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A former staffer for an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now testified today that the organization was provided a “donor list” from the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in late 2007 for fundraising efforts.
Anita Moncrief, a former Washington, D.C. staffer for Project Vote, which she described as a sister organization of ACORN, said her supervisor told her the list of campaign contributors came from the Obama campaign. Moncrief said she has a copy of a “development plan” that outlines how Obama contributors who had “maxed out” under federal contribution limits would be targeted to give to Project Vote, and that it was her job to identify such contributors.
So… Obama claims to have “no ties” to ACORN, and yet we find out that Obama used to work for them, has spoken at ACORN meetings, represented them as an attorney in two court cases, paid them $830,000 for get out the vote projects… AND is providing them with potential donor lists?
To quote Shakespeare, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
*Thanks to Bluemorning for finding this tidbit for me!*
In a déjà vu moment from Campaign 2006, President George W. Bush again is asking his Attorney General to launch an investigation into the registration of hundreds of thousands of new voters, many of whom are expected to vote Democratic.
Bush forwarded to Attorney General Michael Mukasey a Republican request that he intervene in the battleground state of Ohio to force 200,000 new voters to either verify the information on their registration forms or cast provisional ballots, which are often thrown out after the voter leaves the polling place….
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Bush asking for his extraordinary intervention after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to get involved in the Ohio dispute.
“Unless action is taken by the [Justice] Department immediately, thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of names whose information has not been verified through the [Help America Vote Act] procedures mandated by Congress will remain on the voter rolls during the Nov. 4 election. …
“There is a significant risk if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted. Given the Election Day is less than two weeks away, immediate action by the Department is not only warranted, but also crucial.”
On Friday, White House spokesman Carlton Carroll said Bush had referred Boehner’s letter “to the Department of Justice for their review.”
As a bit of background, ACORN is a “community activist group that advocates for the poor” in areas such as housing and get out the vote (GOTV) projects. Senator Obama worked for them while he was a community organizer, represented them as an attorney in lawsuits twice, and gave them $850,000 this year to GOTV.
Minnesota now joins 12 other states in which ACORN is under investigation for voter registration fraud…. Massive fraud.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s office said today it is investigating whether a voter registration processing lapse at the Minnesota ACORN office falls within guidelines for criminal prosecution….
Despite the recent controversy over ACORN voter registration practices, the grass-roots community organization’s policies appear to be in compliance with state law, Deputy Hennepin County Attorney Pat Diamond said this afternoon. If the county finds cause for prosecution, it likely would focus on individuals. Diamond declined to speculate what kinds of charges could be pursued, or what kind of penalty would be possible.
Organizations are given a 10-day filing period intended to prevent a last-minute backlog of registrations at county elections offices. ACORN officials declined to say exactly how many cards were affected, or how far outside the window they were submitted.
I am wholly disappointed in the Department of Justice for sure! It turns out it isn’t our ahem! esteemed DOJ filing charges. These charges are coming from a think tank…I never even considered it would be The Buckeye Institutefor Public Policy Solutions of Columbus, OH. This information has just been released today by the institute. Here is more on those charges:
The Buckeye Institute, a Columbus-based think tank, today filed a state RICO action against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on behalf of two Warren County voters. The action filed in Warren County Court of Common Pleas alleges ACORN has engaged in a pattern of corrupt activity that amounts to organized crime. It seeks ACORN’s dissolution as a legal entity, the revocation of any licenses in Ohio, and an injunction against fraudulent voter registration and other illegal activities.
It still distresses me that it is a state action not a federal action. Where is the US Department of Justice on ACORN? As far as I can tell missing-in-action.
More from the Institute:
Plaintiffs Jennifer Miller of Mason, Ohio and Kimberly Grant of Loveland, allege that ACORN’s actions deprive them of the right to participate in an honest and effective elections process. They allege fraudulent voter registrations submitted by ACORN dilute the votes of legally registered voters.
