I’ve been watching the gleeful celebration of the death of ACORN around the PUMAsphere with sadness and dismay. It’s not because I’m an ACORN advocate, far from it. I actually know very little about the group, and, to be honest, most of what I’ve heard hasn’t been good. It’s because I’ve realized that I’m a pretty liberal Democrat at heart, and a liberal institution is under vicious right wing attack, primarily for being a liberal institution:
Republicans have long seen the group — which offers housing and other services, including voter registration, to the poor — as a shady operation devoted to electing liberals and siphoning off taxpayer money.
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O’Keefe, however, said that he and Giles’ work was done independently and dismisses claims that the videos were paid for by conservative organizations. O’Keefe said he did receive advice from a conservative columnist.
After O’Keefe had filmed the first two videos — in Washington and Baltimore — a conservative friend urged him to share his project with Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Internet entrepreneur who had plans to launch an anti-liberal site called BigGovernment.com. Breitbart said he was skeptical after a June phone call with O’Keefe.
But when he saw the video in Los Angeles in July, Breitbart said, he gasped.
Breitbart, who had written a column for The Washington Times, advised O’Keefe to roll out the videos one by one, rather than at once.
“When I saw these videos, I couldn’t help thinking, this is the Abu Ghraib of the Great Society,” said Breitbart, who put the videos on BigGovernment.com. “Everybody that is a conservative news junkie thinks that ACORN is the most important institution for us to uncover to the American public.” Read the rest of this entry »
Everybody hates ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. To those on the right, ACORN almost literally represents everything they hate about the left. Even Politico is now dropping its pretense of neutrality to gleefully report the organizations current troubles, sporting a “Come and get us, suckers!” headline today. For PUMAs, ACORN is the thuggish voter intimidation arm of the Obama Primary Express. For both, ACORN is, in many ways, responsible for at least some of the housing market crash.
I dunno, I’ve never been quite sure ACORN is the Satan spawn-filled abomination it has been made out to be. Swept up in anti-Obama hysteria like many people upset with the way and how of Obama’s securing of the Democratic nomination for president, I’ve leveled my share of invective at the group’s shenanigans on his behalf. However, I can’t help but wonder if they, like everyone else who helped Obama get elected and is now under the proverbial bus, weren’t courted, embraced, deployed, used like a tissue, then discarded just as casually as all the rest. As far as the right wing is concerned, I remember them going after the group in ‘04, and every election year before that, too, in the same way, for the same reasons they are now. Read the rest of this entry »
We be black. We was black befo’ Obama got elected, and we still black, nah. Summa y’all don’t like dat, an’ it piss y’all off. Y’all be trippin’. Y’all suck. Chill.
Don’t nobody care what y’all think, no way. Y’all the ones always be tryin’ to keep a brotha down. That’s whack. Fuck dat. Fuck y’all. – Black America
I often try to illustrate the not-so-hidden racism rampant in our society by comparing it to the similarly hidden-in-plain-sight sexism we live under, hoping that women will at least consider that many of the “race card” claims being pooh-poohed on a regular basis do actually have some basis in fact. Unfortunately, far too many women, themselves victimized by insidious institutionalized bigotry, obvious to them at every turn, no matter how small, slight, or insignificant such behavior might be considered by perpetrators of said sexism, simply cannot see the same sort of racial bias right in front of their eyes. Though they are not only adept at recognizing overt discrimination directed towards them, but quite skilled at ferreting out intended sexism no matter how cleverly couched, even correctly identifying incidences where deliberate bigotry is intentionally dressed in politically correct clothes in order to escape detection, no such leeway is accorded those who empathize with those of us who suffer racially. Read the rest of this entry »
Propaganda is defined by Wordnet as “information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause.” Sounds innocent enough, right? However, Wikipedia gives us this definition:
Propaganda is the dissemination of information aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of people. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, often presents information primarily in order to influence its audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Read the rest of this entry »
Okay, I’ve found two sources, neither exactly “mainstream,” though one, Slate magazine, with its MSNBC/Washington Post connections comes close, that rather cavalierly admit that, like Chris Matthews, fluffing Barack Obama at all costs is deemed by a lot of the media to be a top priority. While anybody awake and sober knows this to be true, since, nobody is denying it, seeing it in black and white is unnerving.
The Slate piece, regarding those recent allegations that the New York Times deliberately killed a potentially “game changing” ACORN/Obama story last October, because it might derail the woefully under-qualified Celebritician’s campaign chances, asserts that even if the allegations that Obama was illegally involved with “impermissible political activity by Acorn,” were true, the Times reporter was justified in not publishing it because of the paper’s, and both the original story’s reporter’s, and the Slate article’s author’s, political beliefs. Stunning.
Slate’s Mickey Klaus says that he disagrees with a friend, code-named, “Max,” who claims that any “red blooded,” responsible journalist today would, and should, have been ecstatic to break such an explosive story, especially one that “brought down a presidential nominee,” and that the writer’s paper and colleagues would have been “high-five” proud to publish that potentially Pulitzer quality article. According to Klaus, that kind of thinking is just so yesterday:
As we, the people, try to figure out exactly where President Black Obama might be going with his stimulus, budgets, and bailouts, I thought it might be useful to revisit some earlier articles about him in an attempt to gain insight. Given what we already know, and have seen with our own eyes, the observations and quoted statements written here likely provide a slightly different perspective than one might have gleaned from them when they first appeared in print.
The first series of quotes are from a September 2, 2006 New York Magazine 8 page love letter written by Jennifer Senior:
“To me, the issue is not are you centrist or are you liberal,” he says. “The issue to me is, Is what you’re proposing going to work? Can you build a working coalition to make the lives of people better? And if it can work, you should support it whether it’s centrist, conservative, or liberal.”
“I don’t want people to pretend I’m not black or that it’s somehow not relevant. But ultimately,” he says, “I’d want to be a really great president, you know? And then I’d worry about all the other stuff. Because there are a lot of mediocre or poor presidents.”
“One good test as to whether folks are doing interesting work is, Can they surprise me?” he tells me. “And increasingly, when I read Daily Kos, it doesn’t surprise me. It’s all just exactly what I would expect.”
The next series of snippets from an April 3, 2007 article by Christopher Drew and Mike McIntire, are not direct quotes from the then, Not Quite Obamessiah, But Almost, they reflect the authors’ investigation into his more mortal early attempts at fundraising:
Mr. Obama’s breakthrough in the 2004 Senate race was also made possible by a new wrinkle in the election laws. Faced with a self-financed opponent in the Democratic primary, Blair Hull, who pumped more than $28 million of his own money into the race, Mr. Obama was able to accept up to $12,000 from each donor, or six times the limit at that time.
As a result, nearly half of the more than $5 million that Mr. Obama raised in the primary came from just 300 donors. In a stroke of luck, he had just enough money to pay for a television advertising blitz in the final weeks as Mr. Hull’s campaign crumbled amid accusations that he had abused a former wife.
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When Mr. Obama decided to run for Congress in 2000 against the former Black Panther Bobby Rush, he used a $9,500 personal loan to help finance the campaign. When he lost, he found himself broke and fielding questions from the Federal Election Commission about his campaign finances. He later had to lend his campaign committee $11,100 more to cover refunds to donors who had inadvertently given too much.
It took him two years to repay his own loans, mostly with small checks from black executives who agreed to help him prepare for another run.
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Antoin Rezko, a Chicago businessman who was later involved in a land deal with the Obamas, gave $10,500.
Mr. Obama’s support also widened among Chicago’s business elite. Members of the Pritzker family, which founded the Hyatt Hotel chain, donated $40,000; Penny Pritzker is now the senator’s national finance chairwoman.
Mr. Crown, whose family’s investments include a major stake in the military contractor General Dynamics, said family members normally avoided taking sides in a primary, in part because it was not good for business. But with Mr. Obama, they made an exception, with 10 family members giving a total of $112,500.
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Mr. Obama also attracted major national Democratic donors, including George Soros and members of his family, who gave a total of $60,000.
