"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest." -- Paul Simon, The Boxer

Depends on who is giving the hearsay.

I also suspect that posting videos and transcripts may be legally fraught.

Knowing that you were/are a lobbyist Redux certainly changes the way I read your posts.

I do recall more than one interview with ACORN voter registration takers, they were quite honest about the things they did. Unless you are trying to say this was some kind of Right-wing Conspiracy ala Hillary Clinton, I have not seen much that supports their good work that wasn't published by them or equally partisan left-wingers. That is the problem with our Informations Super Highway (Thanks Al Gore!).

The courts didn't hide anything that I'm aware of. You asked why I didn't tell anyone about my experiences with ACORN and I simply stated that I did. My depositions disclosed my experiences.

1) I wrote loans for people. I don't read or write spanish so I've never done a loan for anyone who doesn't speak English.

2) Several of my clients, along with many more that ACORN rounded up, claimed they spoke no english so didn't understand the loans.

3) ACORN got plenty of press by having jackasses in shark costumes walk picket lines in front of our offices. The news ran stories featuring "poor families who were taken advantage of".

4) When the cases I was involved in (and many of the others I'm aware of) progressed they either fell apart before or during the first appearance in court. They all spoke english. They all read english. they all had crappy credit that is why they had 7-9% mortgages, language and skin color were irrelevent. In the end several of the people admitted ACORN representatives called them (ACORN admitted to pulling loan records and contacting clients) and told them they might not have to pay their mortgages if they said they didn't understand what they signed because of language problems. ACORN of course said maybe an overzealous rep or too might have stepped out of bounds (kind of like what they said when the voter registration fraud came up)

5) Like many other companies targeted by ACORN my company found it easier to write a big check to ACORN for their "community education programs" and make the story go away. ACORN cashed their check and moved onto their next victim(I believe Wells Fargo was the next to follow in our steps, but I'm not positive). Some of the AG's involved in the cases got bumped into governor's mansions. The company agreed to a gag order on any info beyond a touchy feely ACORN helped the little guy press release.

That's the long and short of it. No information was hidden from the courts. The courts simply didn't care. We were sued, cases were dismissed, negative press was affecting business, so the company wrote a check. ACORN wins.

A pretty good original source. LO has my vote.

Thats their M.O. Use people to get more money and more power. Illegal? ......Probably.
Provable.... Probably not.
Unethical ...Damn skippy

Jesse Jackson perfected the scam years ago, they are just following an out of the box system.

WHAT???? You racist you!

Filtering through all of the above, here is what emerged for me:

In the past, ACORN exercised its right of peaceful assembly and speech and held protest rallies in front of Lehman Bros or Wells Fargo to highlight what they considered to have been predatory lending practices and redlining.....and you dont agree with their tactics or their message and somehow that makes it unethical if not illegal.

And still lingering is Lookout's still undocumented "personal" account of alleged illegal activities that the courts ignored.

Bottom line is that ACORN has never been charged with any criminal activities in either their voting registration activities or their housing finance advocacy activities.

You just dont like the way they do business...and that is your right. I dont agree with all of their practices either.

IMO, what is unethical is making allegations of criminal activities that you cant document.

What sucks for you Redux is that we've had much more interaction with lookout than you and as such trust his word at face value. Your blanket suspicion isn't flying because you're the only one here who has an unfounded, inherent distrust of what he has said to have experienced.

Right...I dont find it credible that a court would simply ignore an allegation of illegal activities and that as lookout seemed to imply, it was because of some kind of unexplained court sympathy for ACORN...Perhaps they reviewed the allegations and found that they were w/o merit.

I have no idea, nor does lookout as to if or why his allegations were ignored.

And the fact still remains....ACORN has never been charged with any criminal activities in either their voters registration activities or their housing finance advocacy activities.

Unless its all part of a vast left wing conspiracy or cover up, this fact of no charges against ACORN anywhere in the country might lead one to conclude that their activities have not been illegal as charged here.

I understand why that sucks for the ACORN accusers.

Redux I think you may be operating under the incorrect assumption that I'm trying to convince you of something. I stated my experiences, you don't believe them. That's cool, move on. I will be after this post. I believe I clarified earlier that even I couldn't specifically prove that the events I witnessed were part of a formal ACORN business plan. That would be illegal. They are very good at keeping themselves out of trouble by using the rogue rep ploy.

I'm not part of the republican party, as I find them just as repulsive as the democratic party. My statements in this thread weren't a right/left pile on. I related my personal experiences which you can choose to believe or not, that's up to you.

Sounds like the mob! Everyone knows who they are and what they do. Not all of them have charges brought up tough.

Lookouts word is gold around here. You are a newcomer who is an admitted lobbyist. BTW - who are you lobbying for now? ACORN or one of their many shell companies, err I mean subsidiaries?