations were dumping large numbers of fraudulent registrations on them late, and it was actually causing their system to break down.

You consistently misrepresent what I've said, ignore my cites, refuse to read my actual arguments and respond to arguments you wish I had made instead of the ones I actually made. I have no idea why I waste any time with you. Masochism, I guess.

The same could be said of you, since you repeatedly ignore all cites contrary to your own (fraudulently obtained, one might say) conclusions.

[elucidator]

Youi simply must, repeat, must implore a mod to fix that quote for you. Cognitive whiplash, the acute but temporary form of cognitive dissonance.

PS: Am I allowed to do that myself, or do I need to poke the OP? I mean, I'm pretty sure that paragraph before the orphaned [/quote] wasn't friend SnowBo.

[gonzomax]

If this group was closely associated with the Republicans, you can bet there would already be a half dozen Congressional investigations ongoing, computers seized, and funding cut off....

You kid right. The dems have refused to go after the repubs who did so many sick and illegal things the last 2 terms. The dems always play too nice. The repubs spent mega millions trying to find a way to make legal trouble for Clinton. They launched investigations from the beginning to the end of his terms.They have no shame.
By the way, show incidences of people actually voting illegally. ACORN registered voters and when they were suspicious ,they would flag the app to call attention to it. This is again repub noise .How long will you people allow them to play you for such suckers?

[Snowboarder Bo]

Youi simply must, repeat, must implore a mod to fix that quote for you. Cognitive whiplash, the acute but temporary form of cognitive dissonance.

PS: Am I allowed to do that myself, or do I need to poke the OP? I mean, I'm pretty sure that paragraph before the orphaned [ /quote] wasn't friend SnowBo.

The 2 paragraphs actually. I sent a note to mods to plz fix. Thanks for spotting my coding error.

It should look like this:

As for not citing evidence that this is damaging the system, I gave you MULTIPLE cites. Did you even bother to read them? The CNN investigation went to an electoral office that had been swamped by ACORN dumping 5,000 registrations on them just at the deadline, with HALF of them being fraudulent. The Mercury News cited said that ACORN and other related organizations were dumping large numbers of fraudulent registrations on them late, and it was actually causing their system to break down.

You consistently misrepresent what I've said, ignore my cites, refuse to read my actual arguments and respond to arguments you wish I had made instead of the ones I actually made. I have no idea why I waste any time with you. Masochism, I guess.

[elucidator]

Why haven't we heard more about this, because I'd like to know. For instance, I would like to know who this documentary guy is. Where he got the courage to take on the shadow empire of ACORN. Must have gotten some money from somewhere, even Greyhounds to six or seven cities costs money.

Not that I'm suspicious! Well, yeah, actually, it is. I don't want this story to die, I want to know all about it.

[Snowboarder Bo]

Why haven't we heard more about this, because I'd like to know. For instance, I would like to know who this documentary guy is. Where he got the courage to take on the shadow empire of ACORN. Must have gotten some money from somewhere, even Greyhounds to six or seven cities costs money.

Not that I'm suspicious! Well, yeah, actually, it is. I don't want this story to die, I want to know all about it.

You know, that's a good point. Where did this guy get his funding from? Who is he? Do we even know his name?

[yorick73]

Why haven't we heard more about this, because I'd like to know. For instance, I would like to know who this documentary guy is. Where he got the courage to take on the shadow empire of ACORN. Must have gotten some money from somewhere, even Greyhounds to six or seven cities costs money.

Not that I'm suspicious! Well, yeah, actually, it is. I don't want this story to die, I want to know all about it.

You haven't heard about it because you don't watch Fox News. They were the only network to report the story. CNN finally mentioned it today I think. The NYT ran an AP blurb on their online version only. ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and the Wash Post did not mention this story. Actually, I think Glenn Beck gets credit for breaking this story. He's also the one who did the legwork on the Van Jones commie story. I personally detest Beck but you have to give him some credit on these two.

Also, I think Andrew Breitbart's group was behind the investigative reporting.

[yorick73]

You know, that's a good point. Where did this guy get his funding from? Who is he? Do we even know his name?

