Hannah Giles

Disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke is urging Catholics to quit their church:

In the fall from grace of one institution after another, religious bodies have been on a steady decline for a generation.  No institution claims more members and fills less pews now that the Catholic Church on any given Sunday, nor has any outfit taken more of a licking in the public perception.  The inability to effectively manage the staff at the boundary lines between practice and principle has led to some dioceses declaring bankruptcy, multi-million dollar damage settlements, and a general uneasiness about how faith and flock have been stewarded by priests.  Couple all of that with a rigid hierarchy that seems committed to resisting change, pushing back the clock, some verifiable degree of misogyny, and a hardening attack on the victims of priestly misconduct and venerable institutions like the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and anything that still carries the torch of the Church’s long historic leadership in the fight for social justice.
What’s to be done?  Finally, it has become crystal clear.  It’s time to leave the church and follow the nuns! [emphasis added above]

That’s rich.

Wade is one of the worst managers in the history of nonprofit activism. His brother Dale embezzled nearly $1 million from ACORN in 2000 and Wade covered it up for eight years until it became public in 2008. As I note in my book Subversion Inc. Wade’s actions laid the groundwork for the collapse of ACORN. All ACORN needed was a push — and that push was provided by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles the next year when they caught ACORN employees on undercover video offering helpful advice on setting up a brothel for pedophiles. The video sting caused Congress to cut off funding for ACORN and scared away remaining institutional funders. ACORN filed for bankruptcy on Election Day 2010.

The Census Bureau dumped ACORN as a “national partner” in the 2010 head count last fall after James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles’s undercover videos spotlighting ACORN’s rampant corruption debuted here on Big Government.

In a letter dated Sept. 11 that terminated the Census Bureau’s relationship with ACORN, Census director Robert M. Groves wrote

Over the last several months, through ongoing communication with our regional offices, it is clear that ACORN’s affiliation with the 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 Census efforts.

While not decisive factors in this decision, recent events concerning several local offices of ACORN have added to the worsening negative perceptions of ACORN and its affiliation with our partnership efforts.

The Census had to act because it’s important to keep dishonest and incompetent workers far away from the nation’s once-a-decade Census.

The data gathered are used to help determine who gets what and how much in the nation’s federalist system of governance. Population figures arrived at through the Census decide which states gain and lose seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the redistricting of state legislatures, county and city councils, and electoral districts.

False or inflated population figures can water down or negate entirely the value of an individual’s vote just as effectively as stuffing ballot boxes.

That’s why Americans were outraged last year when they learned the Obama administration bent over backwards to give ACORN a major role as a “national partner” in the 2010 Census.

In March, after the Obama administration tried unsuccessfully to consolidate control over Census operations in the White House, officials downplayed the significance of ACORN’s participation in the Census:

Any charge or claim that a Census Bureau partner could influence or have direct input into census operations is baseless and inaccurate … the Census Bureau has strict quality assurance procedures in every operation to prevent the introduction of errors and/or fraudulent information into the national count.

The official statement was, however, largely beside the point.

After Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the administration the Census Bureau disclosed that ACORN’s involvement gave it ample opportunities to influence how the count would be conducted.

ACORN’s status as a “national partner” in the Census entitled it to “[i]dentify job candidates and distribute recruiting materials,” and “[p]rovide space to train new employees.”

Just what the Census needs: radical left-wing community organizers as employees, recruiters, and trainers.

The “national partner” status also would have helped ACORN to pose as a respectable group by allowing it to “[u]se census drop-in articles, messages and logos in newsletters, mailings, etc.” (See page 113 of the Census Bureau’s May 15, 2009 Freedom of Information Act response to Judicial Watch.)

“Given its history of illegal activity and fraud, ACORN should be nowhere near the 2010 Census,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said last year.

(crossposted at Big Government)

ACORN’s lawsuit in Baltimore has been dimissed for want of prosecution.

The plaintiffs failed to serve their frivolous complaint on the defendants before Maryland’s 120 day limit ran out.

ACORN and its employees sued James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart LLC after O’Keefe and Giles caught the workers on video encouraging various illegal acts.

Filmmakers Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe III are being sued by a Philadelphia ACORN employee in federal court, according to America’s Right.

