ACORN employees enable child prostitution & tax fraud

[Cail]

No, seriously.

he activist group ACORN has fired two employees of its Baltimore office who were seen on hidden-camera video giving advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman posing as a prostitute.

Fox News broadcast excerpts Thursday from the video. The man and woman ask about buying a house and how to account on tax forms for the woman's income. An ACORN employee advises the woman to list her occupation as "performance artist."

Maryland ACORN board member Margaret Williams says in a statement that the employees "did not meet ACORN's standards of professionalism."

The video on the link is somewhat sensationalized, but the bottom line is that two ACORN employees help a woman posing as a hooker and a guy posing as her pimp to obtain housing, advise them how to get around paying taxes, and tell them how to claim underage girls used as prostitutes as dependents.

[Zarathustra]

Yeah, and the only ones reporting it (last I checked) was Fox News. If you read other sources, you wouldn't even know that it had happened.

It's unbelievable. Coming on the heels of 11 ACORN members arrested for federal election fraud violations, I wonder how widespread the problem is. And these people are getting 80 billion dollars of tax payer money. Oh, and they're going to be involved in taking the census.

[Cail]

I heard this on the local news, so I don't know what the national story is....But this is f*cking disgusting.

Heads should roll over this.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

Along with eyes. Can this serve as proof that ACORN does not need to be involved in vtoter registration or other contracted government work?

dw

[[Syl]]

No more than dirty cops prove the police force needs to be abandoned. Hell, compared to the number of workers ACORN has nationwide, you have a better case for disbanding the Republican party in California (you may cherry pick your own example if you choose) over this Duvall guy. Now if you can point to something endemic to the organization itself...

[Cail]

No more than dirty cops prove the police force needs to be abandoned. Hell, compared to the number of workers ACORN has nationwide, you have a better case for disbanding the Republican party in California (you may cherry pick your own example if you choose) over this Duvall guy. Now if you can point to something endemic to the organization itself...

So you defend the organization, attack another one, and have not a single negative word for what happened?

It's responses like this that give the O'Reilleys and the Becks the fodder they need to make outrageous statements like, "liberals support child prostitution".

[[Syl]]

Personally, I don't give a fig about ACORN. Just saying this isn't an indictment of the organization but more partisan axe-grinding. I'll join your protest against ACORN the same day you renounce the Catholic church. I'm sure I can find evidence of at least 11 priests that molested little kids. But for myself, I don't regularly attend ACORN meetings and give them up to ten percent of my wages.

[Cail]

Funny, I didn't say that it was an indictment of all of Acorn, I posted a link to this story, and commented on what these two women did.

So now you can attack me, but still say nothing about what happened.

Not surprising I guess, but it does highlight the absolute resistance for supporters of a certain party/ideology/politician to break ranks and speak out against one of their own.

[Kinslaughterer]

Given the title of the thread and the comments...You've implicitly implied that Acorn should more or less be disbanded.
I'm glad these two were fired. I'm glad ACORN decided to turn in those employees that were recording incorrect information for voter registrations that Malik was speaking about.
Seems like an interesting and sensational story at best. Glad they fixed it quickly. I guess you could even say that ACORN is fighting against child prostitution.

[Zarathustra]

Individual priests don't indict the whole church, but the church's response to these individual priests (covering up, in some instances) does. It will be interesting to see how ACORN handles this, and the election fraud arrests.

Watching the coverage last night, it was reported that a Senator (I forgot which one) was going to start an investigation of ACORN, but was pressured to drop it by "the powers that be." This is my own unfounded speculation--but I wonder if Obama is protecting them.

BTW, Megan Kelly on Fox News (Constitutional law expert) said that no crime was committed here. Advice isn't conspiracy. That's an odd Fox News take.

[[Syl]]

My initial response was to DW who asked if this proves that ACORN should not be involved in elections. You then accused me of defending the organization and insinuated I am supporting child prostitution (OMG! IF U DON B ANGRY AT AKORN U HURT TEH KIDZ!). I didn't attack you (as I don't support anyone abandoning the Church because of some bad priests), but rather showed you the shoe fits as poorly on you as it does on me. Sucks, don't it?

Since the nuance appears to be lost, allow me to point out that by saying there are bad people in any organization, it should be inferred that the people in this instance are also considered bad, m'kay?

[Cail]

My initial response was to DW who asked if this proves that ACORN should not be involved in elections. You then accused me of defending the organization and insinuated I am supporting child prostitution (OMG! IF U DON B ANGRY AT AKORN U HURT TEH KIDZ!). I didn't attack you (as I don't support anyone abandoning the Church because of some bad priests), but rather showed you the shoe fits as poorly on you as it does on me. Sucks, don't it?