His name is James O'Keefe. He also claims that CNN was passing on an ACORN lie when they reported that his crew tried this at other ACORN offices but failed.

http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/11/on-why-i-dont-return-phone-calls-from-an-intrepid-cnn-producer/#more-1018

[yorick73]

Looks like I was wrong about Breitbart. It appears O'Keefe had already done this investigation before approaching Breitbart. Here is Breitbart's account and a link to the transcript and audio in its entirety.

http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/10/introducing-james-o%e2%80%99keefe/#more-402

[GIGObuster]

His name is James O'Keefe. He also claims that CNN was passing on an ACORN lie when they reported that his crew tried this at other ACORN offices but failed.

http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/11/on-why-i-dont-return-phone-calls-from-an-intrepid-cnn-producer/#more-1018

Why is that that yahoo filmmaker (and I call him that for his moronic reply in that opinion piece) ignores that it is normal for the media to make an effort to offer both points of view in a history? When he comes saying that CNN is lying for pointing to what acorn and others said about what the filmmaker did at other locations, the filmmaker is going way beyond “journalistic ethics” if he is serious here.

[yorick73]

Why is that that yahoo filmmaker (and I call him that for the moronic reply in that opinion piece) ignores that it is normal for the media to make an effort to offer both points of view in a history? When he comes saying that CNN is lying for pointing to what acorn and others said about what the filmmaker did at other locations, the filmmaker is going way beyond “journalistic ethics” if he is serious here.

Um...if the filmmaker did not go to other locations then he is correct to point out that ACORN is lying. He says that CNN pushed the ACORN lie, not that CNN is lying.

[GIGObuster]

Um...if the filmmaker did not go to other locations then he is correct to point out that ACORN is lying. He says that CNN pushed the ACORN lie, not that CNN is lying.

The title says "On why I do not return calls from an intrepid CNN producer"

He is clearly implicating CNN on this.

When you air the raw ACORN footage that is now viral on the Internet, and being played on FOX NEWS and countless talk radio shows, then and only then — when America can see, hear and smell the stench we have exposed — will I subject myself to a CNN hit job.

IMHO he is more in favor of the FOX system of reporting, no other view points should be considered, only they have the access to the truth.

[Snowboarder Bo]

His name is James O'Keefe. He also claims that CNN was passing on an ACORN lie when they reported that his crew tried this at other ACORN offices but failed.

http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/11/on-why-i-dont-return-phone-calls-from-an-intrepid-cnn-producer/#more-1018

Thanks for the name and the links. Mr. O'Keefe himself is not very honest, and is definitely pushing an agenda. This isn't journalism at all; it's a hatchet job.

He claims to have exposed "blatant ACORN CORRUPTION" and "ACORN caught on tape trying to help create a brothel featuring illegal immigrant age range 13-15 from El Salvador", but the transcript doesn't back that up. ACORN had nothing to do with this, other than being the employer of the people he taped.

And, in the end, ACORN did fire the people involved, as any decent employer would.

I doubt that will stop Mr. O'Keefe from wailing and gnashing his teeth, tho.

[yorick73]

The title says "On why I do not return calls from an intrepid CNN producer"

He is clearly implicating CNN on this.



IMHO he is more in favor of the FOX system of reporting, no other view points should be considered, only they have the access to the truth.

I think he is saying that he will consider talking to CNN when CNN bothers to air the footage and report on the story.

[GIGObuster]

I think he is saying that he will consider talking to CNN when CNN bothers to air the footage and report on the story.

First CNN pushed the false ACORN line that “[t]his film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed.”

But once again he is being misleading regarding how the media reports histories. Just because Fox does not do it that way does not means that it is something nefarious. As in other thread I found reports that the filmmaker may also had broken laws against secret recordings, I have to question if all the information and all of the tape was released.

BTW I agree with the workers being fired.

[yorick73]

Thanks for the name and the links. Mr. O'Keefe himself is not very honest, and is definitely pushing an agenda. This isn't journalism at all; it's a hatchet job.

He claims to have exposed "blatant ACORN CORRUPTION" and "ACORN caught on tape trying to help create a brothel featuring illegal immigrant age range 13-15 from El Salvador", but the transcript doesn't back that up. ACORN had nothing to do with this, other than being the employer of the people he taped.

And, in the end, ACORN did fire the people involved, as any decent employer would.

I doubt that will stop Mr. O'Keefe from wailing and gnashing his teeth, tho.

