Acorn on Brink of Bankruptcy, Officials Say

[UpInArms]

Source: New York Times

BALTIMORE — The community organizing group Acorn, battered politically from the right and suffering from mismanagement along with a severe loss of government and other funds, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, officials of the group said Friday.

Acorn is holding a teleconference this weekend to discuss plans for a bankruptcy filing, two officials of the group said. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.

Over the last six months, at least 15 of the group’s 30 state chapters have disbanded and have no plans of re-forming, Acorn officials said. The California and New York chapters, two of the largest, have severed their ties to the national group and have independently reconstituted themselves with new names. Several other state groups are also re-forming outside the Acorn umbrella, and will not be affected if the national organization files for bankruptcy.

This week, the Maryland chapter announced that it would not reopen its offices, which were shuttered in September in the wake of a widely publicized series of video recordings made by two conservative activists, posing as a prostitute and a pimp, who secretly filmed Acorn workers providing them tax advice. In the videos, Acorn workers told one of the activists, James E. O’Keefe III, how to hide prostitution activities from the authorities and avoid taxes, raising no objections to his proposed criminal activities.

After the activists’ videos came to light and swiftly became fodder for 24-hour cable news coverage, private donations from foundations to Acorn all but evaporated and the federal government quickly distanced itself from the group.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/us/politics/20acorn.html?src=me

[ck4829]

1. More people out of jobs, people facing foreclosure have lost their ONLY ally in certain areas

I hope conservatives remember that as they're doing their victory jig.

[No Elephants]

15. The Democratic Congress took an unconstitutional vote to de-fund ACORN and a Democratic

Constitutional Law lecturer signed it.

O'keefe was just one young moron who got gleeful media coverage from Fox. Neither he nor Fox, however, was in control of the mighty federal government.

[Mithreal]

24. +1 Well said

[sabrina 1]

31. Have any of the Democrats who voted for that Rpublican

bill (Issa was the one who pushed it airc) responded to the judge's decision, calling it unConstitutional? Shame on them.

Only 75 Democrats voted against it.

ACORN sued Congress over it and won, but what about the financial fallout? Congress should now not only restore their funding, but increase it to attempt to undo the damage they did.

Is there any possibiltiy that some of these so-called Liberal organizations we have donated to in the past, would start a fund-raising petition for them, AND help organize a movement to get Congress to apologize, re-instate, and increase their funding?

I know, they are very busy these days funding Wall St. and now, The Private Insurance Industry.

It seems that our Democrats prefer people like James O'Keefe to an organization that helped millions of Americans fight fore-closure, poverty, prejudice and most of all, exercising their right to vote.

I keep saying 'Democratic Party', but I don't know if there is one left. ACORN helped get them elected. Cowards that they are, like Obama, they dumped ACORN on the word of a bunch of political dirty tricksters and liars, just as they did with Van Jones.

And just as they have done to the rest of us with this HCR Bill. Big Business thanks them. They are helping to wipe out every program and/or organization that helps the poor.

[booley]

29. They will remember

and they will jig all the harder.

Who give s a crap if others suffer. they won... something.

You can't shame the shameless.

[Lorien]

38. They seem to truly enjoy crushing working class people

even the poor among their ranks have contempt for everyone who isn't wealthy!

[fasttense]

2. So, yet again, after the Democratic party won by a landslide

majority, so huge that we have to go back over 30 years to find any correlation, they turn around and do the work for the RepubliCONS.

It's amazing, if I didn't know better, I'd say that the RepubliCONS won the last election.

[pattmarty]

5. Well, they did win the last election sort of. The last liberal President........

..............we had was LBJ. He passed Medicare, Medicaid, Civil rights act, voter registration act. If people really want to know what a fucking real liberal looks like check out LBJ. I was a youngster (23 yo) broke, with a young wife and 3 kids in 1970. I found out about a program (started under Johnson) called section 235 where I could by a 3 bed bath and a half house for 24,900 and the interest part of the payment was paid by the govt on a scale depending on your income. Anything like that under Clinton, Carter or Obama? Nope, all we got is this fucking really, really shitty health "reform". I'm done listening to people here that keep insisting how fucking liberal Obama is. I was taken in just like everybody else here, but at least I woke up. What in the fuck has he done in almost a year and a half? All talk and not much fucking else.