Hannah Giles (left) and James O'Keefe (right)

Here is the legal complaint filed by ACORN’s Katherine Conway-Russell who is apparently attempting to salvage her reputation after being caught on hidden-camera video condoning illegal activities.

Or this could be part of ACORN’s larger strategy to stamp out its critics through litigation. We’ll see.

As damning video after video is released showing ACORN’s willingness to counsel lawbreakers, no one has been more willing to assassinate the character of ACORN’s opponents than the hired guns at the left-wing group Media Matters for America.

As I noted yesterday, thin-skinned Jamison Foser of Media Matters wrote Oct. 16  that “some conservative activists induced a statistically insignificant number of the organization’s low-level employees to behave badly.” [emphasis added]

Setting aside the question of whether the ACORN employees were “induced” by activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles to do things they wouldn’t have already been willing to do, was the number of ACORN personnel behaving badly statistically insignificant? Let’s take a look at that claim.

In statistics, a result is considered statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance.

So far ACORN employees in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Philadelphia have been shown on video behaving badly. On all the videos, ACORN personnel have been cooperative and helpful to the make-believe pimp and prostitute.

So far ACORN personnel in six offices have acted badly. That’s six out of six, or 100%.

What are the chances of that happening?

This is –obviously– not statistically insignificant.

Actually, in statistics when a phenomenon keeps repeating itself over and over again and you’re batting 1000, it’s called a “trend.”

With the release of the Philadelphia video Wednesday, let’s add up the total number of ACORN employees behaving badly.

Unless I’m leaving somebody out:

Baltimore (2): Shera Williams and Tonja Thompson

Washington, D.C. (3): Sherona Boone, Lavernia Boone, unidentified woman

New York City (2): Volda Albert and Milagros Rivera

San Bernardino (1): Tresa Kaelke

San Diego (1): Juan Carlos Vera

Philadelphia (1): Katherine Conway Russell

That’s a total of 10 ACORN employees. Of the 10 ACORN employees videotaped, all 10 have acted badly. That’s 100% too.

What are the chances of that happening?

According to ACORN’s website, ACORN has 71 offices. I believe the total number is actually lower because several of the offices listed do not appear to be open for business.

But for sake of argument, let’s say it’s 71 offices. Expressed as a percentage, six out of 71 is 8.4%. That means that 8.4% of ACORN offices contain badly behaving employees. That’s a very good-sized statistical sample.

ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis told “Democracy Now!” Sept. 17 that ACORN has 700 employees.

Assuming Lewis is telling the truth (which is a very risky assumption to make given her proven mendacity) then 1.4% of ACORN’s workforce has been shown on video behaving badly.

Of course 1.4% is not as impressive a sample as 8.4% but it is certainly not small.

Desperate to defend his allies in ACORN, Foser of Media Matters can’t even think straight.

He’s asking people to believe that the 100% of the 10 ACORN employees (representing 1.4% of ACORN’s total workforce) shown in videos behaving badly is a statistically insignificant fluke.

Bear in mind if more videos are released showing ACORN employees behaving badly, the percentages are only going to grow.

Foser’s asking Americans to believe that the bad behavior of a statistically significant percentage of ACORN’s employees documented on video is purely coincidental. In other words, he’s arguing O’Keefe and Giles just happened to stumble upon the few rotten apples working at ACORN.

What are the chances of that happening?

Foser’s “rotten apples” spin happens to be the same lie that ACORN has been telling for years.

Is that a coincidence too, Media Matters?

Throughout the ACORN undercover sting video saga, no one has been more willing to assassinate the character of ACORN’s opponents than the hired guns at the left-wing group Media Matters for America.

Headed by former journalist and confessed serial liar David Brock, the extremely well-funded Washington, D.C.-based defamation factory has gone out of its way to attack conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, online news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, and this website – the truth be damned.

It’s worth noting that even the New York Times describes Media Matters as a “highly partisan research organization.”

Media Matters is only interested in generating a body count and won’t let facts get in the way.

Nothing better illustrates the depths to which Media Matters is willing to sink in order to protect its allies and smear its opponents than its outrageously irresponsible commentary on the ACORN undercover video saga.