This is the main argument of this thread. Not whether this one tape implicates ACORN in the wrongdoing of these employees but, taken together with everything else that certain ACORN employees, management and the founder have been involved in, can a reasonable person assume that the group is corrupt and needs to be investigated? This is all the more important since they receive taxpayer dollars in the form of grants.

[GIGObuster]

This is the main argument of this thread. Not whether this one tape implicates ACORN in the wrongdoing of these employees but, taken together with everything else that certain ACORN employees, management and the founder have been involved in, can a reasonable person assume that the group is corrupt and needs to be investigated? This is all the more important since they receive taxpayer dollars in the form of grants.
Not anymore regarding any census work, so IMO that is a moot point.

IMHO ACORN was judged guilty already by many here, you may want to think on the fairness of that. And yet I do remember that in the past ACORN was reinstated after courts did investigate and the prosecutors just can not manage to demonstrate that finding some unethical workers means that the whole organization is a criminal one.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/files/documents/2009/ACORN-FEC/5820_7_Notification_to_Iglesias.pdf
PDF file.

Imagine that.

[magellan01]

Not anymore regarding any census work, so IMO that is a moot point.

IMHO ACORN was judged guilty already by many here, you may want to think on the fairness of that. And yet I do remember that in the past ACORN was reinstated after courts did investigate and the prosecutors just can not manage to demonstrate that finding some unethical workers means that the whole organization is a criminal one.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/files/documents/2009/ACORN-FEC/5820_7_Notification_to_Iglesias.pdf
PDF file.

Imagine that.

Based on your post #216, which was incorrect in your accusation of who was lying (in bold, no less) , and the way you were politely corrected on that point, and your attempt to handwave it away, it seems you are the one glomming on to preconceived notions and reluctant to be dragged to reality.

FYI: Something along the lines of "Oops, I was wrong", or "Oops, I worded that poorly" or something similar is what was called for in your Post #218.

[GIGObuster]

Based on your post #216, which was incorrect in your accusation of who was lying (in bold, no less) , and the way you were politely corrected on that point, and your attempt to handwave it away, it seems you are the one glomming on to preconceived notions and reluctant to be dragged to reality.

FYI: Something along the lines of "Oops, I was wrong", or "Oops, I worded that poorly" or something similar is what was called for in your Post #218.
There is a big difference between accusing someone of pushing the news and reporting the news IMO.

[elucidator]

Reality is over-rated, anyway.

[GIGObuster]

As for being "dragged to reality" you only avoided dealing with the verdict on past pumped up accusations.

The reality is that that reporter had an ax to grind, that does not mean his effort on finding some unethical workers was a bad one, what is bad is that then he and Fox goes further, accusing others of avoiding the proper way of reporting the news.

IMHO the "intrepid filmmaker" needs to learn a lesson too.

http://wbal.com/apps/news/templates/story.aspx?articleid=35357&zoneid=2
The only information received in reference to this alleged criminal behavior was a YouTube video. Upon review by this office, the video appears to be incomplete. In addition, the audio portion could possibly have been obtained in violation of Maryland Law, Annotated Code of Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article §10-402, which requires two party consent.

If it is determined that the audio portion now being heard on YouTube was illegally obtained, it is also illegal under Maryland Law to willfully use or willfully disclose the content of said audio. The penalty for the unlawful interception, disclosure or use of it is a felony punishable up to 5 years.

[ElvisL1ves]

What are you talking about? All ACORN would have to say is, "If we find even one fraudulent registration in the pile a worker submits, no payment will be forthcoming for any of it." You really do need to read posts before replying to them, you know. It was already explained to you why they can't validate registrations themselves. It's illegal. Reread as often as necessary until it sinks in, m'kay? Sheesh!

\As for not citing evidence that this is damaging the system, I gave you MULTIPLE cites.The issue was your side's constant bleating about fraudulent voting. The actual number of fraudulent votes cast, or even specific alleged cases, remains at zero. Zero. Reread that as often as necessary.

You're backtracking to a claim of "damaging the system" would be amusing if it weren't also unsupported, despite your frantic attempts to characterize them in such a way. Yes, there have been some fraudulent registrations submitted. But so what? What effect have they had? (again, zero) Why would ACORN even want to bother trying? (because they're Democratic-leaning and therefore eeevuhl)

You consistently misrepresent what I've said, ignore my cites, refuse to read my actual arguments and respond to arguments you wish I had made instead of the ones I actually made.When you can finally show a grasp of the concept of illegality, maybe we can get somewhere. Otherwise you might as well just link directly to the RW blog posts you're paraphrasing here; it would save you some typing.

