13 October 2008 Patriot Vol. 08 No. 42


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Obama's ACORN roots
THE FOUNDATION: ADVICE
“We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.” —George Washington

RE: THE LEFT
“’You’ve got only a couple thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog-food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don’t despair: You can still buy a house.’ So began an April 1995 article in the Chicago Sun-Times that went on to direct prospective home-buyers fitting this profile to a group of far-left ‘community organizers’ called ACORN, for assistance. In retrospect, of course, encouraging customers like this to buy homes seems little short of madness. At the time, however, that 1995 Chicago newspaper article represented something of a triumph for Barack Obama. That same year, as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to ACORN, and sending still more money ACORN’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported ACORN. And ACORN, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis... In June of 1995, President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and Secretary Cisneros announced the administration’s comprehensive new strategy for raising home-ownership in America to an all-time high. Representatives from ACORN were guests of honor at the ceremony. In his remarks, Clinton emphasized that: ‘Our homeownership strategy will not cost the taxpayers one extra cent. It will not require legislation.’ Clinton meant that informal partnerships between Fannie and Freddie and groups like ACORN would make mortgages available to customers ‘who have historically been excluded from homeownership.’ In the end of course, Clinton’s plan cost taxpayers an almost unimaginable amount of money. And it was just around the time of his 1995 announcement that the Chicago papers started encouraging bad-credit customers with ‘dog-food’ wages, little money in the bank, and even histories of bankruptcy to apply for home loans with the help of ACORN...ACORN is at the base of the whole mess... And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.” —Stanley Kurtz

POLITICAL FUTURES
“The Dow’s nose-diving, stocks are looking at their worst year since 1937. At the debate we were offered the curious spectacle of two candidates both of whom essentially take the same line on this stuff—Wall Street greed, special interests, lobbyists, the usual populist boilerplate. And yet for a pair of guys who both believe in big government solutions, everything they said seemed small and tinny. Epic events swirled all around, but the two men fighting to lead the global superpower could only joust with cardboard swords: Why, Obama was such a bold leader on this issue that only two years ago he ‘sent a letter’ to somebody or other. Why, long before Obama sent his letter, McCain ‘issued a statement.’... The Republican candidate’s tragedy in this election is that he’s chosen to fight on Obama turf, to share so many of his assumptions. At a McCain rally in Wisconsin, a fellow in the crowd announced he was mad as hell and got a standing ovation. What was he mad about’? Obama, Pelosi and ‘the socialists taking over our country.’ McCain listened politely and then pledged to get back to Washington to reach across the aisle to work on some gargantuan bipartisan cure-all. Not the answer that chap wanted to hear, I’ll wager. If the more frightening polls are correct, America is about to elect the most left-wing government in history: an Obama Oval Office, a Pelosi House of Representatives, a filibuster-proof Senate... and a year or two down the road maybe three new Supreme Court justices. It would be a transformational administration that would start building (in Michelle Obama’s words) ‘the world as it should be’.” —Mark Steyn

GOVERNMENT
“Now, the U.S. Treasury is considering buying banks. Buying banks. That is to say that if Bob’s Bank in Godknowswhere, West Wiscarolina is going under, the U.S. Department of the Treasury is considering bailing out Bob’s Bank by buying it. Here’s the Washington Post’s take on this excellent new obligation you and I are about to take on: ‘The Bush administration is hammering out the final details of a plan that would allow the government to inject cash into banks in exchange for ownership stakes in an effort to shore up confidence in the faltering financial system, according to officials and sources who have been in contact with the Treasury Department.’ I do not want to own Bob’s Bank. Or any other bank. Especially if the geniuses who have been running the bank have run the bank into the ground. What am I missing here? If you read the WashPost’s report on what the Administration is now proposing, you and I are going to be on the hook for the banks’ bad loans. But, because our money is not THEIR money, the Post reports ‘What is less clear is what strings would be attached, particularly regarding the compensation of top executives at participating banks.’ Here’s my plan for compensation of top execs at participating banks: Nothing. Nada. Zero. Bubkis. Not a farthing. If those executives don’t like my compensation plan? They can quit. They can leave in a huff. If they don’t like that, they can leave—in the words of the Marx Brothers—they can leave in a minute an a huff. We’ll get someone else. How about the guy who slices the bagels at the breakfast place on Pennsylvania Avenue? He cannot possibly do any worse than the slug with an MBA from Harvard. Am I wrong? I want the people who got us into this mess drawn and quartered. I do not want them to go to the Spa at some five star hotel in California on my dime. Or yours.” —Rich Galen

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