In December, 2006, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on The President Formerly Known As Bonehead’s pay-to-play involvement with his de facto real estate partner and campaign donor, Tony Rezko:
In addition to a land deal, Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to indicted dealmaker Antoin “Tony” Rezko include an internship the senator provided the son of a contributor at the request of Rezko, an Obama spokesman confirmed Saturday.
John Aramanda served as an intern for Obama for about a month in 2005, said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. His father is Joseph Aramanda, a Rezko business associate who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal corruption case against Rezko. Aramanda has contributed $11,500 to Obama since 2000, Gibbs said.
“Mr. Rezko did provide a recommendation for John Aramanda,” Gibbs said. “I think that it’s fairly obvious that a few-week internship is not anything of benefit to Mr. Rezko or any of his businesses.”
The internship revelation comes after Obama acknowledged he erred in buying property from Rezko in January. The transaction took place when it was widely known Rezko was under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office.
The Baltimore Sun ran a May, 2007 story about Obuyme’s holier-than-thou attitude about pork, pay-to-pay, payoffs and politics:
“My philosophy was that, if money was being distributed, then it would be inappropriate for me to not get my share for my district,” Obama, now one of the U.S. Senate Democrats’ leaders on ethics reform, said in an interview. “Did I think it was the best way to prioritize government spending? No.”
Ryan Lizza wrote a ten page investigation into Obama’s early community organizing days, clled, The Agitator, and examined how he came to be “faith-based:”
From Wright and others, Obama learned that part of his problem as an organizer was that he was trying to build a confederation of churches but wasn’t showing up in the pews on Sunday. When pastors asked him the inevitable questions about his own spiritual life, Obama would duck them uncomfortably. A Reverend Philips put the problem to him squarely when he learned that Obama didn’t attend services. “It might help your mission if you had a church home,” he told Obama. “It doesn’t matter where, really. What you’re asking from pastors requires us to set aside some of our more priestly concerns in favor of prophesy. That requires a good deal of faith on our part. It makes us want to know just where you’re getting yours from.”
After many lectures like this, Obama decided to take a second look at Wright’s church. Older pastors warned him that Trinity was for “Buppies”–black urban professionals–and didn’t have enough street cred. But Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”–included a “Disavowal of the Pursuit of ‘Middleclassness.’”
The cross currents appealed to Obama. He came to believe that the church could not only compensate for the limitations of Alinsky-style organizing but could help answer the nagging identity problem he had come to Chicago to solve. “It was a powerful program, this cultural community,” he wrote, “one more pliant than simple nationalism, more sustaining than my own brand of organizing. “
In March of last year, China Daily (?!?) found it interesting that not all rich black people were putting their money where Obrother’s mouth was:
Barack Obama’s quest to become the first African-American president is being run without the financial support of much of the black corporate elite.
Less than one-third of the 191 black members of the boards of the largest 250 US companies have contributed to the Illinois senator’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. The list of board members was compiled by Black Enterprise magazine.
As Americans try to wrap their heads around their hopey-changey KoolAid Dispenser-In-Chief’s sudden, “surprise” (not) rubber-burning lurch to the left, they might wanna pick their jaws up off the floor and read what Stanley Kurtz (yeah, yeah) had to say about Senator Stealth and the Gamaliel Foundation. In fact, a look back at Sual Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals might be in order; he was the Father of Community Organizing, and the Obamessiah, like Jesus before him, is following in his father’s footsteps, right? So, shouldn’t we all just put our differences aside and let his gentle hand guide us through our current turbulent waters? The problems he’s inherited are inevitable, aren’t they?
Looks like Obama the Candidate was really serious about “change.” As we all know, “change” was the buzzword of the 2008 campaign season, promoted constantly, incessantly, annoyingly by Barack Obama, and picked up on by all of his opponents in self defense. But, while everybody else was just spouting campaign rhetoric; after all, whenever one administration replaces another, you’re going to get “change,” Obama seems to have been serious as a heart attack without health insurance about it.
Conventional wisdom and common sense would indicate to even the densest among us that in order to achieve the “true change” Obama promised to bring to the “old ways of Washington” in his determination to “remake the country,” the country in question, as in any renovation, would need to be torn down to the studs. And, it appears Obama is well on his way to completing Phase One. At least, according to George Soros. Reuters reports that Soros, speaking at a Columbia University dinner, echoed the sentiments of the speaker before him, Paul Volcker, head of the president’s new Economic Advisory Board, when he said the world as we know it is well on its way to irrevocable destruction, economically speaking:
Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.
Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.
He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.
“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”
Hmmm…isn’t that what Rep. Paul Kanjorski said, and all the Obots went, “Pfssshh, yeah, right“? And, if I’m following all this correctly, doesn’t this mean that the economic event that lead to Paulson’s TARP (don’t call it a) bailout and propelled a curiously over-funded Obama from a hotly contested, tied competition into the White House virtually unopposed, is also the catalyst of global financial ruin? What say the Obots, now?
Well, they can’t say Obama leads by example. Or, maybe he does, since people not paying bills, for one reason or another, is a big part of the mess we’re in. Obama doesn’t seem to want to pay his bills, either, at least not the one to his adopted home city for the Bashapalooza they threw for him on Election Night. The Chicago Sun Times has the details:
Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama’s victory celebration in Grant Park — despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.
“The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us,” Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, said Thursday after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’re reaching out to them this week.”
I guess South Side Slick expects the city to just hang on for the stimulus money since there’s probably pork aplenty to cover. And, now that the Illinois legislature has done its part in kicking Rod Blagojevich to the curb, the state qualifies for its share. There’s probably a bonus for breaking harmless little Roland Burris‘ heart by stomping on his dreams and jackbooting him out of the Senate job he dearly wanted, foolishly embraced and would be out of in a minute anyway. One way or another, Chicago will be paid; either they’re headed under the bus, or somebody will “deliver an envelope,” if you get my drift. Obama takes care of his own, it’s the Chicago Way.
Of course, the Obama Way means nobody has to pay their bills; he’s hellbent on seeing to it that everybody at least has a house, regardless of whether they can afford it, or not. He unveiled his big, stock market tanking housing plan to help out the lender-seduced buyers who jumped off the deep end into houses that now have them underwater, and financially back up those lenders for going along with the program with government money, if they feel like it, unless they’re Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Since that’s the only way the greedy lenders can get the up front bailout money and back end insurance, I have a feeling they’ll probably play along.
For those pretty much destitute-from-the-jump folks just given over-priced houses by lenders, basically for free, just to get the right numbers on the paper those bankers were going to turn right around and sell for even more worthless computer bits and bytes signifying nothing, even though everybody knew they’d never be able to pay it back, Obie has sicced ACORN on the problem on the QT. All those folks have to do is make like Wild West expansioneers and just squat on their homestead, since Obie’s got their back with the bailed out bankers, no matter what. Besides, the original mortgage has probably been through so many grubby banksters’ hands, the guys trying to foreclose probably couldn’t produce the necessary paperwork if they wanted to. If the system gamers get cold feet, or the banker on the low end not hip to the deal tries to lock them out, a quick call to Obie’s ACORN enforcers will bring the strongarm crew to help you gain access to your now completely free house. Of course, like all Dons, Obie’s three steps removed, especially since he got Rep. Marcy Kaptur to sell the plan to the clueless for him.
Don’t be fooled by the “hold bank executives feet to the fire” rah-rah coming from the administration, either. The whole “salary cap” thing is bogus all around, being nothing but re-election theater as it is. Team Obama and his money man, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) tried to quietly tiptoe out of the whole TARP-related “take my money, play buy my rules” dramatic ploy, but Congress realized they need votes too, so they snuck it back into the stimulus bill. And, even though it sounds like “Ooooooh, we showed those bad bankers,” anybody who believes there isn’t enough wiggle room in the provisions to drive a fleet of private jets, and Daschle limos through, is a hopium head, and deserves the no grease screwing a-comin’.
Same for anybody who really believes Obie’s gonna close Gitmo; I’ll believe it when I see it, since the Obama patented “clear myself ahead of time” review panel he commisioned, this time through the Pentagon instead of White House counsel like the brush-Blago-off-the-shoulders one, says everything at Gitmo is Geneva convention compliant and thus, hunky dory. So, why close it? Look for him to rescind his exec order sometime in the coming year, on the sly, like he’s extending those Bush policies. Shhhhhh.
