So Quad, what part of this assessment by the California DA are you saying isn't the same as what was being posted back in the Fall of 09? Which when I first read the story back in the Fall of 09 was pretty much exactly how the issue was framed. http://www.sodahead.com/fun/acorn-busted-again/blog-175567/ To now try to re-write history, as you and Tiassa are doing, and saying the charges made back then were false, given the California DA's report, is ludicrous Arthur
bullshit and if you believe that your an idiot. preception is more important than reality. your thug republican congressman attacked it and took it out because it did good
except which you refuse to admit is they were making joke suggestions as they your fairy princess O'keefe wasn't being taken seriously.
Pretty funny. While ACORN got about 10% of its funding from the Govt, it would appear that almost all of its funding was from Democrats. You blame the Republican congressman, but it was the Democrats who stopped the flow of private funding that killed the organization (helped along by some serious problems with embezzlement by managment).
Wow, that's a preposterous attempt at reframing the whole conversation around a strawman, even for you. The assertion is that the entire narrative was a GOP concoction that misrepresented the facts, from the outset, for the purpose of politicizing ACORN via the media and so attacking their funding. Are we clear on that? If you're interested in these DA investigations and how the relate to the factual question of alleged wrongdoing on ACORN's part, how about the actual results (from Wikipedia): "On December 7, 2009, the former Massachusetts Attorney General, after an independent internal investigation of ACORN, found the videos that had been released appeared to have been edited, "in some cases substantially". He found no evidence of criminal conduct by ACORN employees, but concluded that ACORN had poor management practices that contributed to unprofessional actions by a number of its low-level employees. On March 1, 2010, the District Attorney's office for Brooklyn determined that the videos were "heavily edited" and concluded that there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in the videos from the Brooklyn ACORN office. On April, 1, 2010, an investigation by the California Attorney General found the videos from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino to be "heavily edited," and the investigation did not find evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees. On June 14, 2010, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its findings which showed that ACORN evidenced no sign that it, or any of its related organizations, mishandled any federal money they had received" Nobody disputes that the statements made in 2009 conform to the framing in 2009. That's a premise of the complaint, which is that said framing was dishonest, anti-factual and politicized. And that partisans such as yourself are, to this day, still running with the old narrative, despite the subsequent revelations of its lack of basis in fact, its politicized character, and the various dirty tricks employed in furtherance of such. Are you clear on that, or can we expect another cheap attempt at totally redefining this into some inane strawman? Those charges have all been shown to be unequivocably false, including by an investigation undertaken by the CA attorney general. The narrative is due for a revision exactly because it remains in open, intentional, politicized variance with the actual facts. This is why none of the criminal investigations went anywhere, and why there are none ongoing today. Your attempts to cling to the constructed partisan narrative at this late date - long after the relevant facts have emerged and made such untenable - is a transparently partisan, recalictrant exercise. This is why you are unable, despite your bravado, to provide any clear-cut, honorable defense of such, and instead energetically pursue cheap dodges using strawmen, fallacious premises, and intentional ignorance of any news since 2009. Your efforts here are both craven and contemptible.
The part where all such allegations of illegal conduct were subsequently found to be baseless, presumably.
O' Keefe seems like a kook not unlike some of the posters on this board, of course excluding you Tiassa Maddow. I think your panties are in a wad over a couple of organizations he has gone after PP and ACORN, these are of course hallmarks of the american socialist movement and defended by staunch socialist marxist such as yourself, joe, pdud, and quad. I wonder will you be delighting us with your next long, tedious and boring expose on the life and times of Bill Ayers and radical leftist ethos. Oh yeah, I forgot he is part of the solution isn't he? Galt
Shouldn't you be off in some mountain retreat, opting out of our debased, excellence-stifling society or something?
Not at all. I skipped Wiki, because on a subject like this, WIKI, which you quoted, is in fact very partisan and so went directly to the SOURCE, the CA DA's report which is the only thing that I've been quoting. Clearly NOT a strawman. Hanging onto the fact there is no prosecution for this activity is pointless since they were not gathered in a manner which allows their conversations to be used by a DA. Doesn't mean the DA's characterization of the conversations is wrong though. Arthur
What they DID say though was quite clear: I guess you are fine with that? The fact that the DA chose not to prosecute for this is an entirely different issue and has a lot to do with what could be introduced into evidence.
