Barack Obama - The Problem, not the Solution

I have been mentioning ACORN in a lot of posts lately. In case you only get your news from the drive-by media, you wouldn't know too much about the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, except maybe that the original financial bailout plan included grants to them.

But, if you consult a multitude of sources and not rely on liars (on the left, they don't monger fear, they outright lie), you'd discover that this was one of those organizations Barack Obama community organized for, and it's one of the reasons the housing crisis has occurred, and it's one of the pieces of the puzzle that links Democrats to groups like ACORN, and Freddie MAC and Fannie Mae. It's also a friend of Democrats since it excels at registering dead and imagined people to vote.

Mona Charen has a column linked at realclearpolitics.com today that provides more insight into this group's tactics. Also, the site rotten acorn lists ACORN's many transgressions. A detailed 2006 report exposing ACORN as a left-wing, Democratic front group is available for all who care to read.

Here's a short list of ACORN transgressions:

• In 2006 ACORN registered 1,800 new voters in Washington. With the exception of six, all of the names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the "worst case of election fraud in our state's history. ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms." Pretty good gig if you can get it!
  
• ACORN members have been prosecuted for voter fraud in a number of states, see a list of ACORN's illegal activities here.
  
• ACORN proudly touted "affirmative action" lending and pressured banks to make subprime loans. Madeline Talbott, a Chicago ACORN leader, boasted of "dragging banks kicking and screaming" into dubious loans.
• ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott hired him to train her staff -- the very people who would later descend on Chicago's banks as shakedown artists.
• Obama later funneled money to ACORN through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
• The Clinton Administration found that ACORN was misspending government grants designed to help counsel the poor.
• ACORN sued the state of California to get out of paying its own employees the state minimum wage.

The New York Times exposes fraud at ACORN and another community group and contrasts the way they dealt with it:

• Acorn chose to treat the embezzlement of nearly $1 million eight years ago as an internal matter and did not even notify its board.
• Dale Rathke remained on Acorn’s payroll until a month ago (June 2008), when disclosure of his theft by foundations and other donors forced the organization to dismiss him.
• The fact that most of the handful of people who did not disclose the fraud when they learned of it eight years ago still work for Acorn or its affiliates concerns many of the group’s financial supporters

So, Barack Obama has worked for, supported, and abetted an organization that has blackmailed banks into giving bad loans, has committed massive voter fraud, and that doesn't even follow its own alleged principles. If it didn't sound so much like the US Congress, I would almost hold him to task for it.

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