Obama/ACORN: A side by side History (documented)

The troubling thing about ACORN
	OBAMA/Democrats	ACORN
	They support harmful policies of ACORN along with Freddie and Fannie. Social Engineering and policies more important than Capitalistic and free markets. Government should provide support for ALL needs Higher taxes will bring more welfare funds This has led to the biggest disaster at all levels	ACORN Housing provides mortgage loan counseling, first-time homebuyer classes, and helps clients obtain affordable mortgages through unique lending partnerships. They even set up their own lending institution as a non-profit mortgage brokerage with CitiMortgage, Bank of America, First American Title Insurance Company, and Fannie Mae to help low- and moderate-income families find safe, affordable mortgages. This is one of the community organizing groups into which the Democrats tried to funnel billions of dollars in the first draft designed to capture the 700 billion pound gorilla http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/27/consumer-rights-league-obama-acorn-and-the-subprime-mortgage/
1985	Developing Communities Project	Received funding from Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund Obama's DCP, from 1993–2002, http://web.me.com/chme/Blog/Obama_Resume.html
1988-1990	History: OBAMA Director of Developing Communities Project Wrote an article below: "In theory, community organizing provides a way to merge various strategies for neighborhood empowerment. Organizing begins with the premise that (1) the problems facing inner-city communities do not result from a lack of effective solutions, but from a lack of power to implement these solutions; (2) that the only way for communities to build long-term power is by organizing people and money around a common vision; and (3) that a viable organization can only be achieved if a broadly based indigenous leadership — and not one or two charismatic leaders — can knit together the diverse interests of their local institutions. " "In Chicago, the Developing Communities Project and other community organizations have pooled resources to form cooperative think tanks like the Gamaliel Foundation. These provide both a formal setting where experienced organizers can rework old models to fit new realities and a healthy environment for the recruitment and training of new organizers. Obama, Barack. 1990. “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City.” In After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois, Illinois Issues, University of Illinois at Springfield. " http://www.edwoj.com/Alinsky/AlinskyObamaChapter1990.htm	History ACORN (1972-current) The goal was to unite welfare recipients with working people in need around issues of free school lunches for schoolchildren, unemployed workers' concerns, Vietnam Veterans' rights and hospital emergency room care. Thus, an idea was born that would grow and adapt, thrive and flourish, and become a powerful movement from coast to coast. took the cause of economic justice seriously and studied and respected the traditions of social justice movements in American history, they saw possibilities and opportunities where others did not. They founded a movement that would unite races, join neighborhoods and unify the interests and efforts of low- and moderate- income people wherever they lived or worked. No political movement in America can be considered complete unless it is capable of mounting a significant election campaign. In 1972, ACORN made its first entry into electoral politics. http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12447 ACORN's decision to back the Rainbow Coalition and Jesse Jackson might have been a divisive action in many organizations. When it became clear that Jackson not only shared ACORN's commitment to the People's Platform but was able to work with ACORN and other progressive groups, however, the decision was easy. Finally, ACORN began playing the insiders' game in American politics. Congressional lobbying is practiced by ACORN staff. Leaders and members became a central part of the insiders' games, too. http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12444 (Last para) Members elected to office or serving on APACs acquire experience and skill applying power from the inside of the political process. Instead of confronting opponents in actions (something ACORN will never stop doing), members could trade and negotiate from inside positions of power. ACORN's work on the savings and loan bailout provided effective means of developing and applying power for low- and moderate- income people. ACORN members won appointment to the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to help determine the management of the billions of dollars of assets the government seized. The payoff to these activities came, and still comes, when substantial numbers of ACORN members developed the ability to move inside the political sphere that has for so long been closed to low- and moderate-income people. http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12444

1990	(Obama is mentioned in this article) Constructing a Tree for Community Leaders: Contexts and Processes in Collaborative Inquiry Journal American Journal of Community Psychology Publisher Springer Netherlands ISSN 0091-0562 (Print) 1573-2770 (Online) Issue Volume 26, Number 4 / August, 1998	The 1990 ACORN convention in Chicago focused on the fast-breaking housing campaign. It featured a squatting demonstration at an RTC house which was reclaimed for use in an ACORN neighborhood. (ACORN Website) ACORN (Illinois Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), Aug. 30 - Sept 4 1990 http://www.library.uiuc.edu/archives/uasfa/2620092.pdf Developing Communities Project, Chicago, Illinois. This paper presents collaborative ...... Kahn, S. (1980). http://www.springerlink.com/content/r8011w85266k5n6l/
1992	Public Allies, board of directors	Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993. http://web.me.com/chme/Blog/Obama_Resume.html
1993-2002	Woods Funds, board of directors	The Fund frequently gave ACORN grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.
