This story was previously titled "Controversial Facebook Bigwig Tied To ACORN Sting Videographer"
Controversial Facebook Bigwig Tied To ACORN Sting Videographer »
Posted By jovial 3 months ago in Political Opinion
Article: A new report reveals that the 'undercover pimp' videographer who secretly taped fictitious abuses taking place in ACORN offices may have tried to downplay funding received from controversial Facebook investor Peter Thiel and others shortly before he began his so-called 'independent' investigation.
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jovial
Grew up In Brooklyn. Joined the Navy in 1976 stayed in 10 years. Aircraft Electronics tech. Worked for Major Govt. contractor then settled in California ...
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jovial3 months ago
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FTA:
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"James O'Keefe, the man who dressed as a pimp to secretly videotape ACORN employees condoning illegal activities was found to have received funding from Peter Thiel, a politically controversial Conservative hedge fund baron - along with several other conservative donors. According to the Village Voice, Thiel admits paying O'Keefe approximately $10,000 for a video project despite the videographer's claims he is "absolutely independent", repeatedly stating he was not funded by outside parties."-
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jovial3 months ago
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There are a lot of people that have money and will pay to have the status quo maintained. They stir up controversy so that Republicans get stirred up about it and start trouble. The real investors remain silent in the background scheming about which string to pull next.
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Progressive3 months ago
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Perhaps the worst thing revealed in this report is the alleged lying by O'Keefe to cover his tracks after the fact. This shows his awareness of popular perception of the underhanded 'astroturf' movement, in which well-oiled conservative groups pay extra to create the illusion that the protests against Obama's policies are coming from average middle class citizens.
Instead, we see these efforts are funded and aided by the wealthiest of the anti-populist upper class looking to suppress voter turn out in poor and working class American communities, continuing the work of the Bush Administration during the DOJ firing scandal and the vote-caging outrage in which lists of voters from heavily Democratic districts were discovered being sent from Karl Rove's RNC office server to a White House web server in order to intentionally bounce eligible voters from election rolls.-
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Beau78903 months ago
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"Perhaps the worst thing revealed in this report is the alleged lying by O'Keefe to cover his tracks after the fact. This shows his awareness of popular perception of the underhanded 'astroturf' movement, in which well-oiled conservative groups pay extra to create the illusion that the protests against Obama's policies are coming from average middle class citizens."
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OK, I'll say it. O'Keefe and the others who blindly take up the cause of the rich in an effort to support the myth of this false populism are...useful idiots.
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Tumultuous3 months ago
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I recently read that James O'Keefe stated that he and his female associate supported themselves and financed the film for $1300. O'Keefe claimed they were forced to live on power bars and Subway sandwiches for a two month period.
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In reality, O'Keefe had his right-wing sugar daddy - Peter Thiel, supplying greenbacks for his con-man documentaries.
From the moment this story broke, my intuition suggested this sting was funded by the conservative right-wing hate machine.
Go figure.-
hyperbolaComment removed: Spam
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hyperbola3 months ago
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We should all be aware of what is really behind FaceBook. Pretty much the kind of corrupt right-wing oligarchs that we need to expose and destroy any credibility they ever had with well-deserved ridicule.
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"With Friends Like These… (the politics behind the people behind Facebook)"
But Thiel is more than just a clever and avaricious capitalist. He is a futurist philosopher and neocon activist. A philosophy graduate from Stanford, in 1998 he co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth, which is a detailed attack on liberalism and the multiculturalist ideology that dominated Stanford. He claimed that the "multiculture" led to a lessening of individual freedoms. While a student at Stanford, Thiel founded a rightwing journal, still up and running, called The Stanford Review - motto: Fiat Lux ("Let there be light"). Thiel is a member of TheVanguard.Org, an internet-based neoconservative pressure group that was set up to attack MoveOn.org, a liberal pressure group that works on the web. Thiel calls himself "way libertarian".
... This little taster from their website will give you an idea of their vision for the world: "TheVanguard.Org is an online community of Americans who believe in conservative values, the free market and limited government as the best means to bring hope and ever-increasing opportunity to everyone, especially the poorest among us." Their aim is to promote policies that will "reshape America and the globe". TheVanguard describes its politics as "Reaganite/Thatcherite". ...
... So, Thiel's politics are not in doubt. What about his philosophy? I listened to a podcast of an address Thiel gave about his ideas for the future. His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes' famous characterisation of life as "nasty, brutish and short", and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature. Value now exists in imaginary things...
