ACORN: Housing Assistance For Prostitutes

[Lefty Scaevola]

There might be additional fraud, but I haven't heard any details.

There are several investigations currenty open against ACORN for mortgage/loan fraud, that they knew or convived at false information on housing loan apps: false income, false assets, net worth, etc. Little publicity on them and little effort or progress into them, probably not from political protection, but becasue they are at the bottom of the priority barrel in a huge ocean of mortgage fraud with much bigger fish around. Every loan fraud investigator has stack of files to deal with. There is at least one internal wistleblower on the subject on record somewhere.

[chequita guevara]

Wrong is wrong. If they hadn't been doing illegal activities, they wouldn't be in this mess.
Just because you don't like who's making the accusations doesn't make what they're doing legitimate. Talk about a homer.

Nowhere have I denied what is wrong. The point, however, is that the sole reason the right-wing is after ACORN is to suppress voter turnout, is because ACORN does a very good job of getting poor people registered to vote. If ACORN's primary area of activity were poor rural whites, the GOP would never mention them, no matter what laws they were breaking.

[Wezil]

You need to fix your system. It shouldn't be this hard for people that really want to vote to do so.

[chequita guevara]

They fixed the system precisely to make it hard. The last things politicians want is the public getting involved.

[DaShi]

Nowhere have I denied what is wrong. The point, however, is that the sole reason the right-wing is after ACORN is to suppress voter turnout, is because ACORN does a very good job of getting poor people registered to vote. If ACORN's primary area of activity were poor rural whites, the GOP would never mention them, no matter what laws they were breaking.

Rah's skepticism is only one way.

[Theben]

They have the full transcripts and audio at Big Government.com for all except the San Diego office so far.

I'd need the full visual also to make an objective assessment.

Except for the gun-toting crack smoker. She said enough in 2 minutes to send her packing (not a gun).

[Darius871]

BTW, the New York Post got out their side of the story today. Obviously it's a given that they must be lying liars telling lies, but at least they're plausible ones. And she's so brutally hot that I have to believe them. QED

Duo who turned this trick

By LACHLAN CARTWRIGHT and JEREMY OLSHAN

Posted: 5:51 AM, September 16, 2009

The two conservative activists who captured ACORN employees giving advice on the sex trade and money-laundering only play a pimp and prostitute on video.



In real life, Hannah Giles, 20, isn't a lady of the night. She's a minister's daughter studying journalism at Florida International University.

And James E. O'Keefe III, 25, a Fordham MBA student from New Jersey, isn't a pimp so much as a provocateur -- determined to expose what he sees as the hypocrisies and moral lapses of liberals by employing their own tactics against them.

The pair met last year on Facebook after O'Keefe posted his own gotcha videos, showing Planned Parenthood employees agreeing to his request to earmark his donations for the abortions of African-American babies.

After Giles proposed the ACORN video-sting idea, O'Keefe -- who started making the videos while a student at Rutgers University -- pounced on it. "Why go after ACORN?" Giles asked. "Because I love America, I love God, and corrupt institutions don't help that."

After six weeks of research, Giles said they scavenged together their cos tumes from friends, except for the pimp coat, which was on loan from O'Keefe's grandmother.

In total, the project cost them $1,300.

They did the job entirely on their own and paid for it themselves, they said.

The two never became romantically involved, Giles said. "We're too good as business partners for that -- and besides, he has a girlfriend," she said.

O'Keefe contends their tactics are "the future of activism and investigative reporting."

"This is now my full-time job," he said.

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/n...twmSXxhfVELmZL

Least we now know they ARE nutjobs. I also don't trust what they say, so whatever.

FWIW, O'Keefe finally explained the reason for the delayed releases, which was one I hadn't even thought of; it's not just to extend the controversy, but as a "gotcha" to ACORN's oh-so-predictable BS reaction. Clearly only a professional PR firm could have foreseen that.

After we [released] Baltimore...[ACORN] issued a statement saying we were kicked out of ALL the other ones, and then we came out with the DC one and they turned out to be liars, so I would just hold out and see how much they're willing to lie, and at the end of is we're gonna see the truth come out, and we're gonna see them apologize to me and Hannah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2kPbbJlS40 (6:59)

Oh and the female actor in this-- she ducked the question about whether they were turned away elsewhere. She responded merely that they succeeded in DC and NY. Now there is obviously an issue if they are getting this type of advice in 3,4,5 or 6 of these places but the optics are a fair bit different if they were turned away or given advice that would follow various laws in 20 more (but that story would not be as good)

From the context it seemed like she only ducked the question and stuck to DC/NY because part of the plan was to keep tight-lipped about successive videos, and that Red Eye interview indeed was before the San Bernadino and San Diego came out, not to mention there still might be others.

I'm sure it'll eventually come out, either from the duo or from ACORN itself, just how many offices did turn them down, but if the $1000-$3000 total price tag cited in the media is accurate, it wouldn't seem likely that they could have gone to many more than a dozen or so. Time will tell.

At least by now they've gone on the record on that point, but they always dance around it at first and when put on the spot they qualify their answwer; essentially it sounds like they were never "kicked out" for the specific reason that ACORN staff was unwilling to assist their crime, but there were some instances where the staff didn't help them for some other reason or no reason at all. Evidently they're too gutless to just come out and break down how many attempts there were and what happened at each.

