Post-election Obama and ACORN

Post-election Obama and ACORN ACORN enthusiastically endorsed candidate Obama in the 2008 presidential race. A fundamentally unethical group, ACORN aims at more than community organizing: it proposes social engineering. Even Fannie Mae is involved.

ACORN made headlines during the past presidential campaign, not just for candidate Barack Obama’s past work with the organization, but also for revelations that it was implicated in voter fraud and embezzlement. The situation was serious enough – and public enough – that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ charity, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, decided “to end CCHD funding of ACORN organizations because of serious concerns about financial accountability, organizational performance and political partisanship.” And the CCHD doesn’t defund the progressives lightly.

ACORN, an acronym for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, considers itself the nation’s largest community organization – and a highly partisan one, at that. Its political action committee, ACORN Votes, to take an example, enthusiastically endorsed Senator Obama’s run for the US presidency in February 2008.

Like most of the large community-organizing networks, ACORN’s roots reach back to Saul Alinsky, the founder of contemporary organizing who left behind his “vision” in two books, Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals.

It’s a fundamentally unethical vision, however. Alinsky teaches, for example, that in politics, the ends justify the means. Specifically, he teaches organizers to seek political power by any means that accomplishes that end. Local agendas of “self-interest” serve a larger, organizational agenda that is sometimes diametrically opposed to the values of its membership. To support the “dissonance” this creates, faith-based institutions are re-evangelized to embrace liberationist theory. These are serious problems.

There are practical matters, too. Aside from instances of malfeasance – which are merely an incarnation of Alinsky’s amoral world of power-grabs – citizens must wrestle with the specific programs ACORN supports, and that support ACORN.

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…And motivated a “housing bailout” package to rescue Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by providing them with an unlimited credit line and feeding millions of dollars back to ACORN.

Now, the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae programs are more than just about housing. Can we say “social engineering?” Both foundations have given money to the Washington, D.C. chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG-DC) for years. Freddie Mac has awarded grants to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest gay lobby group, to assist homosexual couples adopt children. Fannie Mae has sponsored a number of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) events – whose purpose is positive media portrayal of homosexuality.

Most egregiously, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made substantial campaign donations to Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), an openly gay congressman who chairs the committee having oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How is such corruption possible? Some suggest that the fact Herb Moses, a former partner of Frank’s, was an executive at Fannie Mae during time Frank was serving on the Committee, might have something to do with it.

So, now what? The federal government has a Self-help Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP) to fund non-profit organizations (like ACORN) help those “who otherwise would not become homeowners.” One stipulation, however, is that prospective homebuyers “must apply through current SHOP grantees” – of which ACORN is, of course, one. Political junkies expect the new legislative session to approve a $10 million appropriation for the SHOP program. Not bad.

That’s small potatoes, however, next to the $1 billion for Community Development Block Grants or the $4.1 billion for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. ACORN has its feet in these doors, too. So, it’s hardly surprising to learn that ACORN’s current campaign is passage of the Economic Recovery Package. There’s gold in them ‘ther ills.

See www.acorn.org, “ACORN and Allies Launch Nationwide Economic Recovery Campaign”

Stimulus bill: the audacity of pork, Chicago-style, where every vote counts..twice

by Arthur Bruzzone, SF Politics Examiner Previous You have to credit the President Obama and the democrats for audacious constituent relations. The 642 page stimulus bill is rich in the Chicago tradition of political payoffs.

The House Tax Committee has yet to find one new job in the bill.

Start with $4.2 billion to ACORN – an organization that’s being investigated in a dozen states for blatant voter fraud, and who’s leaders were forced to apologize for “mistakes.” You have to believe that ACORN can create a job or two with $4.2 billion.

It’s all about payback, Chicago-style. While former President Bush pumped up faith-based charities, Obama has put progressive-based ACORN on steroids.

Let’s try to find jobs in the following: Digital TV coupons ($650 million), new government cars ($600 million,) a $87 billion Medicaid bailout, $1 billion for Amtrak, $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, and $150 million for the Smithsonian.

More new job searching in the following: $83 earned income credit for those who don’t pay income taxes, and $20 billion for food stamps.

Public employee unions also got theirs, $6 billion for urban transit systems. The teachers’ unions will be pleased with the $66 billion allotted for education.

President Obama has managed to placate every major group and institution that supported him during his presidential campaign.

That’s Chicago. In the 1910s and 1920s, that political environment let organized crime flourish to the point that many Chicago policemen earned more money from pay-offs than from the city. This same culture led directly to the Chicago Black Sox scandal of game fixing by the Chicago White Sox in 1919.

Audacious seems to mild a description the transposition of Chicago political culture to Washington, D.C. in less than two weeks.

It comes at a costs. The $825 billion ‘earmarked’ in the stimulus bill is equivalent to borrowing $10,520 from every family in America.

The Democrats and the President will have their stimulus package. It will have little impact on the economy or the current serious credit crisis. In the process, they have sown the seeds of a new opposition, one that is leaderless at the moment. But that will change. (There’s that word again, with new denotation.)

I’m going to break this down into very small phases so there can be no misunderstanding, ok?

1. ACORN paid people to collect voter registrations. This is not a crime

2. Some of those people filled out bogus registration forms to increase their pay. This is a crime, but not one committed by ACORN

3. ACORN turned these forms in to the state. This was not a crime. Failure to do so would be a crime.

Seriously, think about what you’re suggesting. Let’s say I run Killfile’s Registration Assistance and Plumbing Supplies (KRAPS). Now KRAPS goes out and finds 100 college students and asks them to collect voter registrations... paying them for their efforts of course.

Each college student brings me back 1000 or so forms! I have 100,000 voter registrations! Hooray!

Now, if I weren’t obligated to turn them all into the state, no matter how suspect they might be, my partisan side might come out. I’d say to myself “Self, you have here hundreds of thousands of voter registration forms, many of which have a party affiliation clearly marked upon them. If you should happen to decide that the ones marked “Republican” look suspicious and just not turn them in... well that could significantly impact the election”

Fortunately we’re all saved my internal monologue because the state would require that I, like ACORN, turn in all of the forms, no matter how suspect so that the impartial state officials can judge what is and isn’t legitimate.

But yea, let’s all rip on ACORN for following the law.

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