1994-2002	Joyce Fund for Chicago, board of directors	The Fund frequently gave ACORN grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.
1995-2002	Annenberg Funds, board of directors	The Fund frequently gave ACORN grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.
1995-1999	Chicago Lawyers', board of directors of Committee for Civil Rights Under Law	Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center
1995	Litigation on behalf of ACORN A young lawyer named Barak Obama, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of ACORN and won. ACORN later invited Obama to train its staff on voter registration drives.	Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud.
1996	Obama ran for Illinois State Senate and	ACORN became his precinct organization, identifying and turning out the vote.
	An old friend of ACORN’s, Senator Barack Obama, joined the group in challenging the photo ID law. For the past 15 years, Obama has teamed up with ACORN, litigating voting cases for them and even training ACORN workers.	Not surprisingly, ACORN has returned the favor by endorsing Obama for President and vowing to register hundreds of thousands of new voters who will presumably vote for http://www.biaw.com/Documents/Magazine/may_08.pdf

2003	Illinois State Senator Obama going after Hospitals for their Collection Techniques because of ACORN! Repeat of Home Loan Banking Industry.	Advocate executives promise to forgive ACORN debts ....ACORN also requested that Advocate publicize its new charity care policies, but the Advocate executives were not willing to distribute information that would make the hospital “a magnet for the uninsured.” Unsatisfied with Advocate Health Care’s response to charges of predatory collections, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, led by Senator Barack Obama (D-13), vowed Oct. 22 to seek answers from the hospital chain. http://www.hospitalmonitor.org/pdf/winter03.pdf
2004	ACORN and Obama's win for Senate Seat http://www.socialpolicy.org/index.php?id=838	Case Study: Chicago-The Barack Obama Campaign By Toni Foulkes. ACORN's history of nonpartisan electoral work (voter registration and voter turnout) and leadership development combined during the March, 2004 primary season to make a big difference in the level of participation of our communities in that important election.

2007	Obama claims he has no ties to “a group he once did some legal work for.	ACORN’s national political arm endorsed Obama for president, and its “nonpartisan” voter registration affiliate starts registering hundreds of thousands of voters for Obama.
		exposes the lie by uncovering $832,598.29 that the Obama campaign funneled through a front company called Citizens Services, Inc.
August 22, 2008	U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.	ACORN, which receives partial taxpayer funding, used those funds to conduct solicitations for contributions to and raised over $800,000 for Obama in Philadelphia alone http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_584284.html
		Where does ACORN, the political group get this money? In 2006 Project Vote hired ACORN and CSI as its highest paid contractors, paying ACORN $4,649,037 and CSI $779,016. It has also been well documented that money flows to them from various sources including from the federally chartered non-profit ACORN Housing Corporation, as you will see below.
