But Senator McCain...why do you hate ACORN?

[ashbeeigh]

Just another day...

This is obviously one of our (ACORN) press releases..but still...and the plot thickens....


ACORN to McCain: Have You Lost That Loving Feeling?

MIAMI, Oct 13, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Senator Allied with ACORN as Recently as 2006, Now Turns Cold Shoulder

U.S. Senator John McCain's recent attacks on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), are puzzling given his historic support for the organization and its efforts on behalf of immigrant Americans. As recently as February 20, 2006, Senator McCain was the keynote speaker at an ACORN-sponsored Immigration Rally in Miami, Florida at Miami Dade College - Wolfson Campus.

The rally, co-sponsored by ACORN in partnership with the New American Opportunity campaign (NAOC), Catholic League Services - Archdiocese of Miami, Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Miami Dade College, People for the American Way/Mi Familia/Vota en Accion, the Service Employees International Union, and UNITE/HERE, was intended to call attention to the need for comprehensive immigration reform.

Senator McCain spoke at the rally attended by hundreds of ACORN members, most of whom were dressed in the red shirts typical of its members. Senator McCain's speech focused on the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, a bipartisan, comprehensive reform bill, which McCain
sponsored with Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA).

Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer of ACORN, said, "It has deeply saddened us to see Senator McCain abandon his historic support for ACORN and our efforts to support the goals of low-income Americans. Maybe it is out of desperation that Senator McCain has forgotten that he was for ACORN before he was against ACORN; he was for immigration reform before he was against immigration reform; and he was a maverick before he became erratic. We were thrilled to partner with him to help reform the outdated immigration laws in this country, and were pleased to work closely with him on this issue."

Lewis continued, "We expected Senator McCain to support our efforts to give voice to millions of American's who have never participated in an election before. We are surprised at his efforts to vilify an organization that, until recently, he saw as an ally. Maybe this surprise attack and change of heart is indicative of his state of mind, and the way he would govern."

Senator McCain and his campaign have recently launched a series of coordinated attacks on ACORN, the nation's largest community organization of low-and middle-income families.

Ms. Lewis went on to say that, "We are sure that the extremists he is trying to get into a froth will be even more excited to learn that John McCain stood shoulder to shoulder with ACORN, at an ACORN co-sponsored event, to promote immigration reform."

Senator McCain was joined at the rally by Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL), Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), leaders from both political parties, immigrant communities, and members of labor, business, and religious organizations.

****
About ACORN
ACORN is the nation's largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country. Since 1970, ACORN has been building community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy and voter participation. ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful players in our democratic system. The organization recently completed its national voter registration drive by registering 1.3 million new voters across 21 states.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/acorn-mccain-have-you-lost/story.aspx?guid={9DF1C9E0-F0BA-4509-B4EC-AF741171DEAC}&dist=hppr



Let me step out of my job shell for a second here...

Obviously ACORN is trying to paint McCain as a "flip-flopper" of sorts, even if this was in 2006. I don't know how this is going to work out. This is all in response to the recent attack ads that have been playing. What do you all think? I think it's all a load of crap and just politics. The second the election is over everyone not directly related to ACORN or politics is going to forget about them until the next election season or unless ACORN gets brought up again in regards to the CRA.

Here is the ad if you haven't seen it:

http://www.johnmccain.com/videolanding/acorn1.htm?sid=google&tobama&r=obamaacornvideo

[boutons_]

The Repugs hate ACORN because ACORN has registered 1.3M poor voters. That's democracy and enfranchisement, not stealing an election.

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/102685/gop_attacks_on_acorn_are_based_on_the_fear_of_1.3_ million_new_voters/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-friedman/13-million-reasons-for-th_b_134025.html

If the Repugs are against it, you know it must be good.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/Acorn_pushes_back_hugs_McCain.html?showall

The Repugs will have their gestapo at polling stations to intimidate and challenge registered voters (aka, Repug "democracy"), but HUSSEIN is organizing to have his own people at polling stations to challenge the challengers and support/encourage/protect the voters.

[Anti.Hero]

Boutons you are amazing man.

ACORN registering 1000's of made-up people, busing in homeless from the streets telling them who to vote for if they want a better life, bribing 15 yr olds with cash and cigs...and the dems/Obama are clean as an angel.

Pretty pathetic, after bush, against mccain...obama/dems/and these piece of shit organizations have to try and buff their chances.

