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ACORN Vindicated of Wrongdoing by the Congressional Watchdog Office
On Monday, June 14, a preliminary probe by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) of ACORN has found no evidence the association or related organizations mishandled the $40 million in federal money they received in recent years.
A review of grants by nine federal agencies found no problems with ACORN's grants. In my book Seeds of Change I document how ACORN, the largest most successful national anti poverty organization in America, was forced to close its door.
The GAO interviewed and obtained documentation from grant program managers and staff from nine agencies; NeighborWorks, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of the Treasury (Treasury), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Department of Homeland Security and (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Most of the grants were for housing-related purposes during fiscal years 2005 through 2009.
The GAO, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, is often called the "congressional watchdog." It investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.
Nearly two dozen members of Congress requested an investigation after a series of complaints against ACORN and its affiliates. The complaints included an embezzlement matter, several cases of voter registration fraud, and the release of edited and misleading videotapes, secretly made by conservative activists that appeared to implicate ACORN workers in several offices facilitating prostitution. In fact the staff in most of ACORN's offices turned the pair away, reported the couple to the police, refused to provide them any aid, and in one case tried to convince the phony prostitute to get counseling. In no ACORN office did employees file any paperwork or do anything illegal on the duo's behalf.
But Fox News broadcasted the deceptive tapes nearly around the clock for several days defaming ACORN.
While Republicans in Congress, who for years had accused ACORN of corruption, used the phony tapes to lead an effort to successfully strip the group of federal funding in 2009. Months later the group was exonerated from any wrongdoing by every official and independent investigation.
After the broadcast of the videotapes on Fox and CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post inaccurately reported that the ACORN workers in several offices facilitated prostitution. The papers also reported that O'Keefe was dressed up in a cartoonish pimp garb when he entered the ACORN offices, when he actually wore a dress shirt and slacks and identified himself as a student or friend of the young woman who posed as a prostitute. As a result of the conservative's smear campaign and the media's erroneous reporting of the smears as true, the U. S. Congress defunded ACORN, which led to many of its funders and allies to withdraw their support.
An independent investigation by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and the Attorney General of California vindicated ACORN of any wrongdoing. A federal judge ruled that the law barring the group's receipt of federal funds was unconstitutional. I capture the story of this incident as well as the history ACORN, in my new book, Seeds of Change, The Story of ACORN, America's most controversial anti-poverty community organizing group.
One of the activists, James O'Keefe recently pleaded guilty to charges of entering federal property under false pretenses when he attempted to embarrass Senator Mary Landrieu because of her support for national health care legislation.
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Show Alloff topic but so important;I propose this headline:
"Teachers Vindicated in Wrongdoing" --
2008:
We will recruit an army of new teachers and develop innovative ways to reward teachers who are doing a great job, and we will reform No Child Left Behind so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/Impr
2010:
It's open season on the teachers' unions--and President Barack Obama has joined the hunt.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has "applauded" the move to fire every teacher at Rhode Island's Central Falls High School, the Providence Journalreports.
If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability," Obama said in praise of the recent decision to fire all teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.
But while Obama's open endorsement of an effort to bust a teachers' union may seem shocking, his administration has been hammering teachers since he took office. Obama's $4.3 billion Race to the Top (RTTP) initiative doles out grants to states that have laws attacking teacher seniority rights and that tie teachers' pay to student test scores.
With the recession drying up normal funding channels for schools, states are rushing to pass union-bashing laws to get a shot at the federal money--even as they impose layoffs and cutbacks to close huge budget deficits.
A new day in the Chicago Teachers Union
Lee Sustar looks at the far-reaching impact of the reform victory in the CTU.
June 14, 2010
Karen Lewis, president-elect of the Chicago Teachers Union, speaks after the CORE victory was announced (Labor Beat)
KAREN LEWIS didn't waste any time laying out her vision for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU)--and challenging the political and business interests driving corporate school reform.
"Today marks the beginning of the end of scapegoating educators for the social ills that all of our children, families and schools struggle against every day," she said at a press conference the morning after the slate of rank-and-file reformers she led won a decisive union election victory, taking just over 59 percent of the vote. She continued:
Today marks the beginning of a fight for true transparency in our education policy--how to accurately measure teaching and learning, and how to truly improve our schools and how to evaluate the wisdom behind our spending priorities. This election shows the unity of 30,000 educators standing strong to put business in its place--out of our schools.
Corporate America sees K-12 public education as a $380 billion trust that--up until the last 15 years--they haven't had a sizeable piece of. So this so-called school reform is not an education plan. It's a business plan, and mayoral control of our schools and our Board Of Education is the linchpin of their operation.