		The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), with a smattering of Obama and ACORN thrown in to the mix assisted in the creation of the subprime housing saga. The saga led to the governmental take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
		ACORN’s illegal activities. ACORN has now been connected to money laundering, misuse of taxpayer funds and embezzlement as well as the voter fraud. The original three states I wrote about in Part I of this story turns out to be three of at least a dozen states in which ACORN has apparently committed voter fraud. http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/07/16/obama%E2%80%99s-acorn-a-leftist-social-reform-group-part-ii/
September 17th, 2008	OBAMA in your face: “I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face,” he said. http://clintondems.com/2008/09/obamas-in-your-face-politics/	ACORN has perfected an in-your-face strategy that works effectively at capturing public attention and winning adherents in cities. ACORN’s revival of its Baltimore chapter is a textbook example of this style. Several years ago, a top ACORN organizer, Mitch Klein, injected a new aggressiveness into the Baltimore chapter. Underlings piled garbage in front of City Hall to protest lack of services in poor neighborhoods, wielded huge inflated rubber sharks to disrupt a bankers’ dinner, and—most controversially—staged a profanity-laced protest in front of Mayor Martin O’Malley’s home. “They unloaded a busload of people shouting pretty ugly things and scared the daylights out of my wife and kids,” an angry O’Malley complained
		But ACORN is unapologetic about its tactics. “We’re up in their face,” an ACORN representative enthused. (Despite—or perhaps because of—the intimidation, ACORN still gets $50,000 a year from the city of Baltimore to provide housing counseling to the poor.) http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_acorns_nutty_regime.html
	Frank Salvato, Managing Editor Obama, ACORN & Their Starring Role in the Mortgage Crisis October 10, 2008	http://www.therant.us/staff/fsalvato/2008/10102008.htm
2008	The Consumer Rights League has its on agenda. It doesn’t like the housing bailout bill being offered up in the House (HR 3221), but it has started a petition to pressure to put pressure on Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, to hold hearings on the fraud committed by ACORN	They have even suggested some fixes to the problem with ACORN and its fuzzy accounting methods and funneling of money from one entity to another. CRL has suggested three remedies to prevent further abuses of the governmental system by groups like ACORN. They are calling for “increased transparency” (requiring annual audits). They also said there is a need for “organization firewalls” (something missing from ACORN) and finally hit them in the pocketbook with “increased penalties for misuse of public funds”.
	(This summer when Bush signed the current housing bill into law, he effectively gave ACORN and ACORN Housing Corporation a portion of upwards of $600 million dollars. There is no firewall between ACORN and AHC so the money for housing also supports the the political arm….Project Vote.	Documents provided by internal whistleblowers, cross-checked with public records and recorded events, expose hypocritical lending recommendations tied to ACORN Housing Corporation’s agreements with major banks—agreements that end up harming consumers. Media reports, combined with information provided by former ACORN employees, show that: • ACORN leveraged the Community Reinvestment Act in order to attack lenders’ reputations and secure financial resources for itself; it has also endorsed loans offered by companies that fund ACORN operations • ACORN’s decades of lobbying and publicity seeking have contributed to the current housing crisis by lowering lending standards • Despite raking in a troubling 40 percent of its revenue from taxpayers over the last three years, ACORN Housing Corporation’s actions range from controversial to borderline illegal
		http://www.acorn.org/fileadmin/Reports/ACORN_Wins_Report.pdf

	They are taking tax-payers money to spread their Socialist Message and No one is stopping them.	It does not claim federal tax exemption, therefore it is free to engage in politics and is not required to disclose details of its vast and varied financial operations. Their membership includes more than 350,000 families, in more than half dozen countries.
	According to CRL’s report, ACORN has a business model that is repeated over and over again, each time targeting a different company or financial institution. : http://msplaceddemocrat.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/14/	Here is that model Issues—–>Target—–>Direct Actions—–>Victory——>Partnership—–>$$$$ For Organizing This information is provided by Former ACORN Organizer and University of Georgia Professor Fred Brooks.
	Collapse of Banking Industry CRL really did their homework and was able to retrieve information on the funding ACORN receives from financial institutions through whistleblowers (former employees) and public records. Some of the whistleblowers provided CRL with internal e-mails. Here are some of those figures:	• ACORN (Citibank Partnership)………………………….$127,500 • ACORN (Citibank Partnership)………………………….$240,000 • ACORN (Freddie Mac)……………………………………….$35,000 • Ameriquest Mortgage…………………………………………$130,000 • Fannie Mae (for Broadband)…………………………………$20,000 • Fannie Mae FYE 2005–2006………………………………$100,000 • JP Morgan Chase 2005–2006…………………………..$1,000,000 • Bank of America 2005–2006……………………………$1,390,000 • Washington Mutual…………………………………………..$175,000 • M & T Bank…………………………………………………….$150,000 • United Way (American Dream)……………………………..$15,000
	Why should banks pay without a fight? Banks according to CRL, “look at it as a cost of doing business.” Model proposed by Sharpton and Jessie Jackson	It seems that ACORN forces banks to see it as doing business….according to an internal statement that CRL retrieved.
