Posted on 09/16/2009 7:18:01 PM PDT by BAW
The journalists at the center of an embarrassing scandal for the grass-roots organization ACORN also paid a visit to the ACORN office in San Diego County.
Grass-roots organizing has gotten a black eye on the national stage after undercover videos involving ACORN, a controversial group with a local office, were released that were shot during a series of visits from a hidden-camera crew.
At 6 p.m. on Wednesday, a video was broadcast on Fox's "Hannity" that purported to show a San Diego ACORN staffer discussing human trafficking with two people who were undercover.
Earlier in the day, local ACORN officials, at an office in National City, said they were upset over the fallout and admitted that the undercover filmmakers paid a visit to them. They say no "paperwork" wound up being filed. At that point, no "gotcha" video had surfaced.
"I think none of our offices are 100 percent perfect. Our office here in San Diego is no different. I think what is important is that every day we are saving people from foreclosure,” said David Lagstein with California ACORN prior to San Diego video's release. “Fighting for access to health care. We're helping families to become new citizens that are eligible for that."
In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, Lagstein wrote, “San Diego ACORN confirms that the unscrupulous undercover team visited the San Diego office some time last month. The incident will be investigated as part of the work of the Independent Advisory Council announced today. ACORN confirms that no paperwork of any kind was filed by the San Diego office. We are also demanding that Fox news release the full content of the tapes [and all of the undercover tapes].”
The organization is now launching an independent investigation and overhaul.
While ACORN cleans its house amid the hidden-camera scandal, the group is facing a cutoff in federal housing grants and calls for a Justice Department investigation.
An activist filmmaker and a friend, posing as a pimp and a hooker, have exposed deceitful practices involving ACORN offices in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington and San Bernardino
"Honesty is not going to get you the house,” is heard from one of the participants in the undercover video.
That "house" was to be used for prostitution -- a premise ACORN staffers offered help in concealing. The organization has fired or suspended several employees and brought in outside auditors.
ACORN has been active and taken to the streets in San Diego County since 2001 occasionally drawing criticism for its assistance in getting mortgage loans for illegal immigrants.
In last year's local voter registration campaign, 17 percent of the applications were red-flagged as "invalid' or 'deficient."
Meantime, we got this reaction to the ACORN scandal from Michael Rosen, secretary of the San Diego County Republican Party: "What's coming into focus now is that ACORN itself may be at the epicenter of the economic and political crises facing this country," said Rosen.
Unscrupulous!
Never mind that the scumbag the “unscrupulous duo” interviewed offered help in smuggling illegals and money for sex.
at that point..they hadn’t heard the guy offering to help with the child human trafficking sex ring.
Just wait until tomorrow..hahahahahah
Pin a medal on them!
caacornsdro@acorn.org
Oddly, it was the ACORN people who were unscrupulous. Funny how liberals don’t understand what words mean.
“....gotten a black eye ...”
Someone at NBC is using racially insensitive syntax.
Tsk tsk
LOL!
unscrupulous undercover team
Surely there will be a backlash of ACORN workers at some point. How long can one work for an immoral company and not have it affect you one way or another?
Gosh, more of that soft bigotry at work.
Its death by a thousand cuts for ACORN it seems.
Jon Stewart is now chiding the LEFTstream Media about being scoped by highschool kids with a video camera and Obama's minions have played the race card to try and trump the scandal.
Someone pop some popcorn and break open a keg. I got a feeling the "feature" show is about to get started!
Fixed it.
Jon Stewart did the story justice in asking...where were the MSM? And how come two kids, whose entire budget was $3000 was able to find this stuff out and the MSM wasn’t? Of course, we all know the answer, the MSM wasn’t looking and didn’t care to know.
that every day we are saving people from foreclosure,” said David Lagstein with California ACORN prior to San Diego video’s release. “Fighting for access to health care. We’re helping families to become new citizens ......
The ends can never justify the means, Nimrod
"I'm a fake journalist and I'm embarrassed these guys scooped me"
is a classic!
Our office here in San Diego is no different. I think what is important is that every day we are saving people from foreclosure,
**************************8
This inspired my new tagline...
Last night Breitbart insinuated that there may be tapes of Giles and O’Keefe “attempting” to sell the story to major media.
He would neither confirm or deny that there is tape.
I busted out with a full on belly laugh when Stewart yelled...”ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME!?”
Also probably a candidate for Understatement of the Year.
Wow, the NBC affiliate in San Diego was pretty fair in that report. No holds barred either.
I was drinking Jack Daniels and Pepsi when I caught that bit and got 3rd degree Pepsi burns in my nose!
Funniest bit I have seen in a good while!
Great quote:
“What’s coming into focus now is that ACORN itself may be at the epicenter of the economic and political crises facing this country.”
-Michael Rosen, secretary of the San Diego County Republican Party
He left out "We're helping to smuggle child sex slaves into the country."
“Funny how liberals don’t understand what words mean.”