Remember that ACORN provides the “shock troops” of the left. ACORN gets the vote out. ACORN wins elections. Those Democratic politicians who don’t love ACORN fear it – and for good reason. To the establishment left, ACORN must be defended at all costs.

This helps to explain why Media Matters has lashed out so viciously at the enterprising journalists O’Keefe and Giles.

The pair have steadfastly insisted that every time they visited an ACORN office and acted out the same now-familiar scenario involving a pimp and prostitute seeking ACORN’s help in establishing a brothel, ACORN employees helped them and provided advice on their make-believe illegal plans.

With the release of the latest video today, this time showing ACORN’s Philadelphia office offering helpful advice on the finer points of lawbreaking, Media Matters has once again been shown for what it is: a relentless attack machine determined to smear conservatives at all costs.

Slime first; ask questions later.

It turns out O’Keefe and Giles were telling the truth, but barely a word of truth has escaped the lips of Media Matters and ACORN.

Now that what really happened in Philadelphia has been revealed, let’s recap and break down what Media Matters has said about ACORN’s Philadelphia story and about the undercover sting video operation in general.

In a Sept. 17 blog post titled, “Police report filed by ACORN exposes false claims by individuals behind videos,” Media Matters uncritically accepted ACORN’s version of events even after a series of damning videos showing ACORN’s illegal conduct in cities across America had already been released to the public. The Media Matters post states

However, in a newly released video, ACORN Housing Corp.’s Katherine Conway Russell directly rebuts those claims, citing a police report ACORN filed as evidence that she asked the filmmakers to leave the ACORN office in Philadelphia and called the police after the filmmakers asked suspicious questions.

The Philadelphia video shows that no one working for ACORN ejected O’Keefe or Giles from the office or asked them to leave. If the Philadelphia police complaint depicted in the blog post was actually filed, that fact still doesn’t establish much because the video shows ACORN cooperating.

If ACORN called the police, it was only after O’Keefe and Giles departed, which was long after ACORN bent over backwards to counsel the couple on establishing a brothel. The only time in the video the ACORN employee discusses the police is to assure O’Keefe and Giles that she wouldn’t call the police to turn them in.

The only false claims on record are those that have been made knowingly by ACORN and Media Matters.

Media Matters rushed to protect ACORN in a Sept. 18 blog post titled, “Wash. Post ignores ACORN filmmakers’ credibility problems,” in which the media criticism shop compounds the damage it previously tried to inflict on the reputation of O’Keefe and Giles.

The blog item claims that the Washington Post in its coverage of the ACORN video saga “ignored facts which undermined the conservative filmmakers’ credibility.”

Media Matters said

Some of the videotapes may have been taken illegally. The Post did not report that in secretly videotaping their conversations with ACORN employees, O’Keefe and Giles may have violated state criminal statutes in Maryland and California.

Media Matters can’t seem to get over the fact that rules of evidence used in courtrooms don’t apply in journalism. If a journalist smuggles a fake weapon through airport security in order to expose weaknesses in baggage screening processes, doesn’t society benefit from the enterprise? Journalism is about truth-telling, not about putting people behind bars (though if there were any justice in the world, ACORN’s leadership would be in prison).

Even if the secret videotaping was illegal, how does that single fact undermine the credibility of the filmmakers? Moreover, how is the concept of credibility even relevant here? The camera doesn’t lie. The videotapes shot by the couple show that ACORN employees were only too willing to facilitate criminal conduct. None of the ACORN workers shown in any of the videos released to date appear to have any moral reservations about helping a pimp and prostitute engage in illegal activity.

Media Matters repeats the tiresome credibility allegations Sept. 24 and jumps the shark on Sept. 27 by accusing Chris Wallace of Fox News of trying to “salvage” O’Keefe’s credibility.

In an Oct. 16 rant, Jamison Foser shrugged off the videos. “[S]ome conservative activists induced a statistically insignificant number of the organization’s low-level employees to behave badly,” he wrote. By the way, Foser is so far to the left that he thinks “Hardball” host Chris Matthews is a rabid right-winger. He refers to the TV talk show host as the “Clinton-hating, liberal-bashing misogynist Chris Matthews.” Foser used to be research director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

On Sept. 28, Eric Boehlert refers to the “marginal ACORN story.” Boehlert claimed on Sept. 29 the videos were “not really journalism at all.”