[wellst0nev0ter]

34. A-F'n-Men! I Didn't Think He Was Any Liberal When I Voted For Him.

I thought of him more of a "pragmatist" (read "chickenshit") than anything else. The four-year Senate record he had didn't really impress me. Still the fact we have to eat a shit sandwiches and say they're ice cream still makes me furious.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BunkerHill24]

4. ACORN was too slow to react the smear campaign, and now, they're too late to act on anything

...thank you, ACORN, but you suck on PR

[pattmarty]

6. Well you have to admit they did not have anything to combat the.............

...........tsunami of RW propaganda that was loosed on them.

[BunkerHill24]

7. I would agree, but afterward, and even about now, they could of done a better job

...but they lack such, that they have no protection from any body!

[SpiralHawk]

8. The Times just buried the fact that the RW Black Ops vid was phony crap

And that ACORN was found to have done nothing illegal.

Thanks a pantload, Times.

[UpInArms]

9. The New Whored Times has been a bastion of reichwingism

for quite some time now.

[No Elephants]

19. The L.A. Times, too. Face it, the right owns the media.

[No Elephants]

18. All the news that's fit to slant.

[ro1942]

22. You can also thank the spineless Democrats

that threw them under bus out of fear.

[Chakab]

11. What venue did they have to

defend themselves? The media unquestioningly regurgitated all of the smears against them, and they were thrown under the bus by elected Democrats and purported Progressives.

[NashVegas]

14. I Guess They Were Too Busy Trying to Help Poor People

To manage a smear campaign. Damn them!

[Mithreal]

25. +1 Well said

:applause:

[No Elephants]

16. Congress de-funded ACORN very soon after the "pimp" story hit the fan.

The story hit September 10, 2009. (At least, that's when FOX aired it.) Boehner filed a bill on September 15, 2009.

That wasn't even enough time for ACORN to investigate.

[ronnie624]

23. The corporatist scum in both parties know which side of their bread is buttered.

Their worst enemies are education and registered working class voters.

[Mithreal]

26. +1

[deminks]

10. Uneffing believable. The rag owes Acorn an apology, not another hit piece.

Nowhere does The Times rag note its own complicity in the smear against Acorn. Nowhere does it mention that the investigators found the videos to be 'edited to meet the filmmakers agenda.'

Damn librul media. /sarcasm off.

for the history, see Bradblog

http://www.bradblog.com/

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7740

Media Watchdog FAIR Finds NYT Was 'Duped' in 'Wildly Misleading' Coverage of ACORN 'Pimp' Hoax

The New York Times "was duped" and "refuses to own up to mistakes in the paper's coverage" of the now-infamous ACORN "pimp" hoax video tapes published by partisan Rightwing activists James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart.

That coverage, according to a devastating, no-holds barred, well-documented action alert issued today by the decades-old media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), was "wildly misleading" as a result of the paper having "decide to skip the standard rules of journalism."

[ananda]

12. Here's my question.

Why do they need money to register voters and get out the vote?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. Guess: Most people won't work for free.

[joanmj]

17. exactly

it should be done by all volunteers. when i worked there they fired people who didn't make bt 20-25 registrations. and they hired anyone.

[No Elephants]

21. See Reply 25 And get a brain. Organizations don't subsist on volunteers,

anymore, not when most families need two incomes. And, even if they could get enough volunteers, they would still need to pay rent, pay administrative salaries, buy supplies, etc.

That's why having RW trolls post here is so annoying. Not only are they liars, but they're so damned dumb, too.

[ro1942]

32. Thanks, so true

[Mithreal]

27. -1

:wtf:

[ronnie624]

20. Thanks for the links.

A good place to start for info on the Iraq reconstruction fraud, too.

[rhett o rick]

28. Any support from the New Democratic Party? nm

[EFerrari]

30. Has Congress apologized yet? n/t

[rhett o rick]

33. Has Cheney's home frozen over? nm

[underpants]

35. The plan to dismantle them appears to have worked

What does Acorn do?

They fight against and negotiate for people sucked into (predatory lending) pay day loans (loan sharking)
They fight to lower heating bills
They council first time home buyers - a much higher success rate on defaults than those left unto themselves
and


wait for it



they register voters
and the register voters well


Figure out who doesn't want those things to happen and you know who has tried to bring them down...and I left out the racial part ;-)

[EFerrari]

37. ACORN was a natural target for those racist GOP pricks. n/t

[marshall]

36. They could have sure used some of that Peace Prize money

But I hope it at least went to causes that were just as worthy.