What do you think of this? James O'Keefe managed to tank ACORN

[EFerrari]

just as foreclosure gate was ramping up and before most people knew about it.

The ACORN videos hit the news in September 2009 and they were defunded by the Senate soon after, Sept 15th.

ACORN was the only nationwide non-profit that helped working families fight bad foreclosures. They shut down in March 2010.

Foreclosure fraud didn't really hit the media until October 2010 or so, although by then who knows how many families lost their homes in illegal foreclosures that had been going on for at least a year, probably longer than that.

ACORN has always been a target for the right wing because they help poor people of color but the timing of the destruction of ACORN stinks to high heaven, imo. James O'Keefe doesn't seem smart enough to rotate his tires, let alone, bring down ACORN without coaching.

[PDJane]

1. It's very convenient.........

and no, I don't think the little slimeball is acting on his own.

[tosh]

4. For certain, not alone.

That little prick is set for life.

[EFerrari]

11. Clearly he gets funding for his scams.

It never occurred to me that he might get direction, too. Duh.

[emulatorloo]

2. I think you are right. There was a coordinated effort to scapegoat and demonize ACORN

On the surface it seemed so Irrational. Why obsess over ACORN like this, it made no sense.

Your theory makes it all make sense. A story worth digging into.

[leveymg]

3. Foreclosures are like the plague. Not too many people want to talk about it.

Like AIDS in the early days - the victims tended to get blamed, but beyond that, just fear and loathing.

Your theory makes sense to me.

[EFerrari]

6. Foreclosure elicits some kind of shame, so yeah, people don't want to think

about it.

That was the second big score for the breitbartia that year. The other one was that fake New Black Panthers case that went all the way into a Congressional investigation even though there were zero voter complaints.

And Issa referenced both cases as Obama administration "failures" the other day.

ETA: a time frame for the two cases. They both went down in 2009.

/spelling

[Erose999]

8. Wasn't Britefart behind the firing of Dan Rather as well? nt

[EFerrari]

10. I don't know. Sounds like one of his deals.

But, he doesn't do all of this. It's more like he's a ringleader.

[hlthe2b]

5. Yup... When one looks up "smarmy POS" in the online dictionary

it clearly should present his picture.

[Erose999]

7. The RW had always been after ACORN. The O'queefe videos just gave them a convinient excuse to drop

the axe. Sadly, our fine Democratic leadership and our so called "liberal media" didn't have the fortitude to investigate Ratboy's and Britefart's libelous claims.

From what I understand, some of the groups that were under the ACORN umbrella are still around. As I understood it the defunding of ACORN was mostly just for show anyway, as many of the groups operated without federal funding.

[EFerrari]

9. But the Senate JUMPED on this. The Senate never jumps on anything.

What is that?

:shrug:

ACORN had been around since 1970. It's not like they were some fly by night organization.

[seabeyond]

12. no. fox news did. they just used okeefe to do it. nt

[EFerrari]

13. Well, it certainly was Fake News. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

15. I will take you one step further, FOX used Okeefe and the Congress used FOX, now who used

the Congress?

My money is on the banksters.

[EFerrari]

17. Maybe one thing to do is to look up who brought this flap to the floor of the Senate.

I started thinking about all this again today because the word came out that the big banks won't be prosecuted for foreclosure fraud and it pissed me off all over again.

[seabeyond]

30. lol. and the corp dudes. ya, you are right. nt

[starroute]

14. Look to the Heritage Foundation nexus

The Heritage Foundation has close, overlapping relationships with two other groups which are very much a part of this story. One is the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which establishes (and frequently subsidizes) conservative college newspapers. O'Keefe and most of his co-conspirators came out of ISI operations.

The other is the Capital Research Center, which has a long history of investigating groups like ACORN and constructing the kind of elaborate conspiracy theories that Glenn Beck has done so much to popularize.

Add in Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute -- which has a 40 year history of training young right-wing dirty tricksters and is also extremely active on college campuses -- and you have something close to the whole picture.

These groups are also overflowing with money -- Heritage and ISI both regularly show up in the lists of top recipients from conservative foundations -- and they're both ruthless and highly effective in how they apply it.