[billfish678]

It was false and defamatory of ACORN as an institution.


If what the employees did was a bad as it sounds like , its not exactly a ringing endorsement of ACORN that they found folks like that on only the sixth try.

[DoctorJ]

What are you talking about? All ACORN would have to say is, "If we find even one fraudulent registration in the pile a worker submits, no payment will be forthcoming for any of it."

Even if they did random spot checking, the potential of losing all the money would greatly reduce the incentive to cheat, wouldn't it?

Or, if they don't want to be that draconian, they could say that for every fraudulent registration they uncover, the worker involved will forfeit 50 good ones. Or something like that.
I'm not sure how this lines up with labor laws--I wouldn't think you could agree to pay someone an hourly wage and then not pay it like that. But I could be wrong.

In any event, in your scenario, what happens when some jackass comes up to the ACORN voter drive table and fills out a form for Heywood Jablowme at 6969 Penetration Park? The worker has to turn it in, and under your scenario he could be fired for it. Even worse, what if someone fills out a form with a completely plausible fake name and address? The worker can't help that.

Perhaps more to the point, there's nothing stopping the worker from claiming that this is what happened if some of his forms turn out to have bogus names and addresses. So there's no way for ACORN to prove wrongdoing.

The only thing they can do is flag the forms that are obviously suspicious, let the workers go who are obviously faking a bunch of forms themselves (and are dumb enough to get caught), turn all the forms in as they are legally required to do, and let the county clerk's verification process (which is going to happen anyway) sort out the good from the bad. In other words, exactly what happens.

I'm also not sure what nefarious motive ACORN could have to deliberately turn in a bunch of fake registrations. They work mostly in low-income areas that are overwhelmingly Democratic, so if you accept their leftward bias (and I do) it's in their interest to get as many people as possible registered to vote. How would turning in fakes further their cause at all?

[Lightnin']

If what the employees did was a bad as it sounds like , its not exactly a ringing endorsement of ACORN that they found folks like that on only the sixth try.

Sixth city, not tries. We really have no way of knowing how many times he tried this before he found someone willing to take the bait. All we've got is his gotcha ya video showing that he caught someone- and we're supposed to paint the entire organization with that brush he's trying to sell us.

As I wondered, above- how long would he have kept doing it 'til he found someone that would take the bait?

If I have a box filled with thousands of red and blue marbles, and I keep pulling marbles out until I get a red one... what usable information does that give us as to the percentage of red and blue marbles?

[ElvisL1ves]

I'm also not sure what nefarious motive ACORN could have to deliberately turn in a bunch of fake registrations.Because they just hate America, like most Democrats?

Sam will have some better explanation for us soon, perhaps. Or perhaps not.

[El_Kabong]

Here is another BigGovernment.com (http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/10/chaos-for-glory/) link, in which Mr. O'Keefe attempts to justify his actions:

ACORN has ascended. They elect our politicians and receive billions in tax money. Their world is a revolutionary, socialistic, atheistic world, where all means are justifiable. And they create chaos, again, for it’s own sake. It is time for us to be studying and applying their tactics, many of which are ideologically neutral. It is time, as Hannah said as we walked out of the ACORN facility, for conservative activists to “create chaos for glory.”

Frankly, he sounds like a bit of a nutter.

I would like to point out that even if the ACORN employees taped were not in on this bit of theater, which remains to be seen, nothing that he has done so far bears any resemblance to responsible journalism:

a) He made audio tapes without the consent of the other party, apparently in clear violation of Maryland law;

b) Posted the tapes to YouTube, apparently without ever contacting the persons taped or their employer, for a prior response;

c) Edited the tapes without giving any idea what has been redacted or why;

d) Apparently has yet to give an accounting of when the tapes where made and the circumstances under which they were made. Indeed, the DC tapes are clearly date-stamped "2005 7 22", which is most likely wildly incorrect.

Obviously if it does turn out that any of the ACORN employees were willing accomplices, the effect is likely to be rather different than Mr. O'Keefe intended.

What this sorry episode does seem to herald is a new era in which activist right-wingers embrace monkeywrenching tactics to serve their ends. An interesting development, but ethically questionable, in my view.

