Latoya Peterson at Jezebel has the best concise explanation I’ve seen of the Great FOX News ACORN Scandal. She finds five key questions, and answers them, with an efficiency I can only wish the “established, professional” Media Village Idiots would use more often:
What does ACORN do?
Why did they come up in the 2008 election?
What’s happening with the current controversy?
Where have we seen James O’Keefe before?
What are the mitigating/aggravating factors here?
The comments are well worth reading, too. A number of people discuss their own history with ACORN, stressing the fact that a network of 1200 separate offices with a policy of hiring from the low-income neighborhoods they support, and the usual non-profit-organization tendency to underpay and overwork its staff, will inevitably offer a few soft targets for a right-wing Borat wanna-be with an unlimited budget and no more edifying hobbies to distract him. Since I, unlike Ms. Peterson, am not trying to be scrupulously unbiased, there was one comment I particularly enjoyed:
[T]here are two other “not-malice” possibilities that come to mind as well. 1) As has been pointed out, obvious real-life trolls were obvious and she was fucking with them. 2) When you work in community service in low-income and underprivileged communities, you are often helping people with various mental health problems and people who are just… off. You don’t want to just outright dismiss them, you want to welcome them and accept them, and you kind of develop an attitude of “let’s just hear this guy out.” You can wind up “hearing out” some genuinely messed up and terrible people, because you just kind of get used to folks coming in with very, very, very weird and sketchy claims.
I’m sure Mr. O’Keefe would appreciate the irony that he might just have been mistaken for a genuinely brain-damaged petty criminal looking for a sympathetic audience…
The Grand Panjandrum
Joe Conason chimed in with a nice defense of ACORN.
Zifnab
From the – admittedly brief – snippets I’ve seen, this wasn’t a case of a couple of workers just going with the flow. The ACORN staffers in this case should have at the least shown these people the door.
That said, I’d be surprised if either of these two workers had more than a high school education. They don’t know the laws. They aren’t savvy to the political game getting played. Like you said, they’re soft targets.
But it’s worth noting the disparity here. Our US Military hosts a network of secret prisons, used expressly for the purpose of unlawfully detaining and torturing suspects. It hires out third-party contractors to come in and engage in horrendous acts of brutality. And the “investigation” of all of this is reduced to calling out “a few bad apples” and shoved under the rug.
ACORN is caught helping a pimp lie on his taxes, and funding for the organization is pulled in a House vote BY THE END OF THE WEEK! It’s absurd.
Svensker
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Yes, but Republicans are good and ACORN is bad. Nuff said.
MikeJ
I’ve never understood why prostitutes shouldn’t be allowed to get help with their taxes.
Dr. J
Exactly! It is incredible to me that anyone would take seriously this boy scout and the cheerleader, who looked like they were heading to the fraternity’s Halloween costume party.
Common Sense
Good luck on this windmill. Acorn is dead. The Dems already abandoned them. Probably best they take a page from the GOP playbook and set up another organization that serves an identical purpose, staffed with identical employees.
Zifnab
@MikeJ: What do they declare as income?
I mean, I don’t see why drug dealers and money launderers shouldn’t be allowed to ask for help declaring the tens of thousands of dollars they bring in from illegal activity either. You’ve got a good point. :-p
Dave L
“When you work in community service in low-income and underprivileged communities…”
This won’t impress anybody on the right. They’re inherently suspicious of anybody working with “low-income and underprivileged communities”. Their working assumption will always be that ACORN just has to be a scam, because they can’t take seriously the notion that anyone would choose to do community work.
Exasperated questioning along the lines of “well, what do YOU think should be done to help?” will just draw blank stares. If anything, they would rather just build walls around those communities, and shoot anyone who steps outside. At the most profound, you might get a response like Limbaugh’s (this was actually in reference to health care): “Well, they shouldn’t have been born low-income and underprivileged!”
superking
ACORN doesn’t really deserve a defense.
This was a well executed hit job, but I don’t feel sorry for ACORN in the least. I am currently working in housing and I previously worked on election issues. ACORN should have trained their people better.
If someone walks into my office talking about sex slavery and/or trafficking in persons, I will call the police, even if I suspect they’re a couple of bourgeoisie trying to make a name for themselves. The ACORN office in Philly did the right thing, and there is no excuse for the other offices to fail this simple test.
I’m sure ACORN does some good–I know they do. But it doesn’t really seem like they can keep from fucking up. Earlier this year, they decided to roll out a new media strategy to combat the attacks on their voter registration activities. The strategy was essentially to a) say that the attacks are racially motivated, and b) demand universal registration. While (a) is mostly true, it usually doesn’t work to just go call your critics a bunch of racists.
We’re seeing more and more crypto-racism, and it needs to be combated. But it can be hard to explain to people, and unless people already understand how contemporary racism works, they are more likely to think you’re wrong for simply calling names.
So, I’m not crying about ACORN.
Evinfuilt
Capone got busted on Tax Evasion, prostitutes would be smart not to have another reason to go to jail.
And of course Mr. Undercover decided to go dresses as Huggy Bear, so you know no one at all saw through the cover, nope… not at all.
