ACORN is out of favor now. Better keep an eye on those folks because they will turn up in another form sooner or later.
ACORN is like cockroaches. They’re firmly established and it will take some strong medicine to eradicate them.
Obama is probably more mad that they screwed up badly enough to force his hand in taking a stand against them...
FReep mail me if you want on/off the list.
OBAMA IS ACORN. ACORN IS OBAMA.
The kindest description for the president is uppity rabble rouser.
I usually don’t post in a thread when it’s source is WND because their credibility has always been so shaky. But I want to ask if it has improved any in the past 2-3 years. Aside from the birth cert. issue.
ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities
(Editor’s Note: Sol Stern’s political trajectory has taken him from the University of California’s student movement in the 1960s to editorship of the New Left magazine Ramparts to writing books and articles on a wide range of political matters from a conservative point of view. The following excerpts from a three-times lengthier article present his critique of ACORN, one of the country’s pre-eminent organizing groups..)
f you thought the New Left was dead in America, think again. Walk through just about any of the nation’s inner cities, and you’re likely to find an office of ACORN, bustling with young people working 12-hour days to “organize the poor” and bring about “social change.” The largest radical group in the country, ACORN has 120,000 dues-paying members, chapters in 700 poor neighborhoods in 50 cities, and 30 years’ experience… Not only big, it is effective, with some remarkable successes in getting municipalities and state legislatures to enact its radical policy goals into law.
Community organizing among the urban poor has been an honorable American tradition since Jane Addams’s famous Hull House dramatically uplifted the late-nineteenth-century Chicago slums, but ACORN and Addams are on different planets philosophically. Hull House and its many successors emphasized self-empowerment: the poor, they thought, could take control of their lives and communities through education, hard work, and personal responsibility. Not ACORN…
ACORN’s bedrock assumption remains the ultra-Left’s familiar anti-capitalist redistributionism. “We are the majority, forged from all the minorities,” reads the group’s “People’s Platform,” whose prose Orwell would have derided as pure commissar-speak. “We will continue our fight…until we have shared the wealth, until we have won our freedom…We have nothing to show for the work of our hand, the tax of our labor”-claptrap that not only falsifies the relative comfort of the poor in America…But never mind-ACORN claims that it “stands virtually alone in its dedication to organizing the poor and powerless.” It organizes them to push for ever more government control of the economy, as if it had learned no lessons about the free-market magic that made American cities unexampled engines of job creation for more than a century, proliferating opportunity and catapulting millions out of misery…
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…
…[T]here’s an aspect] in which ACORN departs from the old New Left’s playbook. Instead of trying to overturn “the system”… ACORN burrows deep within the system, taking over its power and using its institutions for its own purposes, like a political Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not only has ACORN worked to influence existing city councils and state legislatures; it has also thrown itself into municipal and state elections, claiming to have registered 500,000 new voters in low-income communities around the country. With the labor-union allies it has cultivated, it has even helped create new parties that have scored real successes [such as New York’s New Party]…
…ACORN organizer Heather Appell, an energetic and appealing recent Vassar graduate, is currently talking to poor parents about taking advantage of the new No Child Left Behind education law that allows children who attend failing public schools to transfer to more successful public schools. “Parents are really stirring on this issue,” Appell enthuses. “Many of these people come here so they can get ahead and provide a decent future for their children and families-so being forced to go to bad schools becomes a huge concern.” Appell sounds like a real education reformer-even a conservative reformer. No doubt it’s talk like this that prompted Bush administration secretary of education Rod Paige to honor ACORN publicly with membership on something called the Urban School Reform Dream Team.
But a closer look at ACORN’s educational policies reveals a militant opposition to the authentic educational reform the urban poor need so desperately. 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, I think it has done pretty well. But what is beyond dispute is that Edison has never performed as poorly in a single one of its schools as has Gotham’s Board of Ed in the five schools the mayor proposed for privatization. In those schools, more than 80 percent of the students couldn’t read or do math at grade level. Nothing that Edison might have done could possibly have made them any worse-and might well have improved them.
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.
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.”
…ACORN had another ulterior motive for opposing any privatization experiment. ACORN has political ties with teachers’ unions-and they fiercely oppose privatization and vouchers in education, because these reforms might threaten union members’ jobs….
http://socialpolicy.org/index.php?id=1121
What Makes Obama Run?
Lawyer, teacher, philanthropist, and author Barack Obama doesn’t need another career. But he’s entering politics to get back to his true passion–community organization.
By Hank De Zutter
December 8, 1995
… Another strong supporter of Obama’s work–as an organizer, as a lawyer, and now as a candidate–is Madeline Talbott, lead organizer of the feisty ACORN community organization, a group that’s a thorn in the side of most elected officials. “I can’t repeat what most ACORN members think and say about politicians. But Barack has proven himself among our members. He is committed to organizing, to building a democracy. Above all else, he is a good listener, and we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.”
Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side. Conducting a session in a New Horizons classroom, Obama, tall and thin, looks very much like an Ivy League graduate student. Dressed casually prep, his tie loosened and his top shirt button unfastened, he leads eight black women from the Grand Boulevard community through a discussion of “what folks should know” about who in Chicago has power and why they have it. It’s one of his favorite topics, and the class bubbles with suggestions about how “they” got to be high and mighty…
And never mind that Project Vote is simply a front for ACORN.
