Back when I did computer tech support, we had a rule of thumb for evaluating the significance of reports of unusual and previously unreported failures .
- One report of a failure is a fluke.
- Two reports of a failure is a coincidence. It might just be two users making the same error.
- Three reports indicates a pattern of failure that arises from the hardware or software itself.
This rule of thumb evolved after observing the failures of millions of computers. We learned that three separate computers would only suffer the same failure if the failure arose from a common source in the computers themselves. Just three machines out of millions told us we most likely had a systemic problem.
This brings me to the Acorn child prostitution scandal.
- One report from an Acorn office was a fluke. Any large organization, public or private of any creed can be infected by amoral individuals who will try to use the organization to commit illegal or unethical acts. No organization larger than a few dozen people can police the actions of every member, all the time.
- Two reports from two separate Acorn offices was just a disturbing coincidence. The same reasoning as above applies, because in a large organizations, just as in a large installed base of computers, it’s possible for two separate bad eggs carrying out the same acts to show up in the same organization.
- Three identical reports of the same failure from three separate offices indicates the criminality arises from the organization itself. It is highly unlikely that, out of the hundreds of Acorn offices around the nation, the journalist just happened to wander into the three offices whose managers wouldn’t blink an eye at helping to set up a brothel using children.
This degree of organizational systemic rot has to come from the head. I think that much is obvious. Something in Acorn’s organizational culture made these people feel that it was okay and expected for them to give the criminal advice that they did. Certainly, if Acorn had been a private for-profit company, three separate and wholly unrelated incidents would have been enough for leftists to demand the heads of the corporate officers.
The really disturbing part is how in all three cases the managers of the Acorn offices don’t even bat an eye when the journalist asks about setting up a brothel. Further, they seem to have the logistics and legal tangles of using a brothel to fund a political career already well thought out. I don’t know about you, but if someone ask me how to run a brothel using minors and how to funnel that money into the a political campaign, I would have to stop and think about it for while. The fact that they have the answers already queued up and ready to go tells us one thing…
… this is far from the first time they have provided this kind of “assistance”. They know the answers because they’ve been asked them before and they’ve answered them. Repeatedly.
We might also note that in most cases illegal immigrants are forced into prostitution against their will. Alone in a foreign country they have to serve their pimp’s pleasure or risk being killed or having their family members killed back in their home country. This is doubly true for minors. There is a nifty term for holding people against their will and forcing them to work for you:
Acorn was promoting slavery. Sexual slavery. The sexual slavery of children.
Is that overwrought? Well, it isn’t in my book but then I have a low tolerance for the sexual enslavement of children. If someone had seriously asked me the same questions the journalist asked the Acorn managers, I would still be cleaning the blood splatter off the ceiling. Perhaps in leftist circles the involuntary prostitution of minor illegal aliens is not considered a big deal.
I do know for certain how horrible Acorn’s acts would be viewed as if they had been a non-leftist organization.
But this is what I really don’t understand:
This systemic criminality is an act of treason against both Acorn’s supporters and the people they were supposed to help! There is no other word for this level of betrayal. Honestly, what greater crime could an organization commit against the sensibilities and trust of leftists than to support criminal activities that degrade the communities of our nation’s most poor and helpless? What greater sin is there in the leftists’ lexicon than the literal sexual enslavement of children?
Where is the blind rage from the left? Why aren’t they mobbing the offices of Acorn and dragging the corporate officers out into the street? How bad do things have to become within a leftist organization before the rest of the left says, “Enough! You are no longer part of us!” How long will it take for the left to cast Acorn from the fold? How long before they stop making excuses and condemning those who brought this evil to light and instead clean their own house?
The world watches and wonders. This is their moment to demonstrate their integrity.
[Update (2009-9-14 9:52pm): According to several post on this Hot Air thread, the same guys who did these three videos will release something else tomorrow which they describe as “devastating”. I’ve got ask, once you’ve caught an organization assisting in the sexual slavery of children, what the hell do you do for an encore? I mean, is there a mass grave in the Acorn basement or what?]
