ACORN videos are causing quite a stir

 

With the count now at four, the ACORN videos are causing quite a stir. At first when there were only two (Baltimore, Md and Washington D.C.) and you could easily brush them off as a couple bad apples in the barrel, but now with the addition of two more (Brooklyn, NY and San Bernardino, CA) the problem appears to be more wide spread.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, bills itself as a community based organization that advocates for low and moderate-income families. Controversy has surrounded ACORN almost since its inception.

Recently, James O'Keefe and Hanna Giles visited several ACORN offices around the country. Giles posed as “Eden”, a prostitute, and O'Keefe as her boyfriend. They ostensibly were looking for assistance to purchase a house and use it for purposes of prostitution. They went as far as to tell the ACORN workers that they were bringing 13 and 14 year old girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. They recorded their encounters with ACORN and the resulting videos are available on the web.

It is very possible that Giles and O'Keefe were thrown out of one or more ACORN offices, we don't know right now. But in at least four of them, they were given advice on how to go about getting a house and how to deal with the IRS.

In Baltimore, Giles and O'Keefe were told to list her occupation as “performance artist,” to train [the underage girls from El Salvodor] to keep their mouths shut,” that Eden could write off clothing and equipment to tune of “$7-8,000 a year,” and that they could “claim the girls [from El Salvador] as dependents. See it for yourself:

In Brooklyn, Giles and O'Keefe were advised to open two bank accounts, one checking and one savings in two different banks and deposit $500 a week into each. That way they wouldn't raise and suspicions from the banks and they could establish credit for their housing loan application. They were also told to take the excess cash and put it in a “tin,” bury it in the backyard and cover the hole with grass.

In San Bernardino, the ACORN worker bragged about killing her husband, and claimed that she too had been a prostitute and didn't bother to report any of her income from a $10,000 six-day job.

In none of the four videos released to date did any of the ACORN workers show any problems with prostitution, nor any hesitation to violate the law. One asked “is prostitution legal in New York?” and when informed it was not, then responded that Giles and O'Keefe needed to be very careful. None of the ACORN employees shown on video balked at the idea of under aged girls being used for purposes of prostitution.

Reaction in Washington D.C. has been swift. The U.S. Census bureau will not use ACORN for the 2010 census. The U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to deny housing funds to ACORN. Republicans John Boehner (Ohio), Eric Cantor (Virginia) and Dave Camp (Michigan), members of the Republican leadership in the House, have asked the IRS to discontinue their partnership with ACORN – and why not, we have ACORN employees openly advocating tax fraud.

During the 2008 election campaign, Republicans charged ACORN with engaging in voter fraud. They may have been right. A week ago, Florida officials arrested six ACORN workers on chargers of voter registration fraud. This comes on the heels of ongoing investigations of ACORN voter registration in Nevada, Washington state and convictions in Pennsylvania.

On June 26th, Representative John Conyers (D-MI) chairman of the House Judiciary Committee dropped plans to investigate ACORN saying, "The powers that be decided against it." Looks like events have overtaken the “powers that be.”

So far videos have been shown for four ACORN offices. How many more are there? How many more will it take before ACORN undergoes serious investigation?
 

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