	The original lobbyists for the CRA were the hardcore leftists who supported the Carter administration and were often rewarded for their support with government grants and programs like the CRA that they benefited from. These included various “neighborhood organizations,” as they like to call themselves, such as “ACORN” (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).	Banks have been placed in a Catch 22 situation by the CRA: If they comply, they know they will have to suffer from more loan defaults. If they don’t comply, they face financial penalties and, worse yet, their business plans for mergers, branch expansions, etc. can be blocked by CRA protesters, which can cost a large corporation like Bank of America billions of dollars. Like most businesses, they have largely buckled under and have surrendered to their bureaucratic masters. Then groups like ACORN call these loans discriminatory forcing the banks into making loans that they ultimately have no protection from. Thus, if one browses the ACORN web site, one can read of their boasts of having “predatory lending laws” passed in numerous states which outlaw such fees, prohibiting banks from protecting themselves from the added risk involved in making forced loans to “subprime” borrowers.
	Banks are constantly threatened with fines if they do not comply with the requirements of the CRA. See how the Democrats have been forcing the issue lately. Investors.com wrote about this very subject:	Only, the risk-taking was her idea (Rep. Nancy Pelosi) — and the idea of all the other Democrats, along with a handful of Republicans, who over the past 30 years have demonized lenders as racist and passed regulation after regulation pressuring them to make more loans to unqualified borrowers in the name of diversity.
	Additional Short-Term Strategies Making Social Reporting Mandatory -- ACORN and CRA	There is cultural support in U.S. business for transparency, so this goal is likely achievable — particularly in the wake of the Democratic capture of Congress, since liberal Barney Frank will now chair the relevant House committee. Also, it could be done via SEC rule-making with no legislation required. A good example can be seen in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which requires banks to have good community-lending ratings in order to attain merger approval. A denial issued once — as happened with CRA — made the industry take note. The citizens’ group ACORN has used the CRA to negotiate over $1 billion in lending agreements for low-income neighborhoods in cities like New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, and Des Moines. http://www.corporatepolicy.org/pdf/SCI_Report_September_2007.pdf
	AMNESTY / Illegal Immigration	IllinoisACORN saved over 100 jobs that were threatened as a resultof “No Match” Social Security letters, including 60 jobs at World Kitchenin Monee, Illinois. ACORN members marched into the World Kitchen’soffices and demanded that they listen to workers and public officials, likeCongressman Luis Gutierrez and County Commissioner Roberto Maldonado,who explained that the Social Security Administration has no authority todeal with immigration issues, and is just trying to protect workers who maynot be getting their social security benefits credited to the right account.■ Illinois ACORN also participated in a statewide campaign with theMetropolitan Alliance of Congregations, Centro Sin Fronteras and ICIRRto pass a measure allowing undocumented immigrant students who havebeen in the state for three or more years to pay in-state tuition instead ofout-of-state tuition at public
	How Cities are Going Bankrupt!	In addition to fighting for better city services, many ACORN chapters have been on the defensive, organizing to prevent major cuts to programs that benefit their members. After the most recent economic downturn, cities and states found themselves short of revenue and scrambling to close budget gaps, often at the expense of low and moderate income families. ACORN has been battling these efforts and in many cases has succeeded in averting proposed cuts or getting funds restored. Altogether, ACORN chapters have won at least $226,230,000 in funds that otherwise would have been sucked from their communities. The biggest gains were made in the following areas: • State and local education funding cuts rescinded or funds restored; • Federal housing funds restored; • Public transit cuts averted, including proposed route cuts and fare increases; • City and county employees’ jobs retained, including school social workers, crossing guards, and probation officers. http://www.acorn.org/fileadmin/Reports/ACORN_Wins_Report.pdf
	ACORN Marketing List: a Huge Database for Revenue Generation http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12383	The sole purpose of this report is to strengthen the revenue base of community organizing. Intended audiences are organizers, organizing networks and other organizing intermediaries, funders, academics, and other allies of organizing. http://www.cccfiles.org/shared/publications/downloads/Promising_Practices_Revenue_Generation_Community.pdf