Fortunately, Wikipedia - politicized or otherwise - includes sources for its assertions. Here are the results of investigations undertaken by the CA Attorney General's office: http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n1888_acorn_report.pdf "Although highly inappropriate, the evidence does not show that the ACORN employees in California violated state criminal laws in connection with their conversations with O’Keefe and Giles." And here's some comments from CA Gov. Gerry Brown, regarding the outcome of the investigation: http://oag.ca.gov/news/press_release?id=1888 "A few ACORN members exhibited terrible judgment and highly inappropriate behavior in videotapes obtained in the investigation," Brown said. "But they didn't commit prosecutable crimes in California." "The evidence illustrates," Brown said, "that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor." The statements of the relevant CA authorities make it unequivocable that they did not find any evidence of illegal behavior in the tapes, to begin with. Also doesn't mean that a few isolated, heavily-edited conversations are typical, let alone emblematic, of a large national organization. You fail to mention the various ACORN staffers that refused such discussions, or even called the police. These pranksters had to work hard for a long time to get enough footage to edit down into something that would misrepresent ACORN as engaged in criminal behavior. You also fail to mention that the only reason they did not themselves face prosecution for the various illegal activities involved in producing those videos, is exactly that they were able to extract an immunity deal from the relevant DAs in exchange for handing over the videos for use as evidence.
Actually yes. People receive similar private council from their lawyers, accountants, etc. all the time. Provided no laws were broken, there's little to complain about. And if you do think this kind of thing is unacceptable, then ACORN is hardly the place to start. Your trumped-up outrage at such is transparently partisan and craven. No, it does not. It has everything to do with the failure of investigations to turn up any evidence of any crimes having been committed in the first place, as detailed in the CA Attorney General's findings.
And indeed it is that SAME report that contains this: But your whole defense of this obscene behavior seems to be that the California DA didn't feel they could prosecute. Really? BTW, this is the part I've been leaving off from that report: None the less, it was the fact that the BASIC revelations were true is what turned off DEMOCRATIC donors to ACORN. Which is what killed it. If you are trying to say, well it was a big organization and what happened to it was disproportionate to the actions of these few people then take it up with the Democrats who quit writing checks to ACORN but don't try to blow smoke up my ass by saying that what the DA's report contained didn't agree with the original claims made by O'Keefe. It clearly did. Arthur
They weren't lawyers. The council was BS and you know it. But the funny thing is you are preaching to the wrong congregation. I wasn't one of the people writing checks to Acorn. Ask THEM why they disagree with you and so quit funding it.
You seem unable to comprehend simple, declarative sentences. I consider this point definitively covered and closed, and your position here to be clearly, openly dishonest. Moreover, even as trolls go, you're being very childish. Prove it. I (still) contend that the false narrative made ACORN politically toxic to donors, totally irrespective of their individual feelings on the matter. So long as the public media narrative of ACORN as a prostitution ring lasted, the facts did not matter, and people were forced to jump ship. This being exactly how the GOP tactic was designed to work: trump up an image of ACORN as a pro-prostitution crime ring, and then tar anyone who continues to support them as pro-crime socialist subversives. Yes, it is contemptible that the public played along, and disappointing that ACORN's backers didn't summon the backbone and resources to resist. But none of that changes the basic fact that this was all a nasty right-wing hit-job from start to finish, designed to harm the poor and marginalized for electoral gain. Unlike the real beneficiaries, however, you seem to lack the good sense and tact to quietly move on once the points have been scored. Perhaps you're actually gullible enough to think that these guys operate honestly, out of principle? Or churlish enough to think that, since the original attack basically worked, this will continue to be a font of triumphalism for you to revisit, even years later when the actual facts have all come out? Either way, you're sorely misguided. You wouldn't have to troll and misconstrue so vigorously, if either of those were the case.
So what? That only means that the conversations weren't privileged. It has nothing to do with the silly claim that you object, on principle, to anyone having such a conversation with anyone else. I don't even know what you think you're saying there, let alone why you imagine that I agree with it. They didn't disagree. They just recognized that your party's hatchet-job had enough traction in the media that they were forced, as a matter of political calculation, to turn away.
It wasn't a party hatchet job. It was a kid with a video camera. Acorn hoisted themselves on their own petard and you are just angry that they did so.
