Obama & ACORN

I have to be quick, since I'm really supposed to be vacuuming and making the beds, but I wanted to give you some links so we can get the word out on ACORN. As I told you yesterday, 60% of people view ACORN unfavorably, but 39% do not believe Obama is affiliated with them.

Start with Stanley Kurtz at NRO and follow his links:

To understand the nature and extent of Acorn’s radicalism, an excellent place to begin is Sol Stern’s 2003 City Journal article, “ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities.” (For a shorter but helpful piece, try Steven Malanga’s “Acorn Squash.”)

....The extent of Obama’s ties to Acorn has not been recognized. We find some important details in an article in the journal Social Policy entitled, “Case Study: Chicago — The Barack Obama Campaign,” by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago Acorn leader and a member of Acorn’s National Association Board. The odd thing about this article is that Foulkes is forced to protect the technically “non-partisan” status of Acorn’s get-out-the-vote campaigns, even as he does everything in his power to give Acorn credit for helping its favorite son win the critical 2004 primary that secured Obama the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate.

.... Although it’s been noted in an important story by John Fund, and in a long Obama background piece in the New York Times, more attention needs to be paid to possible links between Obama and Acorn during the period of Obama’s service on the boards of two charitable foundations, the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation.

According to the New York Times, Obama’s memberships on those foundation boards, “allowed him to help direct tens of millions of dollars in grants” to various liberal organizations, including Chicago Acorn, “whose endorsement Obama sought and won in his State Senate race.” As best as I can tell (and this needs to be checked out more fully), Acorn maintains both political and “non-partisan” arms. Obama not only sought and received the endorsement of Acorn’s political arm in his local campaigns, he recently accepted Acorn’s endorsement for the presidency, in pursuit of which he reminded Acorn officials of his long-standing ties to the group....

... the possibilities suggested by a combined reading of the New York Times piece and the Foulkes article are disturbing. While keeping within the technicalities of the law, Obama may have been able to direct substantial foundation money to his organized political supporters. I offer no settled conclusion, but the matter certainly warrants further investigation and discussion. Obama is supposed to be the man who transcends partisanship. Has he instead used his post at an allegedly non-partisan foundation to direct money to a supposedly non-partisan group, in pursuit of what are in fact nakedly partisan and personal ends?

You will also want to see Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

"Barack's World" is an important in-depth look at Obama's key personal and political affiliations.

This section of DiscoverTheNetworks examines Barack Obama's connections to a number of key individuals and organizations. In some cases, these affiliates are notable for the leftist views and objectives they share with Obama. In other cases, they are notable for their collaboration with Obama in controversial or unethical activities. In all cases, they offer a window into Barack Obama's values and priorities. Taken as a whole, they verify Thomas Sowell's observation that Obama has "spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America."

ACORN is a grassroots political organization that grew out of George Wiley's National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), whose members in the late 1960s and early 70s invaded welfare offices across the U.S. -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them.

ACORN's mandate today includes all issues touching low-income and working-class people. The organization runs schools where children are trained in class consciousness; it oversees a network of "boot camps" where street activists are trained; and it conducts operations that extort contributions from banks and other businesses under threat of trumped-up civil rights charges.

In the 2004 and 2006 election cycles, ACORN and its sister group Project Vote ran nationwide voter mobilization drives that were marred by allegations of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging, voter intimidation, and vote-for-pay scams.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, Obama worked with ACORN and Project Vote. In 1995 Obama sued, on behalf of ACORN, for the implementation of the Motor Voter law in Illinois. (Jim Edgar, the Republican Governor of Illinois, opposed the law because he believed that allowing voters to register using only a postcard would breed widespread fraud.) ACORN later invited Obama to help train its staff. Moreover, Obama eventually would sit on the Board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which gave a number of sizable grants to ACORN. In April 2007 The Nation reported, “Today Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side [of Chicago].”

....At the March 2008 "Take Back America" conference sponsored by Campaign for America's Future (CAF), ACORN joined CAF and five additional leftist organizations in announcing plans for "the most expensive [$350 million] mobilization in history this election season." The initiative focused on voter registration, education, and get-out-the-vote drives. Other members of the coalition included MoveOn.org, Rock the Vote, the National Council of La Raza, the Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund, and the AFL-CIO.

See also Barack Obama's

Fannie Mae Connections:
James Johnson
Franklin Raines

Radical and Socialist Influences:
Saul Alinsky
Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour
Bill Ayers
Carl Davidson
Frank Marshall Davis
Bernardine Dohrn
John L. McKnight
Democratic Socialists of America
Gamaliel Foundation
New Party
Socialist Scholars Conference

Political Allies and Advisors:
Ali Abunimah
Mohamed Salim Al-Churbaji
David Axelrod
Joe Biden
Gregg Craig
Jim Johnson
Marilyn Katz
Anthony Lake
Robert Malley
Raila Odinga
Alice Palmer
Eli Pariser
George Soros
Cass Sunstein
Dorothy Tillman
Joyce Wheeler
Tim Wheeler

Religious Affiliations:
Louis Farrakan
Rev. Joseph Lowery
James Meeks
Rev. Otis Moss
Rev. Michael Pfleger
Rev. Al Sharpton
Jim Wallis
Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Organizational Affiliations:
ACORN
Arab American Action Network
Chicago Annenberg Challenge
Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C.
International Crisis Group
MoveOn
National Council of La Raza
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Project Vote
Sojourners

Academic Affiliations:
Rashid Khalidi
Edward Said
Cornel West

Foundations:
Joyce Foundation
Woods Fund of Chicago

Money Scandals:
Nadhmi Auchi
Robert Blackwell, Jr.
Tony Rezko

Family:
Michelle Obama

Discover has links for each name. Go to work. I'm going to make the beds.

Newsflashback: Colin Powell has been advising Obama since at least June of last year (Debbie Schlussel)