ACORN – The Final Nail

When the ACORN scandal hit the ‘community organisation’ had one excuse. They claimed that the undercover couple had visited many offices and been turned away, and only in a handful were they offered advice on how to cheat the taxes on money they earned from underage sex slaves.

In particular ACORN claimed Giles and O’Keefe were turned away from New York and San Diego offices (video evidence has already been shown that they were actually helped there). Most importantly they were not only refused advice in Philadelphia, but were told to leave the office and the police were called.

Errrrrrmmmmm, or not, as the case might be.

Incidentally the ACORN employee’s voice is muted, for legal reasons.

How can anyone who knows about this now fail to utterly condemn ACORN? How can ACORN continue to function, when they don’t know what else Andrew Breitbart has to release? How can they have any credibility when everything they have said has turned out to be a lie, because Breitbart really, really knows his business, knew exactly how ACORN would react and had the evidence to respond to everything, so ACORN’s defence only made things worse at every stage?

ACORN Roundup (updated)

There are rumours that suggest there will be more Giles/O’Keefe videos from more ACORN offices. I will keep a look out and post anything new that comes up, especially if it gives any more insight into ACORN’s increasingly dubious claim that the pair was turned away from '”dozens” of ACORN offices.

For anyone who has been interested in the dirty dealings at ACORN, the Washington Examiner has a roundup of stories going back to February.

It shows that ACORN is about so much more than helping people to set up their child prostitute slavery empire and avoid paying taxes. It’s about not paying its own taxes, exploiting employees, failing to file accounts, demanding those sub-prime mortgages that got us in this mess (demanding them now, that is; of course they demanded them during the boom years and helped trigger the whole issue). Hey, to get the full impression you’ll have to look at the link.

Phil Kerpen is rather dubious that ACORN’s culpability in the sub-prime loan catastrophe will be exposed by the commission investigating why the recent economic problems came about.

Big Government, who launched their site by breaking the recent ACORN scandals, has a good ponder about the whys and the wherefores. Of course it all connects with political correctness, and the distortion of values inherent in politically-acceptable (but in fact utterly contemptible) attitudes to poor people of minority ethnic identity.

The most interesting thing about this satire? The wall belongs to Shepard Fairey, who designed Obama’s ‘Hope’ poster, and didn’t charge for it (in the process probably breaking election funding law, but by the time anyone noticed Obama was in charge). Someone is clearly connecting Obama’s campaign and ACORN.

Jay Leno also sees the humour. Although not as good as the Jon Stewart video it is still well worth watching.

Update: lots more at the New York Post and even the Washington Post. However it appears that Obama has f-all idea what's going on.

Trouble Smuggling Underage Prostitutes?

An age-old problem we have all faced at some time or another

ACORN can help you there too. Yes, it’s another ACORN video from the professional US media a journalism student and a guy she met on Facebook.

This time the ACORN employee is a lawyer, and since he was educated in Mexico James O’Keefe wonders if he can help with getting his illegal immigrant child prostitutes across the border. What do you think?

Giles and O’Keefe have used an interesting tactic against the socialists who they knew would leap to the support of ACORN. They only released a single video at first, and at that time did not really give any clue that there were more. This then looks like something ACORN can contain, and they do. However this commits them to a line of defence and also to the fact that something is seriously wrong in the office in question.

A couple more videos, and ACORN has a problem but one they think they can handle, so they come out with stronger defences, further committing themselves to a strategy. There is a hint that more videos will come out, leaving ACORN unsure but also committed by their previous response to actually firm up their defence.

Then the east-coast videos start coming out, saying slightly different things and the defence is suddenly all over the place, with wild, utterly unconvincing stories.

It is a tactic I have occasionally tried to use against socialists, but not often successfully. Socialism is an incoherent, self-contradictory philosophy. With that to draw on the left so often shade their views depending on what they are responding to (hence they often come out as hypocrites, e.g. Islam, gay rights and women’s rights)that to argue successfully you need to make them commit early on, before your own argument is out.

Miss Giles, Mr O’Keefe, my hat is off to you. Well done sir, miss.

And the Stars of the Show Are …

Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, whose amateur acting, filmed on a US$ 1300 budget, and pure brass neck has put the US professional media to shame, shot them to fame and exposed the criminal soul of a political animal.

Having run with this great story for more than a day now, I feel I have not given enough praise, admiration and credit to the great duo who brought the mighty corrupt edifice low. Fortunately Glen Reynolds provided an apt link, as usual.

ACORN Finally Acts

Has ACORN acknowledged that there is something seriously wrong, or have its leaders simply realised how much harm is being done when even the traditionally friendly press finally start to report malfeasance? Whatever the reason, ACORN is shut for new business, whether that business be a brothel or not.

The Daily Show Takes On ACORN

I am not a big fan of the Daily Show, but that might just have changed. You really have to watch this video. Unlike many on the left, it seems that Jon Stewart really gets all the issues here, including the lack of response from the serious media. Oh, and it is very, very funny.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Audacity of Hos
www.thedailyshow.com
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Much credit to Jon Stewart. I never thought I’d say that!

Hat duly tipped to A Blog For All Seasons.