	Killing the country that feeds -- ACORN brags about itself	This report attempts to document and quantify ACORN victories for a recent ten year period, from 1995-2004. http://www.acorn.org/fileadmin/Reports/ACORN_Wins_Report.pdf
	ACORN's Get-out-the-vote effort was funded in part by a mini-grant from the Foundation’s Social Justice program. The use of Social Justice term is to make anyone questioning feel guilty!	In August of 2005, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) hit the streets of San Francisco knocking on doors to register voters for the special election. This Get-out-the-vote effort was funded in part by a mini-grant from the Foundation’s Social Justice pro- gram was funded in part by a mini-grant from the Foundation’s Social Justice pro- gram. http://www.sff.org/about/publications/newslettersummer06.pdf
	ACORN Members and Relaxed Mortgage Terms from Banks: This is how the housing market fell!	Housing Services ACORN Housing is a national non-profit organization that has provided free housing counseling and helped over 50,000 low and moderate income homebuyers since 1987. ACORN Housing provides one-on-one mortgage loan counseling, first-time homebuyer classes, and helps clients obtain affordable mortgages through our unique lending partnerships. By joining AHC (ACORN Housing Corporation) you receive: •Lower down payments and closing costs. •No Private Mortgage Insurance. •Banks generally require 3 months of mortgage payments in the bank at settlement. •With our program, they don't, which allows you to buy a home sooner. •Most banks won't count public assistance or voluntarily child support in determining if you'll qualify for a mortgage. • With our program, all steady income counts http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12394


	Welfare Reform I reminded ACORN’s national executive director Steven Kest of the disasters of the welfare-rights movement of the 1960s,	he seemed to acknowledge the failure. “There’s an emerging consensus that for those who can work, it should be encouraged,” he conceded. But, but, but: but work “should come with adequate supports, such as day care and transportation, to get people out of poverty.” But: “We also still believe that, for a lot of people, it’s not right to force them to work. There should be some type of income support for those who still won’t be able to join the work force.” In other words: perpetual dependency. http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_acorns_nutty_regime.html
		ACORN’s anti-capitalism leads it to deep distrust of capitalism’s central instruments—the banks and other financial institutions that ACORN would class high among those “irresponsible . . . largest businesses.”
	Banks are Scared But one prominent consultant to the financial industry, who preferred to remain anonymous, admits: “The banks know they are being held up, but they are not going to fight over this. They look at it as a cost of doing business.	The banks that ACORN has shaken down refuse to discuss their contributions to a political organization that, to put it mildly, is hostile to free enterprise.
	Minimum Wage/Small Business Survival For example, even while pushing for living-wage legislation in California, ACORN was paying its workers less than the existing minimum wage—and arguing when the state sued it that the minimum-wage law infringed its First Amendment free-speech right, since paying workers more would hinder it in spreading its message.	Such opportunism fits an ACORN pattern. The group regularly takes actions that appear blatantly self-interested or hypocritical, as if their pure motives and laudable ends might justify less than elevated means.
	Education Consider ACORN’s successful effort in 2001 to derail Mayor Giuliani’s proposal to allow Edison Schools Inc.—a for-profit educational firm—to manage five of the lousiest of New York City’s lousy schools. Reasonable people can disagree about Edison’s overall record in turning around bad inner-city schools; based on what I’ve seen of the evidence	But a closer look at ACORN’s educational policies reveals a militant opposition to the authentic educational reform the urban poor need so desperately. Yet ACORN used every tactic in its comprehensive playbook to scuttle the Edison plan. It intimidated schools chancellor Harold Levy into letting it print leaflets at city expense, filled with false information about Edison’s record, including the charge that the firm expelled children for poor grades. ACORN obtained from school officials lists of the addresses and phone numbers of parents, whom it then barraged with calls and letters. When Edison reps tried to make their case at public forums in Harlem, ACORN activists shouted them down. For good measure, ACORN staged a noisy demonstration outside Edison’s headquarters, complete with the 12-foot-high inflated rat that is an ugly staple of all union demonstrations in New York against non-unionized companies.
