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October 14, 2008 By Fausta

Stanley Kurtz: HOW ACORN & ITS DEM ALLIES BUILT THE MORTGAGE DISASTER, and how Obama is right in the middle of it

UPDATED
Please scroll down

I didn’t have a chance to post on it yesterday, but Maria and a couple of friends sent this, SPREADING THE VIRUS
HOW ACORN & ITS DEM ALLIES BUILT THE MORTGAGE DISASTER

While you read the article, please do keep in mind that Community Reinvestment Act,

a law that allows groups like ACORN to force banks into making high-risk loans to low-credit customers

is still active. None of the legislation has repealed the CRA to date:

The CRA’s ostensible purpose is to prevent banks from discriminating against minorities. But Rep. Marge Roukema (R-NJ), who chaired the subcommittee, was worried that charges of discrimination had become an excuse for lowering credit standards. She warned that new, Democrat-proposed CRA regulations could amount to an illegal quota system.

FOR years, ACORN had combined manipulation of the CRA with intimidation-protest tactics to force banks to lower credit standards. Its crusade, with help from Democrats in Congress, to push these high-risk “subprime” loans on banks is at the root of today’s economic meltdown.

When the role of ACORN and congressional Democrats in the mortgage crisis is pointed out, Democrats reply that banks subject to the CRA represent only about a quarter of the loans that led to our current troubles. In fact, the problem goes way beyond the CRA.

As ACORN ran its campaigns against local banks, it quickly hit a roadblock. Banks would tell ACORN they could afford to reduce their credit standards by only a little – since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage giants, refused to buy up those risky loans for sale on the “secondary market.”

That is, the CRA wasn’t enough. Unless Fannie and Freddie were willing to relax their credit standards as well, local banks would never make home loans to customers with bad credit histories or with too little money for a downpayment.

So ACORN’s Democratic friends in Congress moved to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to dispense with normal credit standards. Throughout the early ’90s, they imposed ever-increasing subprime-lending quotas on Fannie and Freddie.

But then the Republicans won control of Congress – and Rep. Roukema scheduled her hearing. ACORN went into action to protect its golden goose.

IT struck as Roukema aired her concerns at that hearing. Pro testers, led by ACORN President Maud Hurd, stood up and began chanting, “CRA has got to stay!” and “Banks for greed, not for need!” The protesters then demanded the microphone.

With the hearing interrupted and the demonstrators refusing to leave, Roukema called the Capital Police, who arrested Hurd and four others for “disorderly conduct in a Capital building” – a charge carrying a penalty of a $500 fine, six months in prison or both. As the police arrived, two of the protesters menacingly approached Roukema’s desk, still demanding the hearing microphone.

Requests to the Capital Police to release the activists from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass,) failed. Then Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) showed up at the jail and refused to leave until the protesters were released; the Capital Police relented.

Meanwhile, instead of repudiating ACORN’s intimidation tactics, Rep. Kennedy berated Roukema for arresting one of his constituents and accused the Republicans of preparing for “an all-out attack on CRA.” He also promised to introduce legislation to expand the CRA’s coverage to mortgage bankers and large credit unions.

THIS little slice of political life from 1995 had a variety of ripple effects. Above all, ACORN’s intimidation tactics, and its alliance with Democrats in Congress, triumphed. Despite their 1994 takeover of Congress, Republicans’ attempts to pare back the CRA were stymied.

Instead, Democrats like Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Reps. Kennedy and Waters allied with the Clinton administration to broaden the acceptability of risky subprime loans throughout the financial system, thus precipitating our current crisis.

ACORN had come to Congress not only to protect the CRA from GOP reforms but also to expand the reach of quota-based lending to Fannie, Freddie and beyond. By steamrolling the GOP that March, it had crushed the last potential barrier to “change.”

Three months later, the Clinton administration announced a comprehensive strategy to push homeownership in America to new heights – regardless of the compromise in credit standards that the task would require. Fannie and Freddie were assigned massive subprime lending quotas, which would rise to about half of their total business by the end of the decade.

And where is Obama in all this?

As Kurtz states in his article, Obama

  • Was an ally of ACORN during his community organizing days
  • As a young lawyer, he offered leadership training to the activists who were forcing Chicago banks into high-risk subprime loans
  • Channelled money from the Woods Fund (over $200,000) and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge

Additionally, the Obama campaign has paid $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate, while

Obama was perfectly aware of ACORN’s intimidation tactics – indeed, he oversaw a Woods Fund report that boasted of managing to fund the radical group despite its shocking behavior.

And as a lawmaker, in Illinois and in Washington, he has continued to back ACORN’s leglislative agenda.

