Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

ACORN

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Gee folks—the silence is deafening

RICO——

ACORN is the quintesential definition: An ongoing criminal conspiracy.

The nut, (I’ll admit—he is definitely odd) Glenn Beck, certainly knows how to turn over the rock and expose what is going on in the highest levels of government.

What was the mantra a few years back? A culture of corruption? Take a look in the mirror.

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  2. What is the name of the kid who pretended he was a pimp and got all that incriminating tape on the people who staffed those ACORN offices? I think he gets all the credit for the two outcomes; ending federal assistance, and terminating the census contract. FoxGop is late t the party.

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    p>If you were a betting man, would you bet Glenn Beck is mentally ill or bi-polar and crazy like a fox? Forbes estimated he pulled in $23 million in the last 12 months.  It’s hard to see what he could be so angry about.

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    p>It’s too bad ACORN allowed this to happen becuase we need to have a good solution to staffing for the census.    

    • Well, if we’re to believe Michelle Bachman, it’s very important that the census be conducted correctly otherwise the Obama Administration will have some difficulty rounding up all the conservatives and putting them in internment camps.

  4. …why ACORN is being treated like it’s an arm of the DNC, OFA, or the White House.  If ACORN is breaking laws it should be addressed (and I believe it has), but otherwise what’s the issue.

    • That run deep. It was the Chicago ACORN office that gave Obama his start in community organizing.  Obama trained ACORN staffers for GOTV activities.  ACORN is an arm of the DNC it has been responsible for GOTV for Dem candidates for decades.

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      p>But today they were defunded by a 345-75 vote of congress.  How did our representatives vote?  I’ll give you a clue:

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      p>

      • Let me see if I follow your logic (if one could credibly call what you have presented “logic”):

        <

        p>Obama once worked with ACORN. 25 years later a group of poorly-run ACORN branches are shown to be involved with shady and corrupt activity. Since Obama worked for ACORN, Obama must be shady and corrupt. QED.

        <

        p>Is that the case you are making? Let me try this method on for size.

        <

        p>EaBo Clipper was raised as a Massachusetts Catholic. Some Catholic priests in Massachusetts raped little boys and other shady and corrupt priests worked to cover all this up. Since EaBo is a Catholic, he therefore rapes little boys. QED.

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        p>—————–
        I will state again my feeling on ACORN: Who gives a crap?

            • I just don’t like the guilt by association tactic, applied to EaBo, tblade, you, me, or Obama. I realize tblade was being snarky, but there’s a big difference between the president and EaBo as targets.

              • … precisely because he’s pointing out exactly how the ridiculous association is… well… ridiculous.  That is, he’s pointing out that the logic is bad because the fact that EaBo isn’t guilty by association, but could be proven to be so using the logic.  As such, it’s not a smear because the “isn’t” is the point.

  5. ACORN is the voter suppression tactics that the Republican Party has used to keep black voters from voting for Democrats. Suppressing the black vote is a key part of the GOP’s Southern strategy.

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    p>The GOP used allegations of voter fraud to neutralize attacks on its voter suppression tactics in the last Presidential election. Whether he knew of the strategy or not (he’s pretty damned dense), John McCain said during his campaign that ACORN was “now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

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    p>Factcheck.org begged to differ.

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    p>Conservatives also blamed ACORN for the subprime mortgage fiasco. By linking ACORN with the Community Reinvestment Act, conservatives blamed the victims for predatory lending practices.

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    p>Is ACORN badly run? I don’t know. It has chapters across the country. I would guess some of them could be run better. The conservative pimp and whore were in Baltimore. Their stunt looks bad, and it certainly should be investigated by the organization, but isn’t it possible, even likely, that ACORN chapters in Boston or Springfield or San Diego runs just fine? The truth doesn’t matter to Glenn Beck or the GOP. ACORN is made up primarily, I think, of black folks. Attacking them appeals to the Grand Old Peckerwoods and interferes with their voter registration drive.

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    p>Mark

    • Baltimore, DC, Brooklyn, San Bernadino, and today released video of an ACORN immigration employee agreeing to help them traffic underage sex workers through Tijuana.

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      p>

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      p>Their investigative journalism has caused both houses of congress to vote to defund ACORN.  ACORN is a corrupt organization that follows Alinsky’s principles, the same principles Alinsky’s son said he is proud to see Obama emulate.  

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      p>The mask is being pulled off the organizations that the left uses to effect their “change”.  It ain’t pretty.

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      p>These kids should be winning emmy’s.  Even Jon Stewart has sung their praises.

      <

      p>

      • .. forget the previous ones, and just imagine if that were a Republican “get out the vote” organization.  Just imagine.

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        p>If you don’t think seriously about that, you are a pure partisan and as a bonus, a hypocrite all the way down to the core.

