The evidence against ACORN is overwhelming...

This is from my friend "Grantcart" at Democratic Underground:

Its a little long but the evidence against ACORN requires it.

First let us establish the point of context.

What is fraud in the context of the federal government?

Well sitting in CA 49 we consider ourselves something of experts on fraud. When we find somebody that is really good on the subject we send them to Congress.


First we sent Duke Cunningham to represent us but Duke being somewhat stupid didn't set up a finance committee and pay his wife $ 250,000 a year to run his shakedown, he met government contractors in restaurants and actually wrote down how much his commission would be for each contract he could get. Then he kept the notes.

Second we then sent Brian Bilbray. He became Mayor of Imperial Beach. He has never lived in this district but being the aficionados of fraud that we are we sent him to Congress anyway.

Now fraud, criminal enterprise and personal debauchery have not been isolated in CA 49 it has spread evenly throughout the US, we just have a predilection of not beating around the bush when it comes to our Congressman. We put it up there for everyone to see.

Before we get to the evidence against ACORN we have to say that we see that serious crimes have become common even among our clergy, corporations and communities. Now we didn't send cameras into all of those Catholic and Evangelical Churches to get them to do pedophilia or sleep with prostitutes, these are crimes that became so endemic that they became virtual class action lawsuits.

We have Governors hiring prostitutes and using state money for overseas affairs, Senators having sex in public bathrooms and well we don't have time to continue with all of their crimes. Now we didn't have cameraman punk all of these people, their misbehavior became concrete because well it became public.

Now when it comes to working with the federal government it is critical that sub contractors work to a higher standard than that of our Congressman and Senators (who are all involved in legal bribery), our clergy, our community leaders. They should also work to a higher standard than the government itself. Every branch of the government has had corruption in the form of embezzlement or other abuse. The CIA, FBI, each branch of the service, and so on.

We are currently involved in a great debate about what to do about Health Care. This is an industry that is basically involved in a criminal enterprise to sign contracts and then find frivolous means to back out of claims. The first step of the reform process should have started with empaneling a grand jury.

But when you are a sub contractor working for the federal government you must work to a higher standard than all of these.

Take for existence the record of General Electric in working as a sub contractor for the United States Government

A Brief List of criminal, civil, political and ethical transgressions

1949 General Electric deliberately released radioactive material to see how far downwind it would travel.

1986 the United States and General Electric had conducted experiments on hundreds of United States citizens. One of GE’s most gruesome experiments — disclosed in the Markey hearings — was performed on inmates at a prison in Walla Walla, Washington, near Hanford. Starting in 1963, 64 prisoners had their scrotums and testes irradiated to determine the effects of radiation on human reproductive organs.

GE is wholly or partially liable for at least 78 federal Superfund sites.

+ On September 29, 1998, General Electric agreed to a $200 million settlement in principle of environmental claims resulting from pollution of the Housatonic River and other areas by chemical releases from GE’s plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The claims result from a long history of GE’s use and disposal of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other hazardous substances at the plant, which GE no longer uses for manufacturing.

+ On March 26, 1998, General Electric agreed to pay a $92,000 fine for previous violations of environmental reporting requirements for toxic releases at its silicone manufacturing plant in Waterford, New York,

+ On September 15, 1995, General Electric agreed to pay $137,000 in fines and expenses and to clean up a hazardous waste dump at a former plant where it repaired and rebuilt transformers.

+ October 1993, investigators swooped down on the GE Apparatus Service Center in Brandon, Florida with search warrants to take soil samples and confiscate computer records and files. Inspectors found 30 violations,
GE closed the facility in December 1993.

+ On March 13, 1992, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a $20,000 fine against General Electric for violations of regulations at the fuel fabrication plant in Wilmington, North Carolina.

+On May 29, 1991, GE personnel accidentally moved about 320 pounds of uranium to a waste treatment tank. The danger of the mistake was that the size and shape of the waste container caused unsafe concentrations of uranium, which could have led to a nuclear accident. The NRC dispatched a special incident investigation team the same day and an inspection began two days later. The NRC found that the mistake was the result of lax safety controls.

+At an April 22, 1998 shareholder meeting, GE CEO Jack Welch claimed: “PCBs do not pose adverse health risks.” Testifying in Albany on July 9, 1998, EPA Administrator Carol Browner stated: “GE tells us this contamination is not a problem. GE would have people of the Hudson River believe, and I quote: ‘living in a PCB-laden area is not dangerous.’ But the science tells us the opposite is true ... And concern about PCBs goes beyond cancer ... The science has spoken: PCBs are a serious threat...”

