Inside Obama’s Acorn--professional relationship with a nexus of Chicago radicals merits scrutiny

National Review Online ^ | May 29, 2008 | Stanley Kurtz

[Free ThinkerNY]

[Sundog]

Inside Obama’s nut . . . You have got to be kidding me.

Reminds me of the lyrics to the Colonel Bogie March from Bridge over the River Kwai.

[Kenny Bunk]

Good post.

Because of the "Info-Tainment" factor used by the MSM, the sheeple have been cluck-clucking over The Reverend Wright and "Black Liberation Theology."

Ayers and ACORN are the Obamafriends intelligent voters* ought to be looking at. In fact, since the Reverend Wright is also in with this gang, I wouldn't doubt he's in on the "bait and switch," "sleight of hand," shell game that's going on.

*Pardon the oxymoron

[EdReform]

BTTT

[Ooh-Ah]

I think Obama may be very intelligent in this very narrow world.
Stepping out of it without a speech to follow, he doesn't have a base of knowledge from which to think.

[mojito]

My my! The more you look, the more communists you find in the Obamessiah’s closet.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[caseinpoint]

Thanks for the post. I noticed today in an article about California Assembly passing a law requiring businesses to offer paid sick leave for illness, to care for another, or to recuperate from sexual assault or domestic violence was sponsored by the local ACORN organization. I believe it was also implicated in voter fraud allegations, i.e., their voter registrants submitting fictitious names. It is a dangerous organization.

[Eva]

I just came back to see if this had been posted yet. All the articles that Stanley Kurtz has written on Obama and Black Liberation Theology are excellent. I’ve booked marked all of them.

[STONEWALLS]

when the Obamas make speeches urging young people to “get involved in the community” this is their vision of it.

[theBuckwheat]

During the debate in Missouri over requiring some form of ID in order to vote, people trying to defeat the proposal kept insisting that voter fraud hardly ever takes place. We have had several people indicted for various election-related frauds, and all of them were associated in some way or other with ACORN.

ACORN EMPLOYEE INDICTED FOR ELECTION FRAUD, IDENTITY THEFT

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Bradley J. Schlozman, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Kansas City, Mo., woman hired by ACORN to work in a voter registration drive was indicted by a federal grand jury today for election fraud and identity theft.

Carmen R. Davis, also known as Latisha Reed, 37, of Kansas City, was charged in a four-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Kansas City.

Davis was hired by ACORN, a not-for-profit organization, to work with Project Vote, also a not-for-profit organization that works with ACORN to register voters for federal and local elections. ACORN and Project Vote recruit and assign workers to visit low-income and minority neighborhoods in Jackson County, Mo., and elsewhere to obtain voter registrations. The workers are trained and instructed regarding how to obtain voter registrations and the preparation of voter registration applications.

According to today’s indictment, Davis used another person’s Social Security number when she was employed as a voter registration recruiter for ACORN in August and September 2006. Davis allegedly caused three false voter registration applications – all in the name of the same person, but with different addresses – to be filed with the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners.

Count One of the federal indictment alleges that, between Aug. 7 and Oct. 4, 2006, Davis possessed, without lawful authority, the means of identification of another person, Latisha R. Reed, with the intent to commit Social Security fraud and vote fraud.

Count Two of the federal indictment alleges that, on Aug. 7, 2006, Davis, with the intent to deceive, for the purpose of obtaining employment with ACORN and Project Vote, falsely represented the Social Security account number assigned to her when she knew that it was not her own number.

Count Three of the federal indictment alleges that, on Sept. 18, 2006, Davis knowingly caused to be submitted to the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners three separate voter registration applications, all in the name of the same voter, each of which falsely stated the address of the voter being registered.

Count Four of the federal indictment alleges that on Sept. 18, 2006, Davis defrauded the residents of Missouri of their right to a fair and impartially conducted election process by submitting three false voter registration applications. Qualified voters in the Nov. 7, 2006, election had a right guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to have election officials count their votes and certify elections based on the number of valid ballots case in the election by qualified voters, the indictment says. Davis allegedly deprived Missouri voters of that right by causing three separate voter registration applications, all in the name of the same voter, each of which falsely stated the address of the voter being registered, to be submitted to the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners.

Schlozman cautioned that the charges contained in these indictments are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Linda Parker Marshall. It was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

from:
http://kansascity.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel07/identitytheft010507.htm

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Four people have been indicted on charges of voter fraud in Kansas City, officials said Wednesday.

Investigators said questionable registration forms for new voters were collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to improve minority and low-income communities.

The four indicted — Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner — were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters. They were each charged with two counts.

from:
http://www.kmbc.com/politics/10214492/detail.html

[bamahead]

For the last 10 years or so, Acorn has primarily been bankrolled by none other than George Soros.

The MO vote fraud episode is the tip of the iceberg:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=275181103776079

ACORN has been accused of voter fraud in 13 states since 2004 and was convicted of falsifying signatures in a voter registration drive last July, drawing a fine of $25,000 in Washington state.

Soros says he has ended funding to voter-drive organizations, but he still heads a secretive rich-man’s club called “Democracy Alliance” that has doled out $20 million to activist groups like ACORN.