So, while Obacrats raise Democratic in-fighting to a new art form, using definitions of “what is is” as a time tested, media approved bludgeoning tool against their brethren-on-the-outs in the case of David (Caroline wasn’t my first choice) Paterson and Roland (but I didn’t give him any money) Burris, the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader can continue happily fronting for the banksters, robbing the world blind, fighting wars, and tearing the country to the ground, so he can remake it in his own image with a clean slate. Like he, and his wife, told you he would.
All the while, remaining more popular than Jesus in the process. Like Dee Dee Myers told us he was.
Barack Obama has been pimping faith, any faith, for political power since the beginning of his professional career as a community organizer. Early on he made a conscious, callous decision to use the pulpit, any pulpit, to attempt to mobilize people into action. This is not a secret, it has been documented repeatedly, yet it has been marketed as most things Obama have been, it is what it is, but it means anything you want it to.
Until recently, when Barack Obama touted his Muslim family members and growing up in a Muslim country on Al Arabiya TV, associating the word, “Muslim,” or anything that might possibly remotely hint at a relationship of any sort between Obama and anything Islamic, including his given name, was considered a completely out of bounds “smear.” Even when he himself slipped up and referred to his “Muslim faith,” specualtion about the nature of the slip and what it might mean, was treated as being highly offensive and unfair to the “Christian” man. The “Christian” man who, as far as anyone knows, has never been baptized, (if anybody has any evidence showing he has, I’ll apologize) who could divorce himself from his church and “pastor who brought him to Jesus” when it became politically expedient to do so, and has used every one of his rare church visits in the last 2 years of campaigning and being elected to the presidency as a photo-op, skillfully talks the Christian talk without being expected to walk the Christian walk.
“Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership and – most importantly – values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities like Chicago. A fierce independence among black pastors and a preference for more traditional approaches to social involvement (supporting candidates for office, providing shelters for the homeless) have prevented the black church from bringing its full weight to bear on the political, social and economic arenas of the city.”
When you’ve got an ace in the hole, or a wild card, or an abundance of trumps, you can play with confidence. If you’ve tucked the only Joker in the deck up your sleeve, only allowing it to magically appear when needed, you can wipe out your opposition without breaking a sweat. But when another player, seemingly low on chips and on his way out the game, suddenly not only goes all in, but produces an even bigger Joker than yours, showing yours to have been a rather poor imitation of the real thing all along, your ass is punked.
After Obama relinquished his seat in November, there were no blacks in the Senate. In all of American history, there have only been five Senators of African descent. Only three African Americans have been elected to the Senate since Reconstruction; two of those Senators were from Illinois, and Barack Obama had a hand in the election of both of them.
Recruited by Sandy Newman to head up the Chicago chapter of Project Vote! in 1992, the group credited with increasing black voter turnout and putting Chicago’s first black U.S. Senator, Carol Moseley Braun over the top, Obama, before he became “post-racial,” actively, shamelessly, and successfully promoted black voter participation. From Chicago Magazine, 1993:
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.
Though Obama later claimed he never worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, (ACORN) Project Vote! is, at least now, affiliated with them, and the two groups collaborated on a voter drive on his behalf. In 1995, a Chicago Reader profile documented a community organizing relationship with ACORN that went undisputed by Camp O, even though the article does not chronicle direct employment.
Once Obama became a candidate for the U.S. Senate himself, however, it became necessary to distance himself from his radical blackness and adopt a more conciliatory demeanor. This facade was shaped in some measure by his defeat for Bobby Rush’s Congressional seat, when he was perceived as being out of touch with black reality:
Mr. Obama’s Ivy League education and his white liberal-establishment connections also became an issue. Mr. Rush told The Chicago Reader, “He went to Harvard and became an educated fool. We’re not impressed with these folks with these Eastern elite degrees.”
Mr. Rush and his supporters faulted him for having missed experiences that more directly defined the previous generation of black people. “Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it,” Mr. Rush told The Reader.
Mr. Obama was seen as an intellectual, “not from us, not from the ’hood,” said Jerry Morrison, a consultant on the Rush campaign. Asked recently about that line of attack, Mr. Rush minimized it as “chest beating, signifying.”
The implication was not exactly that Mr. Obama was “not black enough,” as some blacks have suggested more recently; his credentials were suspect. “It was much more a function of class, not race,” Mr. Adelstein said. “Nobody said he’s ‘not black enough.’ They said he’s a professor, a Harvard elite who lives in Hyde Park.”
No dummy he, Mr. Obama quickly learned to exploit both his blackness and his whiteness successfully. Playing up his bi-raciality while at the same time being conveniently black only when necessary, placing himself above historical racial “distractions” was a neat trick, deftly executed, and proved to be irresistible to voters of all races. However, it was not without pitfalls, nor were racial aspects eliminated from the equation. Far from it. He just had to be clever about when, where, and how he chose to be “just black enough” to turn a given situation to his built-in advantage of being the only person of color in his races subsequent to the disastrous one against Rush. When you’re the only black guy running, you can define what blackness is without challenge.
Therefore, when you can get the Secret Service to protect you just because you’re black, when your wife can channel Spike Lee and implore blacks to “wake up” and vote for you, when you can get the safest, most beloved Mammy-figure since Aunt Jemimah to embrace and endorse you, when black mainstream media pundits and politicians champion the idea and ideals of your candidacy over it’s substance, it is akin to having an entire deckful of Aces up your sleeve. You can feign outrage over every perceived slight you can find to blow out of proportion, casting your opponent in the most vilely negative light imaginable in that situation, while nullifying the legitimacy of any condemnation of your actions. After all, how can a white person tell a black person how to feel about racism? How can a black person in their right mind defend such attacks against a “brother” who says he’s being demeaned? And, even if some things might seem overblown, and others inexplicably dismissed, when the players in the game all agree that the new guy has a right to the race cards up his sleeve simply because they know he knows they used to cheat guys who looked like him on a regular basis, the game becomes an exercise in futility for all but the guy it’s being guiltily thrown to.
Rod Blagojevich, who enjoys a lot of support in the black community himself, knows exactly how the game has been played, and saw clearly who was letting pots go, and who was slipping chips under the table to who. Seeing his own stack dwindle to almost nothing, he decided to call in the only guy to have ever beaten Barack Obama at the game he taught him, and by appointing an equally safe, seemingly unassailable black man to fill Obama’s vacant seat, go all in on having a bigger pair. From CNN:
Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush, who appeared at the Tuesday news conference, warned senators about blocking Burris.
“There are no African-Americans in the U.S. Senate. And I don’t think any U.S. senator who’s sitting in the Senate right now wants to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate,” he said.
“I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer and separate the appointee from the appointer,” Rush said.
Unlike Obama, Rush has no incentive to pretend to be racially ambiguous; he is not, nor has he ever been; the former Black Panther has always been radically black. Now that all the race cards are face up in the middle of the table, it will be interesting to watch how Obama plays his hand.
Why should the federal government spend one dime of taxpayer money bailing companies out of jams of their own making? Whatever happened to “you made your own bed…”? Whether we start with the reverse Robin Hoods of the real estate/housing/mortgage-gouging Ponzi schemers in the “lending” industry and all the attendant theives in their RICO caliber conspiracy, or focus on the “Big 3″ automakers now singing, “waaah, waaah, waaah,” in unison and harmony in front of Congress, the fact remains that they knew long ago that if they kept doing what they were doing, they’d end up where they are. Duh.
