AM New York: Attack on ACORN is political (as if it isn't obvious!)

[BurtWorm]

But at least someone in the media is saying it loud and clear. (AM New York is a commuter paper handed out to tens of thousands of subway and bus riders in the city weekday mornings.)

http://amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/henican-politics-drive-acorn-attack-1.1457874



Henican: Politics drive ACORN attack]

Thursday September 17, 2009 8:44 PM By Ellis Henican

There is no defending what the ACORN workers did.

Why even try?

Offering to help a couple of undercover filmmakers set up an underage brothel — that’s just wrong. The workers should be fired, as they have been — perhaps even prosecuted, as they may well be.

But the roar of outrage at ACORN — well, that has far more to do with today’s ideological politics than with the actions of a few of low-level workers or even the caught-on-tape gotcha techniques of conservative activists.

Follow the money — and the politics!

ACORN, which has existed for 40 years, organizes poor people around issues such as affordable housing, voter registration and community health care. The group has pushed for a higher minimum wage and gotten federal grants to provide loan counseling and foreclosure relief.

And those voter-registration campaigns in minority neighborhoods tend to help Democrats.

Especially since the election of Barack Obama, some conservative activists have been itching to get ACORN.

That a couple of low-level ACORN staffers made it so easy is too bad. That ACORN’s good works may suffer is even worse.

...

[BurtWorm]

1. kick

[Proud Liberal Dem]

2. Yet so many people here and elsewhere

were eager and willing to jump on the "let's trash ACORN" bandwagon based on visceral knee-jerk reactions to the admittedly poor judgment on the part of a few low-level staffers clearly NOT responding appropriately and within the guidelines and policies of the agency to a ruse concocted by a couple of RW dirty trickster operatives bent on discrediting the entire organization.

I hope that the primary reason most of our Senators voted to prohibit federal funding for ACORN is because they want to ensure that ACORN has taken appropriate action and removed the offending parties from its offices and is taking measures to ensure that staff members don't give out such advice in similar situations proposed by RW hacks like O'Keefe and Giles (although based on what I heard about the yarn O'Keefe and Giles were spinning, I actually find it hard to believe that people would take them seriously but maybe they wanted in on it or something :shrug:).

However, I suspect that the vote (and the WH's official comments) had more to do with political a**-covering like with what happened with Move.On.org and the "Betrayus" ad. I find it extremely hypocritical of them, albeit not really surprising, that other organizations and businesses receiving federal funds and whom have been reported to have been defrauding the government and/or actually killing people through negligence and incompetence (i.e. Halliburton) are not being quite as aggressively investigated and/or punished like ACORN, particularly since AFAIK nobody at ACORN ever actually advanced O'Keefe and Gile's *plot* to bring underage illegal immigrants into the US for the purpose of establishing a brothel beyond speaking hypothetically about it. The people who apparently took it seriously and offered *advice* on doing such a thing, yeah, they were stupid and shouldn't be working there (and have hopefully been removed by now) but to make such things the basis for defunding an entire organization just seems wrong to me and by taking such a hard line against ACORN this past week, many Democrats just have given the Republicans and their nutty *base* political cover to continue attacking ACORN- allowing the WSJ to go so far as to as to begin asking for a special counsel to investigate Obama's "association" with the organization- whatever the hell THAT might be. :eyes:

The bottom line for me is if we're going to draw a line in the sand and say that if our representatives will pull federal funding for organizations where there is even the slightest "whiff" of impropriety and even where such impropriety exists among only a few lower level staff members acting on their OWN initiative and when even no formal investigation has been concluded, then we need our representatives to commit themselves to a full and impartial review of ANY organization and/or business receiving federal funds to ensure that all of their activities and staff members are in FULL compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and agency policies and apply the same standards for withdrawing federal funding to them as well.

[BurtWorm]

4. I hope it won't be difficult to restore the funding. I have a feeling it will be.

Even though we're talking about something like 2% of ACORN's assets, it's not just the loss of funds, it's the loss of credibility and credit this will cost the organization and the communities they serve.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. Right

The worst part is that we will probably NEVER see the unedited footage that O'Keefe and Giles collected and, if they were edited together by them to look more incriminating, Congress will have committed an even greater injustice to poor and low-income individuals whom are served by ACORN. Do any of these Democrats whom voted to defund ACORN on the basis of this videotape *evidence* even bother to consider the source and/or motivations of O'Keefe and Giles and Faux News and Glenn Beck's hyping of it? Stupid.

The WSJ is now calling for an investigation of Obama in relation to ACORN. Yet, of course, we are told day after day by the corporate media whores and even substantial numbers of DEMOCRATS in Congress that investigating the Bush (mis-)administration for past crimes is "partisan"!

:wtf:

:argh:

[redqueen]

3. K&R

It's sad how many Dems jumped right on the bandwagon.

More disturbing than sad, really... we have many important battles ahead.

I hope they are quick learners.

[Emit]

6. O'Keefe said he went after ACORN because it registers minorities likely to vote against Republicans

...

James O'Keefe, one of the two filmmakers, said he went after ACORN because it registers minorities likely to vote against Republicans: "Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization," O'Keefe told The Washington Post. "No one was holding this organization accountable."

...

http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=11160760

[Eric J in MN]

7. At least one of the fired workers called the police.

He wasn't trying to setup a brothel. Juan Carlos Vera of the San Diego office.

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http://www.10news.com/news/20975217/detail.html


Vera said he was told the woman needed to escape her controlling pimp, who wouldn't let her start a new life.

Immediately, Vera said he offered to call the police but the filmmaker quickly stopped him.

"Don't call the police because I'm gonna be a lawyer," O'Keefe said in the video.

After the pair left the building, Vera said he called the National City Police Department.

National City police confirmed that Vera contacted them, but said there was not enough information about the couple to file a formal report.
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[mdmc]

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