As readers of this blog are well aware, ACORN is deeply involved in voter registration fraud. Just yesterday Rick Moran noted yet one more instance of ACORN’s criminality: Shelby Holliday, doing the investigative work that the lamestream media has forsaken, shows ACORN vans driving newly-registered people to polls in Ohio where they aren’t required to show ID or proof of residency in order to cast their ballot, in the absence of Republican election observers who were not allowed to be there. One Christopher Barkley of Cleveland estimates that he registered to vote “10 to 15” times after ACORN relentlessly pursued him; another man, Freddie Johnson, filled out voter registration cards a total of 72 times over the course of 18 months.

Read The Complete Guide to ACORN Voter Fraud (via Irish Spy).

Betsy links to Obama and Acorn: Community organizers, phony voters, and your tax dollars, which lists equally egregious violations of the law in Michigan, Indiana and Texas.

This is what Obama stands for. This is who Obama allies himself with. This is why Obama is not suited for any position of leadership, least of which the Presidency.

Bonus reading:
ACORN Ohio Honored By Dems With Wellstone Award

Even CNN is starting to notice

Instapundit points out that CNN doesn’t notice the Obama affiliation.

UPDATE, 2:30PM
State By State, Fraud By Electoral Fraud: Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
The Anchoress has the map:

She also has the Department of Justice‘s phone number, which is (202) 514-3204.

Regarding those denials from the Obama campaign, read this: Obamacorn

Obama’s Web site proclaims, “Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.” Then how is it that Chicago ACORN leader Toni Foulkes sang Obama’s praises for his work for ACORN in his article, “Case Study: Chicago — The Barack Obama Campaign,” which appeared in Social Policy magazine in 2004?

Foulkes said ACORN first recognized Obama’s talents as a community organizer when he was organizing on Chicago’s far south side with the Developing Communities Project.

Foulkes wrote: “When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act . . . . Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar . . . and we won.”

Then Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the new federal “Motor Voter” law out of concern that allowing people to register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud. We wonder where he got that idea.

Foulkes says that “Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Mosely Braun to win the Senate that year. Project Vote delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them).”

Buckeye Institute Files State Rico Action Against ACORN; Little Miss Attila notes that “with a couple of exceptions, this non-partisan voter fraud is occurring generally in battleground states.”

Legitimacy

UPDATE, Wednesday, 15 October
Don’t worry, be happy!
Welcome, Gateway Pundit readers.

Special thanks to Larwyn for the links & the logo.

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Filed Under: ACORN, Barack Obama, crime, Democrats, Election2008, politics Tagged With: ACORN, Fausta's blog

Comments

  1. Anthony (Los Angeles) says

    October 14, 2008 at 8:50 am

    There’s also a good article on the potential for electoral corruption and the Ohio Secretary of State’s role in it here: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/buckeye-state-or-banana-republic/

  2. expat says

    October 14, 2008 at 11:25 am

    Check out Kurtz’s latest at NRO. It’s about the school Obama financed through CAC. How in the h**l could a “first class intellect” even get near these nuts? But please , as you read it don’t fall into the sin of historicism.

  3. expat says

    October 14, 2008 at 11:43 am

    One more thing: Obama gave $800,000 to ACORN and hundreds of thousands (if not the entire CAC budget of 150 mill) to Ayers flaky projects. Does any body want him to be in charge of spending our tax money?

  4. john says

    October 14, 2008 at 4:03 pm

    Over here (http://dealbreaker.com/2008/10/housing-an-unparalleled-succes.php#comments) on a Wall Street blog they appear to be discussing something which, when put together with what you are writing seems to be getting closer to the picture.

  5. Sarah says

    October 14, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    Anyone and everyone concerned about this man becoming President should flood the Internet with as much as they can about Obama and his racist and criminal friends.

    We the people (the decent ones of sound mind and body) of this country need to save this country from what this man has in store for us all.

    Obama continues to lie about everything to do with his past and his pals. One thing is not shy about is the fact that he going to raise taxes on the wealthy or who he considers wealthy and he believes in wealth distribution. Now, what kind of people in this country would vote for this man. YOU be the judge.

    Okay folks get on the net and post the Real Truth about this man anywhere and everywhere you can. Do not stop do not let up keep it up til the very last day.

    I assume Obama is going to use his 30 minutes of air time he bought to encourage everyone to not let the polls think that your vote is not needed. He will tell everyone to please vote on election day for him, no matter how long the lines are.
    I do not know this for sure but I just have a hunch.

    McCain needs to do the same thing as if the polls continue to show that Obama has a big lead then a lot of people that are voting for McCain might think they do not need to go to the polls either. Please people if you are going to help put McCain in the White House where he belongs you must vote on election day. Do not pay attention to the polls. It was said on the news the other night that the percentage of people being polled is much higher for democrats. If it is not done evenly then the polls mean nothing. In order for a poll to be fair you have to call equal registered democrats to republicans as you all know.

