Thread: ACORN prober finds no illegal pattern on videos

ACORN prober finds no illegal pattern on videos
Dec 7 10:59 AM US/Eastern
By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) - An internal investigation of the community-organizing group ACORN found no pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staffers on undercover videos shot by conservative critics of the group.

In a 47-page assessment that former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger was commissioned by the organization to do, he criticized ACORN's management as not moving fast enough to institute reforms after an alleged eight-year coverup by ACORN founder Wade Rathke of an embezzlement by his brother.

ACORN's leaders are "now reaping what Rathke sowed," wrote Harshbarger, who was brought in to investigate.

The organization's leadership has made reforms in finances and governance a priority, the Harshbarger report stated. However, it added, this focus has not yet been matched by similar attention to delivering services to ACORN's clients.

The videos of ACORN staffers offering advice to a woman and a man posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend triggered a firestorm of criticism this fall, with some ACORN employees appearing willing to support illegal schemes involving tax advice, misuse of public funds and illegal trafficking in children.

The videos "feed the impression that ACORN believes it is above the law," stated the Harshbarger report, intended as an independent examination of the issues.

"We did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff involved; in fact, no action, illegal or otherwise, was ever taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers," Harshbarger said in a statement. "Instead, the videos represent the byproduct of ACORN's longstanding management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures and a lack of on-site supervision."

Harshbarger's report says ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, should return to its roots, focusing on community organizing and should hire an independent ethics officer to oversee an internal governance program that is already under way.

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis called the report "part vindication, part constructive criticism and complete roadmap for the future" on behalf of "the interests of the communities we represent—low- and moderate-income, African-American and Latino families."

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... 1&catnum=0

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Healthsense 2p · 1 hour ago
Oh my gosh!!! Conspiring to import under aged illegal sex slaves into our country is not a crime in the USA? Please Mr. Harshbarger this is one of those 'know it when we see it' sorts of things. Lax policy and procedure will get you in huge trouble in many other forms of business (medical practice, hospitals, etc--get you de-funded in a hurry) but I suppose the prostitution and sex slave business is immune to this. Go figure...
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tony_macgregor 47p · 1 hour ago
An internal investigation Of ACORN what a joke. Acorn is CORUPT form the Top and as we discovered all the way down to the bottom.
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darkmorrow 63p · 10 minutes ago
So I decided to hire a wolf to assess my chicken coup so he could tell me why my chickens keep coming up missing. He told me that my chickens were merely disappearing because they had learned now to bend time and space, and had escape to another dimension.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... 1&catnum=0

Oh....here we go. Sure...it didnt happen. Look, we all saw the video. Now they are going to try to tell us we did not see what we saw, or ...lol...we "misunderstood" what we saw. Smoke and mirrors, thats what it is. The illegal activity on those tapes CLEARLY documents illegal activity on the part of ACORN workers.

That's all I can do is Laugh!

IF nothing was found to be wrong, how come the people in the first two videos were FIRED and the punk from san diego was laid off