If you haven't already read Part I of this, please go back and read it... I'll wait.
So, now that you are caught up, we can talk about ACORN and their use of the CRA to control the activities of banking interests.
To start with, let's take a moment to talk about ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. Reading over their Wiki entry, many folks will read their own spin into the text. But there are a few things that stick out in my reading about ACORN. To start with, they don't treat their own people the way they are telling others to treat them. They filed for Minimum Wage Exemption is CA, citing that their employees couldn't understand the low wage workers they were helping if they were paid $4.25/hr (1995). They fired workers for trying to organize a union within their ranks (2003). The pushed for and got "Motor Voter" laws in many states. Detractors of Motor Voter laws cited fraud opportunities. In 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, ACORN employees have been caught submitting fraudulent voter information, and some have been sentenced to jail, as well as fined.
And the next link in the chain is one of the groups that frequently partners with ACORN... Project VOTE. They have also been accused of voter fraud, but have not been found guilty. And of course Project VOTE's most famous Community Organizer was none other than Barack Obama.
Last November, Obama, speaking to ACORN leadership said, “I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” Source. And while I can't specifically attribute Alinskyian principles to Obama, this is an interesting quote from the same article.
These Alinskyian principles are manifested in myriad, cynical ways. Obama unabashedly explained how he became “churched” in a 2007 speech:
It's around that time [while working as an organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago] that some pastors I was working with came around and asked if I was a member of a church. "If you're organizing churches," they said, "it might be helpful if you went to a church once in a while. And I thought, "I guess that makes sense."
But of course there is more. If it was just a voter drive 16 years ago, I wouldn't think there was a strong connection. But, Obama did more than just work alongside them in voter drives. He trained ACORN staff and represented them on legal matters. While he didn't do much in the way of trial work for them (or anyone else... he has tried exactly 0 cases...) he did background and was their attorney of record.
The ties between Obama and ACORN are numerous, and some are vaporous, while others are pretty solid and appear with multiple sources.
And then there is Obama's neighbor and benefactor Tony Rezko. He recruited Obama out of Law School to Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Rezko wa a client of the firm and of Obama. Although Obama denies doing "very much work, just six or seven hours" he has denied requests for any billing records.
Rezko made millions, much of it from government funding of his projects... He and close friends have donated at least $250,000 to Obama, and raised millions more for him. Of course now Rezko is a convicted felon...
The bottom line is that Obama has a long history with some of the players that got us to where we are in the current housing crisis. And of course, now, he is the one who thinks he has the way out... and perhaps he does. Do the opposite of what he has been doing for the last 20 years.
Antoin "Tony" Rezko, Nadhmi Auchi, William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Rev. Wright, Rev. Meeks, Rev. Otis, Father Pfleger and the TUCC, Louis Farrakhan... where does this all end?
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