Supposedly, because of the ACORN-inspired Community Reinvestment Act “requirement” that the lending institutions lend money to poor people, the put-upon bankers just had to issue “zero down,” 100% financing, double mortgages to anybody who came through the door, and encourage them to pay too much for houses they couldn’t afford, since they could always take out another “home improvement” loan to replace perfectly good ceramic tile countertops, plain Jane white appliances, and linoleum tile floors, with the far superior granite countertops, super slick stainless steel appliances and chi-chi slate/terrazzo tile or other hip, urban flooring, in order to further inflate the already inflated home prices and pass them on to the next newly stiffed potential homeowners they were assured they would be able to sell their over-priced “investments” to in the very near future at a nifty, hefty profit. Now, these poor, put-upon “lenders” are so surprized that the bottom has fallen out of these “sound lending principled” scams, since of course, they couldn’t “see this coming,” (I mean, who could?) that they just gotta have a gazillion dollars of taxpayer money just to get by. And, it stands to reason that if these “lenders” can no longer afford to “lend” at the same super-inflated rates they were enjoying so much profit from, well, then, nobody can loan anybody any money to buy anything. Right? So, it naturally follows that, the big, bad auto companies, who have lending arms of their own, at least one of which was involved in home loans, and, who aren’t predisposed to loaning money to people to buy their own product anymore, just have to make up the shortfall with taxpayer bailout money.
Bite. Me. Hard.
“Nobody’s buying our cars anymore, waaah. They want smaller, fuel-efficient foreign cars.” Bullshit. According to a Reuter’s blog article today, Americans aren’t buying anybody’s crap:
Unfortunately, neither loans nor the companies’ promises address the basic problem: Americans just aren’t buying cars, whether GM, Toyota, Ford, or Nissan.
Consider the November sales data, showing GM ’s sales down 41% from a year earlier, Ford’s down 30%, and Chrysler’s down 47%. Foreign brands were hurt, too: Toyota down 34%, Honda 32%, Nissan 42%, Hyundai 40%.
The truth is, there is no “out.” The financial industry scammed the public and now that all the co-conspirators are caught with their pants down and their hands elbow deep in the cookie jar, they want to scream “victim” so they don’t get the spanking they deserve. Union concessions, private jet sales, and other “belt-tightening” measures amount to spitting in the ocean. Until the housing market prices begin to more accurately reflect their value, everybody will continue to lose money and try to blame eveybody else.
Either bail everybody, including homeowners, out, or let ‘em eat cakeshit ____ (fill in the blank with the expletive you prefer.)
ACORN , the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has consistently refuted claims of voter fraud against them as being voter suppression “stunts.” According to the L.A. Times, after a Nevada raid that seized records of bogus registrations, ACORN rep Bertha Lewis said just that:
Bertha Lewis, interim chief organizer for ACORN, said the group has been working with election officials to weed out fraudulent forms from those submitted by its canvassers.
“Today’s raid by the secretary of state’s office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans,” Lewis said.
Lewis also said that ACORN is diligent in scrutinizing their records:
“For the past 10 months, any time ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application in to election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual,” Lewis said.
However, a Politico article disputes ACORN’s claims:
ACORN’s second line of defense has been that fraudulent registrations can’t turn into fraudulent votes, as if the felony of polluting voter lists was somehow not all that serious. But that defense goes only a short distance. “How would you know if people using fake names had cast votes in states without strict ID laws?” says GOP Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who this year won a major Supreme Court case upholding his state’s photo identification law. “It’s almost impossible to detect and once the fraudulent voter leaves the precinct or casts an absentee ballot, that vote is thrown in with other secret ballots there’s no way to trace it.”
Anita MonCrief, an ACORN whistle-blower who worked for both it and its Project Vote registration affiliate from 2005 until early this year, agrees. “It’s ludicrous to say that fake registrations can’t become fraudulent votes,” she told me. “I assure you that if you can get them on the rolls you can get them to vote, especially using absentee ballots.” MonCrief, a 29-year old University of Alabama graduate who wanted to become part of the civil rights movement, worked as a strategic consultant for ACORN as well as a development associate with Project Vote and sat in on meetings with the national staffs of both groups. She has given me documents that back up many of her statements, including one that indicates that the goal of ACORN’s New Mexico affiliate was that only 40 percent of its submitted registrations had to be valid.
MonCrief also told me that some ACORN affiliates had a conscious strategy of flooding voter registration offices with suspect last-minute forms in part to create confusion and chaos that would make it more likely suspect voters would be allowed to cast ballots by overworked officials. Nate Toller, who worked on ACORN registration drives and headed an ACORN campaign against Wal-Mart in California until 2006, agrees. “There’s no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances,” he told me.
Supporters of Hillary Clinton have our own bone to pick with ACORN and caucus fraud in the primaries as documented here and here. In February, the website Writes Like She Talks was one of many to print an email supposedly received from the group:
GOTV for Obama! Ohio ACORN is doing a Get Out The Vote project with the OBAMA Campaign. Ohio ACORN is hiring canvassers to go door to door encouraging voters to vote for Barak Obama.
ACORN is hiring in Cleveland (216)431-3905 , Columbus (614)425-9491, Cincinnati (513)221-1737, for Dayton (call Cincinnati), and for Toledo call Cleveland. Or email polnatoh@acorn.org and your inquiry will be routed to the appropriate person in each of these cities. Intake and training will be held daily at local ACORN offices. Canvass begins on Wednesday Feb. 27th and will work through election day. Please, only persons wishing to work all or most of these days (Saturday and Sunday included) should inquire.
Please do not contact the Obama campaign directly regarding this post as they are not the organization doing the hiring and it will only distract their staff and volunteers from the other important work they are doing on behalf of Senator Obama.
ACORN has not only been accused of employing thug-like tactics on behalf of Obama during the primaries, caucuses and general election, the New York Times says they’ve exaggerated their legitimate efforts:
On Oct. 6, the community organizing group Acorn and an affiliated charity called Project Vote announced with jubilation that they had registered 1.3 million new voters. But it turns out the claim was a wild exaggeration, and the real number of newly registered voters nationwide is closer to 450,000, Project Vote’s executive director, Michael Slater, said in an interview.
The remainder are registered voters who were changing their address and roughly 400,000 that were rejected by election officials for a variety of reasons, including duplicate registrations, incomplete forms and fraudulent submissions from low-paid field workers trying to please their supervisors, Mr. Slater acknowledged.
Is that newly registered, or eligible newly registered? And given the fact that some of them can, and have, voted fraudulently, presumably on behalf of, and possibly at the behest of Barack Obama, shouldn’t somebody do something about it?
New York’s Working Families Party was first organized in 1998 by a coalition of labor unions, ACORN and other community organizations, members of the now-inactive national New Party, and a variety of public interest groups. The party blends a culture of political organizing with unionism, 1960s idealism, and tactical pragmatism. The party’s main issue concerns are jobs, health care, education and energy/environment, and it has won notable policy gains at the city, county and state level by piggybacking on Democratic or Republican candidates.
New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George’s County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.
Candidates must be approved via a NP political committee. Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP. The contract mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.
The political entourage included Alderman Michael Chandler, William Delgado, chief of staff for State Rep Miguel del Valle, and spokespersons for State Sen. Alice Palmer, Sonya Sanchez, chief of staff for State Sen. Jesse Garcia, who is running for State Rep in Garcia’s District; and Barack Obama, chief of staff for State Sen. Alice Palmer. Obama is running for Palmer’s vacant seat.
Twice in the last week, Barack Obama has said his relationship with ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — began and ended with legal work he did for the group in 1995.
Besides, even though ACORN makes no bones about helping found the Working Families Party, they claim to be non- partisan:
ACORN is a non-profit, non-partisan social justice organization with national headquarters in New York, New Orleans and Washington, D.C.
Barack Obama likes to tout his community organizing and associations except when it becomes inconvenient to do so. When they can be used to bolster his weak resume, or counter-mock those who ridicule him, he proudly trots out his “experience.” Yet when anyone questions him about Ayers or ACORN, as John McCain did in last night’s debate, Obama runs as far way as he can semi-credibly get, as fast as his Mac Daddy long legs can take him. How can the fact that Obama “was only eight years old,” when William Ayers committed the crimes he still has not repented, excuse his subsequent association with him as a grown man? Repeating the same mantra whenever questioned about the issue not only underscores the ridiculousness of the denial, it soon becomes tedious. The same is true for the ACORN affiliation. Any self-professed “community organizer” who would try to distance himself from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, either thinks his detractors are stupid, or is stupid, himself.