“The right to cast a vote that is not diluted by fraudulent votes is a fundamental individual right,” Buckeye Institute President David Hansen said.
“ACORN appears to be recklessly disregarding Ohio laws and adding thousands of fraudulent voters to the state’s roles in the process,” Maurice Thompson, Director of the Buckeye Institute’s 1851 Center for Constitutional Law said. “Such voter fraud erodes the value of legally cast votes,” he added.
In the complaint, Thompson cites an accumulation of evidence showing numerous instances of admitted fraud by ACORN employees, as well as individuals solicited by ACORN.
“In light of its hiring, training and compensation practices, ACORN should have known its conduct would cause fraud,” Thompson said. “It also should know that its conduct will cause fraud in the future.”
In addition, the complaint cites conduct by ACORN in Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
A full copy of the complaint is available online at Buckeye Institute here
Buckeye does have a mission and is completeing it in Ohio.
The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, together with its 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, is a nonpartisan research and educational institute devoted to individual liberty, economic freedom, personal responsibility and limited government in Ohio.
All I can say is I am glad someone is doing something to knee-cap ACORN. Good one for The Buckeye Institute. Where is the Department of Justice? Are you out there somewhere? Are you doing your job? Where are the federal RICO charges?
Pagan hits another one out of the park… here is the article cited by him… From The American Spectator.
A retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice says that she is “not confident we can get a fair election” in the state come November….
“Between March 23rd and October 1st, various groups, including ACORN, submitted over 252,595 registrations to the Philadelphia County Election Board” with 57, 435 rejected for faulty information. “Most of these registrations were submitted by ACORN, and rejected due to fake social security numbers, incorrect dates of birth, clearly fraudulent signatures, addresses that do not exist, and duplicate registrations. In one case, a man was registered to vote more than 15 times since the Primary election.”
“Voter fraud is no longer just a Philadelphia problem,” Gleason said, with ACORN targeting key counties across the state. Counties specifically cited included:
* Delaware County: One of four key suburban counties that surround Philadelphia and are at the heart of the campaign by the forces of Senator Barack Obama to carry the state. In one instance, an ACORN employee circulating voter registration forms in Delaware County was featured on the Pennsylvania “Megan’s Law” website, described as having been arrested for “aggravated indecent assault” of a child. Other ACORN circulators had prior criminal records for forgery and giving false information to a police officer, among other charges….
* Philadelphia County:The situation in the state’s largest city is so bad the Philadelphia City Commission, which supervises the registration of Philadelphia voters, voted unanimously to “voluntarily” turn over its extensive records to the United States Attorney’s office for prosecution.
* Dauphin County: Dauphin County (the location of the state capital) District Attorney Marsico said the situation was so bad in Harrisburg that one ACORN worker is now being sought by authorities for submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms. The charge is 19 counts of perjury….
* Allegheny County: Pittsburgh. Here District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. and county police Superintendent Charles Moffatt have just announced, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, that “they are investigating and considering charges against ACORN staffers and other voter registration groups.”
* Centre County: The home of Penn State, which enrolls more than 40,000 students at its home campus. Justice Newman said there was a “massive effort” to fraudulently register students, with efforts aimed at “multiple registrations.”
* Erie County: ….here too students at local colleges are being targeted in “student registration drives” designed to register voters 18 and over “multiples of times.” Student registrants, registered to vote in their home states, had “pending absentee ballot applications” submitted so they could vote for president both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. The Director of Elections in Erie has reported the telltale “same handwriting” on applications, according to Newman.
Marsico added that he believed the attempted fraud was being perpetrated in smaller Pennsylvania counties as well, counties where the resources to investigate simply don’t exist….
Asked whether the Pennsylvania State Democratic Party had come forward to work with the GOP on the ACORN voter fraud issue, Gleason tersely shook his head. One source did say that much of the impetus for the fraud was “an Obama effort,” as opposed to the Democratic Party as an institution….
Is it really possible that the presidency could be stolen for Obama by virtue of a massive voter fraud here in Pennsylvania? And elsewhere? ACORN seems to think so….