[Eva]

From a WSJ / John Fund article:

But the most interesting news came out of Seattle, where on Thursday local prosecutors indicted seven workers for Acorn, a union-backed activist group that last year registered more than 540,000 low-income and minority voters nationwide and deployed more than 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers. The Acorn defendants stand accused of submitting phony forms in what Secretary of State Sam Reed says is the “worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history” of the state.

The list of “voters” registered in Washington state included former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Tom Friedman, actress Katie Holmes and nonexistent people with nonsensical names such as Stormi Bays and Fruto Boy. The addresses used for the fake names were local homeless shelters. Given that the state doesn’t require the showing of any identification before voting, it is entirely possible people could have illegally voted using those names.

Local officials refused to accept the registrations because they had been delivered after last year’s Oct. 7 registration deadline. Initially, Acorn officials demanded the registrations be accepted and threatened to sue King County (Seattle) officials if they were tossed out. But just after four Acorn registration workers were indicted in Kansas City, Mo., on similar charges of fraud, the group reversed its position and said the registrations should be rejected. But by then, local election workers had had a reason to carefully scrutinize the forms and uncovered the fraud. Of the 1,805 names submitted by Acorn, only nine have been confirmed as valid, and another 34 are still being investigated. The rest—over 97%—were fake.

In Kansas City, where two Acorn workers have pleaded guilty to committing registration fraud last year while two others await trial, only 40% of the 35,000 registrations submitted by the group turned out to be bogus. But Melody Powell, chairman of the Kansas City Board of Elections, says Acorn’s claim that it brought the fraud in her city to light is “seriously misleading.” She says her staff first took the evidence to the FBI, and only then Acorn helped identify the perpetrators. “It’s a potential recipe for fraud,” she says, noting that “anyone can find a voter card mailed to a false apartment building address lying around a lobby and use it to vote.” Ms. Powell also worries that legitimate voters who were registered a second time by someone else under a false address might find it difficult to vote.

In Washington state, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said that in lieu of charging Acorn itself as part of the registration fraud case, he had worked out an agreement by which the group will pay $25,000 to reimburse the costs of the investigation and formally agree to tighten supervision of its activities, which Mr. Satterberg said were rife with “lax oversight.”

Last year several Acorn employees told me that the Acorn scandals that have cropped up around the country are no accident. “There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” says Nate Toler, who was head of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in California until late last year, when Acorn fired him for speaking to me.

Loretta Barton, another former community organizer for Acorn, told me that “all Acorn wanted from registration drives was results.” Ironically, given Acorn’s strong backing from unions, Ms. Barton alleges that when she and her co-workers asked about forming a union, they were slapped down: “We were told if you get a union, you won’t have a job.” There is some history here: In 2003, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Acorn to rehire and pay restitution to three employees it had illegally fired for trying to organize a union.

Acorn president John James told reporters last week that his group will cooperate with election officials to make sure “no one is trying to pull a fast one on us.” “We are looking to the future,” he said in a statement. “Voter participation is a vital part of our work to increase civic participation.”

But the Acorn case points up just how difficult it is to convince prosecutors to bring voter fraud cases. Donald Washington, a former U.S. attorney for northern Louisiana, admits that “most of the time, we can’t do much of anything [about fraud] until the election is over. And the closer we get to the election, the less willing we are to get involved because of just the appearance of impropriety, just the appearance of the federal government somehow shading how this election ought to occur.” Several prosecutors told me they feared charges of racism or of a return to Jim Crow voter suppression tactics if they pursued touchy voter fraud cases—as indeed is now happening as part of the reaction to the U.S. attorney firings.

Take Washington state, where former U.S. attorney John McKay declined to pursue allegations of voter fraud after that state’s hotly contested 2004 governor’s race was decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire by 133 votes on a third recount. As the Seattle media widely reported, some “voters” were deceased, others were registered in storage lockers, and still others were ineligible felons. Extra ballots were “found” and declared valid 10 times during the vote count and recount. In some precincts, more votes were cast than voters showed up at the polls.

[rfp1234]

Typical of the libs: raise a phony scandal (Bush firing U.S. attorneys) to cover up the underlying voter-fraud catastrophe (assuming it is uncovered for the public to see).

These ex-U.S. attorneys should be the ones dragged before Congressional committees to explain why they failed to pursue such obvious cases [Reason: they have no 'acorns'].

[livius]

Acorn is a savvy and exceedingly effective political player. Stern says that Acorn’s key post–New Left innovation is its determination to take over the system from within, rather than futilely try to overthrow it from without. Stern calls this strategy a political version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Very well put. Saul Alinsky was a heck of a clever guy.

[XR7]

“Community Organizing” = Marxist buzzwords

[Jacquerie]

I hope all of the Freeper clowns who say there is no diff between McCain and the Obamabeast read this article.

[markomalley]

BTTT

[okie01]

Is it not so that ACORN provided the primary voter registration and get-out-the-vote effort to the Kerry campaign in 2004?

Remember all those fake registrations in places like Ohio and St. Louis? Recall that some of the canvassers were rewarded with crack?

That was all ACORN.

And, purportedly, ACORN was funded in this effort by...George Soros.