Free Republic

Doesn’t he come up for re-election in a couple of years? How delicious it would be to help Arizona elect a TRUE Republican to replace him! Let’s move to Arizona!

I voted for him for President as the “lesser of two evils”. Sarah Palin made it much easier.

You bet! I’ll boycott them. Everybody needs to send an email to FOX telling them how DISgusted we are about the Palin story because that’s actually what they pay attention to.

Thanks for posting that. It very succinctly summarizes the info I found.

Thanks for the information about the archive link. I’ve been searching and saving all afternoon.

Maybe what I’ve found is not news to others, but it’s news to me. There’s some stuff out there about how Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac contributed to ACORN; how radical ACORN’s agenda is and how they’re related to the New Party—of which we know that Obama was a member.

Please read the following section about ACORN from a commentary to the Catholic Bishops of the United States regarding the need to reevaluate their donation procedures:

“...II. COMMUNITY ORGANIZING: During the funding period of 1992-1995, CHD gave significant grants to community organizing efforts that implement many of the organizational techniques recommended by Saul Alinsky. Many community organizations patterned after Alinsky’s recommendations recruit their membership either entirely or partially by institution. Included among this class of grantees are four national organizations: the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), Gamaliel, Pacific Institute for Community Organizing (PICO), and Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART). The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) which is also patterned on Alinsky’s organizational recommendations, recruits individual members. These five national organizations alone account for approximately 33% of current CHD expenditures annually. For purposes of illustration, it will be useful to note here some aspects of the operation of ACORN and the IAF.

A. ACORN

1. ACORN received approximately 5% of the national CHD annual budget between 1992-1995. Between the years of 1992-1995, ACORN received $1,493,000 in national CHD grants.

2. ACORN’s People’s Platform was written in 1978 and ratified in 1979 at ACORN’s national convention in St. Louis. The document was revised and re-approved in 1990 at ACORN’s national 20th Anniversary Convention in Chicago and is in effect at present. Among other things, the ACORN People’s Platform specifies that ACORN demands that the United States :

· “create a national health-care system” in which “all medical costs are covered” and in which doctors are provided a medical “education subsidized by the federal government.” [section on Health Care, # I & II]

· “create more housing” by setting a “goal of a million new units of federally subsidized housing per year.” [section on Housing, #I]

· “charge government and big business with the final responsibility for full employment.” [section on Work and Workers’ Rights, #II]

· “guarantee a minimum annual family income…” [section on Work and Workers’ Rights, #III]

· develop schools that are “available for community needs, like adult education” and “job training that is linked to specific employment,” and which “can provide all support and services that a child cannot receive at home.” [section on Education, #II & IV]

3. To accomplish its goals, as outlined in the People’s Platform, ACORN has developed a political alliance with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Together with others, ACORN and the DSA have formed a political party, the New Party.

a. National ACORN president, Maud Hurd, along with Dr. Cornel West (honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America) and a representative from the Reproductive Rights Coalition Fund, are listed as New Party supporters.

b. Bronx ACORN operates a New Party chapter out of its headquarters.

c. In a drive to identify political allies, the New Party held “extensive discussions” in 1994 with “high ranking officials in labor (teamsters, electrical workers, oil workers, bus drivers, etc.); grassroots environmentalists with Greenpeace, Citizens Clearinghouse on Hazardous Waste and Friends of the Earth; community organizations like ACORN and the Industrial Areas Foundation; DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] and Sane/Freeze, and scores of important local organizations.”

d. By 1996, New Party alliances with ACORN, the IAF, Sustainable America, and others, promoted “living wage” campaigns around the country. ACORN has also promoted the Income Equity Act of 1997 (H.R. 687, 105th Congress), which would place federal control over executive earnings by “denying tax deductions for executive compensation that exceeds 25 times the company’s lowest paid full-time employee.”

4. ACORN’s political activity is viewpoint-oriented: “…[O]rganizing needs to happen more than ever to counter Right-wing assault.” Member groups are able to “have a voice in setting a national agenda for organizing to fight the right.” To this end, ACORN endorsed the pro-abortion Fight the Right March in 1996.