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        p>Sorry, but its true.

      • Let’s investigate ACORN. Everything they do, in every office, every interaction they have with publicly funded agencies.

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        p>We’d all learn something.

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        p>As for Obama’s ties to ACORN, that is relevant how, exactly? Let’s suppose you’re right, and law-breaking is ACORN’s business. That would mean Obama left the organization, went to Harvard Law, then ran for public office quite successfully. It would make him a success story of the American system and not tarnish him at all.

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        p>Now, surely, you aren’t suggesting that the president engaged in any wrongdoing at ACORN, any more than I would suggest George Bush sold steroids to Roger Clemens, are you? You wouldn’t be trying to tarnish the president based on isolated actions taken in 2009 by employees who happened to work for an organization he worked for more than 20 years ago, are you?

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        p>And by the way, do you know Bank of America was cited for illegal activity last week, nondisclosure over the Merrill Lynch deal, at the highest levels of the organization? Do you recall when Wal-Mart got in trouble for hiring illegal immigrants? That’s illegal, EaBo, and there’s a Wal-Mart in my town! I’m outraged!

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        p>Jon Stewart is right. Where is the press on this story? Let’s get the story, the whole story, and not hold up one incident as the indictment of an entire organization.

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        p>

        • to me its not about Obama, its about ACORN.  Acorn which routinely assists with voter fraud and which has collected millions of yours and my tax dollars over the years.  The good news is they are getting what they deserve right now from congress.

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          p>As for Obama, he’s got problems of his own – his associations with Wright, Ayers, Van Jones, ACORN, etc. are just a backdrop for everything that is going on right now.

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          p>Didn’t you find it interesting that on the same day that a report came out saying that Iran can build a nuke, Obama chucked our missile defense commitments to Poland and the Czech Republic?  I guess the Russians were happy, because it was also the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.  Nice touch, Obama.

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          p>Healthcare, anyone?

          • not because of Acorn a the handful of cases in Nevada, it’s because a lot more people voted for Obama.  Get over it.  You lost because your party drove the country into the ground.  Sorry you need to blame ACORN, you can stay in denial as long as you want.  But you lost.

          • All the things you dislike about Obama are connected to Obama.

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            p>What a web he weaves!

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            p>Re: the shield, as a conservative, shouldn’t you thank him? It’s a wasteful, ineffective government program.

                • but are manufactured and developed in Massachusetts by Raytheon.  This decision will force Raytheon to lay off even more Massachusetts workers. Nice.  Wonder what Niki has to say about that.

                • … defend pork now (which it is if it doesn’t actually help the military).  

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                  p>Now I’ve seen them all bend over backwards to not attack the existing socialized insurance and healthcare systems (and then attacking them again depending on their audience), denounce truth in favor of partisan loyalty, and now defend pork as long as it’s military pork in their district.

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                  p>Its getting to the point that I can’t remember what it was like to be surprised by the GOP.

                • …are the weapons that the Raytheon weapons would hypothetically destroy, not the Raytheon missiles themselves.  Iran doesn’t have the missiles that the Raytheon missiles would supposedly protect against. So not only do these missiles not work well, there are no targets for these missiles.  

              • We conservatives are strong on misguided national defense.

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                p>Iraq war anyone? Giving N.Korea and Iran strong incentives to develop nuclear weapons? Screwing up relations with Pakistan? Alienating Europe?

                <

                p>Awesome, totally awesome.

          • …when you bring up Wright, Ayers, and Van Jones.  While they may not be candidates for sainthood, there is NOTHING wrong with his association with any of them.  Anything any of them did that you might not like was not endorsed by Obama.  He distanced himself from Wright’s more incendiary statements, Ayers illegal activities were long before their acquaintance, and Van Jones was much ado about nothing.

          • … Digby:

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            p>

            Consequently, the self-described populists on the right – aided by a hapless political class – are working their minions into a frenzy over some unidentified alien “other” coming to take your hard-earned tax dollars, without the pernicious influence of rapacious corporations ever entering into it. Anonymous Liberal had a great post on this yesterday.

            But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday’s Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it’s an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country.

            That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We’re still not out of the woods and we’re deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.

            But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN’s relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).

            Absolutely. Set aside the fact that the Glenn Becks of the world are smearing community organizations that help low-income folks, often at variance with the facts. It’s the intensity of focus from the privileged on the poor, the disenfranchised, and yes, minorities, when measured against the influence and giant multinational corporations who are on the verge of buying American elections, that strikes such a discordant note.

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            p>With regard to missile defense, what he did was brilliant.  He didn’t abandon missile defense and he didn’t abandon any commitments to defend against missiles.  He took the DoD at its word that it could be done more cheaply from sea and put that plan into action.  He simultaneously addressed a foreign policy problem (Russia), a money problem (cutting a DoD program’s) cost, and didn’t tread on anything the ‘pro-StarWars’ community could honestly object to (of course dishonesty is always an option for them).