    Please vote on election day if you have not already. God bless America ! Proud voter in a red state !!

  6. MARY JARRARD says

    October 14, 2008 at 11:28 pm

    PLEASE READ AND ARROW CONNECTING OBAMA & ACORN
    Chicago Magazine / January 1993 / Vote of Confidence

    Vote of Confidence
    A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago’s electoral landscape—and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama.
    By Gretchen Reynolds
    A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago’s electoral landscape-and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama.

    In the final, climactic buildup to November’s general election, with George Bush gaining ground on Bill Clinton in Illinois and the once-unstoppable campaign of senatorial candidate Carol Moseley Braun embroiled in allegations about her mother’s Medicare liability, one of the most important local stories managed to go virtually unreported: The number of new voter registrations before the election hit an all-time high. And the majority of those new voters were black. More than 150,000 new African-American voters were added to the city’s rolls. In fact, for the first time in Chicago’s history-including the heyday of Harold Washington-voter registrations in the 19 predominantly black wards outnumbered those in the city’s 19 predominantly white ethnic wards, 676,000 to 526,000.

    The election, to some degree, turned on these totals: Braun and Clinton had almost unanimous support among blacks. But just as important, if less obvious, are the implications black votership could have for future city and state elections: For the first time in ten years, more than half a million blacks went to the polls in Chicago. And with gubernatorial and mayoral elections coming up in the next two years, it served notice to every¬one from Jim Edgar to Richard M. Daley that an African-American voting bloc would be a force to be reckoned with in those races.

    None of this, of course, was accidental. The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization. “It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics,” says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side’s 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.

    At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama. The son of a black Kenyan political activist and a white American anthropologist, Obama was born in Hawaii, received a degree in political science and English literature from Columbia University, and, in 1990, became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. In 1984, after Columbia but before Harvard, Obama moved to Chicago. “I came because of Harold Washington,” he says. “I wanted to do community organizing, and I couldn’t think of a better city than one as energized and hopeful as Chicago was then.” He went to work for a South Side church-affiliated development group and “was heartened by the enthusiasm.” But barely three years later, Washington died, and Obama, convinced he needed additional skills, enrolled at Harvard Law School. The African-American community he left, rent by political divisions and without a clear leader, went into a steep decline. By 1991, when Obama, law degree in hand, returned to Chicago to work on a book about race relations-having turned his back on the Supreme Court clerkship that is almost a given for the law review’s top editor-black voter registration and turnout in the city were at their lowest points since record keeping began.

    Six months after he took the helm of Chicago’s Project Vote!, those conditions had been reversed.

    * * *

    To understand the full implications of Obama’s effort, you first need to understand how voter registration often has worked in Chicago. The Regular Democratic Party spearheaded most drives, doing so using one primary motivator: money. The party would offer bounties to registrars for every new voter they signed up (typically a dollar per registration). The campaigns did produce new voters. “But bounty systems don’t really promote participation,” says David Orr, the Cook County clerk, whose office is responsible for voter registration efforts in the Cook County suburbs. “When the money dries up, the voters drop out.” Nor did the Democratic Party always vigorously push registration among minorities, Orr says. “It’s not that they discouraged it. They just never worked hard to ensure it would happen.”

    All of that changed with the ascension of Harold Washington. In the months just prior to his 1983 Democratic primary win, 120,000 new black voters were registered, most by registrars who received no bounty.

    Off in Washington, D.C., those efforts were scrutinized with great interest by the founder of a new voter-registration organization. Sandy Newman, a lawyer and civil-rights activist, had founded Project Vote! the year before to promote registra¬tion among low-income and minority voters. At the time, his operation was still centered in the nation’s capital, pioneering such now-commonplace practices as registering people at food-stamp and welfare offices. While Project Vote! was indi¬rectly involved in the Harold Washington registration effort, donating money to the black wards’ voter-registration drives, it did not start a branch in Chicago. “The group already at work there was fine,” Newman says. “We decided to support them with funds, rather than compete with them.” Even after the minority-registration effort in Chicago fell apart following the death of Washington, Project Vote! opted to avoid Illinois. “The Democratic Party in Cook County was still actively using a bounty system for most registrations,” Newman says, “and we didn’t wish to get associated with that.”

    * * *

    Carol Moseley Braun’s upset primary victory over Alan Dixon last March altered Newman’s feelings. “It’s not that I wanted to influence the Senate race,” Newman says. “Project Vote! is nonpartisan, strictly nonpartisan. But we do focus our efforts on minority voters, and on states where we can explain to them why their vote will matter. Braun made that easier in Illinois.” So Newman decided to open a Cook County Project Vote! office and went looking for someone to head it.