It's really enough to make someone sick. Stealing votes with this shit. Amazing.

[Clandestino]

they showed several black people. one had registered 73 times and another guy 15 times. they said acorn pressured them into it and they didn't know they were doing anything wrong

[ChumpDumper]

So how many fraudulent votes do you think will be cast because of ACORN, and does that number include the Dallas Cowboys in Nevada?

[Anti.Hero]

McCain isn't a Maverick. He sways with the wind. This is nothing new. This pro-immigration/anti-immig. is McCain.

A big portion of his shitty campaign is that he has spent his entire political life trying to "reach across to the other side" thinking he was some badass for being different. He has no idea wtf to do and it is obviously showing.

[boutons_]

To repeat, bogus registrations DO NOT EQUAL bogus votes.

Voters have to show up, at the right polling station (which the Repugs will move around to hide them, esp in poor precincts), with some kind of ID, get past the Repug gestapo challenges, and have their ID or whatever match with the registration records.

To repeat, Repugs will very probably purge and block more legit voters than ACORN will ever succeed in getting new voters.

But in fact, the Repugs are scared shitless of:

A) ACORN's efforts in battleground states, and

B) HUSSEIN's grassroots organization to get out the vote and man voting places on election day

The ACORN tactic now is how the Repugs intend to de-legitimize any HUSSEIN or any Dem Congressional victory as fraudulent.

[Anti.Hero]

I'm surprised ACORN has the balls to steal other Americans' votes during such polarizing times.

I guess the millions they receive from the government makes them feel just as bullet proof as others in Washington.

[ChumpDumper]

I'm surprised ACORN has the balls to steal other Americans' votes during such polarizing times. How many?

[boutons_]

"steal other Americans votes"? got proof? got even a hint?

dubya's US Attorney-hit-men were forced to search for "massive voter fraud" for 7 years and came up empty handed.

btw, "massive voter fraud" has been a knee-jerker going back to Nixon's defeat by JFK.

[ashbeeigh]

I'm surprised ACORN has the balls to steal other Americans' votes during such polarizing times.



So looking at the map

http://acorn.org/typo3temp/pics/baea967b85.jpg

and look at Ohio for example. Say 20% of that was fraudulent and every county acted like Cuyagua county and threw out that twenty percent. That's throwing out roughly 50,000 voter cards. If you tag "all" ACORN cards as fraudulent, as you may have seen in the special investigation on CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/09/acorn.fraud.claims/index.html) in Indiana, that's throwing out nearly 200,000 good voter cards; just because there could be a chance that some are fraudulent. And that's throwing out a huge majority of first time voters (college students, minorities, and low income families). I just think that's ridiculous and to be blamed on individual counties who "don't have the time" to review the voter cards.

And as far as those cards and employees, what has been said in the media is true. Cards get turned in by every member of the GOTV team everyday to be reviewed. If a card looks shady it gets "flagged" and still has to get turned into the county elections officials. After they get turned in it's pretty much no longer ACORN's card, it's the county. The card is traced to ACORN and ACORN is able to tell who turned in the card (obviously, if the signature looks the same, stuff is missing, cards look the same, etc). ACORN then tells the election official who turned in the card and it's the county or government's call on prosecution. When you have something like 120 people getting at at minimum of 12 cards a day that's 1400 cards a day. For a large office that's even a lot of work; but I've personally seen it done (not in that magnitude, but I've seen it done in the Houston office...which is under investigation.).

And as boutons has said it's not voter fraud until someone actually votes. Do you really think a card in Las Vegas is going to get to Tony Romo and Marion Barber and then they'll vote? I think not. It's just so blown out of proportion (yet I posted the article..lol).

[Shastafarian]

I saw a hilarious headline while flipping through channels today.

I flipped to FoxNews to see what they were lying about now and saw this:

"Is ACORN at fault for current housing crisis?"

:lol

[Wild Cobra]

And as boutons has said it's not voter fraud until someone actually votes. Do you really think a card in Las Vegas is going to get to Tony Romo and Marion Barber and then they'll vote? I think not. It's just so blown out of proportion (yet I posted the article..lol).
And like I said, it's the stupid ones being caught. How many are not being flagged?

I saw an instance not long ago that with the recounts and "found ballot" which changed an election result after a recount, that the obvious answer was that plants at the elections office took names that hadn't voted yet, then voted for them. Sure, not 100% positive, but the ability to abuse the system is wide open.

