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Very strange story to be sure.




I have been following this for a bit and I am not very surprised about the way that ACORN is trying to handle this situation. Truly moronic staff, especially the lady who thought it would be a fan-freaking-tastic idea to talk about a murder... the lack of a brain comes to mind.

If nothing else this whole thing stinks of god-awful management at the very least. Personally this ACORN group is something that I know very little about, but I recall hearing about the other stupid employees that supposedly submitted fake votes or something along those lines.

Stuff like this is terrible for the morale of organizations of the same nature. Overall, there is a pretty crappy trend amongst the management for such projects, it just seems to nearly always be the case. Regardless, it is good to hear that ACORN has jumped in head first to fixing this problem, at least from what I can see.

The people who got fired, are bound to be totally down and out now, so any hard feelings have definitely lost their edge for me.

By all rights the fed should be investigating under RICO.

Pelosi didn't know the Senate voted to end disbursements to the group or why(40% of funding is from the government).

I agree that a a federal investigation should take place, if these cats are going to get mass funding, the fed better damn well take a long look into this.

Like I said, I am not familiar with this organization, but I would assume that they do some good. Taking all of their funding could be just as bad for the communities they support as some of the things they do, but I digress.

If the money they receive is actually being used intentionally for these purposes, and the managers are actually aware of this type of thing going on (not knowing is not an excuse mind you) they should be slapped silly and shut the feth down.

So far similar things have occurred in what, five states now? Its a criminal grifter organization.


More importantly they just killed the nuke shield to be built in Poland. Interesting.

These are low-level staffers, and I would be EXTREMELY shocked if this was a real criminal organization, that point aside though, I do think that this bodes very badly for their future at any rate.

Wait... nuclear shield what now? DUCK AND FRAKKING COVER!!!

I know a lot of people that work for ACORN. Most of them are fairly conscientious about how they approach people in the course of their GOTV campaigns, and the upper level guys tend to be pretty good about keeping the more fanatical people inside of their community organizing programs. However, during election season their operations usually center around GOTV, so there's often a lot of cross-over as people are shuffled around to cover different districts. That certainly leads to a good bit of impropriety.

There's no secret that they have a serious liberal bend, but I think accusing them of outright voter fraud is a wee bit sensationalist.

I'm not accusing them of voter fraud. I'm accusing them of racketeering, tax fraud, and other felonies.

Its pretty difficult to nail an NPO for racketeering unless their books show an obvious profit margin.

Nope. You only need multiple communications via wire of criminal intent for RICO.

The just need to show that major players are profiteering.

Frazzled wrote:Nope. You only need multiple communications via wire of criminal intent for RICO.

Are you talking about indictment, or proof of racketeering?

Frazzled wrote:
The just need to show that major players are profiteering.

How do you prove profiteering with respect to an NPO that is incapable of turning a conventional profit (so not price-gouging, price-fixing, etc.)?

I would assume eyewitness accounts, and possibly some recorded phone calls (recorded phone calls in an NPO???) to stand a real chance in court.

dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Nope. You only need multiple communications via wire of criminal intent for RICO.

Are you talking about indictment, or proof of racketeering?

Even better-conviction

How do you prove profiteering with respect to an NPO that is incapable of turning a conventional profit (so not price-gouging, price-fixing, etc.)?

Respectfully, thats not relevant to the point. Modern legislation in this area is not desired for the corporate body, although it has been used, but against actors.

Frazzled wrote:
Even better-conviction

You can't charge someone under RICO without the presence of prior convictions in the area described in the legislation. Those conviction don't exist with respect to ACORN, so you're jumping the gun a bit. Conspiracy to violate RICO, as far as I'm aware, only applies after the RICO charge has been substantiated.

Frazzled wrote:
Respectfully, thats not relevant to the point. Modern legislation in this area is not desired for the corporate body, although it has been used, but against actors.

Then we're not talking about actual profiteering as you indicated.

You keep talking about the entity. I am talking about the people. They would go after the people.

Nope you don't need previous convictions.

You would think a pattern exist after the similar alleged criminal activities came out from 5 different states.

Wrexasaur wrote:I would assume eyewitness accounts, and possibly some recorded phone calls (recorded phone calls in an NPO???) to stand a real chance in court.

That's the thing. Conventional profiteering usually turns on on obvious effort to distort market forces. You need to establish intent while also showing that a market distortion exists. In the case of an NPO there is, generally, no market to distort, so convicting them of something like price-fixing would be impossible.

