It’s not that hard to understand the difference.

And as I said initially…

ACORN has never done NSP work, V. They would be competing against groups that have. Doesn’t mean they can’t try.

It also doesn’t mean that because ACORN is eligible to compete for $4.2b that they have received $5b in funds as a payout by the Obama administration. The latter was your initial claim. (i.e. “…You don’t think they gave ACORN $5 Billion in the Spendulus for nothing, do you?”.)

When caught, he cites one ACORN affiliate and claims that that proves that ACORN won’t get this money

Simply not what I said.

I pointed out, and so did Factcheck, that they are eligible to compete at the state level for funds. Your cite says they are now eligible to compete at the Federal level. Great. But they still have to compete for those funds — along side many others. They haven’t been given those funds. They haven’t been given $5 billion dollars by the Obama administration.

Your source doesn’t list a single ACORN group that has ever received NSP funds. Your source doesn’t list a single ACORN group that is currently competing to receive those funds. — Vitter hasn’t even done so. No one is disputing that the could; they haven’t yet and there’s no evidence that any element plans to.

To review, “can compete for”, “might compete for”, “is eligible to compete for” is not the same thing as has received. It is definitely not the same thing as has received as a payoff — what V, Lime, and now you, ND30, has said has happened.

And therein lies the problem, V and Livewire; we can provide all the facts we wish from multiple outside sources, but not a single one of them in any way relates to Jody’s talking points. Therefore, they must be wrong.

What makes it really funny is when Jody’s own talking points prove him wrong. Example:

How $4.2 billion in 2009 monies ACORN has never received, never applied for, have no plans to apply for, are at a competitive disadvantage in receiving should they try, and that would still need to be approved and disbursed by state agencies other the Obama administration, is any kind of bribe, remuneration, payolla, or evidence of corruption, is beyond me.

But his own source clearly states:

Boehner and Vitter claimed to smell a rat in the stimulus package’s language that allows nonprofit entities to compete directly for NSP funds. When the NSP was created last year, only state and local governments were eligible to participate in the program.

When caught, he cites one ACORN affiliate and claims that that proves that ACORN won’t get this money — while ignoring 173 others who are more than capable of doing so, in line with ACORN’s past history of taking money from one spot and using bookkeeping swaps among its affiliates to move it to something else.

Jody’s position is that no corruption exists unless ACORN confesses to it..

That’s simply not what I’ve said. There could be corruption going on with Acorn; there are investigations on a variety of fronts over many issues by lots of organizations. It will turn up or not as a result of those investigations. But corruption over voter fraud still doesn’t mean payoffs of blockfunds.

V made two very simple statements, that $5 billion… billion… dollars in stimulus funds had been given directly to Acorn by the Obama administration as a payoff and that the administration had hired Acorn to conduct the census.

$5 billion is a lot of money, more than Acorn has ever operated with to date. That should be fairly easy to document; especially by the person who publicly made that allegation — presumably Boehner and Vitter.

Yet nothing has turned up.

Further, the hiring of Acorn for the Census is another fairly easy thing to document. Contracts… Acorn offices assigned districts to tally… Acorn hiring it’s members to walk those districts. Something. Especially in light of Congressional inquiries. Easy.

But again, nothing.

All that anyone here has been able to do is to say in regards to the monies is: “Well, they’re being investigated for voter fraud AND they received $53 million in government originated funds since 1994. Therefore that proves they’ve received a $5b payout from the Obama administration!”

For the Census bit, the head of the Agency was asked directly by Congress if he’d hired Acorn and was told no, they hadn’t. He told Congress in fact couldn’t, because Census workers are Federal employees, requiring a raft of procedures to follow, not the least of which is an FBI background check. No subcontracting possible.

Acorn had been asked to get the word out that the CB was hiring, as had a large number of other organizations. But everyone still had to be hired by the Census Bureau, following the existing Federal procedures. So the story that Acorn was doing the census, for multiple reasons, is wrong.

I pointed all of this out with three cites from Factcheck, showing both bits were rumors and quarter truths that had taken on a life of their own when set loose in the wild of culture. Nothing new, though. Happens all the time.

Response? Everyone is lying…. It’s all a conspiracy…. Obama is bad… This unrelated article, my beliefs and conjecture prove it. Your are blindly partisan if you can’t see it….

And that’s nothing new either. Happens all the time. On the Left and on the Right. And, most especially, right here.

ps. Live, “Limewire” might keep coming up because of the P2P software program Limewire. Our brains can be funny and substitute similar sounding words.

Yet, under his Crap and Trade bill, the government has the authority to energy audit every private home in America.

There already is such a sign to anyone willing to look; Jody’s position is that no corruption exists unless ACORN confesses to it; all denials have to be taken at face value and can not be questioned.

(aside: What is it with ‘Lime’ I see people do it all the time, is the L key really that close to the M key? )

You seem to settle on proof being defined as a large neon sign flashing pointing to “Corruption going on over here!” In ACORN’s case they’re playing a shell game, much like the guy on the street corner. The facts remain that the rules have been changed to benefit an organization that has a history of being, shall we say, fast and loose with the law? It will take some untangling, but it’s safe to say that you will see money ending up in ACORNs hands after it’s been through several shell companies.