Fifteen years ago, this city purposely began starving our lowest-income neighborhood schools of greatly needed resources and personnel. Class sizes rose, schools were closed. Then standardized tests, which in this town alone is a $60 million business, measured that slow death by starvation. These tests labeled our students, families and educators failures, because standardized tests reveal more about a student's zip code than it does about academic growth.
And that, in turn--that perceived school failure--fed parent demand for charters, turnarounds and contract schools. People thought, "it must be true, I read it in the papers. It must be the teachers' fault." Because they read about it, every single week. And our union, which has been controlled by the same faction for the last 40 years--37 out of 40--didn't point out this simple reality.
What drives school reform is a single focus on profit. Profit. Not teaching, not learning, profit.
I stand with you teachers, you do the job of an angel.
Lead item on Faux News Channel -- NOT!!!
ACORN is on the "wrong" side in the class war. How dare they try to help the poor.
Congress will re-instate ACORN's (miserly) funding the same day they hold BP criminally accountable for the Gulf blow-out. And the same day they empty Gitmo. And the same day they bring charges against Dick Cheney. And we will read about it on the same page of the newspaper.
The facts no longer matter. The "message" is everything. There's nothing "self-evident" about the truths anymore and there are no rights that are officially considered "inalienable". For now, vulnerable people like ACORN will pay the price, but not forever. Soon enough it'll be closer to home. Then what?
In _very_ small print on the back page.
The Republicans, aided by the corporate media, have launched a massive assault on all gov't programs that help the needy in this country. They want to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, they want to repeal the healthcare legislation that Obama and the Democrats passed, they want to do away with unemployment benefits, and any other social program funded by the gov't. This must be taken seriously by progressives or we will lose all that is precious to us. The main problem is that the majority of Americans don't take an active interest in what's going on in D.C., and they take as gospel everything that the Republicans and the corporate media tell them. We need a nationwide group consciousness-raising, or we will find ourselves held hostage again, like we were under the Bush tyranny. Please consider yourselves warned, the time for action is NOW!!!
The thing I don't understand is, how do they think all of this defunding helps their greedy financial backers get richer? They aren't going to make any money off of us if they take away our ability to buy
Here's their idea: break down all trade barriers; allow free flow of capital ($ for natural resources - almost always OUT of a country and into their pockets); smash organized labor; demolish the middle class (too much free time for reading, researching, protesting). You're right. But while our purchasing power diminishes, new markets around the world open up. The loss in sales in this country is more than offset by sales elsewhere. We're all in the same sinking boat.
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
Is there any way that Acorn can sue for fraud, slander, defamation and conspiracy? Considering the consequences of the fraud, both the two criminals who made the tapes AND Fox News should have to pay huge punitive damages.
Have their been any moves towards a private suit? Does anyone know?
You people are a piece of work. Nothing in writing from the Acorn workers advising on prostituting illegal alien children isn't illegal? Is it wrong or IMMORAL? I guess I am asking by what standard a relativist might judge.
You obviously missed, or chose to ignore the report from the California Attorney General's office which clearly stated that the video made by the fake pimped was highly edited, after they were able to subpoena the raw footage. In fact, the episode in question was edited to make the ACORN worker look bad, when the full raw footage reveals the opposite of what ballyhooed by Fox Noise Channel & other similar right wing propaganda outlets (though Breitbart soon disavowed the whole thing when it came out how highly edited the whole thing was).
Or perhaps you're getting your 10 -25 cents for posting to this blog from a conservative astroturf organization.
Feel free to post again in reply, I'm sure you could use the paltry coin for appearing to be a fool behind an online handle.
If you had been following the issue from sources other than the corporate media, you would know that no Acorn worker was ever asked for any advice on anything even close to immigrant-child prostitution. The questions, and guy in the rediculous pimp outfit were spliced into the heavily edited and doctored video.
Has anyone heard anything about ACORN's federal funding being reinstated? If it were to happen, would it be retroactive? Or will they have to start from square one to reestablish their legitimacy as an advocacy group? Finally, has ACORN taken legal action both to recover financial losses and to redeem its image through libel suits?
Has anyone heard anything about ACORN's federal funding being reinstated? If it were to happen, would it be retroactive? Or will they have to start from square one to reestablish their legitimacy as an advocacy group? Finally, has ACORN taken legal action both to recover financial losses and to redeem its image through libel suits?
Has anyone heard anything about ACORN's federal funding being reinstated? If it were to happen, would it be retroactive? Or will they have to start from square one to reestablish their legitimacy as an advocacy group? Finally, has ACORN taken legal action both to recover financial losses and to redeem its image through libel suits?
Oops! I didn't mean to post my questions three times. My apologies ...