Newman, the retired Supreme Court Justice, was blunt on the evidence: “I don’t want a president who does this.”
I must thank my dear friend Shtuey for seeing the bigger picture for all of us. And I must say thank you for helping me recover some of my memories of Denver. Shtuey you are my hero!
From Shtuey, our guest for the day:
At the outset I must thank Ms Placed Democrat’s Renaissancelady 48 and Eastan McNeal at No Quarter for their exhaustive research, love of country, and wise council.
How did we get here? How is it that “subprime mortgages” have brought us to the brink of economic collapse? Most people believe it is due to the predatory lending practices of financial institutions. That is the lie you have been sold. The truth is far more insidious. We are in fact on the brink of economic disaster because of the people who have sent Barack Obama.
In order to understand how this happened we must begin with Saul Alinsky , the radical socialist who, after spending a great deal of time with the Al Capone crime family in Chicago, realized that the same shakedown tactics used by the mob to extort business, and control politicians, could be used by activists to shakedown banks and political institutions to advance a socialist agenda. These were tactics utilized by groups like ACORN, in an effort to lobby the government to pass laws that forced lending institutions to issue mortgages to low income/”at risk” borrowers who often had no way of paying the money back.
But ACORN members probably did not lobby for these laws to bring down our economy, at least not knowingly. I believe that, apart from the leaders at the top, rank and file ACORN members legitimately believed they were fighting for low-income housing. But ACORN’s backers were simply using Alinsky’s method (never reveal your real agenda) to serve their own purposes. Who are these people? You know the names of two of them: Bill Ayers and Barack Obama. I suspect that they are more front men than anything else, though who knows who Ayers was with while he was in hiding?
Where did ACORN get the funds to engage in the widespread lobbying (read extortion) that allowed them to shakedown lenders and politicians? From the money diverted to them by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the Woods Fund, as well as with your tax dollars allocated by Congressional Democrats; the same Congressional Democrats that have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Freddie and Fannie in the form of campaign contributions; the same Congressional Democrats that ignored Republican calls for the regulating and reform of Freddie and Fannie–the institutions that took subprime mortgages, bundled them, and infected financial institutions worldwide…all in the name of granting minorities and low income families access to housing (always the trouble begins with the most honorable of intentions, or at least it is made to seem so), but with the Leftists’ hidden purpose of initiating a worldwide economic collapse. All of it accomplished with ACORN as the muscle.
“compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call “communities of color” that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria.”
DiLorenzo goes on to explain:
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). These organizations claim that over $1 trillion in CRA loans have been made, although no one seems to know the magnitude with much certainty. A U.S. Senate Banking Committee staffer told me about ten years ago that at least $100 billion in such loans had been made in the first twenty years of the Act.
So-called “community groups” like ACORN benefit themselves from the CRA through a process that sounds like legalized extortion. The CRA is enforced by four federal government bureaucracies: the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The law is set up so that any bank merger, branch expansion, or new branch creation can be postponed or prohibited by any of these four bureaucracies if a CRA “protest” is issued by a “community group.” This can cost banks great sums of money, and the “community groups” understand this perfectly well. It is their leverage. They use this leverage to get the banks to give them millions of dollars as well as promising to make a certain amount of bad loans in their communities.
A man named Bruce Marks became quite notorious during the last decade for pressuring banks to earmark literally billions of dollars to his organization, the “Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.” He once boasted to the New York Times that he had “won” loan commitments totaling $3.8 billion from Bank of America, First Union Corporation, and the Fleet Financial Group. And that is just one “community group” operating in one city – Boston.
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.
Consequently, banks in every community in America have been forced to hold a portfolio of bad loans, euphemistically referred to as “subprime” loans. In order to compensate themselves for the added risk of extending these loans, many lenders have increased the lending fees associated with mortgage loans. This is simply an indirect way of doing what banks always do – and what they must do to remain solvent: charging effectively higher rates of interest on riskier loans.