MikeJ
In an interview I saw, he was laughing about being the whitest guy in the world and being dressed like that. I’m curious, does he think that only black people use violence to force women to have sex for money?
kay
Conservatives are completely and utterly convinced there is and was massive voter fraud in this country, and they blame ACORN. If you watched the FOX News coverage of Ohio during the run-up to the 2008 vote this was pushed relentlessly. It’s an interesting object of faith, because in my experience it has trickled all the way down. A LOT of Republicans think there was fraud in the 2008 election. They believe, all data to the contrary, that voter fraud is a huge and growing problem. It was an absolute focus of the Bush DOJ, as we all found out. There’s nothing there. There were five charges of voter fraud in Ohio in 2004. One conviction. One. Yet, the myth persists.
It’s yet another way to cast doubts on Obama’s Presidency, as in, “usurper”.
malraux
The IRS says
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.html
My question is why this automatically destroys Acorn, but not something like comcast, delta airlines, or any of the banks whose employees got caught doing something illegal.
Zifnab
@malraux: Well, I am informed.
That said, to answer your second question: CAPITALISM, BITCHES!
And Comcast, Delta, and Banks aren’t normally considered taxpayer funded entities. I know the government pays Comcast and Delta for business services and you know all about the banking bailouts, but to Joe the Plumber and the rest of the FOX News Flunkies, ACORN is the single recipient of $3 Zillion tax dollars a year, with the rest dedicated to paying out of work artists in San Fransisco to do artwork in menstrual blood.
Paul L.
@The Grand Panjandrum: Joe Conason chimed in with a nice defense of ACORN.
Nice unbiased neutral source?
The same Joe Conason who condemned the first ACORN video as Propaganda when came out.
Paul L.
Anne Laurie
a right-wing Borat wanna-be with an unlimited budget
I read claims that O’Keefe spent $1300 on the ACORN videos.
Using the Obama standard that all claims from the source are true, unless you can prove the unlimited budget, You will retract that statement?
Of course you will allow me to dismiss Micheal Moore’s newest film because he has a unlimited budget.
JK
Other good, brief overviews of the ACORN scandal
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/09/16/what-is-the-acorn-controversy-about
http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/179441.asp
Democracy Now (democracynowdotorg) interviewed the head of ACORN yesterday. The video and transcript of the interview is posted on Democracy Now’s website.
Thank God for Joe Conason
Litlebritdifrnt
Apologies a) for this being OT and b) if it has been posted before but for those following this the latest in the Oily Titz saga, she files a motion to stay deployment and asks the Judge to set aside his “sarcastic and biting” order while accusing him of treason (no I’m not kidding)
http://ia311028.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.gamd.77605/gov.uscourts.gamd.77605.15.0.pdf
Judge Land has just responded (he didn’t take kindly to being called a traitor apparently) with another brilliant order which begins
“It’s dejavu all over again”
and ends with
“The court notifies plaintiff’s counsel, Orly Taitz, that it is contemplating a monetary penalty of $10,000.00 to be imposed upon her, as a sanction for her misconduct”.
http://ia311029.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.gamd.77605/gov.uscourts.gamd.77605.17.0.pdf
Enjoy!
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
They believe what the tribal elders tell them to believe. That Mickey Mouse was one badass liberal and clever rodent.
Although the so called “pimp scheme” is a joke and will be shown as such, ACORN needs to cleanup it’s act and maintain more control over it’s operations on voter registration, which of course is what makes the wingnuts crazy and where their hatred for the organization resides.
kay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I saw it yesterday, but I didn’t read it. You assured me Orley would eventually be sanctioned, and you were right.
Paulie Chestnuts
@Paul L.:
Nice unbiased neutral source?
Did The Grand Pajandrum claim otherwise? Ad hominem much?
unless you can prove the unlimited budget, You will retract that statement?
Honestly, my eponymous friend, does even Bill Gates have an unlimited budget? Might Ms. Laurie be speaking in relative terms (Mr. O’Keefe vs. the ACORN staffer’s salaries?).
Black holes are not safe around your density.
Fulcanelli
O/T, But I am lurvin’ me some “Wise Latina” Judges these days… From Raw Story
“Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s newly installed Supreme Court Justice, has a few words for corporations seeking protection under law.
You’re not people.
During arguments in a recent campaign-finance case — that may upend campaign finance law to allow more spending by corporations — Sotomayor suggested that the core underpinning of protecting corporations’ rights was flawed.”
Bubblegum Tate
@kay:
Precisely. The wingnut narrative holds that the Axis of Evil is George Soros, ACORN, and Planned Parenthood (with special guest star SEIU). And all of them are evil because fuck you, commie, that’s why!
General Winfield Stuck
@Fulcanelli:
Yes, I read that. Like I said when she was appointed, then confirmed, I think she is a liberal lion in wait for letting her freak flag fly. Though I did think she’d wait awhile longer.
I mean corporations aren’t for peeps to hide behind, free market heresy of the first order.
Bet she’s already giving Scalia acid reflux.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
Voter fraud (conservatives) and voter access (liberals) can split a room.
There is no other issue (in my experience) like it. People on the two sides go from rational to red faced and screaming in 30 seconds.
The strangest part for me, as an “access” liberal, was that I work in a conservative precinct. I was explaining ID rules and helping voters comply, and racking up votes for the other side. I busted ass to get everybody “voted” as we say in the trade, and they’re 70/30 Republican. I finally got tired of it and quit, after the 2008 primary. I hope they suppress their own vote, and they will, because they’re freaking authoritarians,
drillfork
For all its flaws, ACORN helps poor minorities register to vote.