[Update (2009-9-15 8:24am): I think it goes without saying that this can’t be the only crimes that Acorn is committing/enabling on a routine basis. This kind of systemic rot means that other crimes must be waiting to be discovered. For example, if they don’t bat an eye at the sexual enslavement of children, what would they do for the local drug lord who makes a hefty donation?]
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Reminds me of this:
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” — Auric Goldfinger
“This is their moment to demonstrate their integrity.”
Snort of derision, dry chuckle, feh! (spits on ground)
This Acorn episode is one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard, and I have heard a lot. I have a very low threshold for child abuse in general, much less setting up a brothel for children. If this is proven true, the whole organization should be shut down and several should be made examples of. Lets start with the people who told the reporter how to SET UP A BROTHEL FOR CHILDREN. What else are they doing for gods sake?
I know – it is appalling, and the very worst part is how … what is the right word … unflappable? Casual? They didn’t even look taken back, for even a second.
And it may not even be the last incriminating Acorn tape …what if there are other tapes, of Acorn staff in other offices, all of which may come trickling out, every day or two?
Well, going with the theme three times being a pattern revealing underlying truth, and limiting it to things from the past 4 days:
Pretending Van Jones is just an innocent victim of that mean old Glenn Beck–That’s ONE.
Pretending that the NEA soliciting artists that it funds to produce agitprop was just one low-level guy who got a bit overenthusiastic–That’s TWO.
Pretending that the ONLY thing anyone did wrong in the Breitbart/Fox/ACORN sting was to tape people in Maryland without their permission—That’s THREE.
So, if (I love the Goldfinger quote), if once is happenstance and twice is a coincidence, what can we say about the liberal media and the Obama Administration? Obviously, they have no problem with truthers, abuse of power, and sex slavery, if done by the “right” people. And, looking at the esclating level of the crime, one must conclude that there is no obvious limit to what they would tolerate, if not encourage. I mean, if you can look the other way from poeple aiding and abetting traffick in child prostitution, even murder doens’t seem beyond the pale. (Let’s just say Mary Jo Kopechne was involuntary or negligent manslaughter and leave it at that, for that case.)
This, coming after quashing the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, stiffing the Chrysler secured creditors, unleashing SEIU thugs at town halls and then defending them after they attacked innocents, threatening CIA interrogators that DOJ already declined to prosecute, repeated lies and slanders emanating all the way up to Obama, himself, on the subject of health care, etc., etc., etc.
Now, what is a reasonably intelligent person supposed to conclude?
Surely, at this point, we don’t think these are rogue Acornettes. But, then, few acts are as despicable to our moral fabric than importing and enslaving underage girls for sex, as few things are as likely to destroy our civic fabric than tainted elections. Are you surprised that their vices extend to both?
Nor do we see these as unlike the defense of African American murderers – who have almost always killed African Americans? Nor of the arguments of racism when high school thugs are charged with bullying – even though the bullying is often of those of the same color.
This isn’t “caring” – Ralph Ellison could have told them that in 1952. But for over fifty years the voices of the Ralph Ellisons have been drowned out by the Teddy Kennedy’s and Charlie Rangel’s and Al Sharpton’s. It is they who are seen as “representative” of – well, of what – are we still willing to credit them with misguided but good intentions? That, like Rangel’s tax returns, are beginning to stretch credulity.
There is some discussion that the young folks who did these videos have a number of others “in the can” and this is not the end of it. There ie also an ACORN manual floating around that gives their institutional mission statement. I wouldn’t swear that this is authentic but it is interesting.
ACORN’s life blood is conflict with targets outside the organization.
Just for kicks I went to the Acorn website and there is a statement from their director – which almost devolves completely into a crazy rant about the VRWC. She says that the videos are doctored BUT they fired the offending parties. Wonder why that was. They have also sent some lawyer letters to Fox – but I have seen the videos on other cable networks today, CNN in the airport for one.
