Time to crack Obama’s ACORN (Updated)

Time to crack Obama’s ACORN (Updated)
September 26, 2008
http://www.zimbio.com/2008+Presidential+Candidates/articles/1...



Presumptive presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)’s “most questionable tie is to a leftist organization called ACORN,” NancyA reported July 5, 2008, at No Quarter.

His connection to this group begins with a woman named Madeleine Talbot. She embraced Obama and taught him the ropes. He remained a part of this group’s training cadre. Obama taught leadership conferences for the group while working for Miner, Barnhill & Galland. His connections don’t end there. 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.

Between 1993 and 2001, while Obama served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, ACORN, a “left wing voter registration group and to a partnership for constructing low income housing,” was the recipient of Woods Fund grant money.

Should Sen. Obama be elected to the presidency, John Fund wrote July 12, 2008, in the Wall Street Journal, “he would become not just the head of the Democratic Party but also the inspiration for a large number of liberal groups” like ACORN.

“Some of them would no doubt lobby him to hand out taxpayer grants and contracts for their nonpolitical ‘community’ efforts,” Fund wrote.

Indeed, Mr. Obama has extensive connections with the granddaddy of activist groups, Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which has gotten millions in government grants for its low-income housing programs. In 1992, Acorn hired Mr. Obama to run a voter registration effort. He later became a trainer for the group, as well as its lawyer in election law cases.

Acorn’s political arm has endorsed Mr. Obama while its “voter education” arm has pledged to spend $35 million to register people this fall — despite a history of vote fraud scandals that have led to guilty pleas by many Acorn employees.

The housing bill now before Congress would set up a slush fund for community organizations such as Acorn. But Acorn has gone quiet in its lobbying for the bill this week with the news that one of its employees — [Dale Rathke,] the brother of Acorn founder Wade Rathke — had stolen nearly $1 million from the group. Mr. Rathke decided not to alert law enforcement or the organization’s board, and kept his brother employed at Acorn until last month. “Is this the kind of group we want getting taxpayer money?” asks Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.)

In the April 29, 2008, Wall Street Journal, Fund wrote that Barack Obama came to Chicago “as a community organizer in the 1980s and quickly developed a name for himself as a litigator in voting cases.”

In 1995, then GOP Gov. Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law. Allowing voters to register using only a postcard and blocking the state from culling voter rolls, he argued, could invite fraud. Mr. Obama sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and won. Acorn later invited Mr. Obama to help train its staff; [...]

Acorn’s efforts to register voters have been scandal-prone. St. Louis, Mo., officials found that in 2006 over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations didn’t exist. “We met twice with Acorn before their drive, but our requests completely fell by the wayside,” said Democrat Matt Potter, the city’s deputy elections director. Later, federal authorities indicted eight of the group’s local workers. One of the eight pleaded guilty last month.

In Seattle, local officials invalidated 1,762 Acorn registrations. Felony charges were filed against seven of its workers, some of whom have criminal records. Prosecutors say Acorn’s oversight of its workers was virtually nonexistent. To avoid prosecution, Acorn agreed to pay $25,000 in restitution.

Despite this record – and polls that show clear majorities of blacks and Hispanics back voter ID laws – Mr. Obama continues to back Acorn. They both joined briefs urging the Supreme Court to overturn Indiana’s law.

In his July 12, 2008, article Fund commented that, due to the “leading role” ACORN, and “other liberal groups”, may play in electing Obama, these groups “deserve a closer look now, before their influence and possibly their clout grow dramatically after the November election.”