ACORN Spokesman Offers Proof ACORN is Run by Idiots.

Many of you have seen ACORN in the news recently for allegedly offering incentives to employees to sign up voters, resulting in voter registration fraud by over-zealous community organizers. (not to mention the 19,000 fake registrations, according to this Gateway Pundit article)  In this great clip, Glenn Beck takes on a forgettable ACORN spokesman, who was reminding me a little bit of Nick Naylor in “Thank You for Smoking” as the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies – They are both employed to defend the indefensible, they both really try to do their jobs properly, but they both are fighting a losing battle.  In this case, the official ACORN spokesman (from here on referred to as “ACORN”) seemingly concedes that Beck’s 20+ documented cases of fraud are accurate and was actually trying to defend the organization: he was specifically referencing multiple instances in multiple states of “rogue” employees committing voter registration fraud, saying that ACORN had no knowledge of the illegal acts.

In the hilarious exchange, Beck actually comes up with a fantastic analogy that isn’t too over the top (starts at 5:20).  Does anyone remember the kid who bathed in the Burger King sink on camera?  What about the more recent Domino’s employees who used the pizza kitchen to add disgusting ingredients to some food?  Glenn’s analogy was this:  what if there had been 20 or so cases of this behavior across BKs or Dominos worldwide?  Surely we wouldn’t think that the problem is the kids.  It would be the management.  The company.  Duh.  Well not so fast…

ACORN starts tap dancing and at first complains about the parallel.  Then he moves on to this real gem of a defense:

“this is the analogy? … you named 20 workers out of 13 thousand… so what is the percentage?” – ACORN Spokesman

Is this guy a complete idiot?  Is he saying that the management is not to blame because of the low percentage of “rogue” / “illegal” / “cheating” employees?  Is this even a valid argument for a responsible company?  Does this make ANY sense?  Less than you might realize…

Lets do the math.

ACORN: 13,000 workers

ACORN’s “rogue” employee percentage: .15%.

Sure, that DOES seem pretty small… but is it? Lets look at these two examples:

Burger King: 41,000 workers

Dominos: 145,000 workers

How would that percentage stack up to BK and Dominos?  I guess if ACORN was running a pizza joint and they had a whopping 217 employees across the company (over a period of say, 1 or 2 years) all get caught sneaking “nose berries” into customer’s food, this is what their spokesperson would say:

“Folks, yes, we have had a small percentage of rogue employees, but they are in no way reflective of our wonderful management team.  The good news is that just .15% of our workers soiled your food in the last two years, which means the problem is only a few hundred rogue employees out of thousands.  Rest assured that it will not happen again.  We are on it.  This time for reals….”

Guess what, No one would eat at Domino’s until every single corporate officer, board member, and VP was fired.  Absolutely no one would think that Domino’s high school workers were solely to blame!  Shareholders would laugh in the spokesman’s face as they kicked management to the curb.  That’s because of a little thing called corporate responsibility.  It is the reason companies and large organizations continue to work well (staying efficient, profitable, ethical, etc) even as they grow very large in size.  It says one of two things about ACORN:  the organization is guilty of knowingly turning a blind eye to fraud and should be shut down, or they have the worst corporate management team ever (as demonstrated by allowing illegal activities to continually happen) and they should be shut down.

How many people think that Burger King would be in business today if 67 people had been caught bathing in their sinks over the last two years? How many people think that if BK didn’t go out of business from lack of customers the FDA would have shut them down in less than 9 months, after the first 20 infractions? Of course the government would not let a company operate with such poor leadership, especially if the “rogue employees” were doing something illegal. Now, I’m not saying ACORN members or community organizers are evil (the title picture is just a joke), but there is no doubt that there are some people running ACORN with an agenda, and they let their desire to achieve that agenda compromise their ethical responsibility by offering incentives that could potentially encourage employee impropriety (which it did). All the fuzzy math and tap dancing in the world will not be able to hide that fact from the public eye.

Get real ACORN, and stop making stupid excuses.

Ok, so I know that request is unrealistic…  But if you must make stupid excuses, at least back them up with semi-plausible arguments.