From Discover The Networks:
PROJECT VOTE (PV)
Project Vote is the voter-mobilization arm of ACORN. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose professed purpose is to carry out “non-partisan” voter registration drives; to counsel voters on their rights; and to litigate on behalf of voting rights — focusing on the rights of the poor and the “disenfranchised.” …
And even our one party media admit this is so.
First, in a September 26, 2004 article in the New York Times:
“I get about 30 new voters or changes of address in six hours,” said Ms. Green, who was hired by Project Vote, the nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. “I used to get 16 in 45 minutes, but now everyone’s registered.”
And in this October 20, 2004 article, also from the New York Times:
Project Vote, the charitable arm of Acorn, will spend at least $16 million in crucial states this year; it spent $1 million in 2000.
As does Time Magazine, in this October 18, 2004 article:
“We don’t bring 300 kids from Ohio State University into the inner city of Columbus,” says David Leland, national director of Project Vote, a nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which claims it has registered more than 50,000 voters in the Columbus area.
As does this article — from today’s Palm Beach Post:
Project Vote, which is a political arm of ACORN, a nationwide group of community organizations, estimates their workers have signed up 145,000 Floridians this year.
And someone should alert the grant givers, such as the Beldon Fund (a pdf file):
Indeed, check out the office addresses of ACORN in Arkansas (where they began) and Washington DC:
Compare with the Project Votes offices:
Indeed, they don’t just share offices, but also their job advertising:
And ACORN has been the top “independent contractor” by far for Project Vote for the years we have public records, via Guidestar:
Which adds up to $9,612,115 in “payments” in just three years.
(By the way, “Citizens Services/Consulting” is Project Vote’s accountants. Coincidentally, they also keep the books for ACORN. Lest we forget, it was recently uncovered that the Obama campaign paid $832,598 to Citizens Services, Inc.)
And again, note that according to their Forms 990 ACORN and Project Vote (and Citizens Services) once again share the same address:
(Click all images to enlarge)
ACORN and Project Vote even use the same phone number.
But, no, they are clearly two completely different entities.
Just ask Obama.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-claims-he-never-worked-for-acorn
Project vote and Acorn have the same DC address. obummer lies.
http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=4318
http://projectvote.org/index.php?id=36
Obama Hid $832,598 Payment To ACORN
From the (Obama-endorsing) Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
Obama to amend report on $800,000 in spending
By David M. Brown
Friday, 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.
An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. — a subsidiary of ACORN — worked in “get-out-the-vote” projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.
FEC spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said it is not unusual for campaigns to amend reports, even regarding large sums of money.
But, said Blair Latoff, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee: “Barack Obama’s failure to accurately report his campaign’s financial records is an incredibly suspicious situation that appears to be an attempt to hide his campaign’s interaction with a left-wing organization previously convicted of voter fraud. For a candidate who claims to be practicing ‘new’ politics, his FEC reports look an awful lot like the ‘old-style’ Chicago politics of yesterday.” …
Melanie Sloan, executive director of the liberal-leaningCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the campaign’s error on FEC documents doesn’t seem extraordinary, especially considering the huge amounts of money being spent.
“It’s rare that people don’t file any amended reports. If he has a pattern of lots and lots of amended reports, that would be more noteworthy than an occasional one,” Sloan said.
Jim Terry, spokesman for a group that tracks ACORN, said Citizens Services Inc.’s involvement in the Obama campaign raises bigger questions.
“All of this just seems like an awful lot of money and time spent on political campaigning for an organization that purports to exist to help low-income consumers,” said Terry, chief public advocate for Consumers Rights League, a Washington, D.C., advocacy outfit with a libertarian outlook.
“ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain,” Terry claimed. “Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama’s political gain.”
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-hid-800k-payment-to-acorn
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-acorn-and-the-seiu-they-go-way-back/
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-acorn-and-the-seiu-they-go-way-back/2/
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/poeacprn2005.html
In the 2004 election cycle, ACORN and its sister group Project Vote ran a nationwide voter mobilization drive for George Soros’ Shadow Party. The drive was marred by numerous allegations of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging, voter intimidation, and vote-for-pay scams.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-ran-acorns-training-sessions-on-power
http://nwitimes.com/news/local/article_6ecf9efd-c716-5872-a2ed-b3dbb95f965b.html
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/dangerous_pals_cvq7rDCHftKwJyLaecfPQK
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/700499,CST-NWS-Obama-law17.article
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/acorn-housing-mortgage-program
http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/7-23-09-ogr-acorn-report.pdf
http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1225223330.pdf
http://www.capitalresearch.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/acorn_townhall_august2009.pdf
http://rottenacorn.com/downloads/060728_badSeed.pdf
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_acorns_nutty_regime.html
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/acornbackgro.html
http://www.acorncracked.com/history.html
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/06/08/soros-buddies-herb-and-marion-sandler-gave-orders-to-acorn/
http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin060109.php3
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/gaynor/081028
The stated purpose of Project Vote is to work within the system, using conventional voter mobilization drives and litigation to secure the rights of minority and low-income voters under the U.S. Constitution. However, the organization’s actions indicate that its true agenda is to overwhelm, paralyze, and discredit the voting system through fraud, protests, propaganda and vexatious litigation. In this respect, Project Vote is following the so-called “crisis strategy” or Cloward-Piven Strategy pioneered during the Sixties by Columbia University political scientists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-and-acorn-its-a-power-thing