Well, to answer your question once ;-})
I'm trying to remember what I saw about the president of ACORN and what she said about any future organization. Acorn has closed its doors. Some local organizations may reorganize under new names, but there is no nationwide ACORN organization any more. It will be a harder struggle for local organizations to have the power that the national organization had. I'm not sure that any law suits have been brought yet.
once again, it was the congressional Dems that acually
put the knife in the back of ACORN even though some loony
conservatives started the smear campaign.
The Democrats in control don't really want any more
registarted voters either. ACORN had been vindicated before
Congress put the last nail in their coffin.
The more registarded voters, the more both parties power
can be challenged, especially the under represented.
The Democrats were right with their republican buddies
pulling the plug on ACORN.
You cant fool all of the people all of the time, unless they are americans.
Americans watching Faux "News".
People who were involved with ACORN should sue James O'Keefe for an amount equal to about five years of funding for the agency, then sue FOX for defamation for an amount that would keep them funded indefinitely.
Yes!
On the one hand I cannot grasp how so overwhelmingly many people have enough knowledge about, for example, the BP spill to be able to have any meaningful opinion about how it's being handled. On the other hand I see spineless democrats unwilling to go to the matresses about anything because of their fear of a loud minority of people armed with what everybody has, an opinion. Where the hell is leadership if you are afraid of polls and opinions? Why are you willing to go down in history as the stewards of lost opportunity? Why were you afraid to let the idiots filibuster and show it for all the world to see. The only way out of the chicanery is to be steadfast, not to be reactionary to (and thus controlled by) it?
I know it’s hard to believe, but the same government that couldn’t find any wrong doing with Bernie Madoff’s operation, might have been fooled by Acorn.
This is a joke column right? You are telling me Congress said ACORN did nothing wrong, and that makes everything OK? Congress is filled with power hungry men and women who will say whatever they think will garner them votes. This column is a sham.
Under the current ugly national mood, attacking ACORN would garner many more votes than supporting ACORN.
ACORN had it's flaws - in local chapters voter registration drives, it paid its employees poorly and imposed onerous registration quotas - almost guaranteeing that some of the employees would turn in registration cards with "made up" names and addresses. None of this led to a single fraudulent vote being cast. To compare it to Madoff is ridiculous.
The whole "voter registration" process used in the USA is so profoundly undemocratic that its existence at all is highly suspicious. Most real democracies don't even bother with individual voter registration. People are simply added to rolls automatically when they turn 18. As soon as a change of address appears in a govt. database (tax return, social benefit application, drivers license) they automatically are moved to the appropriate district and notified of their new polling place.
Meanwhile as 2000, 2004 and the recent primary in South Carolina show, the Republican party has clearly showed its propensity for electoral fraud...
I was not comparing Madoff to Acorn. The correlation here is that both Madoff and Acorn were investigated by our crack federal government, who can't police their own rules and regulations. With Madoff, they had a a real slimey trail provided by a whistleblower, and after three seperate investigations, the fed gave Madoff a passing grade. Here's what the fed must be thinking:"Darn, we overlooked the housing crisis, social security and medicare fraud, mine and oil rig safety, airline security, Bernie Madoff etc............, we must need more regulation". So missing fraud at Acorn is just par for the course.
"ACORN had it's flaws - in local chapters voter registration drives, it paid its employees poorly and imposed onerous registration quotas - almost guaranteeing that some of the employees would turn in registration cards with "made up" names and addresses."
Federal prosecutors who investigated ACORN at the insistence of the Bush administration never found any such violations ... that's why Bush fired them for not dragging ACORN into court on non-existent charges.
No sir, if you read the information, the General Accounting Office, ALL of the grant agencies including the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, AND the FEDERAL COURTS said that. Hmmm, they must all be in collusion, getting big bucks from poor people to cover this up huh? If anything, the "power-hungry" (or vote-hungry) Congress were the ones, without benefit of substantiated facts or due process, who served as judge and executioner of ACORN. But why would anyone let facts get in the way of prejudice? Or factual news get in the way of slash and burn commentary...
By the way, for those who have an ongoing concern about the defrauding of the American taxpayer, I highly recommend the sites Taxpayers Against Fraud (www.taf.org) and the Project on Government Oversight (www.pogo.org). Real eyeopeners. PolitiFact is also an excellent site for sorting out fact from opinion.
Very gratifying to see the government has finally concluded its thorough investigation and fully exonerated ACORN ... not long after ACORN was executed for the crimes it didn't commit.
gnken
Ive been away for 2 weeks with little internet to check on. It seems the damage has been done to ACORN and none of the media services will ever say much except as maybe a 2 or 3 second spot just before a break and very few people will no the difference. It is a crime what James O'Keefe, did and Faux News made him a Hero.
LOL, government incompetence again, two young kids with a camera did better