Free Republic

The tax-funded Chicago organization cited as a probable model for programs to integrate youth into the social and political world under an Obama tenure in the White House is the epitome of "Big Brother" that shovels impressionable youth through a course of brainwashing, according to critics. The organization is called Public Allies and Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of directors in 1992. He later resigned and his wife became executive director of the group. According to an editorial in Investor's Business Daily, Obama plans to use the non-profit, which is funded partly...

When I was young, jobs grown-ups had were doctors, plumbers, lawyers, dentists, stock brokers and so on. I had never heard of "Community Organizer" until this Presidential season. What is this job and how does it connect with important current issues? Today, the Department of the Treasury exerted a conservatorship over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the cost of billions to taxpayers. The role of community organizers like ACORN and Barak Obama played in our present financial dislocations may be more direct and pervasive than what first meets the eye. The present subprime financial strains have as its genesis...

CLAIRTON, Pa. - Five days a week, Linda Graham trolls tattered neighborhoods of this once thriving steel city outside Pittsburgh for unregistered voters she can sign up as Democrats — one of thousands of unknown volunteers whose work outside the limelight has already altered the basic arithmetic of the November election. The epic nomination battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton helped put millions more Democrats on the voter rolls while Republican registration declined. Now Graham, 45, has taken three months of unpaid leave from her job at Pittsburgh's Central Blood Bank in the hope of adding to those...

As a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama didn't accomplish much. He'd be the first to tell you that. He got a job bank opened and brought public attention to an asbestos problem at a housing project. He had his failures, too. But Obama's record of accomplishment wasn't what Republicans were criticizing last week when they sneered at his time working for the city's poor from 1985 to 1988. They lambasted the job itself. "He worked as a community organizer," former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said in an ugly speech Wednesday night to much sneering in the convention arena....

In yesterday's mail at my house I recieved a summons for jury duty addressed to some guy I never heard of. THAT MEANS THE GUY IS REGISTERED TO VOTE AT MY ADDRESS. Checked with the condo manager who has lived here forever. No one by that name EVER LIVED HERE. I intend to find out which precinct this phantom is supposed to be voting in and lay the trap for the perp who comes in to cast a ballot for said phantom. Last November when I was an Election Judge I recognized one of the voters because he had voted...

Dipped Jewitt has the purrfect opportunity to make sure the interests of pets are represented in the upcoming election. She recently was given the chance to vote via mailed registration materials sent by the USAction Education Fund, which describes itself as a national nonprofit, nonpartisan group that has organized voter-registration drives since 2004. But there's one problem - Dipped Jewitt is a cat. She received the voter registration application, addressed to her, at her former domicile in Cleveland where her owner, Jeff Jewitt, 54, runs Homestead Finishing Products. Initially taken aback by the application, thinking it was a joke, Jewitt...

A community organizer is any liberal who can't get a real job.

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities." Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered...

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) President Maude Hurd issued the following statement after presumptive Republican vice president pick Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuiliani made disparaging comments about community organizing during the Republican National Convention Wednesday night. “ACORN members, leaders and staff are extremely disappointed that Republican leaders would make such condescending remarks on the great work community organizers accomplish in cities throughout this country. The fact that they marginalize our success in empowering low- and moderate-income people to improve their communities further illustrates their out-of-touch with ordinary people. Through community...

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities." Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered...

Slowly, slowly, I am recovering from the extremely effective bilge festival staged by the Republicans last night. And while there is much to discuss, there was one item, in particular, that has to be considered infuriating: the attack on Barack Obama's service as a community organizer by the odious Rudy Giuliani--he's come to look like a villain in a Frank Capra movie, hasn't he?--and Sarah Palin....So here is what Giuliani and Palin didn't know: Obama was working for a group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners, many of whom had been laid off when the steel mills closed...

06/25/2008 If you don't know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up. This left-wing group takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers -- you and me -- and has leveraged nearly four decades of government subsidies to fund affiliates that promote the welfare state and undermine capitalism and self-reliance, some of which have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and encouraging voter fraud. A new whistleblower report from the Consumer Rights League claims that Chicago-based ACORN has commingled public tax dollars with political projects. Who in Washington...

"Obama: "That's Just How White Folks Will Do You" A 1995 piece in the liberal Chicago Reader basically refutes Obama's statements that he never heard Pastor Jeremiah Wright invoke his racist rants and also provides some additional insight into Obama's early years in politics. "That's just how white folks will do you," Obama writes. "It wasn't merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn't know they were...