[ashbeeigh]

And like I said, it's the stupid ones being caught. How many are not being flagged?

I saw an instance not long ago that with the recounts and "found ballot" which changed an election result after a recount, that the obvious answer was that plants at the elections office took names that hadn't voted yet, then voted for them. Sure, not 100% positive, but the ability to abuse the system is wide open.

:lmao Yeah. It was ACORN's fault. That's a load of crap.

[Anti.Hero]

I need to come up with some scum bag organization so I can get a nice fat federal check. hmmmm

[Wild Cobra]

:lmao Yeah. It was ACORN's fault. That's a load of crap.

You just don't get it. ACORN may or may not have been part of the problem I spoke of. The probelm is that there are several ways to manipulate the election process, and ACORN is a participant in the events that allow voter fraud.

[Anti.Hero]

So THIS is what community organizers do. Ahhhhhh

[DarrinS]

The Repugs hate ACORN because ACORN has registered 1.3M poor voters. That's democracy and enfranchisement, not stealing an election.


:rolleyes

[Wild Cobra]

:rolleyes

He just doesn't get it. He refuses to see the allowance of fraud and the pretence they try to stop it.

[Anti.Hero]

Your tax money at work ladies and gentlemen LOL

[ashbeeigh]

The probelm is that there are several ways to manipulate the election process, and ACORN is a participant in the events that allow voter fraud.

And the Republicans haven't tried to manipulate the voting process? yeah. alright.


So THIS is what community organizers do. Ahhhhhh

Negative. Come to work with me on Saturday and I'll show you what a community organizer does.

[boutons_]

California GOP had Same Voter Registration Problems as ACORN in 2006

By Steven Rosenfeld
Posted on October 14, 2008, Printed on October 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/102933/

Faked names on voter registration forms.

Error rates as high as 60 percent.

Firing the people responsible for these errors. Investigations launched by local and state police.

Sound familiar? This is not ACORN in the 2008 election's final days.

This is the California Republican Party and its contractors in 2006, when the same problems that are now dogging ACORN and providing political fodder for GOP attacks plagued an effort by California Republicans to register 750,000 people.

The details were all spelled out in a series (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/07/local/me-voterfraud7) of Los Angeles Times stories, which quoted former California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres saying these kinds of errors are inevitable (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/08/local/me-voterfraud8) "when you use private vendors." Even the state's top election official in 2006, Republican Bruce McPherson, was forced to investigate (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/02/local/me-signatures2) his own party's actions.

These same issues surfaced again last week as ACORN, the low-income advocacy organization which ran 2008's largest voter drive with 1.3 million new voters, was hammered (http://www.gop.com/) by the GOP for submitting falsified voter registrations. The GOP's attacks have increased and even John McCain is saying that ACORN's actions are proof the Democrats are trying to steal the 2008 election.

"My friends… they must be investigated, and they must be investigated immediately and they must be stopped before November the fourth, so Americans will not -- will not -- be deprived of a fair process in this election," McCain said at a Wisconsin town hall meeting (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/mccin_campantiacorn_campaign_g.php) on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, two former U.S. senators who support McCain held a National Press Club (http://blog.cleveland.com/openers/2008/10/registration_fraud_creates_a_p.html) briefing where they said voter registration problems could lead to a "nightmare" election in November.

The only thing ACORN's errors prove is that mistakes in big voter registration drives are inevitable, no matter who conducts them. When you look at all the other problems in the nation's voting systems -- from poorly designed ballots to electronic machines that lose votes cast -- the larger truth is every aspect of American elections is imperfect.

Right now ACORN has few public defenders, not in the last weeks of a presidential campaign. Its membership, which includes poor people, young people, minorities, is not as experienced as making its case to the media as the Republican National Committee or McCain campaign.

But let's put ACORN's errors in perspective. More than 120 million Americans may vote in November. ACORN, which hired 13,000 workers to register 1.3 million voters, had a few bad hires - like any big company.

But unlike the California GOP in its 2006 voter drive, ACORN has a policy of telling local election officials when it believes it has fraudulent registrations. It is required by states to submit all voter applications and urges election officials to prosecute knowing mistakes. The current case against ACORN comes from its own disclosures.

