How many employees in an organisation have to exhibit bad behaviour before you'd consider it 'evidence' that there is something wrong with the organization as a whole?

This is the best question in the thread

You take employees from some of the largest low-income cities (therefore ACORN's biggest calls to action) and find employees encouraging fraudulent behavior?

Add this on top of the MULTIPLE accounts of ACORN employees being compensated for fraudulent voter registration, as well as the state voter fraud investigations, and to me this equals a bad organization.

I get especially suspicious when ACORN claims the videos were doctored and fake, and are trying to place charges on the journalists. What a load of BS

Quote: Original post by stonegiant
As a point of fact to note about how ineffectual Jimmy was on the first day Reagan was in office the Iran Hostages were realesed, on the first day, the first day Jimmy was out! And Jimmy was supposed to be such an expert on mid-east policy, he is a complete fool.

I'm old enough to remember that day. You probably aren't aware of it but serious and substantial allegations were made that Reagan's campaign cut a deal with Iran to hold the hostages until the inauguration [1], [2], [3], [4]. The Iran-Contra Scandal lends greater credence to these accusations. I can help you research that if you need it.

Carter's mid east cred comes from the Israel-Egypt peace treaty he brokered.

Quote: Original post by stonegiant
If the "Overwhelming majority of white Americans oppose Obama because he is a Black man" as said by Jimmy, how the hell did he get elected? It would be immpossible for him to get elected if the "OVERWHELMING majority of white people opposed Obama", it is utterly ridiculous, the two can not exist in the same sentence and both be true, Jimmy is a damn fool!

That's not what Carter said. You really ought to read what he said before you start calling him a fool.

Quote: Original post by superpig
Six employees across three states, not one employee. Seven if you count the one who's now claiming she was 'playing along.'

...

This is why I asked the last question in my previous post, which you didn't answer. How many employees in an organisation have to exhibit bad behaviour before you'd consider it 'evidence' that there is something wrong with the organization as a whole? Seriously, I think that's a useful question to answer for the general case.

It depends on a lot of factors. If its 6 employees in an organization of 20, then yes, that's indicative of corruption. 6 in 100? Maybe. 6 in 1000? No, its not really. What is the size of ACORN anyway?

More relevant is whether they received orders, or whether compensation is set up, to specifically encourage fraud over legitimate canvassing. That's not an easy thing to prove.

More telling might be whether fraud or illicit behavior is more common in swing states, thus showing some kind of strategy behind the fraud. That would definitively be indicative of some kind of organizational planning, I think.

Regardless, as of this point I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that ACORN is trying to organize fraud. I'm still of the opinion that these are probably unethical employees. Innocent until proven guilty.

Weren't there some investigations around the time of the election? What ever happened to that? I'm not finding much info beyond that.

Quote: Original post by stonegiant
Hey "less" you a race bater? Don't insert race, as you just did.
My Grandmothers last name is Stewart, it annoys me when John (Liebowitz) Stewart uses it, it is not his name. Whay does he not use Liebowitz?

Why did John Wayne not stick with Marion Morrison? Why did Cary Grant not stick with Archibald Leach? Why did Nicolas Cage not stick with Nicolas Coppola? I don't know you or your family history (elsewhere you claimed to be Italian and Stewart isn't an Italian name - but no matter). When someone drags Jon Stewart into a discussion which ultimately has nothing to do with him and does so pointing out his real name, which he is not known by and which is completely spurious to the subject, I see what looks like someone trying to discount his views because of his Jewish heritage. Moreover, your claim that you're annoyed that he uses an assumed name that happens to be the same as your grandmothers doesn't change that, it raises questions about why it annoys you and why you feel the need to share that annoyance with strangers on the internet. Asking if you are anti-Semitic in this context is not race baiting. Meanwhile, you've avoided answering the question.

Quote: Original post by superpig
You guys suck at staying on-topic. [smile]

Quote: Original post by BerwynIrish
Yes, and their reasons to date have never been honest.

Past performance is no indicator of future results.

Spare me the stock-market wisdom. You're telling me that you never consider the source? You think O'Reilly is going to wake up one day and decide to become honest?

Quote:

Quote: Did you care one lick about ACORN before the conservative smear machine targeted it?

Nope, I'd never heard of it, save for vague memories of a mention of it some time ago (probably vis a vis the voter registration fraud thing). But so what?

There's the possibility that you or others with the same degree of familiarity will walk away from this latest smear effort with vague recollections of a child prostitution ring, just as you and others have with the voter registration fraud smear. There's two audiences for this smear: The crazies who relish in it and the regular folks who don't pay that much attention but will probably end up with a vague negative connotation associated with ACORN. And with smear after smear, the vague negative connotations accumulate.

Quote:

Quote: Do you recognize a vendetta when you see one?

Vendettas aren't relevant.

Such things help me determine who I should spend my time giving serious consideration to. I suppose you make such decisions based on other criterion.

Quote:

Quote: Given your interest in ACORN, you should know what they organize people for, and if you don't know, then it's easy enough to look up yourself.

I've learnt a rough idea of what they're for as far as housing loans goes, but I don't really know beyond that. Why, are they doing something that makes the behaviour seen in the videos more acceptable?

If you look back at the full context of what I said, it's not too hard to see that my point wasn't that ACORN's goals could possibly excuse criminal behavior.

Quote:

Quote: Even if that one employee

Six employees across three states, not one employee. Seven if you count the one who's now claiming she was 'playing along.'