Embezzlement, sure. But that's fraud, not profiteering.

Embezzlement would be the only thing that they could be laid out with from my perspective, suppose I should have said that.

Truly though, NPO's have very little opportunities to actually get away with near any crime. In most cases the culprits would be specific individuals, not the whole NPO at any rate.

Being inefficient at the way they use their funds... oh yes... quite obviously the case in many situations.

I think these people that did these video stings, have done a great service to the American People. I had no idea how corrupt acorn is. I would be interested to see, of the acorn places they visited, how many of them turned them down. I.E. what percentage said... go away you criminals, to OK we don't care that your a pimp and prostitute we will help you break the law.

GG

dogma wrote:I know a lot of people that work for ACORN.

Why am I not surprised?

The Green Git wrote:

dogma wrote:I know a lot of people that work for ACORN.

Why am I not surprised?

He is in Chicago after all.

Ahtman wrote:

The Green Git wrote:

dogma wrote:I know a lot of people that work for ACORN.

Why am I not surprised?

He is in Chicago after all.

Hmmm I wonder why I haven't heard any

Da' Beers. or Go Ditga... from him


GG

The Green Git wrote:
Why am I not surprised?

Because you have a really misguided notion of how the political spectrum works?

generalgrog wrote:
Hmmm I wonder why I haven't heard any

Da' Beers. or Go Ditga... from him


GG

Well, Ditka was really a pretty poor coach. Very one-dimensional offense. There's actually a large segment of Bear fans that hate him because they feel his ego denied the Bears a number of Super Bowls.

I'm no tall about the Bears though. I grew up on Hockey, so I'm more of a Blackhawks guy.

dogma wrote:

The Green Git wrote:
Why am I not surprised?

Because you have a really misguided notion of how the political spectrum works?

Because you like to give out loans to hookers and pimps in your spare time?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

That... is freaking hilarious man .

This... is confusing though. How do they jump so quickly on such a loose accusation. A few bad apples (acorns really ) and you need to burn the whole goddam orchard down? What is this, an act of political pesticide?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jxhq8CPN8LdLntDEDtE5NrEBQ2IgD9APACBG0




Hmmm... here is an interesting clip, and quite honestly not all that far-fetched, certainly no less far-fetched than ACORN being some sort of criminal orginization. The videos I saw did appear to be doctored, and that is without any serious look into it. I think the main thing they did is have some very creative editing, subtle enough to be pretty unclear. Lady was still stupid for talking about murder though, that was clearly inappropriate.




I will throw this in here just for kicks, I was a bit flabbergasted to hear this, totally honest. Bill O'reilly... rational... calm... liberal? Wait... my brain... it hurts again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4devZQo4A0&feature=channel_page

This must be some sort of trick... I don't get it. Is he being told to do this stuff, or is FOXnews actually infested with open-mouthed hosts? Brain... must compute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCgf_sPillY&feature=channel_page

Political spectrum my ass.

Haha, I thought you would appreciate that Wrex. I did think it was fairly clever myself. Dogma you should put it as your new facebook picture

And more ACORN officials go down.
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/sep/17/bn17acornside-newser/?metro

The Daily Show jumped on this one too, and in my eyes, whether good or bad... ACORN is toast... well, not literally you know, more like... well, like burnt toast.

It seems unfortunate really, but with this amount of problems going on, I don't see how they could possibly pull this one out of the bag.

They sure as hell shouldn't get their funding, regardless of what good they could do with it, and I say that with great pain at this point. It is always hard to see NPO's go down, especially when they are actually doing good in the world.

I find all of this quite funny at the same time though, because you know we are going to end up with some half-assed, unfeasible, numbskullery network of NPO hospitals or whatever moronic non-solution the politicians feel like feeding us for a change in health care.

At this point, if you were hoping to see a substantial amount of change on the whole... well, I laugh hard at your naivety.

We are going to get next to no reform, and supposedly we are going to have to like it? I dunno, no amount of jargon will bring peace to any of these discussions anymore.

If FOXnews wanted me to not vote for President Obama next term, I might do just out of freaking spite, I tell you what. The Republicans are obviously behind this, and I hardly see how it can provide anything besides a blatant distraction that the Dems will just jump right on because the water is too cold....

BALLS MAN!!! Do any of these Dems have them?

Ahem... alrighty then.