ACORN has not said how many bad registrations were flagged in 2008, but one nationwide estimate was 10,000. What is ACORN's error rate then? It would be less than one percent. Yes, in one Indiana County a third or more of its submissions were bad. In 2006, contractors for the California Republican Party had local error rates of 60 percent in San Bernadino County, the Los Angeles Times reported, where 1,800 out of 3,000 submitted registrations were incomplete and could not be processed.

How does ACORN's nationwide error rate compare to other voter registration problems? The data is thin, academics say. But two statistics are telling.

A 2007 National Science Foundation report (http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:mR0nRqw414oJ:www.eac.gov/clearinghouse/docs/state-vrd-interim-report.pdf/attachment_download/file+voter+registration+error+rate&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=25&gl=us) for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found county election workers who entered voter information into county databases made mistakes 5 percent of time, if poorly trained. This is not the same as making up a voter's name, which is a prosecutable offense, but not all of ACORN's errors are fake names. Some are the same people filling out more then one voter registration form.

This month in Columbus, Ohio, Franklin County Board of Elections Deputy Director Matt Damschroder said about 2.5 percent of the 200,000 new voter registrations turned into his office in 2008 could not be processed because of typos, unreadable writing or missing information. He said that error rate was pretty good.

Moreover, in gathering signatures for ballot measures, it is a common practice for their sponsors to turn in "150 percent of the legal requirement," said Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News (http://www.ballot-access.org/). "With some people, you can't read their hand writing."

Nobody in the national media is praising ACORN for an accuracy rate of 99 percent in its voter registration drive. Nobody praised the California Republican Party for an accuracy rate that probably also was in the 90th percentile in 2006.

But the real issue here is not whether any enterprise with 13,000 employees can make a mistake. The real issue is whether mistakes were caught, which they were - hence the Republican's political field day - and how do ACORN's voter registration problems compare in size and scope with the other problems concerning a fair 2008 election?

Last week, the New York Times reported that states using Social Security data (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) to verify and update voter lists found 2.4 million "non-matches" for existing and new voters this year through September. The Social Security Administration says its data can be wrong 28.5 percent of the time when used this way, Wired Magazine reported (http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/09/voter_registration?currentPage=all) in September.

Now that is something to really worry about, if the November 4th vote count is close in battleground states and the parties start fighting ballot by ballot - not whether ACORN or the California Republican Party submitted a few thousand bad voter registration forms in a nation or state where tens of millions of people will be voting.

[boutons_]

The Repug noise about ACORN is ALL BULLSHIT AND SLIME, and the Repugs know it.

Their robots in this forum probably know it, too.

fuck all y'all

[RandomGuy]

I saw a hilarious headline while flipping through channels today.

I flipped to FoxNews to see what they were lying about now and saw this:

"Is ACORN at fault for current housing crisis?"

:lol


The right wing is whipping up ACORN to be the biggest boogeyman this country has seen since the Red Scare, and pretty obviously attempting to disenfranchise as many people as possible who might tend to vote Democratic.

Anybody on the right who can't be honest and admit that has been hitting the cool-aid pretty heavily.

[RandomGuy]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/223436.php

The Republican party is grasping on to the ACORN story as a way to delegitimize what now looks like the probable outcome of the November election. It is also a way to stoke the paranoia of their base, lay the groundwork for legal challenges of close outcomes in various states and promote new legal restrictions on legitimate voting by lower income voters and minorities. The big picture is that these claims of 'voter fraud' are themselves a fraud, a tool to aid in suppressing Democratic voter turnout. But I want give readers a bit more detail to understand what is going because the right-wing freak out about ACORN happens pretty much on schedule every two years. The whole scam is premised on having enough people who don't remember when they tried it before who they can then confuse and lie to. And this is clearly important because I'm hearing from a lot of people whose heart is in the right place thinking some real voter fraud conspiracy has been uncovered and that Obama has to distance himself from it post-haste.

ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What's key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people -- often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN's own efforts to catch errors. (It's important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it's ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of 'thousands' of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

I've always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here's the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for registering more people then they actually signed up. If you register me three times to vote, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won't count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there's very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit actual vote fraud. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated cases of actual instances of vote fraud.

To expand on this point let me quote from Richard Hasen, one of the most experienced and concise commentators on this question, from a June 2007 column in the Dallas Morning News ...