Now, unlike people such as Michelle Malkin, I don’t have a giant bowling ball sized ACORN stuck up my butt in my craw. I’m just not sure this organization is the spawn from hell some folks make it out to be. It’s also doubtful that they’re overly effective at any rate, since if they were, Democrats might actually win presidential elections once in a while. And as far as being significantly responsible for the housing crisis is concerned, I’ve already gone on record here, here, and here with my feelings about the unlikelyhood of that.
Yet, Obama is definitely tied to ACORN and he simply cannot credibly claim pride in his community organizing roots without embracing the group. It is common knowledge that Obama was directly involved with Project Vote in Chicago. Chicago Mag.com, January, 1993:
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.
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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.
On ACORN’s front page at their website their affiliation with Project Vote is touted right under their denunciation of McCain’s “attacks.”
The goal of ACORN and Project Vote’s voter registration drives is to empower low-income and minority communities by giving them a voice in the political process. ACORN hopes that expanding the electorate will result in more candidates who appeal to historically underrepresented voting populations.
On Project Vote’s homepage, the ACORN story is the fourth one down. In another article, this one from The Chicago Reader, 1995, we have mention of the Woods Fund being involved with the Developing Communities Project, as well as an Obama connection with ACORN:
Woods was the first foundation to underwrite Obama’s work with DCP. Now that he’s on the Woods board, Rudd says, “He is among the most hard-nosed board members in wanting to see results. He wants to see our grants make change happen–not just pay salaries.”
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Another strong supporter of Obama’s work–as an organizer, as a lawyer, and now as a candidate–is Madeline Talbott, lead organizer of the feisty ACORN community organization, a group that’s a thorn in the side of most elected officials. “I can’t repeat what most ACORN members think and say about politicians. But Barack has proven himself among our members. He is committed to organizing, to building a democracy. Above all else, he is a good listener, and we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.”
Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side.
The Washington Post has been debunking the Obama/Ayers connection on his behalf since February of this year, but given the early endorsement by the Woods Fund Obama enjoyed, makes you wonder whether he may have been responsible for Ayers’ later involvement, not the other way around. This website, Discover The Networks, claims Project Vote is the voter mobilization arm of ACORN, and claims both groups were instrumental in the implementation of the Motor Voter law Obama referred to in last night’s debate.
Obama has tried the same “with ‘em while agin’ ‘em” tactics regarding his blackness. Yes, he wants credit for being black enough for black voters to empathize with him and reward him with our votes, yet he also wants to keep us at enough distance to re-assure nervous white voters that he is not an agent of black empowerment. He will even go so far as to denounce the relevance of our continued struggle, chastise us for our lack of responsibility, and exploit our legacy, all for his own political gain.
There are not only just too many coincidences to explain away, the connections are so obvious they seem to speak for themselves. They speak for Obama, too, but when he deigns to speak of them, all too often, he’s lying. And it’s beginning to seem that his lies just might catch up to him.
UPDATE: This website suggests that Obama and Ayers might have crossed paths many times when they both had offices in the same building.
Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money too is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 [Note the link is to a year 2000 version of their website].
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In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinios 60607. Here’s a copy of their 1998 tax return with that address.
Yeah, tough guy Camp O is at it again. It seems Team Teflon is once again jukin’ and jivin’ out of trouble with the grace and agility of a nimble Heisman Trophy winner. The proud former community organizer and his No Paper Trail Troops are glibly denying any association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
“We’ve got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now, and we don’t need ACORN’s help,” he told reporters at the secluded leafy resort outside Toledo where he is preparing for Wednesday’s debate.
And, even if they are corrupt, so what?
“So there’s been fraud perpetrated probably on ACORN, if they paid these individuals and they actually didn’t do registrations, but this isn’t a situation where there’s actually people who are going to try to vote, ‘cause these are phony names, and it’s doubtful Tony Romo is gonna show up in Ohio to vote, so this is another one of these distractions that gets stirred up in the course of a campaign.”
In another nifty, shifty move, the Oboyz let Jesse Jackson out the doghouse and out from under the bus just long enough to take one for The Team and put his foot in his mouth so The Great redeemer could repudiate his statements before shoving him back under the bus.
Even John Grisham would have a hard time selling the events of the 2008 Democratic election as a novel, but if anybody could, it would probably be him. Lord knows, he’d have a lot to work with. Think about it, a political thriller about an African American candidate coming up out of nowhere, with the mega-buck backing of unknown benefactors hidden by the illusion of unprecedented internet support, to secure the nomination even though he was resoundingly rejected by more than half of his party. Wow! Add the element of a shady Chicago cabal of disparate entities hellbent on remaking the American government and moving the seat of power from Washington D.C. to their home city, through the restructuring of the banking industry, bringing down the global economy in the process. Exploiting a rift in the party, a coup of sorts could be executed, resulting in the overthrow of the party’s ruling family with help from the candidate vanquished early in the last election. Throw in a little organized crime, a few ‘60’s radicals, some local machine politics and the greed and corruption of a major political party, and you’ve got a best-seller on your hands. Wrap the whole thing around a civil court case, and let Mr. Grisham loose. The fictional consequences would present no real-life repercussions and it would be a whole lot more entertaining than what we’re experiencing now.
Who might the cast of characters in this fictional drama be?
Barack Obama – Charismatic, up-and-coming, Harvard educated, junior senator from Illinois; this character would overwhelmingly appeal to the under-represented black community, who could then easily be manipulated into supporting “one of their own.” Hiding a radical socialist agenda under a glib persona, he would be slickly packaged and sold as a messianic redeemer of the underclasses. Coupled with the support of the far-left academic intellectual community, the appearance of a “base” could be built, allowing the candidate to be skillfully marketed, through the use of the internet. Preaching a “non-partisan” platform, unlimited corporate funding could then be funneled to the candidate’s campaign under the guise of massive small donor, across-the-board, grassroots support.
Michelle Obama – First Lady wannabe wife of the candidate, more radical than even her husband, this politically ambitious mother of two, often mistaken as the power-behind-the-throne, relishes the opportunity to further her extremist ideas that her husband’s candidacy presents, though less successful at masking them than he. Fashioning herself a modern-day Jacqueline Kennedy, she would become as well known for her more than occasional public lapses into radicalism as for her sense of style.
David Axelrod – Well-known political kingmaker, the reigning “king of Astroturfing” as he is known, this PR man extraordinaire would spectacularly succeed in his effort to “make a president” out of whole cloth. Known for shaping public opinion by creating the illusion of grassroot support (astroturfing) for his public- and private-sector clients through his two separate firms, Axelrod would plot the course of the candidate’s campaign, writing his TelePrompTer-read speeches, designing campaign strategy exploiting loopholes in existing party rules, and creating a Beatlemania-like atmosphere through the use of artfully stage-managed public appearances. Staying primarily in the background, Axelrod would only appear publicly to explain what Obama really meant (WORM) in order to extinguish one of numerous fires inevitably resulting from trying to pull off the daunting prospect of deluding the country and the world.
William Ayers – unrepentant ’60’s radical bomber turned respected university professor, the combination terrorist/academic/fat cat provides a bridge to the candidates multiple bases of support. Hiding his unreleased radicalism in plain sight, this son of privilege and original architect of the grand scheme to overthrow the government provides entree into the right circles for his hand-picked Manchurian candidate. He also ghost-writes the candidate’s bestselling first memoir which later serves as the basis for the candidate’s legitimacy.
Bernadine/Bernadette Dorhn – even more radical wife of subversive Ayers, this frustrated still mad bomber serves as marriage broker for the candidate by introducing him to her law firm protege before re-entering academia.
Jamie Dimon – CEO JP Morgan Chase, member of candidate’s finance committee, said to be on the short list for Treasury Secretary in candidate’s administration, Dimon turns public humiliation for being unceremoniously dumped by his mentor at Citigroup into a triumph of revenge by heading up Chicago’s BankOne through a merger with JPM after a sixteen month layoff to plot and sulk. The resulting pissing contest between the two firms leads to Dimon’s apparent victory in the market restructuring game.
This motley crew of characters, plotting to move the government’s base of operations to Chicago, could consolidate their political and financial power once Wall Street and the global market has been destroyed, and their candidate has been elected. Though I’m not at all knowledgeable about economics, maybe a Dow Jones/Chicago Mercantile Exchange power shift might be an interesting plot twist.
