Its not the workers. Its the entire organization 240. Where did all these workers learn these criminal activities?
dont you think it is strange how they all give the same advice to cover illegal activities in each of these offices? And the filmmaker said there are at least 5 more cities to come.
This is where I disagree with you. It's not like this is some esoteric advic1ce. It's all pretty obvious.
So, here's a little story. While I was in college and for a few years afterwards, I did a lot of volunteer work. Among the places I volunteered were a drop-in center on e. 77th and an outreach center on 40th and 9th. I started out doing labor and administrative stuff at both, but at the midtown location, I eventually became a counselor. Here's the thing about working with poor people: you are not surprised when you learn that they make their money illegally. So many of my former clients worked off the books that I didn't even blink when they told me how they earned money. My primary duties as a counselor involved helping to get people into programs and helping people find rooms for the night. For certain programs, you had to be really fucked up, so I would let my clients know in a roundabout way, that they'd only be accepted if they showed up high or drunk (or at least appeared to be so) and hadn't showered for a few day. A lot of the young ladies who showed up at the center were prostitutes looking for a room for the evening. Other than some basic literature explaining the dangers of prostitution, we basically just told them not to let house staff know what they did and don't bring any johns back to the room if they stayed there on a long term basis. Once, some girl that had moved here from the midwest visited us but told us she was afraid of staying in shelters, so another counselor advised her to call an ambulance and spend the night in an emergency room.
When I was about 25, I had this client who was about 23 or 24 who was having some problems getting id. He had an off the books job, but he couldn't rent a room or get a legitimate job without state id. We went through several processes and then decided the most expedient measure would be getting a public benefits card because it provided the four proofs of identity he needed and didn't have to apply for a state id. When we met after he got his benefits card, he told me about how the welfare counselor told him about a few holes in the system when he explained to her that he didn't think he'd be able to use the card since he didn't have a home.
I know this is a long post that will go mostly ignored, but my point is that the homeless centers I worked in and NYS welfare office aren't organized criminal enterprises. If you want to describe the behavior I wrote about above as immoral, I wouldn't even bother to dispute that. But, realistically, when you work with the poor or homeless, you weigh the cost of helping them (or what you consider helping them) vs. the cost of strictly following the letter of the law. While I have no issues with the fact that these workers have been fired, nor do I have much pity for them, from experience, I can understand their motivations and I don't see this as some sort of villainous racket.
So, there's the anecdotal portion of my post. Here's the analytical:
I think the mainr difference in how we are reacting to this scandal is that you are viewing it through the prism of possible election fraud and the fact that this validates what you've been led to believe. The fact of the matter is that the "election fraud" ACORN is so often accused of simply doesn't exist and the registration scandal could never result in widespread voter fraud.