Poor minorities don’t vote Republican.
Therefore, ACORN must be destroyed…
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
The difference lies once again with reality. There have been few cases of voter fraud on the national level with libs, or even state level that have been id’d and prosecuted. And those that are, are almost always at the local level.
If voter fraud has happened on a large scale, it is most likely from electronic voting and tabulation, and we know who has been fighting better security on that front. Wingnuts.
And voter suppression has a long and storied history from the GOP, especially in the south.
kay
@drillfork:
ACORN shouldn’t pay people to register voters. I understand the impulse, but it’s not a good idea. It’s a job for volunteers.
In my personal experience, they did damage here, not from evil intent, but because they were sloppy, and Republicans came to this party convinced there was fraud. It’s silly to hand them a cudgel to beat you with.
gwangung
@Paul L.:
That was a STUPID post. Even you can do better.
Do it again.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
Especially when part of that pay was based on quotas.
FlipYrWhig
@Zifnab:
Actually, wait. Why doesn’t the defense-attorney model apply here? If you have done something, and you’re in trouble for it, it’s the function of your advocate to make the state prove its case, right? Lawyers work on behalf of monstrous and unforgivable clients all the time. Obviously this isn’t the exact same thing, but I can see an overlap conceptually… Right? Or am I way off base?
Polish the Guillotines
Josh Marshall has been all over the GOP hard-on about ACORN for quite some time.
He’s done perhaps the best reporting on how this obsession comes directly from Karl Rove’s voter suppression handbook.
It’s really no surprise that Fox is all wedged about ACORN, particularly now that Rove’s a Fox talking head.
The Raven
I’m inclined to donate to ACORN just because they give the wingnuts so much agida. No, I don’t believe ACORN is in the child prostitution business.
I think the only way to stop this garbage is to go after the wingers on every impropriety. Make it hurt to attack liberal organizations.
They are already very clean. But no matter how clean they are, there’s always going something to pin on them. Look at Senator John Kerry, who is an authentic decorated hero. Look at Al Gore, one of the most honest politicians that ever was.
The Raven
I’m sure that the Republicans will stop paying their organizers because ACORN does.
No?
Mnemosyne
@Paul L.:
Heh. Paul L actually thinks that ACORN is running child prostitution rings out of their offices because a guy in a Halloween costume is much more believable than, say, the San Bernardino police department.
chuck
Clearly every police department that has ever had a crooked cop needs to be de-funded. Immediately.
This is a smear campaign straight from Karl Rove’s brain, and as usual the simpering slime molds in the Democratic party raced each other to please the elite.
Man, I used to think bringing up class warfare was a copout, but every year I see what an obvious and inescapable reality it really is.
Calouste
@Fulcanelli:
The conservative justices that are ok with extending campaign contributions for coporations are apparently ok with foreign entities like Iran and al-Qaeda influencing elections in the US by founding a corporation.
Woody
Re Vitter & that other guy: “Nobody is cutting off their federal funding.”
I could think of other things that could be cut off to much greater advantage, and which would then compel them to more chaste, virtuous lives…
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
I have studied this a ridiculous amount, for a volunteer. You owe me thousands of dollars! Kidding. Just kidding.
Suppression came up in the battle over voter ID, and it was a huge battle. I felt (and feel) strongly about it.
It’s still ongoing.
The Indiana Supreme Court declared their conservative-instituted voter ID regs unconstitutional yesterday, under their state constitution. The battle in Georgia is ongoing, too. The DOJ is in that one.
Be careful to distinguish between voter suppression mitigation under the Voting Rights Act and the various “requirements” to vote (state law) which is the new battlefield.
The Voting Rights Act addresses what you’re talking about, in the sense of a history of suppression. State law is a whole different arena.
It’s not just the south, either. There are precincts in Chicago that are under heightened scrutiny under the VRA, because they have a history of blanket suppression.
Woody
The thing that pisses off the Pukes about ACORN (e.g.) is that ACORN registers poor people–many of whom vote Dim–to vote and empowers them to take on the system which sttrives to render them powerless.
It’s pretty simple, really.
Calouste
@kay:
The right wing doesn’t think that gathering signatures for voter initiatives that support discrimination and try to cripple local government via tax cuts is a job for volunteers.
geg6
Anne Laurie, you’re giving too much slack to the MSM village idiots by saying they could use Ms. Peterson’s efficiency more often. They have no efficiency. In fact, they have no brains. Hell, Andy Richter beat the hell out of Wolf Blitzer on Celebrity Jeopardy last night. Andy f-ing Richter, for chrissake.
General Winfield Stuck
@The Raven:
I realize they make an effort to weed out fraudulent registrations, but they end up getting submitted anyway and it adds grist to the wingnut wurlitzer. And when I say clean up, this is what I’m talking about.
Like Kay said, it should be strictly voluntary and there wouldn’t be a need to weed out fraud registry. It is a recipe for disaster of perception mostly, which is a big part of politics like it or not. Though payment might motivate honest workers, you can’t help but have dishonest ones causing grief.
Woody
One of the things that Sotomayor’s statements will accomplish will be to add a “corporate-personhood” section (GOPuke “litmus” test) to the application of the NEXT nominee…
gwangung
They better be careful of what they ask for or they might get it…
And…judicial activism, anyone?
ricky
@MikeJ:
I’ve never understood why prostitutes shouldn’t be allowed to get help with their taxes.