It's shocking to me that these outlets like CNN and the Baltimore Sun are covering for ACORN and writing...about how when the first Baltimore tape came out they were saying that we didn't have any others and that we were "thrown out" - well that turned out to be false, so I think we're owed an apology by these networks.

...

O'Keefe: None of the facilities kicked us out; that's a lie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2kPbbJlS40 (2:38, 7:45)

Hannity: In other words, you never went into one office where they said "we're not gonna help you do anything like that"?

Giles: No.

Hannity: Not one - every place you went, they helped you or were willing to help you...either not report you for an underage prostitution ring, evade taxes as we've -

Breitbart: Right - it is interesting there's no places ACORN tried to state that kicked them out based upon the premise that they were doing something nefarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ld5DsFlZE

[Asher]

It's easy to claim that none kicked him out when he's the only person recording.

[Darius871]

Of course no one can disprove his assertion, but he indisputably disproved ACORN's assertion. That's why the delayed releases were such an obvious choice.

[chequita guevara]

ACORN-- the new Republican bogeyman

If rightwing operatives succeed in bringing down the community group, Democrats and minorities will have lost a valuable ally

by Brad Friedman
The Guardian (U.K.)
9/20/09

Communism is dead. Al-Qaida isn't as scary as it used to be. But an American rightwing without a bogeyman to fear can't long survive. Enter ACORN – the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now.

Finally, something for the Republican party to use to stoke fear among its constituency. ACORN is perfect. The nationwide community group is full of scary black and poor people – who tend to support the Democrats. And, most convenient of all, it registers millions of them, legally, to vote in US elections. Spooky.

Stop ACORN, and you can stop the rise of citizen democracy altogether – you know, "government of the people, by the people, for the people", as we used to like to say here in the US. Or so the Republicans have convinced themselves.

Acorn has long been a target for Republicans, who have attempted to tar and feather it with accusations of "voter fraud". They pilloried the group before the 2008 election (and several elections prior) when names like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Mary Poppins showed up on a handful of voter registration forms collected by ACORN. (Never mind the fact that none of these fictional characters actually voted and that ACORN itself flagged the fraudulent registration forms and turned them in to election officials, as required by law.)

The Bush administration's own department of justice was found to have been illegally helping to target the group for political prosecutions and even John McCain, before receiving his talking points, had keynoted an ACORN convention, declaring the group is "what makes American special". Oops.

But now the vilification of ACORN is in full swing again. A couple of rightwing operatives, acting as a prostitute and her pimp, caught a few, dumb, low-level Acorn employees suggesting ways in which they could get around US law and avoid paying taxes on her "business". ACORN immediately fired the employees, of course, after the videotapes were made public. But that hasn't stopped Republican opportunists, led by Fox News, from calling for the entire organisation's destruction.

The point of the demonising is to shut down their effective voter registration operation and, in the bargain, further the Republican push for state-issued photo ID requirements at polling places, even as they know full-well that some 20 to 30 million Americans – mostly urban, elderly, minority and student (read: Democratic-leaning) – voters don't have such IDs and would not be allowed to exercise their legal franchise.

In fact, though you're unlikely to hear about it on Fox News, Republicans themselves regularly engage in actual instances of voter fraud. Superstar Republican pundit Ann Coulter narrowly avoided felony voter fraud charges in Florida and is being investigated for voter fraud in Connecticut.

The head of the California Republican party's own voter registration firm, Mark Anthony Jacoby of Young Political Majors (YPM), plead guilty to charges of voter registration fraud earlier this year. Republican outfits like YPM have actually changed registration forms from Democratic to Republican without telling voters, and even shredded Democratic registration forms altogether, disenfranchising thousands of Americans.

It's funny how when the American government itself – at its absolute highest-levels – was discovered to have tortured and abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, resulting in actual death, the very same wingnut apologists write it off as the act of a few low-level "bad apples". No accountability for those who actually instituted the policies.

But when a few actual low-level bad apples – who happen to be African-American, and working for a group fighting for the American Dream for all Americans – commit petty stupidity, the entire organisation must be brought down in order to save the country.
And Democrats, as weak-kneed and foolish as they are, can't seem to come up with the courage to fight back.

[rah]

Again there defense is always, Well they do it too. Sad.

Clean up your act.

[Asher]

Again there defense is always, Well they do it too. Sad.

Clean up your act.

That's not what I get from the article.

The article, quite pointedly, points out that ACORN is being targeted by the GOP because it's one of the main reasons they lost the election. They know with a charismatic black president and lots of poor black people voting, they stand no chance in hell of winning the next election.

Even if the GOP themselves are not directly involved, these people are clearly doing it to help the GOP -- they're insanely partisan from the interviews I've read.

It's a damn shame the low-level people were so stupid, it'd be even a bigger shame to get rid of the organization.

[rah]

They did point out all the REPUG instances. Just coincidence.

It's wrong when either party does it.

Gee, the repugs don't like an organization that supports the dems. A real surprise that.

It's politics. This wouldn't be an issue if they weren't continually breaking the law.

[Asher]

When did they continually break the law? Are you referring to these 5 low-level employees in the video?

If it's the voter registration issue, as the article mentions, ACORN complied with the laws?

[MikeH]

The whole US voter registration system sucks.

Our system isn't perfect but everyone has to register and it's all independent of parties. Getting organisations associated with each party is ridiculous, even the fact that you can register with a party affiliation sucks. And the fact that such a high percentage of people aren't registered to vote is ****.