Sarah Palin has been calling attention to Barack Obama’s association with ’60’s radical, Bill Ayers. For those of us who have been following the election since the primaries, this relationship is one of which we are well aware. Steve Diamond, and others, in articles like this, discussed it, and Jake Tapper even made fun of it here. The examination of it began long before The New York Times article diminishing it. Primarily, Obama’s position on the boards of The Woods Fund and The Chicago Annenberg Challenge show a working relationship with Ayers, at the very least. Yet, it seems the mainstream media is up in arms that anyone would dare bring it up.
Obama’s association with ACORN has also been pooh-poohed by the media. However, this Chicago Reader article about Obama’s community organizing roots from 1995 mentions The Woods Fund, Annenberg, and ACORN:
He sits on the boards of two foundations with long histories of backing social and political reform, including his own community work–the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation. Recently he was appointed president of the board of the Annenberg Challenge Grant, which will distribute some $50 million in grants to public-school reform efforts.
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Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side.
Stanley Kurtz examined Obama’s lost years through the use of newspaper archives and, of course, Ayers’ name came up:
Crime is also a key contact-point between Obama and his most celebrated radical associate, William Ayers. We’ve heard a good deal of late about Ayers’s Weatherman terrorism back in the 1960s and his lack of repentance. Ayers refuses to answer questions about his relationship with Obama, while Obama has dismissed Ayers as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” Yet several Obama-Ayers connections are known: Obama’s 1995 political debut at the home of Ayers and his wife (and fellow former terrorist) Bernardine Dohrn, Obama’s joint service with Ayers on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a couple of appearances with Ayers on academic panels, and what the New York Times called Obama’s “rave review” (not actually a full review, but a warm endorsement) of Ayers’s book on juvenile justice, which Obama dubbed “a searing and timely account” in the Chicago Tribune.
Politico discussed the issue in February, admitting a working relationship, though not a close friendship:
Neither Ayers nor the Obama campaign would describe the relationship between the two men. Dr. Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends,” but there’s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation.
The article claims that the 1995 meeting was a chance to introduce Obama to the influential Hyde Park liberal crowd. The Chicago Reader, in 2000 related that those liberal associations have come back to haunt him before, in this instance, during his unsuccessful bid to unseat Congressman Bobby Rush:
There are whispers that Obama is being funded by a “Hyde Park mafia,” a cabal of University of Chicago types, and that there’s an “Obama Project” masterminded by whites who want to push him up the political ladder.
Sarah Palin’s characterization of “palling around with” seems fair to me; that statement doesn’t indicate bosom buddy-ness, it merely acknowledges that the two men are associates. That hardly seems worthy of debate. Therefore, the hair-splitting being done by media outlets like AP, is kinda silly:
But while Ayers and Obama are acquainted, the charge that they “pal around” is a stretch of any reading of the public record. And it’s simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts. Obama was 8 years old at the time the Weather Underground claimed credit for numerous bombings and was blamed for a pipe bomb that killed a San Francisco policeman.
First of all, who cares how old Obama was when Ayers was setting bombs? In fact, since Obama was so young when it happened he had to be well aware of Ayers’ reputation and chose to work with him, anyway. Questioning his judgment in doing so is fair game, and to say it’s not, is again, just silly. But it’s not as silly as the charge that criticizing Obama’s associations is tantamount to racism, as another AP pooh-pooh story claims:
Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.
Any criticism of Obama is going to be a criticism of a black man. Duh. But to claim that any critique is racially tinged or motivated is to diminish the reality of racism to the point of irrelevance. Obama knows and worked with William Ayers. William Ayers is a self-admitted terrorist. How well Obama knows people like that is important to ascertain, and just because some members of the mainstream media don’t like it, is not good enough reason to ignore it. My advice to the MSM: grow up and do your freaking jobs.
UPDATE: From a University of Chicago article, 1997, comes this report of a conference organized by Michelle Obama with a panel including William Ayers and Barack Obama.
Ayers, who spent a year observing the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago, is one of four panelists who will speak on juvenile justice at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, in the C-Shop. The panel, which marks the 100th anniversary of the juvenile justice system in the United States, is part of the Community Service Center’s monthly discussion series on issues affecting the city of Chicago. The event is free and open to the public.
Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system; Randolph Stone, Director of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic; Alex Correa, a reformed juvenile offender who spent seven years in Cook County Temporary Detention Center; Frank Tobin, a former priest and teacher at the Detention Center who helped Correa; and Willy Baldwin, who grew up in public housing and is currently a teacher at the Detention Center.
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Michelle Obama, Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University Community Service Center, hopes bringing issues like this to campus will open a dialogue between members of the University community and the broader community.
ACORN Caused The Housing Crisis! Democrats To Blame For Mortgage Meltdown! Bank Industry Didn’t See This Coming!
Those and other, similar headlines are total bull shit. ACORN may be a lot of things, but a community service organization, no matter how large and nefarious, simply cannot generate trillions of dollars worth of debt. Democrats do deserve a share of the blame for the whole mess, they’re just as guilty as the Republicans, the only difference being the modus operandi of the criminals, not the level of criminality itself. And, if the bank industry didn’t see this coming, they are some lousy bankers.
Let’s say all of the things that have been alleged in all the viral videos and indignant blogs are true. You’re still missing the bigger picture. The housing market was flooded with product at the same time that product was being over-valued and massive loans were extended based on that inflated valuation, across the board. USA Today reported in July about the problem in Miami:
Yet, even seen in the most favorable light, the Miami area is still suffering from the rampant speculation that triggered overdevelopment and galloping home prices, followed by a collapse of the mortgage market. What followed was a surge of foreclosures and short sales, in which owners, with a lender’s agreement, sell a home for less than the value of the mortgage and thereby avoid foreclosure.
Therefore, gazillions of dollars worth of second and third mortgages, and renegotiated mortgages were extended based on nothing. If a home is worth 100,000 dollars, but appraised at 200,000 dollars, 100% financing means that somebody just took out a loan for 100,000 dollars worth of air. And everybody, from the realtors, to the mortgage holders and all the other credit rapists in between, knew it.
The housing boom that began in 2000 and lasted a full five years looked certain to set up homeowners for a better retirement. Median home values rose dramatically and millions of Americans felt much wealthier because of it.
The problem was that for many their newfound wealth was only on paper. Only homeowners who got the money out by selling their homes actually built wealth.
Sharply rising home prices are making a risky housing market even riskier. Six hot markets now face a greater than 50% chance of price declines the next two years, says a study to be released today by PMI Mortgage Insurance.
Rapid price escalation has outpaced income gains and rent increases, making homes less affordable and increasing the odds of a price correction, PMI found.
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“Certain markets … are getting riskier,” says Mark Milner, PMI’s chief risk officer. “Prices can’t keep going up at the current rates of appreciation. It doesn’t have to end badly, but it is pretty clear there will be a flattening out.”
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PMI economist Marco Van Akkeren says the use of exotic mortgages, such as interest-only loans and those that allow borrowers to pay lower monthly payments for an initial period, is creating greater risks for buyers and inadvertently pushing prices even higher. If interest rates rise, “Affordability is going to be much more of an issue,” he says.
U.S. home sales and prices surged again last month, an industry group reported yesterday, as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that the growing use of riskier new mortgages could result in “significant losses” for lenders and borrowers if the market cools.
And some cooling is likely, Greenspan suggested in remarks delivered via satellite to the American Bankers Association convention in Palm Desert, Calif., repeating his view that “home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels” in certain local markets.
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One driver behind price appreciation, Greenspan said, is the popularity of new types of mortgages that enable many borrowers to buy houses at prices they could otherwise not afford — and that may be hard for some borrowers to repay if interest rates rise and home prices stabilize or fall. He mentioned as examples interest-only mortgages, 40-year mortgages and “option ARMS” — adjustable-rate mortgages that permit borrowers to decide how much to pay, how long the loan term should be, and when they can convert between a fixed rate and a variable rate.