But this is discriminatory!, complained the “community organizations.” 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.
The Ohio Secretary of State has set up a situation in which a person can register to vote and vote via an absentee ballot at the same time.
Talk about a recipe for fraud!!!
Well the GOP challenged it in court, but the court said that it was legal… then the voting began, and the only office verifying that the people that were voting were eligible was Brunner’s and they were refusing to release the eligible voter lists to anyone else, including the county elections boards!!!
So the GOP freaked (DUH!) and went to court again…
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is breaking federal law by not giving county elections boards the chance to determine whether new voter registrations are fraudulent, a federal judge ruled tonight.
It is hard to imagine a public interest more compelling than safeguarding the legitimacy of the election of the president of the United States,” said Judge George C. Smith of U.S. District Court in Columbus, in upholding the Ohio Republican Party’s request for a court order.
Smith, appointed by President Reagan, said the Help America Vote Act requires states not only to verify the identity of newly registered voters with the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the federal Social Security Administration, but to provide counties with the names of new voters whose records did not match.
Brunner’s office had been doing the verification but had not made the names available to county elections boards. The judge gave her a week to comply….
Brunner’s office said she is filing an immediate appeal with the 6th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals.
Smith said speed is necessary because next Thursday is the deadline to challenge absentee voters; on Oct. 25 elections workers can remove ballots from envelopes that contain the only identifying information about who cast them.
He specifically cited questionable activity of one group that registered thousands of new Ohio voters: the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine said the ruling spoke volumes about Brunner, a Democrat.
“Her refusal to comply with federal law raises serious concerns about her ability to objectively oversee this election. It’s especially troubling in light of her connection to ACORN and that group’s stunning confession this week of fraudulent registration activity happening right here in Ohio,” he said.
Republicans say Democrat Barack Obama has “strong ties” to ACORN, serving in the past as an attorney and “leadership trainer” for the group.
Election Fraud: A radical group Barack Obama used to work for is committing voter-registration fraud in several states, ahead of the election. What does Obama know about this scam?
I am going to let IBD tell the story themselves. Here it is posted in its entirety:
It’s a legitimate question to raise now that the FBI has raided the offices of the nonprofit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in Nevada and North Carolina, two states where Obama and John McCain are running neck-and-neck. ACORN has registered bogus voters in both states.
The group’s voter-registration fraud is rampant, and authorities plan a nationwide sweep of ACORN offices to collect records.
In Nevada, state officials say the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, including quarterback Tony Romo.
“Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada,” Secretary of State Ross Miller said, “and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won’t be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4.”
While those names will be flagged on Election Day, felonious voters may have better luck using other cutouts. Nevada, along with several other key battleground states, requires no ID to vote.
In North Carolina, where Obama has been running nonstop ads, ACORN has registered a record number of new voters, many of them suspicious. Statewide, Democrats are doing better than the GOP in new converts — even in traditionally Republican counties.
There have been 218,749 newly registered Democrats in North Carolina since January — more than five times the 38,337 new Republicans, state records show.
The numbers show a startlingly close political battle even in Republican-dominated Union County, with 4,233 new voters registering as Democrats and 4,362 as Republicans. In previous election years, new Republicans have outnumbered Democrats 2-to-1 in the fast-growing Charlotte-area county.
In Missouri, one ACORN registrant named Monica Rays showed up on no less than eight forms, all bearing the same signature.
Suspicious election officials sent letters to some 5,000 ACORN registrants in St. Louis, asking the letter recipients to contact them.
Fewer than 40 reponded.
In Kansas City, 15,000 registrations have been questioned, and last year four ACORN employees were indicted for fraud.
In addition, ACORN officials have also been indicted in Wisconsin and Colorado. Investigations against others are active in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
ACORN has also been registering convicted felons — including inmates — in Florida and other battleground states. ACORN boasts registering a record 1.5 million new voters so far this election.
What does all this have to do with Obama, besides the fact that he’d be the beneficiary of most, if not all, of these new votes?