Honestly, what greater crime could an organization commit against the sensibilities and trust of leftists than to support criminal activities that degrade the communities of our nation’s most poor and helpless?
Advocate tax reductions? Across the board tax reductions, I mean; obviously finding tax loopholes for aspiring Democratic politicians who want to fund a campaign with child sex slaves doesn’t bother the left at all.
Incidentally, ACORN and the UN mean we’re at least at the “coincidence” stage for leftist organizations that promote child prostitution.
the same guys who did these three videos will release something else tomorrow which they describe as “devastating”.
They should hold off for a while. Let Pelosi try to rescue them first.
Those of us who used to be lefties saw, heard of, or intuited that such things were not only going on but were acceptable on the Left. Their surface gloss of being anti-rascism/sexism/slavery/homophobia/violence covers a roiling sea of the actual, repugnant truths to the contrary. But it’s not their actions, it’s their intentions that are important, you see, and carte blanche to do any and all things vile. ACORN particularly needed their truths revealed for all to see. We must not look away.
Let me refer to my lefty response manual:
Here it is right here –
YOU’RE ALL RACISTS!!!!!
funny that they have that same answer for every question.
i agree with this characterization of ‘acorn’ and the orgnaizational ‘rot’ it represents…
…in the interest of fairness, i’m compelled to point out that the private sector had a direct analog to the acorn misbehavior…the rise of ‘liar loans’ and similar false documentation in the procurement of tens of thousands of dollars in mortgage financing…
yes, the acorn behavior was illegal – period. full stop.
however, by the same token, ‘legal’ mortgages were granted by the tens of billions based on…what? collateral and a demonstrable ability to pay them back? the fairly appraised value of the property?
let’s not kid ourselves: there are banks alive only because of our taxpayer money that hired and paid and supervised loan officers who made not ‘questionable’ loans or ‘challenging’ loans but loans based on falsities and misrepresentations….
…let’s criticize and defund acorn; but let’s not pretend that the private sector is inherently superior on this unhappy issue of corruption and organizational rot
[I think this post is an attempt to change the conversation on the thread away from Acorn and onto unrelated issues. Please don’t respond to it. I will post a single reply. Stay on topic people — Shannon]
[Update: Michael wanted to let everyone know that he did not intend to hijack the thread but to instead demonstrate that Acorn was part of a pattern of the same pattern of organizational behavior that drove the mortgage crisis. I’ve apologize for misreading his comments –Shannon
Democrats
Pro-Slavery in 1776
Pro-Slavery in 1861
Pro-Slavery in 1877
Pro-Slavery in 1975
Pro-Slavery in 2009
Shannon, I, too, worked in (and managed) computer tech support and QA, and I wonder whether you really did apply that rule of thumb. The first report is a fluke, and the second is a coincidental fluke? Awful! I’d have fired my tech support manager if he or she did that. The first report is something to be investigated. If you haven’t found the cause, then when the second report (assuming it jibes with the first) comes in, you’ve already got a problem to be fixed.
Democrat and leftist silence and defense of ACORN shows us just as much as ACORN’s silence and assistance of the child sex trade.
The Democratic Party is apparently willing to knowingly be an accessory to these crimes and many others.
Just Some Guy, I’m in IT. Our own tech support (in India, of course) will not investigate until there are at least 2 other corroborating reports/tickets for the same issue. One report only has them trying to get us to delete this and re-install that, which is very often more harmful than helpful. So we try to gather several instances of the same issue before reporting or we know we’ll be spinning our wheels. Shannon’s experiences echo my own.
How bad do things have to become within a leftist organization before the rest of the left says, “Enough! You are no longer part of us!”
For a very long time their relevant motto has been “No enemies to the left.” A related example is the difficulty the left has had dealing with the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA); only when it gets too hot do they formally disavow.