Update: it appears the media are catching up. The LA Times even goes as far as “If ACORN is to survive and retain a shred of credibility, it needs to stop deflecting blame and clean house”. I would argue that it is beyond that and ACORN should be wound up, but it’s a good, solid position to take that can easily be justified.

ACORN Responds (updated)

The co-founder of ACORN Wade Rathke, has responded, to the recent videos of employees offering to help set up child sex slavery, claiming that this is a “…fake issue”. No it is not, Mr Rathke. Giving help to break the law is a real issue. Giving help to break the law in order to help run a political campaign is an issue in a non-partisan organisation. They are issues, real ones.

Systematically helping someone to claim child sex slaves as dependents in order to cheat taxes and help a politician pay for his campaign is a huge fucking deal, it is an explosive, shocking issue that should destroy ACORN if there is any justice.

The fact that Mr Rathke can say this is a “fake issue” (note he was talking about these videos, not any other issue, as he is linking it directly with the decision to remove any ACORN involvement in the census which happened in direct response to the Baltimore video) shows just how degraded is his sense of morality. If that is the origin of ACORN that explains a lot.

The official response from ACORN just can’t be taken seriously. Not only are they trying to say that their representative was joking, but they don’t even address the fact that three or more other offices offered to help break the law (although admittedly in those cases not to kill people). Their original excuse, that it had been tried in other offices and the ACORN employees had acted properly and even called the police (no evidence provided) has been removed from their website, which does nothing for their credibility. Especially as one of those offices was supposed to be in New York, and employees did fall for it in Brooklyn.

Update: it appears that the couple was turned away from the ACORN office in Philidelphia. So paid love is not so welcome in the city of brotherly love. That is not a great deal for ACORN to brag about, all things considered. Not sure that’s one for the brochure, “13. We don’t help child brothels to avoid taxes in Phili”.

Post Racial America

Seeing the silver lining

There was not a lot for ACORN to be proud of in the last week. They very quickly lost a lot of money and influence that there is a strong argument they should never have had in the first place, let alone after evidence of vote rigging last year.

However the Weasel Times and Stoat Intelligencer has a great take on the story, the positive side for ACORN’s public image. So Obama’s supporters are finally embracing his claims to a post-racial America!

Corruption in Left-Wing Pseudo Charity (updated 11:30 16/9)

There has been an undercurrent of grumbling about pseudo charities (non-profit organisations which are largely funded by government and use a significant proportion of those funds for political lobbying and campaigning) in the right-wing and especially in the libertarian blogosphere. Mostly the complaints are about political influence and the waste of tax-payers’ money.

In America they appear to have a problem that is at least a couple of orders of magnitude beyond that. ACORN (Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now) has been shown to have been willing to assist importation of children for the purpose of sexual slavery, for profit with the aim of political campaigning. Assistance went as far as advising how to buy a brothel and to cheat the taxes on the money earned, by claiming the child prostitutes as dependents. ACORN then requested a donation.

Really. I am not kidding. Tax evasion. Mortgage fraud. Children. Slavery. Sex. Selling actual children for sexual gratification. Then claiming tax benefits because they are children. Then using the money for a political campaign.

This happened in three different states. It could possibly be worse if they start advising on how to hide the bodies once they are too old to work, but I am not sure how else it could be. Yet there are rumours that the people exposing this have something devastating to release today. WTF?

To paraphrase the article linked above, once is a bad apple, twice is an unfortunate coincidence, thrice is systematic corruption resulting from policy.

There are two things that really strike me about the response to this.

Seven senators, six Democrat and one independent, voted to carry on funding ACORN.

This has not been a huge international news story; even in the US it has been remarkably quiet. Below is what the BBC considers to be world news and Americas news at 14:00 today (click to enlarge World News).

ACORN is an organisation that has strong connections with Barack Obama which looked like having significant political influence with the Democrats in power. They were at one-time a client of Obama’s. They helped elect him, in many cases breaking electoral law, in other alleged cases breaking employment law. He had arranged for them to work on the national census (risking a constitutional challenge, which should be a big deal to a former constitutional law professor). He had arranged for them to be in the stream for government funding that was potentially to total several billion dollars.

Is Patrick Swayze’s sad but not unexpected demise really more newsworthy? Is the entirely predictable anger of Islamic fascists really more important for us to know about than a charity supporting child sexual slavery in the USA? Can you imagine the headlines if Halliburton or any other organisation with real or alleged connections with Bush had been caught on tape giving illegal advice? Three times.

Update: note I did not mention which party’s candidate ACORN thought would gain from political donations they were advising on the laundering of. Do I need to?

Update: a fourth video has been released, of a similar nature, filmed in California. It’s a good one though, naming politicians, ACORN employee offering to kill anyone exposing the brothel, suggesting violence against the underage girl, admitting killing her husband. It’s … wow, just watch it.

One ellipsis here hints at more videos to come …

Oh, and it appears that Acorn was breaking the law even operating in Maryland where the first video was shot.

Update: Hot Air has more on the embarrassed silence of the media.

Update: The co-founder of ACORN Wade Rathke, has responded, claiming that this is a “…fake issue”. My response warranted a new post …

Thanks to Instapundit for some of the links.