[E-Sabbath]

The editing and post-processing of the tapes worries me. I'm not sure the audio matches up at all.

[El_Kabong]

After posting, I went back to the BigGovernment site and if one clicks on the ACORN link at the right-hand side of the page, it will open up a longer list of articles, including a claimed complete transcript of the Baltimore tape. I don't have time right now to go though it in detail to see what matches up with the posted video clips.

Still haven't seen any dates anywhere. What the hey?

[elucidator]

El Kabong, cub reporter! Ethical dilemmas aside, did you look at Mr. O'Keefe's picture?

Is there anyone, any where, under any condition of impairment, derangement, or batshit candy mint that would look at that prototypical yuppie scum and think "Pimp!" American cheese on white with mayo. So white, he walks onto the disco floor and suddenly, for a fifteen foot radius, nobody can dance for shit!

Maybe the same people who would look at Barney Fife and think "Commando!" Look at Janet Reno and think "Supermodel!".

I got no idea why anybody went along with this, none whatsoever. Maybe an outreach sort of thing, let's help this white boy get to prison as he so desperately seems to want....

[ElvisL1ves]

Hey, it's good enough evidence for Bricker to demand a legal investigation. There must be more there than for Bush, Cheney, and torture. We just need to go find it.

[El_Kabong]

El Kabong, cub reporter! Ethical dilemmas aside, did you look at Mr. O'Keefe's picture?

Of course I did. A 24-year-old guy, wearing suspenders, fer fuck's sake. I didn't mention it because people got eyes, haven't they?

[Vinyl Turnip]

I'm new to the whole overthrow thing, but if I were in charge of engineering a "socialistic" society, I'm not sure "chaos for its own sake" would be a particularly useful tool for getting there.

Is ACORN in fact so evil that they foment both totalitarianism and anarchy?

[elucidator]

Well, ya know, given a choice between droll subtlety and smacking across the face with a day-old mackerel, I generally go mackerel. But that's just me, no criticism intended, implied, or offered.

[yorick73]

Sixth city, not tries. We really have no way of knowing how many times he tried this before he found someone willing to take the bait. All we've got is his gotcha ya video showing that he caught someone- and we're supposed to paint the entire organization with that brush he's trying to sell us.

As I wondered, above- how long would he have kept doing it 'til he found someone that would take the bait?

If I have a box filled with thousands of red and blue marbles, and I keep pulling marbles out until I get a red one... what usable information does that give us as to the percentage of red and blue marbles?

I agree that we really have no way of knowing. O'Keefe claims that ACORN is lying about the multiple attempts, so it comes down to who you believe. But, DC and Baltimore are not that far apart. Finding two offices in this area suggests it was not too difficult to find ACORN employees wlling to help.

[gonzomax]

ACORN is huge. If you try hard enough, you can find an employee who will be corrupt or stupid. We could eliminate, government, insurance and banking institutions if we applied these methods across the board. We should get rid of lawyers, some are corrupt. get rid of baseball, some players were using steroids.
It is a witch hunt.

[yorick73]

ACORN is huge. If you try hard enough, you can find an employee who will be corrupt or stupid. We could eliminate, government, insurance and banking institutions if we applied these methods across the board. We should get rid of lawyers, some are corrupt. get rid of baseball, some players were using steroids.
It is a witch hunt.

Read post #222 above. As long as they are the recipients of federal grants then they should be investigated if there is any evidence of wrongdoing. Not just one video but years worth of scandals.

[elucidator]

Does the Republican Party recieve any Federal grants? No? Lucky thing.

[Sam Stone]

ACORN is huge. If you try hard enough, you can find an employee who will be corrupt or stupid. We could eliminate, government, insurance and banking institutions if we applied these methods across the board. We should get rid of lawyers, some are corrupt. get rid of baseball, some players were using steroids.
It is a witch hunt.

Can you ever imagine gonzomax saying this, about say an employee of Blackwater caught torturing somebody?

"Blackwater is huge. If you try hard enough, you can find an employee who will be corrupt or stupid. It is a witch hunt."

No? Didn't think so.

And as I've pointed out repeatedly, corporations are explicitly held liable for the actions of their employees when those employees are doing their job. I cited many examples of unauthorized employee behavior that nonetheless caused the company to be heavily fined.