“These products could be cause for some concern both because they expose borrowers to more interest-rate and house-price risk than the standard 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage and because they are seen as vehicles that enable marginally qualified, highly leveraged borrowers to purchase homes at inflated prices,” Greenspan said.
The article goes on to warn about the consequences of issuing so many “exotic” loans (approx. 1 in 5) at inflated prices, but doesn’t mention ACORN, the Community Reinvestment Act or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at all. In fact, another analyst, U. S. Comptroller of the Currency, John C. Dugan, speaking directly to the banking industry, echoed Greenspan’s concern:
Dugan reinforced Greenspan’s message to the banking industry, expressing concern that “looser underwriting standards and the more widespread penetration of riskier mortgage products have raised questions about how these loans will fare in the event of a rise in interest rates or a softening in house prices.”
The banking industry, in concert with the real estate industry, deliberately took advantage of the public for fun and profit. Period. Now that the debt has come due, the bankers are resorting to extorting the government to cover their asses, and everybody else wants to point fingers and assign blame away from the guilty guys who grease the wheels on their gravy train. And the gullible public gets screwed again. By everybody.
If that’s not bad enough, if elected, this “politician” would preside over a country undergoing a complete restructuring of it’s banking industry, a country that is about to bailout Wall Street with 700 billion dollars plus of taxpayer money. This comes after re-naming the “bailout” a “rescue” in an attempt to placate disgruntled voters who expressed their displeasure to lawmakers, only to seem to change their minds after the overloaded House website was shut down. Makes you wonder how Congress got the message.
Yet, nobody mentions the other bailouts, like the one in March for JP Morgan Chase, or the 630 billion the Fed pumped into the global financial market Sept. 29, or the other 630 billion dollar government spending bill, including 25 billion bucks for automakers, that Bush signed Tuesday. And, heaven forbid anyone from talking about monies paid to Congress by companies involved in the big bailout, or question donations to the “politician” benefiting most with voters from the country’s economic troubles, even when those donations come from the same banking industry whose executives advise him, like Jamie Dimon and William Daley (Chicago mayor, Richard’s brother) of JP Morgan Chase. If you’re not going to ask about those guys, you certainly won’t pay attention to donors to the “politician” like Mr. Good Will or Mr. Doodad Pro. Naaah, everything’s fine.
So, while I may seem to be a tad irrational in my daily ranting about this “politician,” I assure you, I am not. In a society gone mad, when the deck seems stacked against you, and the other side is just as bad, insanity is relative, anyway.
Democrats blame Republicans. Republicans blame Democrats. The lenders blame the government. The government blames the lenders. And, in the media, everybody blames poor people. Cut it out.
Poor people did not cause the economic crisis in this country. Think about that. They’re poor. They didn’t have any money in the first place, now they have less. Even if it’s a lot less, it’s not enough to account for the current mess we’re in. It ain’t 700 billion dollars worth of less. If poor people were buying substandard housing at fair market prices, even if they all defaulted on their mortgages, what’s the big deal? Let’s face it, if this whole housing mess only involved poor people and minorities, only poor people and minorities would care.
Sure, the laws on the books were exploited to the point that we’re in full economic free fall right now, but it’s the exploitation at fault, not the law or it’s intention. The Community Reinvestment Act’s stated purpose was a noble one. The worst it could be accused of being is “naively optimistic.” But then, Carter was president.
The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound banking operations. It was enacted by the Congress in 1977 (12 U.S.C. 2901) and is implemented by Regulations 12 CFR parts 25, 228, 345, and 563e. (See Regulation)
The CRA requires that each insured depository institution’s record in helping meet the credit needs of its entire community be evaluated periodically. That record is taken into account in considering an institution’s application for deposit facilities, including mergers and acquisitions. (See CRA Ratings) CRA examinations (see Exam Schedules) are conducted by the federal agencies that are responsible for supervising depository institutions: the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
As I blogged about a couple of days ago, all you’d have to do is watch HGTV or any of the other real estate-oriented shows all over the airwaves and you’d have seen the problem unfold before your very eyes, starting years ago. Everybody got subprime loans. Young professional singles, couples, retirees, middle class, lower middle class, lower upper class, and a bunch of other categories and sub-categories of Americans in between, bought all kind of houses with 100% financing. No down payment is the norm. Very few of these shows feature unemployed minority families.
In fact, money was so easy to get, there was a rise in shows dedicated to home “flipping,” or buying houses just to sell them. Whole shows about whole companies dedicated to inflating the housing market for profit. This has nothing to do with poor people, minorities, CRA, ACORN or any other alphabet soup organization, in fact, house flipping takes advantage of low-income housing, since it means that before a family has access to a home, it has to be bought and sold twice. At a profit.
And don’t think that all these “flippers” could afford their “investment,” either. Most of them bought houses to flip with 100% financing and often faced the prospect of carrying 2 mortgages; one on the “flip” house, and their own home loan. All too often, they couldn’t sell the flip house in time to avoid selling at a loss, or worse, going into default. Yet nothing stopped them from trying again once they got out from under.
When seeing people play the “blame poor people” game, remember that “subprime” refers to the loan, not the recipient. Congresspeople and entertainers have faced losing their homes, too. An environment of unlimited credit, plus the illusion of unlimited opportunity created by profiteers benefiting from the hysteria over-inflated, out-of-the-ballpark numbers can generate put us in our current situation. The scam artists and con men on both sides of the aisle have gotten caught with their hands in the cookie jar and now want to blame their underpaid maids for making cookies in the first place. And, if that doesn’t work, those guys shouldn’t sell such nice stoves, or maybe people shouldn’t write cookbooks. But if you want to know who the real crooks are, you probably don’t have to look any further than the guys yelling, “Hey, it’s not my fault!”
Especially since he has successfully re-framed the terms of the debate.
Checkmate.
What was supposed to be a foreign policy debate will instead be a “what-do-you-have-to-do-with-ACORN-and-the-bailout, Mr. Obama?” debate.
Obama, who will be over-prepared for foreign policy, will…probably cry.
He will stutter and stammer about regulations.
He will confuse McCain with George Bush.
Just like he always had trouble telling Bill and Hillary Clinton apart.
He will chant, “change,” “hope,” and “the American people” in the same sentence.
Over and over again.
Whether appropriate or not.
Like he always does.
And he will lose.
Of course McCain wouldn’t want to miss that.
He set it up.
Pay no attention to the pundits, they’re paid party hacks. Read Uppity Woman, No Quarter, any of the right-wing blogs, or check out my last post, below (she said humbly.) Whether you agree or not, the point is, these are now the relevant questions.
Spero News (whoever they are) says ACORN has been involved in government since the Carter administration:
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was given life during the Carter administration, and empowers four federal financial supervisory agencies to oversee the performance of financial institutions in meeting the credit needs of their entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Whenever an institution wants to make virtually any change in its business operation, such as merging, opening up a new branch, or getting into a new line of business, it must first prove to regulators that it has made ample loans to the government’s preferred borrowers, those in low- and middle-income neighborhoods who normally would not qualify for a loan. Lenders with low ratings can be fined by the government.
The Carter administration used tax dollars to fund numerous “community groups” that helped the government enforce the CRA by filing petitions against banks whose “cooperativeness” didn’t measure up, and sometimes stopping their efforts to expand their operations. Banks responded by giving money to the community groups and by making more loans. One of those organizations was the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). An active associate of ACORN in the 90s was a young public-interest attorney named Barack Obama.
These organizations long ago predicted that a crisis in the housing market would result in a staggering increase in foreclosures and cause the largest loss of personal net worth since the Great Depression.
Now these folks are seething because the proposed bailout of financial institutions fails to include any provisions to directly help the people at the center of this crisis. To fund the bailout, $700 billion of Treasury securities would be issued to finance the purchase of troubled mortgage assets.
Basically, these organizations want bankruptcy provisions:
Nonprofit leaders want any bailout bill to include a provision that would give bankruptcy judges the discretion to modify primary mortgages.
“This is an effective way of providing relief to homeowners at no cost to taxpayers,” AARP President Bill Novelli wrote in a letter to the leadership of the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee.
