Official Statement From ACORN Housing President Alton Bennett, Executive Director Mike Shea
by PubliusSTATEMENT FROM ALTON BENNETT,
PRESIDENT OF ACORN HOUSING, AND MIKE SHEA,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, REGARDING
RECENT NEWS REPORTS
Washington, D.C. –”As President and Executive Director of ACORN Housing we were appalled and angry to see the video of two Washington, D.C. employees offering advice on how to operate an illegal enterprise to keep it hidden from the government. While no transaction took place – no loan documents were signed or submitted, no bank loans were arranged, no new business was established – this is not how we behave. All ACORN Housing staff members undergo rigorous training and are expected to comply with high standards for ethical behavior and compliance with the law.
“This video tape is slanted to misinform the public about ACORN Housing. The people who made this tape went to at least five other ACORN Housing offices where they were turned away or where ACORN Housing employees responded by calling the police. That is not mentioned on the tape – it is part of a long-term plan to smear ACORN Housing for political reasons and provide entertainment in the process. But that does not excuse the behavior of the employees. We have fired them and are initiating an internal review of practices and reminding all staff of their obligation to uphold the highest legal and ethical standards.
“After more than two decades of helping people in need comply with the law in pursuit of the American dream of home ownership, it saddens us that ACORN Housing has been put in this position by everyone involved.”
####
Founded in 1986, ACORN Housing has counseled more than 350,000 low and moderate income families across the U.S., over 100,000 of which have become homeowners. ACORN Housing has 29 offices in 24 states.
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300 Comments
I call Bullsh*t
Please, please, please tell me you have more videos just waiting to be posted. It would be the BEST Christmas present EVAH!!!
Good thing the investigation is internal. Otherwise, it might actually be investigated.
I wonder how many of these 100,000 low income Acorn backed homeowners that Mike Shea references contributed to the sub-prime recession?
Thomas Sowell "The Housing Bust"
Called the police, my azz! If they called the police, they would've been shown the video from what was going on inside ACORN's office, and these people at ACORN would already be in custody.
Ahhhhh..soooo sweet…. The Census bureau just released a press statement cancelling and negating all participating relationships with ACORN concerning the 2010 census….. I wanna cry…ahhahahaha !
Watching intently , and reading all and I mean ALL concerning this and ACORN. Keep it up.
The question is, how many of the 350,000 counseled were given advice on how to commit tax fraud and to set up fronts for illegal activity? The only way we will ever know is through an independent investigation that does not involve the current administration. Where are the police on this? Where is the DA's office in these communities? Where is congressional oversight?
Its too late for this drivel now. I bet this team has hours and hours of this stuff. Maybe even different skits.
Looks like I've got more ACORN offices to call on Monday.
Excellent thoughts….
Thank God the ACORN geniuses won't be involved in the census. Like BLU, I hope there are more videos waiting in the wings.
Revoke their NPO status NOW! Freeze the accounts and cut all funding. No tax dollars to ACORN or any ACORN affiliates.
My thoughts EXACTLY! How many corrupt officials do we have? I'd say 95% of them are rotten to the core.
They MUST have piles of material on ACORN and hopefully some other affiliated groups as well. This gift must keep on giving! Van Jones last weeked, ACORN this weekend…
It is nice to see evidence of someone use their own tactics against them. They hate it. KEEP UP THE GOOD FIGHT.
The racist slimebags at acorn are one step lower than the aclu and the naacp.
Obama babies nurtured with hate, hate, hate.
I wonder if the 24 states there in are more red or blue???
"The people who made this tape went to at least five other ACORN Housing offices where they were turned away or where ACORN Housing employees responded by calling the police."
If true, I'd like to see a copy of the police report, or any other evidence of this strange accusation.
One never can be too sure now ya know.
Not Over.