I agree, especially after they have helped Republicans in Congress with their sex problems.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
Yes, I know. I was talking about low brow tactics like sending out flyers in black neighborhoods telling people to vote on the wrong day. The use of legal suppression tactics cloaked in what appears to be common sense requirements for everyone but poor people, is whole a other matter going on now.
chuck
@General Winfield Stuck:
ACORN can only flag fraudulent registrations, not filter them. They are compelled by law to submit all completed registrations, fraudulent or not. Virtually all investigations into registration fraud connected to ACORN have come at the behest of ACORN itself.
Zifnab
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t think the comparison works because, a) even your defense attorney isn’t allowed to advise you to do something illegal and b) the defense attorney is required to report if you tell him you are about to commit a new crime.
The ACORN folks basically spelled out how to cheat on your taxes to these guys. I was a tax guy for a few years, and my office was pretty explicit in stating you don’t tell people how to lie on their taxes. If they ask, you just inform that you can’t help them with that.
This is the equivalent of a defense attorney coaching an alleged criminal about how to lie on the witness stand.
But, again, I go back to the comparison to the military contractors in Gitmo and Abu Garab. Billion of dollars continued to flow into Blackwater and Halliburton bank accounts long after they were exposed as war profiteers, gun runners, and rapists.
(Oh yes – I said rapists: http://houston.broowaha.com/article.php?id=2750)
But this – THIS – is what defunds ACORN. The hypocrisy is absolutely staggering. The injustice is blinding.
arguingwithsignposts
OT but from the judge’s second smackdown:
“Furthermore, competent counsel would have understood that the Court was required to address…”
One loves the legalese translation of “listen, you fookin’ moron…”
gwangung
@General Winfield Stuck:
Thing is…voter registration is also a two-prong function for ACORN, not only getting the poor registered to vote, but also to give honest, useful jobs to the poor, so they can help themselves.
Essentially, the right is against helping the poor working to better themselves.
kay
@The Raven:
I think ACORN should be paid to organize. I don’t think they should be paid to register voters. This is nitty-gritty, and maybe more specific than you’re interested in, but I don’t think they should collect the registrations, because they are in a sense “vouching” for them, and that exposes them to fraud charges. Not legally, but perceptually.
They’re mailers. The voter should send his or hers in. I have registered voters. There’s nothing wrong with explaining the language and the rules, or giving them a voter reg form, but then you gotta let it go. I tell people to turn them in, personally. Then, if there’s a question (and there are always questions with poor people and addresses:they move a lot) the Bd of Elections can raise the question and the prospective voter can answer it, right there.
That way their registration won’t get thrown out, because it can’t be verified.
You can’t do this sloppy. You’re actually harming them, not helping them.
General Winfield Stuck
@chuck:
You are right. But it still doesn’t change the perception of fraud which wingnuts use shamelessly, regardless of ACORN flagging bad registrations, causing investigations that never turn up actual voter fraud.
I just think it’s better for the democratic party to not give ammo to the enemy.
Badtux
One thing to bear in mind: There is no (zero) legal obligation for the typical private citizen to report a crime (this is ignoring mandatory reporters, such as teachers who must report child abuse, but those are state-licensed professionals who accept that obligation as part of their state licensing). If someone comes in and tells you that they’re a pimp and that they’re wanting to buy a house to use as a whorehouse, you have no legal obligation to report this. Just the facts, m’am.
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
General Winfield Stuck
@gwangung:
Yes, I fully agree. And I am only talking about their voter registration operations. The issue of wingnuts not liking the poor being empowered is a different topic. I’m sure ACORN can find other activities to pay folks for, that don’t create such political problems for dems from negative perceptions.
burnspbesq
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Love it. Thanks for posting.
HRA
“Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.”
This is unbelieveable. Then it may well be true someone might comply with it. There is no end to stories about dumber than dumb criminals. I have a few of them from a previous job.
In another unrelated job, I interviewed claimants for benefits. I was one of many during certain times of high unemployment. In other times, I was one of a few interviewers. The truth is most of these jobs during high unemployment were patronage jobs. They were given a quick 2 hour class in their duties. Mistakes were made.
Two examples:
a) A once convicted burglar who specialized in opening safes was set up to get schooling/training at a locksmith. It was his choice of what was offered. He got me for his validation interview. Short story – he had worked with a niece and she had told me about his crime. He was gently refused. The class was closed.
b) During a down time, I noticed boxes with claims stacked in the office and decided to look them over. Every one of those claimants had not been paid for a 13 week extension in benefits.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
I hate that stuff, but I think a broader goal of “voter education” might be really helpful.
As an example. During the voter ID battle in my state, I was so plugged in to it that it was unimaginable to me that people might not know there were new requirements.
Until election day. Thousands of people vote intermittently. They don’t vote in every election. Hundreds of them didn’t bring ID, conservatives, liberals, whatever. It was a train wreck. People were furious (there is nothing like telling someone they can’t vote, to make them hate you). I’m an access liberal, so I was frantic.
I was so upset with the Sec of State (at that time) because he made no effort to tell people there were new rules. They didn’t know.