The writer of a letter in the Courier & Press published Aug. 28 worried that the author of a book critical of Barack Obama (Jerome Corsi, "The Obama Nation") is a "danger to our society." He further cautioned that it is the responsibility of U.S. citizens to actively examine political discourse for truth and clarity. I wonder if he followed his own advice and voiced concern about the left-wing, radical rantings of Michael Moore, in books and movies, against our president and our society. Our enemies loved Moore's words, but fortunately, our great country is strong enough to withstand criticism,...

Milwaukee has discovered some more voter fraud with 10 more voter registration workers are being investigated by Wisconsin authorities. Fittingly, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covered the story in its paper on August 29. Unfittingly, the Journal Sentinel forgot one, tiny aspect of the story... that the voter fraud was perpetrated by Democrats. In fact, one of the organizations, ACORN, is intimately linked with Barack Obama. Milwaukee’s top election official said Thursday she plans to seek criminal investigations of 10 more voter registration workers, including two accused of offering gifts to sign up voters. So, what we have here is an...

Using donations for the poor to help power-seeking politicians attain their ends is pure Alinskyianism. One of Obama’s Chicago mentors, Gregory Galluzzo - a former Jesuit priest, now married and Executive Director of the Gamaliel community organizing network – was interviewed by a writer to whom he showed the training manual he uses with new organizers. “Galluzzo told me that many new trainees have an aversion to Alinsky’s gritty approach because they come to organizing as idealists rather than realists. But Galluzzo’s manual instructs them to get over these hang-ups. ‘We are not virtuous by not wanting power,’ it says....

It's bad enough that American taxpayers have to bail out the privately owned, tax-exempt Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac. But it's truly outrageous that tax dollars will also go to groups involved in voter fraud and illegal immigration. The small print in the $42 billion bailout passed by Congress and signed by Bush requires those two government-sponsored mortgage giants to deposit 4.2 percent of all new mortgages they underwrite into the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Here's the catch. The Trust Fund - the largest expansion of federal housing assistance since LBJ's Great Society - is required to make grants...

-- snip --Mr. Obama is doomed to defeat. His best efforts to camouflage his left-wing associations will not work. He can flip-flop on issue after issue in the vain hope he will deceive Americans. Yet he is clearly a liar and a phony, a false messiah. He will not lead the Democrats - or the country - to the Promised Land: He has no credibility. Mr. McCain will win - and win big - in November.

Milwaukee’s top election official said Thursday she plans to seek criminal investigations of 10 more voter registration workers, including two accused of offering gifts to sign up voters. Most of the suspect workers appear to have falsified driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards, Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman said. Counting the latest group, Edman will have referred 49 voter registration workers this month to Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf for possible prosecution. Milwaukee police are looking at the evidence to determine whether criminal charges are warranted against the workers, Landgraf...

CLEVELAND -- A national organization that conducts voter registration drives for low-income people has curtailed its push in Cuyahoga County after the Board of Elections accused its workers of submitting fraudulent registration cards. The board is investigating the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Results of the inquiry could be turned over to the county prosecutor. Board employees said ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign...

CLEVELAND -- A national organization that conducts voter registration drives for low-income people has curtailed its push in Cuyahoga County after the Board of Elections accused its workers of submitting fraudulent registration cards. The board is investigating the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Results of the inquiry could be turned over to the county prosecutor. Board employees said ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign...

In a surprising attempt to stifle broadcast criticism of its candidate, the presidential campaign of freshman Illinois senator Barack Obama is organizing supporters to confront Chicago's WGN radio station for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its main evening discussion program. "WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail sent to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. (Wednesday night) pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."

The Obama campaign has tonight again demonstrated that it will try to silence voices with which it does not agree. This should chill all Americans, for it offers a preview of the tactics to which a President Obama might harness the power of the federal government. The means chosen include harassment of television stations running the 527 group Ayers ad, a demand for a Justice Department investigation, and just last night, disruption of a radio talk show in Chicago that dared have Dr. Stanley Kurtz of National Review, who has been examining the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, in...

Obama campaign confronts WGN radio by John McCormick and Steve Schmadeke DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air. "WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers." Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an...

Throughout his campaign, Barack Obama has presented himself to be a new type of politician: transparent, clean, aboveboard, and above all, positive. His campaign would be an idealistic one: no tricks, just plain old-fashioned honesty. Of course, coming from Chicago with its big-city machine politics this would be quite impressive if it were true. Alas, it is not. As many are learning from David Freddoso's new book, The Case Against Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee was a practitioner of the dark arts himself -- and he has continued to rely upon tricks as tactics in his ground game. The...

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 26, 2008 04:41 PM I noted this morning that the Obama campaign’s Chicago-style thug effort to shut down the independent ad on Bill Ayers is part of the larger effort to intimidate conservative donors and curtail the free speech of The One’s critics.It’s getting uglier, people. Obama’s lawyer has sent a second letter to the Justice Department calling for the head of Dallas billionare Harold Simmons, who funded the Ayers ad that the Obama campaign doesn’t want the public to see.Feel the chill: Obama general counsel Bob Bauer today sent a second, sharper letter to the Justice...