Interestingly if this was a smear campaign against a few criminals and ACORN was such a good wonderful organization they need to answer. Why did OBAMBI trow them under the bus. While it is great news the Census has been taken out of their hands….NOW we need to STOP the 8+ Billion that has been earmaked for them from ever reaching the THUGS!!!!
I suggest that all of us that will be in D.C. tomorrow watch our backs no telling how they are going to react.
Jake Tapper is running with the ACORN story – just waiting on clearance/guidance from Obama White House.
Congratulations to this brave young couple, James and Hannah, and may God keep all of them safe and secure.
BTW, these false charges of racism are so disgusting – are you guys suggesting that child prostitution and other felony crimes are a healthy part of the Black culture? And thus are NOT to be condemned for their SLAVERY mentality of young women and children?
That is what it sounds like to me!
One's an anomaly, two's a coincidence, …
(three's a pattern)
How many? I'd say close to all of them after reading and lightly studying, The Cloward-Piven Strategy.
The link is to an essay on the CPS at David Horowitz's, DiscoverTheNetworks.org.
Isn't this the same script they put out every time they attempt to influence elections too? "Rigorous training", "highest ethical standards", "it's just a smear campaign". I want to know how far up in the White House this group of thugs goes. I think I know…
All the cries of "smears" and "gotcha journalism" fall on deaf ears. If ACORN were running a reputable, ethical operation, there would be no chance for "gotcha journalism". The President and CEO can make all the excuses they wish, the simple facts are 2 ACORN offices willing gave information on how to defraud the government, and how to shelter an illegal source of revenue.
Nice one ACORN. Tell us again how great community organizers are….
Andrew and all invloved in this invesigation, you have my support! Keep up the good work. You are indeed brave and a true American!
I believe they are in the larger cities of many states and if memory serves most big cities tend toward the blue. Don't quote me though. lol
God Bless you James and Hannah, you are doing something great here. I see Conservative momentum building across this great country of ours…
If they called the police, then there would be police reports available for viewing.
I await their release by ACORN in 3… 2… 1… what? Not coming? Thought so.
The census news has officially proclaimed your successful investigation is officially historic. The potential damage Acorn could have done would have lasted a generation or more. I am humbled by your deeds.
Congress 202-224-3121
White House 202-456-1414
Perhaps a cacophony of voices could make that happen? Just a thought.
when is anybody going to prison over this?
I thought there were 57 states?
Ya gotta love the change in defense strategy, from "they are just rogue employees" to "NOT ALL of our employees agreed to steal government money to set up a brothel using minor alien sex slaves to ruin another urban neighborhood!"
where are the prosecutors?
I did.
Oh, a followup assignment, James, Hannah:
You know where you've been. Let's ask those police stations for the logs proving that ACORN called them about your visits.
Acorn says that the same thing was tried at other Acorn Housing offices and they called the police. If so, where are the police reports?????????????????
I can give you 8.5 billion reasons there should be more than just internal investigations!
they are all tied up right now shaking down the cia right now for getting that Al-Qaeda info
The more of this that gets exposed, the greater the likelihood that there will be some ACORN employee or employees that will regain control of their morality and blow the lid off this whole thing.
He will just have to wait on that – Rahm is busy on the phone with youtube suppressing the view counts
Ok….so at this point there are five offices where they did not find corruption (if you take their word for it)…and two where they did….so that is almost half….extrapolate that to cover ALL the offices and you have a very scary, ugly picture. And our taxes are paying for it. Ugh
My prayers go out to these brave young people….God keep them safe.
2 years ago i had never heard of a community organizer – times were better then
My goodness, two out of seven? I guess for Acorn that is nothing, but it seems like a lot to me! Multiply that by the number of Acorn offices and it adds up to a lot of fraud.
Also, riddle me this Batman, how is an investigation of fraud automatically Racist?
How does Acorn know that they have tried this five other times? I find that an odd statement. Anyone else out there think its odd too? Do tell, how do you know this Acorn? I am so glad these 'gotcha journalists' are working on this and showing the Presidents drones (media) how its done! I am so sick of this love affair with this Administration.