I’d like groups like ACORN to fill that role. Give voters accurate information, door to door, if necessary.
burnspbesq
@Litlebritdifrnt:
How much would you pay to be able to watch the hearing on the order to show cause with respect to sanctions? That is going to be un-flippin’-real.
linda
completely ot … chuck todd sneezes into his hand (ewww); kathleen sebelius can’t believe it and calls him out on it; promises to have elmo show him how to sneeze. lol.:
http://jezebel.com/5362797/elmo-called-on-to-deliver-white-house-briefing-on-sneezing
General Winfield Stuck
@linda:
Too funny. Always thought Elmo had one up on the Toddster.
The Grand Panjandrum
@linda: Todd had an online chat yesterday so I asked him if the rumor was true that he was deing a flu season PSA with Elmo. For some reason he failed to respond. We should continue to question this vicious rumor until he answers gives it an yea or nay.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
Hey, Andy Richter’s a pretty smart guy. I’m not surprised at all that he would run rings around Wolf Blitzer.
One of the best “Celebrity Jeopardy” episodes I saw was David Duchovny and Stephen King. (Well, Lynn Redgrave was there, but she was really a token third.) It was a battle right up to the end when Duchovny choked on a question about Truman Capote for Final Jeopardy. And his (unfinished) dissertation was supposed to be on modern American literature. Very embarrassing.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Grand Panjandrum:
LOL. Where do we deliver your Internet?
Seriously, these ppl take themselves way too seriously.
burnspbesq
If you’ve ever wondered how companies “sell” hugely valuable assets without paying any taxes, here’s an example.
According to this, Tribune is gong to walk away from a transaction involving the Chicago Cubs with $845 million in cash and no current Federal income tax liability on that $845 (it’s on the hook for an $845 million loan, but who knows whether that will ever be repaid).
I do stuff like this for a living, and this transaction appears to me to be bullet-proof: I can’t find an argument that the IRS could make that would have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. It’s a matter of cleverly stacking together parts of the tax law that individually make sense to get to a result that is … umm … counter-intuitive.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2009/09/lawsky-the-tax-savings.html
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: This is a reminder to all you Baby Boom haters. Today is the 39th anniversary of the passing of Jimi Hendrix. You have NOT ONE musician from your generation of comparable stature, but you did give us Josh Groban.
Molly
@arguingwithsignposts: “OT but from the judge’s second smackdown:
“Furthermore, competent counsel would have understood that the Court was required to address…”
That one made me smirk with appreciation, and my colleges ask “whatcha reading?”
Orly has become my favorite Winger. I adore her.
someguy
Um, but they have, under the Lie Down With Dogs Get Up With Fleas axiom.
Though ACORN really isn’t the kind of centrally run, top-down enterprise that the Republican Party is. Can’t spell RICO without R.
MikeJ
Meh. We have plenty of dead musicians.
General Winfield Stuck
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Excuse me, while I touch the sky.
burnspbesq
Has Bruce Bartlett been excommunicated from the conservative movement yet? If not, this will probably be the last straw.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/17/federal-budget-spending-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html
Tom Q
Let’s get it in for the record: Blitzer didn’t just lose — he ended up deep in negative numbers. They had to give him charity money just so he could play Final Jeopardy.
I agree it’s no surprise Richter is bright. There are, in fact, a fair number of bright folk in show business. And people like Blitzer spend a good amount of time ridiculing them for expressing their opinions.
The Grand Panjandrum
@arguingwithsignposts: To his credit he did admit that when he was 10 years old he wanted to be a pro wreslter.
General Winfield Stuck
That should be kiss the sky,. damn I ought to be horsewhipped.
Linkmeister
@The Grand Panjandrum: Hey now! If we claim Jimi, we also have to take responsibility for Yanni.
My advice is, don’t go there.
burnspbesq
@The Grand Panjandrum:
You must not listen to much classical music. There is an extraordinary group of players in their 20s and 30s right now, and one composer (Thomas Ades) who is on his way to being as important as Prokofiev of Stravinsky – if not more important.
The Grand Panjandrum
@General Winfield Stuck: Purple haze all around
General Winfield Stuck
@Linkmeister:
And Tiny Tim.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Depends on the generation. I’d put SRV in a similar pantheon.
MikeJ
When people talk about music form the 60s, they always talk about Hendrix and the Beatles and never the Singing Nun.
arguingwithsignposts
I do think we might want to avoid the intergenerational musician comparisons. We all have crap in the closet. And if we’re talking about suckitude, it was the boomers who gave us Simon Cowell.
Zifnab
@HRA:
The IRS isn’t obligated (in fact, in some cases it is prohibited) to report you to another agency. For a while, Republicans wanted to try and track down illegal immigrants by their tax returns, but the courts struck it down because the IRS wasn’t legally empowered to investigate or even report on immigration issues.
And since the penalties for tax evasion can get unpleasantly steep, I don’t see any reason why a prostitute or a drug dealer wouldn’t file income under some heading. There are some pretty generic occupations for self-employment, after all.
I mean, they busted Al Capone on tax evasion. And he wasn’t the last. If you handle all your income in cash, it might actually be in your interest to have a record with the IRS of your earnings. That way, when a cop turns up $90k in your freezer, your attorney can at least point to the Underwater Basket Weaving Craftsman business you say you’ve been running as a source of the funds.
licensed to kill time
@MikeJ:
Arghh! You had to put that song in my head! Dominique-a-nique you!
The Grand Panjandrum
@arguingwithsignposts: But what truly great music was produced by the generation after the Boomers?