@Ursus Maximus: I love your slogan, and I’ve often asked my left-leaning friends if they knew what “Southern Democrat” was a euphemism for a century ago, but I can’t think of what the ‘1975’ date refers to.
Michael Schrage,
… but let’s not pretend that the private sector is inherently superior on this unhappy issue of corruption and organizational rot
Nice attempt at a strawman. If any had made such an argument at any time or place you would have a point but since no one has ever argued that private companies never do anything wrong, your argument is simply gibberish.
Acorn’s behavior is much worse than that of a for-profit company because Acorn is supposed to be a charity devoted to helping the poor and down trodden. When you go into a deal with a for-profit entity you expect them to make the best deal they can for themselves and you will do likewise. When you interact with a charity, you expect them to make the best deal possible for you. After all, this is why leftist always bloviate on why non-profit/for-power organizations are morally superior to the grubby, for-profits that do nothing more than provide all the necessities and luxuries of life. It a much more serious problem and more morally repugnant when, say, a member of the clergy rips you off than when the bank does.
I have to ask: Where is your outrage? You’ve been betrayed! People you trusted to good used your support to do evil! You’re political goals have taken a serious hit! Why the hell is your first impulse to circle the wagons and try to deflect attention? Did you ever actually care about goals that Acorn claimed to work towards?
Why are you more concerned about dragging the non-left down with you than in cleaning your own house, finding out what other damage was done and trying to replace Acorn with an organizations that does what its supposed to?
This is the moral bankruptcy of the left. Winning political power is all that matters. Integrity and the harm done to the innocent simply are not major considerations for you.
And our fresh NY Senator Kirstin Gillibrand voted to ‘Keep ‘Em Pimpin”
Shannon, I would have pointed out that the evil financial institutions made bad loans because they were strongarmed into it by politicians, bureaucrats – and ACORN.
But to return to the topic, you know evry well what it would take to stimulate ourage from the left. Losing power. That’s it – gaining and holding power is the sole goal. Anything that works towards that is acceptable, anything that hinders or reverses that is an outrage. There’s the ethics, there’s the integrity.
Ends, means, yada yada yada.
Shannon,
What if they weren’t betrayed? What if this is what they had in mind all along?
Why are they covering for this behavior if they don’t approve? It seems more plausible to assume they do approve. Or at least they’re willing to tolerate and accept the behavior because the ends justify the means.
They want wealth and power. What difference does a little child sexual enslavement make in the larger scheme of things? If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.
Stalin and Mao killed tens of millions while pursuing the goals of the Left, and the Left in the West was not only silent, but complicit in covering it up. There is no depth to which these people will not sink in pursuit of their Utopia. Child prostitution? A pecadillo, in comparison.
Ben White,
What if they weren’t betrayed? What if this is what they had in mind all along?
I don’t think so, at least, the vast majority of people outside of Acorn itself certainly did not. I know and have known a lot of seriously leftwing people and I know for certain that anyone who suggested these crimes that would be beaten to death with the nearest blunt object. Of course, they’re Texan leftist so it might be different in other places.
If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.
I think don’t think this causes leftists to endorse such practices before hand but I do think it governs their responses afterward. As noted above, their first instinct is to not to disavow and clean house but to try to minimize and deflect. They justify those reactions with Lenin’s omelet metaphor.
This is just the tip of the iceberg w/ Acorn. They’re basically a criminal organization w/ an advocacy front. I used to work w/ the CCNV in Washington. The CCNV is the organization started by Mitch Snyder. They operate several homeless facilities in DC, offer social services, and advocate for many of the same people that Acorn claims to. When I’d worked there, we were explicitly instructed to avoid any ties with Acorn, and to have their people removed from our facilities if they showed up. They have a reputation for violence and were known to be involved in organized crime. And to top it off, they’d compete with legitimate organizations for grants and city contracts, though they’d never actually honor their commitments. So they were stealing monies meant for homeless and low income families.
The acorn truly doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?
I viewed the NYC video. Disgusting. Repugnant. Enraging. But not, alas, surprising.