Sick and tired of all the LIES! President Obama has taught the ACORN thugs well. Watch your back, James and Hannah, there are still a lot of leftist criminals on the loose!
Good start but to then blame the messenger is a serious misstep.
For ACORN to survive in any politically viable way, it would have to go through an extreme housecleaning and "mea culpa".
This post tells us all that they have no intention of doing so.
Just wondering how many offices there really are. Yesterday's statement was pretty sanctimonious too. You'd think ACORN would wait until they are sure they are all out…….
He just sent Gibbs a stern tweet. If he doesn't hear back, he has promised to "get nasty" at Monday's presser. (Obama and ACORN should have a solid cover story by then.)
All I can say is; Acorn, cry me a river and water the roots of the mighty Freedom Tree!
Read what that moron wrote. He said they went to "at least 5 other offices". So, they went to a total of 7. Two eagerly committed felonies. That means that only 28% of ACORN is totally corrupt. Actually that's not bad compared to most of our representatives. Probably about 40% of them are corrupt!
If they sent the same sting operation into H&R block, or HUD offices, I wonder what percentage would do what the ACORN people did?
Somewhere in ACORN offices across the county, workers are saying "Was that the HO that visited us?" LOL
Oh yes, Mr. Bennett. We are highly entertained!! LOL!
Yeah right! They dont listen. Am I supposed to call my Rep. Bob Filner, he is acorn and so are my senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Finestien
LMAO…Alton Bennett should be ashamed to have even allowed this press release. Other than being obvious BS, it appears to have been written by someone with 5th grade writing skills (sorry 5th graders, no disrespect
).
Glenn Beck had a guest on his show today who was a former ACORN employee. This lady explained to Glenn that she tried to point out inaccuracies, but was also barred from the D.C. ACORN office.
Of course, ACORN is going to blame its problems on FNC and label them as racists.
Congratulations to James and Hannah for their outstanding work. Muckraking to expose corruption has all but disappeared from today's media outlets. These two young folks are a breath of fresh air in today's world.
Thanks to James, Hannah and FNC for reporting the FACTS!!
Memo to Chris Matthews: You need a crash course in journalistic ethics. You could learn a thing or two from these young people. Is your leg still tingling for Obama? I bet we don't see ACORN mentioned on MSNBC, unless it's to defend this "fine organization"!
They know how to make fake documents. Ask that officer that made the guy take the Obama Joker poster down at the town hall meeting, because you cant have pictures on protest posters on school property. He can make a police report for them.
BEAUTIFULLY said! I couldn't agree more! I'd almost forgotten what REAL journalism looked like.
It seems to me that these animals know every trick in the book in defrauding our government… Besides working for ACORN i bet they all sell either POT or CRACK and claim it as "RECREATIONAL DIRECTOR" I think the I.R.S. should get involved too!
28 percent to be exact! I have a feeling Hanna and James have more! Not sure but I like the idea of releasing them on different days and let the lies of Acorn statements keep on coming.
Typical of the left wing nuts……….blame the disgusting behavior on someone else. If these employees were SO thoroughly trained why did they do what they DID?? "This video tape is slanted to misinform the public about ACORN Housing". Suuuuuuuuuuuure it is!! Every excuse in the book! These people are garbage and thugs, nothing more.
"The people who made this tape went to at least five other ACORN Housing offices where they were turned away or where ACORN Housing employees responded by calling the police."
Let's see, two out of seven offices they visited offered questionable if not illegal advice. 28 percent of the visited offices practiced this activity. Does Alton Bennett really want to stand by his words that almost a third of the ACORN offices were corrupt?
Maybe we should offer some type of waiver from prosecution for those who took out loans assisted by ACORN in exchange for testimony about illegal activities by other ACORN offices/employees.
most employees are only taking orders from thier boss wonder who was training the employees?