            <

            p>Personally I think he should scrap the whole thing.  It doesn’t work, it can’t work, and even if you can get it to work it costs more to implement than it would cost someone else to implement a work around.  The cost benefit ratio sucks.  We’ve got enough money problems as is and enough problems trying to modernize our military for the kinds of missions we are actually taking on.

        • http://directorblue.blogspot.c…

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          p>

          Let’s take a look at a quote from a 2004 article – Case Study: Chicago- The Barack Obama Campaign – written Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN Leader, which was published in the journal Social Policy. Did we mention that Social Policy recently pulled this particular article from their website, while leaving links to all articles up?

             Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them).

             Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.

          Not only does Foulkes boast of Obama’s ACORN leadership training, but also makes it clear that Obama’s post-law school organizing of “Project VOTE” in 1992 was undertaken in direct partnership with ACORN. The tie between Project VOTE and ACORN is also something that Obama and others have attempted to disprove in recent weeks as ACORN has come under fire for allegations of voter registration fraud. As recently as March 2008, the Los Angeles Times also made reference to Barack Obama’s involvement with ACORN:

             “At the time, Talbot worked at the social action group ACORN and initially considered Obama a competitor. But she became so impressed with his work that she invited him to help train her staff.” (LA Times, March 2, 2008)

          • You seem to be arguing that ACORN is rotten to the core. I think that ACORN is flawed, as are we all, but is fundamentally a good organization and a positive part of Obama’s background. So the timeline of his involvement isn’t that interesting to me. It would be fine with me if he spoke at an ACORN meeting tomorrow.

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            p>Am I summarizing your point accurately? And then, if you’re right, then what?

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            p>

      • Alinsky again? LOL! Eabo, man, seriously get a grip.  

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        p>And, as usual Eabo, you ducked Mr. Bail’s question:

        <

        p>

        isn’t it possible, even likely, that ACORN chapters in Boston or Springfield or San Diego runs just fine?

        <

        p>The Philadelphia office of ACORN filed a police report about O’Keefe on July 24th. So where is O’Keefe’s footage from his Philly trip?

        <

        p>http://mediamatters.org/resear…

        • So ACORN had a one out of 6 refusal rate to help him.  When branch offices do the same thing, it ceases to be isolated incidents and becomes standard operating procedure.

          • 5 offices out of 1200 is a fair and representative sample? Obviously you had long ago made up your mind about how corrupt and bad for America ACORN is so I know it is irrelevant to you weather it was 1, 5, 100, or 0 ACORN offices involved with this behavior, but even you can’t believe that 5 is actually good evidence of standard procedure.    

            <

            p>What is also troubling is that if O’Keefe was a journalist, as you are claiming, he would have reported on the ACORN office at which a police report was filed against him on July 26. O’Keefe claims that no ACORN offices kicked him out, but we have the police report. From the Media Matters link above:

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            p>

            O’Keefe: “None of the facilities kicked us out. That’s a lie.” During the September 13 edition of Fox News’ America’s News HQ, senior correspondent Eric Shawn asked O’Keefe, “ACORN says that you went to, what, five other places around the country where they kicked you out. … [D]id you find ethical, honest ACORN employees in any of the places that you went to that kicked you out and said, ‘No, we’re not going to do this. We’re not going to cooperate. We’re not going to have ACORN help you’?” O’Keefe responded that the people at ACORN are “liars” and that he “[a]bsolutely” wanted an apology and later added: “[N]one of the facilities kicked us out. That’s a lie.”

            <

            p>What could he gain from lying about this fact?  

      • I hope soon people go undercover into GOP — not independent organizations — honest-to-goodness GOP field offices.  They can solicit help caging minority voters, tying up Democratic phone lines, physically forcing Democrats to enter the chamber for show votes…you know, all things that the Republican Party has done in Ohio, New Hampshire, and Texas already.

  6. EaBo posted is clueless. His answers seem to be agreement, covering up a lack of understanding.

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    p>He mentions the district attorney in spite of the fact that the conservative pimp and whore are pretending to perpetrate a crime? Maybe he’s incompetent, but my guess is that the guy kicks the whole thing up to his supervisor at some point.

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    p>Of course, the video doesn’t show that. I’m also disturbed by some of the editing in the beginning. We have a voice over summarizing and the guy answering on tape. That’s kind of screwy.

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    p>In response to MCRD’s contention that we should all be ashamed of our association with ACORN, I ask, “What is our association?” Is there anyone here with first-hand experience with the organization? It’s mainly a “for us, by us” organization dominated by poor African-Americans.

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    p>Mark

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