Oh but they do. They really do understand what the words mean. They just don’t want the words to mean something against them, so they will them to mean something else, or they project their guilt upon those who expose them.
It’s SOP for the Libs.
I know this is a quote in the article from the secretary of the San Diego Republican party, but that it would even appear in this article is AMAZING!
If the collapse of the housing industry and the economic downturn that resulted from it can be tied to ACORN and the "politics of corruption" that Democrats nodded and winked at (Chris Dodd and Barney Frank come instantly to mind), there is going to be hell to pay at the polls come next Novemeber, and most of the "casualties" are going to be incumbent Dims!
Yep, they're obviously well trained.
I'm just waiting to see the headline, "ACORN Promotes/Supports Slavery".
Does that mean they're as inefficient as they are corrupt?
|
oh yeah ... the mainstream media DID cover the story tonight...on abc. They had the head of ACORN charging...
guess what she charged the people exposing this with?
Just guess?
Hint: It starts with an “r”.
And then, these people try to defend themselves as champions of "civil rights' when they are in fact stepping all over themselves to help a "pimp and a whore" break all kinds of laws and engage in the "profitable" business of exploiting under-age females?
EXCUSE ME? !:(
The “independent advisory panel” which consists of a bunch of crooks who are hardly “independent.”
Glen Beck will be all over this, and has been for some time. He will connect all the dots until something more is done about it.
Clearly you harbor evil, hateful thoughts.... Everyone knows that word starts with a capital R.
;-)
(snip) ...Nate Toler, currently head organizer of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in Merced, Calif.... In 2004 he worked on an Acorn voter drive in Missouri, and says Acorn statements aren’t to be taken at face value: ‘The internal motto is “We don’t care if it’s a lie, just so long as it stirs up the conversation.”...(/snip) ---------- "Anatomy of a Shakedown (ties between ACORN and SEIU)," by Anita Moncreif http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/09/09/anatomy-of-a-shakedown/?print=1
No!
Does it end with an “ism”?
Even our local 10 PM news is covering it right now, but of course they imply this is just some wacky conservatives - actually he is just rehashing the NBC story and is unaware another tape was released today. What a bunch of tools.
San Diego news has now called them journalists — about time some news organization admitted what they are doing is investigative journalism which is in short supply today.
FEBRUARY 1990 : (ILLINOIS : STATE HEARING : ACORN-CHICAGO DIRECTOR MADELINE TALBOTT -- See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS, OBAMA) ...ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s mortgage policies. Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in “direct action” - organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a “living wage” law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.
In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA [Community Reinvestment Act of 1977] . The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by [Madeline] Talbott . Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an “affirmative-action lending policy.” The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans. ------- From: http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0
There’s already a group called the “ACORN-8” who were former board members who asked to look at the outfit’s books. They were summarily kicked off the board. Other than those 8, how many people of character would even consider working with ACORN is a legitimate question.
1991 : (—See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS) ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA.[1977 Community Reinvestment Act ]-——— “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis,” By James Simpson, September 28, 2008 http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
1990s EARLY : (CHICAGO : ) IT would be tough to find an “on the ground” community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.
He returned to Chicago in the early ‘90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama’s legal services for a “motor voter” case and partnered with him on his 1992 “Project VOTE” registration drive.In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks.
More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago’s Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation’s board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. ——— From:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0
APRIL 1992 : (ILLINOIS : ACORN-CHICAGO DIRECTOR MADELINE TALBOTT — See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS) IN April 1992, [Madeline] Talbott filed an other precedent-setting complaint using the “community support requirements” of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first “bank fair” at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.
Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank “summit” in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting - for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.
By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott’s program as “affirma- tive-action lending” and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.-——— From:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0
1990s : (ATTNY BARAK OBAMA, ACORN & THE CRA-— See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS ) As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior {See SUPERIOR BANK CHICAGO BOARD CHAIR PENNY PRITZGER, ALSO FUTURE FINANCE CHAIR OF 2008 OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN} to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis.
Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did...
...Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the current Finance Chairperson of Obama’s presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown. She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action law suit but doesn’t seem to have come out of it too badly....-——— “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis,” By James Simpson, September 28, 2008 http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
Rosen is correct. ACORN lobbyed the government heavily for sub-prime mortgages and they had a big role in the mortgage melt-down.
SEPTEMBER 1993 : (REPORT : ACORN-CHICAGO DIRECTOR MADELINE TALBOTT ) Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks “kicking and screaming” into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were “participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories.”
What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. “If this pilot program works,” crowed Talbott, “it will send a message to the lending community that it’s OK to make these kind of loans.”Well, the pilot program “worked,” and Fannie Mae’s message that risky loans to minorities were “OK” was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.-——— From:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0
1994 : (ACORN ATTNY BARAK OBAMA-——See 2008 MORTGAGE CRISIS) Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining [claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending.]. -——— “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis,” By James Simpson, September 28, 2008 http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
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