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No wrongdoing for ACORN in Cal.

Skeptic said:
That's usually what happens to people or organizations when they get caught with their proverbial pants down. There's a limit to how good one's reaction to the "PR nightmare" can be when your employees are caught on tape aiding and abetting child prostitution, as well as illegal immigration. But if anybody is to blame for the "PR nightmare", it's the ACORN employees.
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You didn't watch the video either, I see.

The ACORN employees in California (we can talk about the others when the full tapes are released) did NOTHING wrong.

Again, one guy gathered information and IMMEDIATELY called the cops.

One woman was trying to help someone she thought was a young prostitute find housing. O'Keefe made it sound like she was helping them get financing for the sex ring.

Watch the damn video.
 
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Libel:

Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. It is usually, but not always,[1] a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#United_States

Did O'Keefe communicate a statement that made a false claim that gave an individual and an organization a bad image?

Absolutely. You cannot watch the unedited tapes, observe how they were spliced, and conclude otherwise.

He took footage of a woman helping someone described to her as a prostitute find housing and made it seem like she was helping finance a child sex ring.
 
All I can say Ziggurat is you don't know what libel/slander is. They don't need to be lying they only need to be implying something. And the way the diting was done they were clearly implying illegal stuff.

"Ziggurat, when did you stop beatting your children ?"
 
quixotecoyote said:
Cavemonster seems to have it right.

You seem to be hung up on defamatory statements.
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What part of "Go back further" do you not understand?

I outlined a scenario. Under this scenario, according to Cavemonster, I would be liable for slander. You claim otherwise. Sort it out with him why he's wrong.
 
Aepervius said:
All I can say Ziggurat is you don't know what libel/slander is.
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All I can say is, no lawyer in the country would take ACORN's case on contingency. There's a reason they haven't filed suit: they don't have a case. It isn't enough that the edited tapes look worse than the unedited tapes.
 
TraneWreck said:
You didn't watch the video either, I see.

The ACORN employees in California (we can talk about the others when the full tapes are released) did NOTHING wrong.

Again, one guy gathered information and IMMEDIATELY called the cops.

One woman was trying to help someone she thought was a young prostitute find housing. O'Keefe made it sound like she was helping them get financing for the sex ring.

Watch the damn video.
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Read the damn report. If you had, you'd get the full information from Brown's report, not the "edited" version that Rachel portrays.

Employees outside California made suggestions for disguising profits from the illegal enterprise and for avoiding detection by law enforcement authorities. Clearly, the worst behavior was exhibited by the Baltimore employees who advised on how to falsely report the profits of their sex business and report underage prostitutes as “dependants.”
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Additionally Brown lists a number of serious law violations uncovered during the investigation including:

* The disposition of confidential documents in violation of state civil laws.
* Voter registration fraud in the 2008 election.
* Improper accounting for charitable donations.
* Non-filing of tax forms.

Your title of this thread, "No wrongdoing for ACORN..." is just plain wrong.
 
Ziggurat said:
What part of "Go back further" do you not understand?

I outlined a scenario. Under this scenario, according to Cavemonster, I would be liable for slander. You claim otherwise. Sort it out with him why he's wrong.
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Okay, I thought Coyote would clear this up for you, but he was hoping you'd figure it out for yourself, I guess he was kind of optimistic assuming that.

To tell your neighbors that someone is a convicted sex offender is a defamatory statement.

However, in most jurisdictions, truth is considered a valid defense. So while there would be a defamatory statement, there would not be a winnable case (in most places).

However, if you were incorrect about your new neighbor's status, even if you thought you were telling the truth, you would still be liable.
 
Zig keeps insisting that if they had a case they would have filed one, forgetting any other factors.

Primarily, O'Keefe doesn't have any money, and neither does ACORN (because they don't exist anymore). If they sued him, it could only be to make a point, but would cost the now unfunded, non-existent group huge amounts of money that could not be recovered from O'Keefe because he doesn't have it.
 
Neally said:
Read the damn report. If you had, you'd get the full information from Brown's report, not the "edited" version that Rachel portrays.


Additionally Brown lists a number of serious law violations uncovered during the investigation including:

* The disposition of confidential documents in violation of state civil laws.
* Voter registration fraud in the 2008 election.
* Improper accounting for charitable donations.
* Non-filing of tax forms.

Your title of this thread, "No wrongdoing for ACORN..." is just plain wrong.
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I guess the selective editing gene resides in all right-wingers.

What is the title of the thread? Look at it again. What is located where you chose to enter an ellipsis?

Yes, ACORN has done some fairly untoward things in the past. Although voter registration fraud is really a non-issue. It just meant there were false names on lists they submitted to state bodies that determined voter registration. There were no cases anywhere of actual voter fraud.

The rest are minor infractions that could have been dealt with by proper sanctions. Note that all of the listed charges are child's play compared to the consistent defrauding of the government at the hands of defense contractors who continually have their contracts renewed. ACORN should have been properly punished, not destroyed.

But you've tried to evade the point of the video. It dealt specifically with California because we have the full, unedited tapes. When we see the full, unedited tapes from the other offices, we will be able to see what happened there.

Here's an interesting tidbit from the NY Times:

To obtain the full tapes, Brown's office agreed not to prosecute conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, who played the pimp and prostitute in the video, even though the report found they likely violated state privacy laws.
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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/01/us/AP-US-ACORN-California.html

So, O'Keefe likely commited crimes, ACORN did not. In that article Brown discusses the charges you listed above--destroying records and failing to file state tax returns--he described those acts as "terrible judgment and highly inappropriate behavior...But they didn't commit prosecutable crimes in California.''
 
Cavemonster said:
Zig keeps insisting that if they had a case they would have filed one, forgetting any other factors.

Primarily, O'Keefe doesn't have any money
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What, you seriously don't think a verdict in their favor, regardless of any recovered costs, wouldn't have been worth a lot to them? Of course it would.

and neither does ACORN (because they don't exist anymore)
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They did last year.
 
Ziggurat said:
What, you seriously don't think a verdict in their favor, regardless of any recovered costs, wouldn't have been worth a lot to them? Of course it would.
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Really? What would it be worth? Would it have returned all federal funding? Or any?
 
Cavemonster said:
Okay, I thought Coyote would clear this up for you, but he was hoping you'd figure it out for yourself, I guess he was kind of optimistic assuming that.

To tell your neighbors that someone is a convicted sex offender is a defamatory statement.
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According to some definitions. Not according to others.

However, in most jurisdictions, truth is considered a valid defense.
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In other words, what you wrote wasn't the complete story, since you never even mentioned truth before. Which means O'Keefe matching your listed criteria doesn't mean he's liable. Thank you SO much for figuring that out. Except you didn't, I had to tell you.
 
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