Why do you think delivery vans have those signs on the back that say, "If you see this employee driving dangerously, call xxx-xxxx"? It's because if the delivery driver speeds and hits and kills someone, the liability will be on the company, regardless of how hard they try to keep their employees from speeding. The courts have ruled on this many, many times.

Why should ACORN get a pass?

[MsRobyn]

Very sad that it took these two videos for the census bureau to cut all ties with ACORN. I would have assumed the 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations would have been enough. But, thank goodness they have cut all ties nonetheless.

The videos were the last straw. Senator Shelby (R-AL) expressed his concern (http://www.census.gov/po/www/foia/09-077.pdf) to President Obama in March over ACORN's involvement in the Census. (The file is a PDF.) And he's not entirely wrong. In fact, ACORN's involvement may cost the Census a good bit of cooperation and goodwill among the right wing; after the voter registration kerfluffle, they don't trust ACORN, and by extension, the Census.

It wasn't just the videos, it was the perception that ACORN was out to compromise the Census for its own ends, and the perception that ACORN is somehow dirty.

[elucidator]

Can you ever imagine gonzomax saying this, about say an employee of Blackwater caught torturing somebody?

"Blackwater is huge. If you try hard enough, you can find an employee who will be corrupt or stupid. It is a witch hunt."

No? Didn't think so...
Gee, Sam, are you really sure Blackwater is the comparison you want to make here? What with the corpses of innocent civilians scattered about?

I mean, its your rubber ducky, squeeze it anyway you want, but still.....

[elucidator]

...It wasn't just the videos, it was the perception that ACORN was out to compromise the Census for its own ends, and the perception that ACORN is somehow dirty.

But that's all it is, a perception. Firmly based on an innuendo, which is in turn founded on suggestion.

I've met these people, they are freshly scrubbed liberals with used cars and threadbare, second-hand suits. So earnest they set my teeth on edge, so sincere they make me want to drink. These people do not hatch plots, they hatch free range chickens.

They have one crucial weakness: they are poltically disposed to trust the poor, they suffer from the unfortunate misperception that poverty enobles a person. It does not, if anything, poverty corrupts and degrades. The very reasons why we are determined to stamp it out, Goddess willing.

(Its somewhat reminiscent of the radical black movements of the late 60's, who got tangled up with the goofy idea that black criminals in prison were all political prisoners, that ripping off the Man was a legitimate political action. That a thug steeped in the paranoia of prison life was somehow more "real".)

Its a delusion, of course, poor people are no more trustworthy than anyone else. A sincerely dedicated person is a lot more trustworthy, but there isn't any blood test for that.

Bless their hearts, they mean well.

[Sam Stone]

But that's all it is, a perception. Firmly based on an innuendo, which is in turn founded on suggestion.

I've met these people, they are freshly scrubbed liberals with used cars and threadbare, second-hand suits. So earnest they set my teeth on edge, so sincere they make me want to drink. These people do not hatch plots, they hatch free range chickens.

Gee, that doesn't match my impression of the people in that video at all. They strike me more as cynical manipulators of the system than freshly scrubbed earnest liberals. Your description might be accurate for the ACORN office in Berkeley, but I don't think it's representative.

[yorick73]

But that's all it is, a perception. Firmly based on an innuendo, which is in turn founded on suggestion.

I've met these people, they are freshly scrubbed liberals with used cars and threadbare, second-hand suits. So earnest they set my teeth on edge, so sincere they make me want to drink. These people do not hatch plots, they hatch free range chickens.

They have one crucial weakness: they are poltically disposed to trust the poor, they suffer from the unfortunate misperception that poverty enobles a person. It does not, if anything, poverty corrupts and degrades. The very reasons why we are determined to stamp it out, Goddess willing.

(Its somewhat reminiscent of the radical black movements of the late 60's, who got tangled up with the goofy idea that black criminals in prison were all political prisoners, that ripping off the Man was a legitimate political action. That a thug steeped in the paranoia of prison life was somehow more "real".)

Its a delusion, of course, poor people are no more trustworthy than anyone else. A sincerely dedicated person is a lot more trustworthy, but there isn't any blood test for that.

Bless their hearts, they mean well.

You can believe this nonsense if you choose. Hey, maybe you are right. But, the fact remains that they are receiving tax dollars for some of their projects. As long as that is the case I don't give a fuck whether they are criminals or just trustworthy idiots...makes no difference.