CBD wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Then it's uncovered that the same guy did the same sting in Washington and got the same results. Ooppsie.
Which doesn't prove that it's an organization-wide problem, with instructions coming from the top to enable pimps and child prostitutes.
I never said that. I have said repeatedly that this Isn't what I am saying. Please stop with the lame strawman.
I said that the procedures they use lend themselves to people doing this. I'm quite sure that nowhere in their training were the told to help people create child prostitution rings, nor am I arguing that. I am arguing that the instructions they are given, and the procedures they follow, and whatever work evaluation criteria they operate under, all combine to make this sort of thing happen more often than it should. By a huge margin.
The same sort of thing caused the massive voter registration fraud Acorn engaged in. No one told anyone to falsify registrations. They just paid them based on the number they got, constantly pressured them to register more people, and didn't put any sort of mechanism in place to verify registrations much less discourage any of their workers from falsifying them.
Anyone with half a brain knows what will happen, but Acorn claims it just didn't know that people would falsify registration under those conditions.
It was a lame excuse then, and it's a lame excuse now. You set up conditions and expectations and rules. What happens as a result of those things is your responsibility. It's not rocket science to figure out how people will react to various situations. That's *why* folks on the right are sneaking in stings against groups like Acorn and Planned Parenthood. Because they look at the structure and the "look the other way" mechanisms in place and realize, as any rational person should, that this will result in abuse. And sure enough, they find it. They find workers at PP pressuring teens to have abortions. They're not supposed to. It's technically against the rules, but we all know they do it anyway because no one enforces the rules, and they make more money if they break it.
Same deal here. More clients means more government money. Which means more influence. All the incentives in place in Acorn encourage them to provide aid to clients at any cost and to ignore anything which might get in the way. Why be surprised at their willingness to falsify the information so that they qualify? That there were two willing to do this to help someone create a child prostitution ring is just the extreme example. It's a reasonable bet that it's much much more common for them to simply help folks falsify their income claims and professions in less extreme ways in order to qualify for various aid packages.
That all follows from culture. How is an organization set up. Acorn is set up to maximize the likelyhood of this happening. Of course that's not their objective. Their objective is to get as many folks on public assistance as possible, and hopefully wrangle as many organized volunteers as possible as well. But if they do that with no checks on how they're doing it, you will have abuses like this occur. It's pretty much guaranteed.
