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Can This Be Real?

September 15, 2009, 3:11 pm

I haven't really written about the various ACORN videos James O'Keefe has been collecting.  As someone with 500 employees, I have substantial understanding for folks who get bitten in the butt by nutty front line employees.  But the volume is starting to look a lot more like a culture of corruption that a few crazy employees.  Did this ACORN employee really just explain how she got away with murdering her husband?  I mean, if she tells this story to people who just walked in off the street, she must have told it to everyone at ACORN she works with.  I have hired a few doozies by accident, but I can guarantee you that people only 10% as nutty as this lady would be out our company's door in minutes after telling such a story.

The only thing I really can say is that O'Keefe missed his chance at a fortune, because this stuff is far more outrageous than anything on reality TV.

Tags: ,
Category: Politics
  • Flatland

    Once can happen... Twice is a coincidence... Three times indicates systematic problems... Four?

  • Stan

    ACORN now says that lady was just messing with them... which is plausible. Saying she killed her husband maybe, but going along with an underage brothel?

  • http://sailorette.blogspot.com Foxfier

    Video after video after video... plus the known issues with voter registration fraud... sounding like the barrel is pretty nasty, not just a few apples....

  • Michael

    Andrew Breitbart plans to release 5 tapes from around the country. He said today, future releases of new tapes will depend on the actions of congress and the MSM. Nothings going to really change since Wade Rathke has another 269 acorn like organizations under his control and these organizations blend their federal funding.

  • Michael

    I saw the episode when Beck had on the national spokesman for acorn. Beck asked him about acorn's work release programs for people convicted of identity theft. The spokesman just indicated that identity thieves were one of the types of people the group liked to work with. Considering the history of the group, it would make sense to staff the local offices with petty criminals. Every time some acorn employee gets busted, the leadership says it was just a rogue employee, nothing they could do about it.

  • Max

    In the ACORN article on wikipedia, there is already a chapter about these videos and that ACORN fired those employees and also considers to fire the other revealed people in Washington, New York etc. Also, the Brooklyn Attorney seems to think about an investigation at least according to the wiki article.

    The videos seem to have a vast impact, which is good news for this kind of journalism...

  • Jim Collins

    "Beck asked him about acorn’s work release programs for people convicted of identity theft. The spokesman just indicated that identity thieves were one of the types of people the group liked to work with."

    Seems to me that a conviction for identity theft would be a resume enhancer for an organization that deals in voter fraud and until recently, going to supply people for the Census.

    Remember the door to door people with the GPS units. Let's see a database full of potential addresses and access to Census and Voter registration forms. Throw in the skill of identity theft and you can create almost unlimited non-existant people who will show up to vote.

  • tomw

    If the CA woman describing shooting her husband was telling the truth, she just confessed to premeditated murder on tape. Well, pre-meditated killing anyway.

    I don't know the law, but she used "Burning Bed" as a useful tool to plan an how to get away with killing her husband. She obtained the weapon ahead of time. She pleaded 'battered wife'.
    If she has not been prosecuted, she should be.

    tomw

  • Michael

    What's most telling about the videos is the lack of surprise and the willingness of the acorn staff to help in these crimes. You would think child prostitution, money laundering and tax evasion would get the attention of the feds, but you never know what Holder will do. The worst part is that tax money is being used to fund these activities.

  • Smitty

    I'd wager that a substantial number of ACORN employees have criminal records and are probably involved in ongoing scams (tax cheating being number one.).
    So no, I'm not surprised at their response to this entrepreneurial pimp, he was just another street hustler looking for advice and start-up money.

  • me

    Interestingly enough, the video turns out to have been not true. FOX ended up going nationwide without fact-checking. Whole story: http://mediamatters.org/research/200909160023

    I do to some degree respect someone who decides to give back as good as they get when confronted with an outrageous plot by a reporter.

    Now, an interesting aspect here is proportion. Greenwalt points out that we just had a trillion dollar wealth transfer from tax payers to -ah- generally well-funded private interests (wall street), but are morally outraged at a mere million dollars going to an organization that's representing the folks below the poverty line. Worth reading: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/17/acorn_hysteria/index.html

  • http://sailorette.blogspot.com Foxfier

    ME-
    I believe what you mean to say is: "The woman on the tape was lying."

    Nice try, though.

  • DKH

    "me":

    Your link is not consistent with the claim you are making. The video is "true," in the respect that it actually happened and has been released and we are free to draw our conclusions from it. Ostensibly, some of the claims made by the ACORN employee in the video may not be true. But I'm not sure how you expect FOX or Mr. Breitbart to go about investigating the employee's claims when they have no legal standing to do so.

    The link also seems to show that FOX explicity acknowledged some of the uncertainties as they relate to what is presented in the video. As to ACORN's response, I have trouble taking them seriously since they seem to have a consistent and widespread problem in their organization. Obviously, it's uncertain at this early time what all of the facts are and how this will play out.

    Of course, you close with a "tu quoque"-style argument that was just presented by our host as a fallacy, aside from the fact that probably many people here aren't fans of the Wall Street bailouts anyway.

  • me

    DHK -

    I'd argue that this is not a case of "tu quoque" - we're talking about the attention and concern of the group of people in a position and charged with taking care of both messes, with a substantially different reaction to either.

    No argument on lots of stuff being seriously wrong with acorn.