For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for “advance work.”)
What’s more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN’s voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on Chicago’s South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.
The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.
Obama downplays his ties to ACORN, and his campaign denies coordinating with ACORN to register voters.
Meantime, New Orleans-based ACORN maintains that it has no control over volunteers who are falsifying application forms, that they’re like employees who steal from the store.
But the fraud is widespread and not isolated. It also turns out that some ACORN execs allegedly are involved in a $1 million embezzlement cover-up at their headquarters. Representing them in the case is none other than Michelle Obama’s old law firm in Chicago.
ACORN’s corruption is not just out in the field, as they claim. There’s a pattern of corruption from the top down.
McCain would be wise to start preparing a challenge to voter registration rolls should he lose the race in a close contest. He’d be crazy not to contest the results in light of these events.
I have been asking for months now, since July, why the Department of Justice/FBI had not done anything to take down ACORN? I am still a bit bothered by the DOJ/FBI’s inaction on the issue of voter fraud and ACORN because we are less than 4 weeks from the November election. I won’t pretend to understand the methodology of the DOJ/FBI, but I am still critical of their action at the 2 minute warning buzzer!
The group that Barack Obama worked for as a community activist and has hired for voter registration drives this year has had their Nevada offices raided by state authorities.
Investigators are tracking highly suspicious and fraudulent voter registration activities.
ACORN is already under investigation or is under indictment in multiple states. Nevada adds to this list.
LAS VEGAS – Nevada state authorities are raiding the Las Vegas headquarters of an organization that works to get low-income people to vote.
A Nevada secretary of state’s office spokesman said Tuesday that investigators are looking for evidence of voter fraud at the office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.
No one was at the ACORN office when state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away.
Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh says ACORN is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names.
The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada.
Obama’s most dangerous tie is to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN. ACORN boasts a membership of over 400,000 low-to moderate income families in more than 1200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country. They work on various issues but are most known for voter registration drives, with claims they are a non-partisan group. Nothing is farther from the truth.
ACORN has been prosecuted in several states already for voter fraud. The most notable states are Washington state where they were fined $25,000 and Missouri where seven people were indicted and eventually found guilty ofvoter fraud by the US Department of Justice.
ACORN is also currently under investigation or suspected of fraud in NINEstates: Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, North Carolina and Kansas. Most of the states involved are swing states.
To really drive home how ACORN has or is affecting the November election, I am including an excerpt from Consumer Rights League, Chief Advocate James Terry’s testimony to Congress:
Terry Stated “It Is Fair To Question How Many Fraudulent Registrations”
Submitted By ACORN May “Lead To Fraudulent Votes,” And Also Pointed Out
That ACORN May Be “Willing To Undertake” Other Actions “To Influence
The Election.” James Terry: “Furthermore, as this mega organization
with a decades long history of violating the law is turned to get out
the vote efforts, we believe it is fair to question how many fraudulent
registrations may lead to fraudulent votes or what other activities
they are willing to undertake to influence the election.”
(“CRL Testimony On ACORN’s Voter Fraud,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/25/08)
ACORN’s largest organization exists in Chicago. And it is in Chicago that Obama first worked with ACORN on a “project vote” campaign during his community organizing days.
At this time he was noticed by Madeleine Talbott, the director of the Chicago Operations. She hand picked Obama to train her staff. When Obama returned to Chicago in the 90s, Madeleine Talbott was just beginning to make her run on banks. More from the Republican National Committee (RNC):
Obama Directed Project Vote And Later Taught Classes For “Future Leaders Identified By ACORN And The Centers For New Horizons.” “He [Obama] says he is drawn to politics, despite its superficialities, as a means to advance his real passion and calling: community organization. … In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, the most successful grass-roots voter- registration campaign in recent city history. Credited with helping elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the U.S. Senate, the registration drive, aimed primarily at African-Americans, added an estimated 125,000 voters to the voter rolls — even more than were registered during Harold Washington’s mayoral campaigns. ‘It’s a power thing,’ said the brochures and radio commercials. … Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side.”
