Obama, ACORN, and the mortgage mess

Mona Charon reminds us today of what most MSM won’t: Sen. Obama’s close ties to ACORN, an organization with a history of vote fraud activities and pushing taxpayer support for high risk loans to people with weak or outright bad credit history

Charon begins - - -

The financial markets were teetering on the edge of an abyss last week. The secretary of the Treasury was literally on his knees begging the speaker of the House not to sabotage the bailout bill. The crash of falling banks made the earth tremble. The Republican presidential candidate suspended his campaign to deal with the crisis.

And amid all this, the Democrats in Congress managed to find time to slip language into the bailout legislation that would provide a dandy little slush fund for ACORN. ( I posted about that here. - - JinC)

ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a busy hive of left-wing agitation and "direct action" that claims chapters in 50 cities and 100,000 dues-paying members.

ACORN is where Sixties leftovers who couldn't get tenure at universities wound up. That the bill-writing Democrats remembered their pet clients during such an emergency speaks volumes.

This attempted gift to ACORN (stripped out of the bill after outraged howls from Republicans) demonstrates how little Democrats understand about what caused the mess we're in.

ACORN does many things under the umbrella of "community organizing." They agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare workers (that is, those welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits) and organize voter registration efforts (always for Democrats, of course).

Because they are on the side of righteousness and justice, they aren't especially fastidious about their methods. In 2006, for example, ACORN registered 1,800 new voters in Washington. The only trouble was, with the exception of six, all of the names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the "worst case of election fraud in our state's history."

As Fox News reported:

"The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms."

ACORN explained that this was an "isolated" incident, yet similar stories have been reported in Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, and Colorado -- all swing states, by the way. ACORN members have been prosecuted for voter fraud in a number of states. (See www.rottenacorn.com.)

Their philosophy seems to be that everyone deserves the right to vote, whether legal or illegal, living or dead.

ACORN recognized very early the opportunity presented by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. As Stanley Kurtz has reported, ACORN proudly touted "affirmative action" lending and pressured banks to make subprime loans. Madeline Talbott, a Chicago ACORN leader, boasted of "dragging banks kicking and screaming" into dubious loans. …

ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott hired him to train her staff -- the very people who would later descend on Chicago's banks as CRA shakedown artists. The Democratic nominee later funneled money to the group through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, ditto.

Obama was not just sympathetic -- he was an ACORN fellow traveler. …

Charon’s entire column’s here.

*********************************************

Comments:

Sen. Obama’s involvement with ACORN is even more extensive than Charon reports. He was, for example, its general counsel for three years.

We keep reading and hearing of MSM inquiries regarding Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin (the AP reported the other day she’d gotten a free facial while Mayor of Wasilla. Wow! I guess the AP thought that was an example of in your face abuse of the public trust.)

But we don’t read or hear very much from MSM about why Obama linked up with ACORN in the first place and what he did with and for ACORN since then.

I think MSM is afraid if people find out about Obama’s ACORN connections they’ll wonder whose interests he’ll serve if he becomes President.

With people like Madeline Talbott and Barney (“Fannie Mae is fine”) Frank supporting him, I think we know.