And then there’s this spin-doctoring from Sept. 20 and this bizarre subheading in a Sept. 22 post, “Ignoring mitigating facts, [Fox’s Megyn] Kelly previously suggested entire ACORN organization should be punished.” Is Megyn Kelly a broadcast journalist or a judge in a criminal court? What does the legal concept of mitigation have to do with journalism? Is it Kelly’s job to try to make ACORN look good?

I could go on but I think you get the point.

Finally, one of the very few items Media Matters posts about ACORN that’s worth reading is a Sept. 24 post by Boehlert in which he reposts a passage from a column by Slate.com media critic Jack Shafer. Shafer excoriates the mainstream media for ignoring the ACORN story. Boehlert highlights this passage from Shafer’s article:

The liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America complains that the ACORN videos, which aren’t a “major story,” are driving an “incomplete, misleading” media stampede.

But Media Matters is wrong. Independent news organizations, including the Washington Post, the New York Post, and the Baltimore Sun, are chasing the ACORN story not because they’ve been bamboozled by the Breitbart exposé but because the dress-up stunt has pointed them toward what could be fertile grounds for wrongdoing.

Indeed, Media Matters is wrong and this latest undercover video is a devastating blow to the George Soros-backed organization’s credibility.

Now that ACORN is suing Hannah Giles a legal defense fund has been established in her name.

Giles played a prostitute in undercover sting videos in which ACORN workers were shown offering advice on how to evade taxes, establish an underage illegal alien sex slave ring, and seek government grants under false pretences. The videos were first aired at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com.

The website is DefendHannahGiles.com.

President Obama announced he plans to nominate Patrick Corvington to be chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America.

My readers will remember that “the Corporation” assumed a prominent role on the infamous NEA Conference call, where ”the Corporation’s” Nell Abernathy joined White House and NEA officials to nudge artists to produce works supporting the Obama Administration’s legislative priorities.

Although the charity Corvington works for, Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, has granted funding to ACORN during his tenure, it is unclear if Corvington has ties to ACORN.

Nonetheless, Corvington is part of the same cluster of organizations that provides financial and other support for ACORN which is a longtime fixture in the activist community.

Since 2001 the Annie E. Casey Foundation has pumped at least $1,705,500 into the ACORN network, according to philanthropy database information.

Of the $1,705,500, at least $850,500 was earmarked for ACORN operations in Baltimore, Maryland, home of the ACORN branch office first shown in the recent undercover videos that debuted on BigGovernment.com. Those videos show James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute and receiving mountains of advice on evading laws pertaining to tax evasion and prostitution (among other things).

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a major funder of other groups on the left.

Looking at just the first letter of the alphabet, its grant recipients are labor federation AFL-CIO, abortion rights think tank Alan Guttmacher Institute, and liberal policy shop the Aspen Institute.

Although most of its grants go to groups on the political left, the foundation has funded at least one think tank on the political right. It has provided a few grants to the American Enterprise Institute.

(modified from a post at BigGovernment.com)

The thugs at ACORN are suing filmmaker James O’Keefe, his partner Hannah Giles, and news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart for their role in the undercover sting videos that revealed ACORN’s everyday criminality for the whole world to see. (Here is a copy of the complaint filed in a Baltimore court.)

This is standard operating procedure at ACORN. If lying doesn’t work, ACORN goes for intimidation.

ACORN is already suing whistleblower and former ACORN/Project Vote employee Anita MonCrief.

In June ACORN threatened the ACORN 8, a reform group headed by Marcel Reid and Karen Inman, because it’s afraid of them and wants to shut them up. The group argues the ACORN 8 is violating ACORN’s intellectual property by using the word “ACORN” in its name.

It sent the ACORN 8 a “cease and desist” letter. Here is a PDF of the June 11 letter from ACORN lawyer Arthur Z. Schwartz of the New York City law firm of Schwartz, Lichten & Bright PC. Blogger Procrustes has some background information on the longtime activist lawyer.

Schwartz is also listed as one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the new lawsuit filed against O’Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart.

When it looks like Hell has finally frozen over: The Los Angeles Times has an editorial critical of ACORN.