DENVER — Four years after leaving office, former Sen. Bob Graham looked every bit the political star Monday, surrounded by beaming Florida fans and well-wishers. But more striking was the action around him at the Florida delegation breakfast: U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston had her own throng of fans, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer was fielding questions about another statewide run, and all over the hotel ballroom people speculated about Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink running for governor or U.S. Senate in two years. "Democrats went through a period in which the bench got very shallow. Now I think...

Criminal charges were dismissed Monday against Jane Balogh, the Federal Way woman who registered her dog to vote — but not without a hiccup along the way. King County District Court Judge Mariane Spearman dropped a misdemeanor charge of making a false or misleading statement to a public servant, based on Balogh's completion of the terms of a plea agreement reached in September 2007. Balogh, 67, a grandmother and Army veteran, paid $240 in court costs and completed 10 hours of community service at the Tacoma Rescue Mission.

JAFFA, Israel – Did Sen. Barack Obama's campaign attempt to hide a paid working relationship with a radical leftist organization that has admitted to major financial improprieties and has been convicted in numerous major voter fraud scandals? That question is being openly asked by the Republican National Committee after it was disclosed Obama's campaign paid more than $800,000 in services to Citizen Services Inc. (CSI), a nonprofit organization that is an offshoot of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. ACORN is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families. It has held violent, disruptive...

I waded in today to the crowd of old hippies and punks that call themselves Re-create 68. Basically anarchy was the theme and they were quite a herd of cats......

Clovis native Rebecca Sitterly registered to vote soon after returning to her native state in 1979 and jumped right into Democratic politics about the same time. So the former Bernalillo County district judge was surprised to get a July 3 call from a community nonprofit that was checking on her new registration. When Sitterly said she hadn't filled out a registration form (indeed, she'd been regularly voting in the same place on Mountain Road NW in Albuquerque for nearly 20 years) a supervisor with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now promised to destroy the card, Sitterly said in...

There’s much more to the story of Obama’s amended campaign finance reports than what Obama and the Obamedia will tell you. I will fill you in on what’s missing in a moment. What we have here, essentially, is Obama using a non-profit group called Citizens Services Inc. as a front to funnel payments to ACORN for campaign advance work. Obama officials say it’s no big deal. Nothing to see here. Move along. But where there’s left-wing laundering smoke, there’s fire. CSI has been the subject of a little-noticed complaint to the FEC by a Democrat who smelled something rotten going...

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports. An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. -- a subsidiary of ACORN -- worked in "get-out-the-vote" projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports. An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. -- a subsidiary of ACORN -- worked in "get-out-the-vote" projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.

Milwaukee’s election chief on Wednesday turned 32 more voter registration workers in to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution, saying they tried to submit falsified registration cards. That brings to 39 the number of registration workers under scrutiny, and the number could grow, Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman said. An organization warned the commission staff late Wednesday afternoon about some questionable cards in the latest batch collected by its workers, Edman said. Of the 32 ACORN workers referred Wednesday to Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, Edman said:

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 20, 2008, 6:18 p.m. By Larry Sandler City refers 32 more to DA for voter fraud Milwaukee's election chief turned 32 more voter registration workers in to the district attorney's office for possible prosecution today, after they tried to submit falsified registration cards. That brings to 39 the number of registration workers under scrutiny, and the number could grow, Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman said. An organization warned the commission staff late this afternoon about some questionable cards in the latest batch collected by its workers, Edman said. All of the workers targeted for investigation were paid...

This is deeply troubling. Acorn is responsible for voter fraud in several states. They pay their workers a fee to register new voters. They have been found to sign up people who are convicted felons, illegal immigrants, dead people, etc. Several people from multiple states have been indicted. Acorn is closely affiliated with the Democratic party and they have also been found to throw out Republican registration forms -- leaving citizens unable to vote on election day. It is a disgrace that any taxpayer money would go to such a corrupt group. The housing bill signed Wednesday by President George...

Irrefutable evidence indicates that Obama’s campaign has been doing business with CSI, which appears to have been operating fraudulently in the State of Maryland and Ohio, and ACORN, which has been associated with a laundry list of fraudulent business practices. The full nature of the relationship between ACORN and Citizens Services Inc is not known but this much is clear: both share the same address in New Orleans and officials with CSI refer folks to ACORN for questions about “political consulting” and Get-Out-The-Vote” activities. These are questions that mainstream media should examine.

