Patterico's Pontifications

10/20/2008

ACORN: Sweatshop of Fear

Filed under: General — Karl @ 9:52 am



[Posted by Karl]

The New York Post reports:

Pushed to meet daily quotas and bullied by bosses if they didn’t, Ohio ACORN workers faked voter registrations, signed up people more than once, and even paid off registrants to keep from being fired, its canvassers told The Post.

“Every day, there was pressure on us. Every single day,” said Teshika Elder, a Cleveland single mom of three who worked for ACORN this summer.

Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds comments:  “Sounds like a real sweatshop.  Somebody should organize a union or something…”

He is not the first to come up with that idea, which is why ACORN has been repeatedly dinged by the Department of Labor for illegal union-busting activities, as detailed by the Employment Policies Institute:

Despite its ardent public support of higher wages and union membership for all workers, ACORN has made repeated attempts to block the unionization of its own workforce while paying below-minimum-wage salaries to its employees. In addition to the extensive union-busting detailed by the NLRB (see Appendix A), ACORN unsuccessfully sued the state of California to be exempted from the minimum wage. In its appeal of that suit, ACORN argued that the reduction in the number of employees resulting from the minimum wage would violate its First Amendment rights. ACORN’s claims were labeled “absurd” by the presiding judge (see Appendix B).

Just another reason why Barack Obama has been lying about his long relationship with ACORN and trying to airbrush it from history.

–Karl

24 Responses to “ACORN: Sweatshop of Fear”

  1. To be a Leftist, you must advocate certain beliefs, like tolerance, fairness, and love.

    You don’t actually have to practice them …

    JayC (9e9d67)

  2. “Do as I say…”

    The contrast between the role of women in the Obama campaign and in the McCain campaign is another example. Obama lectures about equal pay for women but doesn’t practice it.

    Mike K (1ac1c7)

  3. Sorry, but you’re looking beyond the Good Intentions of a leftist organization, which is forbidden.

    I might also add that it is racist.

    Racists.

    Kurt (5a6552)

  4. A caller to Rush had a similar point. Obama raised $150 million last month. When is he going to spread the wealth to less fortunate candidates?

    zmdavid (a957d5)

  5. Karl, you are being completely irresponsible in thinking that ACORN, an orginization dedicated to advancing and full-filling mankind, should be held to the standards of labor law, which (as we all know) was only implemented to deal with the criminal, evil, actions of degenerate Wall-Street Capitalists who have no regard for human-rights or civic-betterment.
    How dare you!

    Another Drew (25937f)

  6. Hah! The contortions the Republican base is going through over losing this election are getting funnier and funnier.

    Don’t worry guys, the Democrats will screw everything up, too, and you’ll be back in power in just a few years. Promise. You’re just getting a little “time out” right now.

    Imagine if our choices in rest of our lives were as miserably limited as politics:

    Sick of peas? Try some carrots. Sick of carrots? Try some peas? Sick of peas? Try some carrots. Sick of carrots? Try some peas . . . etc., etc.,

    Phil (6d9f2f)

  7. In other words, it isn’t ACORN’s fault that their workers faked voter registrations. ACORN simply urged its employees to be as productive as possible. They certainly never encouraged voter fraud.

    And the ACORN workers who faked voter registrations can’t be held responsible either. After all, they were being bullied by their bosses to meet quotas. You wouldn’t want honest, hardworking people like Teshika Elder, a randomly selected single mother of three, to lose their jobs, now would you? Of course not.

    Clearly the blame for this distraction lies squarely on the shoulders of John McCain and the Republicans.

    Frostee (0c7fe4)

  8. Personally, I’m loving the pictures of the nonpartisan ACORN workers wearing the T-Shirts that read “ACORN Votes Obama.”

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  9. I also enjoy Phil’s daily contortions to explain that Obama’s associations with various slimeball idividuals, organizations and ideologies are mere distractions and not character flaws or reasons not to vote for the most inexperienced candidate for President in the country’s history. I don’t think he’s persuading too many people on this site.

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  10. Unbelievable. The Los Angeles Times finally ran a story about voter registration fraud. They found a Republican who did it, and ran the story in the California section. I guess they’ll have to amend today’s “no big deal” editorial about voter registration fraud to say that it is a big deal when Republicans do it.

    Aldo (4ca181)

  11. To be a rightest, you have to pretend to speak for Jesus.

    You just don’t have to actually read the Bible or know what He stood for.

    truthnjustice (d99227)

  12. There was a good long post yesterday on Obama’s Fraud Factory over at the Protein Wisdom Pub with some worthwhile links. One of the links to Nonprofitquarterly.org includes interesting comments from people who appear to be former ACORN insiders. Worth a look.

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  13. To criticize a rightist, you don’t actually have to know what one stands for, you can just make the whole thing up.

    tnj – I’m lookin’ at you.

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  14. Solution for the poor, harassed ACORN canvassers:

    *U*N*I*O*N*

    –furious

    furious (56af6d)

  15. To criticize a “right*e*st”, you have to first know that it is spelled “*R*igh*i*st”; otherwise you’re simply misspelling an already grammatically incorrect superlative.

    T-n-J scores the rare two-strikes-on-one-pitch. Bravo!

    furious (56af6d)

  16. Actually rightest (TM) is the award I give to the craziest statement made on a right-wing board for the week. I don’t really check this board out that much because there are other conservative boards with much more constructive and interesting opinions than this trite little trash heap. I do remember giving out the award to a gentleman who earlier claimed that Obama’s election would be the downfall of America, and would be the last election held. That is the right-wing equivalent of a ‘Bush planned 9/11’ crazy, but I digress…

    truthnjustice (d99227)

  17. truther hangs out in trash heaps. I knew it all along. Maybe nobody else will take him.

    Mike K (1ac1c7)

  18. So your counterpoint is an admission that this site is a garbage dump? Wow, good one…

    truthnjustice (d99227)

  19. tnj: I’ve been looking for conservative websites that are better than this one. Can you tell me the ones you are talking about? Thanks in advance.

    kaf (59b8c4)

  20. Of course if Obama were President, poor Ms. Elder and the rest of the ACORN employees who were treated unfairly wouldn’t have to worry because they would be a home watching Judge Judy waiting on their government checks. They wouldn’t have had to hold down a (gasp) job! Vote Obama and his leftist illuminati views for a New America!

    Jeff (9f2f2a)

  21. Not to rain on this parade, which I actually love, but when you hire kids and homeless you are hiring people who see pressure every time an alarm clock wakes you up. I really wonder how much pressure any of us would feel if some smelly ugly woman told us to get more sigs or else? Or if some twenty something hippie ordered us to get off our butts? Pressure only if we are failures to begin with. $9 per hour? WTF “works” for $9 per hour?

    howard432 (cc8b85)

  22. “WTF “works” for $9 per hour?”

    doward – That would be the rich, once Obama is done sharing the wealth.

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)


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