ACORN finally is getting the attention it deserves. It is a symbol of corruption that is taking place in our banking system that has led to today's financial crisis and the corruption of the voting process. But it's more than a symbol, it is one of the major players in such corruption. And Democrats in Congress want to give it taxpayer money.
As Mona Charen points out, Democrats and Congress added a slush fund to the bailout bill to give tens of millions to ACORN to continue its "community organizing" work. Republicans reacted in disbelief and stripped the provision out.
Stanley Kurtz has reported in detail how 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. And who trained those ACORN recruits who stormed banks and directors' meetings, intimidating bankers and public officials to make unsound mortgage loans? Barack Obama.
ACORN's pioneering work in forcing mortgage loans to be made that never should have been made led to the housing bubble, its collapse, the loss of homes and investments by milliions of innocent Americans and world financial chaos.
Voter registration is also one of ACORN's specialties. And despite rules about nonpartisanship being required for those receiving tax money for registration drives, ACORN somehow seems to only register Democrats.
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."
Several ACORN workers went to jail. But reports like these on vote fraud involving ACORN are coming in from all over the country in this election, including from so-called swing states such as Ohio and New Mexico. Obama's campaign paid ACORN some $800,000 for work during the primary campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton (and tried to hide the payment).
[ACORN's] philosophy seems to be that everyone deserves the right to vote, whether legal or illegal, living or dead.
Barack Obama has supported ACORN since the 1980s, not only training staff in Marxist socialist tactics, but representing them as a lawyer in their campaigns of intimidation and steering charitable (and tax?) money to them to fund their radical activities. And they are going all out to elect him.
Obama was not just sympathetic -- he was an ACORN fellow traveler.
Now you could make the case that before 2008, well-intentioned people were simply unaware of what their agitation on behalf of non-credit-worthy borrowers could lead to. But now? With the whole financial world and possibly the world economy trembling and cracking like a cement building in an earthquake, Democrats continue to try to fund their friends at ACORN? And, unashamed, they then trot out to the TV cameras to declare "the party is over" for Wall Street (Nancy Pelosi)? The party should be over for the Democrats who brought us to this pass. If Obama wins, it means hiring an arsonist to fight a fire.