[EFerrari]

16. Good call. Thanks for the tips.

It seems like someone around here -- maybe suffragette? -- posted about one of these groups re O'Keefe before, shortly after the defunding of ACORN.

But the timing of the attack on ACORN was a missing part of the context at the time.

[suffragette]

24. I posted about O'Keefe and the Leadership Institute

Here's the link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6554811&mesg_id=6557493


And I still think there's a pattern going on with what happened to Acorn, Maxine Waters and Sherrod:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=8870637#8891462


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=8950453#8951324

[EFerrari]

25. Ha! Thanks!

ACORN and Sherrod dirty tricks come out of the Breitbart circle. Attacks on Maxine come more directly from BushCo with Porter Goss walking point. New media vs. old style thuggery.

[suffragette]

28. That's true.

They all do have connection through the mortgage issue, particularly mortgages for lower income, minority, working class people.

Good article here of how strong Sherrod's background in this was:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-m-abromowitz/shirley-sherrod-beyond-th_b_659769.html



I followed my own link to take another look at the agenda to remind myself who attended, but the link won't go through anymore. Glad I posted a little of it in that old post. There was a combination of Republican politicians and rightwing "media" on the agenda.
Found an archived version:http://web.archive.org/web/20071029190543/http://www.cpac.org/agenda_30207.html

[EFerrari]

29. Thanks, suffragette.

:hi:

[suffragette]

33. I think you're on to something with this

K&R

And Happy New Year!

:hi:

[EFerrari]

34. Happy New Year!

:hi:

[jotsy]

18. Follow the money!

The name is Thiel, Peter.

A high profile DUer named Brad Friedman publicly and persistently called out the New York Times about their failure to check O'Keefe's story, without the support of the big wigs, this hatchet job never gets as far, and certainly not as fast. Not until after ACORN was done for did the Times ever concede their behavior wasn't entirely appropriate. I would have hoped to see DU support one of their own, but such things are not my call to make. I show my own support for the BradBlog by not participating in threads that use material their as the substance of a post.

Also look hard at how connected his cohorts in the senate office gig are. This is machine tentacle from the word go.

Recommended.

[EFerrari]

19. I remember Brad staying on that for *weeks*.

Thanks, jotsy.

[hootinholler]

20. That's an interesting set of dots you have there Beth

I think you might be on to the right angle. I always wondered about the sudden poutrage in the press.

-Hoot

[EFerrari]

21. Lowering the drawbridge.

You know, that fake New Black Panthers case had the same M.O. -- fake scandal to make Congress hold a hearing. The NBP case was an attack on the Obama Doj for not prosecuting the case when it was BushCo that made that decision.

ACORN defunding lowered the drawbridge for fraudulent foreclosures. The NBPs case tried to racialize and delegitimize the Obama DoJ right out of the gate. Hmm.

[formercia]

22. I agree 100%

The Banksters knew it was coming. ACORN was the Canary in the Coal Mine. Along with professionals who saw it coming and tried to warn people plus the States Attorney Generals who petitioned without success over predatory lending practices. They were told the States had no jurisdiction.

It was a done deal. The Economy was set up to fail.

[EFerrari]

23. And now suddenly, the States do have jurisdiction -- the Feds handed

foreclosure gate to the 50 AGs to solve. Pretty neat trick there.

[formercia]

26. The Banksters got the money.

No need to pretend any more that it wasn't a scam from the git-go.

[EFerrari]

27. They ran the board. That wasn't obvious when the attack on ACORN

was happening. Even now, people aren't aware of how much real estate the big banks have stolen outright from working people who couldn't even afford to hire a lawyer to write a f#cking letter and there was no ACORN to help.

The administration's loan modification program, HAMP, was used as a honey pot to lure mortgage holders into foreclosure. And then, when the problems surfaced, the Feds won't call a foreclosure moratorium and Elizabeth Warren says the states are the best hope to deal with fraudulent foreclosures.

What a farce.

[Horse with no Name]

31. I think even being aware of what is going down

there are things that still shock me. This is one of them and you are spot on.

[EFerrari]

32. Reading the wikileaks cables really helped me

get my head on straighter, especially the contrast between what public officials say to us and what they say to each other.

[dreamnightwind]

35. K & R

[Swamp Rat]

36. k&r

[Senator]

37. K&+R