Simply amazing how these idiots can try to spin this so THEY appear to be the victims!
Here! Here!! An investigation is RIGHT!! These creepy, no-good b***ards should be shut down! What tears me apart is that ACORN is slated to receive BILLIONS of dollars in stimulus money!! That Obama is a piece of work, I'll tell ya!! All he does is ignore a problem and move on. He simply doesn't care. He thinks that if he ignores it, it'll get less press time. Another thing that infuriates me is that there's virtually NO media coverage on this story. Wait, I forget, they're in bed with OBAMA…..this really sucks!!!
M
So they went to 5 other offices first…. So let me get this straight, only about 15% of ACORN offices are like this…. (/sarc)
After the first one hit, ACORN said they had been to three other. The next day, we find that they had indeed been to at least one of the others and the same thing happened. 50% is bad, so they claimed it was 5 more than the 2 bad ones. What will they say when the next tape is released? Right now we are at more than 7% of all the ACORN offices. One more puts us over 10% of all the offices. We know they probably did not get to all of them. No matter how you slice it, this is bad for ACORN and good for our country.
[...] [...]
Hang on, Blu. Last night, On the O'Reilly show Megan Kelly alluded to an even LARGER, more damaging story on ACORN that Fox News has been working on aside from these How To Advise the Downtrodden Set Up Underage Illegal Alien Brothels For Dummies story. Should be breaking next week.
After the first one hit, ACORN said they had been to three other. The next day, we find that they had indeed been to at least one of the others and the same thing happened. 50% is bad, so they claimed it was 5 more than the 2 bad ones. What will they say when the next tape is released? Right now we are at more than 7% of all the ACORN offices. One more puts us over 10% of all the offices. We know they probably did not get to all of them. No matter how you slice it, this is bad for ACORN and good for our country.
That would have been a reasonable statement to write if it had only happened with one office. Having it happen at two offices, it would seem they have a larger problem.
And to think, they are going to get Billions of OUR dollars…
let's see – "Founded in 1986, ACORN Housing has counseled more than 350,000 low and moderate income families across the U.S., over 100,000 of which have become homeowners. ACORN Housing has 29 offices in 24 states."
ACORN has been assisting people of low income purchase homes for 23 years and have ONLY helped 100,000 people become homeowners????? That's only an avg of 4,347 per year they've helped in all 29 offices.
To break that down more, each of the 29 offices have assisted 149 people per year purchase a home.
They have an opportunity to RECEIVE $8.5 BILLION in federal money (our taxes) to operate. I want to know how much it cost them (US) to assist each of those 100,000 people. In a true business sense, they are a BAD INVESTMENT. The money is NOT going to truly help low income people, it is going to line the pockets of the Rathke's and POLITICIANS. This whole thing sucks and needs to be investigated, probed and held to accountability.
Hey, that 8.5 billion could buy 42,500 homes @ $200,000 each. how many of you would want that?
So they said they called the police. Just as Van Jones was somewhat hazy on the implications of YouTube these geniuses seemed to have never heard of The SmokingGun.com.
ACORN was reported to be changing its name to Community Organizers International (COI), according to the Washington Examiner in June 2009.
The link: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/b...
Snippets of the article are below:
The new name will let ACORN leaders continue their operations without worrying about prior bad publicity, according to Marcel Reid of ACORN 8, a group of present and former members.
“We’ve known for many months now that the name ACORN is going to be retired,” Reid said. “The name has been so damaged to the point where the leadership knows it simply can’t go on as it has with the ACORN label out front and center, especially after all of the reporting.”
So, boys and girls, do keep a keen eye on COI as well as ACORN. Birds of a feather…
My take on this is how many other tax cheats and tax fraud advice did they give out to those 100,000 people before getting caught. It boggles my mind just thinking about it. This is where my hard earned tax dollars are going It sickens me tremendously. Ok say I believe some other offices of Acorn turned them away but if their training was consistant then these 2 offices would have as well. Just goes to show you Acorn does not care about even training their employees the way they should be trained. When something goes wrong inside all they have to do is throw these disposal employees under the bus. Community Organizers at their best!!! NOT!! Clean up your act Acorn or shut down and stop taking my hard earned tax dollars.