Defense Contracting Fraud

+ On July 23, 1992, GE pled guilty in federal court to civil and criminal charges of defrauding the Pentagon and agreed to pay $69 million to the U.S. government in fines — one of the largest defense contracting fines ever.
General Electric said in a statement that it took responsibility for the actions of a former marketing employee who, along with an Israeli Air Force General, diverted Pentagon funds to their own bank accounts and to fund Israeli military programs not authorized by the United States.Under the settlement with the Justice Department over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, GE paid $59.5 million in civil fraud claims and $9.5 million in criminal fines.


+ GE is a repeat offender when it comes to Defense Department fraud. The company has repeatedly violated the False Claims Act — a measure originally proposed by Lincoln to protect federal coffers. When the Project on Government Oversight surveyed defense contractors, it found that General Electric was responsible for 15 instances of fraudulent activity in just a four year period (1990-1994) — more than any other defense contractor. GE:

1. Paid $7.1 million to settle a qui tam suit alleging that the company failed to satisfy electrical bonding requirements for its jet engine contracts, thereby creating a safety risk.
2. Paid $5.87 million (along with Martin Marietta) to settle a qui tam suit associated with improper sales of radar systems to Egypt.
3. Paid fines between 1990 and 1994 ranging from a $20,000 criminal fine to a $24.6 million civil fine for a variety of defense contracting frauds, including: misrepresentation, money laundering, defective pricing (2 incidents), cost mischarging (3 incidents), false claims, product substitution, conspiracy/conversion of classified documents, procurement fraud and mail fraud.
4. Was convicted on February 3, 1990 in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia of defrauding the government out of $10 million for a battlefield computer system.
5. Pled guilty on May 19, 1985 to charges of fraud and falsifying 108 claims on a missile contract.
6. Was convicted of defrauding the Air Force out of $800,000 on the Minuteman Missile Project.
7. Was convicted of bribing the Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority.
artial rebates to buy new GE dishwashers.

Recidivistic GE
What distinguishes General Electric is not merely the number of crimes committed — or the dollar amount of the crimes — but a consistent pattern of violating criminal and civil laws over many years.

Exacerbating the situation, General Electric has been a leader in using political influence to attempt to overturn the environmental and defense contracting laws that it persistently violates.

excerpts taken from http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/01july-august/julyaug01corp4.html.

Now, despite this record of continual fraud by General Electric no one has ever called for the Federal Government to stop contracting with General Electric.

Again these are crimes that became evident. No one went into General Electric with a camera and tried to see what crimes a local manager might do.

And now we come to the case of ACORN.

The evidence is overwhelming.

Now it is clear that when it comes to the question of voter fraud all of the charges against them have proven baseless. Irregularities with either silly or fictional voter registration is marked by ACORN and submitted to voter registrars as required by law.

Surprisingly, despite all of the efforts by FOX to undermine the election with baseless charges of election fraud, not a single case of voter fraud has been substantiated.

So now FOX has cooperated with provacateurs to go into dozens of ACORN offices and see if they can't get people to take some stupid bait and get involved in improper actions.

And now the call goes out to "defund ACORN". Every organization in or out of the government has had some malfeasance. Even the Church is filled with it.

And yet only ACORN is expected not simply to identify wrong doers and implement corrective systems; they are to be wiped out of existence.

Now what is the evidence against ACORN? What is the essential element that makes them unique that they must be exterminated. Are they more corrupt than General Electric?

No. The evidence of ACORN is that they are there to help poor people. They are there to advance social justice.

Listen to 30 seconds of this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGFXzPNtH3g

The Fox Host asks the undercover reporter "You're not a pimp; you're just playing one on our show, and you played it on those tapes"

Reporter's response "I AM ONE OF THE WHITEST GUYS EVER"

ACORN's crime is that they work with the poor and minorities and so because of that "crime" they will be treated differently than every other contractor who has ever done business with the government and had some of its employees act improperly.

Poor people aren't stupid, or more inclined to impropriety, or more filled with hatred.

Poor people are simply poor. And shame on this country that it has no moral ambition to face its poor, embrace them and find ways to end their poverty. We would rather send rich kids in to see if we can't find some to be ridiculous and then hold up the people who work with the poor to public ridicule.

Where are their defenders?