Thursday, July 31, 2008

"Housing" Bill Includes Funds For Obama Affiliated Left Wing Organization

The "Housing" Bill surprises just keep on popping up.

Earlier this month, we reported on a shadowy, powerful left wing organization that Barack Obama worked for, ACORN.

The housing bill signed Wednesday by GW will provide funds for various nonprofit groups that are involved in the housing market. One of the biggest likely beneficiaries, despite Republican objections, will be ACORN. ACORN in one of its poses is a housing advocacy group that also helps lead ambitious voter-registration efforts benefiting Democrats.

ACORN is made up of several legally distinct groups under that name. It's voter mobilization arm is co-managing a $15.9 million campaign with the group Project Vote to register 1.2 million low-income Hispanics and African-Americans, who are among those most likely to vote Democratic. "Technically" nonpartisan, the effort is one of the largest such voter-registration drives on record.

Obama was a member of ACORN and taught leadership conferences for the group while working for Miner, Barnhill & Galland, according to No Quarter. Obama actively sought and received the endorsement by ACORN for his local campaigns. He has now done the same in his bid for the USA presidency, says No Quarter.

In a Spring 2003 article for City Journal, titled, ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities, Sol Stern reported on the organization:

If you thought the New Left was dead in America, think again. Walk through just about any of the nation’s inner cities, and you’re likely to find an office of ACORN, bustling with young people working 12-hour days to “organize the poor” and bring about “social change.” The largest radical group in the country, ACORN has 120,000 dues-paying members, chapters in 700 poor neighborhoods in 50 cities, and 30 years’ experience...

[ACORN]promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor....

ACORN’s bedrock assumption remains the ultra-Left’s familiar anti-capitalist redistributionism. “We are the majority, forged from all the minorities,” reads the group’s “People’s Platform,”...“We will continue our fight . . . until we have shared the wealth, until we have won our freedom . . .
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ACORN has perfected an in-your-face strategy that works effectively at capturing public attention and winning adherents in cities......there’s one....crucial respect in which ACORN departs from the old New Left’s playbook. Instead of trying to overturn “the system”—to blow it up...—ACORN burrows deep within the system, taking over its power and using its institutions for its own purposes...


According to WSJ:

The organization's main advocacy group lobbied hard for passage of the housing bill, which provides nearly $5 billion for affordable housing, financial counseling and mortgage restructuring for people and neighborhoods affected by the housing meltdown. A third Acorn arm, its housing corporation, does a large share of that work on the ground.

Acorn's multiple roles show how two fronts of activism -- housing for the poor and voter mobilization -- have converged closely in this election year. The fortunes of both parties will hinge in part on their plans for addressing the fall of the nation's housing market and the painful economic slowdown. Some of the places buffeted worst by mounting foreclosures are states whose voters could swing the election. Five battleground states where Acorn has registration drives were among the top 10 states for foreclosure rates as of June: Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Michigan and Ohio...

Republicans critical of Acorn's roles say any money that it gets for housing makes it easier for the group to put money into voter drives. "These are taxpayer funds, in an indirect method, being used to subsidize political activism," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Texas Republican and chairman of the conservative House Republican Study Committee. "I'm sure they're not going out and registering any Republicans."..

Acorn worker Stephanie Willis was scouting for new voters in a seedy neighborhood of Aurora, Colo., a Denver suburb. Spotting a woman seated on a park bench, Mrs. Willis hustled over and thrust a clipboard and pen at her. Within minutes, Brenda Hernandez was a new registered voter. Mrs. Willis then handed Mrs. Hernandez a flier listing Acorn's housing and other services, and signed her up to be an Acorn member
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"Obama!" Mrs. Hernandez yelled, attempting to fist-bump Mrs. Willis, who already was scanning for other people to register.

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