Since the nuance appears to be lost, allow me to point out that by saying there are bad people in any organization, it should be inferred that the people in this instance are also considered bad, m'kay?

Actually, if you read my post, I explicitly didn't accuse you of supporting child prostitution, rather I said that by defending the organization (which you did), attacking another (which you did), and not saying anything at all about what actually happened (which you didn't), you give the far-right whack jobs all sorts of ammunition to make that accusation.

Then, when that comment's made, you attack another organization (the Catholic Church, which I've heavily criticized for its handling of the sex scandals), and still refuse to say anything the least bit negative about what happened.

Now you can make as many meta references as you like, but I clearly didn't accuse you of anything. I am pointing out how a comment like yours feeds into the ridiculously partisan finger-pointing that's become the depressing norm in political discussions.

[Zarathustra]

This might be a case of one woman having absolutely no standards at all. But I think it is fair to ask what kind of standards ACORN has in place to train their employees. I'd like to know if they have any kind of training process that (at the very least) instructs their employees to not give advice on avoiding taxes for people who make money illegally. The fact that this woman was *this* complacent about illegal money and avoiding taxes--and discussing these things with complete strangers--suggests that she was was exceedingly confident that her job would not be endangered by such behavior. You don't get that complacent overnight, or by accident. It does indeed say something about her work environment, that she felt she could behave so unprofessionally at her place of employment. At the very least, this one ACORN branch has some management problems. But it's fair to wonder how far up that goes, and how widespread this complacency toward the law is within their organization. You wouldn't expect to walk into a reputable accountant's office and get advice on how to claim 13-yr-old illegal alien prostitutes as dependents, for instance, because you'd expect these people to be law-abiding and professional. I don't know how many ACORN branches were approached for this sting operation before they found this one rare renegade employ, or if it was the very first one they tried. But the fact that it was relatively easy to find evidence of such egregious corruption should at least be cause for concern.

An organization that has such little control over its employees, such little oversight, has no business receiving billions of tax payer money. It's time for an investigation.

And the lack of reporting from any other mainstream media outlet is just ridiculous. How is this not newsworthy?

[Kinslaughterer]

Its on CNN.

[Zarathustra]

Its on CNN.

Fair enough. I'm glad they managed to notice it 24 hours after it broke. I was hearing about this yesterday morning, and checked the Internet all day to see who was reporting it. Fox was the only one even late last night. I guess they're just faster?

[Edit: I see they're still squeemish about the story. "ACORN workers allegedly gave prostitution tips." Yeah, it's probably best to wait until some hard evidence comes out--like video and audio of the "alleged" event--before reporting it as a fact. ]

[Cail]

I would hope that this is not indicative of ACORN training and/or policy. Quite frankly, the fact that those two women sat there and not only discussed how to conceal child prostitution, but then didn't immediately report what had happened after the couple left sickens me.

I understand that this is an edited video, and in my first post I said that it was sensationalized, but I just don't see how there's any wiggle room for the two ACORN workers.

Good to see that CNN has picked up the story, hopefully MSNBC and the rest of them will too.

[Zarathustra]

That CNN story is a wonder of unbiased journalism. It mentions the word "conservative" twice in the first paragraph in describing the filmmakers, but never once mentions that ACORN is a liberal, Obama-supporting group, even though it does go to the trouble to describe ACORN's origins, goals, size, etc. Why is it relevant that the filmmakers were conservative if ACORN's political alignment isn't also an issue? How can this be a partisan attack if the "victim" of this attack isn't also partisan?

[Seven Words]

If they discuss ACORN's origins and goals, the fact the group is liberal would be self-evident. Is there really a need to describe a gun-rights group as conservative? As an aside, I'm fairly liberal, but very much PRO-2nd Amendment. Now, the bias in the coverage? not unexpected. I don't expect FOX to really dig on conservative figures, and I don't expect much digging on liberals from the other major networks. Unless, of course, it promises massive ratings.

The very TITLE of this topic is misleading and inflammatory. I find it petty and offensive. Holding some shameful individuals up as embodying a group is no different than saying that since some priests molested children, all priests are pedophiles, or since some cops are racist every police officer is a closet Klansman (and I'm not referring to the recent Harvard issue, I'm talking about cops like one that muttered "Nigger-lover" seeing my fiancee and I walking out of Kroger last week)

[Cail]

I think you're grasping at offensive straws (or you're going out of your way to be offended), but the point is taken that not everyone who works for ACORN will aid and abet child prostitution (at least I assume not), so I've modified the title of the thread.

[Plissken]

Just out of curiosity, what was it that ACORN did to piss Cons off so badly?

Is it just that they register voters, or that they keep getting found not guilty in all these voter fraud investigations, or what? I honestly never paid all that much attention to them during the election, and now they're some kind of Conservative code word for creeping evil liberalism or something.