Michael Schrage:
And who was pushing, very very hard, for the granting of subprime “liar loans?” Why, ACORN. Through hundreds of ‘direct actions’ (ie mob intimidation) and lawsuits, they strongarmed banks into dropping lending standards to nil, or in some cases even appointing ACORN their ‘broker’ for distributing these loans.
In fact, one of these lawsuits, against Citi, was brought by a Chicago lawyer named Barack Obama.
Certainly there were mongo-crooked lenders, especially the nonbank mortgage companies. Which ones? Golden West, owned by Soros-clone uber-leftists Herb and Marion Sadler. Countrywide, run by Chris Dodd’s BFF Angelo Mozilo. And then there’s Fannie and Freddie and the prominent Democrats associated therewith.
Maurice,
This is just the tip of the iceberg w/ Acorn. They’re basically a criminal organization w/ an advocacy front.
There is certainly precedent for that. The original Black Panthers were just a street gang that figured out they could prevent the cops from investigating them if they pretended to be a revolutionary group. It worked brilliantly and after a while they really began to believe they were revolutionaries. The cops would touch them with a ten foot pole. David Horowitz’s experiences with the Black Panthers and their murder of his friend drove him from being communist to the rightwing.
It was also standard for the old big city machines to integrated with corrupt unions and the mobs. I think a lot of that attitude has bled over into modern organizations in the same regions.
I suspect that Ursus is referring to a democratic congress cutting off funds for Vietnam, thus allowing the North to enslave the South…
“How bad do things have to become within a leftist organization before the rest of the left says, “Enough! You are no longer part of us!””
I know, maybe a sitting president could repeatedly blow his semen all over a 21-year old subordinate employee in the workplace. THEN they might stop saying he’s the greatest politician who ever lived and…..
Oh, wait.
While the true nature of ACORN is finally coming to light, let’s look at the common offices for all of the ACORN-related entities. We all know ACORN was a large part of the drive for the get out the vote project. By law they are not to be affiliated or promoting any political party. So the fraudulent voter drive (all pro-Dem and pro-Obama) not only should land them in voter fraud hot water (which it has) but should have stripped them their tax exempt status. Add the $872K paid by the Obama campaign for “lighting” and other BS, they blatantly bought ACORN support. But because of the multiple sister organizations, the money from one goes into the same house as all the rest, it just an accounting jungle. They all have the same people serving on the boards and as officers. The House Judiciary Committee leader John Conyers, in June was going to investigate ACORN, but was shut down by ‘the powers that be’.
Yes the left, and particularly the power brokers in Washington will continue to cover this up, look the other way, and see this as noise.
(BTW: – The noise has caused the census bureau to fire ACORN, and the senate has voted to strip ACORN of funding, so the noise is reaching a deafening level. The WH and Pelosi and company will not be able to hold off an investigation much longer!)
This is the fruit of the “Don’t Snitch” ghetto mentality. It will be the ruination of racial relations and will lead to the death of the Left.
Michael Schrage! Good to see you here.
One reason to focus on Acorn and similar organizations is because too often, anything called “nonprofit” is assumed by many to be morally superior. This is far from true.
The community organizer in chief understands the non-profit status. He understands how Acorn works. He understands how the empire is a web of shadows, all to obfuscate the truth. And the SCIA is right there on his hip as well. No less corrupt. No less enslaving its members for the sake of the empire. So after ACORN goes down, there are several orgs (non-profits included) that are next. That should be the “transformation of the country” that dear leader speaks of that should happen.
Let’s not forget all the vote fraud cases involving ACORN that keep popping up around the country. ACORN is an abomination (Obama-nation…heh) that must be completely and hopefully shut down.
ACORN is really disgusting and I can’t believe that there isn’t a bigger out cry over their criminal evils. I know the Senate voted to not renew their funding but where is the outrage and why isn’t our President calling for an investigation, why haven’t they been shut down?