Unfortunately, after putting the spokesman up against the ropes, Beck completely misses the knockout punch, and simply moves on to some equally silly attack based on how many republican politicians ACORN has backed throughout history.  How many democratic candidates has, oh say… James Dobson of Focus on the Family backed?  Of course the answer is none, because his organization’s political ideology is closely aligned with the conservative right.  Same thing goes for ACORN (with the left).  I don’t care if they campaign and promote their ideas, just follow the law or suffer the consequences.

Glenn made a great point overall, but finishes it off with more arguments that just don’t make sense. (come to think of it, how many Democrats have you supported Mr. Beck?)

Good idea, but next time stick to your big guns.   Common Sense is always available and free of charge, you just have to use it.

For more details on ACORN’s shady inner workings, how they are even able to endorse political candidates as a non-profit entity, and how they are structured to avoid public scrutiny please see this excellent article.

UPDATE: In a new fishy twist, Michelle Malkin is reporting that Dem John Conyers is now backing down on his pledge to investigate ACORN… something stinks!

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Related Post: Week-end Wrap-up, What you might have missed last week.

The Grey Republic: A Look at What Divides Us

Within our modern society there is very little that we can classify as cut and dry, non-negotiable, agreed upon by everyone, black and white.  Most of us have never met a person that we agreed with on each and every issue.  As such we all have a few options when it comes to social interaction…  Sure, you could carefully structure your life so that you only spent time with a few select people. (where’s the fun in that?) You could of course choose to opt-out of people all together, an option being popularized by hermits everywhere. Or you could simply refrain from ever taking a position on anything.  Generally speaking though, at some point in our lives, we all must come to terms with the realization that part of what makes us unique is that every single member of our species is different, both internally and externally.

So how is any progress ever made?  Well, through one of our greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses.  Despite our differences, we naturally group with like-minded people.  It really is as simple as that, and yet another thing that makes the human race unique.  We see the results of this phenomenon around us literally every day from the moment we enter grade school to the day we die.  Despite it’s petty nature, our cliquey nature has yielded some impressive results over the years, from the golf foursome to Bill Gates not getting picked in dodge ball, only to build a computer and found Microsoft. (or was that bad?)  Our country first started breathing when a small group of people decided that there was enough common ground to break off from the most powerful and tyrannical nation on earth, in order to create their own, more perfect, union.

The difficulty is that the very same phenomena, if left unchecked, can cause serious problems as our country matures.  Within an established society, this “group with like-minded people” habit slowly starts to morph into permanent cultural and ideological divides.  The reason for this is diversity.  Don’t get me wrong, diversity is a great thing, a GREAT thing.  The problem comes into play when we let our diversity and our tendency to group with like-minded people get out of control.  We essentially let our diversity divide us. People stop worrying about the non-negotiables; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and start focusing on what divides them, which in turn breeds a sense of separation and indignation directed at those across the divide.

We see this everywhere, and its only encouraged by the media which is portraying politicians as “blasting” their opponents left and right. (pun intended)  I’m not here to name names, Olbermann, or point fingers, Limbaugh, but you know it’s true.  We are conditioned to have zero respect for the “enemy”, which only serves to widen the divides.  This is a slow process, a disease, which is helping to bring an extremely advanced democracy to its knees on a massive scale.

For example, how many have read this post and wondered which way this blog “slants”?  It makes sense that we naturally prefer to read things we agree with, because it is easier to agree.  And lets be honest, most folks (including me) love to get a pat on the back now and again.  Some more than others… again, no names, Janeane Garofalo.  But in order to move forward as a whole, as a country, we must let go of the team mentality, this us vs. them thing.

So what is the answer?  This much I know: No one will ever agree with everyone on every issue, therefore it is essential to discuss and understand a position from every represented side in order to establish a mutual respect.  Not that it wont be a heated process, (if you are as passionate as I am, a very heated process) but in the end, a well-thought out argument/opinion/idea should foster a respect born out of common sense.  Once a mutual respect is found, a natural focus on what we have in common will evolve into compromise, while what divides us slips into the background.

If we never get back to the basics and try to understand each other, we will never respect each other; if we never respect each other we have no hope for any compromise.  Understanding, Respect, Compromise,  only in that order.

So, to that end, for every issue that cannot be considered cut and dry or black and white, there is the Grey Republic, putting what divides us under the light of independent thought and common sense.