Workers from a second activist organization have been implicated in falsifying Milwaukee voter registration forms, bringing to 15 the number of voter registration workers who could face scrutiny for trying to sign up dead, imprisoned or fictitious voters, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organizations that paid the workers. For two of the workers, managers at the Community Voters Project caught much of the fraud, fired the workers and reported the problems before the registration cards were turned in, said Sue Edman, the election commission’s executive director, and Ayodele Carroo, the organization’s national director. That involved 15 or...

Workers from a second activist organization have been implicated in falsifying Milwaukee voter registration forms, bringing to 15 the number of voter registration workers who could face scrutiny for trying to sign up dead, imprisoned or fictitious voters, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organizations that paid the workers. For two of the workers, managers at the Community Voters Project caught much of the fraud, fired the workers and reported the problems before the registration cards were turned in, said Sue Edman, the election commission’s executive director, and Ayodele Carroo, the organization’s national director. That involved 15 or...

There's more to the housing bailout measure than meets the eye, says a Minnesota lawmaker. She contends that members of Congress need to be called back to Washington to reverse the measure that, among other things, sends millions of taxpayer dollars to a radical illegal immigration advocacy group. The housing package signed into law by President Bush extends an unlimited line of credit to troubled mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and rescues homeowners near or in foreclosure. The measure also increases the federal debt limit by another $800 billion -- and sends millions of dollars in aid to...

ACORN Cracks Wide Open Carl Horowitz Saturday, August 09, 2008 The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is a network of nonprofit community groups formed nearly 40 years ago on the premise that banks, corporations and insurance companies, immersed in greed, have kept poor and predominantly minority neighborhoods desperate. Within the past couple months, however, its leaders have been engaged in the more mundane task of spinning a scandal that already has claimed its most visible leader. To longtime ACORN critics, it’s a case of belated just deserts. At the center of this storm are ACORN co-founder...

ACORN Watch: Voter fraud and mortgage scams on your dime By Michelle Malkin  •  August 7, 2008 12:41 PM Barack Obama’s taxpayer-subsidized old friends at ACORN have been very, very busy lately. And ACORN Watch is here to give you the rundown on all the latest shenanigans on your dime. * In Milwaukee, election officials are investigating fake names registered by ACORN workers– a favorite voter fraud 101 ploy of ACORN workers. No word on whether anyone used “Fruto Boy Crispila:” Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people...

Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them. Officials are reviewing some 200 to 300 fraudulent voter registration cards, Sue Edman, the commission’s executive director, said Wednesday. And even though the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now caught the fraud and reported it before the cards were turned in, the incident revived a four-year-old partisan debate over the integrity of Wisconsin’s voter registration process, as political groups step up efforts...

MADISON, Wis. -- Workers registering voters for a liberal group in Milwaukee turned in hundreds of fabricated registration forms and many more that were incomplete. That's raised fears among Republican Party leaders of an election fraud repeat. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has fired about a dozen canvassers and alerted the state election commission to most of the problem forms. Commission director Sue Edman said they'll make sure no fabricated or incomplete forms are entered into the voter database. Six of the former ACORN workers have been referred to the Milwaukee County district attorney's office...

KRQE Channel 13 in Albuquerque aired this disturbing report about criminals, including child rapists, persons convicted of fraud and forgery, and drug dealers, being hired by ACORN to solicit voter registrations: The litany convictions and charges against these individuals is long and this story is not the first problem for ACORN this year nationally or in New Mexico. In June the Dona Ana County Clerk warned citizens about registering with third party groups. Across the country states like Arizona, Arkansas Louisiana, Nevada, Virginia, Wisconsin and others have warned citizens about registering with and providing sensitive personal information to groups like...

Election '08: The man who includes being a community organizer on his short resume has a long association with a far-left group that would organize our communities into socialist gulags.In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud. A young lawyer, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and won. The young lawyer was Barack Obama. Acorn later invited Obama to train its staff....

Another day, another shameful racist ad juxtaposing mentions of Barack Obama with an attractive young white woman... (snip)

In the world of investment, one of the main methods of moving a project forward is called "leveraging." By committing a modest sum of money, a funding source can be a catalyst for funds from other sources. Leveraging also can bring to fruition projects of the wrong kind -- like the perpetual project of nonprofit far-Left groups to socialize the risks and rewards of mortgage lending. Actually, the risk side already is heavily socialized. What the nonprofits want to do is rein in the rewards as well. The massive housing bill just passed by the House and Senate gives them...

The housing bill signed Wednesday by President George W. Bush will provide a stream of billions of dollars for distressed homeowners and communities and the nonprofit groups that serve them. The housing bill signed Wednesday by President George W. Bush will provide a stream of billions of dollars for distressed homeowners and communities and the nonprofit groups that serve them.