    The name Barack Obama surfaced. “I was asking around among community activists in Chicago and around the country, and they kept mentioning him,” Newman says. Obama by then was working with church and community leaders on the West Side, and he was writing a book that the publisher Simon & Schuster had contracted for while he was editor of the law review. He was 30 years old.

    When Newman called, Obama agreed to put his other work aside. “I’m still not quite sure why,” Newman says. ”This was not glamorous, high-paying work. But I am certainly grateful. He did one hell of a job.”

    Within a few months, Obama, a tall, affable workaholic, had recruited staff and volunteers from black churches, community groups, and politicians. He helped train 700 deputy registrars, out of a total of 11,000 citywide. And he began a saturation media campaign with the help of black-owned Brainstorm Communications. (The company’s president, Terri Gardner, is the sister of Gary Gardner, president of Soft Sheen Products, Inc., which donated thousands of dollars to Project Voters efforts.) The group’s slogan-“It’s a Power Thing”-was ubiquitous in African-American neighborhoods. Posters were put up. Black-oriented radio stations aired the group’s ads and announced where people could go to register. Minority owners of McDonald’s restaurants allowed registrars on site and donated paid radio time to Project Vote! Labor unions provided funding, as, in late fall, did the Clin¬ton/Gore campaign, whose national voter-registration drive was being directed by Chicago alderman Bobby Rush.

    “It was overwhelming,” says Joseph Gardner, a commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and the director of the steering committee for Project Vote! “The black community in this city had not been so energized and so single-minded since Harold died.”

    Burrell agrees. “We were registering hundreds a day, and we weren’t having to search them out. They came looking for us. African Americans were just so eager to have a say again, to feel they counted.”

    “I think it’s fair to say we reinvigorated a slumbering constituency,” says Obama. “We got people to take notice.”

    * * *

    The question now, of course, is what lasting impact Project Voters efforts will have on Chicago and Illinois politics. Joseph Gardner says it will be considerable. “In this town, numbers talk,” he says. “Who can afford to ignore 600,000 voters?” He says he is confident turnout among black voters in Chicago will remain at nearly that level during future elections. “We tasted victory in November. It was intoxicating. We won’t go back to being silent.”

    Other observers are more skeptical. “Turnout was high because of Braun and because people, especially minorities, were so angry and ready for change at a national level,” Orr says. “It’s not likely we’ll see the same levels in local elections.”

    One Daley insider says the Mayor took particular note of the increase in black participation. “How could he not? But does that mean he starts looking over his shoulder for a rising black political star to run against him? No.” Before his 1989 victory, the Mayor received contributions from many black-owned businesses and black voters. “I think he’s pretty comfortable with his support among blacks,” this insider says. “But he’s not complacent. Look what happened to Al Dixon.”

    As for Project Vote! itself, its operations in Chicago have officially closed down. Barack Obama has returned to work on his book, which he plans to complete this month. He also is teaching a class at the University of Chicago law school, and is an attorney at Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland. But he continues to consult with the church, community, and political groups involved in the monumental registration drive. “We won’t let the momentum die,” he says. “I’ll take personal responsibility for that. We plan to hold politicians’ feet to the flames in 1993, to remind them that we can produce a bloc of voters large enough that it cannot be ignored.”

    Nor can Obama himself be ignored. The success of the voter-registration drive has marked him as the political star the Mayor should perhaps be watching for. “The sky’s the limit for Barack,” says Burrell.

    Some of Daley’s closest advisers are similarly impressed. “In its technical demands, a voter-registration drive is not unlike a mini-political campaign,” says John Schmidt, chairman of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and a fundraiser for Project Vote! “Barack ran this superbly. I have no doubt he could run an equally good political campaign if that’s what he decided to do next.”

    Obama shrugs off the possibility of running for office. “Who knows?” he says. “But probably not immediately.” He smiles. “Was that a sufficiently politic ‘maybe’? My sincere answer is, I’ll run if I feel I can accomplish more that way than agitating from the outside. I don’t know if that’s true right now. Let’s wait and see what happens in 1993. If the politicians in place now at city and state levels respond to African-American voters’ needs, we’ll gladly work with and support them. If they don’t, we’ll work to replace them. That’s the message I want Project Vote! to have sent.”

    This article appears in the January 1993 issue of Chicago Magazine.

    Did you like what you read here? Subscribe to Chicago Magazine »

  7. MARY JARRARD says

    October 14, 2008 at 11:45 pm

    Obama for America has a site at Our Story
    first address below. The second URL shows that in Jul 2007 he was braging that he “Ran Project Vote in Illinois” 1992 with picture.

    http://ourstory.com/BarackObama
    http://ourstory.com/thread.htm?t=253833

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