re: #472 Spare O’Lake

[Link: republicans.oversight.house.gov…]
I just came across this link to a House Oversight Committee staff report on Acorn dated July 23, 2009.
From a reading of the executive summary and pp.7-8 of the report, and assuming the document is even half legit, I would say that anyone who seriously maintains that Acorn executives deserve a pass on allegations that they were complicit in voter registration fraud and other serious wrongdoing, is being perhaps just a tad generous.

This part from pg. 13 is interesting:

ACORN’s walls are artificial. It fails to maintain the necessary legal formalities required for many of its affiliated and subsidiary entities. ACORN’s opacity has allowed it to avoid responsibility, which is why during a debate Senator Barbara Mikulski (D- MD) stated, “ACORN has never, to my knowledge, been convicted of a Federal crime.” Yet Senator Mikulski ignores how ACORN’s opacity makes the organization too byzantine to be legally controlled. Many ACORN affiliates lack real boards or executive
directors, making the legal channel of holding individuals or organizations liable practically un-navigable. Sadly, when ACORN’s leaders commit bad acts, the individuals who get caught tend to be low or moderate income workers – the types of individuals ACORN was founded to protect.