(Hank De Zutter, Op-Ed, “What Makes Obama Run?” ChicagoReader, 12/8/95)
Through Talbott’s direct action tactics, she forced banks to make riskier and riskier loans. Obama helped fund her Chicago branch of ACORN with funds funneled through the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenburg Challenge (where he was a board member with William Ayers, the “unrepentant domestic terrorist”) encouraging Talbott to do more and more.
Obama not only funded Chicago ACORN, he trained their personnel in leadership and he was their attorney. Obama was also the lawyer for ACORN in at least two court challenges, one on motor voter registration in Illinois and the other on banking practices.
In short Obama knows all about ACORN’s strong arm tactics. More from the RNC website:
While Serving On The Board Of Directors Of The Woods Fund, ACORN Received Thousands Of Dollars Of Grants From The Organization:
The Chicago ACORN Received Grants Of $45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), And $40,000 (2002) From The Woods Fund.
(Donors Forum Website, ifs.donorsforum.org, Accessed 6/10/08)
NOTE: From 1993 To 2002, Barack Obama Served On The Board Of Directors
For The Woods Fund. (Tim Novak and Fran Spielman, “Obama Helped Ex-Boss
Get $1 Mil. From Charity,” Chicago Sun-Times, 11/29/07)
ACORN and Obama have a “you pat my back, I’ll pat your back relationship.”
Since Obama had done so much for ACORN, Talbott and ACORN in general endorsed Obama for president in February 2008. Read about that endorsement here.
Their endorsement wasn’t free. They have been working for Obama this year doing GOTV and voter registration drives. Obama was paying ACORN under the table by using another ACORN subsidiary, Citizen’s Services Inc, as a front company.
Obama’s Campaign Paid Over $800,000 To ACORN For Get-Out-The-Vote Efforts, But “Mistakenly Misrepresented” Their Work To The FEC:
Obama’s Campaign “Paid More Than $800,000″ To ACORN For Get-Out-The Vote Efforts; The Campaign Originally “Misrepresented” The Group’s Work To The FEC. “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.”
(David M. Brown, “Obama To Amend Report On $800,000 In Spending,” Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 8/22/08)
Make no mistakes folks, Obama is trying to cheat his way through the November election aided by his longtime co-horts, ACORN. If you do nothing else today, tell five friends and ask them to tell five friends….in a few days we will have told the whole country! Some will not listen because they are drunk on koolaid. Then there will be that one, ten or even a million undecided voters who hears about Obama and ACORN and it will be his defeat.
Please while you are at it, Make A Sign…. put it in your yard, ANYBODY BUT OBAMA….. when people ask you why you have that particular sign in your yard, hand them a printed copy of this blog and ask them to read it and pass it on! Say thank you! And have a nice day. I can’t impress upon you enough that one person you speak to may be the one vote, the one vote that keeps Obama and his dangerous pals out of our White House!
We face serious problems and we need serious leaders with serious solutions. We are on the brink of total economic collapse, and our collapse may trigger a world wide depression on a scale like we have never seen before. The worst part is that the public is still behind the times on the crisis. Mortgages were so last year.
The real looming monster in the room that no one wants to admit is there yet are the credit default swaps. If these start going down the tubes, we are completely screwed. Completely.
The problems we face go so far beyond the basic problems of the mortgage crisis, it is hard to even describe the real problems we face in layman’s terms.
On a basic level, everyone broke up their risky stuff into little tidbits and sold them to a bunch of different places… spreading around the risk, therefore supposedly lowering the risk exposure for each party.
Then, at the same time, everyone was buying other places tidbits of risk and paying a premium… because the returns were big and the overall risk was low due to it being spread over a group rather than a single party. And the risk was further minimized because they owned tidbits of risk from several different parts of the financial sector and from several different companies, so if one part had trouble, no big deal… it was balanced out by all the others.