Linkmeister
@General Winfield Stuck: Oh, yes, Tiny Tim.
However, our parent’s generation gave us other performers on the Ed Sullivan Show, like all those jugglers that filled the hour. And Topo Gigio!
The Grand Panjandrum
@arguingwithsignposts: SRV was a Boomer. Born 1954.
freelancer
via Pharyngula
I think this guy is auditioning for the Veep spot on the Palin Ticket. Seen here, also.
He came in dead last in the primary run-off, but he did get 301 votes.
At what point does religion end and mental illness (aphasia, Tourette’s) begin?
Linkmeister
@licensed to kill time: Thank God the American release of Love is Blue was Paul Mariat’s instrumental, not the version with words.
General Winfield Stuck
Don’t know if anyone watched the seg on Hardball a little while ago with Joe Sestak and some winger neocon, Mike Rogers I think. The topic was on Obama’s nixing the anti-missile shield in east Europe, and going for mobile ones on ships to use against Iran’s future medium range missiles, which is the rationale stated for putting them in Europe, which by the way they wouldn’t work against anyway.
Rogers argument was a case study of winger logic that one day may get us all killed, if they get a neocon back in power.
Went something like this, yes, 0ur missile defense would be useless against Russian Merv’s with decoys, but we should put them there anyway because the Russkies don’t want them, which means they must be planning something offensive against us because us being on their doorstep with missile defense makes them nervous.
Mnemosyne
More ACORN theater: Red state governors are now announcing that they’ve cut off state funds to ACORN … even though ACORN wasn’t getting any money from their state in the first place.
Next, Tim Pawlenty will show you the magic rock that keeps tigers out of the streets of Minneapolis.
(via)
The Grand Panjandrum
@General Winfield Stuck: I’m getting dizzy.
burnspbesq
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Hmmm … this list could get long.
Alison Krauss
Brad Paisley
Cara Dillon
Solas
Cherish the Ladies
John Doyle
Donal Clancy
Neko Case
Conor Oberst
Jenny Scheinman
Brian Blade
Jason Moran
Joshua Redman
Evgeny Kissin
Julia Fischer
Hilary Hahn
Gustavo Dudamel
Thomas Ades
That’s just for openers.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Didn’t we have this discussion recently? When are you defining baby boom? ’65?
arguingwithsignposts
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Yeah, I realized that after I wrote it. I considered when he was popular.
So Hendrix, who was born in 1942 was NOT a boomer!!
licensed to kill time
Check this out:
I think BOB and him need to get together, with all due respect…
FlipYrWhig
@Zifnab:
I see what you mean… is the distinction between what has already been done and what is being contemplated? That is, if I went in to ACORN and asked what I could do in case the cops came and found my pot plants, what should they say? Is it different from what they should say if I asked what I could do to grow pot and not get caught?
Or if, for example, I said I wanted to set up a hair-braiding business, do they have to tell me that I need to get certified with the Board of Health? Or can they tell me how to keep my business small enough that I _don’t_ need to get certified?
I really don’t know the answers, which is why I’m asking. Yes, prostitution is a matter of a different kind. I’m thinking about what a community organization is obliged to do vis-a-vis the letter of the law. Corporate lawyers earn millions by finding loopholes; part of me wants to say that the ACORN workers in the videos are doing much the same thing. When I saw the clips, I felt like a line was crossed (although I was more bemused than outraged), but I’m trying to figure out what line and when and where the crossing happened.
tc125231
The Grand Panjandrum
@General Winfield Stuck: Tiny Tim was not a Boomer, he was born in 1932. Whew!
General Winfield Stuck
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Dodged a Ukulele on that one.
Makewi
Leno did a monologue on Acorn last night, and Stewart was joking on them a couple of days ago. This scandal is now officially part of the American culture.
tc125231
@The Grand Panjandrum: Sort of a silly reamrk. Badly Drawn Boy is certainly a better song writer.
Frankly, Hendrix’s claim to fame is as an innovator, not because his work regularly pulls it all together.
By the way, i am a Boomer, to my shame.
arguingwithsignposts
And thus we get to the real problem with the baby boomer “great music” argument. Some of the artists who made the ’60s and early ’70s great were actually pre-baby boom (depending on the source, 1946-1965), and thus the boomers have no claim to their creativity, just to basking in their glow.
General Winfield Stuck
so?
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
So to classify it as just something only the Fox news crowd is interested in is at best disingenuous.
arguingwithsignposts
e.g.,
Janis Joplin (1943)
Paul McCartney (1942)
John Lennon (1940)
Hendrix (1942)
Rolling Stones were born in 1943
etc.
I would note that there seemed to be a lot of f**king going on during WWII.
tc125231
@Makewi: You mean, like American Idol? Sounds like a lame justification, pal.
Molly
@The Grand Panjandrum: “But what truly great music was produced by the generation after the Boomers?”
OK, musicians, well…nada, unless you’re into hip-hop. But, we have Barack Obama and Jon Stewart. Spot us a musician or two, man.
Leelee for Obama
@burnspbesq: Bruce Bartlett is my favorite conservative, because he thinks what I do about so many things, and isn’t afraid to let his side have it. The man is a breath of fresh air.
Makewi
@tc125231:
I don’t understand the comparison. Can you explain it to me?
General Winfield Stuck
They make jokes about everything and everybody and it is all part of the American Culture, just ask Sarah Palin. Doesn’t mean anything more than that.
