Reply #15: I wish the news media asked all the questions oh I forgot the real news is now on unknow channels to [View All]

[sce56]

the rest of the country.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/17/acorn_head_bertha_lewis_vows_action

From Democracynow.org

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bertha Lewis. Tell us what has happened to your organization, your response to this videotape.

BERTHA LEWIS: Well, thank you for having me, Amy.

Our response was swift and immediate. I terminated all employees that were on those tapes. It was unfortunate that they got duped into this trumped-up scenario, but none of them met our professional standards.

Also, let me add, not one application, not one tax return, not one shred of paper, was ever filed on behalf of these folks. We have a ten-step process. They didn’t even get past step one.

And finally, let me say, in a way, this said to us—we have 700 employees across the country. Five of them actually got duped by this. But dozens of offices that were visited, these people were thrown out, and in several offices, the police were called. So, we don’t see unedited tapes. We don’t see the whole story.

This is a continuation of the concentrated, relentless attacks on this organization by Republicans, by the right wing, when they couldn’t come up with anything that was true. And their voter registration allegations proved that they got caught in the trap, because all of those people in Florida were turned in by us. They had to make up a scenario, try to get some unsuspecting people to talk to them.

But we have taken swift action. This proves, with the throwing out of this crew in dozens of offices, that our quality control works. But you know what? We’re going to make sure that we review everything from top to bottom so that at least this kind of scenario will never happen again. We’ve got to get back to saving people’s homes and making sure people get affordable healthcare, for one.


AMY GOODMAN: How many different places did they go in ACORN? Also, by the way, how many employees do you have? How many times were they turned away? How many times were they, well, given advice, like they were here, that—captured on tape?

BERTHA LEWIS: So, from what we can determine, they visited almost two dozen offices. And in two-thirds of them—you know, now, once we began to see this, because people didn’t really think much of it, when we polled everybody, we knew office—you know, in over a dozen offices, they were summarily told to leave.

I might add that these folks really were very aggressive and refused to leave in several instances in at least three or four offices, and that’s why people said, “We’re going to call the police,” because they just were very aggressive and very pushy.

We have almost 700 employees. So when they’re able to show maybe five or six, you know, less than one percent of our employees there, I would like to know any corporation that has 700 employees, if they could come and help us figure out how we keep 700 employees absolutely perfect all the time. I don’t know. But I certainly, under my watch, will make sure that our procedures are reviewed and that we do tighten this up and our intake processes and communication, as Juan pointed out, is more effective and better.

These video, undercover videos, which, by the way, are illegal in several states, because you can’t take people without their knowledge, so we are suing this videographer, because we think he committed a crime. We’re asking for an investigation of him and Fox. But it is peculiar that these were shot during the summer. Karl Rove, all these Republican things were coming out. And all of a sudden, the night after President Obama’s speech to Congress, all of a sudden now we explode with these secret tapes and secret videos. And I don’t think it’s coincidental.

I think that the right, Republicans, in particular, understand that they are out of power. They are mad as hell at the fact that Democrats are in power. They’re mad as hell that poor people in this country are really participating. And this is their way of fighting back: lies, rumors, innuendos, smear, you know, McCarthyism, with just trying to put a chilling effect on any community group or anyone that would even stand up and say that they’re organizing poor people. So, it’s not a coincidence.

They try to blunt any forward movement, any progressive policies. And now we understand their strategy and their tactics. Their strategy, from the beginning, was to denigrate community organizing, denigrate people of color and poor people in this country. And they’ve carried that forward. We have a former community organizer as president. Stands to reason, let’s attack the largest community organization in this country.
<Snip>


AMY GOODMAN: And Juan, just referring to this latest release of emails, looking at the Huffington Post, last week the House Judiciary Committee released over 5,000 pages of White House and Republican National Committee emails with transcripts of closed-door testimony by Karl Rove and the former White House counsel Harriet Miers. The documents reveal that Rove played a central role in sacking David Iglesias, the New Mexico US attorney, one of the several federal prosecutors fired in the string of politically motivated dismissals in 2006. Iglesias refused to cooperate with the White House’s political agenda of prosecuting ACORN for voter fraud.



So where is the Republican Outrage over the illegal doings of Karl Rove's illegal activities and the lies the Bush White House used to cover up his deeds?