Insufficently COI

COI is another acronym for ACORN.

The fact that ACORN employees in Baltimore MD, Washington DC, Brooklyn NY and San Bernardino, CA all gave the same advice to a couple looking for a housing loan is not surprising and is certainly evidence of organizational practice and preference.

If the New York Times is your news source, or if you watch any of the TV networks for news, you would not know the couple were openly posing as pimp and madam looking for a loan to open a brothel, using underage illegal immigrants and to avoid taxes on the proceeds. In all 4 cities ACORN reps gave essentially the same advice: Lie on the loan application, lie about the nature of your business, lie to the IRS, and avoid certain behaviors likely to attract the attention of immigration authorities or vice squads looking for sex slave operations. Not one ACORN rep questioned the morality of the business plan, or even demurred on the concept.

In light of these revelations ACORN has taken several actions. First, they fired the employees who were exposed. This is consistent with the “ACORN defense,” established in the dozen or so cases where they are charged with voter registration fraud: “It was individual employees, not the organization.” This is SOP.

Second, they accused the people who did the filming and anyone who reported it of “smearing” ACORN. The “vast right-wing conspiracy,” don’t you know, tends to be racist. This is a standard ACORN response.

Third, ACORN says workers conduct ‘indefensible’
Suspends, plans audit, in wake of videos

ACORN, calling the actions of some of its employees “indefensible,” has suspended advising new clients as part of its service programs and is setting up an independent review to see what happened.

ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis said in a written statement that she was “ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN’s service programs until completion of an independent review.”

The actions were taken, she said, “as a result of indefensible action of a handful of our employees.”

Videos of ACORN workers giving tax advice to people posing as prostitutes and other revelations have led to growing criticism of the organization in recent days.

Now, I think I’d suspend operations, too. But it would not be because I thought any reasonable observer (even the Senate has voted 83-7 to withhold funding from ACORN) would think an “independent investigation” would change organizational practices extending from New York to California, or even identify organizational practices as a problem. If that were the result of such an investigation, the “ACORN defense” disappears.

No, I would do it because I wouldn’t want any more of my employees caught on tape telling people how to obtain funding for a prostitution ring using underage illegal immigrants, avoid the law and cheat on taxes – or dispensing extra-credit advice about how to murder a husband and get away with it.