Go flog your breathless wingnut memes of imminent dem destruction somewhere else. They don’t fly here.
burnspbesq
Is it too early to start the Friday night YouTube carpet-bombing?
I think not.
Although I am personally a late boomer (born in1955), I am taking the side of the younger generation today.
So here is a 38-year-old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjsjZWlRVvo
Badtux
@FlipYrWhig , community organizers are private citizens. They are not officers of a court. They are not licensed public accountants or licensed tax professionals with legal obligations under terms of any state licensing laws. They are private citizens. As private citizens, they have no legal obligation to report crimes whether in progress or proposed. Regarding giving advice, that differs based on state laws. If they give legal or financial advice they may be in violation of state laws regulating the legal and financial industries, which require legal and financial advisors to be licensed, but there are states where it is completely legal to give legal or financial advice as an unlicensed private citizen as long as you do not represent yourself as a licensed professional (you can’t appear in court representing a client if you’re unlicensed, but lack of a license in those states does not remove your free speech rights), and even in those states which require legal or financial advisors to be licensed, that generally only applies to people who accept money for advice, which did not happen here.
There is a possibility that if you advise doing something illegal, you might get charged with some kind of “aiding and abetting” charge if it can be shown that your involvement went beyond simply giving advice to actually assisting in or benefitting from the crime, e.g., if you signed some papers for the perps which were necessary for the crime to occur, or if the crime resulted in you obtaining funds illegally. But that requires a crime to have actually happened, which did not happen here in these ACORN incidents unless you believe that the Reich-wingers really were pimps or running child prostitution rings.
Now, there is an *ethical* bounds here which these particular ACORN activists clearly exceeded. From an ethical point of view, it is wrong to give people advice on how to hide money from a child prostitution ring or whatever, and the only proper response is “Get out. Get out now or I call the police.” But from a *legal* point of view, the most unlawful thing these ACORN advisors might have done would be giving legal or financial advice without a license… a misdemeanor which, in those jurisdictions where this is enforced, typically results in a nominal fine and a “Don’t do that again!” sanction.
arguingwithsignposts
@burnspbesq:
Good one. And here’s a 43-y-o.
Calouste
@The Grand Panjandrum:
If you’re talking about stature, Michael Jackson was a boomer, born in 1958, as are Prince and Madonna.
Not talking about my perception of their music, just talking about their stature as artists and entertainers.
arguingwithsignposts
@arguingwithsignposts:
And I should point out that Rawlings doesn’t get near enough credit, IMHO.
FlipYrWhig
@Badtux:
That’s pretty much what I figured. I was using the “defense attorney” idea as a heuristic in order to think through what it would mean to help (in any number of ways) a person who had done or was about to do something illegal. It looks like sometimes we don’t have an issue with that kind of help–defense attorneys do what they can to make it hard for the state to prove its case; emergency-room doctors treat criminals; etc.–and sometimes we do have an issue with it. The kind of illegal act matters, and the kind of help matters.
But that’s really just me trying to think aloud. Thx…
John Harrold
Ok, sure the ACORN workers were uneducated, but how can you claim to not know that importing underage sex workers is against the law? Truthfully, I think prostitution should be legal, so I wasn’t too worried about that aspect. But the whole: we’re going to import underage girls and pimp them out was more than enough for me at least.
Also, I don’t believe this guy had an unlimited budget. As I understand it he did this for around two grand. Even if you are trying to compare acorn staffers budgets versus this guys (a weak argument at best), 2k isn’t really that much money.
ACORN is really indefensible here, and any argument to the contrary is pretty pathetic.
AhabTRuler
Bullshit. Individuals employed by ACORN are indefensible, and the organization hasn’t attempted to do so.
ACORN is being assassinated in broad daylight, and for the most part the American public, media, and political establishment are either too craven or too stupid to recognize it for what it is.
Just another sign that we, as a nation and a culture, are probably beyond fucked, and I welcome our new Chinese or Indian overlords.
AhabTRuler
Unfortunately only Dems and reporters fall for that trick.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I would think that it also matters — and I don’t think that this is immaterial — if the illegal act actually occurs or not. You can talk all day long about starting your own brothel stocked with underaged girls brought here illegally, but unless you actually do it, there’s no crime.
If I tell my friends that I want to kill my husband and I don’t take any actual steps towards doing it, they don’t have a legal or moral requirement to report me to the police. I’m not sure where the requirement would kick in if I, say, buy a gun or stock up on strychnine after talking about killing him, but I’m not even sure there is a legal requirement.
Mnemosyne
@John Harrold:
That is, of course, assuming that (A) the videotape is not doctored in any way and (B) the ACORN workers were actually serious and not pulling the director’s leg like the ACORN worker in San Bernardino was.
FlipYrWhig
@John Harrold:
I honestly think they defaulted to the wrong script: they heard about bringing in Third World women and ignored the whole sex-trade part, just started giving advice about refugees and aliens. Get them classified as dependents, get them enrolled in school, etc.
gwangung
Um, that’s not very good advice for actual traffickers, is it? Way too many points for leaks, escapes, and all that?
FlipYrWhig
@ gwangung: Exactly, it _is_ bad advice for starting an actual house of prostitution. It sounds like a mishmash of advice for how to get foreign women _out_ of human trafficking/sexual exploitation.