...So by his own admission, Thiel is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls "nature", and install a virtual world in its place, and it is in this context that we must view the rise of Facebook. Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation, and Thiel is a bright young thing in the neoconservative pantheon, with a penchant for far-out techno-utopian fantasies. Not someone I want to help get any richer.
http://rockthetruth.blogspot.com/2008/01/behind-fa... -
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injest3 months ago
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According to the Village Voice, Through a representative”
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Through a representative an unnamed unknown source?
ROFLMAO! That’s weak.
“Thiel admits paying O'Keefe approximately $10,000 for a video project”
Through an unnamed unknown source?
For A video project. Is ACORN “THE” “A” video project mentioned?
Show me the proof!
Do you have anything that will PROVE the ACORN employees, ALL 5 tapes so far, did NOT say what they were recorded saying.
If you can’t do that you got nothing. You also are defending child sex slave trade.
“As we learn O'Keefe was actually a young operative given extensive support”
The Institute started O'Keefe off with a $500 "Balance in Media" grant in 2005”
In 2005 would have been 19 years old, maybe just out of high school.
Hanna would have been 14 or 15 years old at the time!
Your conspiracy theory is both lame and weak.
“In fact, one thing that I have noticed……..is that all of these conspiracy theories depend on the perpetrators being endlessly clever. I think you’ll find the facts also work if you assume everyone is endlessly stupid”-
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jovial3 months ago
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The original link at the Village Voice is here.
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http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archive...
"But O'Keefe turns out to have a substantial history of being funded by conservative figures.
In February, a video called "Taxpayers Clearing House" was posted to YouTube. In it, O'Keefe and others drive around in a van with a logo on the side that looks like the "Publishers Clearing House" vehicle known for showing up and surprising sweepstakes winners with oversized checks. In O'Keefe's video, working class Blacks are shown jumping up and down in excitement - until they learn that O'Keefe is actually delivering a bill for $28,000, their share of the federal banks bailout.
O'Keefe told a friend, Liz Farkas, that he had approached Thiel with the idea for the video, and had walked away with "approximately $30,000" to produce it. "
Thiel denies he is directly involved in the ACORn video, but his financing of the video in the link along with money from other donors yet to be identified may have been all he needed. I don't buy the statement from O'Keefe that he struggled to make those videos. He was funded and won't say who it was in order to protect his golden goose .
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dunkirk3 months ago
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ROFLMAO, so you support funding by Soros or is it a problem ONLY when the right gets caught? Watch for a backlash from this working in ACORNs advantage. Its amazing how the right wingers continually support agendas that continually work against them.
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BB643 months ago
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So what's the big deal where his funding came from. He came to their area offering to open a business featuring child prostitutes and the well trained staff of Acorn offered their assistance and advise. That tells me Acorn is a major problem. It's clear, they were more than ready and able to recommend how to skirt our laws and they condoned the practice, unbelievable. For them to accept the idea of child prostitution and then recommend how to avoid getting caught, is unconscionable. Since this happened in more than one office, it's clear dishonesty and corruption are the norm for Acorn and all funding should end now. Tax exempt status too should be pulled. It's time the get the Treasury involved and do a full audit of every book, paper, letter and whatever else they do should be carefully reviewed. If they condone or in the 3 cases, support child prostitution, it's clear there isn't a crime low enough they won't support. The RICO Act clearly needs to be considered.
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amerigus3 months ago
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Here's why it matters where the funding came from: the wealthy right wing financiers looking to take down ACORN have been paying extra to make it look like it's regular people standing up against them. That would be the problem - the dishonesty in hoodwinking Conservatives to think this was a popular uprising when it is actually hired guns.
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The article explains that O'Keefe claimed he wasn't being funded. Then he was caught. Is it all the same to you? What you seem to be missing is that fraud, waste and abuse is everywhere - you can go to your local H Block and find advisors skirting tax laws. The reason the rich guys like Thiel want to take ACORN out is because they also register millions of Democrats. So don't pretend this is about justice, this is a purely political they are paying to disguise as justice.
If you really cared about saving taxpayer money or solving crimes, look no further than KBR who has been caught overcharging the taxpayer multiple times, killed US soldiers and raped their own employees and is still shielding criminals from prosecution. ACORN's $55 million over 15 years is squat compared to KBR's $32 billion just since 2001. So do you care about justice for all or just ACORN?
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