You see, the only way all these little tidbits could pose any real problem is if the whole sector were to grind to a screeching halt. And that could never happen… could it?
Instead of having individual companies running into problems and shutting down, now everyone owns a part of everyone else’s risk… and in the aggregate, those little tidbits of risk add up to a lot of risk, especially if the whole financial system becomes threatened… you know, like now.
So the potential for future problems is immense. Mortgages are just the beginning.
We need a leader with honor, experience and a willingness to work with both sides of the aisle.
John McCain has been in DC and part of the solution for the S&L Crisis, 1987′s Black Friday, the Tech Bubble burst, the collapse after Sept 11th and now the Mortgage Meltdown. He has experience in dealing with both the delicate political and tenuous economic situations.
In addition, much like Obama’s touted “foresight” and speech on Iraq, John McCain put forth legislation in 2005 and warned about the coming meltdown. If we are to give Obama credit that his initial opposition to the Iraqi invasion speaks to some sort of judgement, then this must be trumped by McCain’s prediction of the troubles in the mortgage industry because no one will dispute that the troubles with the economy are by far the most important.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, not so good on the judgement tip. Barack Obama not only stayed silent on the coming crisis, but supported the very groups and people responsible for the crisis. Among those in Obama’s inner circle you can find two former heads of Fannie Mae and the grand dame and architect of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. In addition, Obama has been one of the top recipients of contributions from Wall Street… second only to Chris Dodd. And then there is ACORN… Oh, God… I don’t even know where to begin with these scam artists…
Barack Obama’s complete ignorance and total naivete’ when it comes to real estate and economics has a long track history of devastation. From the boarded up tenements his buddy Rezko left all over the southside of Chicago to the meltdown of the mortgage industy cheer on by his friends, advisors and former employers… Barack Obama is bad for housing and bad for the economy.
This is a big crisis, one that the majority of Americans agree is the biggest crisis we face. We cannot leave it to an ignorant neophyte with a history of destructive decision making that has shown little propensity to change his stance, even less leadership, a near complete lack of bi-partisanship and an affinity for earmarks.
Barack Obama didn’t even want to go back to DC to deal with the mortgage crisis in the first place, didn’t even bother to contact any of the Democrats that were on the fence the morning of the bailout vote… but bi-partisanship and an aversion to earmarks are essential.
John McCain has a long and well documented history of bi-partisanship, one which is lauded by just about everyone in DC including both Hillary and Bill Clinton as well as Joe Biden.
In addition, these bills dealing with the economy need to be free of the clutter, partisanship and politics that earmarks represent. John McCain has never once asked for an earmark… ever.
This stands in stark contrast to Obama and his friends, who wanted to earmark the bailout bill to give ACORN, Obama’s former employer, BILLIONS of dollars and who sunk the vote through their rabid partisanship (ie Pelosi and her rant.)
When facing the precipice of complete economic meltdown, we need someone that has experience, someone that listens to all sides, has the foresight to recognize coming problems, works in a bi-partisan way and does not use crisis situations to earmark and gain political advantage.
Posted on September 28, 2008 by Texas Hill Country
While writing the piece about how the Democrats attempted to earmark the bailout to divert funds to ACORN, it occurred to me that some of my readers might not completely understand who or what ACORN is, how they are related to the Democratic Party, how Obama is intertwined with this group and why the inclusion of this group is so significant.
To explain further, I am going to defer to NancyA of NoQuarter and Renaissancelady48, and Larry Johnson of NoQuarter and Eastan Macniel, also of NoQuarter. These people have done some ground breaking work on ACORN.
Here is a recommended selection of reading…. (in no particular chronological or informational order)
Lots of good reading… that should tell you everything you need to know about the people that Obama keeps diverting money to and who he chooses to associate with!
Posted on September 26, 2008 by Texas Hill Country
UPDATE: You should see the Senate version of the bill… I just got done reading it… holy god.
Note: Background info on ACORN as a follow up has been posted HERE
Back to our original programming…
HOLY CRAP!