“…The House Judiciary Committee leader John Conyers, in June was going to investigate ACORN, but was shut down by ‘the powers that be’….”
Speaking of “coincidences,” right before Conyers attempted to investigate ACORN, his wife Monica was convicted of bribery while on the Detroit City Council, the end of a career as a notoriously corrupt public official. You have to wonder what “the powers that be” told Conyers they would do for Monica if he dropped the investigation.
I am almost at the point where I would bet cash money that the people and structure now known as ACORN will be operating for as long as the Democrats hold power, and perhaps even longer given how gormless and goolie-less the Republicans are.
To the Democrats, child prostitution, possible murder [see the tape released today], and any other crimes are justified by the undermining of the electoral system that ACORN has done. More than a few commentators [outside the MSM which is doing its damnedest to pretend this is not happening] have picked up on the points note above that a) they treat setting up child brothels as routine, and b) what other crimes do they commit routinely?
Knowing that, not only did 7 Senate Democrats [including both Senators from Illinois, Obama’s state] vote to continue taxpayer funding of child prostitution, knowing that; a number of Republicans managed not to be there for the vote. After all, they would not want to do anything to discommode their good friends on the other side of the aisle.
The Senate vote is a scam. For any funds cut off to take effect it also has to pass the House, conference committees, AND be signed by Obama. That is NOT going to happen. ACORN is too valuable as a government funded RICO to Democrats.
The very worst that will happen is that ACORN will have to change its name. It already is registered as a corporation under “Community Organizers International”. Same people, same mission, same corruption, different sign on the door; with the possible benefit to them that the Census has cut off ties with ACORN, but not with COI.
The political and legal system that we learned from the civics books does not exist anymore; nor does the social contract that it reinforced.
Subotai Bahadur
Re: “I don’t know about you, but if someone ask me how to run a brothel using minors and how to funnel that money into the a political campaign, I would have to stop and think about it for while.”
Actually, I could do that pretty much on the fly, but then I use to GM in my younger days. It is obvious after you assume the law is an unjustified impediment. Also I know it is how most strip clubs skirt zoning laws. They put in a request for an entertainment establishment, and only reveal it is a strip joint afterward. Same principle, different legal issue.
The difference is, I would only do that in a ROLL playing game, never in REAL life. Giving that sort of advice in REAL life gets people hurt, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Maybe even killed. Which is why in REAL life as opposed to a theoretical exercise the law is NOT an unjustified impediment.
Gadfly,
Did you mean ROLE playing game or was that a pun?
The_Gadfly,
Actually, I could do that pretty much on the fly, but then I use to GM in my younger days.
But can you imagine if you tried to run a game set in a modern environment and had a scene in which your players could walk in off the street into and advocacy organization and get advice on running a child brothel? Your players would laugh you out of the room!
Having a bunch of dwarves with battle axes pile out an SUV would be more credible.
Oh come on, why is everyone so surprised? For literally decades the left (which ACORN definitely is) has ignored, explained away, condoned or even particpated in all sorts of horrible actions (Stalin’s purges and famines, China’s Cultural Revolution to name just a couple), provided that these advance the cause of socialism. To them, the ends always justify the means,
Also, these are Acorn people helping with this crazy far out request. Who seriously doubts that they probably would all help game the system / teach people how to lie for more minor crimes or infractions?
bandit Says:
“Let me refer to my lefty response manual:
Here it is right here –
YOU’RE ALL RACISTS!!!!!”
Neoneocon came up with a good term for that one. ‘racers’. Heh…
Maybe the acronym should be “ROTON” (revolutionary organization trashing our nation”)
Since when is it acceptable to give millions of tax dollars to a blatantly political (and corrupt) organization?
We are teetering on the edge of the abyss of self-destruction, and Obama is in the process of pushing us over that edge.
[Comment deleted for being off topic and incoherent — Shannon]
Obviously sexual slavery and the sexual slavery of children are big problem which currently take place all over the World. Many thanks to the authod for drawing the attention of readers to all these important problems.