If bankruptcy court judges could modify people’s mortgages, this might give homeowners leverage to compel lenders to restructure loans or face a forced modification in bankruptcy, said Bruce Marks, chief executive of the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America.
The Chicago Tribune reported on the 23rd that the bankruptcy issue could be a deal-breaker:
An area drawing the most furious lobbying is around Sen. Christopher Dodd’s desire to modify the bankruptcy law to allow courts to reduce homeowners’ mortgage debt, a practice called “cram downs” as in “we’ll let judges cram down the throats of lenders reductions in the housing loans they hold and thus their profits.”
Bankers successfully blocked such provisions from the bankruptcy reform law Congress passed in 2005 and ever since then have resisted consumer advocates’ attempts to get “cram downs” into federal law.
The blogosphere is alive with the news, supposedly mentioned by Lindsey Graham during an appearance on Greta van Sustern’s On the Record, but reported first by Michelle Malkin, that while such provisions may indeed be at the heart of the breakdown, seemingly, ACORN seeks more than that, and the Democrats seem willing to give it:
Just heard from several readers that Lindsay Grahamnesty told Fox that the Mother of All Bailouts includes a reported $100 million more in funding for the left-wing housing entitlement thugs and heavily tax-subsidized fraudsters at ACORN. Under the original bailout proposal, apparently, a large portion of any repayment of the $700 billion would go to Barack Obama’s good friends at ACORN with a smaller allocation to debt repayment. Readers heard him say it was 20 percent.
Could those ties be the reason nobody called Barack Obama to come help with the bailout negotiations until McCain, who was called by Democrats and Republicans alike, challenged President Bush to do so? Exactly what dynamics are at play here? This seems to cut deeper than any mere stunt, or even normal presidential political one-upsmanship. Obviously, somebody with more journalistic expertise than I possess is going to have to do some digging and apply some clear, non-partisan analysis to give us a even hint of an answer, since I don’t understand why “cram down” provisions should, would, or could coincide with direct funding for ACORN.
Or something like that. At least, that’s what the Obamaniacs want you to believe. That, and he can raise the tides and heal the world. But then, as far as I can tell, that’s what community organizers do.
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
I included this quote just so we could all be on the same page as far as Obamaman’s stated goals are concerned. I thought it would be helpful to keep in mind as we go forward on this journey of discovery toward enlightenment to reveal the truth about just what the hell does a community organizer do? After scouring the left, right, center and sideways views available on the internet, I must be honest and tell you that I still have no freaking idea.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago during the Civil Rights Movement, attended public schools, joined my first union at 16, was Baptized in a Missionary Baptist church, and have relatives representing every Christian faith known to black America, some who are very actively involved in their respective churches. Yet, to my knowledge, I have never in my life met a community organizer. Even after learning that Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King and Ghandi were also community organizers, I still can’t think of one I’ve met personally.
Community organizing is a process by which disempowered people – most often low- and moderate-income people – are brought together to act in their common self-interest. Most often these organizations seek populist goals and the ideal of participatory democracy. Community organizers create popular movements by building a large base of concerned folks, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved.
“The nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities,” the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, says they too are involved in “empowering low- and moderate-income people to improve their communities.”
ACORN has been building organizations and developing leadership among low- and moderate- income residents in neighborhoods throughout the United States for 38 years. During that time, ACORN chapters have worked individually and collectively to organize innovative grassroots campaigns on a number of critical issues. As the nation’s largest grassroots community organization with more than 400,000 member families, ACORN employs 400 organizers that carry a huge responsibility of helping disenfranchised people in their communities.
# Largest radical group in America, with 175,000 dues-paying member families, and more than 850 chapters in 70 US cities
# Implicated in numerous reports of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging, voter intimidation, and vote-for-pay scams during the 2004 election
# Maintains close ties to organized labor
Many sites examine Obama’s ties with ACORN though given their various perspectives, it’s hard to know whether ACORN is a noble enterprise or the Devil’s Disciples. Judge for yourself. It can be said though that “agitating” is a core principle of Saul Alinsky’s community organizing model, upon which all community organizing appears to be based. As far as I can tell, when it comes to community organizing, Alinsky’s “da man.” After reading quite a few articles, I’ve come to the conclusion that Alinsky-style community organizing boils down to sticking your nose into other people’s business and trying to make them do what you think they should do to make their miserable lives better. I admit, I could be wrong.
But words like “agitator” keep popping up, a word which evokes childhood memories of school-yard “instigators” who would try their best to incite violence between reluctant combatants. When I was growing up, most often the violence was turned toward the person trying to egg on the fight. So, what is the real benefit to the community organizer or the communities organized?
In return, organizing teaches as nothing else does the beauty and strength of everyday people. Through the songs of the church and the talk on the stoops, through the hundreds of individual stories of coming up from the South and finding any job that would pay, of raising families on threadbare budgets, of losing some children to drugs and watching others earn degrees and land jobs their parents could never aspire to – it is through these stories and songs of dashed hopes and powers of endurance, of ugliness and strife, subtlety and laughter, that organizers can shape a sense of community not only for others, but for themselves.
Great, really, great. But, what the hell do they do? I still don’t know for sure. I do know that Obamaman’s most famous efforts involving asbestos removal from the Altgeld Gardens Housing Project was pretty much a failure. And I’m pretty sure that most of the conditions he described back in 1990 still exist in the communities he organized, pretty much the way they were when he started. To be fair, organizing successful voting drives, which by all accounts he did and was good at, is a very good thing. But who has benefited more, the register (Obamaman) or the registrees (the people still living in the conditions Obama found so compelling)?
“ ‘We are not making large-scale change, and I want to be involved in doing that,’ ” Mr. Kellman said Mr. Obama had told him.
I still don’t have a really good grasp on what a community organizer does, but I’m not sure it’s the noble, heroic profession-on-a-par-with-the-accomplishments-of Jesus that Obamamaniacs suggest. In fact, I’m not even sure Obama is good at it. It seems to me, every job he left, he left seeking that “just one more” element that would allow him to actually make a difference. So, far from swooping into troubled situations and making them right with a single Superman-like act, he seems more like the Superman Big Bank Hank of the Sugar Hill Gang famously described:
“He may be very sexy or even cute
But he looks like a sucka in a blue and red suit”
And I’m not even sure the Naked Emperor’s wearing that much.
I’ve been watching the gleeful celebration of the death of ACORN around the PUMAsphere with sadness and dismay. It’s not because I’m an ACORN advocate, far from it. I actually know very little about the group, and, to be honest, most of what I’ve heard hasn’t been good. It’s because I’ve realized that I’m a pretty liberal Democrat at heart, and a liberal institution is under vicious right wing attack, primarily for being a liberal institution:
Everybody
We be black. We was black befo’ Obama got elected, and we still black, nah. Summa y’all don’t like dat, an’ it piss y’all off. Y’all be trippin’. Y’all suck. Chill.
cannot see the same sort of racial bias right in front of their eyes. Though they are not only adept at recognizing overt discrimination directed towards them, but quite skilled at ferreting out intended sexism no matter how cleverly couched, even correctly identifying incidences where deliberate bigotry is intentionally dressed in politically correct clothes in order to escape detection, no such leeway is accorded those who empathize with those of us who suffer racially. 
Propaganda
As we, the people, try to figure out exactly where President Black Obama might be going with his 
Looks like Obama the Candidate was really serious about “
Barack Obama has been pimping faith, any faith, for political power since the beginning of his professional career as a community organizer. Early on he made a conscious, callous decision to use the pulpit, any pulpit, to attempt to mobilize people into action. This is not a secret, it has been documented repeatedly, yet it has been marketed as most things Obama have been, it is what it is, but it means anything you want it to.
When you’ve got an ace in the hole, or a wild card, or an abundance of trumps, you can play with confidence. If you’ve tucked the only Joker in the deck up your sleeve, only allowing it to magically appear when needed, you can wipe out your opposition without breaking a sweat. But when another player, seemingly low on chips and on his way out the game, suddenly not only goes all in, but produces an even bigger Joker than yours, showing yours to have been a rather poor imitation of the real thing all along, your ass is punked.