At least in hindsight, the center's line of argument is easily deconstructed. First, arguing by anecdote is dangerous business. A new report by Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College looks at these anecdotes and shows them to be, for the most part, wholly spurious. Sure, one can find a rare case of someone voting in two jurisdictions, but nothing extensive or systematic has been unearthed or documented.

But perhaps most importantly, the idea of massive polling-place fraud (through the use of inflated voter rolls) is inherently incredible. Suppose I want to swing the Missouri election for my preferred presidential candidate. I would have to figure out who the fake, dead or missing people on the registration rolls are, then pay a lot of other individuals to go to the polling place and claim to be that person, without any return guarantee - thanks to the secret ballot - that any of them will cast a vote for my preferred candidate.

Those who do show up at the polls run the risk of being detected and charged with a felony. And for what - $10? Polling-place fraud, in short, makes no sense.

The Justice Department devoted unprecedented resources to ferreting out fraud over five years and appears to have found not a single prosecutable case across the country. Of the many experts consulted, the only dissenter from that position was a representative of the now-evaporated American Center for Voting Rights.

Again, there have been numerous investigations of this. Often by people with at least a mild political interest in finding wrongdoing. But they never find it. It always ends up being right-wing hype and lies. Remember, most of those now-famous fired US Attorneys from 2007 were Republican appointees who were canned after they got tasked with investigating allegations of widespread vote fraud, did everything they could to find it, but came up with nothing. That was the wrong answer so Karl Rove and his crew at the Justice Department fired them.

Vote registration fraud is a limited and relatively minor problem in the US today. But it is principally an administrative and efficiency issue. It is has little or nothing to do with people casting illegitimate votes to affect an actual election. That's the key. What you're hearing right now from Fox News, the New York Post, John Fund and the rest of the right-wing bamboozlement chorus is a just another effort to exploit, confuse and lie in an effort to put more severe restrictions on legitimate voting and lay the groundwork to steal elections.

It's that simple.

[Viva Las Espuelas]

so i take it that some people are in favor of fraud. i can understand that. gore did win an oscar, grammy, and a nobel peace prize. silly me................

[ChumpDumper]

So how many fraudulent votes have been attributed to ACORN since the voter integrity initiative of 2002?

[Viva Las Espuelas]

So how many fraudulent votes have been attributed to ACORN since the voter integrity initiative of 2002?well since that they have been investigated ever since 2000 and just this year about 7 to 9 states, swing states i might add, are being investigated it's hard to tell. i know this isn't good for you because a figure isn't given, but with such a shady history who knows.

[ChumpDumper]

well since that they have been investigated ever since 2000 and just this year about 7 to 9 states, swing states i might add, are being investigated it's hard to tell. i know this isn't good for you because a figure isn't given, but with such a shady history who knows.Sorry, there is a clear record of investigations and resolved court cases in the past six years. If the fraud is as extensive and widespread as you seem to be implying, this should be quite easy for anyone to figure out.

[timvp]

If ACORN were a squirrel, the most responsible thing to do would be to put it out of its misery.

[boutons_]

ACORN's gonna have the last laugh, gonna whack McWhacko with a big OAK ugly stick 4 Nov.

[timvp]

ACORN's gonna have the last laugh, gonna whack McWhacko with a big OAK ugly stick 4 Nov.HUSSEIN would have beaten McWhacko with or without ACORN.

[ashbeeigh]

No problems in El Paso....




El Paso ACORN free of questionable voter registrants

Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 10/14/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

EL PASO -- The ACORN office in El Paso registered about 4,500 new voters this summer, or nearly 20 percent of all the county's new registered voters.
"I'm very proud of the work we did in El Paso," said Jose Manuel Escobedo, ACORN's regional organizer in El Paso and South Texas. "It's always very hard to pull in volunteers to canvass, whether it's door-to-door and in high foot traffic areas like we did, but we had very good quality control procedures in place."

The Republican National Committee has focused on ACORN's voter registration complaints in other states, including in New Mexico, but no problems have surfaced in El Paso.

"We talked to them (ACORN) and others early on, and let them know we didn't want to see those kinds of problems in El Paso," El Paso County Elections Administrator Javier Chacon said.

Thanks to voter registration drives this year, El Paso ended up with 25,000 new registered voters, according to election statistics.

To prevent fraud, "we check voter registration applications against our voter registration rolls, we check their Texas driver's license and Social Security number through the state. We have not run into any unusual problems," Chacon said.