ACORN’s political activities have extended beyond mere “Get Out the Vote” drives: “In 1972, ACORN made its first entry into electoral politics. ACORN’s first effort was a ‘Save the City Rally,’ which all the candidates for Little Rock [AK] Board of Directors were invited to attend. Next, ACORN’s Political Action Committee decided to back two candidates for Little Rock School Board….Buoyed by their success, ACORN members decided to go one step further and run for office themselves. In 1974, ACORN members, joined by a group of International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union members, ran for seats on the Pulaski County Quorum Court [IL]….The great expansion of the organization [by 1975], led to multi-state campaign…ACORN national conventions and actions in 1978, 1979, and 1980 led to an entry into national politics through participation in the 1980 Presidential campaign. ACORN used the campaign to apply pressure to presidential candidates during the nomination campaign when they were most in need of grassroots support - a specialty of ACORN’s. They also created the opportunity for the members and leaders to develop their ideas on a national agenda for the organization.”

ACORN received $132,000 from the CHD in 1978, $159,000 from the CHD in 1979, and $157,000 from the CHD in 1980.

In 1988, ACORN backed Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. “ACORN had thirty Jackson delegates on the floor of the Democratic Convention….Electoral politics…became a powerful weapon in the ACORN arsenal…[T]hey were refined and institutionalized within ACORN. The work with the Rainbow Lobby was clear proof of ACORN’s electoral abilities. ACORN Political Action Committee work in local and national electoral politics paid off…”

During the 1990s, ACORN has been openly active in Congressional lobbying. Its leadership operates, “…from inside positions of power. ACORN’s work on the savings and loan bailout provided effective means of developing and applying power…ACORN members won appointment to the Resolution Trust Corporation to help determine the management of the billions of dollars of assets the government seized.

5. ACORN’s educational activism was described by Jennifer Anderson from the CHD-funded NY-ACORN at the 1995 25th CHD Anniversary Conference in Chicago. NY-ACORN is establishing alternative “New Visions Schools” within the New York public school system. During her workshop: “School Reform Sweeping the Nation,” Ms. Anderson identified the reform model which NY-ACORN schools are emulating as the Debbie Meier experimental public school model (the Networks for School Renewal).

The experimental schools designed by NY-ACORN on the Debbie Meier model have many attractive features — small teacher-pupil ratios and small student bodies, for example. However, each ACORN “New Visions School” has one full-time, paid ACORN organizer associated with it, whose duties include organizing parents, class by class. Anderson described ACORN’s efforts to see that “progressively-minded” teachers and principals were hired in the New Visions Schools.

Academically, the Debbie Meier educational model includes substantive restructuring. Standardized testing is eliminated: “For instance, to put the sort of intense emphasis on standardized testing…meant, in practice, the gearing of curricula specifically to prepare students to pass narrowly focused tests-with little attention to the broader array of skills and critical capacities essential in a real world environment…In contrast…an alternative began to emerge.” Parents and educators must be re-educated to accept this restructuring: “But for democratic school approaches [such as the Deborah Meier model] to work necessitated not only changes in the formal structure of education but also effective, skillful training and some clear public commitment to an alternative understanding of educational purposes themselves.” These “educational purposes” can facilitate the training of new community organizers. In ACORN’s New Visions School in New York, Local 1199 School for Social Change, “…students analyze public health issues, the organization of community groups, the development of public policy and the international labor movement. Students are involved in hands-on activities in order to relate classroom learning to community service. These activities range from participation in labor and community organization movements to service as interns at local health care facilities.”

NY-ACORN received $170,000 in CHD grants between 1992-1995. As there is no specific project specified in the reporting of these CHD grants to ACORN, it would seem fair to assume that CHD money has been used by NY-ACORN in ways that would provide at least indirect support to its educational reform agenda.

6. ACORN’s People’s Platform is unexceptionable about what it terms “women’s rights,” demanding only equal pay for equal work, swift intervention in instances of workplace sexual harassment, and maternity leave benefits. However, Maud Hurd, ACORN’s national president, was a speaker at Expo ‘96 for Woman’s Empowerment.

The purpose of the exposition was to develop a response to “the conservative use of ballot initiatives to attack women’s rights and to galvanize a right-wing vote…” The Expo promotional material stated that: “The attack on women’s rights and sex discrimination law has galvanized our coming together….Never before has the woman’s movement been under so much attack…” This network of feminists seeks to “…ignite the women’s movement on the fight to save affirmative action and sex discrimination law; will develop a feminist national budget for the United States; and will envision a feminist future.”

Here’s the link: http://web.archive.org/web/20010605162654/www.wandererforum.org/Focus25.htm