(Persoanlly I think we should subcontract the census to the LDS church. Hells they’re always out going door to door anyway

But Boehner and Vitter compound their error by treating different terms as if they had the same meaning. ACORN does indeed work in redeveloping neighborhoods, but the work that it does is not the same sort of work for which NSP provides funding. By pretending as if the two are the same, Boehner and Vitter commit the fallacy of equivocation.

Project Vote? Not NSP monies.

“Could be” given to is not the same thing as “was.”

“Multiple shell groups that could” is not the same as “multiple shell groups that did.”

None of the above is the same thing as “$5 billion in NSP funds was handed out to Acorn as a payoff by the Obama administration.”

It’s really not that hard.

From Jody’s own FactCheck link:

Boehner and Vitter claimed to smell a rat in the stimulus package’s language that allows nonprofit entities to compete directly for NSP funds. When the NSP was created last year, only state and local governments were eligible to participate in the program.

In short, those funds USED to be disbursed by state agencies. Now they can be handed out DIRECTLY by the Federal government to “nonprofits”.

Meanwhile, there’s a small problem; when you talk about ACORN, which group do you mean?

An internal report by a lawyer for the community organizing group Acorn raises questions about whether the web of relationships among its 174 affiliates may have led to violations of federal laws………

But Ms. Kingsley found that the tight relationship between Project Vote and Acorn made it impossible to document that Project Vote’s money had been used in a strictly nonpartisan manner. Until the embezzlement scandal broke last summer, Project Vote’s board was made up entirely of Acorn staff members and Acorn members.

In short, merely looking up “ACORN” gives you only a partial picture. ACORN has created literally hundreds of shell organizations, owned and controlled by the central one, for the express purpose of making multiple applications and receiving monies from multiple sources. As the article I linked previously talked about, they shift money constantly between affiliates to cover debts at the other ones. They are so interwoven that it’s impossible for them to demonstrate any separation whatsoever – except when providing cover to the Obama Party and Barack Obama, who himself paid them to do his bidding last year and lied about it.

V… and now you… have said those 2009 NSP funds are set aside for them, a “payoff” in Vitter’s words.

How $4.2 billion in 2009 monies ACORN has never received, never applied for, have no plans to apply for, are at a competitive disadvantage in receiving should they try, and that would still need to be approved and disbursed by state agencies other the Obama administration, is any kind of bribe, remuneration, payolla, or evidence of corruption, is beyond me.

Further, how any of that supports a claim that Factcheck is both wrong and crooked, that ACORN has been hired to conduct the census, and that the head of the CB has lied to Congress about this, is both baffling and ridiculous.

As far as the $53 million in total monies Acorn has received since 1994, again, they plainly have, despite the spokesperson changing the subject. I’d consider that “significant” and at odds with his statement.

But receiving $53 million over 15 years from an assortment of state agencies, multiple billion-dollar appropriation bills and two national administrations is still not a support for the assertion that the 2009 NSP funds were a payoff to Acorn by the Obama administration.

You spoke before of cool-aid. What are you drinking, Lime?

I don’t think you and I are reading the same articles.

From the Examiner Link:

Scott Levenson, ACORN’s national spokesman, said “we have received no significant federal funding.” When asked by The Examiner about the $53 million, Levenson said: “If you listen to some of the Republicans who are going to get a billion dollars from the stimulus package, I’m still waiting for my share. Their claims are overinflated, this is a gimmick and an attempt to demonize ACORN.”

So their answer to “What about -this- 53m” the reply was “Lets change the subject.”

The problem is, ACORN’s pattern of systemic abuse should disqualify them from getting anything, but the dems are defending them.

Also wanted to add, I’m not assuming you’re drinking the Obama kool-aid….

Livewire, non of the links you posted support VtK’s statments.

Yes, ACORN is eligible for funds… alongside hundreds of other agencies nation wide, funds that weren’t directed specifically to them, that aren’t distributable by a no-bid process and that ACORN would seem to be at a disadvantage to bid for considering they have no history in the specific area the money is available for.

Further, again, in terms of the ACORN recruiting workers, the testimony of the Census head before congress and the hiring practices of the Federal government show that the reporting on the matter is in error.

Yes, the CB has enlisted ACORN, along side a host of other agencies and groups, conservative, liberal and everything in between, in getting the word out that the CB is hiring workers.

But none of those groups, including ACORN, is doing the hiring, is even able to do the hiring under the law. Hiring is fully in the purvue of the CB and the Feds, and involve many things, including a background check by the FBI.

All of that was summarized in the Factcheck links I posted.

V was simply wrong in his statements. None of the sources you have provided do anything to contradict what Factcheck, which was another part of Vs initial criticisms, already reported. There’s no cool-aid involved in noting any of that.

The spiking of a story critical to Obama is a different issue. As are the census figures in Detroit. I will say, reading the one news story everyone seems to be citing I don’t see anything in the text that says the numbers were altered at the request of the Obama administration or on the command of the agencies current head. I do see a disagreement between the CB and the MCG, with everyone arguing over why their numbers are better than the other guys.

What are offering in proof of deliberate malfeasance on the part of Obama other than a proximate cause for the discrepancy in the counts?