No wonder the Republicans are freaking out over this bill and the whole thing is about to fall through…
The friggin Democrats put EARMARKS in the bill!!!!
And not only are they trying to earmark the bill, they are earmarking the bill for ACORN, an activist group that is under investigation for voter registration fraud in several states.
UPDATE: An explanation from Papau2 (An Author Here On Texas Hill Country)
Sen. Lindsay Graham has jumped a few logic hurdles to get from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund — part of the legislation that passed the Senate Banking Committee in May and is poised to come to the Senate floor as early as this week — to a 20% of bailout bill will go to groups like the ACORN and the National Council of La Raza.
The “trust fund” does get its revenues from a legislatively fixed share of the surpluses of the government’s Federal Housing Administration or the profits from the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The latest version — in the housing and GSE oversight bill that cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May — would establish the fund by taking 1.2 basis points of interest from Fannie and Freddie’s loan portfolio — about $500 million a year. – over the 2 year life of the bailout that is 1 billion out of $700 billion in the rescue bill with $625 million going to Acorn and such groups for “housing aid”- after two years, all of the money to Acorn would go to the housing grant for bailing out troubled homeowners through FHA guarantees of modified loans (Richard Shelby in May stated he had reached a “compromise” with committee chairman Chris Dodd on the housing fund such that money from the “trust fund” would be used to fund the bill’s main action of bailing out troubled homeowners through FHA guarantees of modified loans. After two years, all of the money would go to the housing grant. The version of the bill that passed the Senate committee in May “diverted” half of the money intended for the housing trust fund in its first year and 25% in its second year, but after that 100% of the funds go into the housing trust fund).
The trust fund would allow recipients (Acorn and such) to use the money for lobbying and possibly political campaigning only because the prohibitions on using the funds for lobbying and political activity contain virtually no teeth in enforcing these bans. There are no explicit requirements for recipients of the grants to fill out timesheets for housing activity, or restrictions on groups using grant money to pay employees who also happen to do other things — such as lobbying and political campaigning. And there are really no penalties other than being forced to give the money back and being disqualified for a new grant.
It is true that ACORN histrory includes election fraud and misuse of federal funds with several ACORN workers indicted and/or convicted of voter registration fraud with phony signatures, and with Acorn sanctioned specifically for misuse of federal housing funds. In 1994, the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) received a grant from the newly created Americorps to assist low-income families at finding housing. In applying for the grant, the AHC claimed its activities were completley separate from ACORN – only to find out one year later via the Americorps Inspector General that “AHC used Americorps grant funds to benefit ACORN either directly or indirectly” with several instances of cost-shifting from ACORN’s lobbying group to the housing entity, and also found several instances of steering recipients of housing counseling into ACORN memberships.
On the heels of the reports of ACORN voter registration irregularities in New Mexico brought to light by GRL at Insight Analytical comes a new report about irregularities in New Orleans and the surrounding parishes (aka counties).
A group called Voting Is Power, is funded by the national DNC, has submitted about 50,000 voter registration cards from 4 different parishes… problem is that on these cards include the names of dogs, cats, dead people… and apparently the guy in charge of verifying that the cards are real?
While Voting Is Power has sent in batches of applications for months, registrars have begun to see a disturbing pattern of misinformation on the forms, including duplicates, cards filled out with different colors of ink, or using the names of pets or dead people. In Jefferson, DiMarco sensed something amiss when a new registration card recently crossed his desk.
The card, partially filled out, had his name and listed his office’s post office box on Citrus Boulevard as the address. It also listed him as a male, a Democrat and African-American.
“And I can tell you I’m only one of those,” said DiMarco, who is white and Republican. There was one bright spot, though. “They flattered me by making me younger — I did appreciate that.”
Real smooth… the head of the Post Office for the parish, who would know if there was another person with the same name in that parish, gets a voter registration card with his name on it???
And pets??? Seriously??? Between ACORN and VIP, we might have a Garfield/Lassie ’08 ticket…