My mistake. I was only aware of the one at the time. But I still haven't seen the rest myself and don't intend to waste my time with them. So if you don't mind, spell it out clearly for me: All seven of these employees were apparently willing to assist with child prostitution, yes or no?

Let us also note that one of these employees told these clever sting operatives that she killed her husband, which she in fact did not do, so it is safe to say that this one was definitely humoring these bozos.

Quote:

Quote: was genuinely willing to help with a child prostitution ring (a laughable proposition in itself), there is no evidence that ACORN as an organization would endorse, approve, fund, assist, or even not report it to the police.

This is why I asked the last question in my previous post, which you didn't answer. How many employees in an organisation have to exhibit bad behaviour before you'd consider it 'evidence' that there is something wrong with the organization as a whole? Seriously, I think that's a useful question to answer for the general case.

Absent any other evidence, it would have to be huge. They don't have any memos from ACORN saying "it's dandy to offer up our organizational resources for criminal activity", do they? They don't have any ACORN employees saying "we were trained to welcome child prostituters with open arms", do they? They don't have any kind of paper trail linking the organization to criminal activity, do they? They don't have any evidence that ACORN has profited, even indirectly, one cent from any criminal activity, do they? They have nothing but a handful of low-level employees who were conceivably playing along with a gag. As I said in the Beck thread, throw these undercover assholes at any organization of ACORN's size with enough persistence and you're going to get similar results.

Surely six (subtracting the fake husband killer and very generously granting that the other six were genuine in the moment, and would have gone through with it - did it ever come to that in your videos?) out of what must be over a thousand doesn't even come close for you, does it?

Quote:

Quote: How many times do you have to swallow conservative lies which make you deathly ill before you can recognize the signs that you're being lied to?

If I'd swallowed them, would I be here looking for evidence to contradict them? I came here looking for the statement referred to by the guy on O'Reilly, the statement by the film-makers that they'd tried loads of other offices and been turned away / had the cops called. If that actually happened, then it exposes the move for what it is - a cheap media stunt to try and destroy an imperfect - but what isn't? - organisation through creating a PR disaster for them.

Maybe I wasn't giving you enough credit, but the bottom line is that you are taking seriously accusations originating from Fox News, accusations which don't hold up well to critical thinking, much less investigation.

Quote: (Meta: The level of hysteria in this thread has surprised me a bit. Surely you realise that, if you want somebody to not believe right-wing lies, saying "OH DON'T BELIEVE THEIR LIES" isn't persuasive? It's worse than not saying anything, because it makes it look like it's the best you can come up with.)

What I realize is that if anybody is familiar with O'Reilly and Beck and takes them seriously, then they are beyond reason anyway. The only sane response to them is to point and laugh. I do not play along with their smears. Their pattern of lying is relevant and needs to be pointed out on a regular basis, if not for the love of truth, then at least to counteract the cumulative negative connotation effect I noted above.

[Edited by - BerwynIrish on September 17, 2009 12:59:40 AM]

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by stonegiant
Hey "less" you a race bater? Don't insert race, as you just did.
My Grandmothers last name is Stewart, it annoys me when John (Liebowitz) Stewart uses it, it is not his name. Whay does he not use Liebowitz?

Why did John Wayne not stick with Marion Morrison? Why did Cary Grant not stick with Archibald Leach? Why did Nicolas Cage not stick with Nicolas Coppola?

I know these questions are rhetorical, but that last one is a stumper. One would think that "Coppola" would work better for you in Hollywood than naming yourself after a blacksploitation comic book character.

BerwynIrish: I think some people don't like to trade in on their family name in order to make it in a business such as acting. Wikipedia backs that up, saying he wanted to avoid the appearance of nepotism.

Anyway, I don't have a lot to say on this topic except it sort of reminds me of the dirty coal lobby letter forgeries in that both groups seem to have issues of workers behaving irresponsibly. The question becomes: did either group encourage or discourage the workers to do what they did or were the workers essentially acting on their own? If you aren't aware of the letter forgeries, you may start to read about it here.

It would seem that with the major media attention focused on ACORN we'll eventually learn how many skeletons they have in their closet. At this point I am unwilling to rule out systemic problems. However, I'm not going to cry out for blood because a group of people made a concerted effort to find problems with ACORN. Especially since by the group's own admission most ACORN offices behaved well. Time will reveal all.

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight

Quote: Original post by LessBread
ACORN organizes poor people, poor people of color usually, and it's effective. That makes it a priority target for the right wing.

Do conservatives also want to take grandma's medicine to feed their army of robots?

It amazes me you can even breathe, given how broken your brain is.

Mith, knock it off. The Lounge is an overeager moderation zone and this is your only off-record warning.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
They used to attack it for voter fraud (really voter registration fraud), neglecting the fact that when it comes to voter registration fraud the criminals work for Republicans [1], [2], [3].

The stupidest part about the whole fraud thing is that there was virtually no fraud on behalf of ACORN itself. Federal laws mandate that when given voter registration forms, even if you know the information is false, you are still required to submit them. Yes, ACORN was following the law by submitting those fraudulent forms; they had no other choice!


It's supposed to stop organizations from pretending to register people and then tossing all the forms out. Personally I don't see a problem with the system; we found the forms to be fraudulent, and therefore they weren't registered, and no one was ever able to actually vote under the fraudulent aliases.

What's the big deal?