In New Mexico, ACORN conducted the single largest voter-registration drive in that state, signing up nearly 80,000 new voters. The FBI is looking into complaints in Bernalillo County involving 1,400 suspicious registrations, but it was not clear whether ACORN had anything to do with those registrations. And, in Las Vegas, state election officials raided the ACORN office there after receiving complaints of numerous fraudulent voter registrations.
National ACORN leaders have denied any wrongdoing, and accused critics of wanting to erase votes cast by low-income people.

Typically, officials said, between 3 and 5 percent of El Paso voter registration applications get tossed out or set aside, mainly because they are missing a signature or other required item.

"I'm not aware of any problems in El Paso with voter registrations," said Michael Moore, chairman of the El Paso GOP. "We have a good relationship with the elections office. We have a greater problem with low election turnouts overall."

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_10713489

[byrontx]

Anti-Hero, name your organization something cool like Blackwater or Haliburton.

[ashbeeigh]

John mccain, ACORN, & the financial crisis (http://0.acorn.org/fileadmin/Reports/McCain_Report.pdf)

lengthy read but good read. (it's apdf...lol).

[RandomGuy]

John mccain, ACORN, & the financial crisis (http://0.acorn.org/fileadmin/Reports/McCain_Report.pdf)

lengthy read but good read.

Link is broken. You have two "http://" at the beginning of the URL

I fixed it in the reply bubble above.

Also: You should warn when you are linking to a .pdf file.

Interesting rebuttal to the McCain claim that ACORN was responsible for financial crisis.

That anyone would claim that ACORN would be considered responsible for the current crisis is absolutely ridiculous. The sad thing is that there are idiots out there who will suck that cool aid up... :depressed

The left has its share of idiots, to be sure, but I wonder how long it will be until some hack like Aggie Hoopsfan posts a thread saying exactly that?

[ashbeeigh]

I'm not going to read all the other threads with "ACORN" in the thread so I'll just put this in the thread I started....

KdNgMKPV9xQ

five minute video from ACORN about the whole thing.

[boutons_]

House GOP Leader Boehner: Cut Off ACORN Fundshttp://www.google.com/reader/ui/2412528845-go-to.gif (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/house-gop-leader-boehner_n_137054.html)

from HuffingtonPost Full Feed (http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.huffingtonpost.com%2Fhuffington post%2Fraw_feed) by The Huffington Post News Editors
WASHINGTON — House Republican leader John Boehner on Wednesday urged President Bush to block all federal funds to a grass-roots community group that has been accused of voter registration fraud.

"It is evident that ACORN is incapable of using federal funds in a manner that is consistent with the law," Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote Bush, saying that funds should be blocked until all federal investigations into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are completed.

ACORN, a group that has led liberal causes since it was formed in
1970, this year hired more than 13,000 part-time workers to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods in 21 states. Some of the 1.3 million registration cards submitted to local election officials, using the names of cartoon characters or pro football players, were obviously phony, spurring GOP charges of widespread misconduct.
ACORN has said it was its own quality-control workers who first noticed problem registration cards, flagged them and submitted them to local election officials in every state that is now investigating them.
To commit fraud, a person would have to show up on Election Day with identification bearing the fake name.

Local law enforcement agencies in about a dozen states are investigating fake registrations submitted by ACORN workers and the FBI is reviewing those cases.

Boehner said his office had determined that ACORN had received more than $31 million in direct federal funding since 1998. He said the group had likely received far more indirectly through federal block grants to states and localities. "Immediate action is necessary to ensure that no additional tax dollars are directed to ACORN while it is under investigation," he wrote Bush.

Boehner said he and other Republicans were also asking the Justice Department to investigate ACORN's connections to the home mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying ACORN "appears to have played a key role in the irresponsible schemes that led to the current financial meltdown."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has asked if ACORN, which he accused of perpetuating voter registration fraud, was "destroying the fabric of democracy." ACORN and other advocacy groups have suggested that Republicans are exaggerating the issue to keep the underprivileged, who tend to vote Democratic, from casting ballots.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/house-gop-leader-boehner_n_137054.html?view=print

=========

I'm sure Boner supports dubya's funding of religious groups that practice discriminatory hiring, where dubya's reasoning is that if he didn't fund them, he would be restricting their right to practice their religion.