FlipYrWhig
In fact, imagine you work at ACORN, you’re at the desk, and a guy comes in off the street and says he knows about underaged Central American women being sexually exploited. What advice would you give? “Call the cops” is good, but what if you think the guy might be a criminal? Maybe he’s a real scumbag who’s had a pang of conscience. I feel like some of what’s being said is not that far removed from what could be useful advice for how to protect exploited women. Obviously, the trouble is, that wasn’t really the question–it was more like, I have some women, and I’m wondering how best I can exploit them more?
It’s like O’Keefe was saying he was trying to get his friend hooked on drugs — and the woman misheard him as saying he was trying to get his friend _off_ drugs. Which would be a lot more common of an inquiry.
(OK, no one has used this as a defense, so I could be way off. But it feels kind of plausible. It’s the kind of thing I would snafu my way into doing.)
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
You are an eternal optimist. The nature of politics would suggest that the party in power is usually fighting a losing battle at keeping power.
General Winfield Stuck
The long dark shadow of Bush failure will take some time to fade from the countries memory, and ACORN is not your White Whale of redemption.
HRA
Zifnab thank you for the explanation.
FlipYrWhig: In my state you need to be licensed to do hair. Growing pot, as I have surmised while learning of a coworkers 2nd job, is dependent on how well you hide the plants.
I did not watch the ACORN video. All I know about them is that they are a community organization. Let us acknowledge they are set up to help those in downtrodden communities or as what they were called where I finished growing up – the ghetto or the hood. I do understand their purpose. Furthermore I understand this may well have been a situation of knowing who to approach with this inquiry. I am not saying approaching someone who would be agreeable to the inquiry. Rather it would be someone newer to the task.
Badtux
John Harrold, knowledge that something is or is not against the law is immaterial. ACORN workers have no legal responsibility to report that someone is proposing or doing something illegal. Period. And we have this thing called the “1st Amendment” which guarantees this little thing called “freedom of speech” which means that they are free to give all the advice they want, as long as they don’t misrepresent themselves or themselves benefit from or participate in whatever they’re advising the person to do, even if the advice they gave was to do something illegal. ACORN workers are not officers of the court, they are not licensed professionals sanctionable by state licensing boards, they are private citizens with all the rights of any other private citizen which includes the 1st Amendment right to free speech. Your sneering commentary about legality or illegality of acts proposed by someone who walked into an ACORN office is utterly irrelevant — the ACORN employees themselves did not do anything that was the least bit illegal.
And in case you’re wondering how this bit about “giving advice to do illegal things” interacts with free speech: If you have a DVD, I suggest you back it up to your hard drive or copy it to a DVD-R, because DVD’s have no error correction algorithms and it takes only a few glitches to render them unviewable. This is especially true if you have a DVD player for showing movies to your kids in the back seats of your minivan or SUV, because all the jostling around of a moving car is hard on DVD’s.
There. I just gave you advice to do something that’s illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which utterly outlaws the copying of DVD’s for any reason or the provision of tools for copying of DVD’s. I have a right, as a free American, to give you that advice free of any legal sanction as long as I am not personally profiting from that advice in any way. That right is guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I do *not* have a right to assist you in actually performing that copy, or the right to actually provide you the tools to perform that copy. At that point I would be committing an illegal act. Are you starting to get the picture now? Yes? No? Is this too hard for you, really?
– Badtux the Law Penguin
Darkrose
@Litlebritdifrnt: Thank you for the links–the judge’s response was a thing of beauty.
Steeplejack
@ricky:
Heh.
Steeplejack
@General Winfield Stuck:
Wait, what? I thought it was “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.”
lovethebomb
I always thot it was “scuse me while I kiss this fly.”
CTCB05
ACORN is the rule, not the exception to the corruption that our politicians pay out millions of $’s too. It’s both pol. parties.
It’s time for change……it’s time for Revolution so that all career politicians (& their sub-groups). This wasn’t the govt. the Americans fought/died for when standing up to King George III in the American Revolution.
It is up to us to carry on American traditions & we haven’t done it. Now is the time to stand!!
I also read the new, underground book just out &, like that small town in America who fought federal tyranny, we also need to stand up. It’s a great book….read it!!
“This may be the only time in your life that you can make your own history & leave a legacy for your grandchildren.”
(booksbyoliver.com)
Joe Buck
NPR said that the “pimp” and “prostitute” were thrown out of numerous ACORN offices and one even called the cops on them, before they found a couple of ACORN offices where some idiots would give them good video copy. ACORN provides free assistance with tax paperwork, and those tax assistants were the people the undercover detectives were going after.
ACORN does great work, and doing it has made them a lot of enemies. For example, they’ve been fighting the abusive practices of the loan-shark payday loan industry for a long time.
I recently gave them a contribution, to help make up from the money they are losing from federal grants.
henqiguai
@Joe Buck (#135):
I recall hearing on public radio (don’t recall if it was an NPR offering or APR) that ACORN claims only about 2% of their budget is from Federal sources. If that’s true, then the
Republicanwingnut ploy will not be as devastating as they hope.Hmmm; wonder if the Edit function will show itself on this submission.
John Harrold
Badtux I don’t know what kind of crack you’re smoking if you think the first amendment applies here. If you have knowledge someone is going to break the law and don’t do anything to stop that you’re called an accessory:
According to this story the guy actually contacted the authorities, so I don’t really have a problem with this.