	Education Chicago	Chicago, where they established the Nicholson and Mason 21 schools. These small schools were set up as partnerships between parents and teachers to serve the local communities and improve children's education. Also in Chicago, ACORN members saved Dewey elementary from closing twice and won funding to rehabilitate it. Dewey now has some of highest test scores in the Chicago school system.
	Intimidation Sadly, ACORN’s bullying tactics won the day, and the parents at all five schools voted against the plan. ACORN’s “victory” certainly didn’t benefit the kids, who were stuck right where they were. So who did profit?	ACORN. Little appreciated was the crucial detail that ACORN itself is part of the failed bureaucratic system that any successful privatization program would unsettle. For more than a decade, ACORN has used foundation grants to start up its own New York public schools, something the Board of Ed sometimes allows community-based organizations to do. With warm-sounding names like the Bread and Roses High School, ACORN’s schools are political-indoctrination centers with mediocre academic records. Their curricula abound with “social justice” themes that wouldn’t be out of place at an ACORN community organizers’ training school. Bread and Roses, for example, holds an annual “Why Unions Matter” art project to “teach students how labor unions work and what they do to support social change, economic growth and democratic principles.” The schools have even bused kids to Washington to demonstrate against “tax cuts for the rich.”
	Pressuring City Councils and Policy On the other side of the equation, how many city councilmen would understand the thick pile of studies from liberal as well as conservative economists showing conclusively that big hikes in the minimum wage ultimately kill low-wage jobs,	Take, above all, ACORN’s signature “living-wage” legislation, which fully 80 cities have now adopted. This legislation requires that companies doing business with the city must pay their employees a minimum wage that is higher than the national minimum—often as much as one-third higher.
	Sustainable development Argument to limit Growth	ACORN promotes ideas like “sustainable development,” which would limit the growth of suburbs—so businesses and individuals can’t flee just beyond the city limits so easily—and “regional government,” which would force suburbs to share their tax revenues with cities, so that overburdened middle-class taxpayers can’t vote with their feet against the cities’ ever expanding social-democratic mini-welfare states.
	At times, ACORN opts for undisguised authoritarian socialism, as when it proposes that “large companies which desire to leave the community” be forced to obtain “an exit visa from the community board	signifying that the company has adequately compensated all its employees and the community at large for losses due to relocation.” How much longer before ACORN calls for exit visas for wealthy or middle-class individuals before they can leave a city?
	ACORN for Nationalizing Healthcare Policy:	Health Care for America Now is an unprecedented coalition led by ACORN, AFSCME, Americans United for Change, Campaign for America’s Future, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for Community Change, MoveOn, Na- tional Education Association, National Women’s Law Center, Planned Parent- hood Federation of America, SEIU, United Food and Commercial Work- ers, and USAction. http://www.metroherald.com/metroherald.data/SmartObjects/PDF%20files/07-11-08%20archive.pdf
	Senator Obama going after Hospitals for their Collection Techniques because of ACORN! Healthcare gone-- Repeat of Home Loan Banking Industry?	This is an excerpt from the article in the magazine below!! Please see page 6. Advocate executives promise to forgive ACORN debts ....ACORN also requested that Advocate publicize its new charity care policies, but the Advocate executives were not willing to distribute information that would make the hospital “a magnet for the uninsured.” Unsatisfied with Advocate Health Care’s response to charges of predatory collections, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, led by Senator Barack Obama (D-13), vowed Oct. 22 to seek answers from the hospital chain. http://www.hospitalmonitor.org/pdf/winter03.pdf

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