Obama said he wants to fund his health care program from guv waste and fraud. Pssst Big O. I know where you can find the first $8.5 billion.
Minus my whistleblower bounty of course….
Turn statews evidence ladies … do it now – remember ALTON BENNETT is not the one facing criminal charges….
They do not care about you – you are already under the bus !!!!!
oooohhhh I love it. If ACORN is guessing that they got stung 5 times, that means that the odds that I get to watch more of this series is good. Popping corn for tomorrow!
Ya know what? I think I'll move to Mexico where there is LESS government corruption!
As President and Executive Director of ACORN Slave Housing we were appalled and angry to see James O'Keefe sporting a better set of pimping threads than either of us have ever worn. We are, after all, 21st Century Plantation Masters, and we don't like it when young, upstart Journalists, start getting all uppity. This kind of behavior only incourages the rest of them to seek the truth. Now git back to the CNN website, all of ya!
If the videos were slanted as these ACORN officials have stated then why did they fire all 4 workers? Also, if these are isolated incidences as ACORN seems to infer, then they should thank these 2 for help weeding out the "bad apples".
Its about time someone has the integrity to stand up. Good job!!!!!
A few questions for the ACORN spokesman:
What are the odds of set set of workers in two separate offices giving almost verbatum unlawful responses to a absurd proposition?
And, did the five offices you say repulsed the advances of the investigating team do so because they were honest and indignant or that they smelled a trap?
too bad they couldn't have gotten them to actually fill out the tax forms.
As I mentioned on another thread – remember, they still have $8.5 Billion scheduled their direction. And for those that have trouble visualizing a billion – A man gave his annoying wife (switch this to the gender preference of your choice) $1 million – told her to spend $3,000 a day and don’t come home until it was gone. Alas, she was home in less than a year. Exasperated, he gave her $1 billion under the same conditions, and she didn’t come home for almost 3,000 years.
Think what those funds could do in the hands of small business folks/entrepreneurs from whom derives much of new employment.
I think the answer to how far up it goes was already answered at the end of Glenn Beck when he showed a video of Obama addressing ACORN members Dec 1, 2007 when he said that after his inaugeration that they will all be invited to meetings for them to help "shape his agenda"
If their were police reports given in other ACORN locations than how come those locations didn't warn and alarm other locations i.e. Baltimore and Washington about the undercover group. Which makes me believe that no police report was written.
I don't know if you remember when Glenn Beck had ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson on the show. I remember that they argued, he called Glenn a racist, and then Beck kicked him off the set. I seem to remember that slimebag went and asked one of the female employees of Beck's show out on a date.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article...
I would like to see the videos of the banks and other ACORN offices that turned them away, just for proof. I do BELIEVE that ACORN is corrupt, I just think it would as to the injury to see a REAL bank throw them out and call them nut jobs!
You think ACORN would let someone who wants to operate a Meth Lab get a house? And help do their tax returns… I wonder what the "code" for that would be?
When facts, logic, reason and public opinion are all stacked against you…cry racism. I am certain Holder will sweep this under the rug and ensure that the Black Panther Voter Intimidation Goon Squad Battalion all get jobs with ACORN.
This is a "nice" statement but why have the not looked into what if any legal charges can be brought against all 4 cought on tape?
"Good thing the investigation is internal. Otherwise, it might actually be investigated."
ha!
TIME TO RE-BRAND ACORN….
"undergo rigorous training"
Yeah, looks like they do receive rigorous training… in aiding and abetting criminal activity, that is.
And who once served as legal counsel for this bunch of lawbending radicals? Here's a hint… starts with an O & ends with BAMA
Sweet. I am officially giddy!
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